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Pulling feeding tubes

I meant to post this a week or two ago, but I've been sick. Pleurisy. And I'm in the middle of a series of computer upgrades. Still waiting on a video card and a broadband connection . . .

Tom Delay became unhinged:

It is more than just Terri Schiavo. This is a critical issue for people in this position, and it is also a critical issue to fight that fight for life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen if we don't win this fight.

Terri doesn't seem lucid. She certainly lost ability to control her body. The medical reports, as discussed in every court hearing, says she is not lucid.

So DeLay pretends to know something that doctors and the designated courts do not.

The whole issue seems suspect, to me. So what's going on here?

It's hard to let go of a loved one who's dying. If you can keep a body going, forced by modern medicine, even without any personality, any soul, in evidence, well, that makes some family members feel better. It's just hard to let a loved one go.

But a husband was able to do it. And move on. The rest of Ms. Schiavo's family could not do that. They wanted her body kept as a living flame to their hope and cowardice. So they put the courts through a run-through. Then the Republicans got on a high horse, and tried to make a federal case out of it. They lost. And Ms. Schiavo's body now slowly dies. (They now accept the situation, and wisely ask people to calm down.)

Why have the Republicans come out on the side of sentimental death-avoidance and mechanized body preservation? Why do souls mean so little to them, and bodies so much? Abortion, apparently. But they have lied about the case at hand. Ms. Schiavo has not been human for a long time. Her family's unrealistic imputations to the contrary, it appears that the courts are right.

And DeLay, by making such a big deal of this case, dishonestly, has perverted the debate about the medicalization of death.

Once upon a time, the standard for life was normal life. Death came to those who could not eat or drink. With the advancement of medical science and the politicization of payments for same, over the last half century death is no longer a natural part of life. It is now something determined by government policy. If you think this is progress, Republicans, you have lost all conservative perspective, and have committed yourself to modernist folly.

Designations   |   April 6, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

Legerdemain, politicians' domain

I was flipping through channels, and caught a moment in Congress. A Democratic Rep or Senator was talking, showing charts. He proved, quite handily, that Bush's "private accounts" system would make Social Security insolvent sooner. This is something that I've suspected about Bush's proposal, and seemed conclusive. After all, Bush himself has backtracked, saying the proposal wasn't the solution, and (drum roll...) wasn't even a plan. I guess it's more a whim, a maggot.

But then the Democrat proceeded to show how Republicans prefer tax cuts to fixing Social Security.

Now, you might think this is an obvious point. They have cut taxes ("especialy for the rich"), but they have not fixed Social Security.

But then the Democrat shows that the amount of taxes cut from the general revenue stream could have fixed Social Security!

At this point, you might see, the apple of the general revenue problem and the orange of the Social Security problem were not at all different things to this politician. Solving the Social Security insolvency from the apple barrel has its appeal, but, well, that it might detrimentally affect the oranges — that never crosses the mind of a Democratic reformer. (This is the nature of modern government intervention: see a problem; enact solution A; which causes problem x, which leads to soclution C; which causes problems x and y — and all the while the problems multiply, the politicians congratulate themselves on the brilliant work they are doing!)

It's this kind of talk that bothers me so much. Bush's incoherent mumblings about his own half-proposed fixes are one thing; coherent muddles (imagine that!) spouted by men who are obviously smarter than Bush, quite another.

I turned the channel. I can only take a certain amount of legerdemain.

No wonder that most people are confused about Social Security, what with Bush proposing fixes that will make it worse, and Democrats suggesting fixes that no rational deliberative body would consider. Politics (say it with disgust).

Designations   |   April 6, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

Ancient saying

After the feast, then the farting.

Designations   |   April 7, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

Smart is sexy

For years I've argued that natural selection theorists too rarely deal with the reality of the original paradigm that Darwin himself analogized from: artificial selection. Choice. Too often, evolutionists pretend that everything is determined by natural selection, and that choice is a mere illusion. In so doing, they inadvertently read artificial selection out of science.

