Bill's Comments

Today my hair-shirt, USA Today, published a front page article, "Study stirs debate over full-body scans' cancer risk". An article in Radiology, claimed that a full-body CT [computerized tomography, a technique which similar to MRI allows the creation of a 3-D representation of the subject's body]causes the same exposure to radiation as people 1 1/2 miles from Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and increases the risk of cancer by 1 death for every 1200 subjects at age 45 to 1 death for every 1700 subjects at age 60.

On page 7D, the next to the last page of the entire newspaper, there were a few more facts. The most important one was the last sentence.

But first let's look at a prevailing assumption concerning radiation and other environmental doses.

Some basic pharmacology:
All estimates of mortality are based on dose-response curves. It used to be that these were S-shaped, where there was an almost horizontal beginning to the curve, with no effect for low doses, then a sharp rise as mortality or dosage effect occurred proportional to the dose, and then another horizontal area of maximum effect regardles of dose. Increasing the dose did not increase the effect or in mortality curves there was already 100% mortality.

The current environmentalist/activist view:
This first grew out of the cancer work in the fifties and sixties. Rats and other animals were exposed to extreme doses of suspected carcinogens. The cancer induction rates were measured and then the rate of induction at normal exposures was calculated as a linear extrapolation back to the lower levels. This approach is still being used with radioactivity, radiation from therapeutic and diagnostic devices, and environmental pollutants. In effect, they are assuming there is an effect all the way back to zero.

Critique:
This is plain bad science. If we look at the dose response curve, it is not linear. In the range of the proportional response, it is almost linear. However, there are a large number of substances that can cause cancer in artificially large concentrations that are critical to our survival in much smaller concentrations. Salt is the first that comes to mind. Not too long ago, John Ray had some posts on this effect, that certain "toxins" actually promoted health in small doses.

No one published any data for the lower end of the curves, so the activists took the worst possible case and ran with it, the linear extrapolation that believes there is no zero effect. But dose response curves all have zero effect regions. So this approach flies in the face of common scientific experience.

But there are other arguments here that are more forceful. If we look at radiation, its effects are in the breaking of bonds in the nuclear DNA of cells, leading to cumulative mutations which finally cause cancer. But it takes a lot of radiation for this to occur. There are a number of reparative mechanisms in the cell that help keep DNA intact. In addition all life evolved exposed to radiation, more at an earlier time than now. Thus there must be a no effect level, or everything would have died long ago. In fact, radiation is beneficial in that it encourages the occasional spontaneous mutation that has led to evolution.

Similar arguments can be advanced for many of the pollutants or environmental chemicals with which we seem to be so concerned. The body has wonderful biochemical mechanisms for detoxifying things. Yes, there are some things that actually get transformed into something worse, but we learn about those quickly when they occur.

I think our current obsession with germs in the US is of this same ilk. I grew up with reasonable cleanliness. But I didn't have all these anti-bacterial soaps and cleaners around. I played in dirt, pet all kinds of animals, chewed grass (the green stuff in our lawns) and generally didn't worry about germs. As I grew up I got measles, chicken pox, and many different kinds of colds and flus. Almost all my adult life I have never been sick more than 24 hours, with a few outstanding exceptions. I think it is because I was exposed to germs at a low level and built a generally tough immmune system. Fortunately, most kids, especially boys, tend to get around the excessive efforts of parents to keep them sterile.

I wouldn't deny the value of vaccines, and espouse them because they work by challenging the immune system, but I do wonder at our bacteriophobia. We have gotten to where the risk of an adverse reaction now prevents the immunization against smallpox. Supposedly it has been stamped out in the world. However, there are related poxes still extant, and I think it will come to bite us in the butt someday soon.

The summary is that any article that claims some low rate of death or illness due to some fairly common behavior or item, is most likely based on bad science. Demand to know where the data came from and how the numbers were obtained.

Now for the final two sentences I mentioned way up top:

"He also notes that CT technology has been widely used for 25 years. If it really caused cancer, he says, doctors would be diagnosing far more tumors by now."

Isn't reality wonderful? It can usually make an activist into a fool.

Right now with the murder of the twelve Nepalese workers on my mind along with 9/11 and all the rest, I know what I wish Hell to be -- similar to one scenario from the SF novel series "Heroes in Hell", I would like every terrorist to serially experience the death of every one of his victims. That would be both justice and retribution. Vengence would repeat it, many times. Just think, OBL, laughing at the destruction of the WTC, having to hear his laugh in his ears as he dies 3000 times, actually more in his case. That is just what he has to answer to for the US.

I read Belmont Club daily, and I thank Peg Kaplan for bringing it to my attention. He always has outstanding news analysis and commentary. This wry comment from his latest post was too good not to quote:

"There's a reason the French are world leaders in the manufacture of perfume."

Wicked Thoughts has the best set of one liners I have ever read. Go...Now...

The news is always a source of friction to me when I'm on the road. I get my daily mixed blessing of USA Today -- mostly articles that get me riled, but a good source of material for blogging.

1. The coverage in USA Today of the Republican Convention vs. the Dems is like night and day. The Democratic convention was light, and wonderful, and positive, and (gag me with a spoon), while the Republicans are right wing, excluding moderates, etc. anything to make a negative report.

2. The major TV media broadcast the opening of the Dems but not the Republicans. Very subtle way to avoid the two best opening speakers this year. And then I love the article in USA Today claiming that such coverage had been planned for a long time. Maybe so, but that doesn't make it right.

3. I am sick and tired of pollsters. I am even more sick and tired of the constant hashing and spinning, and over analysis of every twitch in the numbers. I wish Gallop, Roper, and all the rest would take a vacation for about three months. Just imagine what it would be like if the newspapers had to report something rather than repeat someone else's data.

OHH! Maybe the reason we have such a low voter participation is the constant polling that predicts what will happen. Why should people vote when the answer is already given?

Dick McDonald, who's forceful The Right Scale, has posted this (I quote it entirely):

I'm Not Sorry

Dick McDonald

I'm not sorry. I don't respect John Kerry's military service and I feel stabbed in the back by Bush, and every Republican, Fox News and the Demomedia who indict 254 decorated eye-witnesses as liars. By respecting Kerry's service record brands the Swift Boat Veterans as liars. I went to military school and when everyone but one person was out of step, we blamed that one person, not the whole squad. Kerry is an insincere, disingenuous, manipulative, out-of-step. unproductive, lying sociopath. America will out the truth. Maybe a brave Republican will lead the way. I am looking for him now. Do I hear the name Marvin Scott(R) of Indiana? Running for the Senate against Evan Bayh.

I realize that it may be good politics to "respect Kerry's service in Vietnam" but Dick McDonald is right. It is wrong to respect a record built on misrepresentation.

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson

Today we have to include the sources of news on the internet, but it still holds true.

From the WSJ Opinion Journal comes this statement"

We're Not GOP Shills
President Bush can't stop us from telling the truth about John Kerry.

BY JOHN O'NEILL
Friday, August 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

We formed Swift Boat Veterans For Truth for one purpose: to present to the American public our conclusion that John Kerry is not fit to be commander in chief. We are organized as a "527 group" with Adm. Roy Hoffmann at the helm, our leader today as he was some 35 years ago when we served under him in Coastal Squadron One in Vietnam. Our membership is transparent and shown on our Web site, www.swiftvets.com, currently including more than 250 Swiftees. We have 17 of the 23 officers who served with Mr. Kerry, most of his chain of command, and most sailors. We have more than 60 winners of real Purple Hearts. No one has a better right than we do to speak to the matters involving our unit.

Are we controlled by the Bush-Cheney campaign? Absolutely not. The Swift boat veterans who joined our group come in all political flavors: independents, Republicans, Democrats and other more subtle variations. Had another person been the presidential candidate of the Democrats, our group never would have formed. Had Mr. Kerry been the Republican candidate, each of us would still be here.

We do not take direction from the White House or the president's re-election committee, and our efforts would continue even if President Bush were to ask us directly to stop.

Why have we come forward? As explained in "Unfit For Command," Mr. Kerry grossly exaggerated and lied about his abbreviated four-month tour in Vietnam. He disgraced all legitimate Vietnam War heroes when he falsely testified to Congress that we were war criminals, daily engaged in atrocities that had the full approval of all levels in the chain of command. So, once Mr. Kerry decided to apply for the commander in chief's job with a war-hero résumé, we felt compelled to come forward to explain why he is "unfit for command."

We have faced assaults on our character, motives, personal backgrounds and honesty. We are told that Mr. Kerry's camp has prepared attack dossiers on the members of our organization. I have been charged with being a Republican shill. But for more than 30 years, I have been non-political, and have voted for as many Democrats as Republicans. In truth, I consider myself a political independent, regardless of how John Kerry and his supporters try to characterize me.

The Kerry-Edwards camp has threatened TV stations with libel suits should they choose to run our ads. Mr. Kerry has filed a complaint with the FEC, seeking to silence us.

How many different ways will John Kerry devise to ask President Bush to condemn our ads and squash our book? Why, Mr. Kerry, are our charges as a 527 group unacceptable to you, while the pronouncements from 527 groups favorable to you are considered acceptable, regardless of stridency and veracity? And we do not have a George Soros, willing to drop millions into our modest group. We control our message. To date, we have received $2 million from 30,000 Americans who have donated an average of around $64.

Mr. Kerry, we ask you not to repeat the same mistake you made when you returned from war: Please stop maligning your fellow veterans. Dealing with us should be easy. Just answer our charges. Produce your Vietnam journal and notes, and execute Standard Form 180 so the American people can see your complete military record--not just the few forms you put on your website or show to campaign biographers.

Mr. O'Neill, author of "Unfit For Command" (Regnery, 2004), is a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

I consider any attempt to shut down or restrict the 527's as wrong (including Moveon.org.). Political speech is never to be controlled by any government agency. As for President Bush, Senator McCain, and all the other politicians that voted for this (the new campaign finance law)-- You should have been more careful what you asked for.

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." --James Madison

Much as it does good in the world, here a particularly egregious example of what seems wrong with the Roman Catholic Church acting as an instrument of God. A priest who celebrated Mass in Latin every day on the set during the making of "The Passion" and now is celebrating Mass with a group that is apparently in disfavor with the Catholic Heirarchy, over doctrinal issues has been suspended. Here is the publicized reason:

A Toronto-area priest who was spiritual adviser to Mel Gibson during filming of the controversial movie The Passion Of The Christ has been suspended by Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic for saying Latin masses for a traditional Catholic splinter group.
...
Somerville, who defends the film against critics, and who strongly denies that Gibson or the movie are anti-Semitic, was suspended by Ambrozic for celebrating mass in Toronto for the Society of St. Pius X, a group that Ambrozic and the Vatican's ecclesiastical commission consider "not in full communion with Rome."

"(Y)our ongoing association with and celebration of the Tridentine Mass for members of the Society of St. Pius X give external recognition to their illegitimate claims and their lack of submission to our Holy Father Pope John Paul II, to bishops appointed by him, and to the teachings of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Your actions are also a potential source of scandal to clergy and laity of the Archdiocese of Toronto," Ambrozic said in a letter to Somerville.

The Society of St. Pius X is one of several traditionalist Catholic groups that refuse to accept changes brought in by the Second Vatican Council, such as saying mass in the vernacular instead of Latin and having the priest face the congregation instead of turning his back to them.

Suzanne Scorsone, a spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, said yesterday that Ambrozic didn't have a choice in the matter.

"Essentially it's a situation where (Somerville) has chosen to take a position not in keeping with the faith body he has agreed to be a priest for. Since he's taken a different position he can no longer speak for us," she said. "He was given the opportunity, even after the suspension letter, to reply and say that he would agree with what the Church teaches.

"He declined to do that. The time period elapsed and so the suspension is now official," she said. "This is an issue on which the Holy See already has a very clear position."

A retired Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, Somerville said he respects Pope John Paul II for his "heroism and his office" as head of the Catholic Church. But, like other traditionalist Catholics, he has reservations about post-Vatican II doctrine.

Since 2001, he has been celebrating the pre-Vatican II Tridentine Latin liturgy, which has its roots in the 16th-century Council of Trent, using the 1962 guide to the mass. Masses are held in chapels and private homes, mostly in Toronto and Michigan, Montana, Indiana, Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C.

Being suspended by the Toronto archdiocese means Somerville is still a Catholic and can practise his religion, but is not officially authorized to say mass anywhere in the world.

"I regret that it's come to an open conflict between me and my archbishop," he said in response to the suspension. But, he believes, the suspension "is unlawful and without foundation."

He said the St. Pius X society is not "schismatic," as alleged by Ambrozic, and is not "out of communion with Rome."

And under canon law, he said, "no one is to be penalized who disobeys a command out of necessity, even if he is mistaken about the necessity, even if it's only a perceived necessity."

I realize this seems parallel to the case of the little girl's first communion that I posted. I pointed out that doctrinal consistency is likely the reason for the strength of the church. That would appear to be the issue here as well, although I smell some standard, of this world, politics as well.

In this case those considered in the wrong are refusing to accept a sanctioned change by the church, whereas in the first case, the church was refusing to change when asked by those considered in the wrong. I think the case here is weaker, in that requiring the Communion bread have wheat and the wine have fermented grape juice might be justified in a cultic requirement sense. The issue of Latin in the service is strictly a dictum by the church heirarchy.

What I find interesting, however, is that the issue is over saying the Mass in Latin, and yet St Bartholomew's Basilica in Philadelphia still holds Latin Masses twice a month. Also, if providing communion to a group of sincere believers who disagree with church doctrine, is grounds for suspension, why have the priest(s) that have given communion to those politicians that voted for and champion abortion not been chastised or punished in any way?

Even though I can see the Roman Catholic position in both issues, it does offend my concepts of God and the worship of Him that some men can say, "Do it my way, or else." It makes them little better than Christian or Islamic fundamentalists. Of course, I belong to a church founded by the man that told the Holy See where to get off, and got away with it.

Thanks to Mike Gilleland for the link.

The time has come the scientist said
To speak of other things
Of whistles, sounds, and helium
and maybe how birds sing.

(Apologies to Lewis Caroll, "The Walrus and the Carpenter" from "Alice in Wonderland")

I was taking my evening walk and was sure I heard a steam engine chime (Steam engines do NOT have whistles, they have chimes.) I started thinking about why I was so sure it was a steam engine and the nature of its characteristic sound. Why did I think it was steam instead of air powering it?

