My reading of the polls as of this morning is that the Electorals are split 269-269.
That would be a lot more interesting than any of us want, I think.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Hurricane Ike
Ben is going through his first hurricane in Houston, and he's excited. Even though he's inland, there'll be gusts to 80mph after midnight. Plus flooding.
To his parents, not so comforting.
To his parents, not so comforting.
Cultural Improvement
Hearing these mentioned on the radio this morning, it occurred to me that I haven't seen them in years. They've gone out of fashion. This is a great cultural victory.
On the main site, the drop-down menu lists a "Delivery to" countries menu. The first one, which comes up automatically, is Afghanistan. I would love to send one of those to Afghanistan. It would do them a world of good.
On the main site, the drop-down menu lists a "Delivery to" countries menu. The first one, which comes up automatically, is Afghanistan. I would love to send one of those to Afghanistan. It would do them a world of good.
LUTS
The Physician's Weekly poster over in the medical suite has the headline LUTS Increases Fall Risk In Older Men. You can probably guess how I read that at first glance.
Damn, one more thing to worry about, I thought.
Damn, one more thing to worry about, I thought.
War Budget
The car in front of me in the parking lot today had one of those bumper stickers reading "Why is there always enough money for war but not for education?" There was one of those mostly orange pie charts that's deceptive about the military budget as well.
Well, it seemed like a good question, so I went looking in the town report. I can't find the war budget anywhere. Is it hidden under one of those odd sounding items like "Overtime" or "Miscellaneous?" I'd like to get the exact numbers, so I can compare, y'know?
Same thing with the State of NH budget, though there do seem to be some things about the National Guard and Emergency Preparedness. It must be really awful if the government goes to such lengths to hide it.
Well, it seemed like a good question, so I went looking in the town report. I can't find the war budget anywhere. Is it hidden under one of those odd sounding items like "Overtime" or "Miscellaneous?" I'd like to get the exact numbers, so I can compare, y'know?
Same thing with the State of NH budget, though there do seem to be some things about the National Guard and Emergency Preparedness. It must be really awful if the government goes to such lengths to hide it.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The West Wing
Ben insists that this election has had eerie similarities to season 6 of The West Wing. America is currently re-enacting Season VI. Other similarities here, where he wonders if John Wells may be the Antichrist in foreseeing this so well.
The Whole Thing
Women who have had an abortion might want to hesitate before reading this post. I don’t think I am in the least condemning, but it may bring up thoughts that are painful.
After reading Neo-neocon’s poignant stories of unmarried women who had gotten pregnant in the 60’s, I thought it wise to rethink my rhetoric. I have been harsh with feminists who have made abortion the defining issue as to whether someone is “for” women. I have played off the illogic of that, pretending not to understand why it became so central. But I do understand, at least a bit. Perhaps my frustration stems from the fact that I can go part way down that road before taking a different turn, rather than not seeing that road at all.
To switch metaphors, it is not that those cards have no value, but that there are other cards which trump them.
So. Should I start with the explanation of my shared understanding, or with my objections? There have been two recent examples of respectable outlets publishing deranged essays, both of which illustrate the illogic of Prolife + Anything = Anti-woman; there is also an essay over at lawblog Volokh Conspiracy showing how abortion is a dead issue legally, except skirmishes at the edges (it is entitled, appropriately enough “It’s All Over But The Shouting”). And there’s plenty of overheated rhetoric you can find on your own. But I think I’ll just leave those as links, for you to engage or not, as you choose. I’ll talk about the other side.
Abortion is not the only women’s issue, but pregnancy is a place where many other women’s issues come to a hard point. This was even more true in the early years of feminism, when abortions were difficult to obtain. That was my generation – I was born in 1953 – and some memories are yet green. I have much less understanding of why the issue has such symbolic importance for women a generation (or two) younger, because the ground is different now. I don’t intuit why they regard limiting abortion as equivalent to rape, for example. That springs from some other part of female psychology tied into body questions of sexual experience, and childbirth, nursing, and dependence. I don’t get that.
But for my own generation, I think I understand something of how the issue looked to everyday women of my era.
We grew up in the first generation of widespread prosperity, and also the first generation in which many women might aspire to careers other than the Big Three: teaching, nursing, and secretarial. They were raised to aspire to having a small business, or some training after high school, or going to college, or even – gasp – graduate school and the professions. Yet the old world was still quite visible, and girls were very aware that they were fortunate to have these chances. Their mothers and aunts hadn’t, nor even their older cousins. There was a bright new world, which they might not make it to, but could at least consider and try for.
Or you could sink back into the old world of a woman’s lot for hundreds of previous generations. We see that differently now, knowing that there are other, less direct paths to our goals. Those indirect routes were available then as well, but were less common, and less visible. There was a sense that you were only going to get so many chances to grab the brass ring. I think this was especially true of girls who were the first females in their families to go to college – and college women were the bulk of early feminists. To have a baby was to leave school, probably never come back, and have your sights lowered, presumably forever. Your college sisters who hoped to become more than “just a housewife” would now look at you as “just a housewife” – if they ever thought of you at all. Even if you went home you would have to make new friends, because your friends from high school were away at college.
Plus, you would feel you had let your family down. They also had had hopes you might do something different. You had not only sinned, you had failed, and it would be tough for them to take - or admit to their friends.
Having babies was seen, and still is in some circles, as an admission you couldn’t hack it in the new world. You were one of those women who had to retreat to the old ways – not one of the smart, capable girls who succeeded.
If you “went away” to have the baby, a lot of people would guess what had happened, but you had some chance of keeping the secret half-hidden, especially if you moved and started again.
This sounds disappointing, but not particularly terrible. A little bleak, but not tragic. There was another cultural current that made everything even more precarious, however.
In the old world, the boy had to marry you. “Had to” is a loose term, because some didn’t, but those boys then had complications of their own, usually having to move away and start off somewhere else. Usually, it was easier for everyone to just get married. He was, after all, your boyfriend, so you must have liked him somewhat. She was your girlfriend, so you must have seen something in her. Everyone knew that there were grimmer situations of rapes, unfortunate liaisons with people who shouldn’t be married, or denials of paternity, but because these were a minority of cases, society could regard the hasty-marriage solution as basically solving the problem. It covered most situations. (Abortion was always the unspoken option in that horrible minority of cases, because they were already so grim that little could make them worse.)
People knew those marriages were less likely to be happy, but that was the price you paid. You couldn’t say it was a horrible life, because it was awfully similar to the life everyone around you had. It wasn’t the new life that other people were getting to move into, but it was familiar, endurable – perhaps even for the best. Sure I wanted to be a chemist. But I wanted to be Wonder Woman when I was four, and a ballerina when I was nine, too. Life changes. It’s okay.
Those rules were changing. Because the boy in question also had dreams and expectations, and was perhaps the first in his family to go to college, he was more likely to balk at giving up those dreams as well. A girlfriend’s pregnancy might be the prime moment for a boy to reveal what an irresponsible jerk he was. Having the baby meant marrying the jerk or being an unwed mother and see your marriage prospects really drop. An abortion solved that. You would not only get a reprieve on your career path, you would also dodge an unhappy marriage. Birth control gave the illusion of being bulletproof, and pregnancy was seen as an unfair role of the dice. What kind of job could I (or he) get now? We’re half-trained for something, fully-trained for nothing but low-paying jobs.
If for good reasons or bad you were not going to marry the father, then you were not just moving one step down in your expectations, but two or three. You were now facing a life you had never mentally or emotionally prepared for. If I seem in any way to be minimizing that, I apologize. I don’t think that a small thing. Young people may overdramatize, and we can see in retrospect that Her Whole Life was not at stake, but it certainly looks that way at the time. It is at least partly true.
Let me interrupt myself to note that this cultural shift is not a rigid distinction. The past scene I have painted is not unknown now, nor were modern choices completely unavailable then. It’s a continuum, varying in different families and regions.
All this conspired to keep the more abstract moral notions out of the picture. Having an abortion might be wrong – some people thought so, some didn’t; but being humiliated, giving up your dreams, failing – those were definitely wrong. Everyone agreed on that. Weighing how wrong one thing was versus another is extremely difficult when you are actually in the situation.
The act of getting an abortion has one more aspect which pulls it away from moral reasoning. At the last, it is passive. It is something that someone else actually does. The woman has it done to her. There are good studies about decision-making that reveal we make a distinction between actively harmful and passively harmful acts. The Trolley Problem illustrates that we view the morality of events not only by their probable outcome, but by the actions we actually have to perform. Allowing the man to die on the trolley track is permissible; pushing him onto the track is not, though the outcome is the same. If the abdomen were transparent, perhaps abortion would be more rare. But it is not transparent.
In 1969, as now, it was not pregnancy that was an unfairness to women. But pregnancy highlighted many other inequities. Women got worse jobs and got paid less; a baby was more work for her; the sexual double standard delivered more social opprobrium to a female; her secret was more difficult to hide; the fall from grace was much farther and more lasting.
Is that fully encompassing moral reasoning? Of course not. Very little that any of us do is. But it is understandable that some women could see the abortion question as The Whole Thing.
After reading Neo-neocon’s poignant stories of unmarried women who had gotten pregnant in the 60’s, I thought it wise to rethink my rhetoric. I have been harsh with feminists who have made abortion the defining issue as to whether someone is “for” women. I have played off the illogic of that, pretending not to understand why it became so central. But I do understand, at least a bit. Perhaps my frustration stems from the fact that I can go part way down that road before taking a different turn, rather than not seeing that road at all.
To switch metaphors, it is not that those cards have no value, but that there are other cards which trump them.
So. Should I start with the explanation of my shared understanding, or with my objections? There have been two recent examples of respectable outlets publishing deranged essays, both of which illustrate the illogic of Prolife + Anything = Anti-woman; there is also an essay over at lawblog Volokh Conspiracy showing how abortion is a dead issue legally, except skirmishes at the edges (it is entitled, appropriately enough “It’s All Over But The Shouting”). And there’s plenty of overheated rhetoric you can find on your own. But I think I’ll just leave those as links, for you to engage or not, as you choose. I’ll talk about the other side.
Abortion is not the only women’s issue, but pregnancy is a place where many other women’s issues come to a hard point. This was even more true in the early years of feminism, when abortions were difficult to obtain. That was my generation – I was born in 1953 – and some memories are yet green. I have much less understanding of why the issue has such symbolic importance for women a generation (or two) younger, because the ground is different now. I don’t intuit why they regard limiting abortion as equivalent to rape, for example. That springs from some other part of female psychology tied into body questions of sexual experience, and childbirth, nursing, and dependence. I don’t get that.
But for my own generation, I think I understand something of how the issue looked to everyday women of my era.
We grew up in the first generation of widespread prosperity, and also the first generation in which many women might aspire to careers other than the Big Three: teaching, nursing, and secretarial. They were raised to aspire to having a small business, or some training after high school, or going to college, or even – gasp – graduate school and the professions. Yet the old world was still quite visible, and girls were very aware that they were fortunate to have these chances. Their mothers and aunts hadn’t, nor even their older cousins. There was a bright new world, which they might not make it to, but could at least consider and try for.
Or you could sink back into the old world of a woman’s lot for hundreds of previous generations. We see that differently now, knowing that there are other, less direct paths to our goals. Those indirect routes were available then as well, but were less common, and less visible. There was a sense that you were only going to get so many chances to grab the brass ring. I think this was especially true of girls who were the first females in their families to go to college – and college women were the bulk of early feminists. To have a baby was to leave school, probably never come back, and have your sights lowered, presumably forever. Your college sisters who hoped to become more than “just a housewife” would now look at you as “just a housewife” – if they ever thought of you at all. Even if you went home you would have to make new friends, because your friends from high school were away at college.
Plus, you would feel you had let your family down. They also had had hopes you might do something different. You had not only sinned, you had failed, and it would be tough for them to take - or admit to their friends.
Having babies was seen, and still is in some circles, as an admission you couldn’t hack it in the new world. You were one of those women who had to retreat to the old ways – not one of the smart, capable girls who succeeded.
If you “went away” to have the baby, a lot of people would guess what had happened, but you had some chance of keeping the secret half-hidden, especially if you moved and started again.
This sounds disappointing, but not particularly terrible. A little bleak, but not tragic. There was another cultural current that made everything even more precarious, however.
In the old world, the boy had to marry you. “Had to” is a loose term, because some didn’t, but those boys then had complications of their own, usually having to move away and start off somewhere else. Usually, it was easier for everyone to just get married. He was, after all, your boyfriend, so you must have liked him somewhat. She was your girlfriend, so you must have seen something in her. Everyone knew that there were grimmer situations of rapes, unfortunate liaisons with people who shouldn’t be married, or denials of paternity, but because these were a minority of cases, society could regard the hasty-marriage solution as basically solving the problem. It covered most situations. (Abortion was always the unspoken option in that horrible minority of cases, because they were already so grim that little could make them worse.)
People knew those marriages were less likely to be happy, but that was the price you paid. You couldn’t say it was a horrible life, because it was awfully similar to the life everyone around you had. It wasn’t the new life that other people were getting to move into, but it was familiar, endurable – perhaps even for the best. Sure I wanted to be a chemist. But I wanted to be Wonder Woman when I was four, and a ballerina when I was nine, too. Life changes. It’s okay.
Those rules were changing. Because the boy in question also had dreams and expectations, and was perhaps the first in his family to go to college, he was more likely to balk at giving up those dreams as well. A girlfriend’s pregnancy might be the prime moment for a boy to reveal what an irresponsible jerk he was. Having the baby meant marrying the jerk or being an unwed mother and see your marriage prospects really drop. An abortion solved that. You would not only get a reprieve on your career path, you would also dodge an unhappy marriage. Birth control gave the illusion of being bulletproof, and pregnancy was seen as an unfair role of the dice. What kind of job could I (or he) get now? We’re half-trained for something, fully-trained for nothing but low-paying jobs.
If for good reasons or bad you were not going to marry the father, then you were not just moving one step down in your expectations, but two or three. You were now facing a life you had never mentally or emotionally prepared for. If I seem in any way to be minimizing that, I apologize. I don’t think that a small thing. Young people may overdramatize, and we can see in retrospect that Her Whole Life was not at stake, but it certainly looks that way at the time. It is at least partly true.
Let me interrupt myself to note that this cultural shift is not a rigid distinction. The past scene I have painted is not unknown now, nor were modern choices completely unavailable then. It’s a continuum, varying in different families and regions.
All this conspired to keep the more abstract moral notions out of the picture. Having an abortion might be wrong – some people thought so, some didn’t; but being humiliated, giving up your dreams, failing – those were definitely wrong. Everyone agreed on that. Weighing how wrong one thing was versus another is extremely difficult when you are actually in the situation.