I'm rereading Geoffrey Miller's brilliant The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, and in this book I find one of the few evolutionary psychologists who do not err on the side of survival-of-the-fittest type processes. Sexual selection is choice, whether in animals or in humans. Obviously humans can weigh more factors, and imagine more likely consequences, further down the chain of causality. Why can they do this? Because the ability to so consider a variety of avenues of possible action was itself attractive to our ancestors. The choice of smarter over dumber in the selection of whom to engage in coition (or, in the vulgar tongue, who to fuck) had the partially understood consequence of Homo sapiens sapiens's greater intelligence.

There is a sort of by-your-bootstraps feel to this whole argument. But if you look at the process as mostly gradual, and step by step (economists should grok), you see it not as circular but as helical. Artifical selection is planned breeding of another species; sexual selection is the piecemiel planning of one's own breeding. The former may have a stronger rational character to the choices, but surely this is only a matter of degree, not kind. The capacity for rational choice arose out of sexual choice, which over time itself grew more rational. Miller's argument shows how, through marginal decisions over eons of mating, intelligence blooms from its first flickers to its present state.

It could use more nurturing, if you ask me.

I'll show you my IQ, if you show me yours.

Designations   |   April 8, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Hattie McDaniel in the Senate

I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies! Hattie McDaniel's most famous line echoed in Senate chambers, recently, as that august body's Ethics Committee told newbie senator Dr. Tom Coburn to close his medical practice. So what if he managed to work as Representative for years, earn a reputation as a firebrand, and keep his OB/GYN practice going? It's not a question of can. It's a question of should. And according to modern political ethics, bringing babies into the world while working diligently in the U.S. Senate is a conflict of interest.

Nonsense and poppycock, as Paul Jacob ably shows on Townhall.com today. Sometimes you have to go a bit deeper than the mere appearance of impropriety.

How could birthin' babies conflict with one's duties in the Senate? Are pregnant mothers going to bribe the Senator to . . . what?

Well, here's the clue to the whole mess. Obsession with the appearance of impropriety is all about corruption in politics. And it mainly concerns lawyering. It's easy to see how a lawyer doing what Coburn is doing would, indeed, seem to be inappropriate. Not birthin' babies, but taking on clients. Working for a client in a property rights case, for instance, would send up a red flag. How could we trust the representative to deliver an impartial support or opposition to an environmental bill, or a land-use regulation?

This is why it gets messy. Lawyers are in the business of law, and law is what legislators enact. And corrupt. And make a mess of. And, maybe, improve. You just can't get around this. A senator in private legal practice would yield more appearances of impropriety than Seven-11's yield Elvis sightings.

So the rule should be: physician, heal others; lawyer, heel.

Inevitably, if one is worried about corruption, this "double standard" will emerge as a kind of common sense. It's not double, of course; merely nuanced. It tracks the actual nature of corruption, not figments of public relations. And it's not as if a politician-lawyer sent back to the private sector would suffer from her term in office; for a lawyer, term in office looks good on the resume. For a doctor, it means precisely nothing.

Of course, as Paul Jacob makes clear, the way to reduce corruption is to reduce the power and scope of the federal government. But that ain't gonna happen any time soon. Dr. Coburn's babies will be retiring, I bet, before that happens. So, in the meantime, just let Coburn do what Hattie McDaniel said she couldn't.

This is not a complicated ethical case. It shouldn't even be a complicated political one. But, I must remember, this is modern politics, where there is no black and white, and where shades of gray are really shades of maroon. Ultramaroon.

Designations   |   April 10, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

In my previous entry, ten days ago, I misidentified an actress. It was Butterfly McQueen, I've been told, not Hattie McDaniel, who knew nothin' 'bout birthin' babies.

In the many days of no blogging, I've been visiting friends. I saw a few movies, too. One was very bad: Sin City. One was very good: Millions. The former is fine viewing for budding serial killers. A cold movie, revelling in shootings, knifings, beheadings, disembowelings. How cool! The latter is fine viewing for families with a little moral sense. A warm movie, revelling in the unlikely, the everyday, unexpected good fortune, moral choices, and the Catholic Saints.

