First and Second Amendment Conflict?

Consistently libertarian Eugene Volokh, who Glenn Reynolds used to suggest should be a Supreme Court nominee, weighs in on the right to bear arms at protests, by excerpting recent decisions.  In the first case he quotes both the ruling and the dissent.

Links From 2013

 Just about done with that year, as you can see. 2014 was the year I blogged least, and the following three weren't much denser.  I don't know why. Maybe when I get there I'll remember.

Life Together  With an uncomfortably prescient comment from Texan99

Rants On Disc  And here I am a bit prescient myself.

Live Simply  What I mean by that, or what it has meant to me, has changed over the course of my life more than once.  You may find the same.

Marty on the Mountain  Only older NH residents, mostly in the North Country, remember Marty. A legend in his time, though.

To Anacreon In Heaven 

Minstrel Show 

 

Love In The Ruins

One of my book groups is reading Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins.  I had not known there was a subtitle (Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World) until I started this post, and think it would have helped me understand what the heck is going on - a problem I often have with non-genre fiction. I also learned from Amazon that it is an uproarious comedy. I have yet to roar myself, finding the oddity more disturbing that funny.  Perhaps that will help going forward as well.  What I have concluded is that one main theme is "What is wrong with mankind at the root, and what can be done about it?"  There, now you have three hints to go on if you want to pick it up. It's pretty easy to turn the pages on this one even when it is confusing, and I write this as one who doesn't enjoy the amount of description he engages in.*

I thought he was dancing around the problem of evil, but then dropped "The mystery of evil is the mystery of limited goodness" on me and that put an interesting twist on a concept I have been long familiar with, that Evil is not self-existent, it can only be spoiled goodness.  I discussed it here early on in Sauron is but an Emissary, which I still enjoy on rereading. So, limited goodness instead of spoiled goodness.  It fits the novel, and is in some ways an idea more accessible to the modern mind.  I don't think it is ultimately a better understanding of evil, but it has advantages.

*I suspect when people talk about fine writing they mean description, which is why I stay away from those books. 

Personality and Book Genre Preferences

 Predicting Personality from Book Preferences with User-Generated Content Labels.  (The graphic expands for much greater clarity)

 

  

The colors are from the Big Five personality traits 

C (yellow) - Conscientiousness

O (red) - Openness

N (dark blue) Neuroticism

A (light blue) Agreeableness

E (green) Extraversion

This was fun, not only seeing what are common personality features for the genres you love and those that don't interest you, but for the similarity of some genres. Journeys is close to balanced, and Classics, Racial, and Kids only a bit less so.  Young Adult, Girls Fiction, and Fantasy have similar shape.  One might expect that Philosophy, Religion, and Paranormal to have similar shapes, but they are in fact quite different. Does the graph show that girls become more conscientious as they become women, or that the type of person (likely female) who reads Girls' fiction as an adult is less conscientious than the type that reads Women's? Why are Drama and Plays so different? As these are user-generated tags, does it only mean that different personality types describe the same works in different words?

 

Intelligence and Prejudice

It is about 18 months old now, and we have been going over this material for all 20 years of this blog, but I think it is worth pointing out again.  I don't think it is morally reprehensible that one group is just as prejudiced as another. The problem is when they don't consider it even possible that they are in the same ballpark, and spend so much energy berating the other group for being bigots. Jesus was harder on the accusers than on the sinners. 

Intelligence and Prejudice 

 

Too Many New Ideas

I spend increasing time dopamine-scrolling through substack summaries, linksites, and blog commentary sites - like you SOB's - looking for promising ideas that will explain to me what is happening in the world. I sample them, sometimes reading all the way through, sometimes just extracting something tasty before moving back to my idea-flooded Internet River to look for more. Am I going upstream to find tributaries and sources, or downstream to find out where it is all going? I have no idea.  I only know that after a few hours a day I realise that there are too many promising explanations in the world and I have to walk away from things which might be the Key To Life. How can I turn my back on them?

Fiction takes too long to get to the point; daydreaming is much faster. But both carry the related dangers of repetitiveness and sleepiness. My brain is full.  I shall go and play Octordle. Do not send me any new ideas, I have no more storage space, and I am weary of building more shelves.

Guantanamo Bay

Now that there is electronic, portable, and personal music available, I don't know how much servicemen have shared songs anymore.  Schools, fraternities and sororities, miners, regions, ethnic groups - all had more shared songs not so long ago. 

 I had this album, but for this one, I don't remember the liner notes or the lyrics.

The Influence of Extreme Outliers at Volume

 Inside the Funhouse Mirror Factory, a research review in Current Opinion in Psychology. So maybe we shouldn't believe our eyes. We have to have our perceptions warped by this to some extent. "When people stare into the mirror they do not see a true version of reality, but instead one that has been distorted by a small but vocal minority of extreme outliers whose opinions create illusory norms."

