195 Comments

1. tommy:

So good bye Yellow Brick Road,
Where the dogs of society howl.
You can’t plant me in your penthouse,
I’m goin’ back to my plow.

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:32 am 2. steeple:

there’s my nomination for the Best Post award next time Richard opens the voting

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:37 am 3. Charles:

Judy Collins – Both Sides Now

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:40 am 4. Josh:

sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:55 am 5. Stephen:

“The market has either temporarily lost its ability to properly value assets; or more disturbingly we are simply unwilling, like the ATP vis a vis Andre Agassi, to recognize the truth because it would be bad for business in our servitized world.”

This is not something new. Investment real estate lending in any particular market has prevailing loan to value ratios that everyone is aware of. This is an acknowledgment that the stated value may not be the real value and that a greater or lesser margin of safety, safety from foolish optimism in the service of greed, may be needed. In the financial investment world they actually call it “margin requirement” and it gets changed over time to give a greater or lesser design margin to financial markets.

These things get circumvented of course, just like thieves figure out new ways to steal store merchandise or credit card dollars, but the remedy for thievery is to patiently pursue thieves just like we have always done.

Centralization of financial markets and information makes thievery a really scary thing for everybody. But the principles of stealing and preventing stealing are the same as ever. We have to pursue thieves with tenacity and patience, knowing that this job can never be completed but it can’t be abandoned either.

What does this have to do with BBC tv shows? I’m not sure but if you understand how to value commercial real estate or common stocks it won’t surprise you in the least to find out that the talking heads on tv are drug-fueled basket cases in real life.

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:55 am 6. James the lesser:

We must be entertained. We fear what happens when the entertainment stops. In silence, who knows what we will face?

Pascal wrote “I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.”

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:18 am 7. Bob:

Debbie Schussel asserts that Glenn Beck is a coke head. I don’t know if this slur is true or not. But I do remember that he was hospitalized last year for a few weeks. Cocain would be a way to keep an actor under your thumb too–reading what you wanted off the teleprompter.
The only vanishingly small ability that I have and like Dick Morris (who has inside knowledge)am only corect 60% of the time, is an ability to read people. This guy is a phony who has been put in place to agitate for a third party.
The conservative message is out there–Mark Levin, Rush, Ingraham, Hannity–I know it’s all a matter of taste. But their sincerity shines through.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:19 am 8. steveaz:

Richard,

“The modern economy no longer produces “things”. It produces intangibles called services. Insurance, banking, government, tourism, retail, education, social services, franchising, news media, hospitality, consulting, law, health care, environmental services, real estate and personal services now dominate the activity of the Western world.”

When I studied economics we were taught that industrial economies undergo an inevitable and desireable metamorphosis. First the ugly larval phase – one based on “dirty” primary industries like mining, agriculture and timber, molts to the secondary intermediary form, a sooty, energy-intensive, pollutive, and only slightly less “yucky,” manufacturing phase. From here, the secondary economy inevitably graduates from its pimply adolescence, and molts to a lustrous, hi-tech, hi-energy, and least yucky, service economy. This tertiary phase is characterized by a massive explosion of hired agency: I call it the “middle man” economy.

This assumed industrial progression, even when railed against, is the presumed developmental protocol in everything from global development financiers’ and environmentalists’ “sustainability” plans to African delegations to the UN and American EPA regulators. But the assumed, inevitability may be bunk.

I’m beginning to doubt both the inevitability of the metamorphosis, and the appeal of living in an economy dominated by the “creative” corporate ethos (she was offered coke the first day on the job?!). First, the proposed inevitable progressions like urbanization, and the “singularity,” and the “third wave,” all of which propound an inevitable, global collective graduation of sorts, seem “pie-in-the-sky” today. Like the dream of getting free broadband in every (over-mortgaged) home, things we assumed would happen yesterday are looking a lot less certain today. Why not throw the Primary-Secondary-Tertiary economic “inevitability” on top of the pile with ‘em?

Second, ever get a bad brake job? Hiring agents and middle men to do things that you really could do for yourself is not always a good idea. When a person hires an agent, be it a barber, or a house-keeper, or a broker, he may think he has hired a perfect proxy. But all he has done is exchange his money for an approximate proxy – and it is the deviance of the approximation, whether the degree to which the estimated agency-value deviates largely or not at all, from the hirer’s estimation and the hirer’s degree of forbearance for any apparent deviation, which determines the agency’s ultimate value. The agency economy’s dwell on approximate appearances is ripe for intentional misrepresentation, and its impositions on client forbearance exacts a more dear, unquantifiable toll on the client’s moods, “stress level,” and daily home life.

If the momentum some think will allow the US to coast through its “inevitable” evolution to a lasting tertiary “creative” economy is, well, lagging…and if the value of the commodity promised by the “new” agency-economy is, well, fuzzy, we’ve hardly got a foundation of testable empirical cornerstones ideal for building a sustainable economic base on.

It’s likely that, following the burst of this second middle-man bubble, this message is sinking in. Next on the agenda: reducing the freemen’s everyday regulatory burden, as in land-use restrictions, smoking-bans and income taxes, so’s we can shuck even more of the barnacles off our hulls.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:20 am 9. Marcus Aurelius:

The Eagles sang about that lifestyle too: There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face. She pretended not to notice she was caught up in the race.

Valuation of even the physical and tangible is not so easy. For example, gasoline prices are generally on the rise of late, but they don’t go straight up but zig-zag around. The gas stations around here recently went to $2.79/gallon but almost the very next day they started moving down to $2.74 and even at that they may find they are overshooting the market price.

Even the physical & tangible needs service to come together. Some friends & I made pork BBQ on a stick and lumpia. We sold the goods at our local Farmer’s Market and Octoberfest. The BBQ had an incredible demand and we never lost money on the deal but let me tell you, it took us a while to discover the value of what we had. The BBQ we sold for $1.00/stick and at peak times we could NOT keep up with demand. So the next season we went to $2.00/stick — same deal. Third season we went to $3.00/stick and then things got reasonable. In fact, we sold our last stick at closing time for $3.00 — it was near perfect.

One of the justifications I used in going to $3.00/stick was to account for the time and hassle we had to go through to make & deliver the goods.

However, I do agree with the overall theme and that is so much of what goes on is usually pretty ugly but unless you can see past the facade it looks good.

Funny, I consider the odor of two stroke engine exhaust as a very pleasurable smell and so much more the odor of freshly cut grass.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:31 am 10. sol vason:

Napolean said “truth is the set of lies we have mutually agreed on”. Conflict arises when one set of truths is replaced by a different set. Conflicts are usually resolved by war and drinking too much. And sex and drugs and rock n roll.

And that’s the truth

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:36 am 11. NahnCee:

So now the pendulum has swung entirely back, and BBC Mother isn’t to be blamed at all for her parenting skills in bringing up a daughter who was so weak and stupid that she succumbed to the blandishments of The Industry?

Why is this particular dead bimbo any different from Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Janis Joplin, Anna Nicole Smith or Michael Jackson; and why is this particular mother any different from Marilyn’s froot loop of a mother, stage mother par excellance Mrs Gumm, or Joe Jackson?

Other than she wants to put all the blame somewhere else, and isn’t it interesting that the institution she wants to blame has deep enough pockets for a pretty good payoff (if things are done that way in Britain).

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:45 am 12. wretchard:

“truth is the set of lies we have mutually agreed on”

I think the key idea behind civilization, and indeed all progress, is that there is something out there that represents the truth. It exists independently of us. We cannot simply make it up. Once that is grasped, all else is detail. We attempt to discover what reality is by careful measurement, experiment, trial and error. The only requirement is that we must truthfully record the result of the investigation. Because the next step depends on a true memory, or at least on a memory as true as we can make it.

From these efforts we read the book. And what you want to call the author that book is up to you. Some have called it the Creator. Others have called it reality. We can call it “X”. The name of the symbol is somehow less important than acknowledging that the term exists.

Although I may be stretching meanings, I think the most critical part of political theory lies in acknowledging that human institutions are not the ultimate sources of authority. They live within the world of the unread book. Whatever O’Brien said in Room 101, no man or set of men are gods unto themselves. Thus the idea of “unalienable rights”, like discoverable truth is ultimately beyond the province of spin. It cannot be legislated out of existence if it exists in the book.

Humanity reads the book together through common experience. From time to time it tentatively agrees on the meaning of a word or phrase that it encounters in that archive and they call it a law of physics or a theorem in mathematics. In the more complex world of human society things are more uncertain, but even here the wisdom of crowds is essential. We agree on the political meaning of things through a vote in which the stupid and the smart, the lame and able, the tall and the short alike have their say.

This may irk those who think more of themselves than they do of others. They want the remote. They’re going to control the channel, which is alright as far as it goes, for the able should lead. But there comes a time when some think they can make up anything they want. History is full of those instances. The Triumph of the Will. But it doesn’t work. Ultimately we cannot even will a single word in the book in or out of existence, though improbably we find we can add new material ourselves, as if someone had granted us write privileges for so long what we write is consistent with the rest of the book.

My Diary. My Unexpected Journey. There and Back Again.
And
What Happened After.
Adventures of Five Hobbits. The Tale of the Great Ring, compiled by
Bilbo Baggins from his own observations and the accounts of his friends.
What we did in the War of the Ring.

THE DOWNFALL
OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS
AND THE RETURN OF THE KING

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:05 am 13. marymcl:

“Why have we become so indifferent to counterfeits? So willing to accept the clever facsimile for the ostensibly real?”

Part of it is the over-intellectualizing of Truth, which has been going on for many years. By now any teenager will have absorbed via cultural osmosis that the “truth” is a subjective matter. And anyone who reads history will have learned for themselves that this is often so. However – the problem is that the immature mind accepts that as the end of the matter when in fact the real moral challenge is not to know the truth but to be truthful. They are not the same thing, but the distinction is often lost.

I’ve often wondered at the appeal of reality TV shows. Many of the younger people (in their 30’s) that I used to work with follow them avidly. These same individuals couldn’t sit through a real drama if you paid them. When I would point out to them that these programs can hardly be realistic, that their producers have specific agendas or that the presence of cameras is going to make everyone behave differently than they would otherwise, whatever, they just just shrug it off. It’s not that they believe any of it, they just don’t care. They are intelligent people with young families, and they work hard. But clearly something about their imaginative capacities was stunted or amputated early on.

Awhile back I heard an interview with some actor (sorry can’t recall who or where) about a production of “Othello” that had dispensed with all of Shakespeare’s language because it was thought necessary in order to make the play more “accessible” to young people. This production was being praised for the supposed fact it would stimulate a greater interest in the Bard. But without the language it’s no longer Shakespeare, it’s just another melodrama about a guy who murders his wife. Now I like melodrama as much as any other form, and using Shakespeare as a springboard for other creations is fine too. Kurosawa did great things in “Ran” and “Throne of Blood” by fusing Shakespearean plots with Japanese traditions. What I don’t understand is how any critic could suppose that an entire generation needs to be shielded from hearing Shakespeares’s words and then conclude that the same people would thereby be inspired to read him. In the end it’s easy to say the lack of imagination or interest on the part of the young is yet another indictment of the public schools, but what is at work on the part of those who were educated at an earlier time and most certainly know better? Do they believe what they are saying? Are they just lazy, or corrupt, or what?

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:19 am 14. herb:

I followed a link in a Roger Kimball post to an address by William James at http://falcon.jmu.edu/~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html

I think its at least in part on point. James argues that we have two separable and equal duties: To discover Truth and To avoid Error. What the Boss has identified is a failure to avoid error. Simple acceptance of an alleged “truth” is not enough. The individual has also to examine what he has discovered for falsity. We or society or the media or the intellectual elites or whoever-is-in-charge-down-there has failed in that part of their duty. The fact that Wanda Sykes or Whoopie Goldberg or David Letterman or Paris Hilton or Britney Spears any of these people are considered worthy of anything short of public scorn is the clear proof of the proposition. Al Sharpton was a panelist on the ABC Sunday show today. Barney Franks is considered a financial authority.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:24 am 15. PA Cat:

In this kind of world there is no essential difference between a President and a person who plays the President for so long as he does it entertainingly.

“US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet trick or treaters at the North Portico of the White House as they celebrate Halloween. The First couple welcomed more than 2,000 children from Washington, Maryland and Virginia schools and their families to celebrate Halloween.”

Photo of the costume party at the link below:

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/driveby/trick_or_treat_or_else.php

Are we having fun yet?

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:27 am 16. toad:

So, on my wrist is a device that tells me a truth, the time, the date, and the day. If it doesn’t tell me anything I do not wear it. If it lies to me I not only don’t wear it,I don’t buy another like it. Tell me President Obama, What time is it?

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:53 am 17. Josh:

I think the key idea behind civilization, and indeed all progress, is that there is something out there that represents the truth. It exists independently of us. We cannot simply make it up.

wretchard, I’m VERY surprised to see this from you.

I think the orthodox position on such metaphysical matters is that there may indeed be a truth out there, but absolute access to it is forever beyond us, or at least beyond proof. This is not just modern litcrit or pomo, this is Kant and Plato.

The history of western thought is a big wheel that turns from acceptance to rejection of this idea. Science is operationalist, secular. But cold. The wheel turns, we have a new romantic age, a new age of faith. But charlatans galore flourish in such an age, and the wheel turns again, and we believe only what can be coldly proved.

Spinning wheel, got to go ’round.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:56 am 18. steveaz:

Wretchard,
You’re sounding like an American Naturalist now, my friend. Welcome home!

What is truth? What is testable? What happens when your tests certify false truths? When does a search for truth approach obsession, or even clinical paranoia?

All of these are explored teasingly in that definitive treatise on paranoia, the movie The Number Twenty-Three. After viewing this film, I had an inkling about how voodoo probably worked on poor ex-slave islanders, and how hexes painted on Pennsylvanian barns could grind-down the will of an indebted farmer. And how rewarding a deeply-held suspicion of any sort can disqualify inconvenient truths.

I think ignoring most of the info-clutter is the key. It is the scale of the clutter heaped on top of truth every day that makes it seem so hard to find.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:56 am 19. PA Cat:

In a market for fantasy the truth has little or no value.

Interesting that the favorite cliche of those who service or maintain that fantasy is “speaking truth to power.”

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:01 am 20. Spindok:

Humans are deceptive. Animals use deciept as well but I think only humans are capable of self deception. I do not think this is a modern trend.

Clinton was decepetive but I think only in the less harmful way of covering up when the lights flashed on and his hand was in the, umm…cookie jar
Truth: Everybody lies and decieves.

What worries me now is the true self-deception of one who actually thinks he can roll back the seas and turn Mahdi lions into lambs.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

(The Tempest Act4)

Spindok

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:05 am 21. wretchard:

I don’t think we will ever have full access to the truth if only because the index is out of range but it is tremendously exciting to discover that we can actually know something, even if only in part. It is even more exciting to realize we can say something whose validity does not depend on consensus or human fashion.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:20 am 22. Josh:

But, do we ever really “know” things? Perhaps we can know what we know, and what happens when we follow it.

Humean skepticism says we have associations, but never really knowledge … but then, Hume was a buzzkill. Do we know stuff, like water is H2O? We know it’s a good thing if we act like we know it, if we act like it’s true. Does it have to be True? What does Hume recommend we *do*? Hmm, actually, I don’t know the answer to that last, I suppose I should, if I’m going to blather like this in public places.

So back to the topic, what should Joe or Jane Citizen make of what he and/or she sees on the tv? Well, that’s sort of the challenge of life, isn’t it? And few people want to wrestle with the universe, they just want a path to walk, a church to attend, even if it’s a secular, skeptical church.

Aggregating several topics from the past few days, we seem to be lacking such paths. We’re told we should wrestle with the universe, individually or collectively. We’re told we CAN wrestle with the universe, and make it do what we dream. Well, that ain’t right!* I think Obama has declared war on arithmetic, that’s what I see as wrong with his health care proposals. It’s not who cares the most, it’s what can we actually, truly (!) do. Our mood is currently romantic, it seems. We dream, we talk, we sing, we change, grow wings and fly!

And just how long can that last?

*And yet, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? Hard to condense life, the universe, and everything into a short blog comment!

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:37 am 23. eazymark:

Wretchard at #12: “Ultimately we cannot even will a single word in the book in or out of existence, though improbably we find we can add new material ourselves, as if someone had granted us write privileges for so long what we write is consistent with the rest of the book.”

The words written in that book predate us and our conventions of deceit, lying, artifice and fantasy.

They simply are not of “this world”, i.e. the Napoleonic worldview that stipulates the truth as an agreed-upon set of lies, the Madison Ave. mindset that manufactures reality for the marketplace. So the rules and rubrics of this world will not serve to qualify, prove or disprove the Truth, though it will easily dismantle the deceptions and fantasys of the “name-it-and-claim-it” crowd. It exists on a plane that transcends the measure of things in this world.

The Truth has no marketvalue in such a worldview. It’s a partypooper. It requires too much self-denial, the antithesis of self-delusion.

Pascal had it right. But there’s too much frisson in the “dare” for the au currant lemmings to select “truth” instead.

The truth will set us free, but lately it’s seemed like a sad truth…but I turn to the Book to read what is written:
“…I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”
gospel of John 17:13-19

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:42 am 24. anton:

Two Points;

1. My view is that we cannot ever know Absolute Truth, but the quest is to get as near as we are capable; to strive (knowing that the object is unnattainable) with all our might and wisdom to grasp at the truth every day of our lives.

2. This cry that the BBC should have “done something” is just another note in the symphony of modern relativism. The idea that nobody is responsible for their actions and that “somebody ought to do something” (also known as an opportunity to start a government program).

My grandad would always tell me this when I tried to get him to do something for me that I should have been doing for my self; “If you need a helping hand look at the end of your arm”. Our society has been so programmed to sit and wait for “somebody to do something about it” that they will inactively watch a tragedy unfold in front of them and wonder at the fact that it is allowed to happen. Hand wringing all around but nary a finger lifted. The willingness to accept a contrivance as reality is part and parcel of this, it blurs the already indistinct line between reality and perception and creates a desire to watch rather than act.

Consider this clip;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9zy37-_0LU

A film crew were filming something outside a courthouse when a man starts shooting at his lawyer, dozens of people WALKING past and none of them react, the film crew (who are well aware that this is real and not some act) film the assault but take no action, the lone security cop is the one who acts, the one person in the area who is enough “tuned into reality” to see what is going on and understand the right path of action. A hundred years ago the shooter would have been mobbed (more likely shot by a passer-by with a pistol – people usually carried back then) not allowed to stroll away.

The Coastal Elites are like the passer-bys, they see but are conditioned to not understand, out leaders are like the film-crew, they know what is going on but are more interested in getting a good shot (or getting/keeping power) than saving a man’s life. The nut with a gun and the lawyer represent reality in this little drama, ignored by all but a very few.

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:16 pm 25. Fast Monday links « missyhiggins:

[...] http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/11/01/bows-and-flows/The financial meltdown is from a certain point of view, a pure crisis of information. What we don’t know (or better yet what we do know but ain’t so) is hurting us. The market has either temporarily lost its ability to properly value assets ; or more disturbingly we … Maybe the reason why finance, politics, news, real estate and environmental services are in dire such straits is that they among the service industries have the biggest portfolio of defective information. … [...]

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:17 pm 26. Batman:

We come back to two of the central issues of our age and all ages. One is Truth vs. truths and the other is how cause and effect plays out in terms of personal responsibility vs. context and extenuating circumstances.

