You’re registering for a website logon. You’re asked to think up and enter a password. THEN you’re told, in a bright red accusatory font, that the password format is so-and-so, and that you failed to conform to it, dummy! Doesn’t that put you in your place? And then perhaps you find it annoying. You should.
Category Archives: Irresponsible Opinions
345: Technologies That Reached Perfection Just Before They Became Totally Obsolete
You’re welcome to add to this list of technologies that achieved perfection just before they died (like many of us, too):
1. The manual typewriter – FACIT (Swedish)
2. The electric typewriter – IBM Selectric
3. The PDA – Compaq iPaq
4. The manual hand-held calculator – Curta (definitely a collector’s item; I couldn’t afford one when they were being made, and I still can’t!)
5. Color slide film – Kodachrome 64
6. CDs and DVDs (still kicking, but …)
NEXT TO GO ?:
1. The gasoline-driven sedan – Mercedes S-class
2. The laptop computer – Apple
3. TV delivered by cable
Like this:
344: What were they thinking …?
The U.S. Postal Service has a new package mailing and delivery service, called “GoPost.” …Isn’t that just a little too close to “Go Postal?”
343: St Patrick’s Day Trivia Question
Q: Why does it always rain the day after St Patrick’s Day?
A: God needs to clean the barf off the sidewalks.
336: Selling Naming Rights to Greek Temples?
Greece is in financial hot water (under water, actually), owing to being in the Euro zone when it perhaps shouldn’t have joined, and to its government’s too-liberal spending. Solutions have been tried, but the situation isn’t improving. The problem is lack of money, and inability to raise enough through taxes, benefit cuts, or other customary methods. Well, what resources does Greece have that can get them out of this mess?
Naming rights. Think: a “Mark Zuckerberg Acropolis,” or a “Warren Buffet Ruins of Delphi” could mean a cool billion euros each. Many temples are named for gods such as Apollo or Zeus, who are no longer around to pay up. No pay, no play; their time is over.
And islands: How much would you pay to have your name on Santorini, or Corfu, or Mikonos? And how much could be raked in if there were a “Google Republic of Greece”?
All they need to do is follow the grand old American tradition exemplified by MetLife Stadium, Raymond James Stadium, Qualcomm Stadium, and on and on.
You’d hardly notice the change.
335: The Nature of Evil
My contribution to a Goodreads discussion of the nature of evil: “Evil is when someone gets in my way.”
333: A New D.C. All-News Radio Station
The Washington Post ran an article today about a new all-news station, WNEW, to be in competition with WTOP. Here’s the comment I posted:
“I’m delighted that there’s another source for radio news. I won’t miss WTOP’s news stories that turn out to be commercials (how ethical is that?), their ads from bottom-feeder firms that they should have rejected out of hand, and especially their hockey-idiot who yells SCORRRRRRRRRRRRRRE as loud and as long as he can, and sends me running to shut the damn thing off.”
320: Are We Alone in the Universe?
Charles Krauthammer’s column this morning posed that question, quoting Drake’s Equation and coming to a gloomy conclusion about his last variable – how long an advanced civilization might endure before destroying itself.
Is that why we haven’t heard from anyone ‘out there’?
There’s another possible answer. Someone, some planet, must be first. Sometime, some civilization probes the sky and asks – where is everybody? And hears nothing, because they are the first ‘anybody’. We know that there is a first civilized planet. Why not Earth?
Consider: We are in the outer rim of a spiral arm, away from most of the galactic chaos. We have a large moon to ward off stray asteroids (most of them). We have a stable, responsible, middle-class and middle-aged sun. We have tectonic movement (important) and tides. We have an ozone shield. We have both dry land and oceans. And so on.
We are Columbus with no one to meet him.
_______________
[Actually, we should consider only our own galaxy in this query, not the universe as a whole. It is unlikely that we could ever make contact with any beings, no matter how advanced, in another galaxy.]
314: Private Language and Computer Languages: Some Complications
Wittgenstein’s views on ‘private language’ have been concisely summarized by Radden (2011, p.70):
“… he insists that an ideosyncratic ‘private language’ could not be a proper language. Meaning and significance are tied to how words are used, and such use occurs within some linguistic community. Only a mistaken conception of meaning could permit us to envision the possibility of a ‘language’ for one person only.” [This not quite what Wittgenstein said, but the point is useful.]
Complication 1: Suppose the inventor of Esperanto had never convinced anyone else to learn that language. Would Esperanto then be a private language in Wittgenstein’s sense? Well, no, you might say, because ‘in principle’ Esperanto could be taught to thousands of people and used fluently, which it in fact has been.
But how would such a ‘principle’ be formulated? Validated? Applied to Esperanto? What are the criteria for determining that Esperanto would or would not be a ‘real’ (non-private) language in principle, if no more than one person were ever to speak it?
Complication 2: A program written in a computer language can be understood, obviously enough, by a suitable computer program (interpreter, compiler, or assembler, for instance). And we know it’s been understood because the resulting program can execute (whether or not it executes exactly as intended). Is that computer language a ‘language’ simpliciter, or is that only a metaphor?
Complication 3: A computer language is a language if programs written in it can be read and turned into executable code by a suitable computer program. Suppose there is only one such computer program (a compiler, for example). Is that language then a private language? Or would the existence of instances of that compiler on many different machines count as making the language a ‘real’ language, when otherwise it would not be? Why?
** Actually, the intelligibility and use of programs written in the Algol language was quite independent of their translatability by machine. Many short Algol programs were published to be read by people, not compiled and executed.
Appendix: An Example of Computer Language Archaeology
A very long time ago, I was assigned to modify a user’s Honeywell H-400 assembly-language program. Digging into the code, I found its structure rather strange. Digging further, I found not only that it was an almost line-for-line translation from IBM 1401 assembly language, but that the 1401 code was itself a literal translation from wiring of the system where it had originally been developed: Not a computer, but an IBM 407 PCAM (punch-card accounting machine, or ‘tab machine’). There are many examples where human-language writings have undergone an analogous recoding process. This is called translation, of course, and the number of language layers can reach an arbitrary depth.
306: How Do We Know That Our Memories Are of the Past?
In Post #235, I noted that if the past isn’t still ‘there’ to be researched, like some Roman ruin, then the past is whatever we decide it is at the present time, based on records, fossils, memories, ruins, etc.
But now, about those memories. All memories are necessarily of the past. Right? But how do we know that our memories are [actually] of the past, rather than of our present experience of events that we locate in the past?
Wittgenstein had a few things to say relevant to this conundrum:
1) Philosophical Investigations, p. 231:
“Und wie wird er in Zukunft wieder wissen, wie erinnern tut?”
which can be translated as “And how will he know again in the future what remembering feels like?”; or more literally, “And how will he in the future again know, how remembering does?”
Or these other paraphrases:
How will he know, again, how it is to remember?
And how will he know, again next time, what it is to remember?
2) Philosophical Investigations, p. 231:
“Es gibt einen Ton, eine Gebärde, die gewissen Erzählungen aus vergangenen Tagen angehören,”
which can be translated as “There is a tone, a gesture, which go with certain narratives of past time.”
3) Zettel, para 654:
“Kann man ein Erinnerungserlebnis beschreiben? — Gewiß. — Aber kann man das erinnerungshafte an diesem Erlebnis beschreiben? Was heißt das? (Das unbeschreibliche Aroma.)”
“Can a memory-experience be described? — Certainly. — But can what is memory-like about this experience be described? What does that mean? (The indescribable aroma.)