Online discussions are dominated by a surprisingly small, extremely vocal, and non-representative minority. Research on social media has found that, while only 3 % of active accounts are toxic, they produce 33 % of all content Furthermore, 74 % of all online conflicts are started in just 1 % of communities, and 0.1 % of users shared 80 % of fake news. Not only does this extreme minority stir discontent, spread misinformation, and spark outrage online, they also bias the meta-perceptions of most users who passively “lurk” online. This can lead to false polarization and pluralistic ignorance, which are linked to a number of problems including drug and alcohol use, intergroup hostility, and support for authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, exposure to extreme content can normalize unhealthy and dangerous behavior. For example, teens exposed to extreme content related to alcohol consumption thought dangerous alcohol consumption was normative. 

Via Nathan Witkin at Arachne magazine in The Leviathan, the Hand, and the Maelstrom , a reply to Dan Williams, who we just saw in Contra Critical Theory. (The reply was to a different article by Dan.) It's long and I gave up, but he includes a TL;DR at the top.

 

Contra Critical Theory

The intellectual underpinning of critical theory is much discussed by its adherents and not fully known by its opponents. The social and emotional underpinnings of Theory are intuited and even articulated by its critics but are often opaque to its adherents. This is a common issue in all social competition - we want to see our better reasons and evade looking at our worse ones. I liked Dan Williams's Contra Critical Theory explanation of the interplay in Critical Theory over at Conspicuous Cognition, which I have linked to previously. 

Of course, this raises the question of why the humanities are a left-wing monoculture. The reasons are likely complex, contingent, and path-dependent, although I suspect one big reason is intra-elite status competition. Scholars are a prestigious segment of society in competition for status with other high-status groups like businesspeople, the wealthy, and politicians. Narratives that are highly critical of Western society can be partly understood in this context: they demonise status rivals, discredit the economic and political system in which they have achieved success, and implicitly depict the scholars spreading such narratives as uniquely enlightened and noble. 

Those who have been here a long time may remember that I made my own divisions of American (and probably Western) society into Tribes: Arts & Humanities, Science and Technology, Government and Unions, God and Country, Diversity, Military, Business, Criminal Underclass.  I mostly discussed this in terms of A&H, which I grew up in and have an uneasy relationship with now, versus all the others. There are clearly multiple loyalties and overlapping of these categories. I stole ideas from many places, including CP Snow's Two Cultures (now three).  This is one brief summary post among dozens from the early years of the blog.  At the time this was not a common idea, and I was an early adopter.  If you want a deeper dive into our discussions 15-20 years ago, you can regard this longer series as a refresher or an introduction. I think it is a somewhat common framework now. 

Conservative sites have put a lot of energy into dismantling the Arts & Humanities elites, and that has been largely my focus.  However it is worth noting that all of the tribes are not merely putting their own ideas forward but trying to undermine the others. Anti-elitism is often only advocating for the preeminence of a different elite. Tavistock Weekends used to bring in groups and divide them randomly into 2-4 tribes, both to study their behavior and teach the participants how much of their own behavior was just Rooting For Laundry. By the end of the weekend, some groups would hate each other and say the most terrible things.

That's us.  I should be noble and focus on that.  But at the moment I am much taken with the idea that That's them, those bastards. 

Protect the Dolls

From Jo Bartosch on Substack Protect the Dolls: the porn to trans pipeline. 

"Ascribing trans identities to children is itself a sexual fetish." 

Some of this is graphic, and sad. 

See also autogynephilia 

The Seven Deadly Sins

 The Seven Deadly Sins of the Digital World 

 

The Pete Rose/Barry Bonds Effect

Related to the Streisand Effect

If Bill Belichick had been a first-ballot Hall of Fame entry, the sporting world would have clapped politely, basically yawning. A great coach, some even say the greatest ever. (I say we let claims like that mellow a bit. It could be true, but there's no need to be hasty.) Nothing to see here, move along.

The favored explanation is that some voters thought he should serve a little time because of Spygate and Deflategate. Another opinion is that people are still upset that he ran up the score on people in 2007. I have some mild approval of that approach, but only for infractions that were unpunished. Belichick and the patriots were punished, and it's petty to say "Well, it wasn't enough."

But whoever didn't vote for him, it has already backfired, as all the big names are now fighting over their chance to say this is ridiculous.  Next year his nomination will get outsized attention and it will get brought up again, even after he's in. Oft evil will shall evil mar.

Update: The video is disallowed.  It was one of the repeated "We're on to Cincinnati" answers when interviewed after being badly beaten by the Chiefs early in the season.  I won't bother to replace it.