And now, I see, Catholics have a new pope. Please note: I'm careful not to say we have a new pope, for I'm not Catholic; popes mean little to me.

Amusingly, a lot of non-Catholics like to prescribe the best course for the papacy. Licia Corbella, writing in a Canadian newspaper, takes these busybodies on with some joyous fervor, in her column Benedict Will Drive Atheists Crazy.

Of course, her title thesis is less than accurate. Many atheists enjoy fundamentalisms of all sorts. It's much easier to contrast oneself with one's enemy if one's enemy is so very opposite. A mealy-mouth, smarmy liberal of a pope would be little fun (for many) to oppose.

Unsurprisingly, the new, conservative pope sees something called relativism as the main problem of our time:

We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires. . . .

Now, there's a lot of wrong with the moralisms of this world. Relativism doesn't appear to be one of them. The busybody atheists who would prescribe for a church to which they do not belong are not engaging in relativism, that's pretty obvious.

And even a thorough-going egoist (and I've known too many) doesn't hold his own desires above all else. He still has to reconcile what he wants with what he can get. We — and this time I do mean we, as in all of us — bump up against the reality of an external world and other souls all the time. We are constantly revising our values to track the real world. And this friction provides each of our relative evaluations with a standard that offers no small degree of objectivity — and that can't help but seem definitive.

The problems of the day are not lack of standards, but lack of honest talk that would encourage people to address and apply those inevitable standards with greater facility. I doubt that the new pope, yammering on in the current knee-jerk conservative manner, will be much help. Especially to atheists, too many of whom have been corrupted by ideologies seemingly designed to confuse those who wish to apply natural standards.

Both Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen remain mum.

Designations   |   April 20, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

Modest Mussorgsky was a true genius of music, an innovator in both rhythm and harmony. Oh, and melody, too. Alas, he was also a drunk and a bureaucrat, so his orchestral oeuvre needed the help of his fellow Russian composers (and other arrangers, later, such as Ravel and Stokowski and even — gasp! — Isao Tomita) to flesh out, complete. Rimsky-Korsakov, for instance, completed the opera Kovanschina, from which the entr'acte Galitsin's Journey is often taken for concert performance.

Well, perhaps not often enough. It's a fine work, but could use more performances. The Claudio Abbado disc of Mussorgsky works includes it, and is one reason to choose that disc. It belongs in every library.

While searching on the Web for information about the historical Galitsin, I came across the picture above. This shot nicely summarizes contemporary Russian culture, if you ask me. No more comment is necessary, is it?

Designations   |   April 22, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

Cooking: Razor clams Maharajah

I'm not a bad cook, for some things. Brining a turkey and roasting — perfect. A traditional chicken curry — fine. But for the life of me, razor clams breaded and fried — not so good. So tonight's foray into fried razor clams was a good reprieve. They were very tasty.

Here's what I did. First, the ingredients:

• 1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1/3 chopped onion (yellow)
• 1 strip of bacon, chopped
• 2 cups razor clams, chopped
• salt
• black pepper
• Maharajah curry powder (Penzey's)
• olive oil and butter

Heat skillet or wok. Pour a big dollop of oil, slice off some butter and mix it in the oil. Add bacon and veggies, sprinkle on salt and pepper, stir fry until bacon is cooked and onions are golden. Move to side. Liberally sprinkle (dump) curry over fresh clams, place in oil and butter (perhaps after refreshing the oil/butter), stir fry until cooked. Then stir fry the whole pan of food together. Serve.

I believe that everything should be chopped elegantly and uniformly except the clams. People want variety of shape and size for the main ingredient. That's how you know this is a razor clam meal and not just another stir fry. The Maharajah curry is quite good. The oil/butter combination adds a richness to the meal. You can still taste the clams. This is far, far better than breaded clams.

Designations   |   April 27, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

Philosophy: Truth is relative

Philosophic debates with people on the question of relativism in science or ethics is usually frustrating. Most people who pontificate (including the current pontiff) on the matter don't really understand the literature, and certainly not the concepts. Of course, many philosophers have erred on the subject, also.