The act of getting an abortion has one more aspect which pulls it away from moral reasoning. At the last, it is passive. It is something that someone else actually does. The woman has it done to her. There are good studies about decision-making that reveal we make a distinction between actively harmful and passively harmful acts. The Trolley Problem illustrates that we view the morality of events not only by their probable outcome, but by the actions we actually have to perform. Allowing the man to die on the trolley track is permissible; pushing him onto the track is not, though the outcome is the same. If the abdomen were transparent, perhaps abortion would be more rare. But it is not transparent.
In 1969, as now, it was not pregnancy that was an unfairness to women. But pregnancy highlighted many other inequities. Women got worse jobs and got paid less; a baby was more work for her; the sexual double standard delivered more social opprobrium to a female; her secret was more difficult to hide; the fall from grace was much farther and more lasting.
Is that fully encompassing moral reasoning? Of course not. Very little that any of us do is. But it is understandable that some women could see the abortion question as The Whole Thing.
Rookie Of The Year
I thought Barack Obama had Rookie of the Year locked up, and was even in contention for MVP. He had a great first half, so they moved him into the cleanup spot, where’s he’s less protected. Recently he’s been swinging at bad pitches, trying to hit a home run every time. Now that pitchers have learned his tendencies, they’re getting him out more easily. He went 0-4 against O’Reilly the other night, barely making contact. Maybe he’s been reading his press clippings. His fielding has dropped off as well, making a lot of mental errors. He’s better as a leadoff or two-slot hitter, and I think they’ll have to move him from SS to 2B eventually. He’s not really a power hitter, but he’s been put under that expectation because of injuries this season.
Steinbrenner once unfairly accused Dave Winfield of being Mr. May, in contrast to Reggie Jackson’s Mr. October. That wasn’t true of Winfield, but it might turn out to be true of Obama.
This Palin kid up from Triple-A is impressive so far. She’s more of a line-drive hitter, steals a lot of bases. Her fielding has been specatacular since she’s come up, including that game-saving throw to the plate last week, but her usual game is consistency. If she just stays within herself she’ll do fine. It’s too soon to tell. She has to learn to foul off bad pitches and make opponents work to get her out. I also don’t like her stolen-base percentage – a little too aggressive, trying to force errors. I don’t know if she’ll have enough at-bats to qualify, but she’s contributing in a pennant race, while Obama is choking.
Steinbrenner once unfairly accused Dave Winfield of being Mr. May, in contrast to Reggie Jackson’s Mr. October. That wasn’t true of Winfield, but it might turn out to be true of Obama.
This Palin kid up from Triple-A is impressive so far. She’s more of a line-drive hitter, steals a lot of bases. Her fielding has been specatacular since she’s come up, including that game-saving throw to the plate last week, but her usual game is consistency. If she just stays within herself she’ll do fine. It’s too soon to tell. She has to learn to foul off bad pitches and make opponents work to get her out. I also don’t like her stolen-base percentage – a little too aggressive, trying to force errors. I don’t know if she’ll have enough at-bats to qualify, but she’s contributing in a pennant race, while Obama is choking.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Another Thing About Prophets
If they'd had TV 2-3 millennia ago, "prophet" would have been featured on the show "The World's Most Dangerous Jobs." A lot of the OT prophets tried to get out of the job as fast as they could. There was a lot of whining and lame excuses. That's not because they were less righteous than you and I are but because they were smarter.
Contrast this with all the people volunteering to be prophets today. Anyone volunteering for a job like that should be suspect.
Contrast this with all the people volunteering to be prophets today. Anyone volunteering for a job like that should be suspect.
Taking A Breath
Sarah Palin will be neither as good as her supporters hope nor as bad as her critics claim. That should be obvious, but because such things get easily buried, let me say it more strongly. Sarah Palin will not be as good as her supporters hope by a long shot. I think she is a refreshing hope for reducing some of government waste and corruption, but it’s a big government, and she’s just one person. Nor is her record entirely unblemished. She gets credit for being the one who killed the Bridge to Nowhere, but her claim to have opposed it from the beginning doesn’t seem to be true. It’s a perfect example. She’s likely to be better than others, but she is still – deep breath – a politician, dammit.
On the other side, the worries from the left that she’s going to make everyone live like she thinks they should is overstating by a long shot. Asking the librarian if she would remove books, being told no, and then dropping it, is not the mark of an Inquisitor. I think Palin has social-conservative instincts, and would grab what victories she could as they went by on that score. But she is not a social crusader, and nothing in her record suggests it. She goes after the big targets and hangs on. That’s fine. As for troopergate, there is a lot being made of what are at most inappropriate interventions. A trooper is drinking in a state patrol car? If I did that it would be immediate dismissal. I don’t know how common it is to shoot moose from the car in Alaska, but I’ll bet that would be fireable in other states. And threatening to put a bullet in your father-in-law should disqualify you from being a state policeman, in my book. So once you know about these incidents – whether you read them in the paper, whether they came across your desk, or whether your sister told you, I can see why a governor would want to make sure that person was removed for the good of the citizenry. If the trooper’s supervisor decides that a five-day suspension is enough, that’s a little nuts. If you’re the governor, you now have reason to suspect that the supervisor doesn’t run a very tight ship. We would hope that any public official would, however, realize that they were too close to the case and pass it to someone more neutral. To keep yourself as involved in it as Palin did seems a little…entitled. What you would expect from – a politician.
Let’s apply the same thing to Obama. The swooning and messiahship memes have been offensive and a little frightening. But so are the people trying to read the entrails of goats about his Muslim sympathies. He leans pretty far to the left and has a pretty elevated picture of himself. But he is not going to take office and start kicking the Jews out of Florida and giving pieces of NYC to Pakistan. (Alaska, maybe, but not New York). I think he will be prone to a type of international diplomacy that will weaken us, and an interventionism in the economy that will slow us up, but I don’t think he will actually forget he is president of the US and start thinking of himself as president of the world.
On the other side, the worries from the left that she’s going to make everyone live like she thinks they should is overstating by a long shot. Asking the librarian if she would remove books, being told no, and then dropping it, is not the mark of an Inquisitor. I think Palin has social-conservative instincts, and would grab what victories she could as they went by on that score. But she is not a social crusader, and nothing in her record suggests it. She goes after the big targets and hangs on. That’s fine. As for troopergate, there is a lot being made of what are at most inappropriate interventions. A trooper is drinking in a state patrol car? If I did that it would be immediate dismissal. I don’t know how common it is to shoot moose from the car in Alaska, but I’ll bet that would be fireable in other states. And threatening to put a bullet in your father-in-law should disqualify you from being a state policeman, in my book. So once you know about these incidents – whether you read them in the paper, whether they came across your desk, or whether your sister told you, I can see why a governor would want to make sure that person was removed for the good of the citizenry. If the trooper’s supervisor decides that a five-day suspension is enough, that’s a little nuts. If you’re the governor, you now have reason to suspect that the supervisor doesn’t run a very tight ship. We would hope that any public official would, however, realize that they were too close to the case and pass it to someone more neutral. To keep yourself as involved in it as Palin did seems a little…entitled. What you would expect from – a politician.
Let’s apply the same thing to Obama. The swooning and messiahship memes have been offensive and a little frightening. But so are the people trying to read the entrails of goats about his Muslim sympathies. He leans pretty far to the left and has a pretty elevated picture of himself. But he is not going to take office and start kicking the Jews out of Florida and giving pieces of NYC to Pakistan. (Alaska, maybe, but not New York). I think he will be prone to a type of international diplomacy that will weaken us, and an interventionism in the economy that will slow us up, but I don’t think he will actually forget he is president of the US and start thinking of himself as president of the world.
Thank You, Barack
Researching the prior professions of the US Senators, I decided a lot of those guys look alike. And not a good alike. We should be grateful for Barack Obama being in the Senate, because he actually does look different. That’s not a reason to elect him president – our presidents have already been somewhat varied in appearance. In fact, it might be a good reason to keep him in the Senate. But thank you, Barack, really. When you look at all those other senators in succession, it gets a little spooky.
There is more variety among the female Senators, but even they, er, can look something like a realtor’s billboard.
Predictably, most Senators are lawyers. 34 out of 51 Democrats (including Sanders and Lieberman) have law degrees, a percentage that is sure to make conservative Republicans jump out of their seats with the veins in their necks sticking out, shouting “See? I told you so!” Not so fast. The Republicans have 27 lawyers out of 49 – more than half. I think having some lawyers in the US Senate is a good thing. I don’t think 60% is so good.
It gets worse. There are people in both parties who essentially started running for political office as soon as they finished school, and a few others whose only other career has been in government.
For scientific training, the pickings are slim. The Republicans offer two doctors, two vets, and an engineer. The Democrats don’t have anyone with specific training. Maria Cantwell did start a high-tech business, and that should count for something. And there are certainly specialties of law which require familiarity with science concepts.
Businesspersons refers to large or small businesses, entrepreneurial or established.
The list of what Democrats did before going into politics:
34 Lawyers
5 Businesspersons
2 Social Workers
2 teachers
2 other educators
2 govt.
3 politicians
1 non-profit director
And the Republican list:
27 lawyers
9 Businesspersons
2 physicians
2 veterinarians
3 politician
2 govt
1 engineer
1 farmer
1 Athlete
1 Military
There is more variety among the female Senators, but even they, er, can look something like a realtor’s billboard.
Predictably, most Senators are lawyers. 34 out of 51 Democrats (including Sanders and Lieberman) have law degrees, a percentage that is sure to make conservative Republicans jump out of their seats with the veins in their necks sticking out, shouting “See? I told you so!” Not so fast. The Republicans have 27 lawyers out of 49 – more than half. I think having some lawyers in the US Senate is a good thing. I don’t think 60% is so good.
It gets worse. There are people in both parties who essentially started running for political office as soon as they finished school, and a few others whose only other career has been in government.
For scientific training, the pickings are slim. The Republicans offer two doctors, two vets, and an engineer. The Democrats don’t have anyone with specific training. Maria Cantwell did start a high-tech business, and that should count for something. And there are certainly specialties of law which require familiarity with science concepts.
Businesspersons refers to large or small businesses, entrepreneurial or established.
The list of what Democrats did before going into politics:
34 Lawyers
5 Businesspersons
2 Social Workers
2 teachers
2 other educators
2 govt.
3 politicians
1 non-profit director
And the Republican list:
27 lawyers
9 Businesspersons
2 physicians
2 veterinarians
3 politician
2 govt
1 engineer
1 farmer
1 Athlete
1 Military
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
John Sununu Recommendation
Incumbent John Sununu (yes, the son of the brilliant and irritating John Sununu who was Reagan's Chief of Staff) is gaining on Ex-Gov Jeanne Shaheen in the NH Senatorial race, after having been quite a bit behind all year. NH has become a blue state over the last two decades.
John could use a Vice Senatorial candidate who hunts caribou, I think.
In all seriousness, it's a damn shame. There are very few people in the US Senate who understand any science at all, but Sununu has a Masters in Engineering from MIT. Shaheen is a cipher, a pleasant woman who was an ineffective governor.
I'm going to go find out what US Senators did before becoming politicians. I figure that lawyers will predominate, with a few businesspersons.
I know that the Republicans have two physicians and the Democrats have two social workers. We'll see what else is there.
John could use a Vice Senatorial candidate who hunts caribou, I think.
In all seriousness, it's a damn shame. There are very few people in the US Senate who understand any science at all, but Sununu has a Masters in Engineering from MIT. Shaheen is a cipher, a pleasant woman who was an ineffective governor.
I'm going to go find out what US Senators did before becoming politicians. I figure that lawyers will predominate, with a few businesspersons.
I know that the Republicans have two physicians and the Democrats have two social workers. We'll see what else is there.
Concerning God's Judgment
I briefly introduced this topic about a week ago. The comments are better than what I actually wrote.
After 9-11, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or someone (maybe both) made comments that God was punishing the US for its sins. I forget whether it was abortion or homosexuality that was supposedly ticking off God at that point. More recently, there was a report that a Jews For Jesus rep speaking at Sarah Palin’s church claimed that terrorist attacks on Israel were God’s punishment for something. Not believing in Jesus, most likely, given the source. Obama’s pastor, the Rev Jeremiah T. Wright, was captured on video saying “God damn America” for its sins. I again forget which sins were supposed to be the operative ones in this case, though I recall they were more social than religious. The exact quotes don’t mean much for our discussion, as it is the general principle I am concerned with.
This is not quite the same as statements about chickens coming home to roost. That would refer to some sort of natural forces coming back to bite you. I am interested in this idea that God himself punishes nations.
Right up front, we know that it is a biblical possibility. Yahweh is quite specific throughout the Old Testament that He will bless or curse Israel on the basis of its behavior. Insincere worship, as evidenced by evil dealings with other human beings, is the usual accusation, exceeded only by God’s wrath at actual worship of other gods. It shows up in the New Testament in the words of Jesus as well, warning that cities which reject his gospel messengers will fare worse than Sodom and Gomorrah did. Finally, such punishments are predicted in the Revelation to John as well, though the focus seems to have shifted to churches somewhat.
Point #1. Biblical punishments are announced beforehand. That would seem to get us off the hook but for one problem: How would we know? The warnings of the Hebrew prophets were widely known in their day, but there doesn’t seem to be any guarantee that everyone got the specific message You. There in the field. Smarten up now or the Assyrians are coming in. In our own age, how do we think God would go about making sure we got the memo? We have our general directions about what to do, but how would the specific “last chance” warning get delivered? Who would we listen to? Maybe there’s a few hundred prophets out there who have already delivered the message. But with a few thousand prophets to choose from, how would we know which hundred were the right guys? Or gals.
It all seems rather shaky. You can set up shop, telling people that God is going to punish us for whatever really torques you off personally, and then when anything bad happens you can say, “See? Toldja.”
Point #2. Why us? It’s easy to see how other countries might blame the wrong targets, choosing especially those nations, which can’t or won’t fight back, but we have to figure God has a clearer idea who has really been sinning. If He’s punishing countries for homosexuality and abortion, how did the Netherlands escape notice? If Our Lord is singling out nations that have had slavery and abuse the poor, how did we make it to the top of the list over, well, everyone else? How did we make the cut and move on to the next round in this reality show?
This is just American exceptionalism turned inside out. Though he hardly intended it, Rev. Wright is declaring that we are a chosen people when he preaches like this. The idea of the prophetic voice speaking on behalf of the poor to the powerful is popular in the African-American churches and has moved into the social activist circles of the mainstream denominations, but it carries an American arrogance hidden in its backpack.
Nor is there any escape in the idea that these are our prophets, other nations have theirs, and what they do is none of our business. Who are those prophets? If they were out there, mightn’t we have heard at least a whisper of ‘em? European clergy seem to condemn their own governments only for their cooperation with US policy. In a part of the world with weekly church attendance at less than 10% - sometimes little more than 1% - wouldn’t an Old Testament God at least mention their religious practice?
