Good morning.

1. Church and state and Turkey.
2. Market in Poland, a photo-essay.
3. Vindictiveness and the Admin.
4. On that hard pullout date and strategy.
5. More on Park51.
6. A conservative surprised at epistemic closure from the left.
7. I have yet to see mention of this from the left. Odd that. And this is spot on … the concept of hate crimes are an outrage.
8. Somebody somewhere didn’t like Wall-E.
9. Fun with banks.
10. 100 years, and some shared thoughts.
11. Bike tech lust.
12. Weight loss tips that beat licking raw eggs all hollow.

Good morning.

1. Divination.
2. For those that need a Bastiat clobbering.
3. An economically well modeled computer game played (HT: CT).
4. Talking beer.
5. More on the Koyzis essay I wrote about last night … for my reading it seems that what is presented as Koyzis ‘reading” of Mills is better than Mr Nivens. 
6. The jam ends, the cause … regulation?
7. H-Fit?
8. Our President in a nutshell.
9. Firestorm.
10. Criticism of the right from the right.
11. Sex and the single life.

David Koyzis has been writing about oppression, here and here.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Declaration that the purpose of government is to preserve and protect Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. While it is pretty clear what Life meant, and that Happiness for Jefferson ran along Aristotelean lines, which is to say along the lines of something like eudemonia. But Liberty … now there is a tricky word. In colonial America, historian David Hackett Fischer in a book everyone should read (or at least have as a reference) Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History), identifies four folkways or distinct communities in colonial America. These folkways had very different about almost every aspect of life but in particular they all had distinct and non-overlapping ideas of what the word Liberty meant. Alas, while I say (and really think) this is a great reference book it turns out my copy is at work … and not here at home where I’m writing this so some of this is going to be from memory. Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. Blogs and peer review.
2. Yes, a tax cut is not a payment.
3. Someday it will occur to someone on the left, that there are two ways to attack the deficit by cutting spending or raising taxes, alas not today however.
4. I can’t even imagine how to spend money like that, do they burn it?
5. Stony Ithaca, a place to set my head?
6. A repulsive thing.
7. From the “I can’t imagine any need for secrecy in wartime” department.
8. Housing.
9. 25%!!! Amazing. A cultural divide if there ever was one.
10. Hope and change transform.
11. Books read and micro-reviews supplied.
12. As life imitates Airplane.
13. On war, which theory of war posits that making public a “I’m quitting and going home” date as a having any strategic value?

Brandon on that very serious blog, Siris (a spelling mistake I made long long ago) offered this interesting post some time ago. I had linked it with the intent of writing a little later, and later finally has arrive. That post as well, links back to this one originally, which expands the argument posed by Brandon a little and (twice) offers that quantum mechanics has not had anything to say about determinism. I think that’s wrong, and the paper by one of my favorite mathematicians (Conway) which I blogged a bit about demonstrates the case that Physics offers regarding determinism. But … to the main point, I think this misses an essential point which might be termed the divide between childhood and adulthood. 

Strawson’s argument in brief attempts is:

(a) It’s undeniable that the way you are initially is a result of your genetic inheritance and early experience.

(b) It’s undeniable that these are things for which you can’t be held to be in any way responsible (morally or otherwise).

(c) But you can’t at any later stage of life hope to acquire true or ultimate moral responsibility for the way you are by trying to change the way you already are as a result of genetic inheritance and previous experience.

(d) Why not? Because both the particular ways in which you try to change yourself, and the amount of success you have when trying to change yourself, will be determined by how you already are as a result of your genetic inheritance and previous experience.

(e) And any further changes that you may become able to bring about after you have brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by your genetic inheritance and previous experience.

I offer the following rejoinder, without denying the premise or argument the conclusion is wrong. That is to say it is only true if you are a child and choose to remain a child. 

