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apothegm elision See: Armstrong got Moon quote right
Oh, how wrong I was! Well, not wrong when I was young. Wrong recently, on this blog:
I remember the moon landing, when I was a kid. I watched the first moon walk, and heard Armstrong make his instantly famous proclamation, One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. I remember thinking, what does that mean? because while he distinguished between man and mankind, he didn’t place an article before man to carry the distinction through. As he said it, it was preciously close to gibberish.
He later confessed that he meant to say One small step for a man, but forgot to say the a. Oops. You only take the first step on the moon once. But better a verbal slip than a physical one.
The available second-hand recordings show his mistake. Think he’s looking for better recordings to prove it all the more clearly?
Now, new analysis
is said to show that the elided a was not elided at all, but merely obscured by static:
Ford said that Mr Armstrong completed the whole phraseone small step for a mantoo quickly to pick up every syllable he said.
But the audio analysis was able to find the signature of the missing word, he said.
So now books of quotations can make the famous apothegm grammatical and rest assured that the corrected version is indeed the historically spoken version as well.
A friend of mine recently said he had never been bothered by the original statement. I still wonder about that. It always bothered me. And the current news article makes clear the reason why: without the missing
a
, the meaning of the quote is lost. In effect, the line means: That’s one small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind.
Well, it is good to know that Neil Armstrong did not suffer from dysarthria, a pathology in his case escusable, one would think, by a one-of-a-kind momentary insanity, a lunacy derived from being the first sentient being ever to step upon the Moon.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 2, 2006 | permalink
The State,Journal des Débats (September 25, 1848)
libertarianism Democratic Party See: The Case for the Libertarian Democrat
Markos Moulitsas, the blogger behind The Daily Kos, presents, on Cato Unbound, The Case for the Libertarian Democrat.
As a libertarian who loathes the Republican Party (though not necessarily all Republicans, or even Republican politicians), the case seems made for me.
Except that it doesn’t seem made for me.
Why? Well, Moulitsas’s harping on corporations and corporate power strikes me as silly, at the very least. It’s a distraction. I’d say a subterfuge, except that I suppose Moulitsas is sincere. It’s just hard to believe that anyone can get caught up in such obviously narrow and short-sighted obsessions.
Yes, he’s right that the industrial part of the military-industrial complex has too much influence on American foreign policy, as well as defense and offense preparation. But complaining about corporations is not the way to stop it. Unhooking Americans from their silly dreams of world domination and the belief that we somehow should
be invulnerable even while continually meddling in foreign lands would put the kabash on this. Nothing else will.
And that’s an ideological matter.
And it is an ideological matter regarding that I don’t see Democrats as quite capable of confronting. After all, world domination has been a post-war obsession for a long time; the role of world policeman
has been relished by both parties for ages. America’s two-party system, and its two major parties, will long choke on the hallucinations we’ve had ever since the Japanese woke up the Sleeping Giant. The giant never stopped dreaming. But, since awakened to its world stance, most visions have not been sense data, but hallucinations. The next wake-up will, perhaps, wake us up truly. But it will probably be too late. We are addicted to our dreams, and the giant will likely descend into narcoleptic fantasy soon after.
And as far as other corporations, yes, many do abuse the system. There are corporate polluters, I readily acknowledge. But let’s face it, anyone who drives a car is a polluter. The way to gain control over the problems of pollution is with general laws that don’t allow for legislated special privileges. But the Democratic Party, as any other successful party, is a party of coalitions. Favor is the name of the game.
Besides, Democrats are notorious for their business/government
partnerships, for special tax breaks to big businesses, and for generally running roughshod over small businesses by favoring heavy regulations and import/export restrictions best suited to promoting bigness at the expense of littleness, all in hopes to increase tax yields overall. This is modern Democracy in action, and the Democratic Party is in it thick, at least as thick as Republicans are. And they often pride themselves as pioneers of such nonsense.
There's an even more basic issue here, though. The general modern attitude towards government, accepted by nearly every coalition member, and as encouraged by both parties, is: exempt me; stick it to the other guy.
That is: the continual attempt by everyone to live at the expense of everyone else.
I don’t see the Democratic Party as a solution to this perverse folly of modern politics. I see it as a historic source for this nonsense, and as an enthusiastic continued supporter. To suggest otherwise is to spit into the wind and expect a clean face.
I may vote Democrat with increasing frequency in the upcoming years. But even if Democrats gain new ground, I don’t expect much more from their successes than new arrangements of the seating on a boat heading for a very large iceberg. America the Titanic seems doomed. The likeliest scenario, barring a new political enlightenment, and subsequent revolution, is a decline, a fall, a painful expiration of the American Empire, and of the Republic from which it grew.
Nothing Moulitsas wrote encourages me that his favored folk would do anything to stop this descent. Why? The real engine of American Folly is firmly bipartisan. It is an idea. And it is instantiated at the deepest levels of our current political system. It will not be dislodged simply by switching parties.
But then, it will also not be dislodged by any continued loyalty to the vile Republicans, either. For libertarians there is no easy political solution.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 2, 2006 | permalink
This Scherzo Is A Jokefrom Charles Ives’s Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano, second movement title
It’s amazing how little I’ve accomplished recently. I’ve been sleeping weirdly the last few days: too many dreams crowding each other out for attention. Now, today, feeling sick most of it, I’ve forgotten them all.