Point #3. Concerning Israel. Things get a bit trickier here. An argument could be made that modern Israel is at least a partial equivalent to the chosen people God seemed to warn quite frequently a few thousand years ago. Plus, modern Israel does have a number of prophet-type people giving religious warnings. Just because I can’t sort out which ones should be listened to and which ones ignored doesn’t mean much. In that instance, the argument that they have to figure out who those prophets are without help from Americans might make sense. Whether a Jews For Jesus preacher traveling the US and talking primarily to Gentiles fits in that basket is an open question. If I read Habakkuk correctly, Israel isn’t allowed the “Hey, at least we’re better than our neighbors” excuse.
Still, it’s a stretch. Jewish exceptionalism has considerable precedent, but we are still left with Point #1, prior warning.
Point #4. And yet. And yet God has worked this way before, and He is pretty darn clear that nations of some sort will be judged at the end of the age. I imagine that Jews living in the days of Jeremiah and Micah had reasons to believe that God wasn’t threatening them, not really.
After 9-11, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or someone (maybe both) made comments that God was punishing the US for its sins. I forget whether it was abortion or homosexuality that was supposedly ticking off God at that point. More recently, there was a report that a Jews For Jesus rep speaking at Sarah Palin’s church claimed that terrorist attacks on Israel were God’s punishment for something. Not believing in Jesus, most likely, given the source. Obama’s pastor, the Rev Jeremiah T. Wright, was captured on video saying “God damn America” for its sins. I again forget which sins were supposed to be the operative ones in this case, though I recall they were more social than religious. The exact quotes don’t mean much for our discussion, as it is the general principle I am concerned with.
This is not quite the same as statements about chickens coming home to roost. That would refer to some sort of natural forces coming back to bite you. I am interested in this idea that God himself punishes nations.
Right up front, we know that it is a biblical possibility. Yahweh is quite specific throughout the Old Testament that He will bless or curse Israel on the basis of its behavior. Insincere worship, as evidenced by evil dealings with other human beings, is the usual accusation, exceeded only by God’s wrath at actual worship of other gods. It shows up in the New Testament in the words of Jesus as well, warning that cities which reject his gospel messengers will fare worse than Sodom and Gomorrah did. Finally, such punishments are predicted in the Revelation to John as well, though the focus seems to have shifted to churches somewhat.
Point #1. Biblical punishments are announced beforehand. That would seem to get us off the hook but for one problem: How would we know? The warnings of the Hebrew prophets were widely known in their day, but there doesn’t seem to be any guarantee that everyone got the specific message You. There in the field. Smarten up now or the Assyrians are coming in. In our own age, how do we think God would go about making sure we got the memo? We have our general directions about what to do, but how would the specific “last chance” warning get delivered? Who would we listen to? Maybe there’s a few hundred prophets out there who have already delivered the message. But with a few thousand prophets to choose from, how would we know which hundred were the right guys? Or gals.
It all seems rather shaky. You can set up shop, telling people that God is going to punish us for whatever really torques you off personally, and then when anything bad happens you can say, “See? Toldja.”
Point #2. Why us? It’s easy to see how other countries might blame the wrong targets, choosing especially those nations, which can’t or won’t fight back, but we have to figure God has a clearer idea who has really been sinning. If He’s punishing countries for homosexuality and abortion, how did the Netherlands escape notice? If Our Lord is singling out nations that have had slavery and abuse the poor, how did we make it to the top of the list over, well, everyone else? How did we make the cut and move on to the next round in this reality show?
This is just American exceptionalism turned inside out. Though he hardly intended it, Rev. Wright is declaring that we are a chosen people when he preaches like this. The idea of the prophetic voice speaking on behalf of the poor to the powerful is popular in the African-American churches and has moved into the social activist circles of the mainstream denominations, but it carries an American arrogance hidden in its backpack.
Nor is there any escape in the idea that these are our prophets, other nations have theirs, and what they do is none of our business. Who are those prophets? If they were out there, mightn’t we have heard at least a whisper of ‘em? European clergy seem to condemn their own governments only for their cooperation with US policy. In a part of the world with weekly church attendance at less than 10% - sometimes little more than 1% - wouldn’t an Old Testament God at least mention their religious practice?
Point #3. Concerning Israel. Things get a bit trickier here. An argument could be made that modern Israel is at least a partial equivalent to the chosen people God seemed to warn quite frequently a few thousand years ago. Plus, modern Israel does have a number of prophet-type people giving religious warnings. Just because I can’t sort out which ones should be listened to and which ones ignored doesn’t mean much. In that instance, the argument that they have to figure out who those prophets are without help from Americans might make sense. Whether a Jews For Jesus preacher traveling the US and talking primarily to Gentiles fits in that basket is an open question. If I read Habakkuk correctly, Israel isn’t allowed the “Hey, at least we’re better than our neighbors” excuse.
Still, it’s a stretch. Jewish exceptionalism has considerable precedent, but we are still left with Point #1, prior warning.
Point #4. And yet. And yet God has worked this way before, and He is pretty darn clear that nations of some sort will be judged at the end of the age. I imagine that Jews living in the days of Jeremiah and Micah had reasons to believe that God wasn’t threatening them, not really.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Red Sox Update
Red Sox fans might smell first place in this upcoming series, but don't get greedy, or disappointed if it doesn't come to pass. We only need one win out of the three games to hold our wild car dominance.
Not bad for a team which had so many injuries to key players this season.
Not bad for a team which had so many injuries to key players this season.
Rasmussen
Republicans who go over to Pollster.com might get worried at first. In the current configuration, it looks like John McCain could have to win all the tossup states and still lose the presidency 270-268. For him to win, he would have to overtake Obama in some state listed as "leaning Democrat."
Be of good cheer. Rasmussen has been the most accurate predictor for quite some time, and Survey USA and Gallup have good histories. CNN/Time, Zogby Internet, and the smaller polls have much weaker records. Click through state-by-state, focus on those better polls, and when they were taken, and adjust the cute color-coded map of the US accordingly.
The site is non-partisan, BTW, and full of excellent commentary on what poll numbers really mean to professionals.
Update: Michigan has moved already.
Be of good cheer. Rasmussen has been the most accurate predictor for quite some time, and Survey USA and Gallup have good histories. CNN/Time, Zogby Internet, and the smaller polls have much weaker records. Click through state-by-state, focus on those better polls, and when they were taken, and adjust the cute color-coded map of the US accordingly.
The site is non-partisan, BTW, and full of excellent commentary on what poll numbers really mean to professionals.
Update: Michigan has moved already.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Bill Whittle Is Up
Bill Whittle of eject!eject!eject! writes only a few essays a year. They are always worth reading. He has a new one up at NRO.
She is so absolutely, remarkably, spectacularly ordinary. I think the magic of Sarah Palin speaks to a belief that so many of us share: the sense that we personally know five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer. Sarah Palin has erupted from this collective American Dream — the idea that, given nothing but classic American values like hard work, integrity, and tough-minded optimism you can actually do what happens in the movies: become Leader of the Free World, the President of the United States of America. (Or, well, you know, vice president.)
Hobbyists
Partisans, or at least partisan commenters, are like hobbyists in a hundred other fields. "I collect model trains, but only Lionel from 1956-64," "Bottles. But only patent medicine," or "19th C Danish needlecraft."
"I collect factoids about Obama, but only the ones that make him look like a stealth Moslem."
"I really read up on Iraq and Afghanistan, but only the stuff that makes Bush look bad."
"I follow energy policy really closely, I've got bookshelves and bookmarks galore. But I only collect the things that say oil companies suck."
It's not just humor on my part. I actually think the mentality is similar.
"I collect factoids about Obama, but only the ones that make him look like a stealth Moslem."
"I really read up on Iraq and Afghanistan, but only the stuff that makes Bush look bad."
"I follow energy policy really closely, I've got bookshelves and bookmarks galore. But I only collect the things that say oil companies suck."
It's not just humor on my part. I actually think the mentality is similar.
Friday, September 05, 2008
The Avengers
Ben over at 10-4 good buddy thought that McCain and Palin were eerily like Tigh and Roslin in Battlestar Galactica, but went on to speculate that that it might be more of an archetype thing of tough old men with tough young female sidekicks. Here's one from my childhood. Is Sarah like Emma Peel?
Thursday, September 04, 2008
NH Still The Smartest
New Hampshire has the highest estimated IQ in the country. That's why we have the primary.
The point to remember (other than that NH is all alone at 104): whenever you get one of those circulated internet things that tells you that Utah or somewhere has an average IQ of 86 or Connecticut 113, the numbers themselves are so implausible that you can reject them without reading further. There just isn't that much range. Average IQ's for any group, unless you are specifically selecting for something related to IQ, are going to hover around the national average of 100. In this instance, the "dumbest" states are South Carolina and Mississippi at 97. The difference between individuals with a 97 and a 104 IQ isn't that great. An average difference of 7 points is huge. When folks try to sell you average differences of 1SD (15-16 points), it's crap.
Related IQ post here.
The point to remember (other than that NH is all alone at 104): whenever you get one of those circulated internet things that tells you that Utah or somewhere has an average IQ of 86 or Connecticut 113, the numbers themselves are so implausible that you can reject them without reading further. There just isn't that much range. Average IQ's for any group, unless you are specifically selecting for something related to IQ, are going to hover around the national average of 100. In this instance, the "dumbest" states are South Carolina and Mississippi at 97. The difference between individuals with a 97 and a 104 IQ isn't that great. An average difference of 7 points is huge. When folks try to sell you average differences of 1SD (15-16 points), it's crap.
Related IQ post here.
Concerning God's Judgment
I have a longish post I can't quite get control of. There have been recent church controversies spilling over into the presidential race, this week with some guest preacher at Sarah Palin's church claiming that terrorists acts were God's punishment on Israel, before that with Obama's pastor making a similar claim about America's troubles. It has popped up before as well, with Pat Robertson and/or Jerry Falwell making some claim about 9-11 being God's judgment (later softened, I think).
Some people obviously assent to these ideas, or these pastors would have no audience and be run out of church on a (communion) rail. But most people reject the concept outright, and are uncomfortable even having it brought up. Not only does it not sound like the God we worship, but we have a pretty clear idea how such ideas could get badly out of hand and lead to violence.
I am going to argue that both sides are partly right, and try to find the necessary distinctions. I'm not sure I've got the skill to pull this off without being misunderstood. But seeing something of both sides on religious issues is very natural for me. There is an old saying, "Two Jews, Three Opinions," and I identify strongly with that. I'm still surprised I haven't uncovered any Jewish ancestors. Actually, some Jews, including a rabbi, kept thinking I was Jewish years ago.
There is a blogsite with similar name - Three Jews, Four Opinions, that is quite entertaining.
Some people obviously assent to these ideas, or these pastors would have no audience and be run out of church on a (communion) rail. But most people reject the concept outright, and are uncomfortable even having it brought up. Not only does it not sound like the God we worship, but we have a pretty clear idea how such ideas could get badly out of hand and lead to violence.
I am going to argue that both sides are partly right, and try to find the necessary distinctions. I'm not sure I've got the skill to pull this off without being misunderstood. But seeing something of both sides on religious issues is very natural for me. There is an old saying, "Two Jews, Three Opinions," and I identify strongly with that. I'm still surprised I haven't uncovered any Jewish ancestors. Actually, some Jews, including a rabbi, kept thinking I was Jewish years ago.
There is a blogsite with similar name - Three Jews, Four Opinions, that is quite entertaining.
Andrew Jackson
Jackson, our seventh president, may have been only partly literate. Don't let that fool you. Historian David Hackett Fisher relates an event when the exact wording of complex legislation was being debated in Tennessee for over a week. Some early drafts had been misplaced; people wanted to consider returning to an earlier wording of key passages; tempers were running high. Jackson recited all earlier drafts word for word, including the debate about the changes, at points identifying who had said what. Such feats of memory were more common on the frontier, where folks relied less on books and writing for their education. Many who could read could not write, though men of importance labored to teach themselves to make at least their own signature with a flourish.
So in the town histories where your ancestor signed with an "X," it didn't necessarily mean he couldn't read, and certainly not that he was stupid. The term "unlettered" had a specific meaning we have since made general.
Jackson practiced law, specializing in land claims, even though he had read few books of law. He developed a reputation for sizing up liars and charlatans quickly. His marriage to Rachel was clouded in controversy, and there are still conflicting accounts of how proper it was for him to have taken her from her abusive husband. Some say he thought her divorce was final and simply made a mistake; others that he had forced the divorce by absconding with another man's wife.
Some regard him as a great president, others are more sparing in their praise. He was a Scots-Irish frontiersman, rough, domineering, unpolished. He considered himself the representative of the common people, and took any aspersions on his lack of social graces as an insult to his people more than himself. This was not uncommon in a tanistry system (from which we get the word "thane," you Shakespeare and Tolkien fans). The thane and his people were closely identified, sharing glory and insult together.
Democratic Senator Jim Webb, one of the new blue dogs, has written movingly on how the Scots-Irish have made this country what it is more than any of the other waves of immigrants that arrived. (Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America) He is prejudiced, of course, as these are his people, and we all overvalue the contributions of our own ancestors. But Webb may have a case here. John McCain, BTW, is descended from this group as well.
Andrew Jackson would never be elected in our current primary system. The Eastern elites, powerful then as now, would have laughed him out of several states, where he would win only a few percent of the vote where people considered him a bumpkin and a hick. Yet he was likely smarter than they were, and certainly stronger, a better judge of character, and a better leader. He didn't know who the ambassadors from European countries were, and he didn't care that he didn't know. If he had to deal with one, he studied up on it and moved on.
I don't know if Sarah Palin is going to be an Andrew Jackson - that's a pretty high standard for anyone. But that's the type of leader she's aspiring to be, and that may be the best standard to judge her by. As I noted in a previous post, she is not from my tribe, er, hive, and my ears are quick to reject her unless I force myself to look at what she has and has not done, what her tendencies are, where she wants to go. I have to remember that a large percentage of my Puritan ancestors probably looked down on Jackson, but they were wrong. (My own Scots-Irish ancestors, though they came from the Merrimack Valley instead of Appalachia, may have liked him just fine).
So in the town histories where your ancestor signed with an "X," it didn't necessarily mean he couldn't read, and certainly not that he was stupid. The term "unlettered" had a specific meaning we have since made general.
Jackson practiced law, specializing in land claims, even though he had read few books of law. He developed a reputation for sizing up liars and charlatans quickly. His marriage to Rachel was clouded in controversy, and there are still conflicting accounts of how proper it was for him to have taken her from her abusive husband. Some say he thought her divorce was final and simply made a mistake; others that he had forced the divorce by absconding with another man's wife.
Some regard him as a great president, others are more sparing in their praise. He was a Scots-Irish frontiersman, rough, domineering, unpolished. He considered himself the representative of the common people, and took any aspersions on his lack of social graces as an insult to his people more than himself. This was not uncommon in a tanistry system (from which we get the word "thane," you Shakespeare and Tolkien fans). The thane and his people were closely identified, sharing glory and insult together.
