Photos of the new computer can be found here. The keyboard is agreeable, with nice Command-C speed.
Now I don’t have to wait for a Windows version of Storyspace or Tinderbox.
In addition a new friend will be added to the group, Carolyn Nims’ Green Flamingoes.
Yes it’s oft quoted but I think still delightful, from Beston and his “The Outermost House.” It’s for Rina, whom I’m glad to hear is doing well:
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the Earth.
It reminds me of McCarthy’s style.
These days it seems that politicians must choose a narrative and stick to it. I don’t think they want to do this, but, then again, they may. Here’s Sam Brownbeck explaining himself
The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.
People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart.
I disagree “wholeheartedly” with everything here and am, honestly speaking, stunned by the illogic. Brownbeck claims that “we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason.” He “believes” that “there cannot be any contradiction between the two.” This is pure nonsense. Reason doesn’t require that faith provide substantiation or, as Brownbeck puts it, supplement. He may “believe” that this is true, but reality doesn’t agree. If the color red appears to me on a tree in the form of an apple, I don’t have to believe in the color red to acknowledge the fact. Nor is reason, on the other hand (and this is where Brownbeck’s logic falls short), required as a supplement for faith in The Great Lettuce Head. This last point is what Brownbeck wants but will not say outright. Brownbeck wants science to support the intangible but he won’t say this because it would sound childish. Science and faith are not complimentary. Brownbeck sees this as critique of his faith. I don’t understand why. That an apple is not an orange does not diminish the taste or the essence of either.
Brownbeck claims that science cannot “help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love.” This an absurd statement. Brownbeck supplies no examples of faith helping us to understand anything. Faith has been argued as its own kind of understanding. Here’s what Luther said on the issue
Instead, faith is God’s work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good works with many words.
Luther argues that faith is a state of being; it’s not something you can control; it’s an external force acting through the human medium. Others would argue that faith is more linked to trust. Others, just to close this, such as Saint Augustine, would argue, that faith is a “form of knowledge” whose authenticity derives from its independence from the observable.
Blest are they who have not seen and have believed
Human suffering can be understood in many ways, even via a method of reasoning, such as “opening one’s eyes” and connecting suffering to “action” like assisting communities in the revitalization of schools and providing care to those who cannot afford the cost of surgery.
To close, here’s Coyne on questions that require the raising of hands:
Suppose we asked a group of Presidential candidates if they believed in the existence of atoms, and a third of them said “no”? That would be a truly appalling show of scientific illiteracy, would it not? And all the more shocking coming from those who aspire to run a technologically sophisticated nation.
Yet something like this happened a week ago during the Republican presidential debate. When the moderator asked nine candidates to raise their hands if they “didn’t believe in evolution,” three hands went into the air—those of Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Tom Tancredo. Although I am a biologist who has found himself battling creationism frequently throughout his professional life, I was still mortified. Because there is just as much evidence for the fact of evolution as there is for the existence of atoms, anyone raising his hand must have been grossly misinformed.
I don’t know whether to attribute the show of hands to the candidates’ ignorance of the mountain of evidence for evolution, or to a cynical desire to pander to a public that largely rejects evolution (more than half of Americans do). But I do know that it means that our country is in trouble. As science becomes more and more important in dealing with the world’s problems, Americans are falling farther and farther behind in scientific literacy. Among citizens of industrialized nations, Americans rank near the bottom in their understanding of math and science. Over half of all Americans don’t know that the Earth orbits the Sun once a year, and nearly half think that humans once lived, Flintstone-like, alongside dinosaurs.
John Timmons sent me this podcast of Geoff Nunberg commenting on Wikipedia. It’s cogent. The one observation I find most cogent is when Nunberg talks about the evasive nature of encyclopedic knowledge and the difficulties of its synthesis. We know a lot about the Romans. But we also don’t know a lot about what we know about the Romans.
Nunberg notes the “wisdom of the crowd” relation to the methodological intent of the online service and claims that one of its limitations is that its form cannot produce a “consistent viewpoint” on a subject. This, I think is all okay, but there’s another, finer point to make about Wikipedia. In my view, above all else, Wikipedia is about “obligatory participation,” not knowledge at all. There is an expectation to each entry–such as a gap on the subject of asteismus, a rhetorical figure used a lot on sitcoms such as Frasier and in Shakespeare: people who can and should contribute are obligated to do so. Nunberg could write this entry on asteismus, thus producing a new version of Wikipedia.
Is that Rina in the comment section? Rina, old friend?
Well, the machine is now out. Time to get out the check book.
After making sure the owners could not influence their pets’ behavior, researchers tested three groups of dogs. The first 14, representing a variety of breeds, did not watch Guinness. When taught how to use the rod, about 85 percent pushed it with their mouth, confirming that is how dogs naturally like to do things.
The second group of 21 dogs watched Guinness repeatedly push the rod with her paw while holding a ball in her mouth. In that group, most of the dogs — about 80 percent — used their mouth, imitating the action but not the exact method Guinness had used. That suggested the dogs — like the children — decided Guinness was only using her paw because she had no choice.
I agree that the dogs were watching, but why does their reaction suggest a decision that Guinness “had no choice”?
Here’s the link to WaPo article.
Spazeboy and Caffeinated Geek Girl on Colin McEnroe.
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Important to military and Intelligence thinking today is the notion of “Ethnographic Intelligence. Thanks to Anne of Space and Culture for the link. Here’s Fred Renzi on the issue (notes in original)
The proliferation of empowered networks makes “ethnographic intelligence” (EI) more important to the United States than ever before.2 Among networks, al-Qaeda is of course the most infamous, but there are several other examples from the recent past and present, such as blood-diamond and drug cartels, that lead to the conclusion that such networks will be a challenge in the foreseeable future. Given the access these networks have to expanded modern communications and transportation and, potentially, to weapons of mass destruction, they are likely to be more formidable than any adversaries we have ever faced.
