1. Wow, for the stupid insult of the day, check out “Soviet/Maoist” red, would the balanced alternative be Luftwaffe blue?
2. And more on that leftwing icon/hero Che.
3. Another lefty doh moment, dude … this is America we’re talking about.
4. Carp(al) keyboard.
5. What’s that mean, “unwinnable?” (and does that mean like Iraq?)
6. Clearly overstated threat.
7. That cross thing.
8. Some interesting tidbits from a Andre Weil biography. I heard Mr Weil lecture while I was at school and I’ve got a few of his books. Spare and elegant.
9. Speaking of maths, fractal cabbages.
10. Shapeshifter battles, and the Pope’s last encyclical?
11. “the Lull”, I’m thinking for some people, that word doesn’t mean what they think it means.
12. Bush and Obama … perhaps not so changey.
13. Heh. Are they all hard of hearing in Texas?
14. Plugging Taiwanese carbon.
15. Words and sex. I recall a few days x-country skiing with my Dad years ago, for various reasons my brother and mom didn’t join us right away. I think we exchanged 20 words a day for about three days. It was wonderful.
16. I need to read this essay more carefully … but it looks interesting.
17. Dreams.
18. Ok, gotcha. Henceforth, it’s small “b” and small “w”. ’cause that “heritage, experience, …” and so forth are nothing but a non-singular multiplicity. The notion that they are singular is a pernicious fiction.
19. This reminds me of that story from British occupied India, in which some Indians were objecting that wife burning was an ancient and revered custom. The British officer reminded them that they too had a ancient and revered custom … that was to hang people who burn their wives.

I had an interesting notion today regarding the world economic crises. Right now, the government is thinking, that for stimulus large amounts of credit should be injected into the economy.

I once read that years ago, an economic study showed large companies would make more money if they increased wages. Those companies for which that would work were large enough that by them increasing their wages, then to compete for workers other similar companies and even those in other industries would be forced to follow suit. As a consequence enough people would have spending money to buy more of their product, which ultimately would result in large profits than they would arrive at if they cut wages as aggressively as they could.

It is also true that national fuel economies are affected most by raising the economies of those (alas large) number of cars with poor gas efficiency first.

Putting those two notions together, perhaps the best thing to do would be to encourage those corporations hiring overseas labor to raise the wages they pay them. Chinese and Indian workers can get as little as $2 per diem in wages. Raise that to $2 per hour and … you’ll soon have a large number of people with disposable income … needing goods … needing automation … fueling a global economy.

1. Obsession with sex … and the seminary.
2. Remembering Aleksandr.
3. Christians in need of forgiveness.
4. California.
5. Next generation intelligence gathering.
6. Patristics carnival.
7. The killing hasn’t stopped.
8. Hmmm.
9. Jews and Turkey.
10. A book, on theology and ontology, noted.
11. Of the wider community and salvation.
12. Start with humility.
13. So, is Mr Obama serious about economic recovery … or “shrinking the economy.”
14. A question.
15. Dreaming and dreamer, close to the worst case scenario.
16. For Christian charity … don’t look here.

Many bloggers have noted the “failure” of abstinence programs and chastity pledges to “work.” It seems to me that a lot of bad conclusions are drawn from this data. In fact the oddest thing about the studies into these programs is that people find the results worth noting. That is to say, the notion that superficial statements about changing one’s life or setting its course do not actually often change or set the course of that life unless one really changes the course of your life in non-superficial ways.

Consider the alcoholic or habitual drug user who (time after time) states, they are “quitting”, only to fall again and again “off the wagon.” You cannot stop drug use without changing all or at least most/many of the habits which accompany one’s life. Consider the convert to Christianity, who professes his or her faith yet changes other outward (or inward) modes and manner of thought. Failure to regularly attend liturgy, engage in daily prayer, and perhaps repentance and fasting … that conversion will likely be temporary and superficial.
Read the rest of this entry

1. Flee (E)Utopia.
2. Man and identity.
3. Meta-linking, that is to say, Brandon offers links.
4. Considering pagans down under.
5. Pascal and poison.
6. An interesting conundrum for the left, Obama (apparently) wants to spend many billions on infra-structure, i.e., building things. But the left has put up lots of regulation making construction difficult. Hmm, how will that be resolved?
7. Offensive?
8. Quashing epiphany?
9. Upcoming march.
10. Did you know that?
11. Reckless language and the “slurs of Andrew Sullivan.”
12. Theology and Mr Eastwood.
13. Clauswitz.
14. Two names not normally linked.
15. Whence hope?
16. Answers for the Afro-phile.