For nourishment, I’m emulating Epicurus: I’m eating cheese.
I’ve been messing about, this week, with iPods and iTunes. Several thoughts spring from this preoccupation:
La Reineis the best of his Paris symphonies.
Riu, Riu Chiu.Use only the repeated first words, sans comma, in the search field.
La Folia,the greatest tune to have the greatest number of great variation sets! The usual suspects are there, but the second on the list I called up has a version with a sitar in it! In a very different treatment, composer Conrad De Jong had fun with it, it sounds like. But where’s Rachmaninoff? (Search for Rachmaninov + Corelli.)
Trauer); and, with much pleasure in contemplation, the only Tibor Serly piece I’ve found in years, his Viola Rhapsody. The recommendations iTunes has made are apt: more Stravinsky, Milhaud’s La Création du monde, Shostakovich string quartets, Hindemith’s delicious Kammermusik, and yet more Stravinsky. Way to go iTunes!
TrauerSymphony, J.C. Bach’s D minor harpsichord concerto, William Bolcom’s Commedia for (Almost) Eighteenth Century Orchestra, and Martinu’s Sinfonietta La Jolla. What a concert!
I got a jury notice summons in the mail today, for Tuesday. I was still contemplating this when I listened to my messages when I arrived at my office. A female voice advised me that the jury duty for that day had been taken off the schedule. In this county, they like plea bargains. I'm assuming that's what happened, the accused plead out. I'll read about it in next week's paper, no doubt.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 7, 2006 | permalink
Pacific Decadal Oscillation(PDO) in 1996 while researching connections between Alaska salmon production cycles and Pacific climate (his dissertation topic with advisor Robert Francis). Two main characteristics distinguish PDO from El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO): first, 20th century PDO
eventspersisted for 20-to-30 years, while typical ENSO events persisted for 6 to 18 months; second, the climatic fingerprints of the PDO are most visible in the North Pacific/North American sector, while secondary signatures exist in the tropics — the opposite is true for ENSO. Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century:
coolPDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while
warmPDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990’s. Shoshiro Minobe has shown that 20th century PDO fluctuations were most energetic in two general periodicities, one from 15-to-25 years, and the other from 50-to-70 years.
holidays celebration See: Leif Erickson Day
I go to the post office; it’s closed. A sign on the door explains the mystery: It’s Columbus Day.
I hadn’t noticed any big celebrations. The lack of civil servants working that day somehow didn’t register. Until I went to mail a letter.
These little holidays are becoming easy not to notice. One has to ask: are they worth noting?
Columbus Day is a national holiday, first celebrated as an official, state-sanctioned holiday in Colorado in 1905, and as a national holiday since 1937. It is now held on the second Monday in October. Some people are more negative than ambivalent about the day, seeing as how Columbus practiced slavery and was none to nice to natives.
Is it worth noting that this year Columbus Day fell on Leif Erickson day? Leif Erickson almost certainly discovered America long before Columbus . . . if long after the inhabitants he found on American shores. Since 1964, presidents have declared October 9 as that Viking’s day of observance.
But what am I supposed to observe? That much of government action is inoccuous and ritualistic? That the Vikings were a daring lot? That they didn’t see much use for America, and thus postponed the great European land grab? I mean, the march of civilization?
In his proclamation, our president explains: I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs to honor our rich Nordic-American heritage.
Whew. I’ve now done my part.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 9, 2006 | permalink
economics time See: Did Phelps Really Explain Stagflation?
I was reading Frank Shostak's Mises.org daily article, on the new Nobel Laureate in Economics, and was again struck by a common classical theme, in the passage Shostak quotes from James Mill:
When goods are carried to market what is wanted is somebody to buy. But to buy, one must have the wherewithal to pay. It is obviously therefore the collective means of payment which exist in the whole nation constitute the entire market of the nation. But wherein consist the collective means of payment of the whole nation? Do they not consist in its annual produce, in the annual revenue of the general mass of inhabitants? But if a nation's power of purchasing is exactly measured by its annual produce, as it undoubtedly is; [...]
My question does not have to do with the main gist of this argument. It's about that word annual.
I've seen it a lot, in Adam Smith, in the Mills, in other classical writers.
And it seems like pseudoscientific handwaving to me. Why not monthly? Why not fortnightly? Why not by the decade? (Because the adjective decadal
sounds unduly pompous?)
Businesses and individuals obviously differ in their time horizons and planning schedules. They expect some things to come to fruition before others; beyond a certain point they don't economize much at all. But those points and schedules are different. The annual
business in classical economics seems simply to lump all time elements into a handy pot and then forget about it. Whereas (it seems to me) the real business of explaining economic systems and events would be to see how those different plans and time-period considerations coordinate.
I can't think of an Austrian critique of this argumentative ploy, or explanatory agenda, or whatever it is. That is, I can't think of one that directly attacks the common classical use of the "annual" time period in its analyses.
I'd be much appreciative of references to critiques - or defenses - of this quasi-obsession with "annual." My reading of classical economists is that this is not a fully developed thought. I could be wrong.