 

Gentle Annie

It's a pity this isn't a particularly good recording, because it's the best version.

My sister-in-law went to school with his daughters in Dover and used to be over at his house as a girl. 

 

Alex Pretti Shooting

I don't know this source, and I don't know if this is right, but I did detect some serious effort to resist an extreme perspective from a person who apparently has some expertise in the area.

Why the Alex Pretti Shooting Leans Toward Justified Force - Barely.

 It’s an ugly, messy shooting. Anyone pretending that this is a clean, clear-cut, and obviously justified shooting – including the Trump administration – is being extremely disingenuous, if not outright spinning you. The people on the other side, who claim this is a clear-cut execution, implying ill intent, are also being very disingenuous, if not outright spinning you. This one falls somewhere in the middle, and the answer likely lies within the fog of war and inside a scrum that we can’t all completely see.

I also stipulate that we don’t know everything the system does; we don’t even know what the officer’s statement says. I reserve the right to change my opinion based on new information.

Let’s start with the law.  

Seems like a good place to start. If you are looking for early clues to bias she does say that the Trump administration is being extremely disingenuous, while the other extreme is being only very disingenuous. 

I jest. I doubt that was more than simple variety of adjectives.

Christa McAuliffe

Concord High School is right across from where I used to work. I had gone over to buy gas at the Cumberland Farms between us, which has the school gym looming over it. As I started pumping, there was lots of student noise, coming from the gym.  Happy noise. I remembered that this was the day of their teacher Christa McAuliffe's launch and rightly concluded they had everyone in the gym to watch it together. The noise crescendoed while I was out there, then suddenly went silent. A creepy silence.  

I went inside to pay and the clerk and a few other people were looking at a small television screen. "It looks like the rocket just blew up, we're not sure." "We think she's dead." We all stared at the screen, the announcers speaking hesitantly, irregularly. "...trying to find out...no word yet from..."

It was one of those dissociative moments where you wonder if you have stepped into some alternate, unreal world.  But there's nothing to do but just head back to work. My son was in first grade, and they had all the children watching the launch. I remembered that myself from school.  All 9 grades at Straw School were brought out to watch the launches of astronaut Alan Shepherd, who was from just a few miles away in Derry. It was considered amazing to be able to watch history as it was happening, and I suppose it was. No one thought of the possible downside then.

Storm

I have never done a stormwatch blog; it just seems too temporary and local.  Y'all have your own problems.  But this is the lightest snow I have ever dealt with. Freezing rain or sleet on snow, or slushy snow don't have the inches or low temperatures to brag about but are much worse. So far no problem.

We supposedly have four more inches to go, when once the prediction was twelve more. Still very light because of the low temperature. I had predicted 16 inches, then jumped it to 18 at the last minute. Some models were saying 24.  My first guess is looking good at this point - light snow projected all day.

Wind chill above zero anyway. 

Final report: It won't go above freezing for two weeks - winds but no high winds. Little snow.  

 

Minneapolis as an Example

The takeover of the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport by protestors is also something we have only partial knowledge of, though we have a bit more than we do about the shooting at present.  One group that made itself prominent in the crowd were clergy. By their own statement they "prayed together, sang songs and hymns, and shared stories of those who have been abducted by ICE while at work or commuting to and from the airport." Notable by its absence is "Asking the Lord what He would have us do."

I would be very surprised to learn that ICE included "Lord, what would you have us do?" in their daily briefing, nor that Trump asks himself that question very often.  But when your job is pastoral in the spiritual sense, I expect it to be prominent in your thinking.  Perhaps it is, I don't know. I am irritated by its absence in the organisers' press releases, but were I there, I might be greatly comforted by how they start each morning. Yet I suspect this is deeply tied to the problems Lewis noted in The Dangers of National Repentance. Confessing other people's sins to show how sensitive you are... It is also in the category of forging God's signature under your politics. It is among the most major of sins.

Both conservatives and liberals will make strong declarations about what they understand God to be teaching and requiring. But if you cannot show the respect to other Christians to even consider their understanding, you cannot convince me you have heard the Holy Spirit. Your prayers are not prayers, but performances. Your songs are not worship but a variety show. I do not see the fear and trembling in you that at least some earlier Christians displayed. 

Clay Tablets

When I read about "400 clay tablets" I had a mental picture of something like 12"x18" objects with hundreds of character each, rather like the Dead Sea Scrolls - a massive amount of information. In actuality, they looked like this, and though sped up, you can see how long it took to make one. Firing it, which allows us to find them and read them now, was not instituted for long term record-keeping as much as to guard against anyone doctoring them after completion

 

Knowledge

We still know very little about the shooting in Minneapolis, yet there is jumping to conclusions.  Admirably, Grim is not.  I'm a bit of a broken record - I recall saying this about Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin as well. But that's rather the point, because those are two incidents where the public still believes untrue versions which they picked up in the first few minutes of hearing about it. 