Let's start with something familiar, a toy whistle. It has a slot with a taper to an edge and a hollow tube. (We could also start with a flute or piccolo, but they create the original sound a bit differently so aren't as good for the purpose). Or maybe some of the readers remember the old Boy Scout whittling project to make a willow whistle. The key is the sharp edge at the slot, and the hollow tube. In fact expand this and you have a pipe on a pipe organ. Air passes across the sharp edge and a turbulence is set up. The turbulence then generates sound waves. For all sound waves that have a wavelength that is 4, 2, 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc. the length of the tube will be enforced by resonant amplification, and others will be diminished or cancelled. This provides the pitch of the whistle.

The timbre or quality of the sound is controlled by the relative proportions of the various wavelengths of sound. The longest wavelength is the fundamental and the others are the overtones. Overtones are exact fractions of the fundamental, i.e., there are an integral number of them contained in the length of fundamental. The chime notes on a guitar are overtones of the string generating them. The octave is the 1/2, the next one is the 1/3. I have not heard nor was I ever able to generate the 1/4 or higher overtone. Yet it is the abundance of this overtone that accounts for much of the characteristic tone of a French horn. For that matter, French horns are sufficiently rich in overtones that two horns playing two notes can produce from their common overtones the remainder of the chord. I did it once when I was taking lessons.

Having described at a very high level the fundamentals of sound generation, we now can talk about helium. Everyone knows the trick of inhaling the helium from a helium balloon and then talking "Donald Duck" or my favorite is "Follow the Yellow Brick Road." Conversely, one time I participated in a halon test (Halon is the gas that quenches fires in computer rooms without water. Contrary to what many people believe it does not get rid of oxygen. It actually is a free-radical quencher--a reverse ozone hole generator.) During the test, my normal tenor voice became something close to basso. So here we have the same vocal chords, lungs, mouth structure, yet three quite different voices depending on whether they are using helium, air, or halon and air to generate the sounds. The difference is due to the effective mass of the atmosphere. Helium has an atomic weight of 4. Air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen so has a molecular weight of .8(28) + .2(32) = 28.8. Halon is very dense stuff. I don't know the exact formula, but it has a lot of bromine in it which has an atomic weight of 37 and a molecular weight of 74 [That's from memory. So if it's off a bit, sorry. The argument still holds.] But halon is not just a bromine molecule, it has carbon and more than two bromine atoms in it. My guess is it is about 200 or so molecular weight. Even a small percent of this in air would significantly raise the density.

OK, so why worry about the density of the atmosphere? Because a less dense atmosphere emphasizes high overtones, and a more dense atmosphere emphasizes low overtones.

Now we get to train steam chimes. A good steam chime was composed of several tuned brass tubes that looked very similar to organ pipes. The idea was that they would create a chord when sounded. If one used air to sound them they would sound similar to an organ, perhaps with less character to the tone. But sound them with steam and there is a world of difference. The complexity of the sound greatly increases. This is due to the complexity of the steam. When it is first released, the steam expands and rapidly cools, and vapor starts condensing. What is created is an atmosphere with a constantly changing density and gradients within it. As the vapor condenses, it cools, and the effective density rises. Additionally, the vapor changes the nature of the turbulence that generates the sound. The result is a characteristic sound unlike any other.

The same could also be said for calliopes, those musical sound generators that used to provide merry-go-round music and riverboat music--a sound unlike any other. Where I love the sound of an engine steam chime, I really don't like a calliope. I think it is because a steam chime is static in pitch, and once tuned, it gives a reproducible result. Calliopes try to produce changing pitches with a non-homogeneous medium (unlike a pipe organ which uses homogeneous air), and so always sound out of tune to me.

In the heyday of steam railroading, every hot shot engineer had a characteristic hand on the cord, and usually a distinctive sounding chime on his assigned engine. As a consequence we get this line from The Ballad of Casey Jones:

"The brakeman knew by the engine's moan,
that the man at the throttle was Casey Jones."

There's nothing else like it.

Oh, yeah, I'll save the birds for another time.

I always have a certain quiet, pleasant anticipation when heading over to Mike Gilleland's blog. Today he discusses some common phrases in English and Latin. It is not that they have the immediacy of political commentary, but I find it reassuring that someone cares enough about such things as to provide correct answers. One common failing in the things we often do is failing to pay attention to details. Here the details command attention.

Norm Weatherby at Quantum Thoughts has some troubling statistics on the economics of illegal immigration. There must be room for them in the economy or they wouldn't keep coming. Let's make it easier to become a citizen the right way, and harder to sneak in. Raise the quotas for third world countries, but clamp down on the borders even harder. It will make a great filter. The ones that do get in will have been selected for determination, willingness to work hard, and even better will be on the tax rolls. (That is not quite as inconsistent with my other beliefs as it first seems. Better to have more people paying so that everyone can keep a bit more.)

The Air Marshall at Naked Villainy has some succinct thoughts on the idea of Islamic courts in the US for muslims. I totally agree.

I just added a link to the right to Amy Ridenour's National Center blog. It is a conservative blog and well worth visiting. I found it from the spike in referrals when she linked to my post on the risks of early term abortion. Thanks, Amy.

A theme that I have written against before is the so-called Argument from Design, or in some versions, the Anthropic Principle. In essence the argument from design says that the universe is so exquisitely designed and so delicately inter-related that it could only have come from a designer. In the Anthropic Principle, the thinking is taken one step further. It states in its various versions, that the universe is so fine-tuned in its construction, that minor variations in the values of fundamental physical constants would render the existence of humans impossible, therefore the universe was designed for the existence of humans since we exist. (In thinking about this today, it reminded me of Winnie the Pooh and honey. Pooh thought that bees existed to create honey so he might eat it.) I am currently reading one of the more thorough papers in this area and plan to post a rebuttal in the future.

What I want to present tonight is the idea that such attempts to use knowledge of science to create evidence for God are both futile and degrading to both God and to science. First and foremost, the epistemology of religion and science are totally opposite. Religion depends on faith and a belief in revealed word. This is common to the three main monotheistic religions and could also be said of the religious writings of other major faiths, e.g. Hinduism and Buddhism. Science on the other hand depends on the objective reproduction of findings by others.

Faith is of itself a difficult issue. The most common idea of faith is an unquestioning acceptance of God. I don’t think that this is the correct meaning. Abraham is considered a man of great faith, yet in reading the Old Testament, yet we see him arguing with God over the destruction of Sodom. In fact driving a bargain with God, extracting a promise the Sodom would not be destroyed if there were ten good people there. (Obviously there weren’t since, it was destroyed, and Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back. Great morality play stuff, and I’m NOT being facetious). What characterizes Abraham’s faith was his lack of questioning God’s being there. Much like we expect our spouses or closest friends to be there for us, so also did Abraham expect God to be there, even if they argued. This is the real basis of faith, a form of trust that God will be there and will fulfill his promises. It is not a blind acceptance of any individual act, but rather a willing acceptance of the existence. Once the premise of God is accepted, there is no questioning, and there is no attempt to prove or disprove. His existence is stated and from that point on taken as given. The word of others is considered sufficient to provide belief. Claims are made for the things that God has supposedly done, and there is little question of them as long as they fit preconceptions.

The rigorous questioning and requirements for objective demonstration place science outside of the realm of religion. In science nothing is taken on faith unless explicitly stated as being assumed. Even then that assumption may be questioned in light of other data or newly acquired results. Even the most fundamental assumptions are open to question. The history of science is littered with the remains of former theories and premises. Euclidean geometry continues to be taught and have value, but there were a number of new geometries that have come along that questioned the truth of the idea that two parallel lines would never intersect, or in alternative formulations, that the angles of a triangle could be either less than or greater then 180º. The truth of the idea that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, is no longer correct in interstellar space, it must follow a geodesic, which potentially is far more curved.

The two areas have disparate goals as well. Science wants to provide the maximum ability to work with the world around us. It provides explanations and new ideas that can be exploited by everyone to obtain a better standard of living. The goal of religion is to increase belief in the given tenets of the religion and modify the believers’ behavior accordingly. In general that is accomplished in small church meetings, not from large, widely disseminated publications, whereas with science belief is accomplished with the publication of the new data. To bring the questioning tactics of science into the search for God, is to state one does not have faith or possibly even belief. To bring the practice of faith into the quest for scientific knowledge is to restrict its scope of inquiry before it is even opened.

One can also approach this as an emotional construct for religion and a rational construct for science. In saying this, it is not to be taken as condemning religion as irrational, or promoting science as rational. As humans we have both parts in us and need to allow both to flourish. For years I was an agnostic, and said only that which was logical and objectively demonstrable counted. When I decided that I did believe in God, arriving at that belief did not use my scientific background. It was in response to my own, internal emotional conflicts. The only thing my scientific training has done is to provide me with knowledge to avoid a conflict between the proper spheres of operation of religion and science. It also provides the knowledge to recognize the differences between the two areas.

As I said last Thursday, such arguments appear to me to be more an attempt to rationalize an arrived-at belief than a convincing argument to another person. Belief in God should be its own justification, just as the practice of science does not need a supplemental belief structure.

Naked Villainy, my favorite quiz source, has this quiz on which I scored a 33%.

I also took the political quiz and was a pragmatic rightist -- surprise, surprise!

Once again Drudge has linked to something of interest. This time it is a good object lesson in how to say something about nothing. He links to a Dan Rather news item on rumors concerning the coming convention. In the 70's and during the Challenger disaster I had a lot of respect for both Walter Cronkite and his protege Dan Rather. I have since lost it [the respect -- some people would say I lost it categorically long ago :-) ] This post is a good example of why I don't care much anymore for Dan Rather. He does his best with no information to torpedo Vice-President Cheney, and then tries to rehabilitate Mr Kerry.

BTW this is why I constantly watch Drudge. He can go weeks with nothing that interests me, then suddenly produce a deluge of interesting links.

Time Magazine interviewed Laura Bush and Drudge linked to it. What a politically savvy and gracious lady! Drudge also posted a link to an additional interview by the New York Post.

Drudge earns a HAT TRICK and Mrs. Bush earns my vote for President. (OK that's not quite correct, but I think President Bush has earned another term in office, and it pleases me that Laura Bush is such an articulate and principled lady.)

Drudge has a preview of the TIME interview with President Bush. Go read it. Here is my favorite quote:

“By Bush’s math, you can change your tactics, but you pay a price for changing your principles, and can gain capital by toughing out a fight even if you lose,” Dickerson and Gibbs write.

Amen.

Now the liberals are targetting the delegates to the Republican Convention directly. And the Justice Department is looking at it as possible voter intimidation. The battle is joined. It's going to be an ugly 2 1/2 months until the election.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

Thinking about some people I know, that I also know hate President Bush and therefore like Mr. Kerry, I believe that part of it has to do with how they view themselves and their place in the world. I have commented on liberals that use it as a means to power, and those who think they are helping others (without consideration of the means to do so), but now I think there is a third category. Those who do not see themselves as efficacious in the world. They feel unworthy or inept, have poor self-images, and generally want to be taken care of. As a consequence they deeply resent President Bush's expectations that they be self-sufficient. It makes them face the fact that they aren't and can't and/or don't want to be. It is taking away their ease and what they see as entitlement.

What is worse, is our public education system encourages this belief and behavior. It strongly discourages anyone solving a problem with another student or in independent behavior. It all has to be under the control of the teacher and/or administrator. No wonder the liberals like control of education. It allows them to make clones, to the degree that it is possible.

The Maximum Leader has taken this quiz and is a Claymore. It fits his love of the Scots. I tried it and got this result:


Bastard Sword, although used by many europeans in
medievil times this sword was more of a
collecters sword and was less used for fighting
and more used for looking at, and would only be
used by great warriors or lords/kings. (Please
Vote)


What sword would you use (info and pics on swords as well)
brought to you by Quizilla

I do like the line about great warriors and kings. :-)

The New York Daily News published the same news event by two different reporters. One was pretty much straight news, the other a standard spin article. Here are the two links, 1 and 2. You read; you decide.

Thanks to Drudge for the links.

While I was taking my enforced absence from the blogosphere, both the Maximum Leader and the Minister of Agriculture (Smallholder) at Naked Villainy have come back to blogging in full force. Good to read you back guys!

The Maverick Philosopher has posted an excellent presentation of what constitutes a cumulative case and applies it to the war in Iraq. One of the best things about Dr. Vallicella is that he has a full appreciation of the realities of the world along with his phenomenal academic skills. As witness this quote from the end:

"But of course, liberals and leftists are so blinded by their passionate hatred of Bush II, that patient analysis of the foregoing sort will be lost on them."

If you haven't seen it, go to Steve Headley's Texas Conservative and look at the city dude in the country. What I would really love to see is him trying to produce the product.

Ally is always passionate in her posts, but this one on partial birth abortion is particularly hard-hitting.

TCS has a graphic with an article that is just too good to miss. Study it for a while. It is one of my favorite types of optical illusions, and the context is too perfect.

Brock Yates has an excellent column in TCS today on why gas milage is a poor criterion for making policy. He does a good job of bringing out the reasons why people drive and why smaller, lighter cars are an ivory tower pipe dream. [deliberately mixed metaphor, but can't you just see it?]

I managed to sneak in some blog reading while my program was running, and found the link to this blog on John Ray's Dissecting Leftism blog. He's good. At first glance he makes me think of a cross between Norm Weatherby and Steve Rugg -- both excellent bloggers.

The title comes from a post of the same name by the SoDakMonk. It comes from an old joke where a scientist asks a Hindu guru what holds the earth up. The guru says it sits on the backs of four giant elephants. These in turn sit on the back of a giant turtle. So what holds the turtle up? ....yep, turtles all the way down. Fr. Matthew mentions this as being in a recent book by Stephen Hawking. He then goes on to see things ominous in Hawkings use of it, continuing to a final cruel ad hominum attack.

I enjoy reading the SoDakMonk, and I have a lot of agreement with his concerns over the persecution of religion in this country. But he is frequently posting the latest version of supposedly scientific evidence for a designed universe. I am currently reading the paper he linked to last week, and I find that it has the common fallacy of the probability of extremely rare occurrences. This is a view that when an extremely rare event occurs or an extremely low probability event occurs, it is seen as being directed rather than being a chance happening. An example from my past is the parallels that were drawn between Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy (the real, original JFK) after Kennedy was assassinated. The paper looks at the complexity of nature and life and does not see anyway for the intricate interrelatedness to occur except by the application of a designer. The author is a materials scientist, and apparently has little experience or knowledge of biology or computer science. In biology evolution can create great complexity and interrelatedness in short times, geologically speaking (very long in human terms). Computers now have genetic algorithms that are solving complex problems rapidly and in ways never thought of by their creators. They do it by evolving the programs to arrive at a solution. I would counter that the end result is so complex that it could not have been designed a priori. The counter to that is that God has infinite intelligence so could do it. This assumes the argument to be proven.

