A Modest Proposal

How to save American colleges: an essay.

All higher-education courses could be done online via bots with no need for expensive classrooms, dorm rooms and other physical facilities.

Instead of paying college costs currently approaching $100,000 a year, students could earn their degrees conveniently and inexpensively from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover, they would be given access to bots that they can use to take tests and write any essays required by the instructor bots. The students’ test answers would no doubt be perfect, and their essays would be persuasive and error-free, which would allow all students to be given A grades without having to disrupt their lives by attending classes, listening to lectures or reading. 

It's a clever idea, which we are likely to adopt more completely than we like to admit.  

Rodeo Songs

David Foster added a link to a list of some of his favorite rodeo songs in the comments to the bullriding post below. I'm raising it to a post because I wouldn't want anyone to miss it. 

Duty to Protect Yourself

Omri Ceren makes note of a message sent to Jewish students at Columbia University. Mostly the message pertains to the fact that Jews can no longer assume that they will be safe at Columbia, given the atmosphere of abuse and hatred that has been allowed to proliferate there. 

Omri rightly points out that conservatives have been subject to censorship and exclusion for decades on the argument that their events might 'make students feel unsafe.' Actual calls for students who are Jewish women to be raped, or Jewish students to be killed, or Jewish students actually being stabbed in the eye, apparently don't warrant any special notice by the university administration. 

It's important to know who your friends are, and who they are not, I suppose. 

That said, I do wish to object to something the Orthodox rabbi said whom Omri quotes. He writes, "It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus." Perhaps "as Jews" is carrying some weight here, but it absolutely is everyone's job -- and right, and duty -- to ensure their own safety at all times. Even where it is forbidden by positive law, it is demanded by natural law. No positive law is legitimate that disarms a threatened people, nor one that purports to strip them of the right to defend themselves. 

Columbia is in New York City, one of the parts of America with the least legitimate laws as regards self-defense and the right to keep and bear arms. This is a good time to reflect on how evil such laws really are. 

Laws repugnant to the Constitution are null and void. It's time to start defying them accordingly, and enforce the rights with which Nature and Nature's God endow you.

Infinity and the Divine

Last week while I was in Vegas, Dad29 had a post about infinity. I foolishly promised to respond to it, and will attempt to do so now.

There’s a lot to be said about the use of the concept of infinity in theology, which I will write about once I’m not traveling. Different major theologians have thought that it was a wonderful way to think about God; others have disliked the usage for various reasons. Nicholas of Cusa, one of the fans, had diagrams meant to convey the impossibility of finite minds grasping God. Others thought other things.

To be clear, I'm one of the ones who doesn't like the concept of infinity as applied to God, ironically because I think it is too limiting. Mathematicians talk about infinities as having different sizes, which there are good proofs for but which I also think is wrong. 

Infinities crop up regularly in physical calculations, and you can just cancel them out when they do: if you get an infinity on one side and another on the other, you can cross them out like you would an "x" in algebra. The calculations work just fine. It doesn't matter if the infinites are "countable" or not, which is the point the mathematicians are making about them being of different sizes. Maybe that has to do with infinity as applied to physical reality, as opposed to within the theory of math. I hold with Aristotle, however, that actual infinities -- physically real ones included -- are impossible. The Church strictly disagrees with me, and Aristotle, on this point. So do many (most?) modern mathematicians. They are persuaded by the same evidence as me in the opposite direction: since we can use the infinities algebraically, they must be actual. My sense is that since we can use them so in spite of their allegedly (provably!) different sizes, they aren't actual infinities but a place where our mathematical models are reaching their limits. There's no reason to think our mathematical models are right, and very good reasons to think they aren't quite. One such: no human beings before us have ever made mathematical models that really were quite right when applied to reality. 

The impossibility of an actual infinity is an important feature of the proof of God given by Avicenna, which Aquinas gives in brief in the Summa Theologica in spite of the fact that he ends up endorsing actual infinity. To put it in basic terms, every existent thing gets its existence from something else that already exists. You came to be because your parents already were, and they were able to bring you about. If an infinite series were possible, then there is no need for a thing-that-exists-without-being-made to have started the chain. God's necessity stands on the fact that divine existence is necessary in order to account for everything else that follows: the whole chain needs to be rooted, grounded, on something that already existed before anything was made. (There is a second proof along this line as well, in which Avicenna is pleased to say that it just wouldn't be determined if everything actually existed without the necessary divine existant; I'll leave that as an exercise for very interested readers.) 