My reading of Mises is that the common obsession with "annual" is kind of goofy. Here's a passage from Human Action:
Public opinion, governments and legislators, and the tax laws look upon a business outfit as a source of permanent revenue. They believe that the entrepreneur who makes due allowance for capital maintenance by annual depreciation quotas will always be in a position to reap a reasonable return from the capital invested in his durable producers' goods. Real conditions are different. A production aggregate such as a plant and its equipment is a factor of production whose usefulness depends on changing market conditions and the skill of the entrepreneur in employing it in accordance with the change in conditions.
But that is not quite as pertinent as I'd hoped to find in.
As an experiment, re-read the passage by Mill with the word annual
excised. Have we lost anything important?
When goods are carried to market what is wanted is somebody to buy. But to buy, one must have the wherewithal to pay. It is obviously therefore the collective means of payment which exist in the whole nation constitute the entire market of the nation. But wherein consist the collective means of payment of the whole nation? Do they not consist in its produce, in the revenue of the general mass of inhabitants? But if a nation's power of purchasing is exactly measured by its produce, as it undoubtedly is; [...]
It seems that by adding the word annual,
a new element of complexity is added that wasn't needd to explain the concept. And, if it is necessary — if time is neceessary to explain Say's Law, then annual
mishandles thave very concept, sweeps under the rug the real complexity of time.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 10, 2006 | permalink
I just got back from a candidate’s forum at the local Grange. It was interesting to witness the real, deep and brewing disagreements that fester at the local level. Though I am quite used to seeing major conflicts at national level politics, more heat in my little county is devoted to local issues. This was something of a revelation for me, for I am one of those people who perhaps too often neglects local issues.
The assessor’s office race was particularly uncomfortable. I like the current assessor. She’s very professional. But she did admit to making a few big mistakes, and she said took responsibility
for them. How does one take responsibility for big mistakes of this kind, as an elected bureaucrat? I can think of only one way: by stepping down when voted down.
Unfortunately, I’m not at all sure her opponent can solve the problems she espies in the local property tax situation, however. This makes me hesitant to vote for her and against the one who admitted significant error. I simply don’t know how I’m going to vote here. Property taxes have always struck me as one of the worst forms of taxation, and this race and the issues it raised merely confirmed my opinion.
For me the most interesting race is between two Finnish-Americans, Dean Takko, a Democratic bureaucrat appointed to the legislative position and now running for, well, re-appointment (this time by voters), and Tim Sutinen, a Republican businessman taking a longshot against the suave player, Takko.
Takko is very centrist, very much a player in the game of government. He railed against how badly written most voter initiatives have been in Washington state, but said that he still supports the process. I asked him, since he supported this institution of populism, whether he supported term limits. He does not. He said how bad it was when Oregon experimented with them, losing such able legislators. He said that he still has a lot to learn about the position. Sutinen scoffed, fully supporting term limits. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly remember his quip. Something about anything you have to learn in more than two terms isn’t worth knowing. He was amused and adamant.
Behind me, the county commissioner from my district whispered in my ear: We have term limits already: they’re called elections!
In front of me, Takko explained that without experience, bureaucrats and lobbyists run the legislature.
I respectfully disagree with my neighbor, the politician seated directly behind me. Public offices have terms. Going up for an election, that’s not a limit. The possibility of not being re-elected isn’t a limit; it’s a limitation. A real limit is not being able to run. Two terms and a limit is what I want. In too many seats, powers of incumbency almost guarantee re-election (this is especially the case for U.S. House seats). So the possible limitation disappears in a general culture of incumbency, which I believe corrupts politicians.
I've supported term limits for executives and for legislators for many years now. I’m not sure about county commissioners. Still, two terms seems about right. (My preference for term limits is not necessarily the one put into law in those states with term limits. For instance, I believe, for one house of a bicameral legislature, in a two-term in, two-term out rule: you can serve two terms, but not run for any position in that house again until two terms have passed; for the other house, a different set might apply . . . but since for states i support proportional representation for the other house, perhaps term limits are irrelevant for such a body, I don't know. For the U.S. Senate, I support two six-year terms, then limited out; for the House? The two-term in/two-term out rule.)
I rather disrespectfully disagree with my representative, Mr. Takko. He gave the standard rap that newbies are too inexperienced not to be run circles around by bureaucrats and lobbyists. This, I think, is demonstrable poppycock. The biggest opponents of term limits, outside of legislators themselves, are lobbyists and state employee associations. It’s not because they don’t like being in charge. It’s because they get more power by the insider power structures that evolve in unlimited-term incumbent-dominated legislatures.
Of course, the real reason Takko doesn’t like term limits is for the same reason he doesn’t like the run-of-the-mill voter initiatives. He thinks professional politics is a good, well-run institution, and that the general sweep of politics and policy over the last 100 years has been, on the whole, good. People who support term limits suspect that most of what legislatures do in their professional capacity is bad, or at least not very good. So, with less getting done, less harm is getting done. Term limits has an ideological component. The more you believe in growing the size and scope of government, the less likely you will support term limits.
Takko dismissed such limits vehemently. I then asked him if he supported unlimited terms for the presidency. The audience erupted in laughter, and he admitted that would be going too far.