Zettel, para 663:
“Aber wenn uns nun das Gedächtnis die Vergangenheit zeigt, wie zeigt es uns, dass es die Vergangenheit ist? /para/ Es Zeigt uns eben nicht die Vergangenheit. So wenig, wie unsere Sinne die Gegenwart.”
“But if memory shows us the past, how does it show us that it is the past? /para/ It does not show us the past. Any more than our senses show us the present.”
Zettel, para 667:
“Aber wie führe ich mir das Erinnern vor? Nun, ich frage mich ‘Wie verbrachte ich den heutigen Morgen?’ und antworte mir darauf. — Aber was habe ich mir nun eigentlich vorgeführt? War es das Erinnern? Nämlich, wie das ist, sich an etwas zu erinnern? — Hätte ich denn damit einem Andern das Erinnern vorgeführt?”
“But how do I give myself an exhibition of remembering? Well, I ask myself ‘How did I spend this morning?’ and give myself an answer. — But what have I really exhibited to myself? Remembering? That is, what it’s like to remember something? — Should I have exhibited remembering to someone else by doing that?”
[END]
302: Save a Tree: Fight Junk Mail
Here’s the text of my response to those junk mailers thoughtful enough to include a postage-paid reply envelope in their solicitations sent to me through the U.S. Mail:
“Thank you for sending me your recent solicitation.
“However, I have no interest at this time or in the future.
“Thanks again, and Almighty God bless your enterprise !” [with suitable graphic]
To be fair, there are some firms that have made it a point to know that I sometimes buy outdoors equipment, and tech stuff, and classical CDs, and timepieces. These firms do not get my godly form letter. But there’s no way I need another credit card, or a car loan, or an account at XYZ bank that pays a miraculous 1.1% interest, and no reason for any financial institution to believe I do. So they’re welcome to my pious postage-due response. May it cost them more to open and discard my letter than the postage they’ll have to pay.
<END>
297: A Memorable Fancy – XXXII
Death to the Loyal!
In our kingdom, loyalty is rewarded. In fact, strong expressions of loyalty are expected – required. The insufficiently loyal are subject to disfavor, disgrace, imprisonment. The trick, however, is not to be too loyal. Above a certain unspecified and unpredictable level, the emperor becomes suspicious. Executions follow.
(after Ed Rehmus’ book from Contact Editions, I’m Over Here)
<END>
===
290: New Website for Publicizing My Novels and Stories
See www.terencekuch.net. The website where you are now (www.terencekuch.com) will remain valid for Irresponsible Opinions and other offenses against rationality, governance, God, and grammar.
288: My ideal mountain hiking weather is …
55F, overcast, wind 6-12, light rain about 24 hours earlier but not since then.
What’s your ideal?
275: A Memorable Fancy – XXI
We built the ruin, the pre-destroyed city, all the beautiful boulevards. We arranged the corpses neatly, none asprawl or askelter, none with ragged stumps or eyes shot out. It was done with care, very carefully.
No one can break our hearts again.
278: The Darth Vader Cat Litter Box from Petco
The Darth Vader Cat Litter Box from Petco
276: Let’s Hear It for Capital Punishment!
When capital punishment is inflicted too often, it loses impact. What’s one more death after so many others? One death performance per year, say, should be sufficient to teach the desired lesson: that the paradigmatic function of the State is the killing of its citizens. It would reinforce the principle that your government claims a monopoly on lethal force. What is force, if it isn’t used?
One a year, yes. And to make sure the lesson sinks in, it could be a national holiday, the moment of death covered by the major networks and blogs, and open to public witnessing as well. On the National Mall, for instance.
But as the French learned in the Revolution, it does little good to guillotine a thief, or a rapist; especially one from the lower classes. The public tends to stay away from these, in repugnance at the low nature of the crime or the criminal. The greatest effect, they discovered, came from the execution of someone notable, such as a minister of state; or a king.
Sometimes even a god has been killed, to general approbation.
In our terms, the preceding thoughts would imply that the selected victim should be white, male, rich, and expensively educated, preferably in the law. Perhaps he has won some important prize, or has had a book written for him by some anonymous drudge.
He would be deeply mourned after death, and cast in bronze.
<END>
272: On Complaining
“Complaining is one of my more endearing habits. And yours, too, I see.”
“Never complain, never explain” has been credited to Lee Iacocca, but it originated in a slightly longer saying of Thoreau’s.
One who complains has already lost.
Complaining is a sign of weakness; it’s the bark of the dog who didn’t get the bone. [Yes, ‘who.’]
The difference between complaining and objecting is the difference between whining and standing your ground.
<END>
260: The Inexplicable Predicament – Another “Nigerian” Email Scam
[the following is verbatim but shortened]
FROM THE DESK OF HON. HON. DANTEX OMAR
DEPUTY GOVERNOR OF CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA
LAGOS-NIGERIA.
ATTN: HONORABLE FUND BENEFICIARY
On behalf of the entire staff of Central Bank of Nigeria, and the Federal Government of Nigeria in collaborated with the Authorities, who are in charge of foreign contract payments. We Apologies for the delay of your Contract/inheritant/lotto payment, the Inconveniences and Inflict that we might have indulge you through.
However, we are having some minor problems with our payment system which have demoralized us, also have caused a lot of predicament to this organization, which is Inexplicable? And have held us Indolent, not having the perseverance and Aspiration to devote our 100% standard Assiduity in accrediting foreign contract payments. Once again, Our Apologies for all inconveniences.
I wish to inform you now that the square peg is now in square hole, and can be voguish for that your payment is being processed and will be released to you upon your respond to this letter. Also note that from my record in my file your outstanding contract/inheritant/lotto payment is 20 million dollars.
Kindly get back to me the followings: …. [identification] ….
Base on money-laundering and fraudelents art that is going on in Nigeria here, the Federal government of Nigeria has set a monitary group called (EFCC) Economics and Financial Crime Commission In conjuction with F.B.I and Inter-Pole of United state to monitor any foreign transfer.
Congratulations in advance.
<END>
254: “Accident” Is an Advanced Concept
Do you know a dog or cat? A horse? Tried to reason with cattle? Animals are really into blame. Everything that happens, in their minds, is viewed as intentional. At least, that’s how their minds seem, from the spectator’s point of view, to work.
Do young children understand intention months before they understand accident? There has probably been some relevant research.
Perhaps our long-ago ancestors evolved a primitive kind of reasoning, recognizing cause and effect and intentionality, and then later came to the more advanced recognition that, although events are caused, some are caused by no one and to no purpose. Accidents, in other words.
Hypothesis: The concept of God came about in such a primitive time. If an earthquake collapsed caveman-Zog’s cave, killing him, it couldn’t have been an accident, since the tribe didn’t yet have the concept “accident.” None of the tribesmen could possibly be to blame – so a great power of some kind must have intended Zog to be killed. And where there is intention, there must be mind. Big mind in this case, capable of shaking the earth and destroying Zog’s cave. God.
<END>
252: Metro Brawls and The Washington Post
The following letter appeared in The Washington Post, A-section, 21 August 2010:
Metro brawl coverage discouraged candor about race
Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander noted on Sunday that “Although The Post’s coverage . . . did not specify the racial makeup of those involved” in the Aug. 6 fracas on the subway, “many readers assumed they were black and offered racially insensitive online comments” ["Brawl on the Metro: Where was the coverage?" Aug. 15].
Well, if The Post won’t report the facts, readers are bound to make assumptions.