The quest for Truth never ends, for as many here have already said, our instruments (brain and perception) are too feeble to grasp it entirely. But without the certainty that there is Truth out there to be approximated and sought, the quest will be meaningless. Certainty in the existence of Truth is the heritage of Athens and Jerusalem (or Sinai).

That Truth has been under attack from the beginning of recorded human discourse. Whether it is from the logic tricks of the sophists or the questioning of the philosophical skeptics or more recently from the deconstructionists and relativists, the notion that Truth is merely your opinion (or the agreed upon opinion of the majority, or the imposed opinion of the strongest) has gained strength in the past two or three generations.

That we now have the technology (photoshop, television, computer generated interface graphics, etc.) to make it harder to distinguish forgeries from originals puts tools in the hands of the deconstructionists that make both Truth and truth harder to distinguish. And as steveaz pointed out in #18, so does information clutter.

Give up Truth and you succumb to any or all of some very bad alternatives: superstition, confusion, fraud, or malignant skepticism.

Give up Truth and logic and you can no longer agree on the facts, or even on what is a fact. It was bad enough when this was confined to aesthetics (is Shakespeare better than Snoop Dog?). It got worse with multiculturalism (are Western values of individual dignity and freedom better than female clitorectomy or burning widows?). It has spread into science itself. Perhaps toad at 16 and others are right to wonder if mathematics itself is about to become deconstructed.

The second and related concern regards self-deception and responsibility. When Truth as a concept goes, cause and effect will not be far behind. We are increasingly in an age in which the iron rule of cause and effect is being ignored.

Do X and Y or Z will follow. But that couldn’t possibly apply to me. Does it really work that way? I can’t accept that. Why should it apply to me? This is unfair. It has to be someone else’s fault. If I buy a cup of coffee and put it between my legs and drive off, the coffee is not supposed to spill and I am not supposed to get burned. So it must be McDonald’s fault. And to prevent the consequences of my action every coffee drinker will have to settle for tepid coffee.

If I go to work in a drug infested industry, it can’t possibly be my responsibility to remain sober. First, I can go there and take no responsibility for placing myself in harm’s way. Second, if I am caught up in that culture, it can’t possibly be my fault.

There is much more to say on this but the post is already quite long, so I will leave you with these lyrics.

Bob Dylan

Who Killed Davey Moore- lyrics

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

Not I, says the referee,
Don’t point your finger at me.
I could’ve stopped it in the eighth
An’ maybe kept him from his fate,
But the crowd would’ve booed, I’m sure,
At not gettin’ their money’s worth.
It’s too bad he had to go,
But there was a pressure on me too, you know.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

Not us, says the angry crowd,
Whose screams filled the arena loud.
It’s too bad he died that night
But we just like to see a fight.
We didn’t mean for him t’ meet his death,
We just meant to see some sweat,
There ain’t nothing wrong in that.
It wasn’t us that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame us at all.

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

Not me, says his manager,
Puffing on a big cigar.
It’s hard to say, it’s hard to tell,
I always thought that he was well.
It’s too bad for his wife an’ kids he’s dead,
But if he was sick, he should’ve said.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

Not me, says the gambling man,
With his ticket stub still in his hand.
It wasn’t me that knocked him down,
My hands never touched him none.
I didn’t commit no ugly sin,
Anyway, I put money on him to win.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

Not me, says the boxing writer,
Pounding print on his old typewriter,
Sayin’, Boxing ain’t to blame,
There’s just as much danger in a football game.
Sayin’, Fist fighting is here to stay,
It’s just the old American way.
It wasn’t me that made him fall.
No, you can’t blame me at all.

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

Not me, says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist,
Who came here from Cuba’s door
Where boxing ain’t allowed no more.
I hit him, yes, it’s true,
But that’s what I am paid to do.
Don’t say ‘murder,’ don’t say ‘kill.’
It was destiny, it was God’s will.

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an’ what’s the reason for?

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:22 pm 27. bob from Idaho:

“If you need a helping hand look at the end of your arm”

That’s good, never heard that one before.

A film crew were filming something outside a courthouse when a man starts shooting at his lawyer, dozens of people WALKING past and none of them react

Well of course they won’t react. It’s a lawyer that’s being shot!

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:27 pm 28. Marcus Aurelius:

So then, does our notion of liberty than rage against the truth?

The US Federal Government defines a contractor (roughly) as a person who delivers a good or service w/o direction from the other party on the production or delivery of that good or service. That is, what is behind the facade or veneer is none of your business — as long as I deliver what we agree upon for what we agree upon.

The commonly accepted notion of liberty is I can do whatever I want as long as I do not infringe upon another’s liberty.

This is what leads to the situation that kicking this thread off — the woman who dies of coke abuse (the private method) in a seemingly respectable and virtuous environment (the public interface).

The BBC delivers their product to specification end of story. Or is it?

Of course, it is not. A mother is missing her daughter.

On one of the history type of channels they talk about BASE jumping. They talk to a BASE jumping instructor and the first thing he does is to make his student(s) write a death note to their loved ones. He does this to the students think about what their death means — that is even if BASE jumping victims freely choose a path that leads to their death — there are others affected.

LOL at the fact that Aggasi played tennis while being hopped on crystal meth. Brought back to mind the story of Dock Ellis throwing a major league ball no-hitter on acid. Peak performance on such is possible but highly unlikely and when such events do happen it is probably best the stories don’t get out lest it encourage others to try such performance enhancements themselves.

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:28 pm 29. anton:

I probably chose badly with that example; the thought “Shooting lawyers, is that illegal?” probably passed through the mind of a few of the people present.

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:33 pm 30. anton:

One is left to question how, in a land with such stellar medical services as the U.K., the mom couldn’t get her daughter into a re-hab center.

Nov 1, 2009 - 12:36 pm 31. Ashen:

I like pizza and that’s da TRUTH!

Nov 1, 2009 - 1:12 pm 32. Batman:

Some additional thoughts about responsibility and self-deception.

In my work as a psychiatrist I encounter many folks who start out wanting to remain the same but eliminate the reactions others have that don’t serve them. Others have the fantasy of checking their psyche in to the repair shop like a car’s 5000 mile tune up, and pick it up later, all fixed.

For those who know what I am referring to, an empathy based “self-psychological” approach is a necessary starting point. BUT — and here is the important point — as soon as I can I try to get the person to see those areas in which they are the architects of their own misery.

Political correctness, both in society and in psychiatry and psychology, criticize this as a “blame the victim” approach. But I strongly disagree. Only if the locus of your misery lies, at least in part, within yourself can you change it.

There is always a battle between those who favor autoplastic change and those who favor aloplastic change. The former emphasizes changing yourself; the latter emphasizes changing your surroundings.

Liberals of today (I’m not talking about the 18th or 19th Century varieties) favor aloplastic change. They define the locus of misery as outside the individual and want to change society. Conservatives of today favor autoplastic change and define the locus of misery as residing within the individual and therefore subject to improvement by such things as industriousness, diligence, reliability, and personal rectitude.

The aloplastic favoring Liberals understand “The Good” as applying to the context, society, and the environment. The autoplastic favoring Conservatives understand “The Good” as applying to the individual through self-reliance and personal responsibility.

In therapy many patients take umbrage at the thought that they are responsible for at least part of their own misery. But for me, having the locus of my misery within me gives me the most leverage to change it.

On a macro level we need both autoplastic and aloplastic change. We do have to right society’s injustices. But without emphasizing autoplastic responsibility there will never be enough societal safeguards to do the job.

Here is a thought problem. How many police would it take to assure that no traffic rules are ever violated? Answer: at least one per driver, assuming maximum efficiency on the part of the police and an absence of corruption. There will never be enough agents of the state or of the society to assure good behavior if the responsibility for good behavior is not made autoplastic.

It takes a village if individual families neglect their own personal autoplastic responsibilities. (Yes, I do believe in the strength and value of community, especially if that community arises organically and not from the top down. And yes, I agree no man is an island. But no village and no community can make up for the absence of personal responsibility and the primary responsibility of families for themselves.)

Truth, with a capital T, acknowledgment of cause and effect, and personal responsibility (autoplastic) are linked together. I rarely see an individual who accepts personal responsibility and the concept of autoplastic change disbelieving the law of cause and effect and doubting that somewhere out there Truth exists for us to search out.

Finally, accepting or denying that there is something called Truth is linked to humility. But that will await a later post.

Nov 1, 2009 - 1:21 pm 33. Raoul Ortega:

I probably chose badly with that example; the thought “Shooting lawyers, is that illegal?” probably passed through the mind of a few of the people present.

Maybe some enterprising congresscritter can hide such a law defining an open season on lawyers in the 2000 page “health care bill.” That would teach ‘em to read the things before they foist ‘em on us the next time.

#16: So, on my wrist is a device that tells me a truth, the time, the date, and the day. If it doesn’t tell me anything I do not wear it. If it lies to me I not only don’t wear it,I don’t buy another like it. Tell me President Obama, What time is it?

Haven’t you looked at your spam lately? It seems one of the big sellers are fake Rolex watches. The selling point isn’t that they provide a better “truth”, but they will make other’s think you are more powerful and have access to better “truths” in other endeavors.

Nov 1, 2009 - 1:42 pm 34. E. Nigma:

Know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Maybe not. Actually knowing the truth can be painful. It may compel you to act in a way that is “socially unacceptable”, or maybe just non-PC. It can alienate you from friends and family.

Knowing “the Truth” is also connected to that thing we call “free will”. How much free will does a genius have when he/she sees one best solution to a problem that others have trouble visualizing, and the struggle that ensues to “compromise”?
No “truth” can exist outside of a moral universe of sensibilities, either. We reject the idea of certain practices, such as slavery today, which were acceptable not too many generations ago. Some slave owners, such as Jefferson Davis, were ‘moral’ men, in that they did not wish to mistreat their slaves, and strove to be fair. They were not brutish men. But their slaves were still just that; slaves. And that is a very unlovely truth about the US, too.

But honestly (?), the truth is always preferable to a pack of lies, and when we lie to ourselves so continuously about everything from how funny David Letterman is to well the economy is doing (the Recession is over!), we only hurt ourselves.
What a vale of tears this world is. And that’s the truth too.

PS. Judy Collins also had a drug problem that she has only recently revealed. And that’s a sad truth too.

Nov 1, 2009 - 1:43 pm 35. whiskey:

Wretchard –

I could not disagree more. It is not a question of truth and lies, so much as wealth or middling class-ness.

Really rich people, or those who are functionally rich by the lack of kids and responsibilities (SWPL yuppies) can indulge in fantasies because their other needs are met in Maslow’s hierarchy.

There is no functional difference between a huge investment in old but young looking hunky guys with superpowers and sparkly vampires glittering in the mist by tween girls and their moms, and the fantasy that rainbows and unicorns will fly out of Obama’s mouth (or other body parts) to make everything OK.

Or that the BBC can “fix” things by focusing on drug abuse (rather than personal responsibility). I’ve been around drugs all my life, among casual acquaintances and various professional people. I’ve never used any of them, not even marijuana.

Why? Because my parents would have been ashamed of me, simple as that. So I declined. Not because I had superior moral sense or better morals or superior worth, but because it was pounded into me by my parents growing up. Don’t do it — the mark of a loser.

Middling classes have enough to lose. Therefore they adopt and focus on their children the same habits of conservatism in social habits, behaviors, and other things. Don’t use drugs. Don’t get drunk. Don’t spend money you don’t have. Be frugal. Watch your weight. Do things yourself you can do, and that you cannot find a competent professional.

It is instead the extraordinary wealth that permeates all society in the elites and semi-elites (among the latter, by not having kids and using the extra saved income to play elite) that allows fantasy. That has had a near total fantasy among nearly all.

DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com had a story on “the first gay leading man to come out” and how Neil Patrick Harris on “How I Met Your Mother” meant that romantic leading men can be openly gay. Ignoring that it is a sitcom, with mostly women watching, and that romantic leading men in movies/dramas require both toughness and yearning for women, not comedy. But the fantasy of “gay everywhere acceptance” and that there will be no differences in gay and straight, and that straight men will want to see gay men in leading romantic/action roles, is so strong among the rich elite that it warps their perception of reality.

Because they can afford it. The Sam Goldwyns and Louis B. Mayers understood and remembered being poor, and resolved never to be there again. Thus they had a healthy dose of reality that those who have never known want or fear do not. Even the middling classes have a fear of falling down, and so moderate their worst impulses.

Our problem is elites, too many and too wealthy.

Nov 1, 2009 - 1:58 pm 36. wretchard:

Our problem is elites, too many and too wealthy.

I’m not so sure that absolute wealth leads to softness. I remember being taken through an “inner city” area once when I had just got in from the Philippines. My first thoughts were: “these guys are poor?” They had real roofs, floors. They had running water. They had electricity. They had doors. Try and find any of that in Smokey Mountain. Yet even the poorest of us moderns — even the poor devils on the old Smokey — has more energy at his disposal than a ancient king. Back in the day they didn’t even have lights after dark. The castles of yesteryear had rushes scattered on the floors to attenuate the cold stone floors. They didn’t have indoor plumbing in Versailles.

Wealth by itself doesn’t create softness. Wealth just means you can challenge yourself at a higher level. Tired of the challenges on earth? Well head for the stars.

It’s not absolute poverty that creates fantasy. It is privilege as defined by the lack of societal consequences. When you are “above the system”, when you are told that YSDS then you start believing it too. In general what happens is the feedback loop gets disconnected. Your experience is invariant with respect to your behavior.

Of course the ability to make your own rules is what some people define as “making it”. The feeling that you’re special, able to be above it all is what people aim for much more than actual utility. Expensiveness may become a good in itself. There’s probably a market for grotesquely overpriced, but ordinary food. The object of such an establishment is to keep people without enough money out, not to serve good food. You pay not for the services of the chef, but for the services of the bouncer. Then you feel like you’re ‘exclusive’.

To the extent that “making it” is defined as being able to thumb your nose at everybody else, then members of that elite are self-selectedly dysfunctional. They aimed to be that with impunity. There have always been people like that, but when that becomes the actual stated goal of the ambitious, “hey look ma, I want to become a TV star so I can snort cocaine without worrying about getting busted, unless I get really, really unlucky”, then we create a kind of aspiration to self-destruction, sometimes called “edgy”, occasionally considered cool.

Nov 1, 2009 - 2:42 pm 37. ADE:

Firstly, on the issue of why Mother Collins should blame the BBC – what NahnCee</b said @ 11.

Secondly, the question of Truth in relation to the financial crisis. I believe that the truth (in the sense of accurate data flows) was always available, just that the receptors could not process the overload – too few at the highest levels had a clue. The GFC was, in a sense, akin to a denial of service attack on the financial services processors, a queue overload.

At the base level, the hand at the end of your arm, so to speak, there is a lot of truth. By and large, our analysis is getting better and better.

It is when we hit Synthesis that we enter the world of charlatans, the biggest being the politicians.

They (politicians) have worked it out:
Truth?
The answer my friend
Is blowing with the wind…

ADE

Nov 1, 2009 - 2:55 pm 38. Rob De Witt:

The polity at large has lost its ability to discriminate due to cultural Marxism, which has inexorably forced generations to accept moral relativism through the schools and pop culture.

The insanity we see on all levels is due to the profound disconnect between perception and reality, and the corresponding angst produced in humans who are muscularly denying their humanity. Marcus Aurelius made the point for natural law directly 2000 years ago; Thomas Aquinas called it “life based on observable truth.”

None of this is new, or particularly difficult. The modern scholar J. Budzisewski makes the case clearly in his book “What We Can’t Not Know,” and even that ol’ hippie Steven Gaskin put it in plain English 40 years ago with “You do too know what I mean.”

Children are born with the ability to act truthfully, and discern the distinction between truth and falsehood, as is readily apparent to anybody who’s raised one. This is what “born in God’s image” means – awareness.

Anyone who indulges in angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin arguments regarding the subjectivity of truth is feeding into the problem, and is indeed a “useful idiot.” Read a little of Alinsky’s attacks on self-awareness if you don’t think that Lefties know this, and depend on it to foment destruction, which is their only aim.

Nov 1, 2009 - 3:05 pm 39. Marty:

There IS such a thing as teh ral world, “truth,” if you will. Yes, our individual knowledge of it will always be partial, imperfect, but it is still worth the effort to come as close as we can, and to call out those errors that we can.

Otherwise we’re just all psychotics, each living within our own delusions, and I cannot accept that that is all there is.

Nov 1, 2009 - 3:31 pm 40. ADE:

Firstly, on the issue of why Mother Collins should blame the BBC – what NahnCee said @ 11.

Secondly, the question of Truth in relation to the financial crisis. I believe that the truth (in the sense of accurate data flows) was always available, just that the receptors could not process the overload – too few at the highest levels had a clue. The GFC was, in a sense, akin to a denial of service attack on the financial services processors, a queue overload.

At the base level, the hand at the end of your arm, so to speak, there is a lot of truth. By and large, our analysis is getting better and better.

It is when we hit Synthesis that we enter the world of charlatans, the biggest being the politicians.

They (politicians) have worked it out:
Truth?
The answer my friend
Is blowing with the wind…

ADE

(I’m having trouble getting through to BC comments, anybody else with similar problems?)

Nov 1, 2009 - 3:51 pm 41. Rock:

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.” – Donald Rumsfeld

“To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” – Henry David Thoreau

So the truth – the answer to whatever riddle befuddles us – may not be there. Or it could be looking back at us from the mirror each morning and we fail to recognize it

Nov 1, 2009 - 3:54 pm 42. toad:

During the Rodney King riots a visitor from a third world country was watching the TV coverage with some friends and said, “You’ve got the fattest poor people I’ve ever seen.”

Nov 1, 2009 - 4:00 pm 43. Leo Linbeck III:

This is excellent stuff, especially Batman’s discussion of therapeutic models of change. Very interesting and enlightening.

There is an emerging consensus in the social science literature that human beings are absolutely awful at predicting what will make them happy. The modern world employs a variety of hypotheses about the causes of our future happiness – a variety of ethics, if you will:

1. Fame. This is the ethic of the BBC newsreaders, movie stars, politicians, etc. Think of it as the “Cheers” principle: I wanna go where everybody knows my name.

2. Fortune. This is the ethic of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, gamblers, etc. These folks ware willing to “do whatever it takes” to make money, with the assumption that once they have their money they’ll be able to do what they really want to do.

3. Sex. This is the ethic of the college student, Whiskey’s SWPL yuppies (Sex and the City), hip-hoppers, etc. Life for them is a series of sexual pursuits, conquests, and post-coital escapes. With bragging rights.

4. Consumption. This is the ethic of the man with 6 cars, the woman with 6 credit cards, the heir with 6 homes, etc. You know – when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. It is also keeps bars, fancy restaurants, and jewelry stores in business.

5. Power. This is the ethic of the community organizer, the communist agitator, the jihadist, etc. The goal is to be able to smite ones enemies, and put them in their well-deserved place (an inner circle of Hell, of course).

6. Entitlement.This is the ethic of the trust fund kid, the welfare queen, the race-based shakedown artist. These folks think that they don’t have to work for their existence, but that they are entitled to live by virtue of who they are.

7. Social Justice. Well, maybe not real social justice, but the faux-social-justice that says that if someone has something I don’t, that is not just. The solution, of course, is for the state to take from those who have, and give to those who don’t.