Democratic Senator Jim Webb, one of the new blue dogs, has written movingly on how the Scots-Irish have made this country what it is more than any of the other waves of immigrants that arrived. (Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America) He is prejudiced, of course, as these are his people, and we all overvalue the contributions of our own ancestors. But Webb may have a case here. John McCain, BTW, is descended from this group as well.
Andrew Jackson would never be elected in our current primary system. The Eastern elites, powerful then as now, would have laughed him out of several states, where he would win only a few percent of the vote where people considered him a bumpkin and a hick. Yet he was likely smarter than they were, and certainly stronger, a better judge of character, and a better leader. He didn't know who the ambassadors from European countries were, and he didn't care that he didn't know. If he had to deal with one, he studied up on it and moved on.
I don't know if Sarah Palin is going to be an Andrew Jackson - that's a pretty high standard for anyone. But that's the type of leader she's aspiring to be, and that may be the best standard to judge her by. As I noted in a previous post, she is not from my tribe, er, hive, and my ears are quick to reject her unless I force myself to look at what she has and has not done, what her tendencies are, where she wants to go. I have to remember that a large percentage of my Puritan ancestors probably looked down on Jackson, but they were wrong. (My own Scots-Irish ancestors, though they came from the Merrimack Valley instead of Appalachia, may have liked him just fine).
Hive, Not Tribe
I saw some of the video of Sarah Palin online tonight - we don't have a TV - and I see and hear what folks mean. I don't like her accent, but it's more than than just pronunciation. Her word choice, her cadence, her facial expressions...she is not from my tribe. I would probably overlook her were she running in the primaries. It causes me to question if this is a great lack in the primaries. Most of our presidents up through Truman would have been weeded out in our current system.
I have a Sarah Palin joke I told at work today, an improvement on the primitive version I posted the day she was tapped by McCain, about being a better shot than Dick Cheney: "If she shoots a lawyer, he's stayin' down." Not politically offensive, see? Once they relaxed a moment even liberals laughed at it. The interesting part was the momentary shocked hesitation among all the progressives that I had even brought her up. Their faces froze; they covered quickly with a worried smile as I told my joke; they relaxed. I found this amusing and made it a point to bring her name up to as many liberals as I could.
The number of women, "feminist" women, who commented almost immediately on their dislike of her hair, her earrings, her shoes, was delicious. I remember a similar thing happening with comments about Katherine Harris in 2000. All these women with advanced degrees couldn't wait to point out her hair, her makeup. Your mileage may vary - I'm dealing with social workers, psychologists, and the like.
If you want some real amusement, tell some of these women that you think they look like her. Watch the claws come out as they tell you what they would have to change to really look like her. (The momentary look of horror is fun, too.) They don't want to say white trash, so they paint it in every color but black-and-white. Feminists, my Aunt Fanny. This is high school all over again. This baton twirler is getting too popular, so they're spreading rumors about how she sleeps with everyone, how dumb she is in class, how ridiculous her clothes are. She is an invader from another hive, and they can't help stinging.
I like the hive analogy. That's my new Arts & Humanities title: The A&H Hive.
Eric Scheie has some wonderful examples of this playing out in a more national setting over at Classical Values. I cut short this post because his is so good.
I have a Sarah Palin joke I told at work today, an improvement on the primitive version I posted the day she was tapped by McCain, about being a better shot than Dick Cheney: "If she shoots a lawyer, he's stayin' down." Not politically offensive, see? Once they relaxed a moment even liberals laughed at it. The interesting part was the momentary shocked hesitation among all the progressives that I had even brought her up. Their faces froze; they covered quickly with a worried smile as I told my joke; they relaxed. I found this amusing and made it a point to bring her name up to as many liberals as I could.
The number of women, "feminist" women, who commented almost immediately on their dislike of her hair, her earrings, her shoes, was delicious. I remember a similar thing happening with comments about Katherine Harris in 2000. All these women with advanced degrees couldn't wait to point out her hair, her makeup. Your mileage may vary - I'm dealing with social workers, psychologists, and the like.
If you want some real amusement, tell some of these women that you think they look like her. Watch the claws come out as they tell you what they would have to change to really look like her. (The momentary look of horror is fun, too.) They don't want to say white trash, so they paint it in every color but black-and-white. Feminists, my Aunt Fanny. This is high school all over again. This baton twirler is getting too popular, so they're spreading rumors about how she sleeps with everyone, how dumb she is in class, how ridiculous her clothes are. She is an invader from another hive, and they can't help stinging.
I like the hive analogy. That's my new Arts & Humanities title: The A&H Hive.
Eric Scheie has some wonderful examples of this playing out in a more national setting over at Classical Values. I cut short this post because his is so good.
The NYTimes and Iraq
Just so we remember, now that the NY Times and the rest of the MSM is trying to avoid the topic of Iraq, what they said not so long ago. A sample:
More from Eric Posner over at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Surge of Ignorance
The only real question about the planned "surge" in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional. -- Paul Krugman, NYT, 1/8/07
There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq. -- NYT Editorial, 1/11/07
What anyone in Congress with half a brain knows is that the surge was sabotaged before it began. -- Frank Rich, NYT, 2/11/07
Keeping troops in Iraq has steadily increased the risk of a bloodbath. The best way to reduce that risk is, I think, to announce a timetable for withdrawal and to begin a different kind of surge: of diplomacy. -- Nicholas Kristof, NYT, 2/13/07
W. could have applied that to Iraq, where he has always done only enough to fail, including with the Surge -- Maureen Dowd, NYT, 2/17/07
More from Eric Posner over at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Governor Lingle...
...just finished. I thought she was stiff at first, even wooden. Following Gov. Huckabee, who has a comfortable, humorous style, she limped. People wanted to cheer, but they weren't quite sure where she was going. Linda Lingle covered a lot of the early biography of Governor Palin, and frankly, it just seemed like a laundry list.
Boy did that change when she hit the part about Palin's supposed lack of experience. Lingle had been a mayor before being governor of Hawaii, and you could tell she took it personally. She really hit her stride, telling how that's real experience. Governor Lingle was so convincing that she made you wonder whether we should be nominating McCain at all, since he's never been a mayor.
Lingle's line about Lyndon Johnson was a beauty.
Boy did that change when she hit the part about Palin's supposed lack of experience. Lingle had been a mayor before being governor of Hawaii, and you could tell she took it personally. She really hit her stride, telling how that's real experience. Governor Lingle was so convincing that she made you wonder whether we should be nominating McCain at all, since he's never been a mayor.
Lingle's line about Lyndon Johnson was a beauty.
The Light Dawns
I had always heard that Jimmy Carter was the smartest recent president IQ-wise. It never made much sense to me, but heck, you can't always tell from afar. His intelligence was even put forward as part of the reason he was ineffective as a president - a lack of trust of others, and unwillingness to delegate, because he worried they wouldn't do it as well as he would.
He had been a nuclear engineer on a submarine in the navy, they said. Well, that certainly sounds like someone with more than an average number of gray cells. So I guess that's it then. All that nuclear stuff is complicated, and engineering is a difficult field. Case closed, right?
I always thought it unusual that he wasn't more pro-nuclear power, being in the field and all, but I figured maybe he knew something I should be aware of. Or something.
Last week I learned what Paul Harvey would say is "The rest. Of the story." It's that nuclear engineer part. The word engineer is kinda funny in English. A train has an engineer, and it's a decent job, but no one thinks of them as - snicker - real engineers.
Jimmy Carter was that kind of engineer. He was in charge of driving the submarine. After being the engineer of a non-nuclear submarine, he took a course so he could drive nuclear subs.
Choo. Choo.
He had been a nuclear engineer on a submarine in the navy, they said. Well, that certainly sounds like someone with more than an average number of gray cells. So I guess that's it then. All that nuclear stuff is complicated, and engineering is a difficult field. Case closed, right?
I always thought it unusual that he wasn't more pro-nuclear power, being in the field and all, but I figured maybe he knew something I should be aware of. Or something.
Last week I learned what Paul Harvey would say is "The rest. Of the story." It's that nuclear engineer part. The word engineer is kinda funny in English. A train has an engineer, and it's a decent job, but no one thinks of them as - snicker - real engineers.
Jimmy Carter was that kind of engineer. He was in charge of driving the submarine. After being the engineer of a non-nuclear submarine, he took a course so he could drive nuclear subs.
Choo. Choo.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Tribal Fertility Totem
For those who like their controversy tied to an insightful but oversold idea, you can't do much better than the brilliant but flawed Steve Sailer. There are new ideas you just can't get anywhere else. On the Sarah Palin controversies, his most recent post is Tribal Fertility Totem Elicits Strong Emotions. The comments get pretty wild. Not frothing, like at Daily Kos - okay, I lied. There's some frothing - but quite...energetic.
And here’s the fundamental reason underlying all the rage on one side and amusement on the other over Sarah Palin: it’s all about … female fertility.In the last paragraph, there's a link at the words "can afford to outbreed them" that has some interesting correlations between marriage, number of children, where people move, and how they vote.
Human beings have extremely strong emotions on the topic of fertility. It’s an obsession — look at the celebrity gossip columns these days. The who is sleeping with whom stuff bores people now compared to the pregnancy news. Thus, celebrities auction off rights to pictures of their new babies for millions, even though all newborns look alike. The top breeding stock parents — Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt — were looking to snag something like $6 million for the exclusive rights to the first photos of their twins...
The Blue Whites are alarmed and outraged to be reminded that the Red Whites can afford to outbreed them and are outbreeding them. Modern people tell themselves they don't care about stuff like that, but they do, oh, they do.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Where Were They Then?
Back in March, I chronicled where the people in the political news were in 1969. Let's play again.
The "beauty queen" sneer has been brought out enough times that it deserves comment. At 20, Sarah Palin was a Miss Alaska contestant while a journalism student at U Idaho. Not much of a positive as a VP candidate, but hard to see it as a negative.
At 20, Obama was a cocaine-user at Oxy (but not a dealer! And that's important.) Biden was an unremarkable student at U Delaware, flunking ROTC but getting A's in Phys Ed. He would shortly go on to be a law school plagiarist, lifting 5 pages of a law review without attribution and putting it in his 15 page paper. That actually may be a qualification for public office these days.
Or if you prefer to ask what they were doing in the 1984 year that Sarah was Miss Wassilla, Obama was working for a PIRG, a student run non-profit in NYC. Nothing wrong with that, but not much of a positive either. Biden was plagiarizing again, this time from British politician Neil Kinnock. Joe was also insisting to Henry Kissinger that the USSR could be reasoned, but Reagan was unnecessarily ticking them off.
If you prefer considering what they were doing more recently, an example is here.
The "beauty queen" sneer has been brought out enough times that it deserves comment. At 20, Sarah Palin was a Miss Alaska contestant while a journalism student at U Idaho. Not much of a positive as a VP candidate, but hard to see it as a negative.
At 20, Obama was a cocaine-user at Oxy (but not a dealer! And that's important.) Biden was an unremarkable student at U Delaware, flunking ROTC but getting A's in Phys Ed. He would shortly go on to be a law school plagiarist, lifting 5 pages of a law review without attribution and putting it in his 15 page paper. That actually may be a qualification for public office these days.
Or if you prefer to ask what they were doing in the 1984 year that Sarah was Miss Wassilla, Obama was working for a PIRG, a student run non-profit in NYC. Nothing wrong with that, but not much of a positive either. Biden was plagiarizing again, this time from British politician Neil Kinnock. Joe was also insisting to Henry Kissinger that the USSR could be reasoned, but Reagan was unnecessarily ticking them off.
If you prefer considering what they were doing more recently, an example is here.
Back in February
I liked Sarah Palin before I saw her pictures, thank you very much. The link explains why I was saying "four kids" in the spring. I also liked Bobby Jindal.
I had read about this young governor who had knocked out the corrupt politicians in her own party and squashed the Bridge to Nowhere and thought she looked good to run in 2012 or 2016. Then I heard about the moose hunting and the four kids and said - ah, VP candidate, not president. But even then I thought next time around would have
been better. What experience she has is very good - she has negotiated with
Canada, Russia, and Japan on behalf of her state - but it's still too new.
Then I heard the Down's baby story and saw her pictures and said "Bonus! Sign
her up NOW! It's about time we got us some of that identity politics action." I think McCain is hoping for it all. Reformer; as far from Washington as you can get; Tough Broad; Real Babe - hoping to pick up some votes from each of those categories. The risk is that she is less experienced than anyone who ran in either party - except Obama (ironic), and that it looks cynical because she's a woman. Yet Jindal would have looked cynical because he's Indian-American. And Romney would have looked cynical because he finished second. And Huckabee would have looked cynical because of the Religious Right.
Because the Democrats, and to a lesser extent the traditional media, don't believe that any of the Republicans were actually qualified, they see every possible VP nomination as cynical. It tells you a lot about them, actually. They think having been in Washington doing nothing, and then going out on the campaign trail where they can ask him questions is an actual set of qualifications for Obama. In their incredible blindness, they believe answering questions for the media is most of what a president does. People who actually do something, away from their cameras, puzzle them.
I had read about this young governor who had knocked out the corrupt politicians in her own party and squashed the Bridge to Nowhere and thought she looked good to run in 2012 or 2016. Then I heard about the moose hunting and the four kids and said - ah, VP candidate, not president. But even then I thought next time around would have
been better. What experience she has is very good - she has negotiated with
Canada, Russia, and Japan on behalf of her state - but it's still too new.
Then I heard the Down's baby story and saw her pictures and said "Bonus! Sign
her up NOW! It's about time we got us some of that identity politics action." I think McCain is hoping for it all. Reformer; as far from Washington as you can get; Tough Broad; Real Babe - hoping to pick up some votes from each of those categories. The risk is that she is less experienced than anyone who ran in either party - except Obama (ironic), and that it looks cynical because she's a woman. Yet Jindal would have looked cynical because he's Indian-American. And Romney would have looked cynical because he finished second. And Huckabee would have looked cynical because of the Religious Right.
Because the Democrats, and to a lesser extent the traditional media, don't believe that any of the Republicans were actually qualified, they see every possible VP nomination as cynical. It tells you a lot about them, actually. They think having been in Washington doing nothing, and then going out on the campaign trail where they can ask him questions is an actual set of qualifications for Obama. In their incredible blindness, they believe answering questions for the media is most of what a president does. People who actually do something, away from their cameras, puzzle them.
The Rumors
Whenever I hear people wondering about these dark secrets of politicians, I ask myself the following, before I even look at the evidence. "How many people would have to be in on this secret whose careers would be destroyed if it were found out? Why, then, would they go along?" I recommend you start at the same place.