If The Post finds some of the resulting assumptions distasteful, then The Post will just have to start telling readers the truth. This applies to race just as much as it applies to anything else.
– Terence Kuch, Falls Church
240: Measuring the Duration of the Effects of an Event
You intend to buy a lottery ticket. You are momentarily undecided as to whether you want (a) to spend $2 on this investment, or (b) just $1. You decide which, and buy the ticket. You win nothing, and destroy the ticket. By the next week you have forgotten whether you did (a) or (b). Everyone else, for instance the 7-11 clerk who sold you the ticket, has also forgotten. The data which recorded the sale will, in time, be deleted.
- – - - For any event e, can we say that beginning at a time t there is no difference in the state of the world whether e had happened or not? Not just no detectable difference, but no difference, period.
If so, then t must be very brief … instantaneous … without a time dimension. But how could that be? How, even in principle, could we ever know that the t of a particular event e has been reached?
<END>
237: Debt, Deficit, Default, and What the Hell Do We Do Now?
Email sent to Steven Pearlstein, economist at the Washington Post, 12 June 2011:
If Congress fails to increase the debt limit (which may well happen, like World War I, by inadvertence), I haven’t seen any discussion in the Post about what debts will and will not be paid, or payment delayed. There should be a broad debate, in Congress and among economists, not to mention the public, about who might have to take a haircut, and by how much.
As you wrote today, 53 percent of U.S. T-bills are held by foreigners. The interest on these T-bills (not necessarily the principal) would seem to me the most obvious priority for debt rescheduling.
I invest in corporate bonds, both U.S. and overseas, and know there’s always I chance I could lose some or all of my money. Part of the return on these bonds is to pay me to take that risk. T-bills should not be immune to risk, and apparently they aren’t!
Thank you for your always-excellent columns.
235: Can the Past Be Changed?
“… her new journal entries become, for the most part, reactions to the days she regrets, wants to correct, rewrite.” — Dave Eggers
Can the past be changed? Surely not, you say: What’s done is done. But consider: The ‘what’s done is done’ argument assumes that there’s a past that’s still in existence, somehow, as the gold standard of ‘what happened.’ If we could just travel back in time, we’d know for sure, because everything that happened is still ‘there’ – somehow; it’s no longer accessible to us, but that’s only because time-travel is impossible.
But the past isn’t ‘there’; whatever happened is gone. If the past isn’t still ‘there’ to be researched, like some Roman ruin, then the past is whatever we decide it is – based on archaeology, old documents, opinions, dreams, revelations, prophecies.
<END>
221: The Really Bad Deal – I
[verbatim:]
Hello Dear Chosen one,
Please excuse me for all the inconveniences my mail could cause you. I have the pleasure to expose to you my predicaments.
[And it goes on, exposing us to his predicaments, and offering to make us rich by simply cooperating in an illegal scheme.]
198: “Isn’t there anyone here who speaks English?”
The thesis:
1 Newcomers to America who don’t speak English end up having to take the most undesirable jobs.
2 “Undesirable” means minimum wage — but there are many minimum-wage jobs. “Undesirable” also means jobs that deal with the public, such as taking orders in fast-food restaurants.
3 What does it say about America when dealing with the American public is something no one wants to do?
<END>
196: Today’s Scam: United Nations Giving Money to Americans
[[The following, from a spam email, is verbatim but abridged. It is certainly an original idea to give money to people in rich countries to help people in poor countries. But if everything else has been tried ....]]
From: Mr Ban Ki-moon
Malaysia Government Accredited Licensed Promoters!
United Nations Trust Fund
Malaysia Department of Humanitarian Affairs
Wangsa Maju 10, Jalan 1/27B, Sek 1
Bandar Baru Wangsa Maju
53300 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Congratulations Beneficiary,
your email has been selected by the United Nations(UN) for a cash grant award of Six Hundred And Fifty Thousand Five hundred United State Dollar,($650,500.00 usd). The united nations authorities has decided to give this award to 15 beneficiaries from all over the world to help facilitate and improve the standard of living to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf for developing States, in particular the least developed countries and small island developing States, and compliance with article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.This grant is been aided by the United Nations development programme and the united nations trust funds for human security.
Do contact our payment office immediately with the informations below.
1.FULL NAMES OF DONATION BENEFICIARY:………………
2.RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS:……………………
3.DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:…………………….
4.WINNING EMAIL:………………………
5.PHONE/FAX NUMBERS:……………………….
6.NAME AND ADDRESS OF NEXT OF KIN:…………..
7.SEX:………………..
8.OCCUPATION:……………….
9.MARITAL STATUS:………………
10.COUNTRY:………………
11NATIONALITY:……….
Regards,
Mr Ban Ki-moon.
(UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL
MALAYSIA GAMING HOUSE
193: Virginia’s Liquor Monopoly
“Governor McDonnell continues to work on a plan to privatize the ABC stores. His original plan would have cut about $72 million a year from General Funds. In return,we would receive a one-time infusion of a maximum of $475 million.” (Senator Janet Howell newsletter, December 2010 (abridged))
Sometime in the fifth year, under the Governor’s plan, the State would start losing money, and would lose money every year thereafter in saecula saeculorum amen.
Now, I don’t think there should be a liquor monopoly run by the State or anyone else. Booze is not a ‘natural monopoly’ like, say, electricity. Let a thousand bourbons bloom.
But on second thought, perhaps Virginia has such a good thing going that there’s a way to solve its budget problems forever, with just a little tweaking; so herewith, a modest proposal:
The State of Virginia Hardware Store Monopoly
If the State were to outlaw private ownership of hardware stores, and establish their own (say, two or three per county or city), the public coffers could reap a veritable wealth of money from retained earnings, more than enough to pay for highway maintenance. And based on that success, we could have
The State of Virginia Laundry and Dry Cleaning Monopoly
Which would earn not as much for the State as hardware or liquor, but might help clean up the State government.
<END>
192: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
We have gone beyond Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) now; but for its day it was a progressive measure. Judging by the press coverage in the past few months, most people think that DADT was a evil policy advocated by homophobes. But not entirely.
Consider that DADT put an end to
.. Soldiers asking other soldiers if they were “queers”, or accusing them of being “one of those fairy types”.
.. Draft boards asking registrants if they had “homosexual tendencies” — and yes, draft boards are still with us.
.. And so on.
The downside was not being able to tell others a large part of who you were. A steep price to pay, but the gain with DADT was still positive, especially considering that no more-liberal policy could have been put into effect at that time.
<END>
178: Washington Post’s (willfully incomplete) Coverage of the Gallery Place Disturbance
from the Washington Post, page A-11, 21 August 2010:
Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander noted on Sunday that “Although The Post’s coverage . . . did not specify the racial makeup of those involved” in the Aug. 6 fracas on the subway, “many readers assumed they were black and offered racially insensitive online comments” ["Brawl on the Metro: Where was the coverage?" Aug. 15].
Well, if The Post won’t report the facts, readers are bound to make assumptions.
If The Post finds some of the resulting assumptions distasteful, then The Post will just have to start telling readers the truth. This applies to race just as much as it applies to anything else.
Terence Kuch, Falls Church
168: I Surrender; Let’s All Go Metric
For some years, I had doubts about converting from conventional ‘English’ measure to metric. My reasons included:
.. English measure evolved over centuries in response to human need. Some measures (e.g., furlongs, cubits) fell out of use, or survive only in specialized applications. The measures we use every day have survived because they were, and are, useful. Metric has never gone through such a winnowing process, and by its nature, never can.