Takko is a very good politician. Very smooth. And he represents the center very well. Like me he is of Finnish descent. We probably don’t have much else in common.
Sutinen started his speech in high patriotic mode, against taxes and regulations. He moved to America from Finland to be free of Scandinavian socialism, and made no bones about it, or about opposing the general gist of Americans sliding, he feared, to the Left.
He is far from polished, but he is quite passionate. We don’t have much in common except our first name. He shortened his name from Timo to Tim for the campaign. For everyday life, I prefer Timo, and try to get people to use it more than they’d like. But I like him. He seems to be a good father.
I didn’t have the occasion to ask my best two questions to either set of state candidates:
I asked Takko that first question in private, a few months ago. He quickly changed the subject. Very smoothly. I barely even noticed he had changed the subject!
Neighbor-over-the-hill Krist banged the gavel and gave order to the event. The local lepidopterist Bob Pyle asked very good questions, and with grace and good locution. Someday I’ll speak as well in public. That day was not today.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 10, 2006 | permalink
reform democracy See: Trust the voters — stop Florida’s Amendment 3
Approaching midnight last night, I wrote about term limits. And yet later I dreamed of music. Why? Earlier in the day I’d written to my cousin that I believed, somehow, that tritones resolved only out
to the nearest interval of a sixth. But of course tritones also resolve in
to a major third. I had written too hastily; forgotten what I’d known. So I dreamt of music and composition and the accommodations made to pure theory in the practice of four-part harmony writing. Sweet dreams. With discords.
Now that I’m awake I’m back to thinking of term limits and citizens’ initiative rights, which I had rather loudly supported at the Grange meeting. That is, a very differnt type of discord is now on my mind, with very different avenues for resolution. Since I’m thinking of democracy, no avenue of resolution is perfect. In particular, while thinking of my Washington state rep. Dean Takko and his hatred of Things That Limit The Good That Professional Politicians Do, I turn my attention to Florida.
Readers of Paul Jacob, the organizer of U.S. Term Limits and a columnist for Townhall.com, are familiar with the arguments for and against term limits and citizen initiative. Last Sunday’s column from Jacob, Trust the voters — stop Florida’s Amendment 3,
learned of yet another Florida political imbroglio. We learn that the legislature there had planned a double whammy this year: gut term limits and the voter initiative at the same time.
But they decided to hold back on term limits, and risk going after the initiative alone.
That is, they aim to recast the initiative by requiring a supermajority vote for passage of citizen-initiated law.
Jacob makes at least several arguments against this. 1. A lot of popular laws would not make it to the books. 2. It would give more leverage for the opposition to citizen-supported laws to nix them. His primary argument, though, is simply that majority rule is accepted American practice, implying that supermajority requirements are just somehow undemocratic. That’s how he begins his essay.
It’s probably the part I disagree with most. Or agree with least. I’ve been a big fan of supermajority requirements on some legislation for at least as long as I’ve supported term limits and the initiative.
As I see it, in legislatures, bills of repeal should require majority support; bills establishing new programs and new taxes, supermajorities. Considering the difficulties associated with getting an initiative to the ballot, a simple majority vote of the people should establish a new law. But for Constitutional matters, a supermajority vote of the people seems appropriate.
And, reading later down Jacob’s column, we learn that that is what’s going on in Florida: citizens are amending their state’s constitution by mere majority votes! Doesn’t that make the political attempt to impose supermajority requirements a good idea?
No. Jacob addresses the real problem:
There is . . . one legitimate argument against Florida’s initiative process. And true to form, the legislators and special interests deal with it as disingenuously as possible. Florida’s initiative process does not permit voters to make statutory changes, simple laws. Voter initiatives must be constitutional amendments. So, there are measures passed that would normally be statutes, but are added to the state’s constitution instead.
There is an easy solution: create a statutory initiative process, which most initiative states have. Legislators refuse. Instead, they feign concern for the purity of the constitution as a way to undermine voter initiatives that check their power.
I don’t know enough of Florida politics to understand how legislatures can stop the citizens from setting up a statutory initiative by themselves. After all, they can amend their constitution by initiative!
But Jacob is surely right to suggest that much of the problem with Florida’s initiative process is that the citizens don’t have statutory initiative power.
Why he opposes supermajority is beyond me. Perhaps it’s a matter of priority. Take this list of what I hazard Floridans need:
It may be that these reforms must be proposed and enacted in a certain order: 1, 4, 5, 3, 2.
After these rules are established, then the debate over political method could turn to Instant Run-Off Voting or (better yet) Condorcet voting and the notion of making one house of the legislature proportional.
Illinois and Mississipi are in a similar boat as Florida, by the way. My state of Washington is in a worse pickle: statutory change can be made by initiative, but not constitutional change.
And we can’t expect any help from men like Dean Takko. Who do not see a problem. How modern democracy works is just fine with him. Good, professional people doing a job, occasionally removed from their seats by the people, or as they step up to greater power. Or die.