In part my statement, “I don’t believe in the germ theory of disease” is meant to be provocative for my position is somewhat, err, nuanced. Consider the following to points:

• 100 people are all exposed to a serious pathogen. Five get sick.
• A number of you at work have a stressful situation at work, requiring serious overtime. For a week or so, along with the stress, you all work long hours and average four or less hours sleep at night. Many get come down with illnesses toward the end and after this time. This is unsurprising.

The problem with the germ theory of disease is the notion that germs cause disease. Germs do not cause disease. Germs are virtually omnipresent. Clean rooms however show that germs, when not present cannot cause disease. That is germs are a necessary condition for disease … and because of their omnipresence, when the real cause of disease occurs … people ordinarily get sick.

The real cause of disease is the failure of your immune system to prevent illness. There are a lot of reasons for that. Mental state, mental and physical stress levels, nutrition all enter in to keeping or failing to keep your immune system working as it should. Recently, I’ve been involved in a discussion in which notions of witchcraft were discounted as relevant in combating disease. However, if we put together realization that there exist communities in which witchcraft is given credence and that mental stress and state contribute to the effectiveness of the immune system one must conclude that witchcraft as a cause of disease, makes perfect sense.

Oddly enough we tend to ignore our immune system. Regarding physical and mental fitness, we have regimens and advice on how to increase, measure, and keep our mental and physical faculties at tip top condition. An athlete can measure his performance metrics precisely. Cyclists for example, can measure and track VO₂MAX, watts/kg, and peak wattage to track and estimate his progress and current fitness. In a few months in the NFL, as another example, will migrate to Indianapolis to put draft prospects through a battery of tests to test fitness to succeed in the football arena. However doctors have no such metrics to measure the fitness of someone’s immune system. There are no “training regimens” to exercise and get your immune system working at optimal levels. In part that is because of the popularity of the “germ theory” of disease. If that catchphrase were replaced by the “immune system breakdown” theory of disease (that is the one to which I subscribe) then one would expect research priorities to be realigned.

Well, I can’t leave comments at Positive Liberty for some reason or other, however a brief response to Mr Kuznicki seems in order.

Mr Kuznicki is up in arms about conservatives daring to “defend” a Rick Warren/Martin Ssempa connection. He finds a movement toward abstinence inappropriate as well as Mr Ssempa’s anti-gay rhetoric. Now, I’m not going to defend the latter. However, a little googling shows that the Saddleback church (Rick Warren’s “purpose driven” mega-church) has embraced an AIDS ministry. The concentration of this ministry accoriding to their web site concentrates confronting AIDS in particular because of the stigma associated with the disease. And additionally, they’ve chosen to focus their aid on orphans and children with AIDS. In spreading their assistance from the States to Africa apparently Mr Ssempa has aided their particular mission.

Mr Kuznicki asks how those particular things which bother him about Mr Ssempa:

–Agitated successfully to remove all mention of condoms from Uganda’s anti-HIV campaign.
–Burned condoms in public and otherwise condemned them. For Jesus.
–Recommended that gays be imprisoned.
–Expressed a belief that witches were making people sick.

He wonders how this could be worse?

Well, obviously it could. African AIDS is not a homosexual phenomena, unlike in the States. That epidemic is apparently driven by rampant widespread adultery. One might Imagine burning condoms were part of a movement to stem this tide and promote the notion of fidelity to one’s spouse. Imagine that, the horror! Why might a conservative support such a clearly silly notion.

It was Mr Kuznicki’s last bullet point that inspired my initial remarks regarding intentions and deeds. If one takes the two notions that Mr Ssempa has been allowing and facilitatting the Saddleback church in getting aid medical, food, and support to orphans and children with HIV/AIDS and at the same time Dr Ssempa thinks that witchcraft and the supernatural impacts the spread of disease. Well, we have an effect, i.e., aid to orphans. We have a belief, witchcraft. The question I posed, and Mr Kuznicki has failed to address, is to ask is why he discounts aid to HIV infected orphans because Mr Ssempa has a belief in witchcraft, i.e., if one’s beliefs (intentions) aren’t pure … does that discount one’s deeds, i.e., facilitating aid to orphans?

