Ace has up a handful of new posts about the steady trickle of disquieting Ebola reports. HotAir has others. For instance, are you thrilled to hear that high-risk tissue samples were sent through the Dallas hospital's pneumatic tube delivery system? Or that nurses who treated Patient Zero also went on to treat other patients at the hospital rather than working in strict isolation?
I'm inclined to cut the bumbling expert bureaucrats some slack on certain issues, such as the continuing confusion over when and how intensely contagious Ebola sufferers are. The answer seems to be that they're not noticeably infectious at all early on, then they become moderately infectious when they develop symptoms, though only if there is considerable direct contact with body fluids. Finally, they become crazily off-the-charts infectious when they reach the crisis stage: so infectious, at that point, that Level 2 biocontainment protocols apparently are ridiculously inadequate and only Level 4 protocols (such as those used at Emory Hospital in Atlanta) will do. This means that the CDC probably is not nuts to advise us that there is quite limited risk to riding on an aircraft with someone who is infected but not yet showing symptoms, perhaps even someone, like Dallas nurse No. 2, who's knows she's been exposed and is running a low-grade fever but for some reason nevertheless decides to hop on a plane, because, hey, it's not like she's a health professional who should know better. But it also means that the CDC's "we got this" attitude is less than reassuring when it comes to the likelihood that your regular corner hospital is prepared to deal safely with a full-on blowout crisis-stage Ebola case. On that subject, the record is not looking so great so far.
For every news article that tempts us to think everyone's getting hysterical, there's another that suggests we're not taking some risks seriously enough. Ebola is a manageable disease in very small numbers in highly qualified clinical settings. If we adopt slapdash procedures in enough hospitals, we may quickly find that the outbreak becomes very, very difficult to contain.
Meantime, all is well: the President has cancelled a fundraising trip so he can get all over this.
Fusion at the Skunk Works
Stories about workable fusion reactors are a dime a dozen, but this one actually seems to be on the level, though--obviously--preliminary.
Chemical Weapons in Iraq
This is a pretty substantial piece on chemical weapons encountered by US forces in Iraq. There are a number of charges that 'the military' hid or suppressed evidence, including from Congress. For some reason, they decided to print the location of a set of bunkers filled with such weapons by American and Iraqi forces that is now controlled by ISIS.
UPDATE: Mr. Wolf at BLACKFIVE has a piece on the subject.
Iraq took initial steps to fulfill its obligations. It drafted a plan to entomb the contaminated bunkers on Al Muthanna, which still held remnant chemical stocks, in concrete.In another era, I'd have hoped that they intentionally misdirected ISIS' efforts by printing a piece of US military deception (MILDEC) that might lead to misdirected resources or wasted time by anyone in ISIS interested in recovering chemical weapons. I wonder if the Times would do that now, or if they'd think to ask for one.
When three journalists from The Times visited Al Muthanna in 2013, a knot of Iraqi police officers and soldiers guarded the entrance. Two contaminated bunkers — one containing cyanide precursors and old sarin rockets — loomed behind. The area where Marines had found mustard shells in 2008 was out of sight, shielded by scrub and shimmering heat.
The Iraqi troops who stood at that entrance are no longer there. The compound, never entombed, is now controlled by the Islamic State.
UPDATE: Mr. Wolf at BLACKFIVE has a piece on the subject.
Some Criticisms
One of the lessons I've learned in my long and valued correspondence with Cassandra is that men must sometimes criticize women on moral grounds. To refuse is to refuse to take women seriously as moral actors. I generally still avoid it as much as possible, but today I am going to make a very rare exception and do just that.
The occasion is Hanna Rosin's article called "Abortion is Great." Abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life. There are cases, such as when it is absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother and the child is too young to be capable of survival, when it is not morally problematic to kill such an innocent human life. It is nearly morally obligatory in that particular example, though I think one can accept the choice of a mother who prefers not to even though it means her life.
There are also cases where the mother or the child might live, as perhaps in the case of chemotherapy, and someone must choose. This case is highly morally problematic, as any case when you are choosing who shall live and who shall die, but it is a case on which honorable people might disagree. I will say that a woman who elects to run the risk herself, to save her child, is someone whom I respect to the uttermost degree. Motherhood itself is honorable because it necessarily entails significant sacrifice, but it is never more honorable than that. Yet I do not see how any law could compel her to make the choice.