This author also looks at the fundamental physical constants and makes note that if any of them varied by very small amounts that life and our universe as it is would not be possible. He then states that since it does exist, it was designed to exist so we could. Again there is no way to prove or disprove that there are an infinitude of parallel universes with different values for the physical constants and they are quite bizarre compared to ours. Also it may well be that we will ultimately discover a more fundamental statement of reality from which these constants naturally derive with no need for a design.

As I have discussed this in depth elsewhere, where I concluded:

However, just because God is apparently not a requirement for life, does not make Him redundant.

So much of this kind of discussion and argument stems from trying to push either too much onto God or not enough, or else attributing the wrong things. Perhaps the best approach is to revive the Old Testament, “I am that I am,” and not try to force God into areas where He is not necessary. Instead of an anthropic universe, consider an anthrocentric God. It is in our day to day lives as humans that God has meaning.

I consider attempts to rationalize, justify, or support religion with science as wasted. The two are incompatible in their approaches, methods, and knowledge base.

But now I want to return to the SoDakMonk's second paragraph:

But what was originally a harmless joke takes on a more ominous tone when used by an anti-religious extremist like Hawking. Hawking is one of the surprisingly small number of modern scientists who is still an atheist.

Actually, if Fr. Matthew is mostly aware of the writings of physical scientists then he might be led to that conclusion. I think there are many scientists out there that simply keep quiet about it, since it does not relate to their science.

The "strong anthropic principle", as detailed last week, is making believers out of scientists who recognise that the universe appears designed for intelligent life.

I have discussed this above and elsewhere. I do not think it is convincing when given to someone. Usually it occurs as the reasons why someone choses to believe.

I haven't read Hawking's latest book, but what I have read by him leads me to think he is rather overrated as a world-class thinker when he ventures beyond his specialty.

Anyone speaking or writing to a general audience, even in his speciality, will not be "world-class" except to his/her publicist. Dr. Hawking is justifiably one of the most brilliant thinkers in theoretical physics today. When he tries to bring his ideas to a general audience it is much like I do when I blog science. Even if he writes outside his field, he is doing no more than Carl Sagan did with "Broka's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden", both of which gave me intellectual heartburn, but were still worth the reading. Such publications are an extended equivalent of blogging.

His physical disability is actually a good public relations trick for him, because it fits the pop culture icon of the eccentric genius. Yes, even in the academic world it helps to have a gimmick.

This is an entirely unwarranted and cruel ad hominum attack. Dr. Hawkings disability has nothing to do with his ability as a scientist. It is his ability to think that has allowed him, with the help of others, to find ways to communicate despite his disabilities. He should be considered an inspiration. Almost anyone else in the same situation would have given up and died long ago.

I have no issue with Fr. Matthew's espousal of arguments for design. I went through that at one time as well. It is comforting in this modern day of attempted hyper-rationality that an emotional state can seem to be supported by reason. However, whether one disagrees or not with another's position, attacking the person in a way not related to the position is wrong. I could be described accurately as a fat, old, fart, but it bears no relationship to my blogging. Were I to try to be athletic, then it is a different story.

John Ray in his Greenie Watch blog has published a term to describe those who have a more sane approach to the environment. One can be a greenie (as in weenie) or one can be a terracotta.

If you're a green, you believe in wildlife (without humans) and wilderness, you want to change attitudes, you believe in communal ownership.

If you're a Teracotta - a material which comes from the earth, but only through the medium of human agency, you believe that humans are part of the world ecology, that you want to see wise use of environmental resources rather than mere wilderness, that you want to change incentives (rather than the minds of politicians) and that private ownership and property rights are probably the best way to protect scarce things, like the environment. Makes sense to me

.

I don't mind being a terracotta.

OK, I couldn't stand going a week without posting. It's addicting. So while my program runs, I'll steal some time.

I'm in Columbus, OH, this week, staying downtown. I've gotten serious again about my weight, so every evening I take a 30 minute walk (Having done nothing for months, 30 minutes is a good time). The hotel is located a block from the State Capitol, and across the street from the Scioto river. So walking can be very pleasant, things to see and think about.

Tonight I'm just into my walk and a guy comes the other way towards me. We pass and I exchange the usual stranger-stranger pleasantries. I'm in a good mood so probably am pretty cheerful. (Oh, yeah, the guy looks pretty poor, economically). About 10 yards away he suddenly turns and says, "Sir, can I ask you something?" OK, I figure I know what is coming, but not being in a hurry and in a good mood, I figure I'll see how it plays out.

He gives me a long spiel and a bunch of ingratiation. Along with, he's been in prison 13 years and just got out a week ago, and hasn't had anything to eat in four days, and he's been to the shelters and the churches and can't get anything. (Yeah, I realize it's all a lie). So could I spare the cost of a sandwich. (Inflation has even hit panhandling. Used to be a cup of coffee).

I look at him and ask, "Are there any places to eat nearby?" He says only about 8 or 9 blocks on up. I said, "nothing around here, say over on High Street?" No. I said, "I'd be happy to feed you, but I will not give you money." He looks at me like, "Huh?" I repeated it. I said, "I will feed you, but I will not give you money. I never give money." This guy looked like he was lost in the twilight zone. This response was totally outside anything he could deal with. He just shut up and turned and left.

BTW if he had asked for money, I wouldn't have given it to him. And I found out a bit later on the walk there was an open Wendy's three blocks away and an Arby's with a 2 for $4 special just a block away.

It's not nice to tell lies. But I doubt if he learns.

This week will be an intense one on the road. I will consider myself lucky to read other blogs much less post to my own. Some weeks I can keep up on the road and some not. This one will most likely be a not.

An eight-years old girl, the Roman Catholic Church, and Political Correctness come together in this particular case.

Here is the story (via CNN, and Naked Villainy): [elisions are the girls personal history]

BRIELLE, New Jersey (AP) -- An 8-year-old girl who suffers from a rare digestive disorder and cannot eat wheat has had her first Holy Communion declared invalid because the wafer contained no wheat, violating Roman Catholic doctrine.
Now, Haley Waldman's mother is pushing the Diocese of Trenton and the Vatican to make an exception, saying the girl's condition should not exclude her from the sacrament, which commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ before his crucifixion. The mother believes a rice Communion wafer would suffice.
"It's just not a viable option. How does it corrupt the tradition of the Last Supper? It's just rice versus wheat," said Elizabeth Pelly-Waldman.
Church doctrine holds that Communion wafers, like the bread served at the Last Supper, must have at least some unleavened wheat. Church leaders are reluctant to change anything about the sacrament.
"This is not an issue to be determined at the diocesan or parish level, but has already been decided for the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world by Vatican authority," Trenton Bishop John M. Smith said in a statement last week.
…
The diocese has told Haley's mother that the girl can receive a low-gluten wafer, or just drink wine at Communion, but that anything without gluten does not qualify. Pelly-Waldman rejected the offer, saying her child could be harmed by even a small amount of the substance.
Haley's Communion controversy isn't the first. In 2001, the family of a 5-year-old Massachusetts girl with the disease left the Catholic church after being denied permission to use a rice wafer.
Some Catholic churches allow no-gluten hosts, while others do not, said Elaine Monarch, executive director of the Celiac Disease Foundation, a California-based support group for sufferers.
"It is an undue hardship on a person who wants to practice their religion and needs to compromise their health to do so," Monarch said.
The church has similar rules for Communion wine. For alcoholics, the church allows a substitute for wine under some circumstances, however the drink must still be fermented from grapes and contain some alcohol. Grape juice is not a valid substitute.
…
Last year, as the third grader approached Holy Communion age in this Jersey Shore town, her mother told officials at St. Denis Catholic Church in Manasquan that the girl could not have the standard host.
After the church's pastor refused to allow a substitute, a priest at a nearby parish volunteered to offer one, and in May, Haley wore a white Communion dress, and received the sacrament alongside her mother, who had not taken Communion since she herself was diagnosed with the disease.
Last month, the diocese told the priest that the church would not validate Haley's sacrament because of the substitute wafer.
…
Pelly-Waldman is seeking help from the Pope and has written to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, challenging the church's policy.
"This is a church rule, not God's will, and it can easily be adjusted to meet the needs of the people, while staying true to the traditions of our faith," Pelly-Waldman wrote in the letter.

Here is a catholic blogger’s take on the issue, a fear that the church will ultimately be dictated to by the courts. (via the SoDakMonk)

Next major assault on religious liberty
Know what it will be? A campaign to deny to churches and other religious entities the right to enforce their own doctrines against an individual dissenting member.

The ideological basis for this campaign will be the asserted right of the individual to "practice" the religion of his choice. Of course, traditional Free Exercise principles forbid the government from interfering with this right; the new twist is that a church's own teachings will be seen as violating religious liberty norms if they burden an individual's desire to belong to that church.

I've already seen an article in the Yale Law Journal sketching this theory, using "fundamentalist" Islam as its target -- a smooth move, since no one will want to be seen defending the right of the Taliban to be the Taliban. (I'll post the cite later; I don't have it here right now.)

In this light, consider this news item:

BRIELLE, N.J. — An 8-year-old girl who suffers from a rare digestive disorder and cannot eat wheat has had her first Holy Communion (search) declared invalid because the wafer contained no wheat, violating Roman Catholic doctrine.
...
Some Catholic churches allow no-gluten hosts, while others do not, said Elaine Monarch, executive director of the Celiac Disease Foundation, a California-based support group for sufferers.

See? Some parishes already accommodate, so it's obviously sheer discrimination for the Church as a whole not to. But Ms. Monarch isn't finished:

"It is an undue hardship on a person who wants to practice their religion and needs to compromise their health to do so," Monarch said.

"Undue hardship." "Undue burden." Lack of "reasonable accommodation." It's the language that precedes a lawsuit, probably under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The Free Exercise suit against the Church will come later, after the Supreme Court has been persuaded by Mark Tushnet, Cass Sunstein, et al. that the "state action" requirement for direct liability under the Constitution should be abandoned.

The Air Marshall at Naked Villainy posted this easily sympathized with view:

Wheat-allergic girl denied Communion
Read the story here[link to above story, bk]. I'd be interested in BigHo's take on this. Being a spiritual, but non religious person, married into the Catholic church, this sort of thing strikes me as just plain stupid. I guess it's OK for priests to molest little kids, but you can't use rice crackers in communion.

It just seems that so many times organized religion gets hung up in irrelevant details and misses the whole point of worshipping a greater being. Especially a political, and financial organization like the Roman Catholic Church.

My Comments:
Despite the apparent triviality of the issue, actually it is very deep and strikes at the roots of religious practice. What makes it more difficult is that depending on one’s starting point, any of the views may be considered justified or even correct. It is also seems to be over the top that this would be seen as a possible attempt to force a church to change its doctrine. So I would like to look at this in a bit more detail.

One of the things that seems to characterize modern society is that we are always ready to ask for, and obtain an exception. It has become much more common in the last few years as victimhood becomes the gold standard for legal action. At the same time one of the strengths of the Roman Catholic Church over the ages is its conservatism, a deliberate reluctance to change without major debate and a careful (some would say overly careful) decision process. Despite the various mistakes that have been shown in its history, there is always a sense of a core, unchanging set of doctrines and practices. It would be my guess that a renaissance or possibly medieval catholic placed in a modern Latin service would be right at home. Such conservatism will of necessity be protected by a tremendous rigidity towards outside influences. That it is a successful strategy is evidenced by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is the only denomination that is growing in the US besides fundamentalist churches, which are also quite rigid in belief and practice. Mainline protestant churches, with occasional exceptions, are experiencing declines. Mainline protestant churches also are the most flexible in belief and practice.

The nature of churches is that the ecclesiastical hierarchy dictates correct belief and practice. And in many churches this means agree or don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Interestingly enough this seems to characterize many growing faiths, including fundamental Christianity, Islam, and Roman Catholicism. It provides a solid core of absolute reference. It does no matter if it is consistently followed by the believers. It is its existence that provides the anchor. It is important to realize that one can discuss doctrine and practice as separate entities, but in actual use practice follows from doctrine, and cannot be isolated from it.

Enter into this an eight-years old girl cursed with an inability to eat wheat gluten. It is my understanding that this disease can be extremely painful and debilitating with exposure to very small amounts of wheat. It is in the nature of an allergy. Think of it as a version of allergy to bee stings or seafood. She has been raised a Roman Catholic and to Catholics, First Communion is a major milestone while growing up. Generally a party is given afterwards that often rivals a birthday party in expansiveness. It is a major family occasion. Her regular parish priest refuses to give her a rice wafer in place of a wheat one, so another priest does. Now her First Communion is declared void.

To most of us this seems heartless and cruel. It is not her fault she has the disease. Why can’t the exception be made? In the news article the church representative states that doctrine requires that some wheat gluten be present in the wafer for it to count. Just as they also say that there must be some fermented grape juice in the grape juice substitute for wine that is given alcoholics. This seems rather technical and hair-splitting in nature. But it can be seen as a way of ensuring spiritual continuity with the original Last Supper, where unleavened wheat bread was served (much like a whole wheat matzo). So even though the Roman Catholic Church has, over the years, turned unleavened bread into an unleavened, shaped disc or wafer, still it has carefully maintained a sense of continuity with the requirement that some wheat be present.

Given such doctrinal importance, it is understandable, even if to some unacceptable, why an exception in this case would be seen as a major erosion of the core faith. If one such exception were made it would open the gates to others. This certainly cannot be the only such doctrinal issue that is inconvenient. It happens to be one of the ones under direct and total control of the church. Many others such as birth control depend on the conscience of the parishioner to be observed.

It is important to keep in mind, that despite the difficulties of maintaining such a position in the face of opposition to it, IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE CHURCH TO DO SO. Much as I said Lester Maddox had a right to chose the clientele of his restaurant in a very early blog. So the church then presents this young girl and her parents with a very difficult decision, remain in the church of birth and not take communion, remain in the church of birth and take communion and be sick, or leave the church. One of the successes of the Roman Catholic Church is that they do an excellent job of indoctrination as a member grows up [this does not necessarily have pejorative connotations]. Leaving the church is probably the last option to be considered.

In today’s climate of victims’ superiority, it is natural for the church to feel the threat of a lawsuit. In this case with the publicity surrounding it, the fear may turn out to be well-founded. If the rights of the church are found to be subordinate to that of the parishioner, then the state will have, in effect, established a religion, because it will have dictated the terms of religious practice of a church.