Regrettably, the traditional structure of the U.S. military intelligence community and the kind of intelligence it produces aren’t helping us counter this threat. As recent debate, especially in the services, attests, there is an increased demand for cultural intelligence. Retired army Major General Robert Scales has highlighted the need for what he calls cultural awareness in Iraq: “I asked a returning commander from the 3rd Infantry Division how well situational awareness (read aerial and ground intelligence technology) worked during the march to Baghdad. ‘I knew where every enemy tank was dug in on the outskirts of Tallil,’ he replied. ‘Only problem was, my soldiers had to fight fanatics charging on foot or in pickups and firing AK-47s and [rocket propelled grenades]. I had perfect situational awareness. What i lacked was cultural awareness. Great technical intelligence…wrong enemy.'”3
I propose that we go beyond even General Scales’s plea for cultural awareness and look instead at amassing EI, the type of intelligence that is key to setting policy for terra incognita. The terra in this case is the human terrain, about which too often too little is known by those who wield the instruments of national power. The United States needs EI to combat networks and conduct global counterinsurgency. This paper will therefore define EI, discuss some cases that illustrate the requirement for it, and propose a means to acquire and process it.
The militarization of cultural and social “intelligence” is an old notion (Tacitus, Marco Polo), and in the hands of military and policy planners, at least the current crop, the results will probably be misused and malnourished. The fact of the matter is we need better thinking about human scale phenomena more than ever, from the local to the national. Just listen to the presidential hopefuls stumble all over themselves to formulate their own ideas on Health and Economic issues. Part of the problem is an inability for people to understand large-scale systems in the human context, such as cities and regions.
I go back to borders. Borders in the US should be cultural centers and destinations, not places to fear and wall up. Borders should also be shared. The US’s southern border is also Mexico’s border. I’m perfectly mindful of the charge that this is a naive position. People want to enter and blow us up, 9.11 being a case in point. But this is a misinterpretation. Many of our problems, such as drug crime, are worsened by issues unrelated to the rules, regulations, and ethics of border crossing. People come to the United States to work because they haven’t the opportunity in Chihuahua, not because they want to thumb their nose at the law. But Mexico feels its brain-drain and population loss, too, and has just as much stake in shaping its course as does the United States. We are all trained to see the world as divided by national borders. We could think differently. Physical borders become cognitive when we orient to the container of predefined place and decide on either impulse, impression, or assumption.
“‘I had to fight fanatics'” said the 3rd infantry commander. How did the commander know they were fanatics? And why were they shooting at him in the first place?
I remember a kid who once loved to kill insects. We found him blowing up horn toads with fire crackers.
“What are you doing?” we asked.
“Killing insects. I hate insects.”
“Those are lizards,” we said.
“Lizards? Are lizards insects?” he asked.
I remember that we all a little stunned.
“Shit,” he said.
You could argue that health is a way of passing through space. I can go with an injury or I can go with repair or crutches. It could also be argued that health has intrinsic value. Well, that last one may beyond argument.
Some commentators get caught up in what they call the culture of entitlement or the “entitlement mentality.” George Will writes
Mac Donald says that although some data suggest that many Hispanic immigrants live in increasing cultural and linguistic self-segregation, clearly some have assimilated in the sense of acquiring one of the nation’s unpleasant current attributes, the entitlement mentality: We are here, therefore we are entitled to be here.
In this context, entitlements are rights that people learn to value, such as social security, jobs, and education. It’s a subset argument of the “marketplace mentality” so often argued by Will and others.
When the incumbent taxi industry inveigled the city government into creating the cartel, this was a textbook example of rent-seeking — getting government to confer advantages on an economic faction in order to disadvantage actual or potential competitors. If the cartel’s argument about a “deregulatory taking” were to prevail, modern government — the regulatory state — would be controlled by a leftward-clicking ratchet: Governments could never deregulate, never undo the damage that they enable rent-seekers to do.
By challenging his adopted country to honor its principles of economic liberty and limited government, Paucar, assisted by the local chapter of the libertarian Institute for Justice, is giving a timely demonstration of this fact: Some immigrants, with their acute understanding of why America beckons, refresh our national vigor. It would be wonderful if every time someone like Paucar comes to America, a native-born American rent-seeker who has been corrupted by today’s entitlement mentality would leave.
The logic is pretty clear: if the government provides education, people will become dependent on government, which will lead to “big government.” If the government provides universal health care (in other words, regulates), the insurance and health-provision establishment will no longer be able to compete, innovate, and supply jobs because government has become ultimate arbiter.
“Ever been to DMV?” Yes I have, and I’ve seen the technology they have to work with. Government’s tools are an old joke. But this can be fixed. Saws continue: Legislative bodies should not solve health care and energy issues because they might upset the market. It invites socialism and dependency. This cynical vestige of “cold-war mentality” itself limits innovative solutions.
Will’s logic is dimwitted and over-complicates decision-making. Health care does not have to be deemed a right for it to be provided universally.
I would hope that human-centered decisions become about reevaluating value. If we valued health for people over markets, we wouldn’t need to rely on fallback predetermined logics to “hope things just work out in the end.” The sun doesn’t have market share, so we shouldn’t convert all government infrastructure to solar power, hence save enough money “in the end” to provide all people with a proportionally scaled system of health, which can be judged as “infrastructure.” The proportions of health care should be judged as an innovation worthy of tackling.
Rather than persisting in our over-estimation of wealth or access as a measure of the human scale, we should change our thinking: first value health.