Rescue

I haven't saved anyone from physical peril lately, unlike our host. What I have been, is involved in a local crisis with the animal shelter. To make a long story short, I was afraid we'd turned some kind of awful corner and would have to abandon our long-standing program that more or less prevented any need to kill animals to make space. I'm now thinking we hit more of a temporary blip and just need to scramble to take some emergency Dunkirk-like action to get the sudden population pressure off the shelter, and that we'll be able to get back on an even keel and still avoid killing animals for space.

More about that later. What I want to say today is that I come unspooled in the face of dogs under threat. Our new County Judge named a committee to step in and made me the chair. I'm scrambling and finding some useful concrete immediate things to do to get a grip on the problem. My committee has excellent members. There's all kinds of good news.

In the middle of all this, I had a shattering experience at my church on Sunday, making an impassioned plea for help that I felt fell on deaf ears. I was in tears in front of the lot of them, and I felt they ghosted me. Again, long story, there's more to it, I get that it wasn't all it seemed, and we'll deal with it.

No, here's the real point. I have a friend at church between whom and myself a terrible rift opened up years ago over how she had put her dogs in danger. I’ve been icy ever since, with my conscience upbraiding me. Yesterday, alone among all my co-parishioners, she showed up in Commissioners Court to support me and the dogs. I realized I had to make this right by finding her and confessing my fault in my part of the rift. Today she asked my forgiveness before I could even speak first. We buried the hatchet. It’s moments like that that make life worth living. (And on top of that, we've savings some dogs.)

I think God sees that there are things in me that can't be helped until other things are broken down. He puts me in a crisis where I have to crack open and become fully human, because I can't coast by in a state of cool control. If it takes dogs in peril, He'll put me in charge of saving some dogs in peril. Because it's not only dogs to whom I owe a duty of love, it's also my fellow human beings, especially the ones I haven't managed to forgive. I'm so solitary; I'm barely in contact with human beings at all most of the time. But that's not what I was put on Earth for.

Bad Christians

The lead story for two weeks running in The Smoky Mountain News has been about a dude* in a bikini. Nobody knows who this dude is, or what sex/gender the person is, or what pronouns are preferred (SMN is at pains to point that out, but then assumes 'she' is correct in their coverage). These were accompanied by an editorial against the "dangerous vigilante fantasies" of country music, which must "end."

Coverage by the local paper has been painfully sanctimonious. Now SMN is a good paper in spite of its clear liberal editorial bias; they produce well-researched journalism on the drug trafficking situation in the region, on local politics, on internal Cherokee Nation affairs, and also on arts and literature in the area (the latter being why I read it; I often find out about good bands and live shows through them). I've been genuinely impressed by their straight journalism work. Even here, they went to some trouble to get the facts straight and to file appropriate public records requests, etc. That's not the issue.

I'm also willing to give an argument against interest in opposing the sanctimony. The coverage demonstrates that people were passing rumors that are not supported by the video of the incident. That's dangerous, as they say; and we can reasonably agree that a hundred years ago a similar kind of rumor about possible sexual predation by a hated minority might have led to a lynching. The absence of lynchings marks real progress, and I am prepared to acknowledge that these sort of irritating liberal responses are presumably partly to be credited for that progress. (Certainly not wholly to be credited for it, but I can see the argument that they are assisting in providing a helpful social immunity to such mob violence).

All the same, I have a problem with the preaching. I do mean preaching literally:  two of the section headers in their first piece are unelaborated Biblical references, whose clear intention is to suggest that their social opponents are bad Christians as well as bad people (as well as wrong on the facts). 

This is not necessary, and in fact is very risky, for their preferred arrangement. Their basic argument is captured in their headline: "The mere existence of trans people is not a crime." (Again, whether or not the wholly anonymous dude in the bikini is in fact trans, or just a David Lee Roth impersonator, is not clear from the facts.) Now that's true as a matter of fact, but it's accidentally true: and if you put it to a clean vote, democratically speaking, I don't know that it would continue to be true. Still, the best argument is that there is official toleration of this violation of local mores that the population is legally bound to accept regardless of whatever they or their church think about it.

