Uh-Oh

 The Big Bang didn't happen.

In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies... One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”

Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The truth that these papers don’t report is that the hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since. Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,” says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, “and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.”

Don't feel too bad. Even Aristotle turned out to be basically wrong about physics, in spite of being the most important physicist of all time. And Newton, and, well, everyone else. You still made a valuable contribution in error, because we can still learn a lot by studying why it was reasonable to think as Aristotle did (and it was -- empirically verifiable, even!). That helps us understand how we progress. 

A Positive Word About the FBI

There is a lot of merited criticism about the FBI, but there are also occasionally good stories from the field offices especially. 

141 adult victims of human trafficking, 84 minor victims of child sex trafficking and 37 missing children were located, during the initiative conducted during the first two weeks of August. Officials said the average age of the children was 15-year-old, and the youngest victim was age 11. 

Now the FBI here was the coordinating leadership branch of a state, local, and Federal effort; I imagine, though I do not know, that the local police did a lot of the actual legwork in locating these victims. Hopefully in the absence of the FBI, local police still could and still would do such things.

Still, the FBI deserves a kind word for its role here. Human trafficking was and is evil, and it is a very positive thing to see victims rescued. 

Seeking Tenure

I did not myself even try to apply for tenure track jobs in academia, coming not from Yale but from UGA. There would have been no point for someone even less attuned to this sort of conversation than the author, coming from a less prestigious (but actually better in philosophy, I think) school.

“I know where I stand ideologically!” the young man next to me burst out. “I am a marxist with a small m.” He was pounced upon by two or three of the women. “But Marxism has nothing to say about feminist issues!” one of them said. “That is why I am a marxist with a small m!” he replied. The professor smiled benignly; her pupils were apt. I cowered beneath the table (metaphorically), understanding immediately that, like a dissenter in a marxist (small m or large) regime, I would need to speak my true beliefs behind closed doors, and only to those I could trust.

Marxism actually had a lot to say about feminist issues; they were at the forefront of Communist revolutionary thought, precisely as a way of bringing women out of the family and into the state. Marxist revolutionary groups frequently had female leadership, and prominently so as a recruiting mechanism for would-be radicals (both to recruit fiery young women who might agree with them, and also young men who wanted to meet fiery young women). Now, once a Communist government actually came to power, women always ended up being pushed out of the positions of real power: but as long as there was a revolution to win, young women with berets and Kalashnikovs were in high demand, and there was a lot of talk about the need for equality between the sexes.

Women of the IRA

New Peoples' Army Women

Viet Cong Woman

So, both, "I reject Marxism, in spite of its occasional good point which I'm happy to recognize and pursue in better ways," and also, "I also reject feminism, likewise in spite of occasional good points I'm happy to pursue in other ways," with a side order of, "Also, you don't know what you're talking about anyway." 

Yes, I would do quite poorly at winning tenure. 

Platitudes in Mathematics

The author and his wife are both philosophers and friends. She works in that branch of contemporary metaphysics that is very interested in formal logic; he works, as you will see, in philosophy of math. This begins with an interesting question: "continuous" was not defined in a thoroughgoing way until the 19th century, but it has been a useful concept since antiquity and -- moreover -- many formal proofs were adequately established before the definition. How is that possible?

Along the way he raises another question: how can one come to a justified belief in mathematics? Now he is speaking of pure mathematics, which is to say the mathematics that exists in the mind alone: whether or not it applies to circular objects in the world, or how imperfectly, the geometry of circles as an idea has a kind of logic to it. What he wants to defend is the idea that it is somehow already all there, and all you are doing is deducing what else you know from what you already know. 

Some of you may find it pleasurable to work through this argument. If you don't, pass on; philosophy of math is not, in my experience, one of the things in life that grows on you.

This... You Can Trust

The Riddle of Steel is joined, strangely, by the Mystery of the Rosary.

Preserving Five Viking Ships

Private foundations have pledged enough to preserve the five ships at Roskilde. 

'Viper' Garland

I wonder if Attorney General Merrick Garland will be flattered or annoyed by this nickname?

Democratic strategist James Carville has a message for people who are doubting Merrick Garland: Just wait. 

"I mean, remember Merrick Garland is like a pit viper. He prosecuted the Oklahoma City bomber case, the Unabomber case, the Olympic bomber case."

The Olympic bomber case? That's news to me. I'd like to hear more about Garland's role in that, because the part affecting Richard Jewell was one of the most disgraceful acts in the history of Federal law enforcement. I did not see Garland's name in any of the relevant Wikipedia articles, which may mean that it's been scrubbed; but exactly what role did he play, I wonder?

As for the OKC bombing, there have been dire mutterings about it for years -- backed up by some apparently legitimate government documents: the source here is conspiracy-minded, but it's hard not to suspect one when you've got a document from the government asserting that the matter "should not be put to paper." Just yesterday I read that Garland had refused to approve a warrant in the Unabomber case, which might be evidence in his favor: I appreciate signs that a man is careful and not inclined to empower the government's agents without clarity. A fellow I know and respect found his treatment of the recent political violence from Antifa to be disqualifying, but one can make a similar argument here also. Maybe it's good not to rush too far ahead of the evidence.