Dean Takko is considered a shoe-in. He doesn’t even have a website, he’s so confident. I wonder how long he’ll hold his seat.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 11, 2006 | permalink
innovation computers See: Apple Computers
A handful of very interesting stories I found on c/net:
IE 7 was Microsoft's one chance to leapfrog ahead of the competition, but the company has only barely caught sight of the current front-runners. For more features and greater security, switch to Mozilla Firefox.Of course, Explorer was once a pretty good browser for the Mac OS, but Apple convinced Microsoft to abandon Mac development of the app. Too bad. Oh, well.
support the same features as Flash on Macintosh and Windows.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 19, 2006 | permalink
As I’ve related before, I’ve long suspected that our planet is warming. Is it a dangerous trend? Well, the melting of Greenland’s glaciers would be catastrophic. And the evidence I’ve seen suggests that this is happening, and will go much further — perhaps even going so far as to entail worldwide lowland flooding. But the normal
people I’ve talked to seem more skeptical than those who are better informed. Why?
I’ve detected a number of reasons, reasonings
:
I didn’t know Man was that important.Civilized people are trained to not impute to Man too much. Thinking of Man as super-important is a kind of hubris. But anti-hubristic humility attributes to human action too little . . .
Revelationsor
The Revelation of St. John the Divinein most English translations). People who hold strictly to the ancient text of Exodus, for example (and this would include a few Jews and a whole lot of Muslims, as well as fundamentalist Christians) tend to pooh-pooh warnings about massive flooding, considering that the Noahic Covenant says that flooding isn’t a future catastrophic option for the deity who repeatedly looks to kill off mankind, or at least the bulk of it. And remember Reagan’s James Watt? He didn’t care about the environment because, well, Jesus is coming soon. This attitude is quite prevalent in America. It should be an embarrassment to Christians — and it is . . . left of center. But what I find most disturbing about this is the lack of interest in actual science. Hope and trust is placed on
faithin ancient writings, not on evidence and scientific principles, no matter how repeatedly such principles prove correct.
Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years,they just ignore the science. The science must be wrong! This kind of irrationality is deeply rooted in American culture, as deep as an Antarctic ice core, perhaps. Its strangle-hold may only be broken by the counter-evidence of a future worldwide flood.
capitalism is utterly benign.But since in huge segments of our civilization, free-market capitalism is not even happening, this whole prejudice against global warming as a consequence of the tragedy of the commons is a huge lapse in judgment.
Many global warming harbor more than one reason for skepticism. I know economists who (I believe) pre-judge ecological evidence simply for the two reasons as stated immediately above. I know lots of ordinary people who combine several other reasons. My own thoughts have been unduly burdened by past environmentalist scaremongering.
None of the reasons to remain skeptical are worth it, in the face of evidence. Only the evidence really matters. The fact that environmentalists have poisoned the well of devate with Malthusian nonsense is no reason to reject reasonable global warming scenarios based on established data. The fact that things aren’t too hot now does not mean that they won’t change tomorrow. Or that the normal breadth of the cycle may have been disturbed, and we are now in uncharted territory.
The evidence against global warming, as touted by global warming skeptics such as Patrcick J. Michaels, strikes me as niggly sniping about the corners of the subject. Listening to Michaels is rather like listening to Fred Leuchter, Jr., on the Holocaust.
Doubt is good. But doubt can be carried too far, as Pyrrho demonstrated in his own goofy philosophy and stance. The full extent of global warming is still unknown. But this does not mean it is reasonable to dismiss evidence for it, or avoid contemplating the more extreme scenarios. After all, those scenarios are looking more likely every day.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 19, 2006 | permalink
Many friends of mine find Stoic writings fascinating. Me, less so. The trouble is, Epictetus has always struck me as a bit of a crank. Not much of a philosopher. Too bad the earliest Stoic writings have gone missing.
I dipped into Epictetus’s Discourses this weekend. I was struck by a few passages. The 18th discourse of Book II, for example, started out well. It’s on habit:
Every habit and faculty is maintained and increased by the corresponding actions: the habit of walking by walking, the habit of running by running. If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write. But when you shall not have read for thirty days in succession, but have done something else, you will know the consequence. In the same way, if you shall have lain down ten days, get up and attempt to make a long walk, and you will see how your legs are weakened. Generally then if you would make anything a habit, do it; if you would not make it a habit, do not do it, but accustom yourself to do something else in place of it.
So it is with respect to the affections of the soul: when you have been angry, you must know that not only has this evil befallen you, but that you have also increased the habit, and in a manner thrown fuel upon fire. When you have been overcome in sexual intercourse with a person, do not reckon this single defeat only, but reckon that you have also nurtured, increased your incontinence. For it is impossible for habits and faculties, some of them not to be produced, when they did not exist before, and others not be increased and strengthened by corresponding acts.
In this manner certainly, as philosophers say, also diseases of the mind grow up.
Fascinating. Spot on.
But Epictetus often strays from such wisdom. Today on Instead of a Blog I consider one of his sillier tirades, that against men whom we today call metrosexuals.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 22, 2006 | permalink
Driving back to the office after checking in at home, I swooped to miss an animal on the road. An amphibian. A salamander, to be precise.
The country road is trod by many forms of fauna, including fauns, as automobiles. Amphibians are quite common, especially in the spring and autumn. In the spring — indeed, in the late winter, at the first sign of good weather — frogs are everywhere, and the salamanders from the hill forests cross the road, heading to the marshes and fields and creek on the other side. The road characteristically hugs the valley at the margin that civilization often establishes: between fields that can be regularly worked, and forests that are protected for intermittent work. The houses hug that margin; this road marks it for much of its stretch.