But what about the little girl? I see a number of options. First, do we really know that a single communion wafer, once a week or once a month will be truly debilitating? Do we know that she has an absolute intolerance to wheat gluten, or is this a case of taking the absolute position for sake of creating an issue. It is possible that she would only have to take a small portion of the wafer for it to count. To anyone familiar with communion wafers, the whole thing is pretty insignificant physically in the first place. There has to be some medical treatment besides avoidance. Can something be worked out with her doctor to minimize the impact of taking communion? I deliberately removed the statements concerning the girl, her condition, and her and her mother’s comments, because they could be considered inflammatory in nature. I don’t think this is being undertaken in good faith by the mother. In the absence of any statements to the contrary, if no attempt a accommodation is to be taken, then find another church. There are mainline protestant churches with a liturgy almost identical to the Roman Catholic one, and most would be willing to use a non-wheat substitute for the communion bread.

The SoDakMonk in the previously linked post said:

“I have always considered the possibility that the Church could see political persecution in my lifetime. The voices of those who hate Christianity are growing louder, and I don't see much outrage on our side. We need a wake-up call.”

Unfortunately, the call is coming very late. This kind of political persecution has been going on for years in Establishment Clause law. I have read a lot of the opinions, and the overall trend has not been to keep religious freedom. Even in my days as an agnostic, I knew that one had to respect religion. Not to respect it opens the doors to persecution of ANY belief, not just religious.

Mike Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti has posted a note on hiring. In my day in science during Lyndon Johnson's guns and butter programs, the pertinent phrase was "Women and minorities are encouraged to apply." I guess getting the job was a cinch if you were a black woman. This was during the worst job market for scientists that I can remember. Science magazine which normally had six to twelve pages of openings, had one to two, and almost all of them carried the above phrase. The poor white guy with kids to feed that had just been laid off didn't stand a chance.

Norm Weatherby at Quantum Thoughts has posted some of the evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is a current secular position that Jesus was a mythical figure. As Norm points out, the evidence does nothing to support or disprove Jesus divinity, but it does establish him as a real person.

Dick McDonald at The Right Scale has the transcript of Richard Reid's sentencing. It is one of the most powerful statements of freedom vs. terrorism I have read. Read it.

Dennis Mangan has linked to my post on deer and predators, and points out:

"for it assumes that only human interests count, and that is exactly what must be established. "

Most articles and commentary on the supposed immorality of eating meat seem to have an argument of animals' interests in them. They then use the animals' interest in not dying in being the moral equivalent of our interests or even trumping all but our interests in not dying. I am not in a position to properly argue this, both from knowledge and time standpoints, but there are two things that strike me about this argument, 1) is the concept of interests being properly applied, or is it being stretched and distorted for the purposes of the position, and 2) given that interests are indeed a correct concept to use, what is the determiner of the value of interests or what are proper interests to have.

I am glad to see Mike Gilleland back blogging again, and he has a link to Joy of Knitting . It is an established blog, and definitely has some different and interesting posts.

The SoDakMonk has a sobering post on the attacks on religious freedom. It rapidly gets into areas of constitutional law and individual freedom trumping religious freedom in the sense of an individual's religious preference being imposed by law on a religious institution despite the established and stated doctrines. The link to another blog and the comments in that blog make it more substantial than one might first suppose.

I have been concerned for religious freedom for some time. This form of attack is new but not surprising.

For the consequentialists in the crowd: This article discusses the well-researched, peer-reviewed and published finding that abortion in the first trimester is three times more dangerous than giving birth, and the legal implications under Roe vs. Wade.

Thanks to the SoDakMonk for the link.

Ally at Who Moved My Truth? does an excellent job of pointing out the inconsistency of the feminists' position on abortion.

Steve Rugg at JusTalkin is really on fire today. Love both his posts on the Kerry advertising and on the Al-Sadr mess in Najaf.

Joshua Elder has published an essay in TCS on the liberals with the above title. It is the best statement on liberal elitism I have seen.

In an email newsletter from The Federalist for today (20 August 2004, Federalist Patriot No. 04-33, Friday Digest) this appeared:

Keeping alive the "President Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore" myth, 13 Democrat congressmen demanded in July that UN observers be invited to monitor the upcoming presidential election. Their request was rejected by UN Secretary Kofi Annan and barred by House Republicans. Yet Secretary of State Colin Powell has invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE's) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to monitor our election anyway. [emphasis mine, bk]

The ODIHR (pronounced, we suppose, "oh dear") is based in Warsaw and conducts "in-depth observation of national and local elections." Its goal is to "ensure full respect for full human rights...as well as promote tolerance throughout society," according to its website.

Needless to say, House Democrats are thrilled, and they're letting the propaganda fly. Said Demo Rep. Barbara Lee -- she of the lone House vote against going to war with the Taliban -- "We sincerely hope that the presence of the monitors will make certain that every person's voice is heard, and every person's vote is counted." As if they weren't in 2000. (Memo to Colin Powell: Mr. Secretary, we respect and admire your service to our country...but what were you thinking?)

Advocates of American sovereignty are livid, and properly so. A spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul described Powell's action as "exactly the type of entanglement that results from our continued insistence on being a member of the UN...."

Meanwhile, just how ODIHR representatives will perform their monitoring is unclear. For example, in Florida, election officials say that foreign observers are not allowed within 50 feet of the polls. But perhaps while they're at it, the foreign "observers" can trump state sovereignty, too.

Tech Central Station published an essay discussing the increase in deer-automobile accidents. They also pointed out the resistance to letting hunters ease the problem. In a nutshell, the reason there are too many deer is that there are not predators and plenty to eat. Deer eat crops, shrubs, gardens, whatever they can find, and they are becoming a nuisance to suburban homeowners. There is so much population pressure that their natural timidity towards man is becoming less. There are no predators because we eliminated them when we settled the country. We had to. Given the choice between a deer that knows danger and how to escape and a fat, dumb cow or fat, slow pig, a predator will go for the domestic food.

From a wildlife management viewpoint the answer is obvious – kill the excess deer.

From a political, emotional viewpoint – wrong answer. I blame the movie “Bambi”. It was out about the time I was four, and it had lots of appealing, childlike characters. The underlying message was that hunters were the bad guys. They kill Bambi’s father and mother. Nowhere in the movie were there natural predators. Animals were presented as “just like us”. Yes, this is obvious make-believe, but the underlying emotional message still got across – animals are sweet, cuddly, and we are awful to hunt them.

Projecting our view and reactions of the world and its impact on us onto animals (anthropomorphism) is totally fallacious. Animals do not live in our world and we do not live in theirs. Yes, we can see similarities in their reactions to what we would feel or do, but that alone does not validate ascribing human-like feelings or reactions to them.

Many of the objections to hunting are simply ignorant. The worry over a wounded animal dying later rarely happens. Almost all hunters are responsible in that they 1) practice to become good marksmen and markswomen and 2) if they wound an animal they follow it until they find it and then kill it as quickly as possible. Though there is trophy hunting, which I would like to exclude from this discussion, deer, turkey, rabbit, squirrel, duck and goose hunting actually provide food and leather or fur. This is not wanton killing. Restricting hunting to only bucks has caused major declines in the quality of deer herds. By selecting only the most fit as objects to hunt, we have removed them as sources of input to the genetic pool. From a natural viewpoint, it is more effective and less naturally expensive to hunt does. Since hunting is done during the mating season, there would be no risk of orphaning a fawn. It would allow males to compete again for the leadership and ownership of the does, and would remove the desire to hunt for a trophy. Removing a doe is far more effective method for herd reduction than removing a male.

Back to anthropomorphism, most people can imagine being shot with a rifle, but few can imagine being hit by a car. Of the two, the car is the worse. A rifle either kills instantly or passes on through. A car creates blunt trauma and death may or may not come rapidly. It may only break a leg in which case the deer dies a slow, lingering death, unable to compete adequately. Here is a thought comparison, being shot by a rifle is to being hit by a car, as being cut with a sharp knife is to being hit with a hammer.

Outlawing hunting and hoping for a better way to control deer than hitting them with cars is nothing but wishful thinking.

The Igloo has a good post on the effects of aging at a relatively young age.

The SoDakMonk has found a new and interesting article arguing for a designed universe. I have downloaded and printed it. I will study it and discuss in a future post. I personally do not believe in a designed universe though I do believe in God. This article looks to have a lot of thought behind it.

Bill Vallicella has yet another important post, this time as an answer to a new argument from atheism/agnosticism. I am constantly awed by his ability to concisely and accurately nail his points.

Tonight I had dinner at an Indian Restaurant for the first time. One of my colleagues said I should try it. OK, I was nervous about doing it on my own. I had heard some bad stories about some other Indian restaurants. I was very pleasantly surprised.

The restaurant was very clean and well decorated with nice Indian prints on the walls. I was amazed at the reasonableness of the prices on the menu, especially for the wine. I typically expect 2X retail or more in lesser restaurants. This was about 125% to 135% of retail. The three of us ordered a huge amount of food, and had some left, with the wine for $25 apiece.

The waiter was very good. Granted we were the only customers for a while, but still I have had bad service under those conditions before. I really enjoyed the food. We ordered medium hot, but I could have handled hot OK. I like this cuisine better than Thai and possibly better than Mexican/TexMex.

But what was more interesting to me was that the other side of the restaurant was set up for a kids party. It looked like about 50 people were expected. They started arriving while we were eating. There was a mixture of American and traditional Indian dress. A couple of the ladies were pregnant.

I think this captures in a nutshell what the American dream is about. These people have come to this country. They work hard; they produce something of value and sell it, and they maintain a closeness of family. I don't consider them a block of Indians. This was a family group first of all. That they happened to be Indians is incidental in one sense, but important in the sense that they have chosen to come here an are working hard to make it worth it.

The other thing to note is that a child's birthday is important. How many US families would bring together the extended family to celebrate a child's birthday? (I have been fortunate to belong to one such for the last 22 years.) Also they believe in having children and taking care of them.

I have over the past few years read opinion that points out that the third world is reproducing faster than the Western world. Pat Buchanan has written on this as well in relation to the US. Pat Buchanan feels that we are threatened by this. If one wants to consider whites as superior, we are. But this country wasn't founded on race, it was founded on ideas. That they came from white men is incidental in terms of their application. If our immigrants understand success better than we do, then they have every right to take over. They will have earned the privilege.

If, like Europe, we, as the longer resident Americans, become so self-centered that we can't be bothered with children, and we don't want to work harder than 40 or so hours a week, then we will get exactly what we deserve. We will be replaced over the decades by those who will.

The biggest problem with getting what we deserve is that by the time it arrives, we've forgotten what we have done. This article is a good example of what all those wonderful, clean air and water regulations and licensing requirements have done to the building of new and better buildings and roads.

Here are some quotes:

LOS ANGELES – Somewhere in China today, a dam is being built and it's ruining Bill Feltz's day.
"It's hurting us, no question," says Mr. Feltz, vice president of production for Anderson Concrete, a leading Central Ohio concrete firm. "The Chinese are building dams and roads and Olympic venues, so they are using more cement than they make." The extra demand is driving up the prices for the rest of the world, he says, so "here in Columbus, Ohio, a significant portion of that is coming out of our pockets."
…
Some construction companies have already planned for shortages until 2005. Although raw materials needed for cement are not in short supply, both the cost and the regulations surrounding the construction of new mills to mix the cement are significant hurdles, observers say.
"The permitting process can take years because of regulations and the fact that many communities don't want a mill in their backyard," says Anderson's Feltz.
To help alleviate the problem, some contracting and homebuilding associations are pressuring the federal government to temporarily lift a ban on cement imported from Mexico. Such tariffs - now at 40 percent but recently as high as 80 percent - began 14 years ago amid US accusations that Mexico was unfairly competing with US companies by selling below cost.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

Norm Weatherby tends to bring out the geek in me, especially with his humor. For all fellow geeks these are funny.

Lee at Verbum Ipsum has a double today also. He has two excellent posts comparing libertarians to liberals, and a counter to the TCS article on fusionism (libertarianism and conservatism).

Bill Vallicella has a double plus an assist. He posted a lengthy reply to a post by Kevin Kim (Big Hominid), and also a reply to a letter on Incarnation from a graduate student in Philosophy of Religion.

These are very challenging discussions. I have saved them off for later study.

I have created an archive of my religious posts, Bill's Religious Archive. It is to function strictly as an archive. All posts will be here first and a copy to the archive. The purpose is to put all my religious writing in one place.

Lee at Verbum Ipsum has an excellent riposte to an LA Times article condemning religion. Regardless of your beliefs, I think it is an important statement in this area.

Steve Rugg at JusTalkin is on fire. This is a powerful post. He should get angry more often!

One of the most damaging behaviors in human relations is self-righteousness. It sets its practitioners apart and maintains barriers. A righteous person simply goes about his/her life doing the things that she/he believes are correct. The self-righteous person rubs everyone’s nose in how righteous he/she is. My usual Biblical example is the Pharisees. They made a big deal about following the letter of the law and then proceeded to have Jesus put to death for pointing out their hypocrisy.

Modern day self-righteousness was responsible for the mess that was Ireland for so many years. It was a combination of self-righteous and self-pity. Often the two go hand-in-hand. It is a deadly combination – I am so good, things are so bad, I am deserving of …. (revenge, retribution, compensation, etc.) Self-righteousness and self-pity fuel the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. There is an attempt to play on it in the Iranian meddling in Iraq.

In the US, usually liberals are the most guilty of self-righteousness, with their great “concern” for the poor, downtrodden, etc. Evidence of self-righteousness comes in their litmus test politics and decisions. A single issue determines all. A judge is confirmed or fails confirmation on his/her personal views on abortion. Or for that matter her/his personal views on anything. As if to say that the law was subject only personal whim in its interpretation.

People do the same with their own issues sometimes. They will condemn others categorically for a single view they do not agree with. It is a shame, because when they experience the same behavior from someone else they find it hurts. Self-righteousness leads to ideology and the ideology then is used to reinforce the self-righteousness along with the self-pity.

To reference an earlier post, self-righteousness is pride without humility.

Lee at Verbum Ipsum published a note a few days ago mentioning the difference between science and ideology. It has prompted me to post my thoughts on the continuation of a four part series started quite some time back, on the foundations of society. (The other two parts are here and here.)