In our last discussion on the topic, though, we saw evidence that these cases are a tiny fraction of the statistics. Risk of maternal life accounted for 0.1% of reasons given; risk to maternal health at any level, one percent. This is not what we are generally talking about when we talk about American abortions. We are talking about elective abortions.
And that is what Rosin has come to defend. "They are not generally victims of rape or incest, or in any pitiable situation from which they need to be rescued. They are making a reasonable and even admirable decision that they can’t raise a child at the moment. Is that so hard to say? As Pollitt puts it, 'This is not the right time for me' should be reason enough. And saying that aloud would help push back against the lingering notion that it’s unnatural for a woman to choose herself over others."
That is wrong. 'This is not the right time for me' is not even a fully satisfactory reason to cancel your dentist appointment. After all, your dentist has set aside time for you to show up then, and has thus not taken on other business. Your 'choosing yourself over others' is not without cost to the others: indeed, some medical practitioners have found it necessary to introduce cancellation fees in order to recoup some of the lost income.
Nor is the argument that 'men aren't doing this' persuasive, since in fact men are held to the standard she denies we hold: if a man sires a child, not only I but the law will hold him to supporting it for eighteen years at least. That is what we believe, and what we will enforce with our courts if we can.
The cost it imposes upon the reckless young parent is already a debt they owe their child. The cost they would be imposing on the child by electing to kill instead is the child's whole life.
I am not surprised at the way the culture has turned on this issue. The very frequency of the practice makes it difficult to criticize, and tempting to celebrate. Rosin cites a source that says that thirty percent of American women have an abortion (almost all elective); my source says forty percent. The percentages are large enough that there must be tremendous social pressure to say that it is OK, that it's fine, that it's understandable: Rosin goes so far as to say that it is "admirable."
It is not. If you choose to kill an innocent human being out of preference for some personal advantage, you are doing a great moral wrong. If you choose to kill an innocent human being to give advantages to others -- perhaps other children of yours -- you are still wrong, because it is not necessary in America to kill any one of your children in order to ensure the others have a reasonable chance at success. In either case, you are doing wrong and it will not be possible to fully respect you until you admit it to yourself and try to reform your heart.
If you are arguing that it is admirable to do these things, you are doing evil.
Can we still bring ourselves, Americans, to criticize so large a percentage of our population? I wonder. Another case that brings it to my mind is today's announcement by her lawyer that the artist who bills herself as Ke$ha is suing her producer. No one probably doubts her story. Her lawyer said, "The facts presented in our lawsuit paint a picture of a man who is controlling and willing to commit horrible acts of abuse in an attempt to intimidate an impressionable, talented, young female artist into submission for his personal gain."
I've already seen adequate evidence to believe that. I've had occasion to see two of her videos.
That's not a joke: I would never laugh about such a thing. The most "harrowing" charge, according to the article is that after a night of partying and some sort of pills he gave her, she "woke up the following afternoon, naked in Dr. Luke's bed, sore and sick, with no memory of how she got there."
The first video I saw from this pair started with her being depicted as waking up in a bathtub, and then shortly thereafter proclaiming that she was going to 'brush her teeth with a bottle of Jack' before heading back out for another all-night party. I saw the second one a few years later, and remember that the chorus went something like, "Let's have a night we don't remember."
So I already believe, based on his artistic output, that he's a man whose character and values are despicable and who is willing to use not just the one woman, but millions of others, for his personal gain. He's willing to sell them a vision of the good life that is poisonous, and he was willing to use one particular woman to craft it and pitch it to them. Our culture is worse because of his work.
But how can I criticize him without criticizing her? If I say that the work is poison, what do I say about its chief saleswoman?
Nothing, apparently: read the comments at the Billboard article, and you will see that any criticism is off limits. We have developed a whole vocabulary to explain our objections to criticizing her here. But if he is damnable for having sold this to thousands of young people, if the reason to believe her lies partly in the fact that she is only accusing him of living up to his own frequently-portrayed values, what must we say of her?
Cassandra was right, and not only about me. Our society has gone a long way toward refusing to take women seriously as moral actors by protecting them from criticism. Indeed, we have built a culture that insists on celebrating them even when they are wrong. That does not create respect, but mockery.
The occasion is Hanna Rosin's article called "Abortion is Great." Abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life. There are cases, such as when it is absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother and the child is too young to be capable of survival, when it is not morally problematic to kill such an innocent human life. It is nearly morally obligatory in that particular example, though I think one can accept the choice of a mother who prefers not to even though it means her life.