.. Metric was an invention of pure rationality by the French revolutionaries, based on the belief (not to say ‘dogma’) that everything possible should be counted in tens. (Why? Because we have ten fingers? How rational is that?)
.. Some metric ‘things’, such as A3 and A4 -sized paper, seem unhandy and awkward. Is this because I didn’t grow up with them? Perhaps, but I don’t think so. And 1/2 litre bottles of Pepsi are just inconveniently small.
HOWEVER, now comes a jar of Gatorade powder about three-quarters of a span high (yes, ‘span’!) with detailed mixing instructions on a panel 2 by 1.75 inches. This panel, in lieu of metric sizes that the drinker-jocks probably wouldn’t understand, cites each of these measures one or more times:
Gallon, Quart, Ounce, Scoop, Cup, Tablespoon.
I surrender! Let’s all go metric.
<END>
165: Can the Past Be Changed?
How do we think of the past — even the very recent past? Consider this excerpt from a Washington Post news story about the troubles in Kyrgyzstan (16 June 2010, page A6):
“Asked to explain the attacks on Uzbek neighborhoods, [Aibek] replied, “People did this only after what the Uzbeks did to us in Osh.” He then repeated widely circulating rumors that Uzbek gangs had raped Kyrgyz women there.
“A [man] agreed, arguing that the Uzbeks had destroyed their own homes. But as he spoke, a young Uzbek woman standing behind him grimaced and shook her head. Finally, she interrupted. “That’s not the truth!” she objected. “That’s not what happened!” ….
“In Geneva, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said it had collected evidence indicating that the violence began [with] attacks in Osh involving men wearing masks and carrying guns.”
We tend, unreflectively, to view the past as just as real as the present, and we go about finding out “what happened” the same way we find out what’s happening now: by collecting testimony, looking at records, searching for physical evidence — everything but direct observation of the past event, which is now impossible. Our unspoken mental assumption is that the past exists, is just as real as the present, but can no longer be directly observed.
A contrary view is that the past is just what we conclude from collecting testimony, looking at records, searching for physical evidence — these activities constitute the past. Time travel to the past is not impossible merely because of logical paradox (killing one’s grandfather before one’s father has been conceived), but because there is no past, now, to return to. And if we constitute the past from what we consider evidence, then such constitution is a political process subject to the same kinds of pushes and pulls as any other political or social process.
Can the past be changed? If the past is just what we conclude it was, then our conclusions can change — and thus change the past.
<END>
156: Beyond Birthers: “Head of State”?
The President is often referred to as the “head of state” of the United States. We should be aware that this usage is not sanctioned by the Constitution. The phrase “head of state” does not occur either there or in the Federalist Papers. In the former, “state” means just the individual states such as Virginia or New York. In the latter, “state” means an individual American state, or a foreign state, and does not refer to what would soon become the United States [note the plural]. The Federalist refers to the President as “head of the executive department”, which of course he is. Article II of the Constitution sets forth the President’s various authorities; none of these includes being “head of state”.
While it may be thought harmless by some, the phrase “head of state” is not appropriate to the United States as a democracy with a federal system of government. It smacks of Louis XIV’s declaration “l’état, c’est moi.” That sentiment may have been appropriate to an absolute monarch; in fact, in using the phrase, Louis was asserting his status as an absolute monarch. But that was in another country, and long ago.
In many modern countries, the “head of state” is a figurehead: on the coinage, dedicating battleships, mourning at funerals of the prominent. We don’t need that here, either.
<END>
154: Latino Immigrants and Jobs
Here’s a sad hypothesis: U.S. employers like to hire Latinos (both legal and illegal) for low-wage jobs because most white consumers don’t object to seeing Latinos tending their yards, or doing their housecleaning, or putting a new roof on their house, or serving them hamburgers. Would these same white people be so complaisant if all these jobs were filled by African-Americans, or would many of them feel threatened?
The unemployment rate for black people is 16.5%, v. 8.8% for white people**. Not that African-Americans should be limited to low-wage work, but any job is better than none.
Last year I witnessed a confrontation between a black customer and a Latino employee at a fast food restaurant in Washington, D.C. The black man was agitated that the Latino had a job even though he didn’t have enough English to understand the black man’s order. We can all understand that.
** bls.gov: ‘civilian non-institutional population’, March 2010
<END>
135: “Honor Crime Victims”?
A display ad in the Washington Post, 18 September 09, read only: “Honor Crime Victims www.crimevictims.gov“
Restitution? if possible. Criminals punished? of course. But “honor”? There is no honor in being the victim of a crime. A friend of mine whose house was burglarized said she felt like she’d been raped. I’m sure most victims of crime feel similarly. Crime degrades the victim emotionally, in addition to any physical or financial harm done. As direct personal revenge is not legally possible in this country, the feeling of degradation may never go away; victims can only try to “get over it.”
The crimevictims.gov web site itself is interesting and useful — and does not contain that ill-conceived phrase “honor crime victims” (Google search, 18 September 2009).
<END>
131: The Kingdom of Wha-Tif
What if your life is an hypothesis. What if God or Descartes’ evil genius (is there a difference?) were to wonder ‘What would happen if there were a world with [your name here] in it?’, and then proceeded to build and operate such a world?
Isn’t that what really happens?
Think about it.
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120: Taxing Health Benefits
Yes, but not the way it’s being spoken for (and against) in Congress.
When Congress talks about “taxing health benefits”, they mean taxing the amount your employer pays the insurance industry to cover your visits to doctors and hospitals. If these amounts weren’t paid out as insurance, they would (in theory) be available to increase your salary. So some part of those amounts, at least, should be taxed as salary. Right?
Wrong. If my employer pays, say, $3000 a year in insurance premiums for me, and I require no medical visits or treatment in that year, I’m out $3000. I have received no real benefits, only a contingent benefit where the contingency never happened.
In terms of motivation, since I see all that money going out, I’m going to be sure to get a benefit — get my money’s worth. So I have every reason to see a physician over some small complaint, or let my arm get twisted to agree to a minor operation I don’t really need, just so I’m not a sucker who’s just lost a $3000 bet. Maybe I’ll “win the lottery” and use up $6000 in medical costs. I just doubled my money. Right?
The motivation here is all going the wrong way. We do need to tax health benefits, but in a way that will induce people to reduce demand to what’s really needed, and bring down the overall cost of health care for the whole country.
The way to do this is to tax actual benefits, and the simplest way to do this is to add $10 (say) to the $10 or $20 you already co-pay when you get attention from medical professionals. The tax could pay for essential treatment for people who have no insurance, improve public health, subsidize medical research, etc. — whatever medical need is greatest. This co-co-pay wouldn’t fund all medical needs, but it would make a major contribution.
<END>
118: Against Secrecy
Secrecy is an evil. It not only (obviously) interferes with the free flow of information, it also corrodes much of our interaction with other human beings. Secrecy is a kind of cheating.
Worse, because of all-pervading secrecy, most of us erroneously assume that most of us are honest, trustworthy, truthful, faithful … all the Boy Scout virtues. When someone, famous politician or not, is ‘found out’, shock and disgust follow. But we are all like that, aren’t we? Because we’re human. Disregarding a few saints (who may have spiritual secrets of their own), we are all, as the old phrase goes, “no better than we ought to be.”
Advocates of secrecy have two major arguments:
1) Danger: Some information is so dangerous it must be kept secret. Consider this (fictional) secret: “How to brew a deadly and undetectable poison from common household chemicals.” Shouldn’t this information be kept secret?