The fact is that infinity as we know how to discuss it is a feature of reality, meaning that we understand it as well as we do because of concepts that pertain to this world. Perhaps, as Pythagoras said, the math is what makes the world; perhaps, it is our model of the world. Either way, it belongs to this world and not to the eternity beyond the world. A transcendent God that genuinely exists beyond our reality would not be bound by it, and it is not helpful -- I think, against the Church's considered opinion which any devout Catholic should take as authoritative in spite of my dissent -- to try to apply it to God. 

We generated these ideas from our own ideas about mathematics and how they work. All of that belongs to this place and our experience of it. I don't believe it translates beyond the wall of creation. It might, but I see no reason why it must. I'm not entirely convinced we are correct about how it applies here, and I see no reason to believe that it ought to apply there. 

The Night Ain't Over Yet

Rodeo Riding

Unexpectedly, the Washington Post writes an in-depth piece about one of the great rodeo riders of our day. 

From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt. The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. It’s an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister. It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.

“I always knew something like this was going to have to happen,” he says.

Indeed. Every rodeo rider knows something like this is a constant danger.  

The Post deserves some credit for this one. It's a pretty good piece. There is some fulminating in the middle about whether or not rodeo is cruel or should be allowed to exist, given that there is no practical reason for anyone to ride bulls -- and limited need, these days, to break horses. Ultimately, though, raising that concern probably just lets readers of that persuasion feel like their perspective is understood, and allows them to engage with a moving story about a courageous man who loved to ride hard and now has to leave it behind. 

Except for the bull, that is. He took the bull home, where it lives a life befitting a retired rodeo star.

Petra

By the great Stoney Edwards, he followed Charley Pride’s success and made this song a hit in 1973. 

Who Are You?

Daniel C. Dennett died today at the age of 82. His work on intentionality -- by which he meant the inside-your-mind view of yourself, as well as the supposition you take about other people's -- was widely discussed in his own lifetime. The second of those links, to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, will lead you to believe that this is a relatively new field for philosophy, heavily influenced by the philosophy of language.

In fact, however, the basic work is Aristotelian, and the major figure not even mentioned in the SEP article is the Medieval churchman and philosopher* Peter Abelard. By coincidence it's also the subject of an essay sent by Dad29, written by James V. Schall of the Society of Jesus.

At least four famous, not-often-enough-repeated Aristotelian questions can be asked of any given thing when we try to figure out what and why it is. They are: 1) “What is it?” – a tree, a rabbit, a planet? 2) “Is it?” That is, does it exist rather than not exist? Does it stand outside of nothingness? 3) Who or what put it into motion or into being? 4) “Why is it in existence?” What is the reason for which it now exists?

Of human beings, we can add a further question: “Who are you?” That is, each of us has a particular, singular, unrepeatable existence unlike any other being that ever existed, but we are still human. Each human “what” is a “you.”

This is actually a very surprising thing for Aristotelian philosophy, because the basic explanation of things is that they are matter put into a particular form. Yet no matter how precisely similar the form is -- twins were well known in antiquity, but it is true also of clones -- the two objects end up having a completely different inner sense. Intentionality is how you try to predict how other people will behave, but it also entails a recognition that they are beings with their own perspective, which you then try to judge.

It's a topic much too vast to cover in a blog post, but if you're interested in it we can go through some of the writings about it in more detail. In any case, requiescat in pace Dr. Dennett.

* Probably the most famous thing about Peter Abelard is that he was castrated by an angry uncle who didn't appreciate his relations with niece Heloise, the latter of whom also went on to become an important figure in the church and in letters. Abelard relates the story (noting that the law blinded and castrated also the uncle and his kinsmen) in the Historia Calamitatum, i.e., 'The Story of my Calamities.' 

The Army has a Navy?

Possibly not a great one. The mission to build a floating pier off Gaza isn't going well Beege Welborn hopes it will be at least a helpful wake-up call.

What this exercise attempting to cross the Atlantic has proven is that we may not need tankers. Our poorly maintained and continually neglected naval vessels, be they Navy or Army, may not be capable of making it to the conflict to begin with.

If someone watching this circus unfold wakes the hell up realizing we are in one hell of a self-inflicted hurt locker and starts to yank chains to immediately effect change?

Then, this crackpot pier idea will be that blessing in disguise.

Home on the Mountain

I have returned to my mountain fastness, after an exhausting near-week in Vegas. 

The spring has advanced rapidly in my absence. When I left on Saturday, the trees were showing signs of green buds; now everything is busting and blooming. 

UFC

One of the things I’m doing out here is visiting with the UFC.

View from the VIP gallery.

They Sure Have Pretty Sunsets

The one thing that isn’t fake in this town is the beautiful Mojave sky. This was taken by the roller coaster in the same casino with the bar mentioned below. 