Nowadays, of course, there’s little work done in these fields, which lie fallow except for the annual haying upstream in the valley. Downstream it’s all marsh now. Which I’m sure is just fine with the salamanders.
In the autumn, as the weather cools, I often find them migrating across the road to the woods. Each acre of biomass in these forests contains far more amphibian life than mammalian. Which means: a heckuva lot of frog and salamander.
The frogs are impossible to miss completely, especially at their peak production. And the salamanders? As try as I might to miss the critters, I’ve killed my share. So much so that I’ve thought about putting a sign up:
Salamander Crossing:
Squishy When Wet
But I do try to not drive over them. As I tried again today, swerving so that no tire would touch the little black streak on the road.
After passing over it, I stopped the car, put it park and turned on the blinkers, and went back to look at the salamander. It stood (so to speak) motionless on the rocky asphalt, at least one foot hovering above the surface, and the tail twisted, looped forward . . . as if it had just avoided being run over. It was shiny, wet, dark-complected: black-gray-brown, with golden flecks on its head.
I have observed salamanders up close on the road before. This being a country road, there was no problem with me getting down on all fours (like the salamander itself) and peering at the creature. It barely moved. I have seen orange-bottomed salamanders on the road before, but this was the more common all-black variety. What variety that is, I can’t say, exactly. I wish I’d had my camera.
I got up, found a flat stick, and gently lifted the salamander off the surface of the road. I then carried it to the other side.
Most other drivers are not quite so conscientious of salamanders; had I not already traumatized the poor creature by passing over
it, I would not have gone to the trouble. But, one intervention calls for another.
It’s not an endless cycle, though. I’m sure that salamander now plods through the forest, finding a place to snuggle down for hibernation.
I’ve observed salamanders before, as noted on Instead of a Blog.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 23, 2006 | permalink
attackfor aggressive criticism). But subsequent speakers may have kicked the ladder away and memorized the idiom by rote. That is why we hear so many dead metaphors such as
coming to a head(which most people would avoid if they knew that it alludes to the buildup of pus in a pimple), mixed metaphors (
once you open a can of worms, they always come home to roost), Goldwynisms (
a verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on), and figurative uses of
literally,as in Baruch Korff’s defense of Nixon during his Watergate ordeal:
The American press has literally emasculated the president.Laboratory experiments have confirmed that people don’t think about the underlying image when understanding a familiar metaphor, only when they are faced with a new one.
Block That Metaphor!The New Republic, October 19, 2006
George Lakoff metaphor See: Block That Metaphor!
Steven Pinker’s review of Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea, George Lakoff’s new book, is magnificent.
I’ve dipped into Lakoff’s Moral Politics, and have heard him talk on C-SPAN about the newer book. My judgment? Witless nincompoopery.
Steve Pinker, in his review, is in basic agreement with me. Lakoff’s expertise is not in political theory. His basic idea — the family metaphor of politics, with conservatives seeing the state as Harsh Daddy and progressives
seeing the state as Loving Mommy — is right out of college bull sessions. This very metatphor was a staple of conversations with friends in the ’80s. But we carried it further than Lakoff does.
Well, broader anyway. The first time I heard the metaphor, I set myself apart from Daddy’s girls and Mommy’s boys. Whereas the left and the right may be unduly maternalistic and paternalistic in their politics, my philosophy, regarding law and the state, has been adamantly fraternalistic.
It’s better to treat fellow citizens as siblings than look down on them as children to be nurtured or punished. We’re talking dealing with other adults, here. Treating them like children, through the agency of an idealized state government, is perverse.
Of course, even that metaphor is a bit too family centered. How about treating fellow citizens as neighbors, first and foremost? Of go further: perhaps we should learn from the simplicities of ancient Hebrew civilization and decide how we should relate to strangers in a just manner.
But Lakoff sits in his corner and milks the family metaphor for as much pabulum as it is worth. Or more. And he of course ignores the fraternalistic idea, the slogan Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
notwithstanding. What a maroon. What an ultramaroon.
Engaging in the family metaphor extensively is simply the wrong way to think about politics. A confederacy such as America’s is, let’s admit it up front, really is an inconsistently harmonized array of sometimes warring tribes. The old Enlightenment idea of breaking down the tribal system and treating people as individuals has been largely abandoned by self-styled progressives,
who seem to believe that tribes should be regarded as sacrosanct, and that one must never cast aspersions on people as members of tribes. To save hurt feelings. And the better to initiate and maintain programs for the maintenance of these tribes.
I’ve digressed. Have I? Well, what is this tribal talk? I’m referring to the left’s continued obsession with race, quotas, and certain groups that have been organized as interest groups with noticeable effects on the Democratic Party.
The tribe metaphor works better at explaining actual Donkey (Don’t Think of an Elephant!
) behavior, at least in the past 20 years. Perhaps Lakoff wants to go back to the Old Time Religion of Nannyist Mothering. I wonder if he argues against or for tribalist ideas in his books.