The Obama rumors and the Edwards rumors - not much cost for many people there. The Sarah Palin rumors - dozens of people would have to be putting their careers on the line for a brand-new governor.
The Obama rumors and the Edwards rumors - not much cost for many people there. The Sarah Palin rumors - dozens of people would have to be putting their careers on the line for a brand-new governor.
Other Themes
Oh yeah, the other themes I mention often at other people's sites but seldom mention here are the two-year delay in a president's effect on the economy; the cultural tribes series in the sidebar; and the Religious Left's power, and their whining because the Religious Right has taken some of it.
Neocon-Paleocon
There are points I made long ago here, but don't keep coming back to here. On the commenting sections of other sites, however, there are themes I keep returning to, sometimes linking to older posts here. Sort of hoping, y'know, that they might stick around and read other things and conclude I'm the bee's knees. (I've inched up from 40 different readers a day to 50 somehow. I check it every few months. And none of them are coming over for the Abba pictures anymore. Hmm, I'll bet I can get up to sixty with a few more of those.)
The following is a comment of mine on Steve Sailer's blog. The context was a new commenter asking why everyone there hated neocons so much. He thought the idea of proxy wars elsewhere rather than large ones here was a good one. Martin, who I think is a regular, gave him a decent but flawed answer: there won't be another of those big European wars again, so we don't have to guard against them. So don't think that paleocons want wars. (That's an unfair summary of mine). My reply is a common theme for me when I go elsewhere.
The following is a comment of mine on Steve Sailer's blog. The context was a new commenter asking why everyone there hated neocons so much. He thought the idea of proxy wars elsewhere rather than large ones here was a good one. Martin, who I think is a regular, gave him a decent but flawed answer: there won't be another of those big European wars again, so we don't have to guard against them. So don't think that paleocons want wars. (That's an unfair summary of mine). My reply is a common theme for me when I go elsewhere.
Of course no one wants enormous wars. Anon's point was that the paleo method brings them about anyway. I think the evidence is mixed on that, but there is at least some reason to claim that the American isolationists and whatever British paleos were called contributed to the large scale World Wars coming and finding us whether we wanted it or not; and much larger than they would have been.
I tend to be a mix, myself. The problem with neocon reasoning is that it works well in retrospect, but not so well going forward. We can look back and see a hundred places in any of a hundred wars and legitimately say "If we had stopped them there, we wouldn't have had to fight them under worse circumstances there." That is not so useful as one might hope, however. There are also past situations where we could legitimately speculate that party A responding to a small threat from party B escalated into an unnecessary war.
The paleos get it wrong because Western Civilization will have to fight proxy wars somewhere or we will fight them everywhere, and there will be no perfect spot to make a stand. Every choice presented to us - Vietnam, Korea, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq - will have serious downsides as well. Yet we cannot avoid them all. This is because paleos are isolationists who became conservative, who still think that because most problems will go away if we leave them alone, therefore all problems will go away if we leave them alone.
The neocons go wrong in underestimating the messiness of the places they choose. They tend to dwell too much on how things could improve if everything goes right. But never does everything go right. Whenever they guess wrong, it costs Western Civilization more than they expected. This is because neocons are liberals who became conservative, and still have the starry-eyed urge to fix stuff.
Palinfacts
The new site Palinfacts brings you things you didn't know about Sarah Palin. Two of my favorites:
Alaskan wolfpacks give Sara Palin first dibs on their kills.
Global Warming doesn’t kill polar bears. Sarah Palin kills polar bears, with her teeth.
Back In Town
Dr. Sanity is back posting again. She had kept up the Carnival of the Insanities all summer (I didn't know), but now is back blogging for real.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Post 1400 - Yeah, That's Really Funny
On the way back from the Denver convention, National Chairman of the DNC Don Fowler comments on possible Hurricane Hannah hitting Florida. Hint: His first thought is how it's going to play politically.
Via Redstate
Via Redstate
Dog Language and Political Language
David, who just commented, has a repost at Photon Courier.
When you talk to a dog, you don't have to worry a lot about using syllogisms, complete sentences, good analogies, or crisply-argued chains of logic. What he's looking for is keywords...particular words and short phrases...like "nice doggie" or "here" or, especially, "dinner."Read more.
It strikes me that, increasingly, the way in which politicians address the American people is very similar...
The A&H Tribe Spews Foam
The Arts & Humanities Tribe is unhappy with the Sarah Palin nomination. Feminists from the Business Tribe or Science & Technology Tribe seem less bothered. That was predictable.
Among the criticisms of Gov. Palin, a few points seem general, such as her experience - I will not touch on those here. What amuses me are the criticisms which clearly come straight from the A&H belly. You can feel them tremble with rage when they point out that she was a beauty queen - our girls don't do that! Those are well, Southern, a little bit low-rent. I mean, I'm sure that there are some very nice girls there, but...; she and her family drive snow machines, and other motorized recreational equipment - those jet skis are so noisy up at the lake, and all those snowmobiles are too, and they put out smoke - I just don't understand what people see in them. Yes, dear, I know the Sartorelli's have them, but he made his money as a plumbing contractor in Framingham - they're wonderful salt-of-the-earth people and Theresa is one of my dearest friends up at the camp, but...; Sarah Palin fishes, and hunts - our sort of people don't do that. That's for rural people, unsophisticated sorts who like to bang away at defenseless animals, euhh....
I know my people. Abortion is their big issue because you know, a woman's career... and anyone can have a baby and be a hausfrau, but... These are cultural markers, and their real measuring sticks. It is not enough to be a successful woman; one has to be successful in the right way.
Among the criticisms of Gov. Palin, a few points seem general, such as her experience - I will not touch on those here. What amuses me are the criticisms which clearly come straight from the A&H belly. You can feel them tremble with rage when they point out that she was a beauty queen - our girls don't do that! Those are well, Southern, a little bit low-rent. I mean, I'm sure that there are some very nice girls there, but...; she and her family drive snow machines, and other motorized recreational equipment - those jet skis are so noisy up at the lake, and all those snowmobiles are too, and they put out smoke - I just don't understand what people see in them. Yes, dear, I know the Sartorelli's have them, but he made his money as a plumbing contractor in Framingham - they're wonderful salt-of-the-earth people and Theresa is one of my dearest friends up at the camp, but...; Sarah Palin fishes, and hunts - our sort of people don't do that. That's for rural people, unsophisticated sorts who like to bang away at defenseless animals, euhh....
I know my people. Abortion is their big issue because you know, a woman's career... and anyone can have a baby and be a hausfrau, but... These are cultural markers, and their real measuring sticks. It is not enough to be a successful woman; one has to be successful in the right way.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Sarah Barracuda
That was apparently her nickname in highschool, because of her intensity as a point guard. I think we should check with her friends, particularly her old boyfriends, whether that was the real reason. I'm not suggesting any specific meaning to that nickname, I'm just wondering what "Sarah Barracuda" would have implied at my school.
Etymological diversion: Nickname is one of those words that got divided wrongly because of the a/an of the indefinite article in English. (Another would be a naeddre, a snake, which became an adder by the reverse type of split.) It was an eke-name, meaning an also-name. "Eke" meaning also is related to "eke" as in "eke out a living." The earlier verb eacan meant "increase."
I don't know where "barracuda" comes from, though. It sounds like a Spanish corruption of a native word.
Etymological diversion: Nickname is one of those words that got divided wrongly because of the a/an of the indefinite article in English. (Another would be a naeddre, a snake, which became an adder by the reverse type of split.) It was an eke-name, meaning an also-name. "Eke" meaning also is related to "eke" as in "eke out a living." The earlier verb eacan meant "increase."
I don't know where "barracuda" comes from, though. It sounds like a Spanish corruption of a native word.
Libertarian
Her kids are named Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig.
Yup. She's pretty libertarian.
Yup. She's pretty libertarian.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Quote Of The Week
Megan McArdle, over at bloggingheads TV:
We were American Baptist, which is kind of like being a Unitarian without all the dogmatic theology. I used to go to Sunday School there, and it took me years to figure out that the hymns that we sang were about Jesus. Because you never mentioned Jesus or God directly, in case it offended someone.Ouch.
Arcadia
My brother the theater professor had assured me I would like Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia," and Ben just gave it to me, so I followed up The Coast Of Utopia with some earlier Stoppard. Goodness, what a masterpiece.
The action takes place in a single room of a country manor(Stoppard plays with the Unities, but uses them heavily). The odd-numbered scenes take place in 1809, the even-numbered in the present. The characters of the present day are trying to determine from records what transpired in the earlier era. It's a common literary device, usually for comic effect, to watch people draw wrong conclusions about events the audience is in on. We know what actually did happen; we laugh at the bumblers misinterpreting the signs.
This theme of working backward from the data is supported by even the sound effects: gunshots in the distance (who or what has been shot?), piano for four hands offstage (who is playing, and why does it grow more intense, then break off?), and a steam engine (for what purpose?). Even the recursive mathematics uses it.
Asimov used the device at least twice. It is central to A Canticle For Liebowitz. Carol Kendall uses it in The Gammage Cup, and a host of detective parodies get mileage out of sleuths being too clever by half in their interpretations. Heck, I even used it myself in a novel I wrote years ago (unpublished, don't try to google for it).
Stoppard had earlier used it to brilliant effect in "After Magritte," my all-time favorite one-act.
Either one of the plays would be interesting alone. Woven together, they take on a universality that highlights one of his main themes.
The comic word-play and sight gags are there as in Stoppard's earlier work - the same tortoise is present in both eras - but he is after bigger and more serious game. The teenage girl in 1809 is gradually intuiting mathematics that will not be discovered for a hundred and fifty years,* setting down diagrams and equations in her copy book, which the later characters have access to. Stoppard gets the math right, by the way, as he got the physics correct in "Jumpers." That in itself is unusual in a modern playwright. The maths are a springboard to both jokes and arguments about determinism, randomness, and inevitability. Stoppard, in his usual risque way, concludes that sex is what undermines determinism, with clever references to the thermodynamics of bodies in heat.
The audience is ahead of the present-day characters in understanding the connections to the past, but even we do not have the full weight descend upon us until the very end. We also solve as we go.
I am always certain that I am missing much of what Stoppard sneaks in as jokes or illustrations. I picked up the subtle reference of the dahlias in print, but they are not mentioned in the dialogue, and not a person in a thousand would both recognize the flower and the mathematical connection. I picked it up only by chance, even with the hint. How many more have I missed?
* Iterated algorithms, for those who care. You don't have to previously understand these to follow the plot.
The action takes place in a single room of a country manor(Stoppard plays with the Unities, but uses them heavily). The odd-numbered scenes take place in 1809, the even-numbered in the present. The characters of the present day are trying to determine from records what transpired in the earlier era. It's a common literary device, usually for comic effect, to watch people draw wrong conclusions about events the audience is in on. We know what actually did happen; we laugh at the bumblers misinterpreting the signs.
This theme of working backward from the data is supported by even the sound effects: gunshots in the distance (who or what has been shot?), piano for four hands offstage (who is playing, and why does it grow more intense, then break off?), and a steam engine (for what purpose?). Even the recursive mathematics uses it.
Asimov used the device at least twice. It is central to A Canticle For Liebowitz. Carol Kendall uses it in The Gammage Cup, and a host of detective parodies get mileage out of sleuths being too clever by half in their interpretations. Heck, I even used it myself in a novel I wrote years ago (unpublished, don't try to google for it).
Stoppard had earlier used it to brilliant effect in "After Magritte," my all-time favorite one-act.
Thelma: For some reason my mind keeps returning to that one-legged footballer we passed in the car... What position do you suppose he plays? I mean, what fantastic pluck! What never-say-die spirit, you know what I mean? Bloody unfair on the rest of the team, mind you - you'd think the decent thing to do would have been to hang up his boot.I digress. Any excuse to quote from that play. Back to "Arcadia."
Harris: It wasn't a football, it was a turtle.
Thelma: A turtle?
Harris: Or a large tortoise.
Thelma: What?
Harris: He was carrying a tortoise.
Thelma: You must be blind.
Harris: It was he who was blind.
Thelma: And how do you explain the West Bromwich Albion football shirt?
Harris: Pyjamas. He was wearing pyjamas.
Thelma: Pyjamas...I suppose he was hopping in his sleep. Yes, I can see it now - a bad dream - he leaps to his foot, grabs his tortoise and feels his way into the street -
Either one of the plays would be interesting alone. Woven together, they take on a universality that highlights one of his main themes.
The comic word-play and sight gags are there as in Stoppard's earlier work - the same tortoise is present in both eras - but he is after bigger and more serious game. The teenage girl in 1809 is gradually intuiting mathematics that will not be discovered for a hundred and fifty years,* setting down diagrams and equations in her copy book, which the later characters have access to. Stoppard gets the math right, by the way, as he got the physics correct in "Jumpers." That in itself is unusual in a modern playwright. The maths are a springboard to both jokes and arguments about determinism, randomness, and inevitability. Stoppard, in his usual risque way, concludes that sex is what undermines determinism, with clever references to the thermodynamics of bodies in heat.
The audience is ahead of the present-day characters in understanding the connections to the past, but even we do not have the full weight descend upon us until the very end. We also solve as we go.
I am always certain that I am missing much of what Stoppard sneaks in as jokes or illustrations. I picked up the subtle reference of the dahlias in print, but they are not mentioned in the dialogue, and not a person in a thousand would both recognize the flower and the mathematical connection. I picked it up only by chance, even with the hint. How many more have I missed?
* Iterated algorithms, for those who care. You don't have to previously understand these to follow the plot.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Dissent
It is toleration of dissent which makes America great, not dissent itself. There is dissent in all nations, even if only under the breath or published anonymously. To claim that dissent is noble in itself, or even "the highest form of patriotism," is rather like claiming that because you are innocent until proven guilty, the most law-abiding thing you can do is act suspicious.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Buzzwords
I think the following words should be banned from church conferences:
Missional
Transformational
Constructs
Catalyzer
Structures
An impious thought: I wonder if any of the words of scripture were buzzwords when they were first written down, seeming dated soon after? Edification? That is soooo First Century.
Missional
Transformational
Constructs
Catalyzer
Structures
An impious thought: I wonder if any of the words of scripture were buzzwords when they were first written down, seeming dated soon after? Edification? That is soooo First Century.
Jake Armerding
We saw Jake Armerding live two weeks ago, and I bought his CD. Boston-scene singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist. He carries a "folk" categorization, but he's got a more Allison Krause sound to me. Or Western Swing, or Nickel Creek.
If I tell you some guy is a brilliant lyricist and then quote those lyrics in print, it always looks lame. Lyrics occur in musical context, and without that skeleton, they just lie around like flesh on the floor. But I can give you some hint by telling you that his "Ithaca" is about Odysseus, not New York, and the happy "Little boy Blue" is subtitled North of North Dakota.