I’m sure there are others, but these are the biggies.

What this means is that the dominant theories of modern life are, well, untrue. These are not new theories, of course; they have been around for millienia, albeit under different names:

1. Pride
2. Greed
3. Lust
4. Gluttony
5. Wrath
6. Sloth
7. Envy

For most of the history of mankind, these theories – these vices – have been tried and utlimately found wanting. They lead to the destruction of the human person, and therefore of the human community which is made up of those persons.

Why, then, do they keep re-appearing, in their different guises? Why don’t we ever learn?

Part of the answer, I think, is that we have lost our tolerance for honest failure. We expect perfection from our leaders, and if they fail to deliver it we turn on them. This makes responsibility is very stressful, so those who have responsibility (e.g. parents [family], CEOs [business], elites [society]) often find these vices an attractive palliative for that stress.

For instance, I never cease to be amazed at how risk-averse parents are these days (and I put myself in that category, BTW). We worry about everything, and feel as if we must watch out kids ever minute or we’re “bad parents.” We also feel like anything bad that happens to our kids is “our fault.”

Now, to be sure there are negligent parents. But when we conflate failure with negligence, we do our society a disservice. And this same logic, I believe, applies to other positions of responsibility.

Finally, this brings us back to the question of perception and reality. When we expect perfection, our leaders must necessarily project that image, and that image must necessarily be inaccurate at certain times. This, in turn, encourages leaders to focus more of their time and energy on managing their image, when they should be “working the problem.” Now, this raises the question of how to distinguish between honest failure and outright deceit. It is a good question, but one that most folks here can answer for themselves, based upon their own experience.

The solution to all this? Heck if I know. But somehow I think it has to do with recognizing the difference between hope and optimism. Hope is the belief that things will work out in the end. Optimism is the belief that things are going to get better. These are not identical concepts, however. Things can work out in the end, but get a lot worse for a while – maybe even for the balance of our time here on earth. This sort of difference is quite apparent in our current situation – not a lot of cause for optimism, but still a case to be made for hope.

Hope, of course, is a virtue. Optimism, on the other hand, is often just a delusion. Appreciating the difference gives us a healthy skepticism of “progress,” tolerance for those who fail, and the strength to go on.

And go on we must.

L3

Nov 1, 2009 - 4:19 pm 44. sol vason:

Just as humans have evolved over the ages, so have human societies. There are laws, customs or taboos that contribute to the survival of a society and laws, customs or taboos that are fatal to a society.

For example, there was an utopian society that settled in Western Pennsylvania in the 1800s that believed in celibacy. The society disappeared from the face of the earth when the last faithful first generation member died childless.

On the whole the truths you mention are the ones that enable a society to survive and grow. I believe there are four fundamental areas that laws, customs or taboos must promote in order for a society to survive.

1. Every member of society must have a job that contributes to the health and safety of the society. There can be no free loaders.

2. The society must conserve and protect the natural resources its members need for survival.

3. The society must make sure it has enough members to protect itself from hostile neighbors but not so many that it cannot house and feed them. Therefore, it must regulate sexual reproduction and the care of children

4. It must keep its members from killing each other.

These rules may not be agreeable or just or perfect. But they are a common denominator among societies which have survived more than a dozen generations. I suppose that makes them “truths”.

Nov 1, 2009 - 4:32 pm 45. Charles:

Clinton Cheated ‘Because I Could’

Mr. Clinton took on every question, including one about what he called his personal failure — his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Rather: “The central question, if I may, and I know this is difficult, the central question is why?”

Clinton: “I think I did something for the worst possible reason — just because I could. I think that’s the most , just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything. When you do something just because you could … I’ve thought about it a lot. And there are lots of more sophisticated explanations, more complicated psychological explanations. But none of them are an excuse … Only a fool does not look to explain his mistakes.”

The affair’s disclosure put him, Mr. Clinton says, “in the doghouse” with his wife and also threatened to alienate his daughter, Chelsea. The family was able to overcome its terrible effect through counseling, however.

Nov 1, 2009 - 4:35 pm 46. “You Can’t Handle the Truth! No Truth Handler, You! I Deride Your Truth-handling Abilities!” « The View from Alexandria:

[...] 1, 2009 by philo Don’t miss Richard Fernandez’s brilliant reflections on truth, civilization, and perception: In recent years management [...]

Nov 1, 2009 - 4:48 pm 47. NahnCee:

“It takes a village if individual families neglect their own personal autoplastic responsibilities.”

How does Islam and the concept of “honor killings” fit into this concept of personal responsibility vis-a-vis the village? Haven’t we been told repeatedly over the last eight years that Muslims feel compelled to kill both each other and anyone from the West in order to assuage their feelings of “humiliation” and because the family’s “honor” in the eyes of others (”the village”) demands it?

Which is why I’ve sort of decided that either we have to ship all Muslims to concentration camps to be reprogrammed, or we should just not ever believe their protestations of “moderation” to begin with a nuke ‘em now.

Is there a psychological third option that I’m not seeing, since peer pressure by Western neighbors and assimilation into a Western life-style seem to have been signal failures.

Nov 1, 2009 - 5:13 pm 48. Andrew_M_Garland:

Mr Fernandez, your post makes my head spin. I’ll choose three items out of many.

You write: “Perception is often the proxy for value in a service economy. Indeed it often comprises the value itself, at least in the entertainment industry and possibly in news.”

In fact, perception is only in special cases the service being provided. For example, in entertainment, or in opinionated writing.

It may be ironic if a depressed comedian can act happy and make us laugh, but that is his job, and he is producing his product. As a parallel, I am not directly concerned if a shoemaker drinks too much, as long as the shoes are done well.

A “proxy for value” is something that indicates value, and it is always perceived in some way. I can’t taste the raw meat at the supermarket, so I use it’s red color as a proxy for freshness. This isn’t perfect, because color can be artificially retained. But, how does that falsify a service economy. Information is always imperfect.

= = = = =
You write [edited]: “If we aren’t interested in the real David Letterman or Bill Clinton, but only in some fantasy character they play, then logically nobody should care about blackmail or stained blue dresses.”

–> Combining Letterman and Clinton confuses from the start. Letterman’s end product is his performance. Clinton’s end product was supposed to be great management. It doesn’t matter what Letterman does in his private life; He wasn’t offering advice on living and I wasn’t looking to him as a role model.

Clinton was in a position of great trust, so of course I am interested in things that could indicate his morals, character, and ability. He lost my trust, not because he had sex, but because he was willing to destroy Monica Lewinsky rather than admit his actions. Only his fluids on a red dress saved her from his power.

= = = = =
You write [edited]: “Whereas the “truth” of a ton of steel is the steel itself, what is the truth of a bundled subprime mortgage? What is the truth content of a credit default swap? Perhaps we don’t know, and this has led to the economic crisis.”

“The financial meltdown is a crisis of information. What we don’t know or falsely believe is hurting us. The market has either temporarily lost its ability to properly value assets; or more disturbingly we are simply unwilling, like the ATP vis a vis Andre Agassi, to value the assets because to recognize the truth would be catastrophic for business in our servitized world.”

The question “What is truth?” is overly philosophical. Steel and Swaps are both useful to those who know about them and use them. It is overwrought to think that no one knows. The only problem with swaps is that some people who lost money used their political power to get public money from the government, claiming that their mistakes were going to end the world. The swaps didn’t rob us, it was some men in business (not business in general) and a bunch of corrupt and ignorant politicians.

The market values assets quite well. The government manipulated the housing market and the bonds based on property values. This manipulation ended in collapse, as always. As a result, the average bond became worth about one-half.

We don’t live in a cartoon world where you don’t fall until you look down. The banks who owned these fallen bonds should have gone bankrupt. But, politicians did not want their own participation to be visible. So, the government has acted to buy the bonds or prop up the banks, again at public expense. This will fail again, but in a more diffuse way that will confuse the perception that those politicians were mostly at fault.

Renowned economist Henry Haslitt wrote in Economics in One Lesson” [edited]:

“Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by the special pleadings of selfish interests.”

“Certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody. Other policies benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. A group that especially benefits will argue plausibly and persistently for its own special policies. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.”

Our world is not as complicated and unknowable as it seems. Our government is the center of most policy. Our politicians work tirelessly to set the policies that favor themselves at public expense. They then work tirelessly to confuse the public with outrageous false statements and further manipulations to hide their reponsibility for the horrible consequences.

Nov 1, 2009 - 5:17 pm 49. Michael Jackson Fans Studio » Blog Archive » Belmont Club » Bows and Flows:

[...] from: Belmont Club » Bows and Flows No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Belmont Club » [...]

Nov 1, 2009 - 5:19 pm 50. E. Nigma:

As Leo illuminated, there are lasting vices that seduce or tempt all men and women. Using the argument that it is “the Left”, or Barack Obama or cultural Marxism, or SWPL-Yuppies, or owning season three of “Sex and the City” DVD set is not the underlying reason.
Marxism, of course, is a mid-19th century construct that tried to codify in a “scientific” treatise all the collectivist whims of human history into a coherent (ha!)structure based on the “timelessness” of the Class Struggle, that the rising “capitalist” system was exacerbating. Of course, it was all just an elaborate lie.
Or was it?

There are lasting truths that seem to be indestructable, mainly because they work. The three laws of Thermodynamics, Newtonian Mechanics (when we aren’t in a relativistic framework), that the value of ‘pi’ is a transcendental number that can’t be fixed to three decimal places. And many more.
In short, there are objective ‘truths’ that makes the mechanistic or technological side of our lives work.

Then there are the more ephemeral ‘truths’ that seem to go in and out of style, that Mr. Linbeck alluded to.
The sins that all flesh is subject to, we seem to forget that from time to time. The flawed nature of men and Mankind. The corruption of power, the temptation of sin and vice, whether it be drugs, drink, sex, food, vanity, greed or laziness (sloth).

Of course, we can’t be judging so harshly. That is the vulgar rationale which makes us avert our eyes and make up rationalizations as to why we don’t always act on these ‘ephemeral’ truths. Why the audience laughs nervously when Letterman reveals his vices; that could be me next, I dare not judge! I dare not be a hypocrite!! I dare not answer that this truth is reason enough to act. Laugh it off, it’s harmless. Close your eyes, look away.

The Orwellian nature of some aspects of the modern world, especially the News Media as many recognize, and Wretchard refers to in passing many times, is the thing that tends to scare us all late at night. It’s not the childish terrors of the many permutations of “Friday the 13th”, or “Saw I – VI”, or the endless reruns of the Andy Griffith show.
When we know we are being lied to by the News Organs of the modern world, yet we can’t be sure of our own facts, when we are so distantly removed from any possible first-hand knowledge of matters that may affect us directly; when so many seem so dedicated to promoting so much Un-truth because it serves another purpose, our fear is voting or choosing incorrectly because we have been mislead so thoroughly.

The silly and tragic woman whose daughter was a Coke addict at the BBC can’t really blame the BBC. Her daughter was weak (as we all are sometimes), and would have found vice wherever she went. If she had been stronger, she could have rejected the drug culture at the BBC and left for another job. It’s a tragic truth that she failed as a parent in instilling judgement and wisdom to reject the false euphoria of drug addiction. And that is the real truth that she wishes to evade. Her failure. She failed her daughter, and as a consequence, her daughter is now dead.

Nov 1, 2009 - 5:30 pm 51. wretchard:

Markets work and that’s the reason we are in a crisis now. I don’t mean to suggest that things are unknowable. They are and that doesn’t suit the book of people who’d like to manipulate expectations. But at any given moment, markets reflect only the available information. As more information comes to hand, it changes its appreciation. Bubbles burst or trends are started. And a bubble bursting is exactly what’s happening, in my view, to parts of the service economy. Politics, newspapers, entertainment — and in a little while higher education — are experiencing a reversal of fortune because they are being re-evaluated in the light of what we now now.

The key argument is precisely that markets work; that “truth” — in the sense of real information — always comes in at the end.

Nov 1, 2009 - 5:37 pm 52. whiskey:

Wretchard — Pursuit of fame/celebrity used to be tempered by fear of falling. Badly. Into the abyss from which there was no escape.

If the middle class and middle class morality (focused on avoiding bad habits and patterns of behavior that destroy upward mobility) were dominant, David Letterman MIGHT have done what he did, but he would have been more careful and would have in any event been destroyed by publicity.

Fooling around with interns is behavior that destroys a middle class family. Affects not at all a wealthy sybarite.

The problem is that wealth/power defines society. That is, the balance of all power to define acceptable social, sexual, status-seeking, cultural, political, and all other types of behavior passed around 1965 from the Middle Class to the elites. With more and more power on the balance going to the aristocracy that defines our age.

We live in the age of Aristocrats. Debauched, debased, fame-seeking, indeed seeing fame as the measure of all things. How many can put the position and power to the name Steve Ballmer, or John T. Malone, or Les Moonves, or Marc Andreesen, or Carol Bartz? Yet all can tell you who Omarosa or Heidi Montag or Levi Johnson are.

If the Middle Class had real power, their values would be enforced on pain of social punishment — loss of money, power, social status, position, and fame.

The crisis is that our elites hold all the power (enabled by technology that made them fabulously rich) and ordinary people have none.

Thus the defenestration of Joe the Plumber and celebration of Obama the Celebrity.

At least part of this has been the improved position of women, something that is good, but like all good things comes with a cost. Take a look at the check-out counter at any supermarket. You’ll see celebrity stuff which is the modern equivalent of the Court of Versailles under Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

It is the “Oprah Nation” with an emphasis on feelings, magical thinking, pleasure-seeking, pseudo-science, and so on. It has been remarkable the transformation of women in American society from sober householders careful of the family budget to splurging on granite counter-tops in Flip that House real estate deals.

IF Women are driving this change (I think they are but am open to being persuaded otherwise) then the only way elites can be curbed/power-clawed back is for women’s positions to change. The end of the “New Girl Order” as Kay Hymowitz in City Journal called it, creating once again a sober, budget-minded conservatism among women. I think the chances here are nil, given women’s desires and past freedoms. But I offer it.

My best guess is that the West will resemble a violent (and they are always violent) matriarchy, with celebrities and famous elites running most things including values, and a chaotic, sullen, resentful male mass of outsiders periodically on the rampage in riots and other acts of random violence. Indeed the act of violence itself if shocking and famous enough being a path to fame and celebrity-hood. Witness Drew Peterson, Michael Vick, and Johan Van Der Sloot, celebrities in the worst sense all.

Nov 1, 2009 - 5:45 pm 53. Pajamas Media » America’s Broken Elite:

[...] Read the entire post here. [...]

Nov 1, 2009 - 5:56 pm 54. buddy larsen:

wretchard, i’m only halfway through your post –no i read it once then realized what an utter gem it is and went back for a close-read. The para beginning with “Why have we become so indifferent to counterfeits?” gnaws at the sums of our fears.

i realize i overdo these Nyquist links, but i have to run this in anyway: Why Not the Truth?

here’s paragraph two:

The truth is dangerous. Who will protect us from it? Our institutions will protect us: the state, the bureaucracy, the Congress, the Office of the President. The link between truth and responsibility here assumes tremendous importance. Those who evade responsibility must also evade the truth. Inevitably, they turn to the state. Let the state be responsible, they say. Let the state signify truth. This latter point they dare not make openly, for everyone would see – in a flash – the disaster they are incubating. It is the disaster of the state as savior. The flight from responsibility, as a corollary of the flight from truth, is the distilled essence of it. Is there a financial crash? Let the government prop up the market. Are people unable to pay their mortgages? The government will pay. Are banks in trouble? The government will bail them out. Why should anyone take responsibility for anything?

(there’s more –sounding the klaxon)

About time for the New York Times to pick you guys up (the New Moralists –”Generation Improved –No More Unsightly Apologetics nor Lily-Gilding).

and the sooner the better, time’s a-wasting, so to speak.

Nov 1, 2009 - 6:26 pm 55. twobyfour:

sol vason/44

OK, some parsing…

1. Every member of society must have a job that contributes to the health and safety of the society. There can be no free loaders.

How do you define a job? A mother with 2 children taking care of them… is that a job in your view?
Or someone working on his invention, with no funding from outside? I could make a long list of examples where people have no discernable “job” and yet they are productive and contributing.
In the Czechoslovakia during commie era, everyone had to have a job, officially, or you risked to go to prison as a “parasite”. Despite the fact that a lot of people pretended to be working… because as the joke went the state pretended paying them…
I would redefine your point as: no state sanctioned handouts, if you don’t have means to support yourself, find a job, or volunteer for community projects that may provide basic means.

2. The society must conserve and protect the natural resources its members need for survival.

As a general rule, no quarrel.

3. The society must make sure it has enough members to protect itself from hostile neighbors but not so many that it cannot house and feed them. Therefore, it must regulate sexual reproduction and the care of children

The part before therefore is agreeable. After therefore it’s Big Brother writ large. Society can usually regulate the population by other, natural means than meddling with sexual reproduction. The care of the children is the parents’ business. The society may provide facilities like child care centers, but that should not be the default mode of child-rearing.

4. It must keep its members from killing each other.

Oh, like removing butcher knives from the reach of members of that society? Or knitting needles–they can be a dangerous weapon. Or simple plank with a long nail on the end. Not even mentioning guns. The only working method is to emphasize the sanctity of human life since an early age, with the caveat that those who do not adhere to it may forfeit the sanctity of their own lives. I think the issue is generally addressed in our legal system. One may question some aspects, like death penalty or a lack of it thereof, but the system is working, just needs tweaking once a while when swinging to extremes.

Nov 1, 2009 - 6:33 pm 56. Charles:

John 18 NIV via bible gateway
Jesus Taken to Annas
12 Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. They bound him

13 and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year.

14 Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be good if one man died for the people.

Peter’s First Denial
15 Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard,

16 but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the girl on duty there and brought Peter in.

17 You are not one of his disciples, are you? the girl at the door asked Peter. He replied, I am not.

18 It was cold, and the servants and officials stood round a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.

The High Priest Questions Jesus
19 Meanwhile, the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching.

20 I have spoken openly to the world, Jesus replied. I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret.

21 Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.

22 When Jesus said this, one of the officials near by struck him in the face. Is this the way you answer the high priest? he demanded.

23 If I said something wrong, Jesus replied, testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?

24 Then Annas sent him, still bound, to Caiaphas the high priest.

Peter’s Second and Third Denials
25 As Simon Peter stood warming himself, he was asked, You are not one of his disciples, are you? He denied it, saying, I am not.

26 One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, Didn’t I see you with him in the olive grove?

27 Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a cock began to crow.

Jesus Before Pilate
28 Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover.

29 So Pilate came out to them and asked, What charges are you bringing against this man?

30 If he were not a criminal, they replied, we would not have handed him over to you.

31 Pilate said, Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. But we have no right to execute anyone, the Jews objected.

32 This happened so that the words Jesus had spoken indicating the kind of death he was going to die would be fulfilled.

33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, Are you the king of the Jews?

34 Is that your own idea, Jesus asked, or did others talk to you about me?

35 Am I a Jew? Pilate replied. It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?

36 Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.