The worst thing about Lakoff is that he sounds like little more than another partisan moron, a Rush Limbaugh for the left. As Pinker puts it, Lakoff’s cartoonish depiction of progressives as saintly sophisticates and conservatives as evil morons fails on both intellectual and tactical grounds.
So much so that it makes him look like a fool.
Well, I’ve had enough of him, and am not going to read more of his work to find out. There are so much better books, such better thinkers out there.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 24, 2006 | permalink
authoritarianism totalitarianism See: Block That Metaphor!
One reason to oppose authoritarian style in moralizing, and totalitarianism in politics, is that both appear as assaults on the reasoning of men. Both go to great lengths to bring everything (or: most things) under the rubric of force, not persuasion.
As I was composing an essay defining the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, this morning, I remembered the work of Bernard Gert. A most interesting Hobbes scholar, he. The epigraph for his book Morality: A New Justifcation of the Moral Rules, from Hobbes, is worth thinking about:
The utility of moral and civil philosophy is to be estimated, not so much by the commodities we have by knowing these sciences, as by the calamities we receive from not knowing them.
Hobbes knew how to stress the negative. And there’s something to be said for that: much of our public work is finished when we have established the ways to avoid the worst catastrophes. Newer catastrophes become possible when we strive too hard, heedless of the means, to obtain things we deem as good,
for everybody.
The trouble with politics, as an active endeavor, can be seen in light of this idea. Locke and America’s founding fathers proved that autocracy was not needed to establish a rule of law that kept the wolves of barbarity at bay. Indeed, they saw, rightly, that autocracy itself was one of the things to be opposed. But what happens when politicians establish and maintain what is necessary for the avoidance of catastrophe? What will they then set about to do? Why, supply us with more and more good things, of course! Politicians must have something to do. So they move on from defending us against the negative and attempt to supply us with the positive.
It is in their interest to ignore the negative side effects of this endeavor. Indeed, they often deny that there are systemic negative side effects from politically trying to secure positive goods. A new bridge here? An indoor jungle there? A bike trail for every state? Pretty soon the populace sees the state as a source for all sorts of good things, and coming at little cost.
Of course, it comes at high cost. But those costs get distributed wide, while the benefits appear concentrated.
Modern politics is thus based on policy illusion. Its ultimate source? The very nature of the republic.
A class of people, politicians, were given the task of making improvements.
But what happens when the negative tasks are accomplished? The positive ones become the main focus. And the illusions inherent to this enterprise make the temptations all that more persuasive.
Not everyone is comfortable with this program, of course. A whole sector of the population has some horse sense. But it turns out that these people, more attuned to the needs of avoiding catastrophe than the needs of communally providing positive benefits, are easy suckers for the oldest con game in the political game book: warfare. Interventions abroad can easily breed opposition, and that opposition can easily be provoked into attack (Pearl Harbor, 9/11), and the attackers can thus be seen (with some accuracy) as enemies of the people, so the people are rallied around to warfare, and . . .
The power of the state increases. A limited republic becomes less limited, more imperial, more socialistic.
Both the modern con game of illusionary policy and the ancient con game of never-ending warfare are built into the fabric of incentives established by the very existence of a republic.
As long as governments exist, both of these perversions will take place. We will have wars, and wars on poverty.
Both could have been avoided, giving us peace as well as progress (on its own timetable), but it is not in the interest of the political class to do avoid them.
The more I think about it, a rule of law sans monopolistic government, looks better and better.
The republic is an unstable thing, with imperial and socialistic impulses embedded within its structures, as if entelechies for Leviathan.
Perhaps it is time to rethink the nature of the republic; or, better yet, find and refine an alternative.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 28, 2006 | permalink
hate bigotry See: Why gays hate marriage
I’ve got lots of theories about all sorts of things. But I don’t have a simple, explain-all theory about why some heterosexual people hate homosexuals to the extent that they do. I tend to opt for several theories, no one applying to every instance of homophobia
and the loathing of faggots.
I do know that, when I learned what homosexuality was, when I was a teenager, I was (a) a little surprised and (b) immediately intrigued by the existence of the orientation, and (c) not disturbed, not in the slightest. I certainly couldn’t work up any hatred for people who were attracted to members of their own sex.
Over the years I’ve witnessed many expressions of hatred and loathing and fear of homosexuals. I never quite got it. Men have made quite explicit passes at me, and I’ve turned them down politely. This was no trouble, and I can’t imagine getting worked up about it.
And yet there are some homosexual acts that I find almost instinctively repulsive. Anal intercourse, for instance. No matter whether the recipient is a man, a woman, or a beast, I’ve no desire to go there.
Knowing that some men do so desire this, and that a smaller subset desire to have it done unto them, does not mean that I find them a threat. They are not. Their acts and desires remain none of my business, really.
But not all see the matter this way. There are many people who seem very sure that homosexuality is very wrong indeed. Some even vent their hatred and revulsion and extreme disapproval in essay form. I wrote about one such, today. It was a longish rant, on my part, so I placed it on Instead of a Blog.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 29, 2006 | permalink
Godis not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word
world.
On Pantheism
random thought department
Funeral Music for Amenhotep IIIcrowds out the world, if not all thought.