Shifting it to a religious ground opens the question of whether this kind of behavior is in fact something that ought to be tolerated as a matter of ethics and morals, and it turns out religion has a lot to say about that. St. Augustine and Aquinas have a lot to say, as does the official doctrine of many churches, as do many preachers and priests who might rise of a Sunday morning to speak to the matter if asked to do so.

The liberal project to a large degree depends on disallowing that entire line of argument. The liberal project no longer attempts -- as it did in the era of Immanuel Kant** -- to universalize religious philosophy as an exercise of practical reason. It has long since simply declared that religion belongs in the private sphere. Because freedom of religion is a basic right, anyone may accept or refuse to accept any religious doctrine. Thus, positive laws cannot enshrine religious doctrines without violating the right of people to reject the doctrines those rules are based upon. 

If you want to argue religion, you have to admit religion to the debate. If you want to exclude religion from public life, you don't get to preach either. 

As for country music, I haven't ever heard the song and thus don't know if I consider it actual country, which is a more vicious debate even than these already described.  The tradition of vigilante fantasies in music is very old and broad, though; it's not just Merle Haggard and Charlie Daniels but traditional Irish and Scottish music, and English, and, well, all such music. You're just going to have to learn to live with that one, SMN. Freedom of artistic expression is a basic right on the liberal model too. 

* Dude is a gender-neutral term, they say.

** Kant's universalized philosophy of practical reason was hotly against alternative sexualities, by the way.

A Less Glorious Outing

We had a call overnight that lasted 14 hours. A big storm left us pulling security for the electrical workers who were repairing the damage so two districts could get power back. It was necessary to completely close the only artery through this area for more than twelve hours, and that on a Saturday night when many people were traveling up or down the mountain while a little tipsy. 

On the upside, power has been restored and no electrical workers were hurt by crazy drivers crashing through their work zones after midnight. I had a chance to get to know one of the elders in the community, who had many interesting stories about his decades with the department of transportation, mountain foods he'd grown up with and recommended, and which creeks were good fishing. He kept coming back on foot all night because his family was trapped on the other side of the barricade, and he was worried about them. We had eyes on them, we just couldn't let anybody through all night.

I can't remember the last time I actually stayed up all night until dawn, which is an experience I remember more fondly from my youth. I think I might forgo it, as fate allows, for the future. 

“Thank you for saving our House”

The nice lady who lived by the place that burned Monday brought me a cobbler and a very sweet note. I’m glad I was out at the time she brought it by, as I’m not always felicitous with such emotions. Still, I very much appreciate knowing that it meant something to her. 

Apropos of the Last

A hero even in California.

Arming Victims Changes Things

Kerry Slone, who describes herself as a victim of domestic violence, has a suggestion for those like herself.

A firearm represents a much bigger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself. Men can readily hurt women without a gun, and if a woman is already in physical contact with the attacker so that he can take away their gun, they are already in trouble.

The peer-reviewed research shows that murder rates decline when people carry concealed handguns, whether men or women. But a woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than a man doing the same.

I have been asked to train women in the use of handguns, when they've separated from a partner and become afraid of him. I did so gladly, even though I might have liked the guy and doubted that he would in fact pursue any sort of harm towards her. If he did not, as I suspected he would not, no harm would befall him; and if he did, well, then he had it coming. 

It's strange, I reflect, to live in an era that turns every piece of once-jovial intellectual property into a complaint by women against men -- Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Marvel comic movies, apparently even Barbie dolls -- yet dodges this simple, practical remedy for the worst sort of actual harm that men do to women. We festoon the complaint rather than solving it.

Victims who are armed aren't victims anymore. They are, to use the language of the complaint, transformed into active agents rather than passive patients. They can assert their will, defend their interests, not be harmed against consent. I might suggest to them that their friends, the real allies, are those who help you get there rather than those who commiserate in the complaint. 

Awful Local News

Three junior Marines dead in North Carolina. 

This was unexpected

The Hunter Biden plea deal is not quite dead, but it's not looking good, either.

A Crisis of Masculinity

There's a bit of a fuss over Politico hosting a 'masculinity' issue without actually asking any men to participate in it. I agree that this is prima facie an odd thing to do, but if you reflect for a moment there are two ways in which it makes sense. First, as my friend Shireen Qudosi argues, men and women exist in (necessary) relationship to each other. (She has thoughts on that necessary connection, too.) It would make a kind of sense to ask women for their independent perspective on how the relationship was going. 