It seems to all of us that social media has made these leaps more likely, yet I wonder if that is actually true.  Human nature abhors an explanatory vacuum, and that is likely true throughout history and prehistory. I doubt that we lived less by rumors and lies a century or a millennium ago. 

Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God

People remember Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God because it's a cool title, not like anything that we would preach today. I'm guessing that less than half the people who recognise it know that it was Jonathan Edwards, and less than half of those would pin it to some Great Awakening, without knowing there were three of four. A fair number might guess it was Puritan, New England, and 16-1700, because that's the stereotype for that group (not without reason). 

Yet it is a touch odd that that's the one remembered.  It wouldn't be what he was known for in his own day.  It would be as if a century from now, all that anyone remembered that some group, maybe the Rolling Stones but probably the Beatles, sang Sympathy For The Devil at Woodstock, and decided that was the most informative example of rock music. Well, no; you missed the story.  

Edwards was known as a vivid preacher, not a particularly condemnatory nor emotional one. He kept up with natural science and was knowledgeable about philosophy, he studied for hours daily. He preached quietly, but was known for fresh analogies and descriptions. Perhaps that is what made him powerful, for the territory of most of the sermon was fairly typical for the time. For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God. Basic Calvinism, heard not only Sundays but at weekday dinner tables and taverns. In this sermon, as with many of his others, Edwards stressed that this pull of this weight, dragging the sinner to Hell, was inexorable. You were going there unavoidably unless something were done about it. This is close to the reverse of what most Americans, including many Christians believe today.  It is a foundational, almost unquestioned belief that while we may not be completely innocent, we are mostly so, only needing a bit of instruction and encouragement. 

In his own day, Jonathan Edwards was known for his emphasis on grace, on the amazing love that God had shown - that for no reason other than his lovingkindness, God interfered with the inevitable torment we were sliding toward. In the imaging of a later writer, that we are not Jacob Marley, doomed to drag weights around in misery for eternity, but Ebeneezer Scrooge, miraculously given "time for amendment of life." Today we have a tendency to go back one step earlier and shift the blame off ourselves.  How/why did God get us in this mess to begin with?

Fertility Crisis

 I have found the cause.

 

Storm Prep

"Why are we buying bread and milk? 

Get wine. And chocolate cake. Maybe some Oreos. Do this winter storm right."

 

Our snowfall numbers keep going up.  Monitoring whether the inches are trending upward or downward is my general rule for whether we are going to get hit hard or it will blow over. It's not a great time to have blown out a rotator cuff.

We'll see. At least I'll have all the time I want to clear it away.

Cea Weaver's Comments

Rob Henderson recommended Oliver Traldi's essay at City Journal Cea Weaver's Comments Were Shocking.  They Used to be Normal.  He detects a change from even a few years ago what is not allowed to be said about white people.  I guess that is true, but I wouldn't trust it. He notes some ironies, that even anti-wokeness attacks whites now, especially if they are liberal women. Left antisemitism is associated with anti-whiteness; right antisemitism is associated with anti South Asians and East Asians.

He advocates that we should feel pity for this sorry lot instead.  I think my mother used to say this when I was a boy, that I should feel sorry for people who were mean to me. I think that is an obstacle to actual forgiveness, because it makes excuses for them, and breeds condescension in us. The poor dears just can't help it. Not like us.

Christian Alphabet

Many Bible teachers of all stripes will tell you "It's as easy as A,B,C"  while hitting a few texts hard to prove a point.  I am not entirely unsympathetic. Some things about the Bible actually are simple, but people try to evade them with complications. You may run with a crowd like that, as Lewis did.

But generally, people who try to shut you down with A, B, C don't like it when you bring up D, E, and F, never mind the rest of the alphabet. There are puzzling things like Ecclesiastes and Job, which are sort of the Q and X of the biblical alphabet.

Come to think of it, A, B, and C are not simple letters themselves.  A comes in long and short forms, sounds different before R, is silent in some words, and is frequently a schwa. B looks simple at first but is deeply related to P, Bh, and even V. Let's not get too deep in the weeds with C. It can be sounded as "s," "k," "ch," or "sh," and the history of the letter teaches you lots of other history.  A highschooler could wow an English teacher with a paper on the letter C. "As easy as A,B,C" indeed. We would do better to say that the Bible is as complicated as A, B, C. The road goes ever on.

Fangorn is Tolkien's representative for Owen Barfield's theory of the preservation of historical meaning, found in Poetic Diction. "My name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language."