Adulthood comes when we accept the cards we are dealt as belonging to ourself and assuming that responsibility for those cards. One stakes the claim that your actions are in fact yours, for better or worse. Fate, the devil (made me do it, upbringing or genetics …. all fall into the same bin. Your words and actions are yours. By accepting that as a premise you put away childish ways. 

I am informed, over and over, as it turns out about “strict liability.” Liability laws in this country, for whatever reason, irk me. More below the fold.  Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. Upcharge for extra mass.
2. Cinema.
3. Low church and liturgy.
4. A the Quantum people attack back.
5. We are more alike than different.
6. Traffic.
7. A good word for Mr Carter.
8. Not me.
9. Heh.
10. He knew that, but didn’t seem fit to mention that the failures were basically all on the government side (especially when you recall the safety equipment is by government mandate).
11. Suffering for art’s sake.
12. The state of Mr Obama’s buddies state.
13. The professional left.
14. Goin’ green … is clearly more fun if you’re a wealthy professional humorist.
15. The Cato purge apparently wasn’t.

I had this joke I was going to try to tell about how now that I’m back biking a lot more regularly but have a new puppy, we have this symbiotic relationship. She licks the sweat of me after a ride reaping salt … and I don’t have to take showers anymore. But I decided not to tell it, aren’t y’all grateful? 😉

Good morning.

1. A word, Eurosclerosis … used … and stimulus measurement. Why oh why is there spending out to 2015?
2. A non-story begins … and ends. 
3. The despicable left.
4. More stupid liberal tricks here … and for measure more ways to curb your freedom.
5. On ethnicity and church.
6. Tanks for the memories.
7. Ten maxims of advice for prayer.
8. Jokes from the CBO.
9. The mosque kerfuffle and cognitive bias.
10. St. Nicholas … a before picture.
11. Testing QM.
12. Duh.

Well, besides the fact that I have two other interesting ideas in the hopper, this notion occurred to me and I thought I’d get it down before I forget.

This question is admittedly in the context of the BP/Gulf spill, but I want (on the outset) to make it clear that I am making no allegation here. I have no factual basis or even hearsay reports which would back up my question. But … the problem is, is that if my question has merit, there wouldn’t be would there?

Let me begin with a legal question about liability. 

Say I’m doing a particular activity, and am following the legal restrictions and regulations regarding that practice. But, what I don’t realize is that by following the legal regulations disaster is inevitable. That is I’m in a catch-22 situation, if I fail to do as required I break the law, if I do follow the law then a disaster occurs. Suppose “not doing” this thing is not really feasible. As an aside, I might mention it is for this reason that I think that regulatory approval should indemnify a company which follows said regulations from liability. 

But my question here doesn’t hinge on legal question but political ones. If the disaster that occurs turns out to loom large on the public stage then an investigation is undoubtedly going to follow. This investigation is going to closely tied with those same people and parts of the government which put the regulations in place which both led to the disaster and which were the responsibility of that same said part/party of the government.

So, here’s the question: How likely is the government culpability going to come out investigation? Will that side of it get a fair hearing? And furthermore, is it necessarily in the interest of the injured party to blame the government regulator when their livelihood depends on a working relationship with that same party? 

Consider the BP/Gulf disaster directly here. BP and all the Gulf oil contractors and drillers are required to use government provided survey and risk models in their business. How and what manner of safety devices are regulated by law, you can’t use something different or better, e.g., you have to use the mandated “cutoff valves” as specified. So it seems a big culprit in this story will be, as in the Challenger disaster, a failure in government run QC/QA practices. At the same time, I’m guessing it’s not in BPs interest in the long run to fight to have the blame correctly assigned with the feds as they (and everyone in their industry) has to work with the feds to get anything done. So, the government (especially in our semi-continual election season) will not want to be blamed. BP will not fight getting blamed. So, even if BP/Deepwater ultimately is not the true culprit here, they will in fact be made the fall guys. 

Good morning. So … my eldest daughter gets her drivers permit today. Tempus fugit, eh?