Apparently, in Mr Kuznicki’s world … it does.

One final remarks, I don’t know the extent or basis of Mr Ssempa’s political influence in Uganda. However, it is my impression that in sub-Saharan Africa in general there are generically very strong anti-gay biases in the populus. That a politician personally on occaision panders to this to garner support is no indication of their personal feeling and may in fact just be a requirement to get support to garner the political capital to do other things, such as for example try to turn the culture toward monagamy and to aid orphans.

• A prayer for the children … of Gaza.
• Commuter bike design contest finalists.
• A clean joke.
• A clean country mile viewed from the Yukon.
• The “evils” of the Pope, refuted.\
• Apparently law school doesn’t teach logic. Ms Fey -> accountability … alas no connection.
• Permitted rape?
• The Christian reconciliation carnival returns.
• Ms Goldberg feeds thousands with 3 fish and 6 loaves? or not.
• Beauty, romance, and the christian life.
• Making the abstractions concrete.
• Two observations made by the late Fr Neuhaus.
• Don’t forget the package.
• Kill them, in a Christ-like fashion?
• Persecution on the quiet.
• And to think, there are real babies needing love and comfort.
• If the intentions aren’t pure, the deeds make no difference I guess.
• Watching the globe cool.
• More on the Mumbai murders.
• Might one of the Presidents defenders ‘splain (or defend) the notion of intelligent spending of $1.5 billion (500 times)?

Fr Richard John Neuhaus died today, which is something you already know if you read more than half a dozen blogs in the Christian blogosphere. I think 30 or 40 blogs in my RSS feed mentioned his passing today. What I found odd, was that nobody seemed especially joyous over the occasion. After all he succumbed to a second bout with cancer, which typically involves a lot of pain and discomfort. While we are enjoined to celebrate our suffering, that is specifically not to be our attitude toward the suffering of others.

So many of the posts are talk about what his writing meant to various people, how he touched their life, what he did for me. This seems to me getting the hindpart foremost. Read the rest of this entry

• Ghana?
• A more measured look at Rowan Williams.
• Mr Ziegler looks at Mrs Palin.
• Gran Torino, a review.
• Cuteness and Nietzshe.
• Forcing news to fit the narrative.
• Monastic investiture.
• Speaking of comebacks, a cyclist I cheered considers coming back (not Armstrong … Michele).
• Low power standby.
• A blogger, who happens to have a mass murderer as a  grandfather.
• A Palestinian not liking the tactics … of the Palestinians.
• Science and religion.
• What is liturgy … a question for even the secular crowd to consider as we approach the political liturgical event ending the current interregnum.
• I think it’s warmer there, i.e., not -15 C.
• Women in the early church … and popular patristic sources.
• Eucharist … ur not doing it rite.
• Someone wants to chide people about forgetting about what lynching means … who himself forgot the origins of lynching apparently.
• Ugly car.

I have to admit, I don’t grok the whole “hate-of-group” thing that so many people to seem get infected with.

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans
‘Cause it’s very chic
Step up and shake the hand
Of someone you can’t stand
You can tolerate him if you try

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
It’s National Everyone-Smile-At-
One-Another-hood Week
Be nice to people who
Are inferior to you
It’s only for a week, so have no fear
Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year!

Does anybody out there understand it? I don’t think the I have any conscious awareness of hatred for any particular group, except perhaps a particular peccadillo I observe (in others) which bugs me. That is I get unreasonably irked when I see able bodied people using handicapped spots. But that’s not the same as the prejudices and hatreds which seem to abound.

If you hate someone, why do you do it? If you hate or despise a particular group of people, why? How do you justify that?

• For the church, sex, and beauty discussion.
• Lessons from Detroit for the Church … maybe.
• In but not of … or not.
• Traps for the converts to avoid.
• Democrats and the MTB crowd.
• On hard times … but whence “celebrate your sufferings” (Rom 5:3)?
• Nature celebrated.
• Challenge/response and Theophany.
• Brave and principled … or not.
• Mr Fernandez considers Mr Panetta’s appointment.
• For the Catholic, the only native US saint.
• Tink.
• Economic metaphor and the church, then and now.
• Zooooom.
• Virginity pledges and lying with statistics?
• Free healthcare and actual effects on population health.
• Other free money matters.
• Panetta … a Bushian choice.