There are also cases where the mother or the child might live, as perhaps in the case of chemotherapy, and someone must choose. This case is highly morally problematic, as any case when you are choosing who shall live and who shall die, but it is a case on which honorable people might disagree. I will say that a woman who elects to run the risk herself, to save her child, is someone whom I respect to the uttermost degree. Motherhood itself is honorable because it necessarily entails significant sacrifice, but it is never more honorable than that. Yet I do not see how any law could compel her to make the choice.
In our last discussion on the topic, though, we saw evidence that these cases are a tiny fraction of the statistics. Risk of maternal life accounted for 0.1% of reasons given; risk to maternal health at any level, one percent. This is not what we are generally talking about when we talk about American abortions. We are talking about elective abortions.
And that is what Rosin has come to defend. "They are not generally victims of rape or incest, or in any pitiable situation from which they need to be rescued. They are making a reasonable and even admirable decision that they can’t raise a child at the moment. Is that so hard to say? As Pollitt puts it, 'This is not the right time for me' should be reason enough. And saying that aloud would help push back against the lingering notion that it’s unnatural for a woman to choose herself over others."
That is wrong. 'This is not the right time for me' is not even a fully satisfactory reason to cancel your dentist appointment. After all, your dentist has set aside time for you to show up then, and has thus not taken on other business. Your 'choosing yourself over others' is not without cost to the others: indeed, some medical practitioners have found it necessary to introduce cancellation fees in order to recoup some of the lost income.
Nor is the argument that 'men aren't doing this' persuasive, since in fact men are held to the standard she denies we hold: if a man sires a child, not only I but the law will hold him to supporting it for eighteen years at least. That is what we believe, and what we will enforce with our courts if we can.
The cost it imposes upon the reckless young parent is already a debt they owe their child. The cost they would be imposing on the child by electing to kill instead is the child's whole life.
I am not surprised at the way the culture has turned on this issue. The very frequency of the practice makes it difficult to criticize, and tempting to celebrate. Rosin cites a source that says that thirty percent of American women have an abortion (almost all elective); my source says forty percent. The percentages are large enough that there must be tremendous social pressure to say that it is OK, that it's fine, that it's understandable: Rosin goes so far as to say that it is "admirable."
It is not. If you choose to kill an innocent human being out of preference for some personal advantage, you are doing a great moral wrong. If you choose to kill an innocent human being to give advantages to others -- perhaps other children of yours -- you are still wrong, because it is not necessary in America to kill any one of your children in order to ensure the others have a reasonable chance at success. In either case, you are doing wrong and it will not be possible to fully respect you until you admit it to yourself and try to reform your heart.
If you are arguing that it is admirable to do these things, you are doing evil.
Can we still bring ourselves, Americans, to criticize so large a percentage of our population? I wonder. Another case that brings it to my mind is today's announcement by her lawyer that the artist who bills herself as Ke$ha is suing her producer. No one probably doubts her story. Her lawyer said, "The facts presented in our lawsuit paint a picture of a man who is controlling and willing to commit horrible acts of abuse in an attempt to intimidate an impressionable, talented, young female artist into submission for his personal gain."
I've already seen adequate evidence to believe that. I've had occasion to see two of her videos.
That's not a joke: I would never laugh about such a thing. The most "harrowing" charge, according to the article is that after a night of partying and some sort of pills he gave her, she "woke up the following afternoon, naked in Dr. Luke's bed, sore and sick, with no memory of how she got there."
The first video I saw from this pair started with her being depicted as waking up in a bathtub, and then shortly thereafter proclaiming that she was going to 'brush her teeth with a bottle of Jack' before heading back out for another all-night party. I saw the second one a few years later, and remember that the chorus went something like, "Let's have a night we don't remember."
So I already believe, based on his artistic output, that he's a man whose character and values are despicable and who is willing to use not just the one woman, but millions of others, for his personal gain. He's willing to sell them a vision of the good life that is poisonous, and he was willing to use one particular woman to craft it and pitch it to them. Our culture is worse because of his work.
But how can I criticize him without criticizing her? If I say that the work is poison, what do I say about its chief saleswoman?
Nothing, apparently: read the comments at the Billboard article, and you will see that any criticism is off limits. We have developed a whole vocabulary to explain our objections to criticizing her here. But if he is damnable for having sold this to thousands of young people, if the reason to believe her lies partly in the fact that she is only accusing him of living up to his own frequently-portrayed values, what must we say of her?