Yes, but not only from you and me; from everyone. No one should know this information, not merely those who claim to have the welfare of all of us as their dearest wish (and who would that be? governments? oh, really?)
2) Information overload: To be told everything is to be overwhelmed with information, most of it trivial and pointless. A thought experiment: You are sitting on a commuter bus where, in the seat directly behind you, someone is talking loudly and endlessly about his operations, job, or grandchildren; perhaps all three. Don’t you just wish he would keep this information to himself? Keep it ‘secret’?
The solution here is to have our own information filters: scan everything; take in whatever we want; ignore the rest. In the instant situation, a pair of good earplugs is advisable (whenever you use mass transit, actually). Except in a business meeting where you’re required to pay attention, or at a cocktail party you can’t avoid, a wide variety of filters are available, including just staying away. Use them.
Consider the red-light traffic camera: It works (reduces traffic accidents) only if people know it’s there. Nuclear weapons only work for a state (contribute to its power) if other states know it’s there. (Consider how carefully Israel has let it be supposed that they have nuclear weapons, even if they won’t admit it publicly.)
<END>
117: Motives
You have heard it asked “Are you questioning my motives?”, as if there were something wrong with this. And the conventional answer is “No; of course not. I certainly wouldn’t do that.”
Consider: Our motives guide our actions; they have grown up with us and are an essential part of who each of us is. You cannot understand another person without knowing, at least to some extent, his motives. To ignore motives is to deal with persons as if they were machines. Perhaps some people would prefer to be (treated as) machines. For the rest of us, inquiry as to motives is always germane.
Do we always understand our motives? Of course not. At times, other people know our motives better than we do. But the impossible goal of knowing our own minds should never be abandoned. Dialog with others can help make it so.
<END>
113: “Hate” Crimes
Remember the proverbial “cold-blooded killer”? We used to consider him more to blame than the killer who strikes in an excess of emotion, hate, or rage. But now the tables are turned.
Since when does a person’s emotional state, when he commits a crime, render him liable to more severe punishment than if he had not experienced the emotion of hate? Since the passage of “hate” crime legislation, that’s when.
Mental states have long been recognized as increasing, or at times mitigating, guilt. Consider: murder v manslaughter, and ‘criminal intent’. But these are matters of intention.Until recently, emotion has been considered relevant to neither crime nor punishment.
It is sometimes said that crimes against “people due to personal attributes beyond their control” (http://moran.house.gov) deserve extra punishment. This position is at least arguable, although I disagree **. But to tie this to “hate” is irrelevant: a man may murder a black person just because he is black, in cold blood. Why should his punishment be more severe if, instead of ‘cold’ his blood were hot
at the time /
of the crime?
____________________
** You are responsible for who you are and what you are, no matter how God or Darwin rolled the dice, no matter whether you could ‘help it’, or not: No excuses.
<END>
110: An Alternative View of the Marriage Issue, Gay or Straight
Marriage is none of government’s business. Marriage was formerly, and is still in many places even today, a relationship that fits within the ceremonies and customs of a religion, not of a state; and it should stay that way.
Why? Because the government has no competence to set rules for or govern intimate relationships between persons **; and because it claims a monopoly on the use of force. Is that the kind of foundation you want for your marriage?
Does government have any valid concerns here? Only two: (a) Protecting minor children and other persons from harm, and (b) Providing a court system that may enforce, if called upon, contractual relationships (such as civil unions). These functions have nothing to do with marriage, per se; they apply to everyone regardless of marital status.
Ideally, all relationships commonly called ‘marriages’ are really civil unions. Partners in a civil union may also seek a true marriage, that is, performed by a minister or similar religious figure. Those who are non-religious will happily avoid this unnecessary complication.
** Perhaps priests and rabbis don’t, either; but that’s a different question.
<END>
107: Ethics and Arm-Waving
‘Ethicists’ appear regularly on radio and TV these days, giving their sage pronouncements. They used to ground their opinions on principles: ‘greatest good for the greatest number’; or ‘duty’; or ‘virtue’. Well-thought-out theories that have been argued at length by many bright people.
But no longer. Now they are pleased merely to give pronouncements, accompanied by a satisfactory amount of vigorous arm-waving. But without a showing of reasons and principles, there is no more reason to listen to them than to anyone else on the same subject: they have lost their claim to having any sort of special knowledge or insight.
Good, then, for Ronald Dworkin. He’s discussing law, but his position holds also for ethics:
“[The Supreme Court] can find its moral authority only in the character of the reasons it offers for its decisions. It has a sovereign responsibility to show that its judgments are grounded in principles that can responsibly be claimed to be premises of America’s democracy. [Justices] must say enough, in important and controversial decisions about constitutional rights, to indicate the principled basis of their decision and show that they understand and accept at least the obvious further commitments those principles require.”
(Ronald Dworkin, “Looking for Cass Sunstein”. New York Review of Books, 30 April, 2009, page 32. Abridged; emphasis added)
<END>
106: Capital Punishment
Concept for a short story:
The future: All those on death row are released to serve life terms. But the government has realized that, although killing its own citizens represents the ultimate expression of state power and serves as a useful caution to its citizens, it is no longer necessary to indiscriminately kill dozens or hundreds of people each year: a single death will do.
The government has also realized that the death of a common rapist or murderer, no matter how deserved, does not fully engage the passions of the public. The scum, they will say, have their reward; and they will shrug their shoulders.
No, there is a difference between the merely brutal and the truly evil, they say. And so the one man or woman to be killed each year, with full offices and ceremonies of state, must be evil. Only in this way can the public be fully engaged, complicit, equally guilty with the state in the commission of this killing. So the quest began for the single most evil man in the country. Not an easy quest, because members of the government were exempted by statute, as were the leading professional sports figures, college deans, and of course lawyers. Other protected classes were added, the deserving poor, the undeserving poor, the huddled masses, the rich, the very rich, and … and …..
And that is why Melvin H. Robertson, an insurance adjuster from Campbellsburg, Indiana, the only one in America not exempted from capital punishment, found himself one day on death row.
<END>
100: Samuel Johnson on the Getting of Money
“THERE are few ways”, said Samuel Johnson, “in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.”
– but Johnson had never met a hedge fund manager.
From The Economist print edition, 23 December 1999
<END>
99: The Strong Leader
What’s wrong with the world society we have built? It’s threatening to destroy itself. This has been true for all of human history, but now we can actually do it, pushing and tugging each other in all directions. What’s needed, as Anakin said, is a strong leader. But human leaders are infected with the same problems the rest of us have, disastrously so; and God seems to have no interest in saving us from ourselves, the ultimate strong leader being occupied with his own ends, largely to our detriment.
<END>
98: The Rights of Plants
New Scientist magazine recently published the following item:
“FINALLY, recognising the achievements of ethics departments everywhere, the Ig Nobel peace prize went to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biology “for adopting the principle that plants have dignity”. In a document titled “The dignity of living beings with regard to plants”, the committee concludes that causing “arbitrary harm” to plants is “morally impermissible”. Feedback wholeheartedly agrees, and thanks the committee for the excuse to stop mowing the lawn and weeding the garden.
(Source: Issue 2677 of New Scientist magazine, 08 October 2008, page 80)
I believe New Scientist’s attitude is, from an ethical point of view, naive and also incoherent. If you value life, you will not destroy or harm it without good reason. Whatever a ‘good reason’ might be, it certainly does not include killing for pleasure. If killing animals for mere enjoyment is wrong (as I believe it is), it is also true that killing trees for mere enjoyment is also wrong. Both represent life, and both have, from a God’s-eye point of view, equal worth. Contra Kant, the famous saying goes “It is not whether animals think, it is whether they suffer.” But consider: is anesthetizing an animal before snuffing out its life acceptable solely on grounds that the animal did not suffer, if it would not be acceptable otherwise? Hardly. Suffering is not relevant to the ethical decision here; arbitrary denial of life, as if we had the moral right to make such decisions, is the issue.