Unfortunately, that wasn't why Politico did it. They did it for the other reason, which is worse: there is a dearth of scholars of masculinity because you could never get tenure in 'male studies.' There are 'women's studies' and 'gender studies' (which apparently never includes one of the major genders, per se unhyphenated males). There are feminists in history departments and literature departments and art departments who are tenured to write feminine-perspective studies of those things. No university on earth has a "masculine studies" program, partly because men are likely to regard that sort of thing as navel-gazing nonsense, and  partly because the whole academic society is hotly against it. 

So we are getting a perspective on masculinity from those who are hostile to it. This is familiar. The New York Times did a similar thing with chivalry, asking a lot of people who weren't chivalrous and didn't really have a notion of what the concept meant whether or not it was important. The Times at least found one person who had some actual relationship to the topic to ask, which is better than this project; he was just not ready to talk about it because he hadn't been asked to think much about it before, only to do it. Politico hasn't even got that, which makes the quality of their work dubious. 

I wrote a response to the Times series, but I don't think I'll write one for Politico. They're allied questions, since chivalry happens to reliably produce the best sort of men. It's not the only way, though: here is a purely religious alternative approach recommended by my cousin the (female) physician. That sufficiently maps out the issue, which is that good men can do a lot of good, and bad men a lot of harm. It's really important to get this right, but our scholars aren't worried about it because they've decided that rising in their social class is more important -- and that requires talking up the hostile-to-the-alleged-patriarchy feminist perspective, and utterly dismissing alternative views (beginning with questioning whether this country in any sense constitutes a 'patriarchy'). 

As Texan99 once put it, since she's a woman anything she does must be feminine. Mutatis mutandis, anything I or any man does must be in some sense masculine. There may be special goods that only good fathers can provide, or good husbands, or good men; or it may only be that there are goods they are more likely to provide. It seems like the maleness is a given, though; the real issue is developing the virtues of masculinity, rather than the masculinity itself. Now that's something I've written a lot about already, and a question that continues to matter year after year.

A Quiet Afternoon

So today, after the weekend of intense rescue training, I intended to take a day off from firefighting and rest up.

As we were driving to the store, not even a half mile from home, I looked over and saw a big fire through the trees. I went running over after I jumped out of the truck and found a building that was so completely engulfed with rolling flames that I couldn't see any part of it. All I could see was the shape of a building, made out of fire.

I got back to my truck and a neighbor lady was saying that she was going to call 911, so instead of doing that I drove as fast as I could to the Fire Station and got my gear. I passed the fire engine on the way -- they'd just been paged off her call -- so I changed into my turnout gear and went back. I got there almost the same time as the truck, was handed one of the attack hoses, and fought the fire on the rear of the house.

We fought that fire for quite a while before any other stations arrived to back us up. After a while, though, there were enough of them that another crew could relieve us. By then we'd knocked down the worst of it.

I told you all of that to tell you this: after we were relieved, some EMTs who had responded were assigned to check the attack team's pulse, blood pressure, and other vitals. The lady who was trying to check mine couldn't get a blood pressure reading because my upper arm was too big. She then shifted to my lower arm. She still couldn't get a blood pressure reading because my lower arm was too big. 

She asked her partner if they had a bigger cuff, and he said no. I replied, "No worries, ma'am. After hearing you say that my arms are too big to get a blood pressure reading, I'll be just fine. I'll be walking on air all afternoon."

She just rolled her eyes and said, "Oh my God. Firefighters."

Legacies

Without being a Larry Summers fan, I thought he got the boot as Harvard's president under ridiculous circumstances. In this Bari Weiss interview about the future of legacy admission, Summers makes sensible points about the purpose of an elite university's admission process while avoiding several fashionable types of arrant nonsense. Mostly he seems to consider questions like: Should we care whether a student is self-motivated or simply allowing his over-involved parents to stuff his resume with expensive baubles? Does an applicant's history of overcoming adversity tell us how much he'll benefit from a challenging university curriculum? Do we trust ourselves to detect intellectual talent any more, or have we decided that we can teach calculus to a horse if we purify our politics sufficiently? If elitist topics like calculus aren't the point any more, then why not simply mail the diploma to anyone who asks for it, to level the playing field? OK, he doesn't ask those questions exactly, but his thoughts are tempting him into these dangerous heresies.