Cassandra was right, and not only about me. Our society has gone a long way toward refusing to take women seriously as moral actors by protecting them from criticism. Indeed, we have built a culture that insists on celebrating them even when they are wrong. That does not create respect, but mockery.
Can We Get A Similar Waiver for US Citizens?
Volunteers are willing to go, but getting through the legal red tape on our side of the Atlantic is proving daunting.
UPDATE: Related.
UPDATE: Related.
Whether Marriage is of Natural Law?
There's a certain amount of talking-past-each-other between secular legal scholars and Christian thinkers on the subject of whether marriage is a natural law concept, or only a positive law concept. The secular scholars don't actually understand the natural law argument, I think; the Christian thinkers don't know how to explain it to them, and think that referring to "nature" in an unsophisticated way will fix the problem.
Fortunately, the very question was treated in the supplemental to Summa Theologicae III, so with a little care we can see what the Thomists thought was the right answer. It's a subtle point, and a problematic one, as we'll see.
Dr. Althouse's objection is actually the very first objection the Summa treats. She puts it this way:
Now, there are some ways in which human beings are like other animals, so that (for example) it would be a violation of natural law to pass a law requiring people to forgo food or water. But there are other ways in which human beings are different from other animals, especially in that we naturally have a larger access to reason. One of the things we can reason about is the fact that, also by our nature, male and female produce a child who requires a long upbringing and education. Thus, we can reason that the perfection of our sexual nature is in the successful rearing of the child, which requires a strong union between the parents. This is the institution of marriage, which is therefore of human nature.
If you want another institution that points to a different need, that's fine: humans are also political by nature (a point made in the same article). As we've discussed before, Aristotelian friendship looks a lot like what 'same-sex marriage' advocates really want: unity of property and concern between (usually) two people, to pursue each other's good in a sort of loving friendship. That could have a sexual component or not -- certainly the Greeks would not have been troubled if it did.
It's distinct from the natural law marriage, though, which comes from this reality about how we produce offspring, and what the needs of those offspring are.
There are two points worth thinking about, though:
1) I think the sed contra is confusing on this point: "Further, the Philosopher (Ethic. viii, 12) says that "man is an animal more inclined by nature to connubial than political society." But "man is naturally a political and gregarious animal," as the same author asserts (Polit. i, 2). Therefore he is naturally inclined to connubial union, and thus the conjugal union or matrimony is natural."
Aristotle clearly thinks that the political union is the more natural because it is only in a political union that human beings can fully achieve their rational potential. So the point being made here is not that marriage is more natural than politics, but only that it is natural since we are inclined to it even more than we (naturally) are to politics.
2) The family nevertheless has a kind of independent status under this reading. It's pre-political. It is (Politics I) different in kind from the state, and Aristotle rejects Plato's idea from the Republic that families should be structured by the state for its own purposes. It's one thing that the political should not intrude upon. Aristotle's clear assumption is that the political union is made up of pre-existing families. These families can unify in friendship in other ways too, as for example in a unity of the sort described above as "Aristotelian friendship." In terms of politics, though, the role of politics is to provide a kind of security among non-family members. It's assumed that you will treat your own kin with favoritism, and in order for a political union to be stable that tendency has to be resisted. So, for example, a single family should not dominate the leadership of a country or a political faction: but of course a father will care more about his son than a stranger.
Where our current debate is most dangerous, it strikes me, is in destroying that natural independence of the family and bringing everything under the rule of the state. That's the gravest danger in this debate: not that some men will go off and do whatever they were going to do anyway, somewhat more easily than before, but that the natural love of parents and children shall be ever more tightly bound by the intrusion of the political and the state. That was Plato's ideal for his guardians, but it is an impossibly tyrannical scheme. Just because it is such a violation of human nature, no state could pursue it and remain legitimate.
That is what must be resisted above all.
Fortunately, the very question was treated in the supplemental to Summa Theologicae III, so with a little care we can see what the Thomists thought was the right answer. It's a subtle point, and a problematic one, as we'll see.
Dr. Althouse's objection is actually the very first objection the Summa treats. She puts it this way:
It's not as though marriage exists in nature. Marriage is an "arbitrary boundary created by man." The only boundary in nature is between having sex or not. Nature puts up no boundaries about when or with who (or what) any given animal has sex. Nonprocreativity doesn't set up a boundary.That's not right, the scholastics argued, because "nature" means more than one thing. You only come to that error by equivocating between the meanings.