Consider: a dogmatist of some sort or another says, That's the truth! usually in a voice brooking no uncertainty. And so some more careful smarty responds, But it's a matter of relativity... and usually before the sentence is finished, the dogmatist responds with an Aha! So you believe Truth is relative! As if this meant much of anything.

My response is a bit different from some others who've trod this very furrowed ground. I respond with something like this:

Me: No. Truth is not relative. Truth is relational. The very meaning of the concept truth relates signs to the things signified. And the very complexity of the world means that simple statements often require careful clarifications, hedgings, amplifications, and the like to make truthful statements at all. So when I say that the value of water is relative to the situation of the person, I'm making a statement criticizable in terms of truth. Truth is the standard, yes, but it must track the complex relations, with variables that are relative to other variables. It's simply the case that a cup of water is more valuable to a person in a desert than a person in the rainiest parts of the Pacific Northwest. Similarly, the efficacy of this rule or that changes as circumstances change.

Dogmatist: But murder is always murder! There are absolutes!

Me: Well, murder may always be murder, but killing a human being is not always disapproved killing. Even Moses realized that. Killing a foreigner at war is different than killing a neighbor or a loved one. Killing a fetus has a different penalty in Mosaic Law than killing a man. And the reasons for killing matter, too. If in Mosaic Law, so in every law. Relations matter. Reasons matter. Situations matter. The values we impute to anything change as circumstances change. And so do even the clearest moral rules that even most people accept.

And at this point the other person usually starts hopelessly fuming, or else backpedalling to such a degree that I don't bother keeping up.

Of course, I have met skeptics and alleged relativists who somehow think that since they've discovered that some given relation is more complex than a simple dogmatic statement they'd heard about it, so this means that, indeed, truth is relative, whatever that means.

As far as I can tell, they never know what that means. Richard Rorty somewhere (well, almost everywhere) states that truth is merely a function of propositions or statements. My reaction is to raise an eyebrow and respond, merely? The functionality of a proposition, or statement, or some sign set, is the whole issue. There's no mere here!

So, what's this functionality?

I've never met one of these folks who interestingly respond. Rorty? I'm afraid I've never read far into any one of his treatises. He reminds me so much of the philosophical boobs amongst the so-called relativist set.

Now, why am I writing this? Because I don't want to look up the older posts to a debate on values I'm having on a discussion group (ThinkingMatters) right now. It's about values, and I gather that my interlocutors have never read the literature. Oh, well. At least they aren't the idiotic dogmatists or relativists manqué I dismiss in this musing.

I should be writing something for sale, right now, not blogging at length. Oh, well. There's a time and place for everything. Or, as Koheleth The Preacher might have said (after waxing about vanity), everything's relative.

Designations   |   April 28, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

One cat behind

As I write these words, my main Mac is installing Panther. Today, I believe, was the day Tiger — the latest version of Apple's OS X — came out. This makes me one cat behind.

I think if one is to be an animal behind, being a cat behind is about the best.

In utterly unrelated news, I saw an owl the other day, perched on a post beside the highway, his back to the traffic. I drove past. He didn't budge. He was utterly beautiful. A very large brown owl.

I'm neighbor to a barn owl, now that I think of it. He lives up the road a bit, in a barn; but we don't talk. He hasn't even bothered to ask WHO I am.

But then, I don't talk to the beautiful white woman on the hill up the road, either.

Some neighbors are more friendly than others.

And some cats, too. My cat purrs when she sidles up to me, when there's no one else around. Add another person to the room, and she quickly bristles. Hisses. Even attacks.

Meanwhile, Panther slowly installs the latest update on my faster Mac. It has been as finicky and as unneighborly as my cat. It wouldn't load on my fastest SCSI drive; I had to switch. I hope it's not the drive, but the SCSI card, which can be more cheaply replaced. Unfortunately, the second monitor worked under OS X 10.1.5, but has not yet under Panther. Cursed luck, cursed cat's behind!

Designations   |   April 29, 2005   |   Wirkman Virkkala

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