37 You are a king, then! said Pilate. Jesus answered, You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.

38 What is truth? Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, I find no basis for a charge against him.

39 But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?

40 They shouted back, No, not him! Give us Barabbas! Now Barabbas had taken part in a rebellion.

Nov 1, 2009 - 6:37 pm 57. laura:

Whiskey,
I must very strongly disagree with you about it being a matter of the wealthy not holding the mores of the middle class. I think it has much more to do with the rich especially those who have made their money on fame and chance rather than hard work or in many cases inherited wealth, do not understand the responsibilities that are attached to that wealth.

Of course my experience is anecdotal, but beginning with a good friend in college who was part of the Auchincloss clan to the friend of my daughter who was both a friend and team mate of George Steinbrenner’s granddaughter I have been most impressed with the good sense, courtesy and yes, morals of some very entitled rich kids.

In fact, it is due to the generosity of a very rich man that my oldest attended that school. He is recently deceased and before he passed away bequeathed enormous sums of money to both community and educational foundations he supported.

I suppose you could say these people are old or oldish money, but more importantly they understood the attendant responsibilities of being rich and represent a morality completely in line with your “middle class sensibilities.”

I believe the problem has much, much more to do with a general coarsening of our culture. The abdication of Churches, communities and families to provide a moral framework for our children for the last 40 years in the face of a vicious onslaught of relativism and the increasing value of celebrity at all costs.

Nov 1, 2009 - 6:45 pm 58. buddy larsen:

with no higher power judging, one can feel no proximate responsibility to the dictionary definition of ‘truth’ as long as one serves an underlying truth. That underlying truth can be as broad as “It’s true that I’d like to get away with whatever i want”. Who can dispute that? You? What right have you? Is there no equal sign between you and me?

Tolerance –yes, we need more tolerance don’t we.

A real question is, what was it that opened the door to fantasy and closed it on truth? People living hand-to-mouth who ignore truth are hard to study –they died out one cold winter twenty thousand years ago. Is material comfort –and the money that functions as future food –inimnical to truth? Is this what swept our forefathers into the meeting house one day every week, where all could take a look at one another’s pilgrim’s progress?

Nov 1, 2009 - 6:47 pm 59. twobyfour:

Whiskey, something of interest to update your demographic parameters…

Nancy Breeden was not sucked in by the euphoria that swept Barack Obama to power and landed him the first victory by a Democratic presidential contender in Virginia in more than four decades.

“I was going to vote for John McCain but it terrified me that if anything happened to him we would have this totally ignorant woman as president. So I voted for Obama as the lesser of two evils,” said the 77-year-old, as she half-watched the news on a television larger than almost anything else in her living room.

“It’s turned out exactly as I expected. The man has absolutely no experience. I’m disillusioned with him about everything. His healthcare plan is a disaster. He doesn’t know how to deal with the rest of the world.”

Breeden is voting Republican in next week’s election for governor of Virginia. Last year, Obama took the county seat, Manassas, with 57% of the vote. Breeden’s was one of them.

OK, riddle me this: Nancy Breeden, 77, identifies Palin as “ignorant woman” and rejects elderly white male candidate and votes for a communist instead.
How comforting it must be to let the media decide for you whom to vote for! Or…?

Nov 1, 2009 - 6:51 pm 60. Annoy Mouse:

The answer is more cocaine. We should send subsidies to Columbia to supply the BBC. It hel make up for CAFTA. If that works out maybe we could subsidize the cocaine trade that is keeping Hollywood alive and bright eyed. As soon as we can cut out the middle man, the cartels, the better. And just think of the benefit to society itself. It could be a kinda flypaper for wayward liberals. Maybe we could off to set up a coop in DC. Perhaps Marion Barry would offer to help set it up.

As far as scandals are concerned, the Republicans offer enough to ridicule since they’re so goody two shoed anyway. No need to expand it to the Dems, the tabloids are busy enough with Hollywood as it is.

Nov 1, 2009 - 7:09 pm 61. Charles:

John 14 NIV biblegateway
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
1″Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God[a]; trust also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Nov 1, 2009 - 7:17 pm 62. Skookumchuk:

OT: An old time commenter at BC, “PeterUK” has died: http://yargb.blogspot.com/2009/11/passing.html

Nov 1, 2009 - 7:25 pm 63. Annoy Mouse:

Whiskey – “violent (and they are always violent) matriarchy, with celebrities and famous elites running most things including values, and a chaotic, sullen, resentful male mass of outsiders ”

Cheer up Whiskey. Now the resentful masses can plan on having babies of their own without having to marry a selfish greedy female other. While all of the gals are clawing their way to the top of corporate America, the teaming masses of disaffected males can stay home and raise babies for the welfare state. It will be great!
BABIES WITHOUT MEN OR WOMEN… *

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1223617/No-men-OR-women-needed-artificial-sperm-eggs-created-time.html

Nov 1, 2009 - 7:30 pm 64. buddy larsen:

two-by, can’t help but note how perfectly (and perfectly early) Palin sniffed out –and went courageously public with –the mole in NY23, who as you may’ve heard today endorsed the Democrat. Also can’t help but note that soon after Palin endorsed the conservative, her grandchild’s 19 yr old father appeared on the broadcast nets as an interviewee who was led to promise upcoming dirt on the almost-mother in law, “if’n she don’t quit sayin’ stuff on me and stuff”. What a coincidence. Wonder if Fox would ever stoop to hosting say a VP’s daughter and discussing the topic of substance abuse and parenting and stuff.
***
–just saw skook’s note –jeez –that’s sad –he and i have sent each other jokes off and on for years –what a great wit –and defender of the realm –was PeterUK. RIP, PeterUK.

Nov 1, 2009 - 7:32 pm 65. Annoy Mouse:

Gee Skookumchuk, I hope you’re wrong. PeterUK was always a great commenter and deserved a mention on the nominations list. I haven’t seen his name in a while. He didn’t have link attached to his name but I’ll check fallback to see if he did there. If this is true it would be sad indeed. Definitely a Fred moment.
AM

Nov 1, 2009 - 7:42 pm 66. buddy larsen:

AM/65; Tribute to Peter Bocking

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:11 pm 67. Annoy Mouse:

Buddy. Same Guy?

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:17 pm 68. buddy larsen:

AM, yes, it’s certain –look in the comments at the link –loaded with internet friends –mostly from Just One Minute where he seemed to base from. Jeez, he was a groundbreaking “Brit Band Invader” –timewise in ahead of the Fab Four it seems –what a CV –i never imagined –he never pumped himself up. i left a comment on his tribute page –about how, just on an email request from me, he very generously and graciously gave a lot of time and inside knowledge about how to tour London & environs to my eldest daughter and her new hub a couple years ago when they honeymooned the ‘grand tour’ –two people he didn’t know except thru years of net chat with their dad –and he gave them hours of expert meanings and historical significances of this and that landmark. A real gentleman –and fierce defender of Judeao-Christendom from the barbarians on the war front in the worldwide net. the trib mentions he passed on his birthday, Oct 31st, at age 67. He and Walt are star brothers –hmmm–artistic talent must run under that sign –what would that be –Scorpio?

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:33 pm 69. bogie wheel:

Great thread, all. As I’m working on a short timetable, I’m just going to post talking points … please forgive the absence of a fluid essay.

1. “Ignorant woman”? Hmm. Nancy Breedan might want to take the plank out of her own eye first.

2. Intellectual exercises in “what is truth? can we ever know truth?” have their place, but there comes a point at which the discussion becomes a lot of navel-gazing solipsism. As a general rule, any epistemological pursuit that would result in your getting eaten by an approaching tiger is probably not something you want to invest too much time and intellectual energy in.

“That looks like a tiger.
But how do I know it’s a tiger?
How can I be certain that what appears to be there is really there?
How can I be certain that such a thing as tigers exist?
What is the essence of tiger?
Is it even possible to know that I could ever know what is the essence of anything?”

CHOMP.

Darwin Award.

Also, let’s please not misuse the word “proof” (in the empirical, materialist sense) as being the only gateway to knowledge, i.e. “we can know only that which can be empirically, materially proven.” Logic is not material nor scientifically empirical, but it gives us several useful tools to ascertain truth (the law of non-contradiction being one).

3. Actually, I thought Napoleon’s saying was that HISTORY (not truth) is a set of lies agreed upon. This may seem quibbling to some, but the misquotation raises up all sorts of pomo implications that are anachronistic and therefore red herrings.

4. I have to disagree with Mr. Garland’s assertion that “Letterman’s end product is his performance,” upon which his private life has no bearing. This may be true for some audience members, but it may not be true for others. How well does his “end product” fare if revelations about his private life reach a tipping point and a substantial portion of the audience has a gut reaction of “ewww”? In that scenario performance counts for squat.

If the full extent of Letterman’s extracurricular activities has been surfaced, then it doesn’t appear his career will suffer. OTOH if there are additional revelations with more extreme details, audience reaction could turn.

5. Leo – WHY do you think it is we seek perfection in our leaders? And isn’t this a form of idolatry?

I’m all for setting a certain standard (preferably a high one) for character in people who hold positions of authority, because character in my experience speaks to judgment.

But what constitutes a realistic standard, i.e. one which (a) does not discourage otherwise competent people of sound judgment from seeking positions of authority and (b) does not pressure people to cover over or lie about their “honest failures.”

Has failure become another political football in the partisan war in Washington? Who would have thought, given the stereotypes of yesteryear, that nowadays we’d be seeing Democrats as the biggest greedheads and Republicans as the ones who can’t keep their flies zipped?

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:44 pm 70. Annoy Mouse:

One of PeterUK’s many gems -
Buddius Larsenius
“Buddy,
The Romans engage a Greek poet to declaim in the ampitheatre,which was filled with water and a beautiful island constructed for the purpose.Around the island paddled virgins in boats.
The Romans,being nothing if not droll,with an impish sense of humour,released on a prearranged signal wild carnivore on the island, hippotumi and crocodiles into the water.Slaves undid bungs on the boats then swam for their lives.
Eat youir hearts ouy Great Satan Inc,you have a lot to learn in showbusiness.

4/30/2006 01:35:00 PM “

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:47 pm 71. Annoy Mouse:

“what would that be –Scorpio?”

I don’t know Buddy. I am a Taurus and Taureans don’t beleive in astrology.

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:50 pm 72. Charles:

The answer to Blake’s Tyger question is yes.

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:54 pm 73. heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn:

Buddy @ 58

What was it?

Origin – 19th century folklorists (see Stith Thompson)

Analysis- Freud (see Century of the Self/ Documentary series – Chanel 4 U.K )

Application – Edward Louis Bernays

Then we’re well and truly off and running into the 20th century.

As to bows and flows, I think Joni Mitchell singing her own lyrics is always best, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg

but I must add that when I first heard Judy Collins singing George Scroggie’s “Farewell to Tarwathie,” I pulled into a laundromat parking lot to hear it in full.

It may not be the whole truth, but it is
beauty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV29xK2xyZ4&feature=youtube_gdata

Heyyoukids

Nov 1, 2009 - 8:56 pm 74. buddy larsen:

AM/70; oh, he was sharp as a razor, alright –a laff-out-louder when he lit into various comrade proles making the error of challenging a student of history and the rhetorical styles of two dead white men whom i pray he forthwith abides, that be Churchill & Shakespeare. Gad –he’s gone and we still have Axelrod and Annie Dunn?

BW/69; all true but the point i think some are trying to make is, if truth must be amorphous enough to accommodate point-of-view, then why do we even bother with trying to use it as a standard or yardstick at all? (yoo-hoo, here Bible, here Bible, or something to objectively, hierarchically, authoritatively guide the way!)

I am a Taurus and Taureans don’t beleive in astrology –LOL –i wuz born on Hitler’s birthday so i BETTER not believe in it –tho it is said that in Shakespeare’s day the baby wasb’t registered at the church until he had survived three days –which means Shakespeare’s April 23 was really the same day as me n’ Hitler. And some others probably.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:08 pm 75. marymcl:

Natasha Collins was 31 years old. She was an adult and she chose the life she wanted. Her mother is obviously distraught and understandably so. I don’t agree with her charge that the BBC is responsible for her daughter’s death. But by the same token, those who say it’s the mother’s fault or the mother’s failure are making the same denial of personal responsibility that they’re criticizing her about. For crying out loud, is everyone under the age of 40 still a child? Social determinists like whiskey will disagree, but children are individuals from day one and they meet their social conditioning halfway. I’m not discounting the importance of a loving family and all the rest, not by a long shot, just that it’s really jumping to a conclusion to assume Collins didn’t have one. The fact is children grow up and they go their own way. Some will learn from their mistakes and some won’t. I have no idea if Collins’s mother is looking for a cash settlement from the BBC (though it’s a safe bet someone’s bound to suggest it to her before long). But I can’t imagine anything worse than what she’s facing right now.

whiskey -

Regarding those “elites” we’re hearing so much about these days, it’s worth remembering that many of them didn’t start out that way. If, as you say, one of the goals of middle class virtue is to enhance upward mobility, that begs the question, upward to where? David Letterman, for instance, was not born a ‘wealthy sybarite’ (nice turn of phrase btw) he came from the middle class. Nebraska IIRC. Truth is, Kennedys aside, most of the so-called aristocrats you are talking about came from the middle class. (You’ll forgive me for ax-grinding a bit here, but having grown up in blue-collar New York, I get really tired of hearing about ‘coastal elites’ when in fact a lot of these people came to the city from flyover country. Anyway these labels are a menace, in my view, because this kind of semantic shorthand interferes with the ability to see people for who they really are, which to my mind is one of the great conservative virtues. The last thing we need is some kind of class-conscious mentality)

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:16 pm 76. marymcl:

Sad news about PeterUK. Godspeed

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:18 pm 77. twobyfour:

Annoy Mouse/63

The problem is epigenetics. The babies created thusly will be very likely defective, due to stress involved in the procedure that would result in turning off some genes. There is no substitute for the natural conception and gestation process.

(The stories about Greys programs –whether mythology or not– curiously reported the same issues 2 decades ago, when these facts were completely unknown)

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:21 pm 78. buddy larsen:

HYK/73; i’d say that’s as good a list of ‘how’ as any –but the ‘why’ is still out there waiting. Nature says our philosophies are merely the garments our instincts wear –if so we’d seem to need to at least understand we’re in state of redemptive need even when fortune has filled our bellies for the while. Those two ladies are indeed angelic voiced. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot, complained Joni gorgeously. The sirens of the ancient myth never killed the sailors that died on the island –the sailors willingly starved to death, preferring to remain marooned and not to depart the sound of the siren voices. The old meme-warrior Homer was trying to tell us something there, hmmm. (personally i don’t think Marge has all that great a voice but then she do have that fridge)

marymcl –lenin’s and robespierre’s and hitler’s formative intellectual circles were children of middle-class parents by and large –children of parents who had to sacrifice something noticeable to educate their kids –

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:30 pm 79. ledger:

Since the BBC is essentially a government organization let me make a proposal.

I suggest that a 45% wage cut across the board would reduce the consumption of cocaine at the BBC. That type of belt tightening would force the reduction of “nonessential” expenditures by the BBC employees. The tax money could be given back to the taxpayer in the form of a rebate which may stimulate the non-underground economy.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:35 pm 80. marymcl:

@73 heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn

Farewell to Tarwathie – thanks. It has to be one of the most beautiful and haunting songs ever. I used to sing my kids to sleep with it when they were little.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:36 pm 81. Annoy Mouse:

Well then Heil Birthday Herr Fritzlarsen!
I was googling PeterUK and came across some funny threads of Peter and Ash mixing it up.
Peter bestows Ash: “Ash, what on earth are you talking about? I give up trying to find a coherent thread in your comments.“ PeterUK
Ash drones on: “I am suggesting that the war is un-winnable because we have set the bar for victory so high (winning hearts and minds to our flavor of democracy) and this is an impossible task to do militarily. The military method actually hinders progress in this task. We are using the wrong tool for the job.”
Ash the savant continues: “oh yeah, and that other whopper of an illusion, that we can fight terror with the military. I had a terrifying dream last night, what the heck is the military going to do about it?”

PeterUK goes in for the kill…
So terror is merely a bad dream is it Ash?
There are plenty of military psychiatrists who can assist you.

Great guy. You know what, I don’t know if there is much conservatism in Britain but I’d imagine if there is it is getting on like Peter. Funny thing, I always thought of him as a moderate voice. A lot of his posts were deleted. Profanity or self-censorship. and thinking of the BC orchestra, Peter woulda had to have his own venue in real life. Seems to me he once said that he was a professional guitar player and all I thought was, Gee, that’s nice.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:38 pm 82. Charles:

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Whoops. Made a mistake here. The Lamb here is capitalized–so Blake is referring to Christ. The problem is that God did not “Make” Christ. This idea of Christ being made –is part of the 3rd century arian heresy that Newton promulgated because he took descartes scientific method to its logical conclusion.

Christ was not made, rather (and here’s a pretty good exegesis)..
Christ also existed throughout all eternity with God: [In old testament terms:] “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From everlasting I was established from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled before the hills. I was brought forth (or born); while He (God) had not ‘yet made the earth and the fields, nor the first dust of the world” (Prov. 8:22-26)

In the new testament we also read that, “In the beginning was the Word (Christ) and the Word was with God… He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). Christ Himself declared, “‘Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM’” (8:58) and He prayed to God saying, “and now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I ever had with Thee before the world was” (John 17:5). In Colossians 1:17, we read that Christ “is before all things… (Col. 1:17) which necessarily imply He was “with the Father” (I John 1:1-2) throughout all eternity past.

Those passages should not be considered to be a contradiction to the fact of God’s unity, but rather a complement to the right understanding of who God is or of the nature of the true God. Thus, not only did Christ inhabit all the days of eternity past with God, but we are taught that Christ was God” (John 1:1); ” He existed in the form of God” (Phil, 2:6); He existed in the very essence of God. Christ was equal with God (John 5:18: 10:33).

THE HOLY SPIRIT

Not only do the scriptures reveal that God is but one, and that Christ coexisted with God throughout all eternity past – that He is equal with God – that He is God, but they also teach that the Holy Spirit is God. That fact is more particularly seen in Acts 5:3-4 where Peter tells Ananias that by lying to the Holy Spirit, he lied to God. Secondly, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, the Holy Spirit is called “The Lord”. Third, Hebrews 9:14 affirms that the Holy Spirit is “The eternal Spirit”. Therefore, the Holy Spirit also existed throughout all eternity past with God the Father, and with God the Son.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:40 pm 83. Annoy Mouse:

Twobyfour
I thought epigenics was some sort of real-time genetic programming that responded to environment and mental routine.

“There is no substitute for the natural conception and gestation process.”

Sounds yucky. Oh well the great quest must continue, virgins be damned and …
well, you get the point.

“And some others probably.” Yeah, probably near 1/365 * 6.2 billion.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:46 pm 84. RagnarD:

E. Nigma @ 50:

….Newtonian Mechanics (when we aren’t in a relativistic framework)….

Way, way O/T:
The really interesting and very, very Zen thing about relativistic mechanics is that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference. IOW, when traveling at almost the speed of light, say 0.999999999c, the speed of light is still 299,792,458 metres per second. Always. Google the gedanken zug.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:48 pm 85. twobyfour:

Charles, I know it’s sunday… but I question the appropriateness of your posts in this thread. Wait for one that deals with religion… but then also try to be somewhat on topic. You are leading a monologue, my friend.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:49 pm 86. heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn:

marymcl @ 80

Your very welcome.

Perhaps its in the nature of toomuchinformation
but my mother, being Welsh, it was most often “All Through the Night”

What I wonder can one then take away from these recollections?