Man's nature inclines to a thing in two ways. In one way, because that thing is becoming to the generic nature, and this is common to all animals; in another way because it is becoming to the nature of the difference, whereby the human species in so far as it is rational overflows the genus; such is an act of prudence or temperance. And just as the generic nature, though one in all animals, yet is not in all in the same way, so neither does it incline in the same way in all, but in a way befitting each one. Accordingly man's nature inclines to matrimony on the part of the difference, as regards the second reason given above; wherefore the Philosopher (Ethic. viii, 11,12; Polit. i) gives this reason in men over other animals; but as regards the first reason it inclines on the part of the genus; wherefore he says that the begetting of offspring is common to all animals. Yet nature does not incline thereto in the same way in all animals; since there are animals whose offspring are able to seek food immediately after birth, or are sufficiently fed by their mother; and in these there is no tie between male and female; whereas in those whose offspring needs the support of both parents, although for a short time, there is a certain tie, as may be seen in certain birds. In man, however, since the child needs the parents' care for a long time, there is a very great tie between male and female, to which tie even the generic nature inclines.The language is a little archaic even in translation, but it can be simplified. "Nature" isn't a simple synonym for "bestial," and making human beings more like beasts was certainly never the Church's point.
Now, there are some ways in which human beings are like other animals, so that (for example) it would be a violation of natural law to pass a law requiring people to forgo food or water. But there are other ways in which human beings are different from other animals, especially in that we naturally have a larger access to reason. One of the things we can reason about is the fact that, also by our nature, male and female produce a child who requires a long upbringing and education. Thus, we can reason that the perfection of our sexual nature is in the successful rearing of the child, which requires a strong union between the parents. This is the institution of marriage, which is therefore of human nature.
If you want another institution that points to a different need, that's fine: humans are also political by nature (a point made in the same article). As we've discussed before, Aristotelian friendship looks a lot like what 'same-sex marriage' advocates really want: unity of property and concern between (usually) two people, to pursue each other's good in a sort of loving friendship. That could have a sexual component or not -- certainly the Greeks would not have been troubled if it did.
It's distinct from the natural law marriage, though, which comes from this reality about how we produce offspring, and what the needs of those offspring are.
There are two points worth thinking about, though:
1) I think the sed contra is confusing on this point: "Further, the Philosopher (Ethic. viii, 12) says that "man is an animal more inclined by nature to connubial than political society." But "man is naturally a political and gregarious animal," as the same author asserts (Polit. i, 2). Therefore he is naturally inclined to connubial union, and thus the conjugal union or matrimony is natural."
Aristotle clearly thinks that the political union is the more natural because it is only in a political union that human beings can fully achieve their rational potential. So the point being made here is not that marriage is more natural than politics, but only that it is natural since we are inclined to it even more than we (naturally) are to politics.
2) The family nevertheless has a kind of independent status under this reading. It's pre-political. It is (Politics I) different in kind from the state, and Aristotle rejects Plato's idea from the Republic that families should be structured by the state for its own purposes. It's one thing that the political should not intrude upon. Aristotle's clear assumption is that the political union is made up of pre-existing families. These families can unify in friendship in other ways too, as for example in a unity of the sort described above as "Aristotelian friendship." In terms of politics, though, the role of politics is to provide a kind of security among non-family members. It's assumed that you will treat your own kin with favoritism, and in order for a political union to be stable that tendency has to be resisted. So, for example, a single family should not dominate the leadership of a country or a political faction: but of course a father will care more about his son than a stranger.
Where our current debate is most dangerous, it strikes me, is in destroying that natural independence of the family and bringing everything under the rule of the state. That's the gravest danger in this debate: not that some men will go off and do whatever they were going to do anyway, somewhat more easily than before, but that the natural love of parents and children shall be ever more tightly bound by the intrusion of the political and the state. That was Plato's ideal for his guardians, but it is an impossibly tyrannical scheme. Just because it is such a violation of human nature, no state could pursue it and remain legitimate.
That is what must be resisted above all.
Bit O' Rain This Morning
Don't do rock music much here at the Hall, but I'll make an exception this morning.
NYT insults the Middle Ages
Tell me again what's wrong with a quarantine? Not an inflexible travel ban, just a hold on incoming traffic while we either run a rapid-turnaround PCR test, or hold travelers for 21 days to see if they develop symptoms. I know it could get expensive, but compared to what?
Comparative linguistics
From Gerard Vanderleun:
An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. … But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
That's some low
Check out the wind map. It looks like a hurricane over Oklahoma City.