If I tell you some guy is a brilliant lyricist and then quote those lyrics in print, it always looks lame. Lyrics occur in musical context, and without that skeleton, they just lie around like flesh on the floor. But I can give you some hint by telling you that his "Ithaca" is about Odysseus, not New York, and the happy "Little boy Blue" is subtitled North of North Dakota.
The Voice Of Saruman
As the McDonald's bag says, "I'm lovin' it." Joe Biden gets the Democratic VP nomination. Others will tell you better than I about the horse race aspect of this. Let me tell you about Joe Biden. I posted on him two years ago, in an entry called The Voice Of Saruman, and I like my words just as well today.
Joe "I think I have a much higher IQ than you" Biden. Senator Biden does not have a higher IQ than the average of this blog's attendees. Okay, that would be true about anyone, but that's why no one should say such dumb-ass stuff. You never know when a faster gun is present.
Update:
Ooh. ooh. The Biden quote from 1988 is available on YouTube. Note the smile at the end.
Update: Steve Sailer quotes from Mickey Kaus's Slate article on the above video. Apparently all the rest of Sen. Biden's comments we hear are uh, untrue.
I believe Joe Biden when I am listening to him. There is something about him that carries such a weight of sincerity that the power of his voice pulls me in. He has the trick of sincerity.From start to finish, this is not an honest man.
Joe "I think I have a much higher IQ than you" Biden. Senator Biden does not have a higher IQ than the average of this blog's attendees. Okay, that would be true about anyone, but that's why no one should say such dumb-ass stuff. You never know when a faster gun is present.
Update:
Ooh. ooh. The Biden quote from 1988 is available on YouTube. Note the smile at the end.
Update: Steve Sailer quotes from Mickey Kaus's Slate article on the above video. Apparently all the rest of Sen. Biden's comments we hear are uh, untrue.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Larry and Denise
Larry David is the smartest person I ever met, and I have met many. He came out of Dover HS to the summer Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul's in 1970. In that supercompetitive group of hotshots from around the state, Larry was not merely admired, but spoken of in hushed tones. Or laughed about, mostly kindly. Among that year's top physics students in the state, he knew more physics - and he wasn't in the physics class. He knew more math than both the Concepts of Math and Topics of Math people - more biology than those in advanced biology. He went on to PhD MIT - big surprise there - and last I heard (1990) was at Bell Labs working on some sort of low-temperature ceramics for which Japanese companies paid him fortunes year after year. A well-meaning, socially inept genius, which we have always had with us, but only recently have recognised have Asperger Syndrome. It leads to an interesting speculation: if Larry's mill-city school system had attempted to treat him, as we would now, would he have become, well, Larry David, the great Chiezu?
You can't accurately predict which ones are which when they're young. If you don't accommodate them and teach them how to work around different environments, some of them are going to just fall apart and never catch on in life. But if you do, then maybe you lose Isaac Newton. What's the tradeoff point?
Was Larry pleased with his lot? I used to think so - a qualified yes. When I was inviting classmates back for the 1990 reunion I had a phone conversation with Larry - one of my most memorable ever. He told me about his mountain climbing in the Whites and Adirondacks, his company softball and fantasy baseball, but finished with "Y'know Dave, I envy you. (This was undoubtedly sincere. It would never occur to Larry to say such a thing just to be polite.) A wife, children. I often wish that I had done that, but I just can't seem to have a relationship with any girls." Larry, I protested, surely there must be some woman in the AMC who understands enough chemistry to know what it is you do and give you something to talk about. "That's not the problem, Dave. It's that they can't keep up. I like to climb five, six peaks a day." I remember thinking Larry, any grease monkey knows - if the girls can't keep up, slow down! but I didn't say it. In 1990, I decided that Larry could know that if he wanted to, but was choosing not to for some reason of shyness or fear of intimacy or whatever.
I no longer think that. To a person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, it can sometimes be that the pace you walk is the pace you walk, because your goal is to climb mountains. There's not necessarily anything psychoanalytic about the lack - it's a hardware glitch in your brain. Whether it's a bug or a feature is debatable, I suppose. I don't know if Larry's happy or not. I'm not sure Larry knows.
So it's quite familiar to me when Denise, a high-school sophomore at church, comes up and says, apropos of nothing but with a big smile "Combustion equations are easy to set up, but harder to solve." (That's a positive comment about the equations for Denise). Denise plays the viola, BTW, in case you hadn't guessed something like that. She did drag some boy around a museum while on orchestra tour in Europe this summer, but apparently there was no summer crush involved. She seemed puzzled that I would even ask. Lovely, lovely girl, and in our made-up stories, the Denises and Larrys find each other and are charmingly if clumsily devoted to each other forever.
But in reality, the Denises don't climb mountains fast enough, and the Larrys can't slow down.
You can't accurately predict which ones are which when they're young. If you don't accommodate them and teach them how to work around different environments, some of them are going to just fall apart and never catch on in life. But if you do, then maybe you lose Isaac Newton. What's the tradeoff point?
Was Larry pleased with his lot? I used to think so - a qualified yes. When I was inviting classmates back for the 1990 reunion I had a phone conversation with Larry - one of my most memorable ever. He told me about his mountain climbing in the Whites and Adirondacks, his company softball and fantasy baseball, but finished with "Y'know Dave, I envy you. (This was undoubtedly sincere. It would never occur to Larry to say such a thing just to be polite.) A wife, children. I often wish that I had done that, but I just can't seem to have a relationship with any girls." Larry, I protested, surely there must be some woman in the AMC who understands enough chemistry to know what it is you do and give you something to talk about. "That's not the problem, Dave. It's that they can't keep up. I like to climb five, six peaks a day." I remember thinking Larry, any grease monkey knows - if the girls can't keep up, slow down! but I didn't say it. In 1990, I decided that Larry could know that if he wanted to, but was choosing not to for some reason of shyness or fear of intimacy or whatever.
I no longer think that. To a person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, it can sometimes be that the pace you walk is the pace you walk, because your goal is to climb mountains. There's not necessarily anything psychoanalytic about the lack - it's a hardware glitch in your brain. Whether it's a bug or a feature is debatable, I suppose. I don't know if Larry's happy or not. I'm not sure Larry knows.
So it's quite familiar to me when Denise, a high-school sophomore at church, comes up and says, apropos of nothing but with a big smile "Combustion equations are easy to set up, but harder to solve." (That's a positive comment about the equations for Denise). Denise plays the viola, BTW, in case you hadn't guessed something like that. She did drag some boy around a museum while on orchestra tour in Europe this summer, but apparently there was no summer crush involved. She seemed puzzled that I would even ask. Lovely, lovely girl, and in our made-up stories, the Denises and Larrys find each other and are charmingly if clumsily devoted to each other forever.
But in reality, the Denises don't climb mountains fast enough, and the Larrys can't slow down.
"I've Had A Really Rough Road"
She was brought in for a dirty urine tox screen. She has a pre-trial agreement that allows her to be out of jail until her hearing if she follows certain conditions. The trial is for attempting to kill her boyfriend with her car. He survived, but is permanently disabled.
The other side. It really can suck to be bipolar. Off medications, she is slender and cute, charming and the life of the party most of the time. When she is only hypomanic she has friends, people like her, she gets promotions at work. Only when that crests a little higher does she get angry, grandiose, and uncontrollable. Eleven months out of twelve she has a good life. One month a year she is dangerous. On mood-stabilizing medication, she gains weight, she feels tired all the time, she tries to work full-time but usually cannot. She then has few friends and hardly anyone pays her any attention.
Predictably, she hates feeling rotten, and has chronic temptations to cut down or eliminate her medications or to take some fun chemicals. It is just plain hard – perhaps impossibly hard for some – to feel that lousy for months on end. Some people with affective disorders are much luckier – they have fewer side effects, better supports, or milder symptoms. The substance abuse has made all this much worse. When you live in a wash of fun chemicals, that becomes the new normal. Your old baseline mood now feels like depression. Would any of us do better up against that wall?
Which is true? Both are true. How can one feel sorry for her? Yet how can one not feel sorry for her? Oh by the way - she used to work here many years ago. We love her and hate her.
Love does the right thing for a person, even if it breaks your own heart and theirs. Without us putting restrictions on her, she will become more and more of a misery to herself and to everyone she meets. If you cut her slack, she doesn’t learn. So we are very hard people at my hospital when we have to be. People try to avoid reality, we turn them back to face it. We don’t rub their noses in it – their noses are already in it.
You can do this job without feelings of love and still be doing it right. Ideally a Christian should be both loving and firm. Easy to say.
Autobiographical accounts from folks who were going wrong but then turned around often stress that it was someone who loved them, someone who wouldn't give up on them, someone who believed in them that made the difference. I'm sure it seems that way, and I wouldn't want to discourage any Christian from hanging on and believing in their prodigal against all sense. I imagine there is something to it if people keep mentioning it. Yet you should notice that biographies written by outside observers don't usually see it that way. Facing a tough reality and compensating for it seems a more common theme there.
An ideal agape love likely includes both, and I can find scripture in both directions which is more important. I say that I lean toward firmness even at the risk of coldness, but that may just be a story I tell myself. With my own sons I may have done the opposite, while only threatening to be a cold hard guy. But however well I did in practice, I'm pretty sure my theory is true. Love does the right thing, though it breaks your own heart and theirs.
The other side. It really can suck to be bipolar. Off medications, she is slender and cute, charming and the life of the party most of the time. When she is only hypomanic she has friends, people like her, she gets promotions at work. Only when that crests a little higher does she get angry, grandiose, and uncontrollable. Eleven months out of twelve she has a good life. One month a year she is dangerous. On mood-stabilizing medication, she gains weight, she feels tired all the time, she tries to work full-time but usually cannot. She then has few friends and hardly anyone pays her any attention.
Predictably, she hates feeling rotten, and has chronic temptations to cut down or eliminate her medications or to take some fun chemicals. It is just plain hard – perhaps impossibly hard for some – to feel that lousy for months on end. Some people with affective disorders are much luckier – they have fewer side effects, better supports, or milder symptoms. The substance abuse has made all this much worse. When you live in a wash of fun chemicals, that becomes the new normal. Your old baseline mood now feels like depression. Would any of us do better up against that wall?
Which is true? Both are true. How can one feel sorry for her? Yet how can one not feel sorry for her? Oh by the way - she used to work here many years ago. We love her and hate her.
Love does the right thing for a person, even if it breaks your own heart and theirs. Without us putting restrictions on her, she will become more and more of a misery to herself and to everyone she meets. If you cut her slack, she doesn’t learn. So we are very hard people at my hospital when we have to be. People try to avoid reality, we turn them back to face it. We don’t rub their noses in it – their noses are already in it.
You can do this job without feelings of love and still be doing it right. Ideally a Christian should be both loving and firm. Easy to say.
Autobiographical accounts from folks who were going wrong but then turned around often stress that it was someone who loved them, someone who wouldn't give up on them, someone who believed in them that made the difference. I'm sure it seems that way, and I wouldn't want to discourage any Christian from hanging on and believing in their prodigal against all sense. I imagine there is something to it if people keep mentioning it. Yet you should notice that biographies written by outside observers don't usually see it that way. Facing a tough reality and compensating for it seems a more common theme there.
An ideal agape love likely includes both, and I can find scripture in both directions which is more important. I say that I lean toward firmness even at the risk of coldness, but that may just be a story I tell myself. With my own sons I may have done the opposite, while only threatening to be a cold hard guy. But however well I did in practice, I'm pretty sure my theory is true. Love does the right thing, though it breaks your own heart and theirs.
Free Market Reminder
The poor should not have to depend on what the powerful agree to give them in order to prosper. A free market at least offers the possibility that you can prosper no matter how selfish and oppressive the others in your society are. Group politics are founded on the idea that enough votes or pressure will shame or compel your neighbors, or even oppressors, into giving up good things. This works moderately well, but has three enormous limitations:
1. The individual is still powerless. He must give his power to the group, with all the compromise and unwilling association that implies. Whatever the collective decides, he is then bound to in a simple up-or-down vote. In a group large enough to have national impact, he is as voiceless as he is in the nation as a whole. Only if he can penetrate to group leadership does he have a say. Elections and government might have to work this way, but a person’s individual freedom and prosperity should not depend on anything so flimsy.
2. What the group can extract from the whole is necessarily limited, and the distribution must go to the whole group. Group politics can bring the indivdual some security, but it cannot ever provide wealth. It can improve justice, but has little impact on fairness.
3. Group politics are economically inefficient, reducing the overall wealth that a society might have.
I prefer not to stake my happiness on how much I can influence those in power to do nice things for me. It's not that group efforts don't do anything, but that they don't do enough.
1. The individual is still powerless. He must give his power to the group, with all the compromise and unwilling association that implies. Whatever the collective decides, he is then bound to in a simple up-or-down vote. In a group large enough to have national impact, he is as voiceless as he is in the nation as a whole. Only if he can penetrate to group leadership does he have a say. Elections and government might have to work this way, but a person’s individual freedom and prosperity should not depend on anything so flimsy.
2. What the group can extract from the whole is necessarily limited, and the distribution must go to the whole group. Group politics can bring the indivdual some security, but it cannot ever provide wealth. It can improve justice, but has little impact on fairness.
3. Group politics are economically inefficient, reducing the overall wealth that a society might have.
I prefer not to stake my happiness on how much I can influence those in power to do nice things for me. It's not that group efforts don't do anything, but that they don't do enough.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Political Word Differences
(First part reposted from October 2006)
I have noted before that Republican ads always say they're going to work for you, while Democrats always say they're going to fight for you. I got thrown a curve ball this morning, when Betsi DeVries promised to fight against a sales and income tax, but my code-breaking was successful. She fights. She's a Democrat.
On my trip down to Houston and across to Pensacola I heard political ads in other states, and of course we in southern NH hear the ads on the Boston radio stations as well. Same pattern. People may uncover counterexamples, but I think my observation will hold up generally.
I think that word choice bespeaks a fundamental difference in the way the two parties view government - or at least, if Bethany is correct, how they view their constituents. Democrats believe that powerful people are out to screw the less-powerful, and if someone doesn't fight for them, they're going to get in in the neck. Republicans see people as able to fend for themselves, and government as a tool to limit the damage of the bad guys. Both believe that banding together is necessary to accomplish some things, though they differ on how much of that should be done.
Well, there's some truth in both those positions. I lean heavily toward the make-your-own-life view of the Republicans, but there are certainly times when the powerful need to be constrained, or at least whacked upside the head a few times.
The "Bethany" referenced above had posted the following months ago:
With the conventions coming up, you can expect a lot of sameness in the rhetoric. Both parties will warn that we are now on the precipice of falling into Bad America, but we have one last chance to choose Good America. They will both oversimplify both their opponent's positions and their own. But I think you will hear the themes listed above thrumming underneath the speeches, the soundbites, and the talking points.