<END>
96: Friendship
Recently, an on-line writer objected to the idea of online-only friendships, where the people involved have never physically met. According to him, friendship must be based on an in-person encounter, even if conducted electronically thereafter. How are we to determine, after all, that our online ‘friend’ is not just a computer program?
I want to agree with him. Really. There is nothing to equal a physical meeting of two or more persons, whether intimate or not. On line, we don’t pick up the other person’s body language (part biological, part cultural, part individual), his unique odor, nor his distinctive physical response to us. Electronically, face and tone of voice do not have the presence and nuance they do in person. Persons are not disembodied minds, nor even embodied minds: they are unique physical presences, only part of which is driven by the mind.
That said, I have regretfully to disagree with the writer. If you will remember your own past friendships and how they grew (or failed to grow), you will sense that “friendship” is an emotion. Like all emotions, it combines the physical and the mental; but the emotion of friendship seems unique, distinct from other emotions such as love or admiration.
As an emotion, friendship arises and exists within the subject (you). It is your response to someone or something that you conceive to be another person. That is, it is entirely subjective.
While online-only friendships are only pale simulacra of the real thing, they do occur, and in many ‘normal’ people at that.
______________
Note: I use “person” as the most general term for a being that (a) recognizes itself as distinct from all others of its kind, and (b) can interact appropriately with at least some other beings, that is, has a social role. Human beings, dogs, horses, cats, most other mammals, many birds, etc. etc., unless severely brain-damaged or dead, are therefore persons. A computer program can satisfy condition (b), but it would be difficult to know what we could mean if we assert that a program could satisfy condition (a).
<END>
91: Does the Washington Post Have (a code of) Ethics?
Correspondence To and From the Post’s Ombudsman
1. to Andrew Alexander, 22 February, 2009 via email
Congratulations and my sympathies on your new position.
In one of her last columns, Deborah Howell mentioned that she had long advocated making the Post’s code of ethics public (as is the New York Times’ code), but that she had failed to persuade Post management to do so. Perhaps you can have more success. As a sometime instructor in ethics (GMU Learning in Retirement Institute), I believe that keeping a code of ethics secret from affected publics and stakeholders (subscribers) is itself ethically questionable.
Having published the code, Post readers will have better tools for understanding why news stories are written the way they are, and interpreting the information they contain.
ASNE.org contains a version of the Post’s code of ethics — from ten years ago. The code has doubtless been updated several times since then, and in any case there should be a prominent link to the code from the Post’s home page.
Best wishes,
Terence Kuch
2. from Andrew Alexander, 22 February, 2009 via email
Thanks for your e-mail. That’s a topic I intend to address at some point – either in a column or in the weekly internal note I do for the staff (it also goes to top management).
Best wishes,
Andy Alexander
Washington Post Ombudsman
3. Ombudsman column, Washington Post, 5 April 2009, page A17 [abridged]
Got Rules? Then Don’t Be Afraid to Share Them
Newspapers demand accountability and transparency from the institutions they cover. But when it comes to The Post, one of the world’s best-known media institutions, the attitude seems to be: Good for thee, but not for me. The Post keeps its journalistic policies largely hidden, making it virtually impossible for readers to know the paper’s ethical and journalistic standards.
The public should be able to easily access them online. It’s not merely right but also smart to be transparent at a time when The Post is trying to hold on to readers.
A number of newspapers, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, post their policies online. A dated version of The Post’s policies made its way years ago onto the Web site of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (http://www.asne.org) and can still be found with a little digging.
The issues are numerous. What are the ethical standards for editing visual images or audio content? What rules should govern the treatment of information obtained through Twitter or social networking sites such as Facebook? What are the policies for posting user-generated content, such as photos? What are the verification guidelines for linking to non-Post material from The Post’s Web site?
A separate question is whether The Post adheres to the policies in place. In my first two months as ombudsman, I’ve found a disturbing lack of attention to the standards and ethics rules.
New hires are taught about them as part of their orientation. But a surprising number of staffers told me it’s been years since they reviewed them. And several said they simply don’t adhere to some of the policies on confidential sources, including a requirement that “the source of anything that appears in the paper will be known to at least one editor.”
Why have policies if they aren’t followed?
One way to ensure adherence is to let the public see them. Readers are smart, and many are darn good at holding reporters accountable through what we in the business call “prosecutorial editing.”
It takes a leap of faith to make the policies public. But a good newspaper, confident that it can meet its own high standards, should welcome the scrutiny.
<END>
89: Ergo-Gnomics
(Like ergonomics, but highly sententious.)
1. The Samsung Instinct cell phone ** displays “speaker on” when the speaker is off, and “speaker off” when the speaker is on. It makes a kind of weird sense, after a while …. But I would have preferred the displays to read “turn speaker on” and “turn speaker off”.
2. Remember when cars still had door keys, not things you clicked and hoped the thing’s battery wasn’t dead yet? Well, some cars still require keys, including my car, and several of the cars I’ve rented the past few years.
On my car, turning the key ‘forward’ from either the driver’s or rider’s side (i.e., turning the top of the key toward the front of the car) unlocks; and turning the key ‘backwards’, locks. This makes enormous sense to me, perhaps because my car is German, and so am I (by descent).
BUT, some cars require you to turn the key ‘backwards’. Now this, like the Instinct’s ‘speaker’ display, has perhaps a kind of perverse logic to it.
BUT BUT, other cars require you to turn the key in a different direction, depending on which side of the car you are on. This makes no sense at all.
Back to the clicker!
** The Instinct is a wonderful phone, iPhone-ish, but it has two advantages over the Apple product ***: (1) Minor advantage: it gives you tactile feedback when you touch a screen object; and (2) Major advantage: you can use a stylus to pick out names, web addresses, etc. on the onboard keyboard if you wish. I don’t have fat fingers, but I have the devil’s own time trying to press the right keys on the iPhone’s soft keyboard, and the iPhone won’t recognize a stylus touch, just a finger or perhaps some other warm and flexible body part.
*** Actually, I have an iPod Touch, not an iPhone; but they are the same except for cell phone capability.
87: The Age of Rocks and the Rock of Ages
Imagine yourself a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe, say, 4000 years ago. You have plenty of time to observe the world around you. In fact, as a hunter or gatherer, closely observing the natural world is essential to your survival.
Every year or two your tribe’s purposeful wanderings return to the same hunting-ground. One of the things you notice is that certain large rocks, which you thought the solidest of things, have come apart, not merely chipped off the edges but sometimes split right down the middle, straight or jagged. You notice this phenomenon in every rocky region you come to; it is very common. Being a wonderer as well as a wanderer, you ponder how rocks come to be split. Surely no merely human agency could do it.
Perhaps you hit upon an answer involving freezing and thawing, or the growth of tree-roots. But then a more complex question occurs to you: you see many rocks broken to pieces large or small, but you never find any rocks put back together. In time, you think, every rock must break up, until the world be made of pebbles. Therefore, the world had a beginning, when all rocks were whole, or perhaps the world was originally just one very large rock.