One of the problems I see in our society today is the warfare between science and religion, specifically academic science and fundamentalist religion. The most obvious battle ground is the argument over teaching evolution in the nations public schools. The fundamentalists want to claim equal time for creation theory or even get rid of the teaching of evolution altogether. For one brief moment they succeeded in Kansas when the State Board of Education decreed that evolution would no longer be taught in the Kansas schools. Historically there have been times when the Roman Catholic church suppressed and dictated the content of science in order for it to be consistent with church doctrine of the time. Today there are cases where religion and science appear to be bedfellows, but I find such coziness troublesome.

At the same time scientists are all too ready to condemn religious thought as superstitious and to especially dismiss the Creation Story. [Dismissing it is to make the converse mistake of the fundamentalists. They hold it as literally true, and science says it is manifestly false. Neither realizes it is an important myth to Judeo-Christian society, just as is the Daneii (Navaho) legend of how the earth and man came to be. Both provide important groundings of belief.]

The problem here is that each side is entering into areas to which it does not belong. I pride myself on being a good scientist by training and by inclination in my approach to everything. I also take pride in having arrived at being a theist, albeit quite non-traditional in my approach. The only way my science impacts my theism is in the analytic thinking habits that I bring to it. The only impact that my theism has on my science is in whatever moral choices I use in the application of the science. It does not impact the practice of the science itself. That is as it should be.

Religion gives us no information or instruction on how to provide for ourselves, or subdue our environment so that we might live. Science gives no instruction on what our moral values should be. Properly employed, science fearlessly studies anything and everything. Religion determines first which of the results of the studies are proper to implement based on its moral laws, and secondarily can determine if the study itself is immoral. A recent example of science without morals was published in the NYT Sunday magazine. A commentary on it was published in Tech Central Station.

The second area is a bit dicey sometimes because of the areas that might be studied. The most obvious example is the ongoing debate on stem cell research and the use of embryonic tissue. Another might be the study of human sexuality. To many believers both these areas are fraught with sinfulness. The one because the fertilized ovum is considered a human, and the other because sex between other than a man and a woman married to each other is wrong. Secularists (read, scientists) point out the benefits to be obtained from the knowledge. [Resolution of this is the province of government because it requires the resolution of competing standards and rules.].

Here are some notes on what I see as the nature of the relationship between scientists and religion as it exists today.

It has been noted that the scientists most likely to be theists in some form are physicists, and those least likely are biologists. I think this comes from ignorance of each others areas, being poor philosophers, and the nature of their respective work.

Lets start with physicists, who form the bulk of the religious scientists and are major contributors to such organizations as the Templeton Foundation. Physicists comments, as quoted in a publication from the Templeton Foundation, tend to fall into the Argument from Design—“The universe is so ordered that there must be an intelligence behind the order.” This is actually poor philosophy, since the order the physicists describe is the order of their models of physical reality. Physicists frequently use their descriptions as a substitute for the actual reality. Events are hypothesized to occur that appear to violate the laws of thermodynamics as long as the energy to cause them is “paid back” within the uncertainty of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal (HUP). HUP is a theory about how closely we can measure something at the atomic and sub-atomic level, not a theory of reality. Another example is Schroedinger’s Cat. A cat is inside a box with a radioactive source. If the source decays, the cat dies, if it does not the cat is alive. The question is whether the cat is alive or dead. According to this interpretation of quantum mechanics, the cat is neither alive or dead until we open the box and check, at which time it will become alive or dead depending on whether the source emitted a particle or not. This is a good description of our knowledge about the cat, but not about the reality of the cat. There are many other examples and paradoxes that indicate a lack of philosophical rigor in understanding what their theories are or imply. Hence the argument that there is a design, therefore there must be a designer. This may be emotionally satisfying to them, but is actually inaccurate reasoning. What is happening is they are creating an ordered description of the universe and saying that because this ordered description works, that is the design of the universe, and since it appears to be ordered and designed, there must be something that ordered and designed it.

Another argument is the so-called anthropic argument. In effect, it is somewhat teleological in that it points out that this universe is suitable for humans only because of some vary precise values of certain physical constants, and that if those constants had other values, the universe would be uninhabitable. Therefore this universe exists because humans exist. In my mind it is a close cousin Bishop Berkley’s and Kant’s ideas, that in essence, the universe is subjective, not objective. Or perhaps to engage in a bit of ad hominum attack, the anthropic universe appeals because those who believe in it can remain the center of the universe just as when they were children.

Biologists go the other way. The deeper one goes into biology, the more chaotic, accidental and undetermined it appears. There are precise descriptions of biological processes that are very ordered in some cases, but every process has places it can go wrong, and examples of where it does. The mechanisms that life uses to reproduce itself are amazingly accurate but subject to error, and certainly don’t appear to be the end result of a rational design. A hundred years ago, there were still strong arguments that there existed a non-physical quality that was essential to life—the vitalists’ arguments. Since that time increasingly detailed knowledge has all but destroyed that notion, and life is seen as the sum of the processes that have been and will be described. Even the highest areas of the workings of the human brain are being reduced to patterns of firing of neurons. Prebiotic evolution studies are slowly closing the gap between non-living and living entities, indicating that somewhere along the way non-living collections of chemicals can become living. In addition, evolution appears to be a very messy and inefficient way to do things. It is a constant process of mixing genes, sometimes altering them, producing as many varied copies as possible and letting them attempt to survive. The ones that survive are then able to recombine with other genes and try again. This not only applies to sexual reproduction, but also asexual reproduction, since bacteria can have genetic material from other bacteria inserted via natural bacteriophages and conjugation. On one hand, it appears wasteful, but in the time scales available, it does the job and provides an extremely rich variety of life.[1] However, just because God is apparently not a requirement for life, does not make Him redundant.

So much of this kind of discussion and argument stems from trying to push either too much onto God or not enough, or else attributing the wrong things. Perhaps the best approach is to revive the Old Testament, “I am that I am,” and not try to force God into areas where He is not necessary. Instead of an anthropic universe, consider an anthrocentric God. It is in our day to day lives as humans that God has meaning.

[1] The overall efficiency of evolution is such that computer scientists have adopted an analogical process called genetic algorithms. Code is created that is “mixed” in the computer and allowed to process. The code that produces the best result then mixes together to produce different code and the processing repeated. This continues with the addition of “mutations,” that give new steps in the processing. The results have been some excellent and heretofore never thought of ways of solving the problems being tackled.

And I also am proud to be in the community of bloggers that the Maverick Philosopher has mentioned. A note to Dennis Mangan, in the blogging world, the PhDs are far less important than the ideas presented in the blog. You have earned an equal stature by posting and trying to think about things.

The AnalPhilosopher has posted a description of the Epicurean ideal.

Keith posted a similar statement early on in his blogging career, to which I had this response:

At first glance this analysis of desires appeals immediately and the partitioning has merit--necessities, preferences, all the rest. However, desires for wealth and power (or perhaps fame) are not necessarily inimical to happiness. They may be for those who don't care about them, or for those who become irrationally driven to pursue such ends as ends of themselves. But I am convinced that the pursuit of something beyond the immediate physical and emotional needs is essential to the health and happiness of individuals, and thus we have the pursuit of ideas, the creation of material objects, etc. In the process wealth, power, and fame may accrue. The acquisition of these things may certainly be pleasurable even to the extent that they rather than the pursuit of the original goal become the motivators. But is this necessarily inimical or harmful? If the expansion of my material wealth becomes a motivator for improvements in what I do or how I do it, by what standard have I harmed myself or others? In the pathological case where wealth, power, or fame are sought as substitutes for other needs, e.g., love, self-respect, peer-respect, etc., I can see the argument applying.

From Fox News, The Political Grapevine, comes this bit.

Canyon Clash
A visit to the grand canyon this week led to a heated exchange between John Kerry (search) and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. When her husband asked her to join him on a helicopter ride over the canyon, Mrs. Kerry refused. As the presidential candidate continued to press her, an exasperated Teresa replied -- "you don't understand vertigo."

Growing impatient, Kerry finally reached out to his wife to bring her aboard the waiting chopper, but Teresa grabbed a secret service member for protection and snapped, "No! I'm not going."

I have had vertigo. As his wife said, he really doesn't understand. He didn't give a shit about her, only the appearances for his candidacy.

The facade is cracking.....

When I was younger I used to like science fiction. I grew up with the “classic” science fiction, rockets and space ships, BEMS (Bug-Eyed MonsterS), and the like. I also read a lot of detective stories, which eventually became an interest in mystery stories. (The two are not the same. A detective solves a puzzle, but the focus is on the action, not the puzzle. A mystery has the focus on the puzzle, the detective is the means to the end.) I also liked war stories from WW II. To this day, my favorite books include “The Guns of Navaronne”, “The Cruel Sea”, and H.M.S. Ulysses, which I rarely read because it is so tragic. From those stories I graduated to spy novels, and my two favorite authors in that genre are John Le Carre, and Fredrick Forsyth. The two are vastly different. Le Carre has a grey, amoral quality about his stories, and they often have a strange mix of incompetence, competence, luck, and tragedy. However, they are excellently crafted and have a tremendous air of reality about them. Fredrick is more romantic in his approach. He has heroes and all but impossible situations that have to be resolved. He also has a lot of realism in his works, but it is that of hard, bright edges and moral action, not mushy grey amoral goo.

I have just finished reading “Avenger” by Forsythe. It is one of his best. It is not the massive sweep of the Gulf War as is “Fist of God” but rather a personal-level story that spans over thirty years. The plot twist at the end is done especially well, it doesn’t get revealed until the last half of the last page. When I read it, I cried, it was so good. For those who like to read the back part way through – resist the temptation, it is worth the wait.

One of the things about Forsythe’s writing, is that it places everything in context. The context he uses is the view of the world of a former British Foreign Service officer who keeps up with all the details of the world of international politics and spy-craft. Every book gives some of his views of the world for the time, and they can be very informative and certainly thought provoking.

Here is a selection from p. 245:

It was an old British spymaster who explained it to him in a London club in the late sixties as Vietnam became nastier and nastier and the riots erupted.

‘My dear boy, if you were weak, you would not be hated. If you were poor, you would not be hated. You are not hated despite the trillion dollars; you are hated because of the trillion dollars.”

The old bureaucrat gestured toward Grosvenor Square, where left-wing politicians and bearded students were massing to stone the embassy. “the hatred of your country is not because it attacks theirs; it is because it keeps theirs safe. Never seek popularity. You can have supremacy or be loved but never both. What is felt toward you is ten percent genuine disagreement and ninety percent envy. Never forget two things! No man can ever forgive his protector. There is no loathing that any man harbors more intense than that toward his benefactor.”

And this selection from p. 273-4:

Paul Devereaux had spent years studying terrorism in general and the types that emanated from the Arab and Muslim world, not necessarily the same type in particular. He had long come to the conclusion that the conventional whine in the West, that terrorism stemmed from the poverty and destitution of those whom Fanon had called “the wretched of the earth” was convenient and politically correct psychobabble.

From the anarchists of Tsarist Russia to the IRA of 1916, from the Irgun and the Stern Gang to the EOKA in Cyprus, from the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the CCC in Belgium, the Action Directe in France, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction again in Germany, the Rengo Sekigun in Japan, through to the Shining Path in Peru to the modern IRA in Ulster or the ETA in Spain, terrorism came from the minds of the comfortably raised, well-educated, middle-class theorists with a truly staggering personal vanity and a developed taste for self-indulgence.

In the Devereaux theory, those who could order another to plant a bomb in a food hall and gloat over the resultant images all had one thing in common. They possessed a fearsome capacity for hatred. This was the genetic “given.” Thehatred came first; the target could come later and usually did.

The motive also came second to the capacity to hate. It might be the Bolshevik Revolution, national liberation, or a thousand variants thereof, from amalgamation to secession; it might be anticapitalist fervor; it might be religious exaltation.

But the hatred came first, then the cause, then the target, then the methods, and finally the self-justication. And Lenin’s “useful dupes” always swallowed it.

Devereaux was utterly convinced that the leadership of Al Qaeda ran precisely true to form. Its cofounders were a construction millionaire from Saudi Arabia and a qualified doctor from Cairo. It mattered not whether their hatred of Americans and Jews was secular based or religiously fueled. There was nothing, absolutely nothing that America or Israel could do, short of complete self-annihilation that would even begin to appease or satisfy them.

…

“They’ll never forgive you, dear boy,” the old man had said. “Never expect it, and you’ll never be disappointed. Your country is a constant reproach. It is rich to their poor, strong to their weak, vigorous to their idle, enterprising to their reactionaries, ingenious to their bewildered, can-do to their sit-and-wait, thrusting to their timid.”

Read the book. Enjoy and learn.

The day after I published my short note concerning deontology and consequentialism, the AnalPhilosopher published a thorough definition of the two. He also showed the distinction between absolute deontology and moderate deontology. He stated that the two (consequentialism and deontology) are never the same and should not be conflated.

I understand clearly what he is saying, but I submit that the issue I am dealing with here is different. The problem is not one of moderate deontology where the act is inherently evil but is allowed because sufficient good will accrue. The problem is one of an act that is inherently good that can come to cause harm. How does one judge and change the moral premise that guides the behavior? It is by looking at the consequences of the behavior and seeing that they are bad. In this case the bad consequences out-weigh the intended good. The correction has to be applied as a result of the consequences, not as a result of the inherent good and bad.

As an example, let’s take the old feminists bug-bear, the wife’s place is in the home, raising children, cooking, mending, sewing, cleaning, etc. In the days when survival depended on a clear partnership and separation of work, with the male physique more adapted to the outer, heavy labor, and the woman caring for the interior, this was a good rule or even a moral law. It had the authority of God behind it, according to scripture. However, as it became possible to either hire all the interior, save having children, (and even that has had its attempts to hire it done, or not done at all by adopting), and the male’s work is mental rather than physical, women found themselves unnecessarily subjugated. They saw that the work the men were doing they could do also. So the feminist revolution came about DUE TO THE CONSEQUENCES of the older moral law. So it was then changed that women were to have more equal access to the other things of the world.

Steve Headley, the Texas Conservative, has a great sense of humor. The latest two posts certainly confirm it. I happen to be partial to puns so it was my favorite.

Peg has a really good sense of humor. This post is funny despite its seriousness and so is her lead-in.

The AnalPhilosopher has an excellent post on the issue of the religious justification of morality. As he points out, God is not a necessary precondition to morality. If there are those who wish to use that as the reason to be moral, then if it works, OK, but as Keith points out, they really are diminishing themselves and God.