One of the dominant meta-ethical methodologies today is consequentialism. The consequences of your choice determine for you the right choice. Roughly speaking if your choice would lead to harm, then it is wrong. Then, consider the following, is it torture from a consequentialist perspective, and if so why? And if it is not, why is it wrong … or is it wrong at all.

• We propose first a drug exists which prevents the formation of long term memory. If this drug is taken, no long term memories will be formed effectively and permanently erasing all subsequent memory of the events from the last, say, 12 hours.
• A torture technique, much like the infamous waterboarding is applied which causes great mental distress, “cracking” the subject but causing no organic damage, i.e., no physical harm which will be detectable the next day by the subject.
• Therefore the use of the techniques like the above coupled with the absence of memory mean that for the subject there is no way of determining that anything occurred.
• After questioning is performed and the results reported , both the subject and the administrator(s) of the questioning (the “torturer”)  are given the drug noted above. Thus neither the questioned nor the questioner have any memory of the event. For them, this never occurred.
• Furthermore, names and data regarding the subject and administrators are not kept. No video record is kept of the interrogation, just conclusions remain with all source information excised. This is to insuring that there will remain no possible (direct) data remaining of the specifics of the interrogation. This prevents the subject (or interrogator) from later viewing and discovering later that they took part this event.

So the question is, where is the harm? It is said that the act of torture degrades the torturer as well as obviously harms the tortured subject. This is in fact why the interrogator as well as subject are given the drug. Therefore with no physical or mental memory of the event, how do we locate harm to the subject? Without memory, is there harm? There is no consequence to subject (or interrogator) on which a harmful consequence can be attached. Where then is the harm located?

The only possible harm is the memory gap that remains. But memory gaps are common. About a decade and a half ago, I had appendicitis. Demoral was administered as a pain killer after the surgery. Intravenous demoral had the effect on me of preventing me from forming reliable memory of the event. Memory of small inconsequential routine days as little as a month or half a year ago fade. Human memory is not so precise that one can realistically locate as harm to an individual the loss of a half of a day in the eight to ten decades of average human lifespan. Couple that with national imperatives to solve crime, stop terror, or save lives by performing the interrogation and one has a consequentialist argument that leads one inescapably to the conclusion that this sort of interrogation is not only not harm, but an ethical good.

My suggestion is that this sort of thing is indeed actually unethical and wrong and that that there is no consequential argument that can be made against it. Therefore this can be posed as is an argument underlining a fundamental deficiencies of the consequentialism as a meta-ethical methodology.

Is this just logical nonsense? Perhaps, but I suspect the technology to implement such a program is not just a hypothetical suppostion, but that it could be implemented today, if a government so chose. That consequentialism is perhaps the dominant meta-ethic should therefore give us pause.

Comments?

• Boing, or more accurately “sproing.”
• Trombone.
• Smaller cheaper accelerator?
• Hmmm.
• God and Mr Burris … and the press.
• Will that affect US gas prices?
• Faith, and analogy to computer languages.
• Yah right, the War on Terror really put a dent in progress on speech recognition … or not.
• Jesus and the ring of Gygax (?), i.e., was he invisible to the non-pious?
• Ornithiferous verse.
• Five years … not three months.
• How not to get public opinion to move your way.
• Homeschooling again.
• Wallpaper.
• Some New Years resolutions.
• David’s cancer story thus far.
• You won’t “just save a life.”
• Oops.

• Tonight, blessing of waters in our varied Orthodox liturgical year.
• Hmmm.
• Alternatives to public education.
• Example one. Example two. Example three. Media bias?
• Of language not fair but foul.
• Good news for the type one crowd, perhaps.
• D’oh.
• Considering a game.
• Number and game. Further reading can be found in this book, The Book of Numbers.
• Balance is key.
• Verse.
• Numbers and blood.
• A Saint recalled.
• Worry.
• Yield.
• A death noted. I’ve read Dortmunder stories and enjoyed them, but did not know he wrote under the pseudonym Stark.
• And old great church.
• That’s a good idea.
• Gosh, ya think?
• Some books.
• Ducted windmills?
• Ethics and the law?