Heyyoukids

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:49 pm 87. Thomas Drew:

I don’t know whether Truth comes into politics or not. I suppose some of its practitioners would like to think so, but the preponderance seem to believe that what the public believes is close enough to make it at least operative (a good bit of Nixonian vocabulary, which never lost its usefulness).

Let’s not forget that most of the Senate and House are quite a bit older than most citizens. They need the ship to stay afloat only a short time compared to the rest of us, and most of them have their refuges, whether those are houses in Paris, estates in Colorado or Wyoming, or upstate New York, or wherever they like. In this life, a temporary solution is all anybody needs, and they have it all set up. From their point of view, après moi le deluge is a pragmatically functional decision. It’s younger people that worry about ‘principles’ and metaphysics, and Hume and so forth.

Wretchard has been telling us for years now: human beings will surprise themselves when the chips are down. Those who have been mouthing the most pacifistic, idealistic rhetoric will overnight prove to be the most violent in spite of themselves. It’s the ones who have never lost their acquaintance with violence, who perhaps have managed a safe-house in perilous conditions, that have learned real survival skills, who are actually to be trusted.

I’m an English major, then a seminary student; consequently very poorly equipped. I read with interest those best comments nominations, particularly the first.

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/10/22/the-lighting-of-the-beacons/#comment-186

Wonderful as that squib sounds, it shows the writer has missed the point. I suspect we’re headed for a struggle we can’t imagine, that will change us beyond recognition. Maybe an ironic sort of anti-redemption. As Isaiah said, All flesh, not just those who reject the prophecy, is grass. As the Apostle wrote much later, our virtue is so much rags.

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:51 pm 88. heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn:

marymcl @ 80

Your very welcome.

Perhaps its in the nature of toomuchinformation
but my mother, being Welsh, it was most often “All Through the Night”

What I wonder can one then take away from these recollections?

Heyyoukids

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:51 pm 89. heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn:

marymcl @ 80

Your very welcome.

Perhaps its in the nature of too much information but my mother, being Welsh, it was most often “All Through the Night”

What I wonder can one then take away from these recollections?

Heyyoukids

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:56 pm 90. Leo Linbeck III:

Someone sent me this video. It seems like it fits in with tonight’s discussion (decay of the elites, manipulation of perception, what is truth), but more importantly, it’s pretty darn inspiring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GCfM60RriM

Cheers,
L3

Nov 1, 2009 - 9:57 pm 91. Thomas Drew:

error

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:01 pm 92. JFSanders031:

“5. Leo – WHY do you think it is we seek perfection in our leaders? And isn’t this a form of idolatry?”

Not Leo, but I will take a stab at it. We seek perfection in our leaders just as we seek perfection in our car mechanics. Because the thought of the brakes going out makes for poor sleep.

Buddy We share a birthday! And it is also the birthday of Napolean III as well. There is a drive to lead in that day. And a certain amount of ego as well.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:08 pm 93. Annoy Mouse:

“I think the key idea behind civilization, and indeed all progress, is that there is something out there that represents the truth. It exists independently of us.”

I have come to believe that the only knowable truth is God himself because one can not hope to arrive at it by looking to oneself. The truths of Man are illusory and fickle; for man can not see truth where he seeks himself. It humbles one to see and hear truth and unless one prostrates themselves to His knowledge it remains hidden. The mind of man can only be seen with empathy and fleetingly at that.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:10 pm 94. buddy larsen:

TD/87; Easter Island is a strange thing under the sun. First there’s the name we westerners gave it, then there’s how that name vibrates against the likely history of the people who made the great stone heads. The island is so far out in the middle of the ocean that it’s like a planet in space –peopled by storm-driven explorers likely in flight from a place of eviction. there they had ideas which they expressed with the monumental labor of the stone heads. Something happened at some point –they had run out of fuel and thus fire and fishing boats, and had gone to clan wars and cannibalism and finally to extinction of the last terrorized and monstrous survivors. The once great builders had left their great ideas from the good times, the fantastical achievement of the ranks of great stone heads, for eternity. So when visitors from another world (Captain Cook was it?) came they could see that there had been great ideas, powerful, motivating, energizing ideas –but no one will ever know what they were.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:10 pm 95. presbypoet:

One major problem is that the truth is paradoxical. (Actually at least quadradoxical, but that is beyond even my understanding.) “Understanding” theology, which is at heart study of Truth, is assisted by “understanding” quantum mechanics. The secret of paradox is in understanding you must be as familiar with what does not happen, as what does happen. Knowing the electron is also 100% wave, at the same time you see it only as particle is helpful.

A simple paradox is found in how often to have communion (mass). Two possible forms are; once a day, or once a month. Each with it’s own danger. If you do it every day, you lose freshness, and it become mere habit, you take it for granted, and it dies. Do it only once a month, and it becomes mere memorial, disconnected from life. It is no longer truly part of your life, and it dies. To find the right and true periodicy, requires asking God. This I did. I asked Him for the true and or compromise number.

His response: Paradoxical. My response. “I can’t do that.” That was when I knew it was God I heard. Since if it’s my own idea, I’m not going to imagine something I can’t do.

His answer:
“Just do both”. Me, simple creature limited by time and space must choose one or the other, much like the collapse of the wave function in quantum physics. I can’t do both. No matter which is chosen, I am prevented from being able to do the other.

Wrestled with this paradox, some understanding came. What was needed was to understand, since they were both right, and beneficial, no matter which I chose, to be as familiar with the other, as the one I did.

So to have mass every day with Catholics, it must be as fresh as if it as been a month. Sharing communion once a month with Presbyterians, it must be as familiar as if done every day. So in simple terms, what I don’t do must be as familiar to me as what I do.

Now this is a simple Truth. The more complex ones hurt the head even more.

My variation of the Rumsfeld Known knowns, is this:
“I need to learn what I don’t know”. Sounds simple, but since I will never know what I don’t know, it tends to keep me humble, since this means the more certain I am, the harder tis to find the Truth. This is one of the simple prime paradoxes. Along with Jesus being 100% God and 100% man.

This may help explain why Truth is so hard to find. Yet one of the Great Paradoxes is:
Truth is knowable/Truth is not knowable, both true at the same time.

Charles: 56

We don’t know what Pilate said. Was he being sarcastic? Was he asking an honest question? Was he saying it is whatever the Emperor says? So the irony is we can’t know the answer, since we don’t know the question.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:16 pm 96. JFSanders031:

RagnarD “Way, way O/T:
The really interesting and very, very Zen thing about relativistic mechanics is that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference. IOW, when traveling at almost the speed of light, say 0.999999999c, the speed of light is still 299,792,458 metres per second. Always. Google the gedanken zug.”

It would seem to me that if “light” can be bent/turned then it can be controlled. If it can be controlled then it is just a matter of finding the proper control for speed. I am not sure but I think the speed of light is different for travel through different mediums. Or then again it may just be that it takes the light longer to travel through due to having to take the longer route along the crystalline structure. Well now I have something to ponder while I turn the pipe wrenches!

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:19 pm 97. Charles:

85. twobyfour:

I disagree. Notice Richard’s last line: “But they must always remember, or forget at their peril, that it is all upborne by truth and human love.”

Until the modern era Christ was the cornerstone for any understanding of truth and love in Christendom.

So its important to know who Christ is (and how the west sheered off its foundations)

If you’d like to read a purely Old Testament take on the subject–proverbs 8 is pretty good

That said, hey feel free to just skip over stuff you don’t care to read.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:30 pm 98. buddy larsen:

PP/95; reminds of the Riddle of the Sphinx –which is ‘what has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?’ The answer is “man –crawls as a baby, walks as an adult, uses a cane as an elder”. but that answer, “man”, means the riddle of the Sphinx is the riddle of the sphinx. the question is the answer, the answer is the question, the medium is the message (as McLuhan told the waiter at the steakhouse), and a better riddle is the Riddle of the Spinks, which is, “in their primes, who would’ve won between Michael and Leon?”

Charles/97; i’m glad to be reminded –the comments favorites threads –alas i missed he start up (sometimes i go into a hole and can’t read) and thus couldn’t agree timely-like, but someone mentioned your long-ago description of a night vist to the Antietam Battlefield, where people had gathered and were burning candles out acrost the meadows –and –I’m reading this on the thread just yesterday or day before –my thought was “that is truly as memorable a comment as i’ve ever read on these pages”.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:31 pm 99. heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn:

My apologies to all for the multiple post.

Buddy @ 78

I suspect Darwin is involved.

Its always a test

I also expect we are to be moved in mysterious ways, are we not?

Heyyoukids

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:40 pm 100. Annoy Mouse:

Riddle of the Spinks – I know that one Buddy. What is Fee Fi Foe, Fo Fee Fee Fi? That is Leon Spinks phone number.

Hey 100, do I win a prize or just frequent commenter points?

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:47 pm 101. RagnarD:

JFSanders – Ponder this, if you are on that train going 0.999999…c (almost the speed of light, but not quite) and your turn on the headlight, what happens? What if you are standing some distance from the track, at rest, can see the train, do you see the headlight come on?

A frame of reference is any place that you can place yourself. Including a crystalline lattice. And yes, it does travel through different mediums at different speeds. That ‘frame of reference’ thing again.

And the speed of light is absolute. It is always c, in all frames of reference.

And E = gamma times m times c ^ 2. Gamma is the fudge factor for frames of reference, sorta.

gamma = 1/(1-(v^2/c^2)) and is greater than or equal to 1. (Sorry, I don’t have the symbolic library) v is your speed in your frame of reference.

To ponder those sort of questions and others is the best we can be. Whether it is relativistic mechanics or the relations of the elites to their suborned ones. (To have an elite class there MUST be peasants, yes?) I forget where I saw it but there was a thread that simply said there are two types of humans. Doers and not-doers. The not-doers can only exist as parasites on the doers. IOW, government/rulers/elites produce no thing.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:51 pm 102. twobyfour:

Annoy Mouse/83

In a sense, you are right about epigenetics, but the label/concept has been a bit broadened lately. Until recently, it was just a concept, but now it has been discovered that there is a physical mechanism behind it. Our 30k coding genes seem to be a paltry quantity to do much beyond manufacture of proteins. The fuzz–RNA “tags” attached to DNA 2-helix and their mutual relationship is the mechanism that forms another information layer on top of DNA chain and expands the information density manifold. One of their purposes is to turn on/off the genes they are attached to.

As far as the artificial procedures go, even artificial insemination is problematic. The process of removing the egg into a petri dish or freezing sperm seems to turn off some genes and increases the likelihood of defects that not only affect the individual conceived thusly, but also would be transferred to future descendants. From that follows that individuals created entirely artificially from stem cells would experience even more stresses due to whole new set of manipulative procedures involved in their creation and would have severe problems even in a very advanced society.

Kind of funny when one considers the Sumerian mythology about creation of man. In a nutshell, an ape man’s (Neanderthal?) scaffolding (curiously depicted as two intertwined snakes… well that is an interpretation that they are snakes, the detail is a bit lacking on cylindrical seals and if I were it shown out of context, I’d swear it is a double helix) was used as a base and mixed up with a scaffolding of the Lofty Ones (you can see the whole ensemble of chemical vessels on some seals that relate part of the story). The result — a.da.mu, e.g. one-from-mud-made, a human — is usually seen sitting on the lap of Enki (lofty male, the genius behind the creation) or Nimhursag (lofty female that provided her womb).

The whole purpose in creating a.da.mu was to make a worker creature. The ape man was not suitable for the tasks Enki had on mind–too untamed, brutish in stature and somewhat lacking the required type of intelligence. The story goes that lower rank lofty ones rebelled against their toiling in Abzu mines (somewhere in Africa, base don some interpretations) and asked Enki to find a replacement. One of the miners came up with the idea of making a man–a creature that would be docile but with enough mental capacity to take over menial tasks.

In the Sumerian story of man, that continues in Gilgamesh Epic, Ea, a Lofty One of highest rank (Enki was the same rank) that opposed to the whole venture from beginning, was not particularly bothered with the tree of life (genetic manipulation?), but the idea of transfer of intelligence (tree of knowledge?) to a.da.mu bothered him to no end and he considered that a sin.

Well, it’s just a story… snakes, trees, a.da.mu and sin… no apple though.

Nov 1, 2009 - 10:54 pm 103. buddy larsen:

HYK/99; agree –what bear would leave his hibernatin’ cave if when he woke up there was fifty pallets of fresh frozen salmon stacked inside? Like Kipling recognized the better man in Gunga Din, as Animal Mother admired of the nearby dead VC trooper in Full Metal Jacket “the little bastard fights on a handful of rice a day” –success is the source of failure. it don’t guarantee it, but that’s the way to bet, long term. unless we adhere to the dictum of Admiral Togo, victor of the battle of Tsushima Strait: “after victory, pull down your helmet”.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:01 pm 104. Annoy Mouse:

Interesting stuff 2by. I never thought of the snakes and DNA et al. More primal intelligence? Don’t know but you can throw in the barber pole there too.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:01 pm 105. Walt:

Wretchard said, The modern economy no longer produces “things”. The question then becomes, how will a declining service economy be returned to an industrial economy? By a Deus Ex Machina? Or is that machinery gone forever as well?

He looked just like you would expect
An empty man to look
A man self-lacking in respect
A case right from the book
He settled wearily on the couch
He sighed and closed his eyes
Said, Doctor I no longer vouch
For what I know are lies
What do you mean? I murmured low
He sighed again and said,
I don’t know why it’s gotten so
The world I trust is dead
You see I once believed in all
The government would say
The TV news now has the gall
To claim that just today
They found that things that we once made
Are made in China now
The Chinese put us in the shade
They’ve stolen our know-how
We do not make the little things
Like hammers, hats and shoes
Or screws and nails and front porch swings
The stuff that folks all use
They claim that we’re in service here
In good old USA
And what is more, this much is clear
We’ve traded jobs that pay
Enough so that a factory hand
Can have a wife and kids
He knows he can support them and
His job won’t hit the skids
I never thought about it much
But doctor, now I see
That service jobs and others such
As those are never free
And have you lost your job I asked
He paused to catch his breath
I did, he said, and now I’m tasked
To bring about the death
Of all the lands that once employed
Its workers making things
I’m tasked to see that they’re destroyed
From commoners to kings
He left me then and shuffled out
I thought him odd but sane
And as I chanced to look about
I glanced out in the rain
And saw the lights go slowly dim
And streetcars to a crawl
I knew at once because of him
For on my desk a scrawl
“When men deny the grace of work
They cannot see the light”
And as I watched by some strange quirk
Came ever-lasting night

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:16 pm 106. twobyfour:

Charles/97
Ya, refs would do just fine, no need to quote whole passages from bible. A ref and your insight/commentary would do a better job.

JFSanders031/96 & RagnarD/101
I were always puzzled by the whole “speed of light” thingy. What is so special about that particular narrow segment of the electromagnetic wavelengths that we perceive as “light”?

It makes no sense because there is no reason why it should be disconnected from all other wavelengths that are outside that narrow bandwidth. And indeed, the same equations apply to all of them.

The only thing I can think of that makes light somewhat different that we are better at collapsing its wave function.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:21 pm 107. Annoy Mouse:

WOT – I just saw O on TV stumping for a candidate and the question occurred to me, just how old was Barry before he was able to affect the tone and lexicon of an African American. I don’t suppose he got much practice in Indonesia or Hawaii. How old was he when he moved to Chicago, and how long did he have to attend the Rev Wright dojo to get the soaring oratory down. I don’t suppose he learned ot from Harvard. I must admit the sermons are affecting me.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:21 pm 108. Annoy Mouse:

“Wretchard said, The modern economy no longer produces “things”. The question then becomes, how will a declining service economy be returned to an industrial economy? By a Deus Ex Machina? Or is that machinery gone forever as well?”
I stumbled across this vintage Annoy Mouse looking for PeterUK material so excuse my vanity;
“The trend of mergers and acquisitions has been to bring about economic well being to the predator company and not necessarily for the overall health of the economy. There is a reason that there are anti-trust laws and I am afraid in the gonzo service economy where the US neither builds nor makes anything for export except for weapons systems, based on the idea that we, a nation of lawyers, pizza delivery persons, hairdressers and phone-sanitizers, will be hired by the Chinese army or Putin’s thugs in order to service the rope that they made for our own lynching, and it will therefore all work out within the bistro math when the bill comes due, somehow., It doesn’t ring true to me.

I’ve watch companies spend 30% of their total economic output making quarterly forecasts come true. We shipped product to distribution points that didn’t order it, then offered them a huge discount, just to post sales within forecast if for a day or two. We had our production shut down because the trucks with our Just-In-Time supplies were parked down the street so our quarterly forecast would be on track, and yeah, we wouldn’t take credit for sales because we didn’t want to be over forecast either. The MBA’s screwed American manufacturing, they screwed the savings and loans, and they’ll screw what ever else comes down the pike. You can’t run a company based on strict adherence to quarterly goals, while we dithered, Asia build infrastructure.

And one day the bagmen came and cooked the books like bones of the living organism and feasted on the gutted carcass. It happened.
5/01/2006 01:19:00 PM
“

Grim. I can add Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the heap piles. Exporting wealth is an industry. It just isn’t a growth industry.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:29 pm 109. Charles:

Charles: 56

We don’t know what Pilate said. Was he being sarcastic? Was he asking an honest question? Was he saying it is whatever the Emperor says? So the irony is we can’t know the answer, since we don’t know the question.
…….
We know what he said.

John 18:38 What is truth? Pilate asked.

We know that pilot was looking at the truth because we know Jesus is the truth as in John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

But what did Pilot mean?

Well consider how he answers his own question. In the next sentence there is this. “With this he went out again to the Jews and said, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

So the narrowest answer was that the truth was –for Pilot–that was Jesus was not guilty of the charges against him.

Beyond that I think that all the possibilities that you laid out have merit. To those I would add “who dat”. Here’s a Wikipedia geneology of the expression. Contained in the geneology is this:

“Who Dat?” Lyrics from 1937:

Who dat up there who’s dat down there
Who dat up there who dat well down there
Who’s dat up there, sayin’ who’s dat down there
When I see you up there well who’s dat down there

Who dat inside who’s dat outside
Who’s dat inside who dat well outside
Who’s dat inside, singin’ who’s dat outside
When I see up there well who’s dat out there

Button up your lip there big boy
Stop answerin’ back
Give you a tip there big boy
Announce yourself jack

Who dat up there who’s dat down there
Who dat up there who dat, well down there
Who’s dat up there, singin’ who’s dat down there
When I see you up there you bum
Well who’s dat down there

Who dat

Just before that line in
We can infer from pilot’s next line what he meant. “With this he went out again to the Jews and said, I find no basis for a charge against him.” The charge was treason against Rome. Why no treason….that whatever Jesus claims –they did not constitute treason against Rome since Jesus earlier said in verse Rome’s Jurisdiction was of this world.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:36 pm 110. presbypoet:

106
Maxwell showed light was an elecromagnetic wave, that includes all wavelengths of light from radio to gamma.

In fact, most “light” we see from distant galaxies has been redshifted, so what was origninally was ultraviolet, now is shifted where we see it.
Wiki has more info than you ever need to know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell’s_equations

105 Walt

What happens is that when currencies adjust, we end up like any country that does not produce a good, it will cost us more. At some point it makes sense to build a plant here, the only problem is not having the money to pay for the capital investment. That is why capital flows are important. The other problem is we have lost the human knowledge base, it will take time and pain to recover.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:42 pm 111. Alexis:

Do not forget the Mesoamerican myth about how Tezcatlipoca defeated Quetzalcoatl. The “smoking mirror”. The mirror that lies. The mirror that tells the person watching it something other than that which is real. Even if the real mirror says one thing, the smoking mirror can tell a girl she is fat when she really isn’t. That is the power of myth.