What is interesting is that what Keith is describing is what eventually led me back to a religious participation. When I realized that the Christian morality made sense independently of the religious, cultish aspects, I was able to look at the whole thing in a way that made sense to me.

Bill. Bill. Billl, I’m surprised that you didn’t know that Fundamentalist Christians have a an answer for the possibility of ETs existing out there.

According to what I heard, the belief is that Jesus had no need to die for other worlds because they didn’t fall for Satan’s trickery. In essence those beings are already in Heaven (somewhat literally). They do not approach us because Earth is quarantined as a battle zone. God has not destroyed Earth (post Deluge) because it would distress those worlds to see him act as a tyrant that blew up a whole world Death-Star style. Everyone is still waiting for things to wind down for Jesus to come back. Remember things have to get much worse before they get better (Apocalypse) and for God two thousand years are like two thousand seconds.

Speaking of Apocalypse. There is a thought that says that the Anti-Christ was Muhammad himself. The devil was beside himself after Jesus’ sacrifice and the spread of Christianity was proceeding unimpeded throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East into Asia. So he got an Arab merchant (a pederast to boot), lured him to the dessert and gave him a book that taught the opposite of what Jesus said. Instead of loving your enemy is hate your enemy, cut off his head and spite him and his family, and if you are not yet strong enough lie and deceive until you can (all in the Koran).

So there you have it, The Christian Fundamentalist view of the Universe. As for myself, I love to listen. Fundamentalist Christians are hoping for their theocracy in the after life. They are not going around killing people to set up one here and now.

John Sanchez

Donald Luskin reports on the appearance of Paul Krugman on Bill O'Reilly's show. Mr. Krugman got a major dose of come-uppance. Mr. Luskin's closing remark was

"And could it be, just possibly, that Krugman has finally learned a little something about humility?"

Naah...it'll never happen. Humility requires believing it is possible to be wrong.

Thanks to the Maverick Philosopher for the link.

My condolences to Peg Kaplan (What If?) on her loss to Bill Gates. However, I'm glad to see her back to blogging again. The cartoon is great!

In a brief note last Wednesday I made the observation that Wahhabism controlled the mosques. Today in TCS Stephen Schwartz published an essay confirming that observation and offering some hope in this country.

Dennis Mangan gets a double for this evening. He has a post on a new book out on Shostakovich. Apparently Shostakovich has been seen as both a hero and a synchophant.

I like Shostakovich's music. I have not read particularly extensively on his life. However, the music to me has a certain satirical flavor. He may have had effusive dedications, but the music is anything but subservient. My favorite is his "Festival Overture." To me it is so overdone as to be a parody of an overture. It is too long, too loud, too big, too joyous, etc. Most brass players end up hating it because it requires simply volume not skill. Many of the themes Shostakovich used had a middle-eastern to eastern flavor, which considering what Stalin did to such peoples was a subtle slap at him. His victims were remembered in the music dedicated to him.

It is very easy for those who write about music to take one stand or another about a composer. What they have to remember is that composers of Shostakovich's stature, cannot help but write music, not to is a form of death. He would probably be on the surface subservient and even to some degree automatically so. However, the music would be the true expression.

An interesting question is what will be the impact of the discovery of an extra-terrestrial civilization? Star Trek in its many episodes and movies has shown a wealth of possibilities, but none of them consider the impact on our current institutions, specifically religion. What happens when we encounter another race, not of this earth, probably not too closely resembling us, that behaves as ethically and morally as we or even better? All those religious fundamentalists that believe they are the only chosen ones will have a great problem. Or those that believe we on this earth are a unique creation of God, what will they do? How can Jesus have died for their sins too?

For that matter, what about God? Do they have a god that is the same God as ours or a different god. And if their god is different, is he/she/it stronger, wiser, more just, more merciful, etc. or less so.

One thing that I think will not be true is that any space-faring intelligence will be prima facie malevolent. I do not think malevolence leads to the kind of advances that will spawn space travel. Yes the Germans developed the V-2 rocket, but the only use they had for it was as a weapon. The US and the free world saw it as a means to conquer space. The Soviet Union did that only for the propaganda it provided, and forever was in a more primitive state than US rocketry. Read the exploits of the joint missions on the Russian space station to see what a thin edge the Soviet and later Russian space programs ran on.

Given that the aliens, should we contact them, are not malevolent, I would venture that they will be about the same stage of moral development or perhaps higher. The first reactions will be ones of hyper-caution on both sides, and a high risk of mutual injury due to that nervousness. Over time there may come a relaxation. However, it is also possible that the two cultures and civilizations are so different that they can never communicate. I would guess that that would probably not be so.

First of all, I suspect that anything we would consider living, would develop only on liquid water planets and use carbon as its basis. This comes from my chemistry background, and that the analogies often made with silicon vs. carbon or oxygen vs. chlorine ignore some very important biochemical phenomena. The energy in a molecule of sugar is very efficiently scavenged by living cells. However, they don’t do it all at once. The energy released by burning a molecule of sugar in oxygen is far to great to be obtained at once, it would fry the cell. So the sugar is first split into two pieces, one carbon is pulled off each and converted into carbon dioxide, and the energy trapped, and then the two remaining pieces are slowly broken down. Along the way the total energy in the sugar is converted into 36 smaller packets of energy, adenosine triphosphate, which are then used for the cells needs.

The energy of the carbon-carbon bond is “just right” for these kinds of things. There has been speculation that silicon compounds would do the same in hotter environments, but if so, why haven’t we seen evidence of them on this planet? Silicon is as prevalent or more so than carbon, and there are sequestered, hot areas where such evolution could occur. I think it is because silicon bonds are too stable, and there are no analogous compounds to those the cell uses as internal energy currency.

Once we have water-carbon based life, the eventual evolution will probably favor something similar to ourselves. Nature has had 4.5 billion years on this planet to experiment, and we are the latest (and its up for grabs at times) and the greatest. As I noted on Saturday, once nature got to us, we found a way to evolve faster than genetics. If we don’t blow ourselves up, we are the end of the chain, biologically. I would suspect any space-faring race to be similar.

The greatest irony would be if we hate each other because we are too much alike, just as two siblings antagonize each other.

Dennis Mangan has replied to my post on anti-vivisection. He uses a quote from Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human to state that it is not possible nor necessary to give up that which has gone before. Yet he then turns around and states as examples past uses of animals for the development of products of which he does not approve as the wrong uses of animals.

Let us suppose that we start today, and state that a true anti-vivisectionist would not use any new products developed using animals. What happens when the latest product is the only cure for a disease that he, she or his/her loved ones has acquired? The argument still holds. There is an implication that Dennis would except some medical advances. In which case we now have a values question of what is appropriate use and not one of whether it is right or wrong to use animals in medical research and training.

Just as a footnote, I don't believe that the only market for Viagra and its relatives is "obese men with unhealthy habits ... [with] impotence".

Here is another excerpt from the introductory material to my Gospel study:

[There is earlier discussion of the scholarly commentaries]

The authors of those commentaries are looking to expound the ways in which the evangelists accomplished their purposes as opposed to investigating the roots of the material used. In that realization, I now understand my earlier observation that they (commentators) don’t address the questions of interest to me. To one degree or another, they all are in the same position, men of faith dealing with issues and information that might undermine that faith. What if, for instance, they were to discover that the oral tradition, by the time it was recorded, was, in effect, totally untrue? I don’t believe that is so, but it is the extreme of the issue. Of necessity they are going to focus on what reinforces the existing faith.

I am pursuing a different path. I am searching for a Jesus that was a common laborer that had the intelligence and wit to persuade common people in his approach to God—a strongly passionate man that hated hypocrisy and was willing to die for his beliefs. In the process, I think it important to question all information that pertains to Jesus, trying to understand what is true and what is appended to provide the evangelistic view. Other than the unsung heroes that tamed fire, invented the bow and arrow, discovered the lever, and adopted logs to wheels, Jesus is the most important individual in the history of man. No one has had a more profound impact on ethics, morals, and behavior. Without Jesus there would have been no Renaissance. Without his destruction of the Pharisaic ethic, there would be no advance in thinking—the emphasis would have been on what is literally vs. spiritually correct. Without his teaching we would have no concepts of legal mercy or tolerance. His admonition to separate the church and state (render unto Caesar…..) is the basis of the religious freedom we enjoy today. And yet, looking at this paragraph, I may be trying to create my own set of Jesus myths. Emotionally, we want heroes, and we create them when they don’t exist. Even if the reality were much baser than I suppose, I would probably find some rationale to keep my current belief system, because it is of importance to me. I may not require the tie-ins to OT scripture to make the events have significance, but I am looking for significance. However, when I am done, the answer to WWJD may not be anywhere near the same as that currently obtained or assumed.

I have mentioned in an early post, that our church participates in IHN the Interfaith Hospitality Network. This is a cooperative effort of the churches and the Department of Welfare of Warren County, Ohio. It is an example of what President Bush calls a faith-based initiative. This particular program has a goal of placing homeless families into homes permanently, and has a success rate of 75% of the families still in a home two years later. I have been helping with this program for a year, and I have been a co-coordinator with my wife for the last six months. In the process I have made some observations on the ways one should approach and not approach such an effort.

The wrong approaches stem from an elitist attitude towards the families. There is always a flavor of “those people”. Basically it assumes that they are where they are due to some moral flaw or a preventable failure. As a consequence it leads to two disastrous approaches to the rules – absolute stringency (because they have to be made to behave properly) or total laxness (because the really aren’t capable of following them, and besides I can feel so superior when I see what they do).

The other approach is that regardless of what their past is, they have qualified to enter the program and are attempting to make something of themselves and provide for their families. The rules are enforced, but reasonably, and the families are treated with the same respect we give anyone else we know casually.

The last time we hosted the families, we had two nights out of the seven that had problems. In one case there was the too easy regimen, and in the other the too restrictive. The families that caused the difficulties sensed the antagonism and acted accordingly.

It required some tough talk by the program director backed by an enforceable threat of being out of the program to get things back in line. However, and this is important to note, once the reasonable enforcement of the rules was re-instituted, all hard feelings disappeared and by the end of the week all families including those that had problems earlier were happy, friendly, and willingly participating.

The families have a lot of work to learn how live properly. They take classes in various life skills and parenting. They are required to write long-term plans and think about what they are doing and plan to do. When they don’t always do what is expected, it is not because they are perverse, it is often because they don’t know. Many of them have harsh backgrounds, and need to learn how to care about others and themselves by example, by being cared for. They have to be treated neither as victims nor as criminals. They are families that are homeless, not homeless that happen to be families. They are simply people that for whatever reason need to get back on their feet and need some help doing so. They respond positively to being treated as able to follow rules and live up to expectations.

What was seen during the problem days was the results of the “bigotry of soft expectations.” In a very direct way it demonstrates the problems with liberal programs that expect nothing. Sum these experiences across millions of people receiving some sort of assistance and it becomes evident that old programs have to go.

I am currently reading Daniel Dennett’s book, Consciousness Explained. I have just read the section on memes. This is one of the most exciting concepts I have come across. It does a good job of explaining what I have observed as the advance of culture as an evolutionary process. Here are some quotes [There are 200 pages of preceding material, so if some of this seems out of context, and you are interested, get the book. It is a high-quality paperback for $16.95]:

One of the first major steps a human brain takes in the massive process of postnatal self-design is to get itself adjusted to the local conditions that matter the most: it swiftly (in two or three years) turns itself into a Swahili or Japanese or English brain. What a step – like stepping into a cocked slingshot!

…it happens so swiftly and effortlessly that there is little doubt that the human genotype includes many adaptations that are specifically in place to enhance language acquisition.

…Once or brains have built the entrance and exit pathways for the vehicles of language, they swiftly become parasitized (and I mean that literally, as we shall see) by entities that have evolved to thrive in just such a niche: memes. The outlines of the theory of evolution by natural selection are clear: evolution occurs whenever the following conditions exist:
(1) variation: a continuing abundance of different elements
(2) heredity or replication: the elements have the capacity to create copies or replicas of themselves
(3) differential “fitness”: the number of copies of an element that are created in a given time varies, depending on interactions between the features of that element (whatever it is that make it different from other elements) and features of the environment in which it persists

Notice that this definition, though drawn from biology, says nothing specific about organic molecules, nutrition, or even life. It is a more general and abstract characterization of evolution by natural selection. As the zoologist Richard Dawkins has pointed out, the fundamental principle is

“that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. …

The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity which prevails on our own planet. There may be others. If there are, provided certain other conditions are met, they will almost inevitably become the basis for an evolutionary process.

But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replication and other, consequent, kinds of evolution? I think that a new kind of replicator is recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate which leave the old gene panting far behind. [1976, p. 206]

These new replicators are, roughly, ideas. Not the “simple ideas” of Locke and Hume (the idea of red, or the idea of round or hot or cold), but the sort of complex ideas that form themselves into distinct memorable units – such as the ideas of

wheel
wearing clothes
vendetta
right triangle
alphabet
calendar
the Odyssey
calculus
chess
perspective drawing
evolution by natural selection
Impressionism
“Greensleeves”
deconstructionism

[Platonic idealism has been resuscitated as a mental and therefore physically real entity. bk]

Intuitively these are more or less identifiable cultural units, but we can say something more precise about how we draw the boundaries – about why D-F#-A isn’t a unit, and the theme from the slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is: the units are the smallest elements that replicate themselves with reliability and fecundity. Dawkins coins a term for such units: memes –

“a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. …

“Examples of memes are tunes ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in th meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. [1976, p. 206]”

… Meme evolution is not just analogous to biological or genetic evolution, not just a process that can be metaphorically described in these evolutionary idioms, but a phenomenon that obeys the laws of natural selection exactly. …

This is a new way of thinking about ideas. It is also, I hope to show, a good way, but at the outset the perspective it provides is distinctly unsettling, even appalling. We can sum it up with a slogan:

A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.

… Who’s in charge, according to this vision – we or our memes?

There is, of course, no simple answer, and this fact is at the heart of the confusions that surround the idea of a self. Human consciousness is to a very great degree a product not just of natural selection, but of cultural evolution as well. …

The first rule of memes, as it is for genes, is that replication is not necessarily for the good of anything; replicators flourish that are good at …replicating! – for whatever reason. …

The important point is that there is no necessary connection between a meme’s replicative power, its “fitness” from its point of view, and it contribution to our fitness (by whatever standard we judge that. …I think there can be little controversy that some memes are, all things considered, good from our perspective, and not just from their own perspective as selfish self-replicators: such general memes as cooperation, music, writing, education, environmental awareness, arms reduction; and such particular memes as: The Marriage of Figaro, Moby Dick, returnable bottles, the SALT agreements. Other memes are more controversial; we can see why they spread, and why, all things considered, we shold tolerate them, inspite of the problems they cause for us: shopping malls, fast food, advertising on the television. Still other are unquestionably pernicious, but extremely hard to eradicate: anti-Semitism, hijacking airliners, computer viruses, spray-paint graffiti.