I'm glad I don't have TV. You poor bastards.
I have noted before that Republican ads always say they're going to work for you, while Democrats always say they're going to fight for you. I got thrown a curve ball this morning, when Betsi DeVries promised to fight against a sales and income tax, but my code-breaking was successful. She fights. She's a Democrat.
On my trip down to Houston and across to Pensacola I heard political ads in other states, and of course we in southern NH hear the ads on the Boston radio stations as well. Same pattern. People may uncover counterexamples, but I think my observation will hold up generally.
I think that word choice bespeaks a fundamental difference in the way the two parties view government - or at least, if Bethany is correct, how they view their constituents. Democrats believe that powerful people are out to screw the less-powerful, and if someone doesn't fight for them, they're going to get in in the neck. Republicans see people as able to fend for themselves, and government as a tool to limit the damage of the bad guys. Both believe that banding together is necessary to accomplish some things, though they differ on how much of that should be done.
Well, there's some truth in both those positions. I lean heavily toward the make-your-own-life view of the Republicans, but there are certainly times when the powerful need to be constrained, or at least whacked upside the head a few times.
The "Bethany" referenced above had posted the following months ago:
I didn't work last night, and thusly awoke at 3am, too tired to do much, and too awake to sleep. For some reason, while I was laying there staring at the ceiling, I began to envision a national survey with only two questions:I see these as related.
1) Do you believe that everything will work out okay?
2) Do you consider yourself more of a Democrat or a Republican?
I don't really know why, but I spent a good 45 minutes pondering if there would be any correlation between the answers to those two.
I don't know how it is for most people, but I realized that on the days that I am consumed with worry over everything from the funny smell in my car to world hunger, I am more likely to want a Democrat ballot. On the other hand, the days that I feel like things are pretty okay, I want to go Republican. I don't really know why that is, but I'm sure I'll be pondering it a lot more over the coming weeks. I was happy however, when I realized that this all meant that my pervading desire to vote for McCain probably means, for me at least, that things are pretty good here on the Western front.
With the conventions coming up, you can expect a lot of sameness in the rhetoric. Both parties will warn that we are now on the precipice of falling into Bad America, but we have one last chance to choose Good America. They will both oversimplify both their opponent's positions and their own. But I think you will hear the themes listed above thrumming underneath the speeches, the soundbites, and the talking points.
I'm glad I don't have TV. You poor bastards.
The Coast Of Utopia
Last Friday I was given a number of plays by Tom Stoppard for Father's Day (Thanks, Ben). I just finished "The Coast of Utopia," Stoppard's most recent series of three plays about Russian radicals in the mid-19th C. They are all here: Mikhail Bakunin, Alexander Herzen, Nickolay Ogarev, Ivan Turgenev, all screwing up each other's lives and the lives of everyone they came in contact with; loving and hating each other, simply hating Marx, sacrificing the lives of family members (especially the unfortunate women who ran across their paths) to vast and contradictory causes.
Stoppard, who is Czech though he has lived his adult life in England, is unsparing and generally unsentimental about them. Their idealism does not capture him as it does more liberal writers in the West. Our literary and historical set sees them as noble but regrettably flawed, their bright dreams unfulfilled because of the sad ironies of life. Stoppard shows that their bright dreams were their flaws, and their starry ideals the cause of their misery. Only Herzen comes off well, forever true to an ideal of freedom and prosperity for the peasants, forever funding the unfree and violent schemes of the other radicals, forever a victim of those he sacrifices for.
I don't claim this is the single idea of this trilogy; Stoppard always keeps several balls in the air, smuggling the more serious ideas in under the humor. But nothing impresses so much in the plays as how petty and self-centered all these Great Hearts are. He sets us up to be fond of each, struggling tragically against the dark though bowed down by the oppressions of the world. We are drawn in, glimpsing the coasts of their utopias, but ultimately swinging wide as they destroy themselves and each other. They are not Shakespearean heroes with a single tragic flaw - they are thoroughgoing Flaws with a single tragic virtue. The destruction of millions that they wrought was a necessary consequence of their ideas, not an accident.
Character after character asks "What sort of Moloch is this that kills its children?", each surprised anew. They look to Rousseau, to Hegel, to Proudhon, and eventually to Marx for their answers. They sacrifice their children to their revolutionary ideals (often almost literally), which has its echo in the countries they feed into the maw of this dark god.
I should research what lessons the more marxist critics of literature and the theater have had to say about the three joined but separate plays "Voyage," "Shipwreck," and "Salvage." I already suspect they have missed the obvious.
Stoppard, who is Czech though he has lived his adult life in England, is unsparing and generally unsentimental about them. Their idealism does not capture him as it does more liberal writers in the West. Our literary and historical set sees them as noble but regrettably flawed, their bright dreams unfulfilled because of the sad ironies of life. Stoppard shows that their bright dreams were their flaws, and their starry ideals the cause of their misery. Only Herzen comes off well, forever true to an ideal of freedom and prosperity for the peasants, forever funding the unfree and violent schemes of the other radicals, forever a victim of those he sacrifices for.
I don't claim this is the single idea of this trilogy; Stoppard always keeps several balls in the air, smuggling the more serious ideas in under the humor. But nothing impresses so much in the plays as how petty and self-centered all these Great Hearts are. He sets us up to be fond of each, struggling tragically against the dark though bowed down by the oppressions of the world. We are drawn in, glimpsing the coasts of their utopias, but ultimately swinging wide as they destroy themselves and each other. They are not Shakespearean heroes with a single tragic flaw - they are thoroughgoing Flaws with a single tragic virtue. The destruction of millions that they wrought was a necessary consequence of their ideas, not an accident.
Character after character asks "What sort of Moloch is this that kills its children?", each surprised anew. They look to Rousseau, to Hegel, to Proudhon, and eventually to Marx for their answers. They sacrifice their children to their revolutionary ideals (often almost literally), which has its echo in the countries they feed into the maw of this dark god.
I should research what lessons the more marxist critics of literature and the theater have had to say about the three joined but separate plays "Voyage," "Shipwreck," and "Salvage." I already suspect they have missed the obvious.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The Wrong Men
This report on research in Britain has been circulating the past few days, generating comment. It seems that going on the Pill can cause women to be attracted to less suitable men. Before we discuss the implications if it's true, lets start with some reasons to be skeptical. The actual research involved women smelling t-shirts worn in bed by different men.
Well, there's your first problem right there. Women signing up for shirt-smelling research may not be entirely representative of the general female population, eh? But let's pretend they worked around that somehow, and have found an intriguing lead that does generalise to the population as a whole. The upshot is that women on oral contraceptives are more attracted to men whose hormonal profile is more like theirs in a narrow area. This is bad, it seems, or at least not the way things used to be.
You will notice we are not anywhere near a study which measures mate happiness rates of Pill-using teens, newlyweds, and matrons versus the happiness rates of their sisters who use other contraception or none.
This is a plausible explanation, but we haven't nailed it down as fact.
Pretend it is. Pretend that messing with hormones in a Yasmin/Ortho-Novum sort of way causes women to go completely against their interests and latch passionately onto Unsuitable Attachments, or at a minimum, a different guy than they would have found otherwise.
Which is worse - to marry the wrong one or to go on the pill and lose interest in the right one after you've married him?
Well, there's your first problem right there. Women signing up for shirt-smelling research may not be entirely representative of the general female population, eh? But let's pretend they worked around that somehow, and have found an intriguing lead that does generalise to the population as a whole. The upshot is that women on oral contraceptives are more attracted to men whose hormonal profile is more like theirs in a narrow area. This is bad, it seems, or at least not the way things used to be.
You will notice we are not anywhere near a study which measures mate happiness rates of Pill-using teens, newlyweds, and matrons versus the happiness rates of their sisters who use other contraception or none.
This is a plausible explanation, but we haven't nailed it down as fact.
Pretend it is. Pretend that messing with hormones in a Yasmin/Ortho-Novum sort of way causes women to go completely against their interests and latch passionately onto Unsuitable Attachments, or at a minimum, a different guy than they would have found otherwise.
Which is worse - to marry the wrong one or to go on the pill and lose interest in the right one after you've married him?
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Don't Plant A Tree
A nurse who worked on my unit was killed in a car accident. The staff has planted a tree in her honor. That is becoming more common, I think.
I like trees. A few years ago I developed one of my enthusiasms for odd subjects and learned to identify local trees and read up on them.
But don't plant a tree to commemorate me. If it lives, it proceeds on into the territory of descendants who could not care less. That chestnut was planted in honor of your great-grandfather... So what?
If it dies, it is one more wound for the survivors, one more great injustice of the world, ending with a whimper instead of a bang.
If you are a complete nobody, you are forgotten by all a year after your death. The beloved fare only a little better, I'm afraid. Twenty years after your death only a few close relatives with retain any memory, and those only occasionally. In a hundred years, those who are remembered will be recalled inaccurately. This world is not your home. Store up treasures in heaven.
I like trees. A few years ago I developed one of my enthusiasms for odd subjects and learned to identify local trees and read up on them.
But don't plant a tree to commemorate me. If it lives, it proceeds on into the territory of descendants who could not care less. That chestnut was planted in honor of your great-grandfather... So what?
If it dies, it is one more wound for the survivors, one more great injustice of the world, ending with a whimper instead of a bang.
If you are a complete nobody, you are forgotten by all a year after your death. The beloved fare only a little better, I'm afraid. Twenty years after your death only a few close relatives with retain any memory, and those only occasionally. In a hundred years, those who are remembered will be recalled inaccurately. This world is not your home. Store up treasures in heaven.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Faux Pas Recognition
There is a faux pas recognition test used for diagnosing Autism Spectrum Disorders. No, really. And it's apparently pretty good. There is both a children's version and an adult version. They are interesting to read. Social situations are described, and the subject is asked if anyone said or did anything awkward. In some situations there is a faux pas, in others there is none. The diagnosis is not made from the True-False score, but from the questions based on the subject's response.
Developed by Simon Baron-Cohen (and others), autism expert at Trinity College in Oxford and author of popular books on the subject, Mindblindness and The Essential Difference: Mail and Female Brains and Autism, the test is slowly coming into use.
You wonder if you recognise the name? Yes, Simon is the cousin of comedian Sasha Baron-Cohen. The whole family seems to be rather accomplished. I think that the irony is amusing, and not quite accidental. Borat's psychologist cousin develops a diagnostic test based around faux pas. Very nice.
Developed by Simon Baron-Cohen (and others), autism expert at Trinity College in Oxford and author of popular books on the subject, Mindblindness and The Essential Difference: Mail and Female Brains and Autism, the test is slowly coming into use.
You wonder if you recognise the name? Yes, Simon is the cousin of comedian Sasha Baron-Cohen. The whole family seems to be rather accomplished. I think that the irony is amusing, and not quite accidental. Borat's psychologist cousin develops a diagnostic test based around faux pas. Very nice.
Be A Fireman
If you'd really like to work in a profession that protects the poor as well as the wealthy...
"I have no ambition in this world but one, and that is to be a firefighter The position may, in the eyes of some, appear to be a lowly one; but we who know the work which the firefighter has to do believe that his is a noble calling. There is an adage which says that, "Nothing can be destroyed except by fire." We strive to preserve from destruction the wealth of the world which is the product of the industry of men, necessary for the comfort of both the rich and the poor. We are defenders from fires of the art which has beautified the world, the product of the genius of men and the means of refinement of mankind. (But, above all; our proudest endeavor is to save lives of men-the work of God Himself. Under the impulse of such thoughts, the nobility of the occupation thrills us and stimulates us to deeds of daring, even at the supreme sacrifice. Such considerations may not strike the average mind, but they are sufficient to fill to the limit our ambition in life and to make us serve the general purpose of human society.” Edward Croker, NYFD chief 1910.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Sell All You Have
We attended a wedding yesterday which was boycotted by the bride's brother. He is furious that his ex-wife was one of the attendants and told his sister "You no longer have a brother." This type of drama queen behavior has been coming from him for several years now, worsening over the last two. This particular sister was the one he was closest to, who defended him longest, and even when he was at his most vindictive continued to visit and keep clear of the controversy.
His father is heartbroken, and keeps replaying old conversations in his head, hoping to find some slight thaw in his son's attitude, some ember that might be nursed into a flame. I fear that gradual softening may not provide the solution.
Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had. We usually think of this verse as cautionary that we do not become too attached to the riches of this world. We think of it as a general admonishment about wealth that applies to all of us somewhat, rather than a specific direction to a specific individual. But if we think of "all that we have" as a more general category than money and goods, we might find the command applies to all of us.
This young man's resentment is his greatest treasure, the one he has sold everything else to possess. We think of resentment as a burden, but many of us do treat it as a treasure. Our self-pity is our pearl of great price. This man will find no freedom in small gestures or middling attempts. He must sell it all and give it away to be free. It is a hard cost and a brutal price.
I have to wonder what my own greatest treasure is.
His father is heartbroken, and keeps replaying old conversations in his head, hoping to find some slight thaw in his son's attitude, some ember that might be nursed into a flame. I fear that gradual softening may not provide the solution.
Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had. We usually think of this verse as cautionary that we do not become too attached to the riches of this world. We think of it as a general admonishment about wealth that applies to all of us somewhat, rather than a specific direction to a specific individual. But if we think of "all that we have" as a more general category than money and goods, we might find the command applies to all of us.
This young man's resentment is his greatest treasure, the one he has sold everything else to possess. We think of resentment as a burden, but many of us do treat it as a treasure. Our self-pity is our pearl of great price. This man will find no freedom in small gestures or middling attempts. He must sell it all and give it away to be free. It is a hard cost and a brutal price.
I have to wonder what my own greatest treasure is.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Self-Respect
Reposted from October 2006
Congressman Foley resigned, as he should. Dr. Sanity discusses shame and guilt cultures in a post from last year, and I think the distinction between guilt and shame might apply here. Resigning from Congress could spring from either guilt or shame (or some of both), but I think other information suggests guilt.
My own personal soapbox on this is self-respect versus self-esteem. If our goal is self-esteem, then when we do evil things we are hopelessly lost. After having been caught making wildly inappropriate sexual comments to a 16 y/o, reliance on self-esteem would leave one forever wounded. But if your goal is self-respect you can at least make your next act honorable. If you have nothing else, you can at least reassert your ability to make some moral decisions correctly. It is in some ways more painful, because your ability to make a correct moral choice on Tuesday implies pretty strongly that you had that capability on Monday as well. But it is at least reality. You can salvage something. With self-esteem, you either have to accept that you have none, or start lying to yourself to get some.
Tangentially, I am always grateful for sins I'm not tempted to. I don't do so great with the ones I am tempted to, and I'd hate for that list to be longer. So I am hesitant to condemn in detail people who have done things I never could. I'm harder on those whose temptations I understand.