All too often, a political dynasty becomes a victim of its own lies, where the political leaders not only believe their own propaganda but let their very identities become defined by that lie. Divine Right Monarchy is one example. The worst example, though, ought to be the Ptolemaic Dynasty, which systematically deified its rulers. The latter half of the Ptolemaic Dynasty was so subsumed by the most depraved variety of familial infighting that it gave rise to some of the worst horrors of modern times (such as anti-Semitism…). Let’s put it this way. Any political system that could let Ptolemy Physcon (who called himself Ptolemy Euergetes II) run around loose must be remarkable stable and robust, for a more fragile system would have collapsed much sooner.

There are reasons why I am utterly concerned whenever any political leader dons the halo and seeks religious sanctification as a means of obtaining political power. It’s all understandable from an atheist standpoint, I suppose, as a means of keeping political order, but the abuse of religious sanctification for political purposes effectively trivializes religion. The trivialization of religion through the abuse of divinity is part of what made Ptolemaic pretensions (as well as the pretensions of Nero and Elagabalus) so offensive.

Nov 1, 2009 - 11:51 pm 112. wretchard:

Leo, Walt, presbypoet — that was good stuff. Amazing stuff from a lot of commenters. And since we’ve brought Judy Blue Eyes into to narrative, here’s her version of “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today”.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:16 am 113. bob from Idaho:

Mark 10:18

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

John 14:6

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

We don’t have a clue “what Pilate said”. We know what some writers wrote.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:16 am 114. E. Nigma:

RagnarD,

What I meant by ‘truth’ in the empirical sense was Newtonian Mechanics. It is not that the Michelson-Morley experiment wasn’t “truth”, or that Einsteinian Mechanics and Riemann geometry aren’t ‘truths’ (just beyond my abilities), it’s just that they are not as easily accesible to the average man as Newtonian Mechanics, which works pretty well in most cases, unless you are working around a pretty deep gravity well (look oooooout!) or operating at a significant fraction of ‘c’. When you are calculating stresses and loads on structural members of a building design or a bridge, you usually don’t use Einstein Relativity Mechanics to find the answer.
F=ma and its variations works pretty well.

And since we are governed by the top speed of the electromagnetic spectrum (in transmitting information and knowledge), the speed of light (c) is also the speed of Truth, since no known phenomenon can exceed that velocity.

Is it also the speed of Lies?

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:19 am 115. twobyfour:

presbypoet/110

I’ll be lost without your elucidation.
Some say that Heaviside’s rearrangement of Maxwell’s equations (that is what it is, what is known as Maxwell’s equations is what was the result of Heaviside involvement) was a reductionist endeavor that curbed the true understanding of phenomena Maxwell described.

As for red shift… If the red shift is quantized as some observations indicate, then the “from distant galaxies” may be actually wildly inaccurate. There are several clusters that have an apparent relationship (connected by filaments) and they have different red/blue shit values in its component parts (in some cases the red-shifted object is in front of a blue-shifted object and decidedly both a part of the same superstructure). That may indicate that the current red/blue shift concept is incorrect and it is related to a different type of phenomena than a Doppler effect. It would also mean that our estimates of distances would be, eh…, misjudged, as well.

It may be that red shift=hot/new and blue shift = cold/not so new.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:23 am 116. Unsk:

“Why have we become so indifferent to counterfeits?

If I may take a stab at that question.

For many in the teenage to thirty something female demographic a cool, hip lie is acceptable as long as it is cool and hip.

Why? Partly because lying for some is a part of romance, and partly because so many young women desperately want to believe the lie and contradiction that there is a Bad Boy/ Prince Charming out there just waiting for them that is equally loving, honest, tender and caring and who is at the same time a ruthlessly blackhearted animal brute Alpha male that satisfies their instinctual yearning for the survival of the fittest. And pity those suitors who don’t play in to that lie.

Powerful forces in the political, cultural, fashion and commercial realms all want to romance and capture the allegiance and favor of this prized demographic of young women. Young women are most easily swayed by hip political movements. Young women are the most likely trend setters in culture and fashion. And young women shop for and buy more products that any other demographic. It is not surprising that these realms all want to conform to the attitudes, sensibilities and preferences of this dominant marketing demographic. So the acceptance of the easy hip lie takes hold.

But to make matters worse, in our perpetual adolescent culture. currying favors, sexual and otherwise of pretty young women has become an ongoing lifelong pursuit. As the ability to project hip and cool has grown to be critical part of our elite’s life pursuits in the trendy realms of commerce, fashion and culture, the fashionable, hip lie has become a necessary tool for many. It is almost to the point for some of the most jaded in the hip set, that telling a lie particularly to an unhip “schmuck” has become a badge of honor.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:51 am 117. Fletcher Christian:

#108 Annoy Mouse – Your depiction of what happened where you used to work is an illustration of something I heard said some time ago; “Every company over a certain size needs bureaucrats and accountants on staff – but for God’s sake don’t let them run the place”.

I don’t know whether it would work in the USA, but we Brits have become used to socialised medicine. My favoured solution is a halfway house; make health insurance compulsory but the government takes up the slack in difficult cases, and the choice of service provider is up to the patient. One reason why is this: The UK Government had a problem with long waiting times in emergency. Their preferred solution was targets for time taken to be seen, which led in many hospitals to the spectacle of lines of ambulances outside the doors for many minutes – because the clock didn’t start ticking until the patient was checked into reception.

Manage a business with targets, and bad employees will find a way to game the system. And the higher up the tree they are the more gaming they will do.

Nov 2, 2009 - 1:31 am 118. ADE:

What is truth?

But is the West, nay the BC, not yet again self-flagellating?

Consider this:

Long ago, Geneva’s police arrested Gaddafi’s son Hannibal in a luxury hotel for beating his imported personal servants. Once Hannibal returned home Dad Gaddafi had two Swiss working in Libya arrested for violations of immigration rules.

In August, the acting President of Switzerland went to Tripoli to settle the matter. There he gave the Gaddafi family the factually unwarranted apology they demanded in their tantrum. He did so even though, “Mr. Son” has been handled according to the laws of the realm. Naïve Mr. Merz returned without the hostages but with promises. He guessed that the Libyans did not want a high publicity welcome for the returned hostages. A government plane and the head of state would have had that effect. The idea was that the hero’s welcome, such as the one given to the Lockerbie bomber by with which Libya’s violated its promise to Britain, had to be avoided. He did, however, have the commitment of the ranting dictator that by the end of September the case would be closed in exchange for an “independent” investigation of the arrest in Geneva. Therefore, a government plane was sent to bring the hostages back quietly. After three days, the plain was ordered to return empty. Following some complication, the deadline passed and the hostages stayed. Supposedly, the Leader was insulted because a local paper published a picture showing Hannibal while under arrest. The Libyans now claimed that all that they had promised was to take some action regarding the detainees. That promise was fulfilled by referring the issue to the Ministry of Justice. “Justice” and the “independent judiciary” did not see it fit to ignore the alleged overstaying of visas.

Now the matter gets more serious. The two Swiss who resided in the Embassy were asked to come to a hospital for a pre-exit check-up. Was it the facility in which the “Bulgarian nurses,” that were sentenced to death for infecting children with Aids, used to be working? The insinuation was that this examination is to prove that the detainees were in good health prior to their release. Well, the presumably healthy hostages never returned from their check up. For weeks now, they are being held in an unknown place. Violating several rules, they are not allowed to have contact to either their consulate or to their family.

Late developments. Libya protests the Swiss foreign minister’s recent use of the term “hostage.” We learn that the two non-hostages are free. However, they are kept in a safe place where no one can harm them. (Be sure you are seated as you digest the absurdity that follows!) The secrecy is needed to prevent Swiss commandoes from kidnapping them Entebbe style. Again, the Swiss, presumably having been invited to do so, sent a plane to Tripoli with foreign office staff to resolve the matter diplomatically. The would-be “negotiators” returned empty handed.

Typically, the humiliated Swiss are confused. Should they apply retaliatory sanctions? Those would anger Gaddafi. Whatever they do, the international community will not help them because Libya has oil money. Furthermore, no one wishes to irritate dictators unless they are directly involved. Who cares, unless he has to, about Lockerbie, the “nurses case” or bozo’s recent stand up comic show at the UNO? That being the case, a criminal regime is again “getting away with it.” That eggs on other similar systems to emulate the example. Just think of Iranian and North Korean promises and their ignored, consequence-free disregard that is followed by new demands and delays. The comportment jeopardizes everybody and signifies a crisis of the international order. The global order is being undermined by discrediting, through their misuse, the proven procedures that sustain it. The pattern that emerges promises to lead to more and more substantial violations. For those transgressions the now silent potential victim states and the “international community” (what a misnomer!) is responsible.

There’s wobbly truth, and there’s moonbattery.

ADE

Nov 2, 2009 - 4:27 am 119. Charles:

113. bob from Idaho:

Mark 10:18

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

John 14:6

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

We don’t have a clue “what Pilate said”. We know what some writers wrote.
……..
If you go by that line of reasoning then you have an epistemological problem with the rest of the bible both OT & NT.

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:00 am 120. ADE:

Ok,

I’ll answer it myself.

I’ve invoked the “what-about-ery” argument, and I know it. No apologies.

But why does the West have to be perfect, or its no good?

Why do we set ourselves standards from which we can only fail?

Because we know that the concept of Original Sin is all pervasive.

If you incorporate human frailty into your logic, you won’t go too far wrong.

ADE

PS: Er, Charles, did Jesus actually exist, because I love his ideas.

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:09 am 121. Charles:

107. Annoy Mouse:

I’ve been on a couple Columbia U alumni threads. Not only are there no records publicly available of his attendance there but no one from his years there remembers him at all. Even guys who graduated poly sci in 1983. I graduated in 1986 with a degree in poly sci. (I tell people these days don’t do a soft science as an undergraduate)

That said, I am one of those who believe that he did attend columbia. why? I went to his chicago pastor’s website in the spring of 2008 and looked at their mission statements, core values etc. What I saw reminded me of the common coin of urban studies/black studies/african studies depts at Columbia from back in the 1980. My impression is that they remain.

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:29 am 122. Charles:

120. ADE:
did Jesus actually exist, because I love his ideas.
///
Did Moses exist? I love his ideas too.

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:37 am 123. ADE:

Charles,

I asked you first.

ADE

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:39 am 124. Charles:

123. ADE:

I believe that both Moses and Jesus once walked the earth.

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:43 am 125. ADE:

Charles, you walked into this:

“sorta like dinosaurs”.

OK, cheap joke.

All we disagree on is who made them God (Jesus) or Godish (Moses).

My answer is: We did.

And if I had to pick from the candidate list, they ain’t too bad.

ADE

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:49 am 126. Wadeusaf:

Conflation!
President Reagan had a way of explaining the separation of two similar but really unrelated ideas was required so a more practical method could be applied and desirable outcome could be achieved. I think it is called perspective.

If you are at rest when the light of the train clicks on it is reasonable to believe you will initially see the illumination but not the train,unless your brain can identify and decipher the blip of time the train took to pass by and reconstruct it in a meaningful to you way. And that’s the truth.

Nov 2, 2009 - 5:50 am 127. Annoy Mouse:

Charles – It’s pretty easy to slide under the social radar when you are Marvin Milque toast. I never visited the colleges I went to. And as soaring oratory is concerned, maybe Barry needed a new personality to pick up chicks. Imagine a modern rendition of a knit-capped urban Hillary wearing a Che’ Guevara shirt in the back room of some college café drinking tea. Barry is a Europhile and his affected speech making may be some kind of social coping mechanism. Either he had a religious epiphany some time in his near youth and started talking like Moses or he adopted it, chameleon like, as a means to provide cover for his political inexperience. Who’d dare damn Moses?

Nov 2, 2009 - 6:32 am 128. programmer:

Walt@105:

I have never commented on your poetry before, just enjoyed it, but all I can say is Wow, just Wow. That is powerful, dude. The spirit of Taliesin lives on.

Nov 2, 2009 - 6:59 am 129. joe buzz:

I will only wade briefly into these depths to comment that I am truthfully saddened to read of PeterUK’s passing.
Now back out onto the bank…..
…..*looks around in the weeds for flyrod*……

Nov 2, 2009 - 7:14 am 130. twobyfour:

Unsk/116

“Young women are the most likely trend setters in culture and fashion.”

Actually, it seems that the powerful forces in the political, cultural, fashion and commercial realms all figgered out that they are a demographic most easily swayed, so they produce the hip trends for them. So, though they all want to conform to the attitudes, sensibilities and preferences of this dominant marketing demographic, they also are making sure that there is an ample supply of hip trends to be set. Kind of two way street. Everybody has some bridge to sell. Thus the “powerful forces” love to have that segment it is more easy their bridges sell to.

Nov 2, 2009 - 7:26 am 131. Charles:

127. Annoy Mouse:
Barry is a Europhile

I don’t think that this is quite right. Rather Barry is a globalist/transnationalist/world citizen. Barry is a Europhile to the extent that the Europeans are globalists. Remember his mom worked for the UN. Guys like Geitner may have got their job because Geitner’s father worked in Indonesia at the same time O’s mother was there.

imho the greatest amount of damage to the USA that O will attempt will be to cede US money and sovereignty to the UN.

Nov 2, 2009 - 7:30 am 132. twobyfour:

Wadeusaf/126

It’s probably more complicated. At the near the speed of EMF propagation, the mass of the train would be such that it would create a gravity well bending light that it produces. You won’t see a thing, but providing it’s a pitch black night and there is a film behind you, after developing it you may find a faint outline of your skeletal structure on it.

Nov 2, 2009 - 7:43 am 133. Charles:

7. Bob:

Debbie Schussel asserts that Glenn Beck is a coke head.
………
Glenn Beck, FOX’s “Rodeo Clown”

Much of what aggravates the Obama administration about FOX News is what Joe Biden would call a three-letter word: B-E-C-K.

Beck calls himself a “rodeo clown.” That fits. A rodeo clown distracts the bull’s attention to defend rodeo riders at risk. Beck believes the nation is at risk and he’s out to distract the raging bulls, or the progressives in power.

This guy is a phony

Nov 2, 2009 - 8:03 am 134. Charles:

Darn I can’t get the editor to work. 133 should read:

Debbie Schussel asserts that Glenn Beck is a coke head…
This guy is a phony
………
Glenn Beck, FOX’s “Rodeo Clown”

Much of what aggravates the Obama administration about FOX News is what Joe Biden would call a three-letter word: B-E-C-K.

Beck calls himself a “rodeo clown.” That fits. A rodeo clown distracts the bull’s attention to defend rodeo riders at risk. Beck believes the nation is at risk and he’s out to distract the raging bulls, or the progressives in power.

Nov 2, 2009 - 8:10 am 135. sol vason:

TWO BY FOUR: I listed 4 goals a society must achieve in order to survive as a society. However, there must be a balance between the needs of the state and the desires of the individual. States, which overachieve these goals at the expense of individual freedom,
disappear.

Your example of Czechoslovakia is perfect. It got the balance between the needs of the state and personal autonomy wrong. Therefore, it no longer exists because its citizens would not fight to preserve it. It has been replaced by 2 states each with a different balance. Will they survive for 12 generations? Czech Republic may, Slovakia will not.

In the matter of totally disarming citizens in order to keep them from killing each other. The solution fails because unarmed citizens can’t defend themselves from hostiles. This state will not survive for 12 generations because it does not have enough people to defend it. This is why China fell to a small number of European adventurers. The Chinese were so thoroughly disarmed they are not allowed to eat with knives and forks – they ate with blunt wooden sticks! When a small band of Europeans replaced their leaders by killing them, the people did not rise up to preserve their state.

In the matter of inventions. Most states ban labor saving inventions because they put people out of work. For example Japan banned the wheel for 2000 years. So did the Incas.

Prior to 1900, most states discouraged effective medicines in order to keep people from living too long after they could no longer work. A person who is too old to fight or work is an unacceptable social cost. Ask Obama. In ancient times, Greek and Egyptian doctors used many of the same antibiotics that we use today. But these countries were conquered by barbarians who had no use for old people. The drugs were lost when the library at Alexandria was burned. The remaining medical books were burned because they contained pictures of people. There are some warrior religions that ban pictures.

Truth is that set of lies we mutually agree on. Every society has its own set. Some societies last longer than others. If one defines real truth as something that last a long time, then long lasting societies must be the home of real, long lasting truths.

Nov 2, 2009 - 9:04 am 136. Rock:

@ 107 Annoy Mouse

Annoy Mouse, here’s my take on Obama’s speaking style:

It’s a variation of the way old time preachers deliver their sermons. Jesse Jackson is very good at it. They speak with a measured cadence and chants that almost rhymes internally with delivery. Usually a sentence ends with the last few words emphasized and intended to deliver the audience into a mesmerized state whereby the substance of the speech is ignored in favor of the speaker’s delivery style. And he mesmerized enough of us to elect him.

In other words it’s basically a technique often referred to as “If you can’t impress them with your selected facts, dazzle them with your remarkable bovine excrement.” For us old timers from the south, who as kids attended church three or four times a week and listened to hundreds of Hellfire and brimstone sermons, we know the style. There are other, more crude ways to explain his delivery style, but I dang sure ain’t gonna `splain it on a public forum. Suffice to say that most of it is part of his heritage and comes naturally to him. The other part is pure charlatan. But he also had to have studied these techniques or had a coach or two. Who knows? I can’t listen to him and have to turn it away as soon as he starts his sermons. Otherwise I might find myself kneeling at his altar too. The very first time I heard him speak I asked myself, “Who’s this fella preaching to?”

Nov 2, 2009 - 9:17 am 137. Wadeusaf:

Charles, From your link, “Beck’s self-deprecating demeanor includes ‘fessing up to his past sins. So unless he’s hiding a felony conviction, his detractors won’t find anything to discredit him by investigating his background. They’re more likely to keep leaning on the sponsors of his shows, hoping to shut him up. Meanwhile, administration officials aim to marginalize FOX News by ignoring their correspondents and personalities.”

IOW who cares what Debbie Schussel says about his past behaviors, Beck as been humbled and learned from his mistakes. It is the same slam BDS afflicted folks can use on anyone who once delved into the cultural proclivities of the left. As I believe the late Fred attested.

No one is perfect and some of us are less perfect than others are more equal.

What Schlussel has against Beck in the differences she and Beck have about Darrel Issa, Congressman from Cali. and a lack of attribution of research for which she claims Beck is not capable of on his own. Debbie has some real credibility.

I prefer to think it is president Obama who is the Rodeo Clown, however that would imply a measure of professionalism and purposeful action on the part of the president, Some thing I am admittedly still in denial about. Besides that it would impugn Rodeo Clowns.

Meanwhile Congress prepares for the kill. Beck’s attacks may sting but there is not have enough deadly pollen in the venom to cause a hyper-allergic type of reaction in a president who has trained himself to ignore the embarrassing stuff.