Here's the Washington Post on the OKC bombing and Garland, for a mainstream media view. One way or the other, we'll be hearing a lot more about 'Viper' Garland in the coming weeks. 

Carville himself is from an older tradition of Democratic politics in which hard-edged nicknames were preferred. Hunter S. Thompson referred to him as a "hired gun" in his book about Bill Clinton's election, Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. Their continued close friendship suggests that Carville was flattered.

Appalachian Vocabulary Test

What is a catamount, she asks? Anyone from around here would know that one.

Bee Stings

FBI Raid

'The FBI Raid On Melania's Closet Was Justified,' Says Merrick Garland Wearing Gorgeous New Evening Gown And Sun Hat (The pic is worth the click.)

Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Claims Trump Had Acquired All Six Infinity Stones

Trump Thanks FBI For Kicking Off His 2024 Reelection Campaign

4D Chess: Trump Saves His Cache Of Classified Documents From FBI Confiscation By Labeling Them 'Epstein’s Client List'

Non-FBI Raid

Law & Order: Microaggression Victims Unit Episode 2 - DEAD NAMED

Gamers Eagerly Await The Release Of 'Call Of Duty: IRS Auditor'

Theologians Confirm Chips And Salsa Were Blessed In Eternity Past And May Be Eaten Before Prayer

Rescue Pre-Planning Expedition

Black Flag Canning

There’s nothing more anarchist than growing your own food and putting it up. Those kids in the city think they’re fighting the power, but they can’t even eat without those trucks we were just talking about. 

You want to be free, there’s a lot of work to do. On the upside, you’re free; and the chow is better too.

Stupid or Evil?

Our regular game continues. On the one hand, the Census Bureau asks a lot of intrusive questions they aren’t really entitled to know about, but which Congress has invested them with legal power to demand. On the other, this would be a first pass at trying to identify handguns purchased privately that the Feds couldn’t track using their background check system (which the administrative state wildly abuses to try to construct a functional registry in defiance of Congress’ laws).

Predictive Analysis

James links to a piece that suggests that thinking hard wears you out because it produces high levels of toxic substances.

Their studies, reported in Current Biology on August 11, show that when intense cognitive work is prolonged for several hours, it causes potentially toxic byproducts to build up in the part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This in turn alters your control over decisions, so you shift toward low-cost actions requiring no effort or waiting as cognitive fatigue sets in, the researchers explain.  

“Influential theories suggested that fatigue is a sort of illusion cooked up by the brain to make us stop whatever we are doing and turn to a more gratifying activity,” says Mathias Pessiglione of Pitié-Salpêtrière University in Paris, France. “But our findings show that cognitive work results in a true functional alteration—accumulation of noxious substances—so fatigue would indeed be a signal that makes us stop working but for a different purpose: to preserve the integrity of brain functioning.”

I'll wager that further study eventually uncovers that low levels of alcohol consumption tend to dissolve and clear these toxic products, allowing the brain to continue hard work for longer. This explains why creative geniuses are often inclined to drinking at low levels but for long periods of the day; many of them, like Winston Churchill, prove to be quite heavy drinkers eventually. 

This feature of human nature is well enough known to have drawn satire.

Science will catch up.

Gun Control for Nail Guns

Allegedly a January 6 character attacked an FBI field office, attempting I gather to use a nail gun to penetrate the bulletproof glass. I kind of see why he might have thought that would work, but it's bad tactics for a number of reasons I won't go into here in order not to be thought to be trying to improve tactical approaches to violent attacks on the government. 

Still, it makes me wonder if we'll now see gun control attempts aimed at nail guns. It's a billion-dollar annual market, nail guns. They're so useful for all kinds of necessary construction that I wonder if the government would even try to restrict such a thing.

In that way it reminds me of the Nice, France jihadist truck attack that murdered many people. It was a 19-ton truck, which turned out to be much more effective than small arms at murdering a lot of people quickly. There was briefly talk about banning them from urban centers, but we all knew it wouldn't happen because modern cities can't live without these trucks. Cities absolutely depend on big trucks bringing them food and other basic goods every single day. You can't ban them.

This is also why Canada last year, facing the truckers' revolt, resorted to strictly fascist and lawless practices to try to suppress it. It terrified them because it is literally something they can't live without, yet do not control. 

I don't know if nail guns will prove to fall into that category, but it will be interesting to see.

Cut the FBI some slack

Joining the girl's club

The frequent news lately of men joining women's organizations inspired me to post Townes Van Zandt's classic "Fraternity Blues":

Historians Warn Biden: Democracy Teetering

This is the least helpful piece that the journalists could have easily written about this, and the most flattering thing I have ever read about Joe Biden.

President Biden paused last week, during one of the busiest stretches of his presidency, for a nearly two-hour private history lesson from a group of academics who raised alarms about the dire condition of democracy at home and abroad.