Given that a few more rocks crack each year, you count them and form, gradually, a rough guess as to the age of the earth. If your tribe has the concept of “billion years”, or “myriads of kalpas”, you think those would be too long a time. But perhaps two thousand years before your birth …
Yes, that sounds about right.
addendum: Most scientists had figured the age of the Earth at billions of years before they could explain why all the world’s rocks have not already become pebbles. The answer has only come in my lifetime, with the discovery of plate tectonics.
86: Observation of the Day
“ ‘This planet is heavily contaminated with life as we know it,’ says Shelley Copley, a biochemist at the University of Colorado.”
– New Scientist, 14 March 2009, page 32
83: Population Pollution
The following quotation is from www.sciam.com, accessed 16 March 2009 [slightly abridged]:
“Every environmental problem is ultimately a population problem. If the world’s population were only 100 million, we would be hard-pressed to generate enough waste to overwhelm nature’s cleanup systems. Population experts agree that the best way to limit population is to educate women and raise the standard of living generally in developing countries. But that strategy cannot possibly happen quickly enough to put a dent in the population on any useful timescale. The U.N. projects that the planet will have to sustain another 2.6 billion people by 2050. But even at the current population level of 6.5 billion, we’re using up resources at an unsustainable rate. There is no way to reduce the population significantly without trampling egregiously on individual rights (as China has done with its one-child policy), encouraging mass suicide, or worse. None of those proposals seems preferable to focusing directly on less wasteful use of resources.”
===== BUT THAT WON’T WORK — attempting to solve the problem through ‘less wasteful use of resources’ is an absurd dream; we’ll never be able to un-waste ourselves out of our mess even with today’s population, much less the future’s. Seems to me, we can either (a) Restrict human reproduction, starting as soon as possible, until we reach a sustainable number of people on this planet, or (b) Wait for our inevitable die-off, when we take with us most of our fellow mammals and everything else but bugs and slugs.
Alternative (a) will be unpleasant and repressive, but no one need be physically hurt.
Alternative (b) will bring millions (at least) of agonizing deaths and, probably, devastating resource wars as well. And even then, we will leave a ruined earth.
What will it be, brother?
80: A Scientific Basis for Personality?
How many different personality types are there? A friend of mine, then recently returned from England, remarked “There are five kinds of Englishman. When you’ve met all five, there’s nothing else to know about them.” He was, almost, serious.
And then we have birth-signs, and Chinese restaurant-menu-‘year of the’-types, and the Myers-Briggs scale, four variables of two values each, revealing in their combinations, i-Ching-like, some inner truth.
And now, scientists have correlated personality types with physiological activity. According to New Scientist, issue of 14 February 2009, page 43, there are four basic personality types, with their assorted mixtures. Now we know what’s what, because science has spoken:
“Explorer – elevated activity in the dopamine and noradrenalin systems. Tend to be risk-taking, novelty-seeking and impulsive, high energy and sex drive. Optimistic, enthusiastic, and curious.
“Builder – elevated activity in the serotonin system. Tend to be sociable but conventional, cautious and meticulous. Often have high social status.
“Director – elevated activity in the testosterone system. Tend to be systematic, dominant, and tough-minded. Intellectual and able to focus attention. Often have poor social skills.
“Negotiator – elevated activity in the oestrogen and oxytocin systems. Tend to be imaginative, empathic, and egalitarian with good social skills. Articulate and able to see the big picture.”
The tip-off here is that, whichever type you are, you are really quite worthy, even interesting, perhaps exciting. Even dull and plodding Builders are redeemed, in their case by ‘high social status’.
– Please leave my serotonin alone, and just hand me that fortune cookie over there, would you?
<END>
79: How to Make Classical Music Boring
Here’s a letter I sent to a well-known classical music radio station in the Washington, D.C. region (WETA-FM), in response to their most recent appeal for money:
“I hope you will consider the following criticisms seriously; I am sure that other ex-Leadership Circle members feel as I do.
“About two years ago, when you switched to all-classical format, I donated a thousand dollars to WETA. As a retired person, that’s not a trivial amount for me to give. I expected two things: Excellent classical music programming, and the chance to meet other Leadership members at various events.
“For the next few months, I listened to WETA 3-4 hours a day, and found the programming, frankly, dull, ‘relaxing’: Pieces we’ve all heard very many times before; and almost entirely limited to ‘safe’ selections from ‘safe’ composers from the Classical and Romantic periods, occasionally Baroque. During those months I never heard any Penderecki, or Pettersson, or Diamond, or Holmboe, or even Rubbra (who is tuneful enough, even if the others may not always be). — Or even more-adventurous works of standard composers, such as the choral works of Beethoven or Bruckner. So for the past year I’ve been listening to the RadioIO Classical channel on the internet. That’s my concept of what WETA should have been.
“And as for events: during that year I received a total of one invitation to a special Leadership event (Ken Burns), but to attend that one, WETA wanted an additional $500!
“So, no thank you.”
<END>
78: Holocaust: Denial or Praise?
Thinking of the case of Bishop Richard Williamson, and others: Why is there Holocaust denial?
Columnist Richard Cohen (Washington Post, 10 February 2009, page A17) holds that deniers claim that the Holocaust is “a yarn, a myth concocted by those diabolically clever Jews to win sympathy, reparations and, of course, Israel itself.”
But that seems an unlikely motive. If the deniers are truly anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic, or if they think Hitler acted rightly, these deniers should affirm the Holocaust, praise it, even exaggerate the number of deaths.
The Holocaust certainly did occur, pretty much as commonly believed. And the deniers, I am sure, know that. Denial therefore isn’t really a claim of historical fact, but a statement of ideology, a refusal to “let Nazis be Nazis.” But the form of their denial seems to me both irrational and, as a strategy, self-defeating.
<END>
77: Revenge
Revenge is the purest of motives. Victims will say “Oh, no, not at all! We don’t want revenge, Heaven forbid!; only justice.” But they deceive themselves, and do not, in any case, have standing to demand justice. Revenge is the individual’s motive; justice is society’s motive. Let us not confuse the two. **
Revenge is entirely innocent: it cares not for wealth, or health, or the high esteem of one’s neighbors. Often, it cares not for personal survival, so long as its object is gained.
Revenge suffereth not; Revenge never faileth.
_____
** Marc Fisher (Washington Post, 8 March 20009, page C01 continuation) puts this point nicely: “ I’ve always thought the system errs when it takes into account the views and passions of victims’ families; for all the tragedy they’ve suffered, they are naturally driven by exactly the kinds of emotion that the justice system should seek to put aside in calculating fair and proper punishment for criminals.”
<END>
71: Billions and Billions
New Scientist, 24 Jan 09, interview with James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory:
“I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2˚C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4˚C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. … [T]he cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. …” [Q: It’s a depressing outlook.] “Not necessarily. I don’t think 9 billion is better than 1 billion.”
<END>
66: Surnames for Women
Solution: Married women should retain their maiden names. Girl babies should be given the surnames of their mothers; boy babies, of their fathers.
Problem: Men (males) have family histories. “The Puddleducks have lived in Wessex since 1558” and so on. Women don’t have family histories; they’re part of men’s histories. When we say “The Puddleducks have lived in Wessex since 1558”, we mean the male line. The female line is ignored, submerged. Why? Less worthy? It would seem so. One way to get over this problem is <see “Solution”, above.>
Rather ludicrously, current practice favors the piling-up of surnames, with or without hyphens. “You’re invited to a party at the Smith-Joneses”, etc. This is unnecessary, confusing (especially to computers and HR departments), and comes off as stuffy and pretentious. Besides, what happens in the next generation? Better if a married woman would just keep her maiden name. We know that was her father’s name, not her mother’s; but we have to start somewhere.