After the front passes through this evening, we're supposed to get 3-4 days of lovely, cool weather. Time to get out and attack some weeds that are as tall as I am.
We're on an all-eggplant, all the time diet this week, even after driving around and handing out bags of eggplants to our neighbors. Eggplant is one of the few crops, besides peppers, that do well here in the dog days of summer.
After the front passes through this evening, we're supposed to get 3-4 days of lovely, cool weather. Time to get out and attack some weeds that are as tall as I am.
We're on an all-eggplant, all the time diet this week, even after driving around and handing out bags of eggplants to our neighbors. Eggplant is one of the few crops, besides peppers, that do well here in the dog days of summer.
Roadblocks and workarounds
Stalling the Keystone XL pipeline may not keep all that Canadian tar-sand oil under the ground after all.
You're a Thousand Years Late
PBS wants you to consider suicide.... er, well, end-of-life care short of lifesaving. We may still yet avoid the Death Panels if we can get enough of you to volunteer of your own good will!
The better way is to live otherwise from the beginning, as we were told in the Havamal.
Some of you, perhaps the ones with less Viking blood, may prefer the Irish version of the sentiment.
The better way is to live otherwise from the beginning, as we were told in the Havamal.
The coward believes he will live forever
If he holds back in the battle,
But in old age he shall have no peace
Though spears have spared his limbs
...
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But the good name never dies
Of one who has done well
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But I know one thing that never dies,
The glory of the great dead.
Some of you, perhaps the ones with less Viking blood, may prefer the Irish version of the sentiment.
Herodotus
Whatever bad things anyone has said about Herodotus -- aye, even Aristotle -- the histories he wrote are among the most interesting things you will ever read. Yet among scholars he has a respect he didn't used to enjoy:
Cicero called Herodotus the “father of history.” Yet Arnaldo Momigliano, the great 20th-century historiographer of the ancient world, ends his brilliant essay on Herodotus by noting, “It is a strange truth that Herodotus has really become the father of history only in modern times.” History, or, more precisely, historical methods, Momigliano explains, finally caught up with Herodotus. Ethnographic research brought a new respect for Herodotus’ own early interest in ethnography. Those who did archaeological exploration in Egypt and Mesopotamia found Herodotus’ writings on these subjects useful. His writings also became valuable to biblical scholars in their study of Oriental history. Oral history, on which he drew heavily, became a standard tool of modern social science and history. Herodotus was also the first serious historian to give due attention to women. In his Histories, he devotes several pages to Artemisia, the queen of Halicarnassus, who commanded the Asian Dorian fleet during Xerxes’ attack on Greece. As for his accuracy, Momigliano writes, “We have now collected enough evidence to be able to say that he can be trusted.”Well, it's not a one-off thing; Herodotus writes about the women of almost every civilization he discusses. And I say "almost" only because I don't want to go back through a long and detailed book to make sure it's fully 100% of them; but I can't recall one where he didn't.
Herodotus’ philosophy arises out of the plentitude of his details. This philosophy holds men to be perpetually in peril of overstepping their bounds—bounds set by good sense and reinforced by the gods. Those who do not understand this go under. But even those who understand may not necessarily come to a good end. Herodotus provides story after story proving that human justice is not the first order of the gods.So it seems.
Doorbells
Megan McArdle posted about the California law requiring affirmative consent for sexual encounters. She objected to the strange tone of a Jezebel post responding to an argument that intrusive consent requirements might ruin sex, where I found this interesting comment:
I expect friends to drop by unannounced sometimes. They know they can count on me to speak up if there's some reason they can't come in. Don't we expect a lover to make a few presumptions, too, as long as he keeps his eyes and ears open for our response, which won't always be signed, sealed, and notarized? There are always people who can't take a hint, and you gradually ease them out of your life, without making a federal case out of it.
Funny how I've never had anyone tell me that doorbells have ruined inviting friends over.Clever, but I'm not convinced it works. Doorbells are for strangers, aren't they?--or for friends who are being at least a bit formal. Is that a good model for lovers, or should we assume that communication in that context is a lot more tacit?
I expect friends to drop by unannounced sometimes. They know they can count on me to speak up if there's some reason they can't come in. Don't we expect a lover to make a few presumptions, too, as long as he keeps his eyes and ears open for our response, which won't always be signed, sealed, and notarized? There are always people who can't take a hint, and you gradually ease them out of your life, without making a federal case out of it.
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