The conversation during a ferocious lightning storm on Aug. 4 unfolded as a sort of Socratic dialogue between the commander in chief and a select group of scholars, who painted the current moment as among the most perilous in modern history for democratic governance[.]

What I would love to have heard is exactly how this 'Socratic dialogue' went: what arguments were made, what counterarguments (if any), which historians were on what side and what they thought specifically. Instead we get "Comparisons were made...." but not by whom or what exactly the comparisons were, other than vaguely that they were to the 1860 period around Lincoln's election and the pre-WWII fascist period.

We do eventually get a list of attendees, from which much can be extrapolated: 

Biden’s occasional speechwriter Jon Meacham, journalist Anne Applebaum, Princeton professor Sean Wilentz, University of Virginia historian Allida Black and presidential historian Michael Beschloss. White House senior adviser Anita Dunn and head speechwriter Vinay Reddy also sat at the table.

That doesn't sound like a Socratic dialogue, except insofar as you mean some of those conversations in which Socrates' interlocutor just says, "Yes, Socrates," and "You're right, Socrates" all through the thing. 

What we are apparently meant to take away from this is less an understanding of the debate -- if it was a debate -- and more an appreciation that Biden is an unusually intelligent president who is capable of carrying on a lengthy discussion with intellectual experts on the subject. Also, that he is more likely than other presidents (especially, of course, Trump) to take time to consult The Wise about his course -- though while always maintaining control and direction, of course.

Democrats broadly expect the same ideas will anchor Biden’s reelection campaign, if he decides to move forward with one, especially if Trump is his opponent again.

Biden has continued to bring up such themes in his public speeches, most recently in a July address to a law enforcement group, where he criticized Trump for taking no immediate action as the rioters he had inspired attacked the U.S. Capitol...

“You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy,” Biden told the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.”

News to General Washington, I suppose. But he was not invited, no more than Jefferson nor Patrick Henry.

You don't have to go back that far, either. His own President Obama backed insurrections in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere precisely on the theory that it was pro-democracy to do so. They took groups off the State Department's terrorist list -- especially in Libya, where they still remain in the warring faction calling itself the 'Government of National Accord,' which name is an obvious lie given the continuing civil war. This collection of allegedly pro-democracy insurgencies was called the Arab Spring, and it was a monumental failure; but I don't get the sense that he is rejecting that model based on reflection on the history. For one thing, he has made no acknowledgement of the unwisdom of his predecessor and former boss, nor his participation in those efforts.

The Right can meme

Suzi Quatro

In one of those internet rabbit holes one sometimes explores, I discovered that Joan Jett in her initial fame as a member of the Runaways described herself as idolizing Suzi Quatro. Now Joan Jett I have known of since I was a youth myself, but I had never heard of Suzi Quatro. 

Well, she's no Joan Jett, but everything has to start somewhere. For whatever role she played in making Joan Jett and the Blackhearts happen, I am grateful. 

"Restoring the Right to Keep and Bear Arms"

This is the title of David Kopel's latest academic paper (h/t InstaPundit). I'm reading it this morning, and it's quite interesting. My own view of the right to keep and bear arms, and of the Second Amendment, is chiefly philosophical; Kopel understands the legal history quite precisely, having participated in much of it in the last few decades. 

Starting in 1989, the Court began occasionally to take cases that vindicated the rights of gun owners—but always on grounds other than the Second Amendment.4 One such case was 1997’s Printz v. United States. Back in 1993, Congress had enacted a statute ordering local law enforcement officials to carry out background checks on handgun buyers. Sheriffs around the nation sued, arguing that Congress had no power to dragoon local officials into enforcing congressional statutes. If Congress wanted background checks, it could hire federal employees to conduct the checks.

By 5-4, the Supreme Court agreed, with Justice Thomas joining Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion. While Printz was about federalism, not the Second Amendment, Justice Thomas wrote a briefing concurring opinion to point out the Second Amendment issue. He was dubious that the 1993 statute was compliant with the Second Amendment.... he wrote: “Perhaps, at some future date, this Court will have the opportunity to determine whether Justice Story was correct when he wrote that the right to bear arms ‘has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.’”

In those days there was a strong sense in the establishment that the Second Amendment was like the Ninth or Tenth, something that had been voided by the silent artillery of time. It took decades of disciplined pursuit of good arguments and the developing of thinkers who would rise to be lawyers, judges, and yes philosophers, to restore it to a right that the nation's courts take seriously and apply vigorously.  

That work must continue. As he points out, even a SCOTUS victory does not guarantee that other judges will undermine the decision. This violates their oaths, but they did it anyway:

Most of the lower federal courts adopted the test that Justice Stephen Breyer had proposed in his dissent in Heller, and which had specifically been repudiated by the Heller majority. 

Likewise there was a SCOTUS majority, it turns out, for not taking any gun cases until Ginsberg's death and replacement. Roberts was against it too.

By the end there is a useful meditation on what limits to the Second Amendment may still be enacted under the current decision, and which sorts may not be.