<END>
65: Against Constellations
Long ago, we thought that all the stars were the same distance from us. Sometimes, a pattern of stars would remind a viewer of the mighty hunter Orion, or a scorpion, or twins. These patterns were thought to be physical features of the heavens. There were disputes over what, if anything, a particular pattern might represent, but not over whether or not there was a pattern. The stars were, after all, just there, a two-dimensional form.
So we called these patterns ‘constellations’, meaning ‘stars together’ **. But the stars aren’t together; that they seem so is an illusion: the heavens are three-dimensional. Even from a few light-years away, most of the patterns we see would disappear.
It is, of course, pleasant to study the ancient Greeks, their exploits and their gods. And we can still look for constellations in the sky with good conscience, knowing them for the fables they are. But constellations are not real, and have no place in an astronomy that’s based on science, not superstition. Let’s reserve talk of ‘constellations’ for studies of cultures, not studies of things.
** Latin ‘con’ originally ‘com’, meaning ‘together’ — see OED.
<END>
64: A Theory About Theories
“We do not counter [a] theory with another theory, but with experience.” — William Large, Heidegger’s Being and Time, p.30 (University of Indiana Press, 2008).
But, on what basis do we assert that a (particular) experience is evidence for or against a (particular) theory? By means of another theory? Or another experience? Either way, we have an infinite regress. Bare assertion is out of favor (except in theology; see Karl Barth, Gesammelte Schriften), but it seems the only way to break out of this conundrum.
Large continues, interestingly: “Yet here we encounter another problem, possibly the most difficult of all. How can we account for or describe this experience when the only language in which we can talk about the world is categorical? If we are going to capture the existential as existential, then we cannot use the propositional language of predicates, attributes, concepts, and categories. But it is precisely this language which we take to be the only true one.”
<END>
57: Israelis in Palestine (and Syria)
Case A: Israelis in Palestine: According to Richard Cohen (Washington Post, 6 January 2009, page A13), quoting a CIA publication, there are about 187,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, 20,000 in the Golan Heights, and 175,000 in East Jerusalem.
Case B: There are thousands of Turks in Germany.
Case C: There are thousands of Algerians in France.
Case D: There are thousands of Mexicans in the United States.
Case E: There are thousands of Kurds in Iran.
An exercise for the reader: What is the most important difference between Case A and Cases B through E?
52: Little Thoughts to Live By
Little Thoughts to Live By:
.. No one respects a victim.
.. Revenge is the only pure motive.
.. Offense is taken, never given.
.. Never assume that the technology is going to work.
.. Never depend on Version 1 of anything.
.. The evil man designates his new product “Version 2.”
END
47: The Great Simplifying Assumptions
#1: Intention is what happens.
#2: Whatever happens is typical.
#3: Speech belongs to the listener — interpretation is everything.
#4: It is easier to ride the horse in the direction it is going. [q. from Werner Erhard]
#5: In the short run nothing changes; in the long run everything changes. [q. from Fred Brooks?]
#6: It is possible for things to get worse without limit. [q. from Herb (Herbert R.J.) Grosch, NBS
40: Superficiality — an example from music
Lots of things are superficial. At times, it seems that everything that isn’t too deep to understand is too stupid to matter.
But there are degrees. To pick one typical example, not to pick on him except as an example, consider the music of Morton Gould: glib, superficial, utterly trivial. The work of someone quite bright, for whom composing came all too readily, who had an easy success.
This is quite different from music that’s serious, intensely conceived, just not of the highest quality. Considering only the ‘G’s, we have Gebel, Gernsheim, Goetz, ….
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39: “Life will find a way”
“Life adapts, continues, and flourishes; it is not life itself that falls, only particular versions of it. Humans are busy endangering themselves and many other species in their suicidal plunge, but life itself has all the time in the world, and it will reassert itself in new forms when it is ready.”
(A.C. Grayling in New Scientist, 6 September 08, page 54)
37: “Just Following Orders”
“Belief in an omnipotent omniscient creator of the world does not in itself have any moral implications — it’s still up to you to decide whether it is right to obey His commands. … The young men who flew airplanes into buildings in the US … were not just stupid in imagining that these were God’s commands; even thinking that there were His commands, they were evil in obeying them.” –Steven Weinberg in New York Review of Books, September 25, 2008, p.76
Weinberg’s is a curious argument. On what basis, in accordance with what ethical theory, are people ‘evil’? No, I don’t have an answer to that question; I don’t believe there is a coherent answer. Ascriptions of evil, at bottom, may be no more than gut feelings, or the teachings of power, or ‘what everybody knows’, or the wish to avoid pain or death, or based on some value system that is itself arbitrary, such as the absolutely supreme value of every human (and only human) life.
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35: What’s Wrong with Pro-Life; What’s Wrong with Pro-Choice
Pro-choicers assert that every woman has a right to bear as many, or as few, children as she wishes. If pregnant, the abortion v giving-birth decision is hers alone, never mind the wishes of the father. I’ll agree that the father has no right to insist that a woman carry to term. And I’ll agree that every woman has a right to an abortion. But I don’t agree that a woman has the moral (never mind legal) right to have as many children as she chooses. Why should society condone irresponsible breeding? Even if a woman is wealthy, having many children imposes burdens on every generation after her, overwhelming the earth with people we really don’t need, and the sheer overwhelming numbers of whom are ruining our world. The conundrum is: who will enforce population control? The Chinese experiment has had many problems. And would we trust our own government as the Chinese trust theirs? I don’t think so.
Pro-lifers are flying under false colors. While caring deeply for every human fetus from conception onward (including severely mentally handicapped fetuses whom it is cruel and insensitive to bring into the world), they ignore any right to life other species may have — species who are also God’s children, and who are, as well, innocent of the burden of sin that human beings bear. “Pro-life” should really be called “pro-only-human-life, screw everyone else”.
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34: October 23: The New World Holiday
It used to be believed that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 B.C.**, variously at noon, 9am, or 9pm (but 9pm was “just a theory”).
Anyone up for celebrating a true creationist holiday? ** See Wikipedia, article "Ussher Chronology"
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33: Offense — Giving and Taking
Excerpts from Deborah Howell’s column in the Washington Post, September 28, 2008, page B6:
“More than 750 readers from around the country told me they were mightily offended [by an editorial cartoon making fun of John McCain and Sarah Palin]. Many were Pentecostals. Complaints also came from mainline Christians and from a Buddhist who said “it offends me.” McCain and Palin are certainly fair game, but most of those offended by the cartoon felt it mocked all Pentecostals.”
We need to be firm about this: no one can legitimately claim to ‘be offended’, or accused of ‘giving offense’; rather, offense is something we do to ourselves, and it’s usually harmful to do so, both to us ** and to everyone else involved. Taking offense does not solve problems: it adds to them, leaving a residue of hate and resentment.
** This is a good time to recall Spinoza’s discussion of the harmfulness of negative emotions.
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22: The Population Bomb Has Exploded
The following comment was posted to www.sciam.com (Scientific American on line) in response to an article on climate change:
“This article shows a bland acquiescence to the presence on this planet of billions of voracious members of a single species — ours. It is time to engage in a debate as to a reasonable and responsible target level of human population, plus or minus a hundred million or so, and the best scientific and ethical ways of achieving that population level. 50 billion? Way too many. Zero? Too few. Somewhere between there should be a point we could all agree on, plus or minus a few hundred million.” – Terence Kuch
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