A question that caught my eye was whether the people paying a fortune in Harvard tuition legitimately expected their little darlings to get the whole Harvard experience, the most important part of which is developing a good rolodex in preparation for a life of nepotistic privilege. Not that I can't see the practical value of such an approach, but it meshes poorly with the image of Harvard as social justice warrior.

Off to the Wilderness

In addition to the TR General/Rope Rescue series I mentioned, I've been concurrently taking TR Wilderness classes on alternating weekends. This weekend is the last of those too, so by Sunday my summer of rescue classes will have come to an end. (If you're keeping track at home, I was already TR Water certified.)

I'll be out participating in the exercises and exams through Sunday. Have a good weekend. 

UPDATE: It’s 8:40 PM Sunday and I’m back on station. 

The night phase turned out to be a full scale search and rock rope-rescue by midnight. Both it and other phases were handled with great skill by everyone in spite of the difficulty of coming from different agencies and levels of government. My son, I am pleased to say, was part of the rope team on the cliff top. He’s coming along.

It almost turned into a real rescue. A 14 year old girl went missing yesterday, and they almost called off the exercise to have us participate in the search. Fortunately I’m told that she was located quickly, so we continued with the exercise.

“Hey y’all”

Quite a translation from the French. 

I need to try to remember “Salut à toutes et à tous.” That could be a useful phrase sometime. 

Duties versus Responsibilities

Last night I took the last exam in the Technical Rescuer - General series (which in NC is also combined with the Rope Rescue specialization). One of the multiple choice questions asked you whether certain things were DUTIES of the incident commander, or instead RESPONSIBILITIES.

These exams are often badly written. I have found them harder than the exams I took in graduate school, sometimes, just because of the bad writing by the exam authors. Sometimes the issue is that the questions are antiquated and haven't been replaced:

• Last night's exam also featured two questions about an acronym used in rope rescue, both the current one we were taught about and the old one they long ago replaced and no one had ever heard of before; 
• another exam featured a series of questions about a type of harness that was long ago discontinued by NFPA, and about which we therefore knew nothing; 
• a third exam had a Vietnam-era question about helicopters that hasn't been current in decades. 

Those questions don't necessarily feature bad writing, just outdated information that needs to be cleaned up but apparently never is. They could be fixed if there were ever a review.

What really gets to me is the logic problems in the exams that are created by authors not understanding how logic works. One question on an early test asked if a kind of rescue material should be replaced after exposure to temperatures above 160 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 degrees, 220 degrees, or 240 degrees. Now logic will tell you that only 240 could be correct, as otherwise there would be multiple correct answers on a question that only accepts one. For example, if the correct answer were 220, then anything exposed to 240 should also be replaced because 240 > 220. 

However, 220 was in fact the correct answer, and the fact that 240 was also correct didn't bother the authors. The question could have been asked differently without creating that problem, which is why test authors should have some training in logic. "What is the standard for the maximum temperature beyond which these materials should be replaced?" would not have created the same issue.

Here too the real point of the question was to see if you had memorized the exact wording of the answer. There is no technical distinction in the literature between 'duty' and 'responsibility' that would justify including both answers in the test. If you look up the definition for 'responsibility,' you will find that the appropriate entry includes the word 'duty.' Either of these words would, in ordinary English, correctly describe the concept. However, one of them was right, and the other was counted towards failure of the exam.

I imagine this sort of thing comes up in many similar technical fields. I know it's something that the authors of the Law School Admissions Test take seriously, because they hired a friend of mine who is a professional logician to review their tests. At the technical school level, though, students have fewer resources and are unlikely to sue if they should wrongfully fail an exam. They're just working class people who are expected to put up with it, as they are often expected to put up with worse conditions in society. You failed? Eh, repeat the course. It won't hurt you to hear it again. 

Cyberpunk Update

Bionic hands are enjoying a significant improvement.

For the first time, a person with an arm amputation can manipulate each finger of a bionic hand as if it was his own. Thanks to revolutionary surgical and engineering advancements that seamlessly merge humans with machines, this breakthrough offers new hope and possibilities for people with amputations worldwide. A study presents the first documented case of an individual whose body was surgically modified to incorporate implanted sensors and a skeletal implant. A.I. algorithms then translated the user's intentions into movement of the prosthesis.