1. Iraq.
2. One man’s speculation on Mr Obama’s religious belief.
3. One might note that this “confusion” is self-inflicted. 
4. Diplomacy and US relations.
5. Have you given?
6. On freedom.
7. 19 years later.
8. Culture of corruption.
9. Stupid liberal tricks … noted.
10. Religious freedoms?
11. On the value of a woman.
12. Two visions.

The scientific method is taught and portrayed as a dispassionate rational dialectic between theory and experiment. Theories are propose, data is collected which forces refinement of theory and that continues. Occasionally, ala Mr Kuhn, a revolution occurs in which a major paradigm shift takes over and a radically new theory becomes ascendant. 

Alas, this has little to no relation to what actually occurs within science. Scientists are not dispassionate men judging between different competing theories analyzing experimental data to that end. They are instead emotional advocates of a particular theory which they espouse a theory which they find, well, beautiful (for a variety of reasons). Now, the reason we have success and progress in science is that the training and process of learning their particular specialty has programmed their emotional responses to align their aesthetic principles with the rigors of their discipline. 

to be continued … 

Good morning.

1. We had some discussions of teachers … and pay. It doesn’t seem to me they not highly paid.
2. More on St. Nicholas in the context of the Cordoba mosque.
3. A car that says “I am a geek” in all caps. Or is it a nerd?
4. A defense of theology from an outsider.
5. A photo contest.
6. Cold war -> Hot War?
7. More Muslims against “the” mosque.
8. Hockey stick and climate … and you can follow links to the original paper, in which I thought one of the unfortunate (for climate scientists) is the remark that little to no contributions have been garnered from the statistical academic community w.r.t. this matter.
9. Have kids.
10. To get up to speed on Austrian economics.
11. Noting the ephemeral future of the gay population. 

While recently I pointed to a remark that we shouldn’t believe things we hear just because we didn’t know that thing before. But … 

I heard that in Egypt during Ramadan, the month-long fast, Egyptians eat three times more than when the fast isn’t present. The explanation had to do with how Ramadan is observed. The Ramadan fast is from dawn to dusk, nothing is eaten during that time. However, after nightfall the fast is broken. And typically during the month of Ramadan people either are or entertain guests and make a feast of it. So much so that the average consumption is far greater during the fast, than afterwards.

I thought that odd. 

Didn’t the Beatles offer that one should never eat on an empty stomach?

Good morning.

1. Stupid union tricks.
2. On the Mosque kerfuffle, our President leads the way, and his leadership has an effect, commentary from an Arabic media figure,  and a representative of the left wing media response. 
3. I have a question for those who offer that zoning should be blind to particularities of faith? What then of St. Nicholas (the Greek Orthodox church) which was an pre-existing church prior to 9/11 but which was damaged. The Greek diocese offered plans to rebuild the church but was rebuffed with the note that the height of their church should not be higher than the buildings planned for the Trade Center memorial. Oddly enough the plans for the Mosque in question are also higher than the buildings planned. It seems to me the left in their responses has a definite religious bias in their stance.
4. Statistics and preschool(ers).
5. Rockets and your toilet, two things you wouldn’t normally associate.
6. In praise of Mr Ryan.
7. Mr Geithner, on housing. Oddly enough what he said is just about exactly the same thing I wrote on Fan/Fred and their effect on the recession.
8. The Fed and the failure of monetary policy.
9. How not to do conservation.
10. Obama and the M1 Garand.

Good morning.

1. Radical Islam and malaria and an argument from analogy.
2. I liked the 2nd poster.
3. Guns from the left.
4. And two from the right in response to Mr Obama’s twin statements on the Mosque near ground zero, here and here.
5. Beauty and the bike-shop.
6. Yes, that’s right “web polls” are less accurate than professional opinion polls, which for themselves are as valuable as a bucket of spit.
7. Work and the bike.
8. A little religious freedom comes to Turkey.
9. Vaccinations.
10. Talking about quantum gravity.
11. Higher education.
12. On Mr Hitchens.