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:26 am 138. Wadeusaf:

twobyfour, although such a silhouette, (previously only attainable by my use of an opaque projector), would provide evidence of the trains existence, even accounting for the light bending tendencies of matter at such speeds, one could not hope to experience the train unless one sat on the track…

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:46 am 139. Charles:

137. Wadeusaf:
Beck’s attacks may sting but there is not have enough deadly pollen in the venom to cause a hyper-allergic type of reaction in a president who has trained himself to ignore the embarrassing stuff.
…….
Maybe, but if the pubbies/conservatives win big enough tomorrow, it will make some of moderate democrats think twice before voting for obama care.

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:59 am 140. marymcl:

@116 Unsk

~”For many in the teenage to thirty something female demographic a cool, hip lie is acceptable as long as it is cool and hip.”~

Agreed, it’s one of the things I was mulling over in my first post @13 though you’ve stated it more succinctly. But I take exception to the notion that this is only true of the females. That said, your statement that “Powerful forces in the political, cultural, fashion and commercial realms all want to romance and capture the allegiance and favor of this prized demographic of young women” is hard to argue with. They are the ones with the money because they are the ones with the jobs. I don’t want to open a racial can of worms here, but my observations of contemporary urban life show young black women going to school, working, and generally trying to better themselves and make a better life for their children, while young black men are standing on the street corner in droves, dressed like five-year-olds and hustling for a living. There are significant numbers of young white men emulating this behavior BTW. Still, to assume this is what women want is to take the easy way out IMO. It’s more accurate to say that this is how it is, and I think laura @57 is correct in her points about the overall coarsening of the culture. (Though affirmative action is partly to blame here – an HR rep can meet two quotas at once by hiring a black woman – though on the other hand nobody’s going to hire a man whose pants are constantly down around his knees either)

But that’s only part of it. Michael Vick (to take one of whiskey’s examples) is a hero to young men, not because of any complicated marketing schemes or because they think it will ingratiate them to women but because they flat-out like him, because he and all the other athlete/rapper/playboys that are the sorry cultural paragons of the day appeal to the natural wildness of young men. The fact that young women have romantic illusions about being swept off their feet by a knight in shining armor or kidnapped by some dashing brigand like Sean Connery or Errol Flynn (showing my age here!) doesn’t change the fact that young men have hormonally-driven fantasies of their own. And make no mistake, the market forces you describe are well aware of them and cater to them as well.

~”But to make matters worse, in our perpetual adolescent culture, currying favors, sexual and otherwise of pretty young women has become an ongoing lifelong pursuit.”~

True, but in another sense, it’s a very old story. Women’s societal roles have changed a lot in the past generation, but let’s not forget that men have been leaving their wives for younger women since before the flood. In fact the early feminist movement picked up a lot of steam from the anger and betrayal felt by women who’d stood by their men through thick and thin only to be dumped in middle age for someone younger, prettier, less argumentative, and generally more flattering to the man’s ego. And whose fantasies of perpetual youth does the steady sexualization of 12-year-olds appeal to anyway? Sorry guys, but it ain’t ours

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:08 am 141. buddy larsen:

wade/137; i checked out the Schlussel rant –she (and the commenters) are pretty much calling names and making wild accusations. Issa may be targetted because he’s been really scorching TARP (”Obama’s walking-around money”) and Bailout Culture in general, from the get-go. Today he’s off on the CIT filing, complaining about the several billion of TARP (taxpayer’s $) that just went *poof*. So what do Schlussel & crew do but attack his race, call him a jihadi and terror-symp, etcetera. These are the same folks who applaud Obama’s ‘opening a dialogue’ with Achmadinejad –some consistency. On Beck they wax wroth over him personally (”dry alcoholics are erratic”) but nary a word on his thesis –the ‘line’ that is booming his ratings –that the USA is being taken over by by anti-constitutionalists. Classic smear tactics is all i can see, with my limited sight. anyhoo it’s easy to comment there –so i left a note recommending they go after the message and forget the messengers –guilt-by-association after all being historically a doctrine of tyranny (and, not to be overly dramatic but, eventually genocide).

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:16 am 142. virgil xenophon:

Whisky is on to much that is central to this argument in his concentration on women and the changing societal role they play. The comedian (and comedians are among the keenest observers of the human condition) Dave Chappel once launched into a hilarious (but true) rant to which I cannot do justice on the Late, Late Show with Conan O’Brian by way of saying that he wished he could somehow synthesize the vagina and use it as currency, as it would be immediately accepted all over the world from everything from bus-tokens to mortgage payments, as it is so universally worshiped. In a similar but cruder vein reflecting the power of women in society, a cousin of mine once said presciently when we were but HS students: “The whole world revolves around the hole.” Likewise, the great Stanley Crouch, commenting on the “hip-hop” practice of young blacks wearing their jeans down around mid-thigh exposing their underwear, observed: “If young girls decided tomorrow that blue blazers, button-down collar shirts, kaki pants
and cordovan loafers were “hip” again, every black male teenager in America would be dressed that way over-night.”

What we got here (h/t Strother Martin) is a symbiotic relationship between the ad and entertainment industry and young females constantly seeking “the new” to set themselves apart as trend-setters. But one becomes jaded to “the shock of the new” unless each new “new” is more outlandish than the last in the same way that addicts become inured to initial dosage levels and constantly have to increase the dosage to achieve the same effect.
Thus once hair and clothing styles have gone through all possible permutations of reformulation we see the addition of tattooing and body piercing to achieve the desired effect when mere clothing and hair styles will no longer achieve the same shock effect–followed in extreme cases by actual disfigurement by cutting of the skin and scarring.

This trend among the female of the species toward the insubstantial even as they are increasingly gaining economic and political power in society by being catered to by power-brokers in Hollywood, the MSM politicians, and corporate human relations personnel and their promotion policies, means that the increasing feminization of society along with its concommitment attachment to smothering “safety-net” social policies so beloved of females and leftists will continue to proceed apace, drifting slowly but surely towards a
totalitarian matriarchy

And as long as society, through women, sends the signal to men thru “The New Girl Order” that the only things valued in men are the insubstantial and ephemeral, sybaritic superficial trappings of the human peacock–as opposed to the bedrock stability of the worker ant–society will increasingly become more fragile and insubstantial even as it becomes more authoritarian; spending down both its’ human and industrial capital until the point of no return is reached insofar as the ultimate vulnerability of society to internal rot (sociological or economic) or external shock (economic or military.) is concerned.

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:22 am 143. olde fogey:

I just read an hour-long interview with Jay Leno about the reaction to his show moving to 10pm. It speaks directly to the issue of the gap between the “elites” and real people. The showbiz interviewer tries every trick in the book to get Leno to give the Hollywood reaction with absolutely no success.

It will make those who watch Leno feel great and the elite readers will write him off even more than usual. Here’s the url: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/366971-Jay_Leno_Talks_Back_An_Exclusive_Interview_With_B_C.php

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:24 am 144. NahnCee:

*high fives MaryMcl*

You GO, Girl!

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:24 am 145. marymcl:

@118 ADE

The Colonel is still kicking himself for releasing the Bulgarian hostages a couple of years ago

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=109310

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:39 am 146. twobyfour:

Wadeusaf

Not a silhouette but bones–meaning an x-ray burst passing through the body. It won’t necessarily provide evidence for such a train passing by, it could be a small black hole if such a thing exists. Or something else, with high enough EMF but moving relatively slowly, say 20 km/s.

Or a burst of a massive plasma discharge through an airless vortex. Actually, that one is unlikely to be very short, you’d need a massive body like a planet in a close proximity, so the discharge would last for a while and would be visible and very fascinating. The visual would look like some kind of a translucent giant god or angel at one phase, and there would be a sound effect too… it would sound like a trumpet.

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:55 am 147. marymcl:

Thanks NahnCee! It’s true what they say about women’s work, huh?

@142 virgil xenophon

That’s an interesting choice of moniker for someone who evidently sees the male of the species as helpless, passive and utterly at the mercy of female whims.

As I’ve said before to whiskey, you can condescend to women all you want but you can’t envy us at the same time. And I hate to bust your bubble, but “the bedrock stability of the worker ant–society” you evidently admire is not only communist to the bone but also about as matriarchal as it gets.

BTW the practice of falling-down pants has nothing to do with women. It derives from the glamorization of prison culture – often the clothes provided in some prisons didn’t fit well and so young gangstas have taken this as a badge of honor

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:56 am 148. Wadeusaf:

Charles
Maybe, but if the pubbies/conservatives win big enough tomorrow, it will make some of moderate democrats think twice before voting for obama care
I would have thought the message was clear over the summer break. That can’t be just a disconnect? There is more to it.

Buddy,

Yup, Schussel I believe helped flush out some nasty mosque business post 9-11, very courageous stuff, for which I will not discount her stuff about home grown terrorism.

But it is very obvious she is no savant when it comes to “L internationale” and maybe that extends to any non Arab funded terror. She may even have an intentional blind spot there from what little I read of her blog. from that reading the name Geraldo does comes to mind.

I was wondering about Issa, to be able to make the kind of intelligent comment on his activities, abroad and at home, would require Schussel to do the kind of research required on the mosques. I am following the links.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:01 pm 149. monkeyfan:

Thank you Mr. Fernandez. You’ve helped me to consolidate several threads of thought I’ve been having recently with regard to the simulacrum of reality that has been foisted upon us as a society.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:02 pm 150. Wadeusaf:

Twobyfour,

Hey, you mean like this? unfortunately my PC wasn’t good enough to capture the sound associated, but maybe this would come close?

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:24 pm 151. RagnarD:

twobyfour @ 106:

It makes no sense because there is no reason why it should be disconnected from all other wavelengths that are outside that narrow bandwidth. And indeed, the same equations apply to all of them.

Precisely. The left side of the equation as normally written, that ‘E’ part. And why it does indeed lead to the unified theory. And why I said it was very “Zen”.

Walt @ 105:

…He paused to catch his breath
I did, he said, and now I’m tasked
To bring about the death
Of all the lands that once employed
Its workers making things
I’m tasked to see that they’re destroyed
From commoners to kings…

Dang it, man, that was punch a in the gut. I am re-reading “Atlas Shrugged” and daily find parallels unfolding as I read. (And all those who do not find Rand cogent, keep it to yourselves, I can argue it as well.) Today was Dr. Ferris from the “State Science Institute” talking to Hank Rearden, “We want them broken. (Referring to laws enacted against industry.) You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – ….. We’re after power and we mean it. ….. There is no way to rule innocent men. The only power that any government has is to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. ….”

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:41 pm 152. Wadeusaf:

Charles, Buddy et al,

I have finished reading Schussel’s link’s and stuff, I have to shower now.

Sorry for the link.

I don’t recall her being so Enquiring.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:56 pm 153. twobyfour:

Wadeusaf, more like this, at about 0:14, but loud enough that it is heard practically over entire hemisphere and beyond and somewhat faintly at the opposite polarity, and with more harmonics coming into place as the plasma discharge changes transitions. There would be about 7 major distinct discharge nodes or sheaths arrangements that would stay in place for a time before the next transition occurs, thus 7 distinct sound base frequency phases.

Nov 2, 2009 - 12:58 pm 154. Wadeusaf:

Twobyfour,

…and the walls came tumblin down. No Jericho, yet.

Nov 2, 2009 - 1:16 pm 155. twobyfour:

Wadeusaf, heh, close for the base frequencies envelope.

Nov 2, 2009 - 1:20 pm 156. marymcl:

Reading over all these posts I’m struck for the umpteenth time with the thought that Belmont Club is a unique treasure – in a single thread we have philosophy, history, physics, sexual politics, mythology, economics, religion, and current events, leavened with music, poetry and humor – and all of it deriving from wretchard’s original essay. As Subotai remarked the other day – “we lucky few” Thanks all

Nov 2, 2009 - 1:24 pm 157. Martin:

This is probably the best thing I have read this year. Thanks for doing this, Wretchard.

Nov 2, 2009 - 1:32 pm 158. twobyfour:

E. Nigma/114

Speed of lies.. Hehe, got a formula?

Nov 2, 2009 - 1:39 pm 159. monkeyfan:

RagnarD @ 101:

“Ponder this, if you are on that train going 0.999999…c (almost the speed of light, but not quite) and your turn on the headlight, what happens? What if you are standing some distance from the track, at rest, can see the train, do you see the headlight come on?”

Irrespective of the context, it seems to me that the speed of light must need be absolute darkness.

Nov 2, 2009 - 1:52 pm 160. Sylvia:

Definitely reading parts of this aloud tonight with the family. Batman and Leo and Alexis will take all evening to discuss. Thank you, all.

I would like to see comments about:
1) L3 mentions happiness. Why aren’t people taking responsibility for creating their own happiness, too? The shirking of blame is not the whole story — it’s almost as if there is a desire to be mediocre. What has taken hold of our society that makes honest joy politically incorrect?
2) Batman touched lightly on the concept of fairness. When I was little, if I complained about something not being fair, my dad’s calm response was that life isn’t fair. In his gentle way he set my expectations. As an adult I can see that he rails against this constantly and doesn’t handle it well, but it was a gift for him to program me to know I would need to be competent in order to deal with life, that there would be no bailout.
3) The whole trust and verify thing doesn’t work when people become so jaded, so divorced from tangible reality, that they can no longer trust. There’s an aspect of mass hysteria to the shunning of people who tell the truth [as they know it].

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:17 pm 161. ScenarioA:

“Truth” is too broad a philosophical concept to get ones arms around. It seems to me that each of us faces the mysteries of so very many as-yet unknown truths that we have to divide the quest into “important truths” that we have a chance of finding and “other stuff.”

E. Nigma@50 laid the foundation for inquiry into objective truth when he/she said: “There are lasting truths that seem to be indestructible, mainly because they work. The three laws of Thermodynamics, Newtonian Mechanics…”

However, in my opinion, RagnarD@101 went a step too far, confusing the “other stuff” with those truths worthy of our limited time and resources when he wrote: “Ponder this, if you are on that train going 0.999999…c (almost the speed of light, but not quite) and your turn on the headlight, what happens? What if you are standing some distance from the track, at rest, can see the train, do you see the headlight come on? To ponder those sort of questions and others is the best we can be.”

In my view, to ponder that kind of gedanken experiment in the same category as pondering dancing angels on pinheads – that is, perhaps of interest to a few selected specialists, but of no value to most of us. It is not the best we can be. Its not even in the right direction.

BTW, my response to the question is that photons generated when the imaginary headlight goes on would exist on their own in objective spacetime independent of their source, and would therefore be detectable by sensors. To turn the example given into something real, consider a star near the edge of the Hubble Sphere in place of the train.

One real value of our technology (which is based in Newtonian physics) is that it proves to us that objective truths do exist. As an aside, I observe that since engineers working for NASA and its contractors find Newtonian physics fully adequate, we might infer the same to be true for most of the rest of us.

With the proof that we all share a single objective reality (Truth with a capital T) in hand we find that our challenges in finding portions of this truth to lie mostly in the soft side of our civilization. And there, we find that such understanding of truth as we are able to garner by comes to us only with effort and cost, sometimes great cost.

Truth has such great value that distorting, obscuring, hiding and/or finding it are major activities in our society. There are huge elements in our culture focused on obscuring truths with fantasies, illusions and lies, usually provided to us free of charge. (Think entertainment media, political parties, etc.) There are significant elements in our culture which make their profit by selling truth, a bit at a time. (Think financial analysts, industrial consultants, news media, etc.) And there are elements in our culture which work at hiding such truth as they process. (Consider the many truths which are protected from prying eyes by laws, backed up by bureaucracies.)

Its in this environment that we find ourselves as pilgrims, each in our own place, each questing in our own fashion. Each of us here drawn to the BC as part of our quest.

With that perspective I join monkeyfan@149 in thanking Wretchard and others here for helping me with their insights.

Annoy Mouse@107. In the 1995 book “Dreams,” Obama/Ayers place Obama’s discovery that his soaring oratory resonated with left wing audiences to a specific political rally at Occidental.

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:19 pm 162. Mark:

Virgil X writes: “. . . the increasing feminization of society along with its concommitment attachment to smothering “safety-net” social policies so beloved of females and leftists will continue to proceed apace, drifting slowly but surely towards a totalitarian matriarchy.”

ELCA Lutherans, never ones to miss jumping into sthe parade when it’s already passed by, have as a cover story in their latest magazine the article “Stamped by Patriarchy.” Included in the magazine are guest columns, his and hers, one entitled “Dismantling the Patriarchy: One Woman’s Journey” and “Dismantling the Patriarchy: One Man’s Journey.” Suffice it to say that the article and columns would be wonderful parody, except they are not.

Lake Wobegon residents will soon be leanirng the new jarjon (provided in the sidebar, e.g. definition of “privilege,”) so that the church congregations can begin practicing the Church Newspeak.

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:21 pm 163. Wadeusaf:

Aw, 2×4, the opaque silhouette of bones projected on a canvas of sorts is the stuff of a train at a hairs kps under light. Your expostulatory gravity well, (provided I read that correctly) sucking up visual evidence would still need something to absorb and time to absorb it. so the headlamp at m and the train at just under could only be witnessed on the track, and the curve of the track could allow for a demonstration on that film, if only for a superinfantestimally small bite of a flash.

Pop. But what texture that horn has.

I like the Tesla-tube, reminds me of a demonstration some years ago, of the then newfangled synthesizer and the music it was capable of “creating”. Chaos still has its place.

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:24 pm 164. Geeze Louise:

@142: And as long as society, through women, sends the signal to men thru “The New Girl Order” that the only things valued in men are the insubstantial and ephemeral, sybaritic superficial trappings of the human peacock–as opposed to the bedrock stability of the worker ant…

I hear Levi Johnston has accepted an undisclosed sum to appear in a full frontal nude layout in PlayGirl.

Yowzza.

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:34 pm 165. buddy larsen:

RD/151; sometimes I start on a Walt and it’s so good i hafta skip over, to come back later in a wee hour and read more carefully. Naturally, that so haphazards keeping up wth his stuff that I’d missed that stanza –thank you for the catch –and thank you for the Rand snip. odd story, I live out in the sticks near LBJ’s boyhood hometown. Lady Bird of course lived there too many years until her recent passing, so a pretty good string of Secret Service agents & their families have passed thru, living around here for duty time and then many retiring here or just quitting in order to stay hereabouts. My kids went thru K-12 with their kids. Guess what a number of them are reading now –and not by fad like sneakers, but thru just osmotically picking it up and reading –and finding out only later there’s a dozen others doing likewise. Yup, Atlas Shrugged. The moms &/or dads in the Secret Service and the adult kiddos are reading Atlas Shrugged. what does that mean i wonder, with a small grim inward smile.

GL/164; LOL ‘yowzaa’ –he gonna prove yet again what a little dickhead he is

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:38 pm 166. buddy larsen:

–to elaborate a bit, the Hefner daughter & now & future Playboy CEO, Christi i think her name is, shows up every once in awhile in the biz press and has often made partisan statements pro Obama, Kerry, Clinton et al. This’ll be a twofor for her, a name from the headlines AND a way to augment the ‘ridiculous trailer-trash Palins’ meme.

Maybe WSJ ought to interview a few big Dem’s chilluns & their pals. but nah, Dems bring guns to the knife fight and we bring a limp Q-tip.