And, via Chicago Boyz, wearable devices are helping fight diabetes. 

UPDATE: Military computer chips with human and mouse brain tissue. 

Home in the High Country

It’s taken a day of travel, but I’ve returned home to the far blue mountains.* I won’t be here long; by the end of the month I’m due to wander out West for a time. For a few days, though, I’ll be here where things are familiar. 

* Louis L’amour made the worst pun I know of in all his work at the end of that novel, when the protagonist sees the far blue mountains,’but he knew not their appellation.’

A Visit with Uncle J

Longtime readers will remember Uncle Jimbo, former Green Beret and fellow BLACKFIVE blogger. I dropped in on him today while passing through Arlington. He has a new sign.

It’s hilarious in the context of his neighbors, who all have those “IN THIS HOUSE WE..” rainbow signs they probably got at their Unitarian or Methodist church. 

The Black Sea Deal

Russia suspended its participation in the Black Sea deal, which provided a grain corridor to the world from the war in Ukraine. Wheat prices jumped immediately, as they would given that Russia and Ukraine together provide a quarter of the world's supply. That said, the war has already lead to fluctuations. 

Traditional Conservatism on Parade

The Orthosphere pens the most genuinely conservative post I have read in many years: an argument in favor of natural slavery.

Conservatives, following Aristotle, get there from time to time; I think it's close to literally unthinkable for liberals, for better or worse. Liberals often have very good minds, so finding something they cannot -- or will not allow themselves to -- think is surprising. Perhaps one of them could entertain the idea over beer, in private conversation with a trusted friend. Perhaps it is just socially so unacceptable as to be unthinkable and incapable of expression even as a potential idea in a public context. 

The idea is severable from racism, and indeed should be severed from it: Aristotle was talking about his fellow Greeks, and the fictional Prime Minister the Orthosphere quotes about his fellow Britons. The issue has to do with virtue and vice, those who give themselves to one and those who give themselves to the other. It is an idea that has a long philosophical heritage, really at least as strong in Plato as in Aristotle, in Kant as in any Anglo-American thinker. 

Liberalism began by emancipating the heretics, proceeded to emancipate the serfs and slaves, turned its hand to emancipation of the women, and has most recently been striking the manacles from off the wrists of sexual deviants and thieves. [Link added for emphasis. -Grim]

There is a Pollyanna liberalism that believes emancipation must always be followed by improvement, that is full of childish self-confidence and hatred of restraint.  Like a child sulking and chaffing under the restraints of his father’s house, Pollyanna liberalism does not see that there are dreadful possibilities in freedom.  When a young man comes of age and is emancipated from the restraints of his father’s house, he soon discovers that he is free to stay up as late as he pleases, and also, if need be, to sleep on the street.  He soon realizes that he is now free to eat whatever he likes, and also, if need be, to eat nothing at all.

The dreadful possibilities of freedom become clear.

The idea is properly a significant challenge to those -- like myself -- who advocate for human freedom in the strongest terms. What should be done with those described? Plato's answer is a sort of ancient totalitarianism; Aristotle, a kind of slavery-for-their-own-good. Kant likes execution, frankly; he is high on the value of capital punishment. Probably I mostly like removing the protections that keep them from realizing the natural consequences of their actions, and letting them learn -- or letting them die.

What we've done instead is driven the idea out of the mind, which seems more and more popular as an approach. No good will come of that for certain. Hard ideas might breed hard men, but they might also engender thoughtful resolutions. Or both: we could do worse than having hard but thoughtful men, and probably will. 

IRR

These numbers are fairly small, which suggests to me that they already had a specific list in mind. The Inactive Ready Reserve is generally the fate of those whose enlistment has otherwise ended, but are contractually obligated to remain available in that way for a certain period (usually 4 years). This is not necessarily cause for alarm; it may be more to do with recruiting shortfalls leaving them lacking a few companies’ soldiery. 

Still, it looks like it is slated for Ukraine. Our continuing commitment to that conflict, which has already pushed a Democratic administration to endorse the cluster bombs they normally prefer to discuss as war crimes, has created an extended risk given that we are not formally a combatant in the war.