He continues to describe the need for a physical embodiment in some medium for the existence of memes and how they may behave and how we use them. It is a fascinating discussion and highly plausible. As I said in the beginning, this provides the details and mechanisms of an idea I have had for some time, that man has started to evolve culturally faster than biological evolution.

I highly recommend the book.

Yesterday's TCS published a wonderful satire involving just-war theory. If you haven't read it do so. Both entertaining and thoughtful.

Wicked Thoughts has a most excellent lesson in taxation.

The indefatigable John Ray has opened yet a fourth blog, Gun Watch, dedicated to the right to own and bear arms. I have read the first postings and it promises to be good.

Having posted my blast at the anti-vivisectionists, I started thinking about what was a consequentialist or utilitarian argument against a deontological position. What I realized was that there is no way to change a moral premise if it is not correct without some feedback which envolves looking at consequences.

The AnalPhilosopher has stated more than once that moral premises cannot be derived but are taken as stated. The problem then becomes one of how does one determine their validity. One can test them for contradictions among themselves and with other premises the person holds, but this is not necessarily sufficient. True paranoid personalities have a totally self-consistent and at the same time totally wrong belief system. That we know it is wrong comes from its application to the real world. So it is with moral premises.

A moral premise is a generalization of experience to the time of its statement. The premise is a way of stating what good or useful behavior should be. But how can it change as necessary over time? That can come only from looking at the results of its application, in essence an uncontrolled (in the scientific sense) moral experiment. But in looking at the consequenses, we are then using a consequential or utilitarian standard. I do not see a problem with that.

Just as I have argued that pride and humility are complementary, so also are deontology and utilitarianism. One needs principles to guide behavior, but one also needs utilitarianism to judge the result. To espouse either one or the other is a grave mistake.

Steve is back, and he has an excellent bumper sticker and an even better poster.

I do a lot of cooking, but haven't had much chance lately. I like to wing it mainly, reading recipes for principles of cooking rather than a how to. Here is a quick treat that I can produce in about 20 minutes.

Pinwheels

1 cup flour
1/3 cup shortening or lard
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract or almond extract
2-4 Tbs melted butter
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 white sugar
1 Tbs ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.

This is pie-dough rolled up around butter, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It is really a free-style event, variations are encouraged.

Using a pastry cutter, blend the flour and shortening thoroughly. It will appear meally. Add the vanilla or almond to the water and then add the water to the flour and shortening mixture and mix with a fork. It will form a soft dough. (This is more water than normal pie-dough, but it makes an easier to work dough)

Roll out the pie dough in a rough rectangle. It should definitely be longer than wider. Perfect edges are not necessary.

Spread the melted butter evenly over the pie dough. Mix the white and brown sugar together (this makes it easier than to spread the brown sugar separately) and sprinkle over the butter. Sprinkle the cinnamon and nutmeg over the sugar. You can alter the cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.

Starting at one end, roll the dough up into a roll. Press the ends of the roll in until they form a roughly square end. Cut the roll into 1/2 inch slices and place on a cookie sheet or baking stone. I press them gently to close the gaps in the spirals. Bake 15 minutes. Use time not appearance to judge when to remove. They look done before they are.

The Maverick Philosopher just scooped a future post, and did it far more concisely and accurately than I would have. [link corrected 8/9/04]

I have a question for all those who want to do away with animal experimentation:

Are you prepared for the consequences?

If you are ill in any way, stop taking your medications. There isn't a single medicine in the cabinet that did not involve animal experimentation. Do not go to a trained physician for your illness. All doctors are trained using animals as part of the training.

And when your loved ones or yourself die of something that might have been treatable, don't whine to me or anyone else. It was what you asked for.

Here is an add-on question, no extra credit given,

Are you like the liberals and want to make the whole world do as you wish but won't do the same yourself until everyone does?

I commented on this to greater depth in the past. However, the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, of which I am a member, has been visiting political people. In response I wrote this letter this morning:

Bishop Hanson,

I have read where you have visited with both Secretary of State Colin Powell and with Kofi Annan. It is apparent that in both cases your visits are by virtue of your being the leader of the ELCA. The problem I have is that, in effect, your statements are taken as those of the entire church. First of all, what I saw concerning what you said was not in agreement with my political beliefs and judgements. Second of all, the church has every right to preach from the pulpit the minister's vision of what is socially correct, but it does NOT have the right to represent those beliefs to the world as those of the parishioners. Political action does not derive in a rigorous logical manner from religious belief. There are actions that are commanded by the Bible, that may be expressed via political bodies, or may expressed directly. However, all of these deal with local, one-on-one type of behaviors. They do not deal with global politics, or even national, state, or local politics.

It is the current rage for organizations to become politically active. I have resigned from several organizations not because of the positions they took but because they took a position. It is time for the church to remember the words of Jesus:

"Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's."

Nowhere did it say render unto Caesar that which is God's.


Bill Keezer

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." --Thomas Jefferson

The Igloo has just posted in favor of legalizing drugs. On Tuesday Dennis Mangan posted against legalizing drugs. Both of them make good cases, but neither refutes the other.

I abhor the waste of using drugs. I am concerned about the impact on others by drug users. I am also concerned about the loss of legal protections that is occurring in the name of protecting us from drugs, and the waste of money that goes into ineffective inforcement. I have seen recent articles claiming that the price of drugs has gone down despite the drug war.

The problem, as I see it, is that if we legalize drugs, we won't pursue any policy to discourage their use. It will resemble the current drunk driving enforcements. We have drunk driving laws on the books, and people still drive drunk. We have extremely low tolerances for blood alcohol and random checks for driving drunk, which violate the presumption of innocence theory of justice. People still drive drunk and kill and injure others. We throw people in jail over an ounce or less of hash, but have relatively light sentences for driving with an open bottle or while intoxicated. When billboards openly advertise DUI lawyers that say you don't have to pay if you don't get off, we have failed.

Once again, it is a case of trying to enforce preventative law instead of reactive law. Preventative law is inherently impossible to enforce in the manner intended. To do so would make the US resemble an Islamic theocracy.

How about putting some real teeth into the law? Stop someone driving irratically. If they are impaired by actual behavior testing (not some arbitrarily determined level of substance) and have either alcohol or drugs in their system, arrest them, try them, take away their license. If they drive without a license, throw them in jail the first time. They do it again, jail them and when they get out use electronic surveillance to enforce it. If they kill or injure someone, make it the top of the felony list for its type, and maximize the sentence. Selling to minors needs to be better enforced and the penalties stronger, ON THE MINOR. If a minor presents fake ID and it is good enough not to be easily detected, then the merchant should not be held culpable. Quit holding bartenders liable for their patrons' stupidity. Make the drunk or addict fully responsible for the consequences of their behavior. Alcoholism is not a disease and neither is addiction. It is a personal choice. If I know that I am prone to abuse a substance and then go ahead and do so, woe to me. If I do so and stay home while doing it, that's my business. If I do so and create a public problem, I should pay.

Many of the horror stories I have read on legalized drugs in Europe appear to be failures of enforcement of policy, not inherent in the legalization itself. The state makes a lot of money taxing tobacco and alcohol, why not make even more from taxing marijuana and other "recreational" drugs? Yes, people will abuse them, just as they do alcohol and tobacco today. But we need to realize that people have the right to go to hell in their own way, as long as they don't take someone else with them.

Oh, yeah. Somewhere we will need to make sure the trial lawyers don't create a new class of "victims". The tobacco settlement still makes me angry.

Wicked Thoughts published this little gem.

Some time back I stated that I considered it dangerous for the country to have both houses and the Presidency controlled by the same party. Verbum Ipsum has a quote that states it much better.

The Democratic National Committee is trying to use the threat of legal action to stiffle the advertising for the Swiftboats Commanders' new book. As usual with the liberals, use the courts to get your way.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

Arnold Kling has an essay in Tech Central Station that describes another way the liberal elite may try to justify running our lives.

Lee at Verbum Ipsum posted two short essays on morality recently. In the first, he said that moral judgements are first order and moral theory is second order. Theory derives from actual use, not the other way around. The second expands on this theme and points out how one can have change in moral judgements despite their being first order. I would like to expand on the nature of moral absolutes, which are the basis of moral judgements, and some of the problems they raise in practice. Along the way I think we shall see that there is both an absolute and a relativistic side to moral judgement and practice.

I think the problem is best discussed using an illustration, and the most obvious to me is the injunction, “Thou shalt not kill.” [Being brought up with the old Book of Common Prayer and the King James Version, I automatically revert to the Jamesian versions of almost everything religious.] If this is taken as a literal absolute command, we would immediately die. In order to live, we must kill something, a plant or animal[1] to eat, a chance insect we step on, the bacteria in the water we sterilize. If we are living in uncivilized areas, we may need to kill non-human animals in order to survive. Yet neither of these questions or problems truly cancels the dictate that we should not kill. The absolute remains as a guideline or ideal [almost as if there were Platonic ideal ethical statements]. It is in the practice and expression of the moral command that the difficulties arise. So immediately our absolute has to be modified. It is an oxymoron to have a moral commandment that condemns us to death if followed. Though beyond the current discussion, I believe that moral commandments have the purpose of making life as humans better overall. A commandment that makes life worse for humans overall is not moral. [2]

So it may first of all be understood that the command means we cannot kill another human. There are two problems with this understanding. First, it says nothing about what happens if another person tries to kill us. Are we allowed to kill in self-defense? Also, it says nothing about killing non-human animals. Is it OK to kill other animals indiscriminately? So maybe we can try to make the statement, “Thou shalt not kill needlessly.” Now we are definitely out of the moral absolute into a comparitive or relative judgement. For how should one determine what is needful?

If we back off a bit and say, “Thou shalt not kill unless necessary to survive,” we have captured much of the essence of the commandment as it might be practically applied, but then how do we judge survival? Is it the bare-bones, barely subsisting survival, or is it a comfortable, healthy survival, or even an opulent survival? We end up crossing over the line from moral judgement to legal judgement. It is the kind of questions just posed that create the need for the detailed rules that make up civilization. The refining of the application of moral commands to everyday life is what legislation and common law are about.

There is another aspect of moral law that relates here and that is the question of punishment. I posted a long essay [Vengence, Retribution, Justice and Mercy] on this area some time ago. Punishment is necessary for any moral law to have the power to control behavior. As I pointed out in my essay, justice is the desired effect, but again we are back into legal niceties.

This problem is at the root of the oppressiveness of theocracies. All religions are stated in terms of moral absolutes, but the application of them in a literal way to everyday life leads to massive restrictions in behavior. Only those things that are clearly allowable are allowed. Karen Armstrong comments on this in her recent book, Islam a Short History. She points out that a great problem in creating Islamic states is that the Quran (or Koran as I learned to call it) contains no legislative material, yet there is only the beginnings of the scholarship needed to create legislative material consistent with Islam.

We must consider any moral absolute as a valid guidepost, but not as a valid description of the way to live. Such absolutes must be surrounded with interpretation to make it useful. Two good examples are the Torah surrounded by the Talmud, and the US Constitution surrounded by the US Statutes. [I cannot resist, the US Statutes are certainly far too thick, so much so as to almost smother the meaning of the Constitution. ]


[1] I will discuss the killing of animals for food in another post.
[2] Such treacherous waters. This smacks of utilitarianism in what is attempting to be a deontological discussion.

Thanks to my son, here is a link to the funniest parody on the election I have seen.

I have just completed Karen Armstrong's ISLAM a Short History. I found it a fascinating book and well written, and I strongly recommend it to everyone who wants a bit more than the press deals out on Islam.

One realization that I have is that one of the reasons that moderate muslims in this county and elsewhere are so quiet is that just as the Socialists infiltrated and now control our educational institutions, the Wahhabis have taken control over the mosques of the world.

This book gives no answers but it provides a great deal of useful information to allow us to consider alternatives.

Here is an essay that welcomes dirty campaigning. Here's the money quote:

"And why is this important? Because I don't want a leader who will invite Osama bin Laden to sit down for group therapy and talk about why he wants to destroy the United States; I want a leader who will take the fight to al Qaeda and its cronies regardless of what France thinks. I want a candidate who is less concerned about whether the world wants to come out and play than about dirty bombs dropping on our doorstep. Tough times take a tough hombre who can roll with the punches and fight back when necessary, and isn't afraid of violating some unwritten code by informing us of his opponent's flaws."

Go read the rest. It is good.

The title of this post consists of three inter-related ideas, that are often confused even by people that work with numbers and measurements daily. Accuracy is how close a number comes to the "true" answer. Precision is how finely we measure a value, and significant figures is a way to determine how many decimals or powers of ten are correct in an answer.

Starting with accuracy, if I make a measurement, say the length of the top of the table my PC sits on, with a tape measure that is graduated in quarter-inches, I can say that the measurement is accurate to the nearest quarter-inch. If the tape measure is graduated in 32nds of an inch then the measurement is accurate to the nearest 32nd of an inch. Here we can see that accuracy is considered subject to the precision. However, suppose I don't realize that my 32nd-inch graduated ruler is missing the first half inch. Then my answer is still precise to a 32nd inch, but is not accurate to that standard, and in fact would be accurate only to the nearest half-inch.

Significant figures are a bit more complicated. The definition states that a number may only have as many significant figures as the number with the least significant figures in the calculation. The examples can get interesting.

Suppose I multiply 22.2 X 23.6 I will obtain the answer 523.92, using my calculator. If however, I use a slide rule, I obtain the answer 524. Notice that the starting values had three places, and the ending value from the slide rule has three places. In arithmetic the calculator answer is the correct one, in the real world of science, the slide rule answer is the correct one.

let's add 1013+22.2+23.6=1058.9 By the rules of significant figures this is 1059. the justification is that imprecision of the 1013 undoes the decimals of the two smaller values. If however, I added 1013.0+22.2+23.6=1058.9 then this answer stands as all the numbers going into the calculation had the same precision. We can consider 22.2 as 0022.2 and 23.6 as 0023.6.

Now lets do a subtraction problem. 102.46-20=82.46. The correct answer is 82, unless we are subtracting 20.0, in which case the answer is 102.5, or 20.00 which gives the calculator answer.