Stern’s report,according to the Wikipedia entry on the subject,
suggests that climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, and it provides prescriptions for how to minimise the economic and social disruptions.It’s interesting how global warming is regarded as a
market failure.Why not
government failure,too?
While misanthropes express a general dislike for humanity on the whole, they generally have normal relationships with specific individuals. Misanthropy may be motivated by feelings of isolation or alienation. It may also resemble intellectual arrogance, where a person dislikes humanity because of a sense of mental superiority over other humans.My take on the possibility of my own misanthropy is to prefer human beings in the particular case to humanity in the abstract, and never let one’s appreciation for human potential cloud one’s judgment on individual failure. I do not consider myself above others regarding most virtues, just the ones I prefer! I am most disappointed by the very human unwillingness to think, no matter how high human potential is in that department. But I also realize that the reason I can make an easy living is from that very unwillingness to think. Were everyone sitting around thinking and reading and writing, my competition would be much worse, and I would have to work harder.
Overt expressions of misanthropy are common in satire and comedy, although intense misanthropy is generally rare. Subtler expressions are far more common, especially for those pointing out the shortcomings of humanity. In extreme cases, misanthropes may remove themselves from society, becoming hermits or shut-ins.
A fool may perhaps think this — he may argue that he had better run away from his master, not considering that his duty is to remain to the end, and not to run away from the good, and that there is no sense in his running away. But the wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself.This strikes me as the very opposite of wisdom. And so it would appear to most people now, as an example of deep perversity. Which of our bromides and pieties will be seen as deeply perverse, in the future?
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 30, 2006 | permalink
politics race See: The cast of characters
| | |
Thomas Sowell asks the right questions about Barack Obama:
Perhaps nothing so captures the superficial, frivolous and irresponsible spirit of our times like the sudden boomlet for Barack Obama as a candidate for President of the United States.
He is a bright, personable and articulate young man but what has he ever actually accomplished that would qualify him for the highest office in the nation and the leadership of the free world?
This is no criticism of Senator Obama. He has been in the Senate only a couple of years. Maybe a decade from now he will have crafted enough important legislation, or distinguished himself in some other way, as to be someone worth considering for President. But today, just because he is fluent, smooth and black?
But Sowell doesn’t supply the obvious answers.
Of course Barack Obama has been targeted for the reasons Sowell gives: he is fluent (in contrast to our bumble-tongued current prez), he is smooth (in a way that doesn’t bring immediately to mind the name Mephistopheles,
as does our current vice prez), and black (thus spurring hopes that our current racial quagmire might get unmucked).
These may seem frivolous and superficial, but what were the reasons George W. Bush was groomed by the Republican hierarchy and the major media, prior to his installation in the White House? Had he accomplished anything of note? Had he accomplished anything that was not handed to him by expert workers and behind-the-scenes players? What was his character? What was his expertise?
He was chosen, almost surely, for sex appeal. For style. He was the GOP’s answer to Clinton. Basically, the Clinton Haters, mouths agape, looked over Clinton’s popularity and, with a flourish, shouted to Americans: If you’ll accept that, then you’ll love this!
The selection of George W. Bush was as cynical an act as any in modern politics. It was Being There as rewritten by true artists, who know that, in this modern media age, prose is feckless, pose is all.
America has endured many lackluster presidents. Perhaps Obama would be one. But he wouldn’t embarrass us, nor degrade us, as much as Bush has.
But then, I could be wrong. Perhaps Obama has hidden depths of evil. Or perhaps his supporters and friends have. And perhaps these can be more than a match for the sorry Bush administration, with its embedded lies and systemic vices.
Still, I’d probably vote for Obama, if the houses of Congress remain in GOP hands. We need some balance. We need divided government, as another columnist on Townhall, Bruce Bartlett, argues. If this election doesn’t provide it, then perhaps the next round will.
Finally, it’s worth asking myself: why do I still read Sowell? His columns are often bad, unduly partisan, sometimes even nitwit. Most often, he spoils a good observation by surrounding it with idiotically narrow and partisan analysis.
Well, it’s not because he’s black. Or smooth. It’s his past accomplishments, the kind that Obama doesn’t have. The author of A Conflict of Visions, Knowledge and Decisions, and Say’s Law (one of the best treatments of this latter, difficult subject) has earned quite a lot of inertial respect going in to any one column.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 31, 2006 | permalink
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I pretty much script my sites according to the rules, and then watch how the various browsers fail to deliver on what I've scripted.
In OS X, this site and Instead of a Blog (IoaB) show various flaws in the browsers I've tried. Image alignment, from background and foreground uses, is one problem, Q tag deployment, another. Link conflict when adjacent, lateral DIVs have links on them, there's another yet. As is following CSS scripts when tags are distributed over two or more SSI files. (This is a
If you did not see, in the previous sentence, both single and double quotation mark sets, there's something wrong with your browser.)
quotation
within a quotation.
So, here I test what I have:
On Windows Explorer, everything seems to work OK except Q tag implementation, which is still nada, nicht, zero. On Firefox for Windows and SeaMonkey for Linux, Q tag is fine, but the links conflict with the way I've used DIVs on IoaB. Will I change IoaB? Perhaps when I get the time.
T i m o W i r k m a n V i r k k a l a | October 31, 2006 | permalink
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