Coyote Ugly

Everything in Vegas is fake, but this is a special case of fake. Coyote Ugly is a fake Vegas version of a fake Hollywood version of a fake New York City version of a Texas Honky-Tonk. I went in just to see it, which required a ID check even though I could not possibly be underage, and then being wanded by a bouncer with a metal detector. This was amusing given that the crowd struck me as wholly unthreatening children, but I suppose it is part of the act. 

It really was dressed up like the kind of place I’d like if it were real. There was an Indian Motorcycles neon sign, and the walls were decorated with old saddles, Jack Daniels signs, and cowboy hats which were in turn decorated with abandoned bras. 

I had the one beer and then left. The bouncer asked me if I had gotten my hand stamped so I could get back in later. I said I wouldn’t be back. He said he’d remember me if I changed my mind. I’m sure he will, and I’m sure I won’t. 

Las Vegas

The weather is nice in the Mojave right now. I’m in town for a few days on business, if any of you happen to be out this way. 

The worst place on Earth.

My Mother Writes

She was looking through old papers today, and…

...I came across a letter written by your 4 year old preschool teacher. It said you had hit a boy named John. You told her that sometimes John hit you first but not that day. You said you only meant to give him a little muscle but you had eaten all your spinach and you hit him instead.

She said she doubted that I had eaten any spinach. I said you ought to give a boy who admitted that he hit first credit for being a straight-shooter. 

A Reverse for Liberty

Unfortunately the undesirable compromise seems to have emerged. Apparently part of the compromise was reducing the term of the renewal from five years to two, so that Trump could potentially sit on the next renewal as President. I assume that means that the fortifiers of democracy are fairly certain that the election can be stolen fortified; but perhaps they’re simply desperate to keep the power to spy warrantlessly on the people through the election. 

More Lies and Dictatorial Actions

A chief item of the long-held desiridata of the gun control movement has been to 'close the gun-show loophole,' which we have discussed here many times. It's intended as a backdoor way of preventing anyone from transferring a firearm without going through the Federal government, which would open the door to Federal registries and confiscatory measures. Congress has often discussed it, lo and for decades, but has never done it. 

Since no democratically legitimate effort to pass such a law has proven possible, the Biden administration has simply issued a 'final rule' pretending that such a law was on the books all along.

The rules clarify who is required to conduct background checks and aims to close what is known as the “gun show loophole” — which refers to the reality that gun-show sellers and online vendors are subject to much looser federal regulations than vendors who sell at bricks-and-mortar stores.

That is not and has never been the least bit true, but the media reliably claims that it is true in order to justify the gun control it wants. In fact, sellers have had the same regulations whether or not they were selling at a gun show; if they were in the business of selling guns, they had to do the background checks. If they weren't, they didn't whether they sold a gun at a show or anywhere else. Now, they pretend that the law requires pretty much anyone who wants to sell a gun to obtain a Federal Firearms License (an expensive prospect) and also to conduct background checks. 

More to come, Biden promises in a festival of lies intended to justify such things. Some of the lies are his; mostly, again, they're the media lying to frame his remarks for him. 

A Victory for Liberty

I won't go so far as to say that it was an act of political virtue or wisdom, but it's a win for American liberty all the same. Hopefully no compromises emerge, and FISA/702 goes away forever. 

Throw me in that briar patch

I can only be amused by the prospect of young people with absurd notions of effective public policy announcing that they're going to give the finger to all us old jerks by declining to vote this fall. That'll teach us to have bequeathed them a world in which the government doesn't supply all their daily needs.

Baby child, you just go right ahead and finish up that 10-year degree in Self-Actualization. Under no circumstances produce anything of value to others in order to procure the kind of unfair perks your elders lucked into. Never run for office or support anyone who does. That's society's job.

A Western Story

Everybody knows that John B. Stetson invented the famous version of the American cowboy hat, but even I had never heard until today who invented the famous version of the cowboy boot. In the spirit of the story about Walgreens' in the Prohibition post, here's a corporate history of that company.

I don't own a pair of cowboy boots right now, but I wore out a measure of them back when I rode horses a lot. It's a style that seems ostentatious at first, but every apparently ostentatious aspect ends up having a practical ground. The high heel keeps your foot in the stirrup so they don't slip out the front of it. The pointed toes let it slip in and out from the back side easily, simplifying mounting and reducing the hazard of dismounting (especially when it is done without the rider being the one who intended it). The elaborate stitching stiffens the leather, letting it stand up tall against thorns and other hazards. 

On the occasion, here's a piece by Molly Tuttle, a young singer of Western tunes.