Finally lets look at division. 135.67 / 71 = 1.91084507, according to my calculator. However, the correct answer is 1.9, because there are only two significant figures in the divisor. If the precision of the divisor increases to 71.000 then we can report 1.9108. However, that is the most precise the answer can be, because the dividend is only five significant figures.

Having said all this, why should anyone care other than a scientist or computer performance jockey? [I qualify for both, that's why I'm writing this] Every once in a while there will be a report in the press of some wonderfully new precise measure of a physics constant. Typically it will be reported as a value plus or minus another string of figures. The value is the calculated value. The additional string of figures is the precision. Often the precision has several significant figures in it, such that they impact the last several places in the reported value. This is because the precision is calculated by an exquisite formula base on differential calculus that can calculate the overall likely error due to all the factors in the calculation. This number is never a single digit value. What the reported value really means is that the "true" value will be within the range obtained by adding and subtracting the precision from the calculated value. Usually this has a further caveat that the chances of being wrong are about 5% (95% confidence limit), though some values are reported even more critically to 99% or 99.9% confidence limits.

There is a very real use for all this in the day to day office world. I have seen reports that give numbers to three, four or even five decimal places when the first is not justified. It is especially evident in reporting of large numbers such as the productivity is 1045.6793 units per hour or some such thing. First of all the value probably came from total production for 24 hours. which means that the real value should be 1000 units per hour, although reporting 1050 or 1046 units per hour would not be a grave sin since the 24 hours are actually measured to 24 hours plus/minus a minute or approximately .02 hours. The world of business abounds in such false precision. The correct application of significant figures would make things appear much more realistic.

"While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible." --Alexander Hamilton

Fr. Matthew, the SoDakMonk, has posted a note that in part calls for a more masculine Christianity. I can sympathize with his view. When I see the wimpish, never-confront type of Christianity, I always want to remember Jesus clensing the temple or suffering on the Cross to get a proper perspective of the strength and power of Christian teaching. I'll say it again as I did Sunday: Jesus' decision to be captured and killed was not an act of cowardice but an example of the bravest kind of act a man can do.

This is not a response to some deconstruction or revision of American History. It is a response to the following quote.

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."
--Benjamin Franklin

Ben Franklin deserves all the credit he gets for his contributions to the start of the United States. His genius was immense and was supplemented by his willingness to work hard to achieve his goals. But the above quote is troubling in that the idea of property or earnings being superfluous to a person’s well-being leads to the arbitrary statement of what is sufficient and a confiscation of all the rest for government ends in its final conclusion.

The other worrisome part is the claim that the public created the property. This is the fundamental tenet of socialism that all belongs to the government. There is one other indication of which I am aware that Franklin was not the libertarian or individualist that we sometimes think he was. He was the creator of the US Postal Service.

Socialist theory had yet to be developed, and I think that much of his apparent collectivism came from the community spirit that would have existed when the country was still young. It is possible that despite the experiences he had with self-centered behavior in others, he basically believed that people were inclined as he was to serve, and were inclined to be as frugal. What is expressed is essentially the teaching of the various Christian churches with “publick” substituted for God. How many compromises did Franklin make with the more classically liberal founders? Is Ben Franklin the model for the modern liberal that actually cares about his country but has major disagreements over how to accomplish its aims?

It is of interest that the fundamental belief of socialism was present at the beginning of our great nation. Perhaps it helps explain in part how we have come to where we are today, in constant tension between individual and the government.

I have ranted on the State Department before. Here is another example of what I am concerned about. How the hell can we wage war when State refuses to cure their chronic colonic craniosis? Much as I admire Colin Powell for achieving what he has, I believe we need a new and different kind of Secretary of State. And Congress needs to remove some of the security of position over there.

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison

Wicked Thoughts snuck in a link to a very serious article among some hilarious jokes.

I have added two new links to the right, The Igloo (Thanks to Ally) and Dennis Mangan (Thanks to the Maverick Philosopher).

Read Belmont Club's post of the same name. Dead on and chilling.

The Right Scale posted two powerful essays, one on Democrat Economics, and the other on Republican race relations. Read them both.

Mike Gilleland, our blogospheric professor of classics, has posted a link to a most wonderful webpage. It generates postmodern essays. I had a good chuckle when I tried it.

Years and years ago, somewhere near the end of the last ice age, I read the Koran, just to read it. I have also read a number of Karen Armstrong's books on the three monotheistic religions, and am currently reading her quickly published History of Islam.

1. Islam considers political action an adjunct and necessary expression of religion. That Turkey exists as a so-called secular Muslim state is almost a miracle. However, note that even Turkey has problems with the Mullahs. Separation of church and state in Muslim countries will always be dicey. Theocracy would be the natural expression of Islam, except that the people eventually see it doesn't work and revert to more secular governments. This has occurred over and over in the history of Islam.

2. The Koran, just like the Bible, is internally contradictory. It is all things to all Muslims. It is easy to find passages that sanction killing all non-Muslims, and one can also find passages demanding tolerance for non-believers. Just like Christianity, Islam has had cycles of tolerance and intolerance. I still assert that Islam is about 1000 years behind Christianity in its overall development, and the only final answer will be when the early lessons of Christianity are learned by Islam.

The important thing for us is to remain forceful and strong, and unyeilding on the important things. The one thing too many people forget is that in international relations, fear and respect are far more important than being liked.

John Hawkins at Right Wing News has posted a long list of quotes from Thomas Sowell's book, The Vision of the Anointed. My favorite is the last:

"In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly 'thinking people' who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes, but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many." -- P. 260

Go read the rest.

Taking a page from the AnalPhilosopher’s book, I want to mention a wonderful technological device. But first some background. My paternal grandparents were legally blind during most of my childhood. My grandmother had been blind since the age of 12 due to meningitis, and my grandfather lost his eyesight to glaucoma. As I was growing up I thought how awful it would be to be blind. I thought I would prefer to lose any sense other than sight.

Now I have lost much of my hearing. Where once I had more sensitive ears than anyone else in my medical school class (proven in physiology lab), I now cannot hear unassisted and must read lips in conversations in noisy environments in addition to having hearing aids. Hearing aids are the technology I want to extol tonight.

I have been very fortunate to work for a company that provides a hearing-aid benefit. In fact it is so generous that I was able to obtain top of the line digital hearing aids at a reasonable co-pay. These are wonderful devices. It is like having a seven-channel graphic equalizer in each ear. Before these, I had good quality analogue hearing aids. They allowed me to have normal conversations, but also amplified much of the background noise as well. They had one great advantage—an on/off switch. My brother-in-law caught me turning them off in the kitchen at my mother-in-laws when the house was full with 30+ people.

What I have discovered, is that I would prefer to go without my glasses than my hearing aids. I have changed my views on the importance of the senses. Eyesight primarily allows focused work. Yes, one can scan the distance for possible items of interest (threatening or otherwise) but eyes do not provide a general input. You only see what you are looking at. Your ears, on the other hand, receive sound from a complete sphere around you. They ground you in your environment and provide notice of things unseen. The eyes can be replaced by a combination of devices and the ears. However, nothing replaces the inputs from the ears.

For those technically inclined, here is some further information on the differences in the two hearing aid types. My hearing loss is typical of older persons, it gets progressively worse as the frequency of the sound is increased (increasing pitch). Analog hearing aids take the middle group of frequencies and amplify them uniformly, until the most critical region for speech is adequate. What this does however, is to over-amplify the lower frequencies, and under-amplify the higher frequencies. To compensate I often had to adjust the gain upwards to distinguish the consonants properly. Additionally, it over amplified environmental noise that had output frequencies in the lower range. Wadding paper, lawn mowers, lawn blasters could go through my head like a knife.

Digital hearing aids use a programmed computer to match the seven channels of amplification to the loss so that a normal hearing curve results. In addition they can be directional. One of them has the ability to be set to connect to a telephone headset by induction instead of the microphone. This stops the feedback loops that occur when using anything next to the hearing aid. The only thing they don’t do is reprogram the brain in between the ears. :-))

Hearing restoration is not perfect, but with them, I function well in conversations. Without them it is like having my ears full of water.

An article in USA Today (some weeks past) had the headline "Meth presence surges 68% in workplace drug tests". Of course the idea was to make it look as if there was a massive methamphetamine addiction going on. However, when one looks deeper into the article a completely different picture emerges. Note that the graphic that comes with the article is misleading as well, unless carefully read. First we learn that marijuana is still the most popular drug, accounting for over 50% of all positive pre-employment drug tests. This 50% is about a 3% positive rate. So the total drug use according to the article is actually 6%. If we look at the graphic, we have to read closely to see that meth was 4.3% of the positive results (not the total tests) in 1999 and 9% in 2003. This is more than doubled, but if you take the absolute rate, it is 3.2 per thousand or 0.32% which is 68% more than the .19% in 2002. Of course the writer couldn't resist, he had to state that in the past six years meth use has increased 145%.

What we see is a common tactic in the misuse of statistics to create a false crisis. The change in the rate rather than the change in the absolute numbers is always far more dramatic. The only problem is that it does not give a realistic appraisal of the situation.

Another example that I remember and quote from memory, was the results of the Framingham study on cardiovascular disease and life style. A bad diet with lots of fat and cholesterol was quoted as increasing the risk of heart disease by almost 50%. The number as a change in rate was accurate. However, the mortality rate due to heart disease went from 9% to 13%, and increase of 4%. Of course then there would be less cause to panic and ask the government to "do something."

It doesn't make any difference what the source is, when someone quotes a change of some percent, be doubtful. Be very doubtful.

Naked Villainy is always good for an interesting quiz. This one was posted by the Minister of Propaganda. I took it. Go read the post then see why my results are so funny.

Which member of the JLA are you? Martian Manhunter The last surviving member of the Martian race. J'onn J'onzz fights to protect his adopted home to make sure that it doesn't suffer the same fate as his beloved Mars. Considered to be the most dedicated member of the he has been in nearly every incarnation of the JLA to date.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

From the study of the Gospels that I have been doing for the last two years, I have concluded that THE determining point in the establishment of Christianity was Jesus decision to not fight in the olive grove after the Last Supper.

Here is what I call a synthetic translation of Mark’s version of this event. I call it synthetic because I have compared nine different translations of the Bible and produced what I consider the closest to the original Greek the Gospels were recorded in.

Mark 14:43-53:
43 Just at that moment, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived and with him a crowd of men with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders.
44 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.”
45 So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him.
46 And they laid hands on him and seized him.
47 But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
48 JESUS: Have you come out with swords and clubs to capture me as though I were a robber?
49 Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching and you did not seize Me; But let the scriptures be fulfilled.”
50 Then they all deserted him and fled.
51 And a young man was following Him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him,
52 but he left the cloth behind and ran away naked.
53 And they led Jesus away to the high priest; and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes were assembled.

Here are a portion of my comments on this passage (The total is several pages long):

This scene, especially as described by Mark, always puts me in mind of the Hollywood monster movie when the crowd is aroused in the local pub by some activist and, grabbing whatever is at hand, charges up the hill to the castle to get rid of the monster and his master. It is even more emphasized with John’s account of their falling back when Jesus identifies himself. It may be that the tradition John records wants to use this as an indication of Jesus inherent divine power. But in this commentary I am trying to look at things as events not symbols as much as possible, and it is easy to imagine a crowd motivated by a mixture of dread and self-righteousness as being afraid of Jesus. My guess that what John describes as falling down is actually minor stumbling and slipping as they backed up in the dark and not a wholesale felling as if from a scythe. Since John is the only one providing this detail, it is questionable whether it is real or an addition.

Again considering the crowd, just how big was it really? We have Jesus and the remaining eleven disciples on one hand. According to Luke 22:38 there were two swords among them. I would also assume that each carried a knife of some sort. Against this we have the crowd. If it were truly a large crowd (Matthew or Luke), or for that matter if it were the Roman guard as John suggests, I cannot imagine any of the disciples drawing a sword against foolish odds. For that matter, it could not be well-armed or the cutting off of the ear would have merited instant retaliation. My guess is that a rag-tag group of around one or two dozen people, armed mostly with clubs and knives, came after Jesus. The odds would have been about even with numbers vs. swords. Jesus, seeing that nothing but bloodshed would come from resistance stopped the disciples from further aggression or defense and allowed them to escape.

I have a lot of difficulty with John’s version calling out the guard to seize Jesus at the olive grove. Especially since Jesus was taken first to either Caiaphas’ or Annas’ house. I don’t see the Roman guard falling back at the mention of Jesus name, or relinquishing control of Jesus once they had him. Actually I am inclined to think that Mark is most accurate, the Sanhedrin roused a bunch of people to come seize Jesus, naming his bonded servant to be the leader of the group (he was the one injured and therefore at the head of the pack within reach of a sword), and then later the Roman guard was called in, after the grounds of the charge of rebellion were created.

I want to emphasize what Jesus did here. First of all, wipe away any consideration that Jesus considered himself more than human. There apparently is or has been a long debate on the subject of Messianic Awareness—did Jesus consider himself the Messiah. If he did, it would have been strictly in the Judaic tradition of Messiah which was another anointed military king such as David. I think from Jesus behavior we can rule that out. He never acted in such a manner. It would provide a logical contradiction of the belief that Jesus was the fully human son of God, to assume he could make this decision knowing he would be resurrected, or even that he had a special place in heaven after he died. Jesus had to make this decision just as we might in similar circumstances, weighing those things of value.

I am going to presume that I can approximate what might have been in his mind that night. Here he stands with his eleven closest friends, having a few weapons among them, and none of them trained as fighters. Facing him is a mob of scared, excited villagers, full of bravado, and each depending on all the others being there to remain steadfast. Accompanying them are some goons from the Temple. Jesus is fully aware that what they want is him. He knows that if he is captured he will die, by what means is not clear but also at this point not important. He also knows that there is the possibility that he could escape. He may also realize that if he does, he will be hounded all over Judea and Galilee until he is captured. In the process of trying to escape, one or more of his best friends and certainly some of the crowd will be hurt or killed. All of this is on his mind, and the fight starts. One of the crowd is injured, and it becomes very real that death for someone will occur. At that point he accepts his fate, and says “Enough.” This is the point at which Christian doctrine of love of all becomes established by example. Jesus loved his disciples and cared enough about the poor fools of villagers, that he gave his life rather than take theirs to protect his. This was not an act of cowardice. A coward would have run or tried to save his life. This was an act of bravery, knowing that his death was guaranteed, he saved the rest.

We give soldiers medals for this, we gave him a church.