Nov 2, 2009 - 2:55 pm 167. Geeze Louise:

@166: Yeah, I’m not a huge Palin fan, but I HATE the media response to what WAS a woman as uncounterfeit as one gets in the modern world. I recall thinking last October that she would either survive exposure on the federal arena and go back to Alaska (never thought McCain had a chance) or she would be ruined professionally.

More OT and to the point, the divide is elite-common, not Dem-Repub.

The ‘Pubs did this to themselves – and the rest of us. The Dems are doing what they do. No sudden moves. No surprises. The only thing “Main St” hates more than a tax and spend Dem is a don’t give a d@mn ‘Pub. That’s (one reason) why the polls are so divided and why the markets will stagnate longer than fundamentals would dictate.***

Prolonging dilettante diversions like Levi’s 15 minutes … and a few others who don’t deserve it, including Christi. To the point where it could backfire.

***The 9/11 terrorists assumed their devastation would “shut down” the USA economy. Well, not right away, but longer term history is still being written. And the backfire theme is still in play.

Nov 2, 2009 - 3:42 pm 168. bob from Idaho:

Never fear Mark #162, that’s my nominal church, we’re losing members so fast we’ll be lucky to make it to the next presidential election. Plus, there is a movement to split the sheets now over this gay clergy stuff. The ELCA goes winking out, like an old star.

Nov 2, 2009 - 3:42 pm 169. Doug:

Where/what is “Idahoe?”
(googled it, found nothing)

In Iowa, Second Thoughts on Obama
The president’s standing has fallen in the state that jump-started his campaign…

Nov 2, 2009 - 4:11 pm 170. Annoy Mouse:

Doug, you da hoe.

Nov 2, 2009 - 6:00 pm 171. marymcl:

@160 Sylvia

~ “L3 mentions happiness. Why aren’t people taking responsibility for creating their own happiness, too? The shirking of blame is not the whole story — it’s almost as if there is a desire to be mediocre. What has taken hold of our society that makes honest joy politically incorrect?” ~

I think it’s more to do with an inability to accept that mediocrity (and unfairness), while not ideal, are nevertheless natural parts of life. The so-called progressive believes in the possibility – no, the inevitability – of human perfection. By those lights, all we have to do is follow the right social/political platform and everybody and everything just falls into line. Of course life is neither fair nor perfect, as every conservative knows, but you have to be able to accept that before you can even begin to find joy in small things.

The progressive is doomed to disappointment, which is why so many of them become bitter over time. When I was young I idolized the people who’d gone to Spain in the 30’s to fight in the civil war. It wasn’t until years later, when I read Orwell and Camus, that I began to understand that the genuine dislike of their fellow man that seemed to characterize all the old leftists I knew (and which seemed so at odds with their altruistic politics) was really the inevitable consequence of those same beliefs.

I realize that’s a bit convoluted, but time has taught me there’s a certain amount of paradox inherent in life. To take up a point I raised earlier @13, the progressive agenda that’s dominated education for the previous 40-odd years has left a generation or two imaginatively stunted and indifferent to the loss. They know they’re being conned by things like reality TV but they don’t care (see Unsk’s point @116 about the hip-sounding lie). This dearth of imagination is joined at the hip IMO with the embrace of clever facsimiles and counterfeits that wretchard notes is so widespread in our culture and to some degree it’s what led Natasha Collins down the road to her untimely death.

In other words, I think it takes a dreamer to see the truth about life and live with it gladly. Just as I think fate relies upon our free will in order to bring about the inevitable.

Nov 2, 2009 - 6:01 pm 172. Annoy Mouse:

marymcl – “I think it’s more to do with an inability to accept that mediocrity (and unfairness), while not ideal, are nevertheless natural parts of life. The so-called progressive believes in the possibility – no, the inevitability – of human perfection.”

This is a tad unintuitive for me. I would invert it to say that “progressives” are unable to accept excellence. They seem to demand an equal outcome for whatever Wretched soul that beckons forth with an outstretched hand. Progressives are quite committed to mediocrity of the masses, no they embrace it. So I would say that they believe in the inevitability and the infallibility of the perfect state.

Some people have opportunity fall right into their laps but most of the people I know work hard for it. I myself have come to terms with my own mediocrity, ya know, only working one job, trying not to spend too many hours at work. Avoiding major commitments of my time. Promising little and delivering a little more. No I am not a progressive but some times I act like one.

“I think it takes a dreamer to see the truth about life and live with it gladly. Just as I think fate relies upon our free will in order to bring about the inevitable.”

Nice turn of phrase. I do concur.

Nov 2, 2009 - 6:13 pm 173. JFSanders031:

ScenarioA: “In my view, to ponder that kind of gedanken experiment in the same category as pondering dancing angels on pinheads – that is, perhaps of interest to a few selected specialists, but of no value to most of us. It is not the best we can be. Its not even in the right direction.”

Now just a split photon there! A whole lot of people gave some Italian gent named Galilei a pretty bad time about him staring off into space and wondering about such things that had no supposed earthly use.

Your argument about specialists and specialization leads to why humans will eventually populate the universe. It is precisely because humans are not specialized that we can adapt and overcome any threat, obstacle or inability. Imagine what someone in Washington’s day would say if he was given a pair of nightvision goggles or even something as trivial as a Leatherman tool. I think Ben Franklin dreamed of man harnessing light without flame. He had to have in order to stand in the thunderstorm with his kite.

Nov 2, 2009 - 7:14 pm 174. marymcl:

@172 Annoy Mouse

Thanks. I see your point (though I think we’re saying more or less the same thing). “Ordinary” probably would have been a better choice and closer to what I meant – as in Sam Gamgee being the typical “ordinary man” (or hobbit – you know what I mean!)

While I’m at it, a better way of phrasing the last bit would be “it takes a dreamer to face up to the truth about life and live with it gladly” – oh well…

Nov 2, 2009 - 7:56 pm 175. Unsk:

Marymcl @140

Perhaps I didn’t explain my point properly. I think at one time, decades ago, it was only mostly the silly, young impressionable airheads of the female gender that bought the hip lies of the slick con artist Romeos.

That has changed. Now, whole industries and groups of people filled with both men and women pursue the hip, cool image as if it is the defining point of their lives. The cool, hip and often derogatory lie is a major weapon in the hipster’s arsenal that helps to define himself or herself as hip to their peers.

That being said, in our grossly oversexualized culture, the cool hip lie is closely linked to sexual pursuits.

Nov 2, 2009 - 8:08 pm 176. buddy larsen:

fashion is a survival mechanism –we’re the same people as painted the fantastical cave wall tableau 20K yrs ago –and clearly those people were already into personal expression of visual flair, implying attendant sensibilities of fashion. It’s probably our cells thinking for us –the fashion-disinterested genes unmysteriously dying out while the fashion-sensitive bred. Probably back there in the back of the cave. Probably with one of my ancestor’s daughters, damn them.

Anyhoo, if fashion has somehow turned into a survival negative –which it may have –the question would be, how did this happen?

The “too successful” categorical might apply here –might be that survival mechanisms that, in muting –per design –so much harsh natural evolution-shaping feedback, they have themselves commited that “too-successful” error and over-specialized past when doing so confered advantage. What would follow among other things is that children, which were never a choice before but are now, would tend to be dropped –as encumbrances –by the front edge of the negative fashion. that is, the ‘latest’ individual’s survival calculus. In that case, the classical fashion instinct goes baroque, mannerist, rococo, all those sensualist embellishings on original design. Eras of self-celebration historically –well they can’t help but to –contain their own correctives –a harsh fact of nature which may be dawning on large swaths of peoples in the West, and accounting for the odd clues pointing to a people beginning to lapse into confusion and diffidence about fundamental rights to be here on the planet.

Nov 2, 2009 - 9:12 pm 177. Rock:

Fashion? I miss mini-skirts.

Sigh!

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:08 pm 178. jWarrior:

Re: 172. Annoy Mouse “Some people have opportunity fall right into their laps but most of the people I know work hard for it.”

Seneca said “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” http://thinkexist.com/quotation/luck_is_what_happens_when_preparation_meets/11990.html

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:08 pm 179. programmer:

buddy@176:

May I say, well said sir!

Progressives who claim to love evolution do not truly understand evolution in action. Those most fervently wishing for change are not always those most fitted to adapt to changing conditions. Life is a feedback loop. A never ending cosmic dance, perhaps!

So,…Lets dance

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:16 pm 180. buddy larsen:

P/179; back atcha ha ha ho ho hee hee!

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:45 pm 181. Leo Linbeck III:

marymcl,

Great comments on this thread. Bravo!

time has taught me there’s a certain amount of paradox inherent in life

This is a key insight. One of the MBA courses I teach is organized around a series of twains – pairs of ideas that interact, conflict, mutually support, and oppose each other. All at the same time. These twains include:

Top-Down and Bottom-Up
Perception and Reality
Rules and Discretion
Ends and Means
Genius and Heresy
Faith and Reason
Law and Justice
Power and Autonomy
Identity and Economics
Work and Life

One of the goals of the course is to prepare future business leaders for the fact that the world is a messy, confusing, contradictory, stressful place, and to lead an organization you have to get comfortable with a sort of dynamic equilibrium between all of these twains. We use Tolstoy’s War and Peace as the cornerstone text of the course.

When I first proposed teaching the course, there was a concern that it wouldn’t get any interest from MBA students. In fact, we’ve had to limit enrollment due to high demand. A lot of students know that there are these important issues that they don’t normally get to talk about, and when given the opportunity they can’t wait to engage.

Someday, I’m hoping to collect all of these ideas into a book. But right now there’s no time. Too many other important tasks at hand. Like my family and my job.

Oh, and our little community here at the BC.

Cheers,
L3

Nov 2, 2009 - 10:56 pm 182. Jonathan:

Wretchard wrote:
One of problems economists should study is what happens when the overall truth content of a servitized economy declines. Whereas the “truth” of a ton of steel is the steel itself, what is the truth of a bundled subprime mortgage? What is the truth content of a credit default swap? Perhaps we don’t know, and this circumstance has directly led to the current economic crisis. The financial meltdown is from a certain point of view, a pure crisis of information. What we don’t know (or better yet what we do know but ain’t so) is hurting us. The market has either temporarily lost its ability to properly value assets; or more disturbingly we are simply unwilling, like the ATP vis a vis Andre Agassi, to value the assets because to recognize the truth would be catastrophic for business in our servitized world.

I would put it differently. Markets generally tell the truth and therefore are inconvenient for people whose success depends on lies. What the financial meltdown really represents is a discounting of new information, i.e., the markets adjust as it becomes clear that the “facts” everyone counted on are false. The new market consensus about the values of various financial instruments and physical goods is not pleasant, but who can deny that it’s a more accurate representation of reality than the old consensus was. This is progress. What’s difficult is to use the information in productive ways. The natural tendency of humans is to blame the messenger rather than make the necessary hard choices.

Perhaps the real psychological purpose of the various government stimulus packages is simply to suggest that we don’t need to know the truth. It’s government’s way of saying that when we don’t like market signals then bureaucracies can set it aside; that with enough printed money we can avoid looking at ourselves in the economic mirror and forestall bankruptcies indefinitely. The music can be kept playing forever if only we wish for it hard enough.

Governments are always trying to rig markets to generate false information that supports the agendas of the people in power. They are still doing it. In the long run it never works. The only questions are how long the charade can be maintained and how large a bill we will have to pay when the reckoning comes. The current financial crisis is, obviously, tremendously expensive. However, governments, by engaging in massive bailouts and currency inflation rather than accepting needed institutional failures, are setting the stage for an even worse financial breakdown in the future.

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:03 pm 183. buddy larsen:

L3/181; -what such a course could do for 9th graders –who are accidentally –by the very shape of packaged pedagogy –being introduced to the spark-drenching notion that all loose ends are problems, errors, mistakes, incompletes, and –in need of solutions!

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:19 pm 184. marymcl:

@181 Leo Linbeck III

Thank you, sir ~ just doing my best to keep up!

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:26 pm 185. buddy larsen:

johnathan/182; we’ll get some idea of something out of the CIT filing –Goldman is holding big CDS markers on a CIT bellyup –from somebody –JPM probably, the wall street treasury dept to goldman’s Fed –chuckles sardonically –derivatives deriving miss daisy. deriving mist hazy

Nov 2, 2009 - 11:35 pm 186. Charles:

125. ADE:

All we disagree on is [who] made them God (Jesus) or Godish (Moses).

My answer is: [We] did.

////////
This is ok for a non christian. But for the Christian this take is fatal. ie christian churches that have embraced this have died. This is what happened to the Churches in Europe and is now happening to the liberal churches in the USA.

I like the explanation of the Jewish psychiatrists from West LA. He said. “Is ceremony, calendar, creed, and calendar necessary? Yes. Without it the ability to hold to the humility and ethical imperatives will inevitably be diluted and disappear.”

I would add to this that different faiths weight ceremony, creed, and calendar differently. For Christianity creed is orders of magnitude more important than ceremony. When the creed goes bad so does the denomination.

Nov 3, 2009 - 12:19 am 187. presbypoet:

L3, 181

There is an eightfold path of paradox.
You start not thinking either part of the paradox matters, in the way a non-Christian would react to the controversy over Grace or Works righteousness.
The first stage is a realization perhaps one part of a paradox might be true. A dawning awareness of possibility.
Second stage, you realize half the paradox seems true, and it might actually affect how you live.

Third stage is where half the paradox starts to transform how you live. You still “know”, even more strongly than at the start the other half is a crock.

Stage four. You know for certain half the paradox is real, and it profoundly influences how you live. You are sure anyone who finds the other half of the paradox true, is an idiot.

The 5th stage is a crisis stage. You know the first half of the paradox is true, but somehow the other half also seems somehow true.
This stage can mess with your mind. For someone raised in a faith focused on half a paradox, it can create a major crisis of faith. Often it can result in a flip back to stage one, only with a focus on the other half. You let go faith in the first half paradox you knew, and flip to the other half, never making it to stage five. Some just rotate here, never going any further on the way. For true stage five stretches you. You somehow retain belief and knowing the original half of the paradox is true, yet expand your mind to encompass this other half that cannot possibly be true, at the same time as the first half of the paradox. It is like stage one, in that both explore possible truth, but much harder, since it requires believing the “impossible”.

Stages six and seven parallel stages two and three, with a heightened tension. Like tightening a spring, it may explode in your face, as you try to reconcile two impossible ideas, at the same time. The temptation at every step, to abandon the attempt and settle for a single simple truth.

The eighth stage completes your journey. It mirrors stage four, in that you now are not only aware both halves of the paradox are true, but that this truth profoundly influences how you live. This is not a simple intellectual game you can ignore, but blueprint for living.

In the final stage, you hang crucified. Living in creative tension where you find Truth, embracing both halves of the paradox. You will never fully understand. Your mind too feeble to truly comprehend. All you can do is sail into the midst of a hurricane of wisdom, to seek God.

That does it for one paradox. I’ve collected 500.

Nov 3, 2009 - 12:20 am 188. buddy larsen:

A paradox is something we see
that ought not in fact really be

but thought through what is missed
is not the world in a twist

but the word for the reality.

Nov 3, 2009 - 1:40 am 189. Marie Claude:

140 Marymcl,

uh, in hospitals for elders (or houses), viagra never got such a high rate of sales, elder women collect adventures ! (also there is a resurgence of venerial diseases)

[I'm on Olhao harbour (south Portugal), facing the "Capitainerie" wifi antenne, so I can benefit of the free access.]

Nov 3, 2009 - 4:22 am 190. Annoy Mouse:

Fashion. I see, it does closely follow genes. Or should I say fashion is closely following Jeans. Fashion in the animal kingdom means plumage, pomp and rival fighting rival. In early humans fashion probably first started as camouflage while stalking animals and probably to keep from getting stalked. Eventually men and women started camouflaging each other so they would be recognized by a prospective mate. Some one wore a feather in their hair, a bone in their nose, and a string of shells around their loans. It was all down hill from there.
Nice quote jW. I had a boss tell me once that you made your own luck. This is the same guy who when I told him my computer crapped out he just looked at me and said, “You’re an engineer. Fix it yourself!”. I miss him.

Nov 3, 2009 - 5:48 am 191. oldsj:

E. Nigma/114

“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get it’s boots on.”

Mark Twain (maybe)

Nov 3, 2009 - 7:51 am 192. Charles:

98. buddy: thanks

Also for body of work I would have mentioned Doug… I always read his stuff well because its short. No heavy pedantry in Doug.It may not always be true that brevity is the soul of wit. But in Doug’s case it is. He’s talker.

Nov 3, 2009 - 8:13 am 193. ScenarioA:

JFSanders0312@163 objected to my comment about his gendanken experiment: “Now just a split photon there! A whole lot of people gave some Italian gent named Galilei a pretty bad time about him staring off into space and wondering about such things that had no supposed earthly use.”
—-

Apparently I was not as clear as I had hoped to be. In this thread on truth, I intended my argument to be a defense of science. I argued that science, as verified by technology, proves that a single reality exists – that objective truth exists – and that science should provide a foundation in our search for truth. I observed that because each of us has limited time and resources, it’s useful – necessary even – to focus our search on those important truths which we have a reasonable chance to discover/uncover and understand. All else is “other stuff.” Gedanken experiments at the fringe of science, which are set up to have weird results, are fun, but, in my view, they are “other stuff” in the search for truth (for most of us.)

Now, I did answer the question posed by the gedanken experiment, implicitly acknowledging an intrinsic interest in the game. More than that, I related it to a real issue being addressed by astronomers today at the edge of the Hubble Sphere. Even so, in my view, this issue is at the fringe, and unless one is a specialist, not at the core of important truths worthy of our efforts, given our very limited time and resources.

A secondary intent was to call out the difference between such science that has been verified by technology as meaningful in our everyday lives – Newtonian Physics – from speculations in areas where confusion often abounds. In today’s world, many such speculations are made with the intention of abusing science. That was not the case in your little thought experiment, but your example did allow me to make my secondary point.

In #173 you raise another issue, which I cannot avoid commenting on, given the orientation toward truth in this general thread. I would like to point out that it was Kepler, not Galileo, who first published in support of Copernicus. It was Kepler, not, Galileo, who proved decisively that our solar system is heliocentric with his mathematical analysis of the orbit of Mars. It was Kepler, not Galileo, who provided the mathematical foundation that Newton built upon. It was Kepler who validated Galileo’s observations, not the other way around.

Galileo’s observations proved nothing by themselves. While Kepler was gaining access to the data library for which the Danish King had bankrupted his kingdom, Galileo was offending Jesuits and insulting the Pope directly. Galileo got the publicity. Kepler did the heavy lifting.

My studies have persuaded me that science would have developed almost exactly as it did had Galileo never existed, except, perhaps, that the Church would have found it easier to adopt the heliocentric solar system in Keplers time had there been fewer direct and personal insults to the Pope by its advocates. Had Kepler not contributed as he did, however, our history may have been very different.

Nov 3, 2009 - 10:33 am 194. buddy larsen:

S/193; (*w0w*) wish i could add something to the disc of the light waves. but to me a light wave is something you give a stranger heading the other way on a two-lane rural highway.

C/192; agree, i’d've nominated doug too –points for tenacity, longevity, links, and overall helpful sunshine –also, about that long stretch at Alcatraz, he sez he’s not guilty.

Nov 3, 2009 - 11:23 am 195. buddy larsen:

recent photo of Doug relaxing after decorating his office wall

Nov 3, 2009 - 3:32 pm

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.