Congressman Foley resigned, as he should. Dr. Sanity discusses shame and guilt cultures in a post from last year, and I think the distinction between guilt and shame might apply here. Resigning from Congress could spring from either guilt or shame (or some of both), but I think other information suggests guilt.
My own personal soapbox on this is self-respect versus self-esteem. If our goal is self-esteem, then when we do evil things we are hopelessly lost. After having been caught making wildly inappropriate sexual comments to a 16 y/o, reliance on self-esteem would leave one forever wounded. But if your goal is self-respect you can at least make your next act honorable. If you have nothing else, you can at least reassert your ability to make some moral decisions correctly. It is in some ways more painful, because your ability to make a correct moral choice on Tuesday implies pretty strongly that you had that capability on Monday as well. But it is at least reality. You can salvage something. With self-esteem, you either have to accept that you have none, or start lying to yourself to get some.
Tangentially, I am always grateful for sins I'm not tempted to. I don't do so great with the ones I am tempted to, and I'd hate for that list to be longer. So I am hesitant to condemn in detail people who have done things I never could. I'm harder on those whose temptations I understand.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Can Christianity Cure OCD?
Can Christianity Cure Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Psychiatrist Explores the Role of Faith in Treatment, by Ian Osborn, MD.
Excellent book; terrible title. Exactly the sort of title I would pass by in a bookstore, and in fact did pass by when a friend sent a link to the volume two months ago. What are these people thinking? Don’t they know that Christians with OCD or other interior battles have seen such things a dozen times before, all containing cliché-ridden bad advice from people who just don’t get it? Hey Christian! Why not use that obsessiveness to memorize Scripture, eh? That’ll get Satan on the run! And while you’re at it, here are some short prayers that will allow you to claim victory in the Name of Jesus! All together on the chorus now:
The Epilogue’s title might have been better for the book: “How Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Saved Christianity.” That has echoes of the popular books How The Irish Saved Civilization, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Such a title doesn’t hint at treatment, true, but most people with OCD would be curious and give it a look, even if they weren’t religious.
Ian Osborn gets it. He acknowledges how Christianity has sometimes caused or worsened OCD, and makes careful distinctions in what he advocates. He has been through it himself and now practices at an OCD clinic. He is up on the research; he sees connections between current brain science and the behavior of great figures in the church over the centuries.
In particular, he focuses on Martin Luther, John Bunyan, and Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower beloved of Roman Catholics. He illustrates from their autobiographical details how each had severe OCD, the terrible advice they often received from other Christians, and how their search for relief from their tormenting thoughts led each independently to a stunningly similar theology, despite their different religious traditions.
As these three would be a good start for anyone’s all-star team of the faith over the last 500 years, we do well to pay attention even if there were no modern connection. But when that theological solution accords with many of the recent advances in cognitive-behavioral treatment specific to OCD and the neurological glitches related to obsessions, we have some powerful stuff here.
I tried to read the book straight through, finding so many previously-unseen connections to my own OCD* that I sought eagerly for more. Yet time and again, I found myself staring out silently, preoccupied with following one of those thoughts through my own experience. As I finished the book, I turned back again to the beginning, this time with a highlighter. Perhaps if I had kept up with OCD research Osborn’s book might have been less arresting, but much was new, and stunning. Thought-action fusion: I had never heard of it but recognized it on sight. Inflated responsibility; add-on obsessions; fixed action patterns. I had known these since childhood and now knew their names. Obsessions and compulsions that had slipped away unnoticed when I went on fluoxetine two decades ago now waved cheerily back at me, stripped of their previous intimidation.
I suspect that non-Christians might also get significant benefit from the book, as might those who suffer from conditions similar to OCD, such as phobias or addictions. The language and concepts are not far off from what one would read in 12-Step literature, and parts of the treatment bear significant similarity to some Steps. I imagine that Osborn’s earlier book, Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals would provide less barrier to a nonreligious person, and he writes approvingly of Jeffrey Schwartz’s Brain Lock, but I haven’t read those and can’t comment.
The Christian clichés come with meat on their bones here. Dr. Osborn emphasizes that trust in God is integral to the treatment, but he describes how that looks in the specific context of OCD. He uses the term “faith” but uses Martin Buber’s distinction between trust in someone and belief that something is true. Finally, you can reflect on where the church would have gone were it not for the corrective of these three giants of the faith and their tormenting obsessions.
*My Y-BOC score in the 1980's was 26. I now score a 14, which seems -heh- normal to me.
Excellent book; terrible title. Exactly the sort of title I would pass by in a bookstore, and in fact did pass by when a friend sent a link to the volume two months ago. What are these people thinking? Don’t they know that Christians with OCD or other interior battles have seen such things a dozen times before, all containing cliché-ridden bad advice from people who just don’t get it? Hey Christian! Why not use that obsessiveness to memorize Scripture, eh? That’ll get Satan on the run! And while you’re at it, here are some short prayers that will allow you to claim victory in the Name of Jesus! All together on the chorus now:
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way…I can’t tell you how much I have come to hate such people. They are not well-meaning – they are arrogant.
The Epilogue’s title might have been better for the book: “How Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Saved Christianity.” That has echoes of the popular books How The Irish Saved Civilization, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Such a title doesn’t hint at treatment, true, but most people with OCD would be curious and give it a look, even if they weren’t religious.
Ian Osborn gets it. He acknowledges how Christianity has sometimes caused or worsened OCD, and makes careful distinctions in what he advocates. He has been through it himself and now practices at an OCD clinic. He is up on the research; he sees connections between current brain science and the behavior of great figures in the church over the centuries.
In particular, he focuses on Martin Luther, John Bunyan, and Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower beloved of Roman Catholics. He illustrates from their autobiographical details how each had severe OCD, the terrible advice they often received from other Christians, and how their search for relief from their tormenting thoughts led each independently to a stunningly similar theology, despite their different religious traditions.
As these three would be a good start for anyone’s all-star team of the faith over the last 500 years, we do well to pay attention even if there were no modern connection. But when that theological solution accords with many of the recent advances in cognitive-behavioral treatment specific to OCD and the neurological glitches related to obsessions, we have some powerful stuff here.
I tried to read the book straight through, finding so many previously-unseen connections to my own OCD* that I sought eagerly for more. Yet time and again, I found myself staring out silently, preoccupied with following one of those thoughts through my own experience. As I finished the book, I turned back again to the beginning, this time with a highlighter. Perhaps if I had kept up with OCD research Osborn’s book might have been less arresting, but much was new, and stunning. Thought-action fusion: I had never heard of it but recognized it on sight. Inflated responsibility; add-on obsessions; fixed action patterns. I had known these since childhood and now knew their names. Obsessions and compulsions that had slipped away unnoticed when I went on fluoxetine two decades ago now waved cheerily back at me, stripped of their previous intimidation.
I suspect that non-Christians might also get significant benefit from the book, as might those who suffer from conditions similar to OCD, such as phobias or addictions. The language and concepts are not far off from what one would read in 12-Step literature, and parts of the treatment bear significant similarity to some Steps. I imagine that Osborn’s earlier book, Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals would provide less barrier to a nonreligious person, and he writes approvingly of Jeffrey Schwartz’s Brain Lock, but I haven’t read those and can’t comment.
The Christian clichés come with meat on their bones here. Dr. Osborn emphasizes that trust in God is integral to the treatment, but he describes how that looks in the specific context of OCD. He uses the term “faith” but uses Martin Buber’s distinction between trust in someone and belief that something is true. Finally, you can reflect on where the church would have gone were it not for the corrective of these three giants of the faith and their tormenting obsessions.
*My Y-BOC score in the 1980's was 26. I now score a 14, which seems -heh- normal to me.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Never, Ever Talk To The Police
When I saw this video loading up at Maggie's Farm, I scoffed. Good people try to help the police in their investigations. Innocent people have nothing to fear. It's like helping people in trouble, picking up your litter, or giving directions to strangers. This law professor convinced me otherwise.
If that's not enough to convince you, Part Two is a police investigator who has done thousands of interviews. (Download time is long).
There is plenty of time to help the police with their investigation - after you have consulted with your attorney. The Fifth Amendment is there for a reason.
If that's not enough to convince you, Part Two is a police investigator who has done thousands of interviews. (Download time is long).
There is plenty of time to help the police with their investigation - after you have consulted with your attorney. The Fifth Amendment is there for a reason.
Obama...
...went to Germany to discuss America's poor racial attitudes. People cheered. Back home, too.
Missing The Point On The Manny Trade
Update: I wrote this post before Jason Bay's first game with the Sox. Side note: sportswriters still don't get it, noting that Bay had "failed to put the ball in play" in his first five appearances. He had two walks and a hit-by-pitch. He was a baserunner four of the six times he came to the plate. Forget batting average. Ignore batting average. On-base-percentage and slugging percentage. (There are other useful stats, but that's where you should start.)
Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.
When statisticians claim that 80% of the variance in baseball is due to
chance, people leap to the ridiculous conclusion that they mean “baseball is 80% luck.” We all pretty readily conclude that we personally would get a hit off Josh Becket 0% of the time, and would strike out Albert Pujols 0% of the time, so we reject the notion immediately. It is this kind of misunderstanding that leads people to reject statistical analysis in general.
Well, actually, people reject statistical analysis because they don’t want to do any math more complicated than addition and subtraction, but they want a more elevated reason to tell other people.
Variance at the major-league level includes the important detail that you are starting from a pool of people who are the 1000 best in the world at this game. Because they all, even the worst of them, fill up the “skill” portion of the equation to almost 100%, the chance factor looms larger than it would in a pure situation.
Chance is why the better team can lose 11-3 in MLB. The NFL equivalent
score of a better team losing 42-14 never happens. There is chance and
luck in football, of course, but not to nearly the same degree. In baseball, Albert Pujols can hit 3 towering flies to the warning track and go 0-3; a guy you brought up from AAA for a week because of injuries can hit a bleeder through the infield and drive in the winning run. No one looks at that game’s box score and says “OMG, we’ve got to get that guy who outhit Pujols yesterday!”
Two rules of thumb for determining how much a sport’s variance depends on chance are a) how many games they play in a season and b) what percentage of games the championship team loses. These are not independent.
Superior skill in baseball shows over time. Over 162+ games, the slight skill advantage will gradually squeeze out the element of chance.
With that in mind, let’s look at the Ramirez trade. For this season, what is the expected outcome for the Red Sox in wins and losses? (We’ll turn to subsequent seasons in a moment). Sabermetricians usually estimate this in terms of runs. We can’t know in advance whether the runs player A creates will be in a situation that wins games, but we know that over time, creating more runs wins more ballgames. Manny has an Onbase Plus Slugging of .926. Bay has an OPS of .894. Over the remaining 50+ games, that would translate into an estimated 7 extra runs for the Red Sox with Manny in the lineup. That is a difference of 0.4 wins. In a pennant race, that may be significant. It can be the difference between going to the playoffs and going home.
But wait, there’s an extra wrinkle. Manny’s estimated extra runs are predicated on he and Bay having the same number of at-bats. Is that a reasonable assumption? Not at all. They might end up with an equal number of at-bats from here, but Bay has more AB at this point in the season for a good reason: Manny’s been hurt a little. Who is more likely to be hurt and miss games during the rest of the season? Manny, of course, and in Boston, those at-bats would likely be have been picked up by Ellsbury or Crisp. Their OPS for those 10-50 AB must be factored in to Ramirez’s total to get an accurate picture of the trade. The Red Sox have lost about a third of a win this season with this trade, on average. Chance factors make a range estimate more accurate. Boston may lose as many as three wins with the trade; they may gain as many as two wins. Throw in fielding and baserunning, and this is a nearly even trade. For this season.
Next season, they already have a guy under contract who is about 20 runs per season less good than Manny Ramirez, for one-third the price. Those extra millions will go a long way toward paying people you want to get or keep.
The Red Sox robbed the National League blind with this trade.
Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.
When statisticians claim that 80% of the variance in baseball is due to
chance, people leap to the ridiculous conclusion that they mean “baseball is 80% luck.” We all pretty readily conclude that we personally would get a hit off Josh Becket 0% of the time, and would strike out Albert Pujols 0% of the time, so we reject the notion immediately. It is this kind of misunderstanding that leads people to reject statistical analysis in general.
Well, actually, people reject statistical analysis because they don’t want to do any math more complicated than addition and subtraction, but they want a more elevated reason to tell other people.
Variance at the major-league level includes the important detail that you are starting from a pool of people who are the 1000 best in the world at this game. Because they all, even the worst of them, fill up the “skill” portion of the equation to almost 100%, the chance factor looms larger than it would in a pure situation.
Chance is why the better team can lose 11-3 in MLB. The NFL equivalent
score of a better team losing 42-14 never happens. There is chance and
luck in football, of course, but not to nearly the same degree. In baseball, Albert Pujols can hit 3 towering flies to the warning track and go 0-3; a guy you brought up from AAA for a week because of injuries can hit a bleeder through the infield and drive in the winning run. No one looks at that game’s box score and says “OMG, we’ve got to get that guy who outhit Pujols yesterday!”
Two rules of thumb for determining how much a sport’s variance depends on chance are a) how many games they play in a season and b) what percentage of games the championship team loses. These are not independent.
Superior skill in baseball shows over time. Over 162+ games, the slight skill advantage will gradually squeeze out the element of chance.
With that in mind, let’s look at the Ramirez trade. For this season, what is the expected outcome for the Red Sox in wins and losses? (We’ll turn to subsequent seasons in a moment). Sabermetricians usually estimate this in terms of runs. We can’t know in advance whether the runs player A creates will be in a situation that wins games, but we know that over time, creating more runs wins more ballgames. Manny has an Onbase Plus Slugging of .926. Bay has an OPS of .894. Over the remaining 50+ games, that would translate into an estimated 7 extra runs for the Red Sox with Manny in the lineup. That is a difference of 0.4 wins. In a pennant race, that may be significant. It can be the difference between going to the playoffs and going home.
But wait, there’s an extra wrinkle. Manny’s estimated extra runs are predicated on he and Bay having the same number of at-bats. Is that a reasonable assumption? Not at all. They might end up with an equal number of at-bats from here, but Bay has more AB at this point in the season for a good reason: Manny’s been hurt a little. Who is more likely to be hurt and miss games during the rest of the season? Manny, of course, and in Boston, those at-bats would likely be have been picked up by Ellsbury or Crisp. Their OPS for those 10-50 AB must be factored in to Ramirez’s total to get an accurate picture of the trade. The Red Sox have lost about a third of a win this season with this trade, on average. Chance factors make a range estimate more accurate. Boston may lose as many as three wins with the trade; they may gain as many as two wins. Throw in fielding and baserunning, and this is a nearly even trade. For this season.
Next season, they already have a guy under contract who is about 20 runs per season less good than Manny Ramirez, for one-third the price. Those extra millions will go a long way toward paying people you want to get or keep.
The Red Sox robbed the National League blind with this trade.
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