Good morning.

1. The left likes to point out lingering effects of the cold war on attitudes on the right. A point returned.
2. Some more thoughts on Mr Paul and the CRA.
3. Economics, macro. Micro here.
4. A prayer.
5. Wise words.
6. Sleeeeeep.
7. Betcha he didn’t “read the bill” either. Such a dreary 10 pages.
8. Hatred and blogs.
9. Contra more (pension) bailouts.
10. The engine controversy.
11. Title suggestions?

Good morning.

1. Logic meets the partisan, ships passing in the night.
2. Marketing meets the satirist.
3. Bohemian rhapsody and … now Bohemian rose.
4. The pope’s words for Pentacost.
5. A case in court.
6. Slow news day? These type of vending machines have been common in airports for more than a year.
7. Marya Bolkonsky.
8. Fire and ice.
9. Yet another bailout?
10. Of Mr Rumsfeld and his legacy.
11. Wave function and Eucharist.

Good morning.

1. Looking for a clue. I offer that if you cannot understand why a practice, custom, or institution is in place then you are not qualified to discuss removing it.
2. Boredom.
3. Our thoroughly modern world.
4. Men’s rights.
5. Concerning priests.
6. Collaboration.
7. So, does this guy want all the oil spills somewhere else in the world or does he think that there is a viable energy replacement?
8. PC an Sex in the City.
9. I missed one of the cues.
10. The church and the man alone.
11. The “new order.”
12. One big jump.
13. Big city gun control … and a facet of the argument likely not noted in the courts.
14. The nuclear devices used in WWII get the big press, not this.

Good morning.

1. California as the world.
2. California schools.
3. The Southwestern US states are not the only ones with water issues.
4. A word, Coming soon to the US care of your ever-growing government.
5. The Democrats complained when their remarks during the Iraq fighting were cited as abetting the enemy. Hypocrites.
6. A canned response for Mr Paul (HT: A Gentleman Ordinary).
7. The future of iconography … is bright.
8. A passing noted.
9. Likely true.
10. Seeking strategy.
11. The future of US Medicine … a cash economy. 
12. Those much touted Iran sanctions, kind of sieve like.
13. Asking about Ms Clinton.

Good morning.

1. I agree with Honda.
2. Lean medicine.
3. Morocco.
4. Sniffing packets.
5. Kagan arguing that it’s important to start from your conclusion and derive a solid argument afterwards.
6. Phil and Paul.
7. A parable.
8. A day in the life of a cab driver?
   
9. States and education. 
10. Perfectly ‘armless.
11. Mum? Sounds like an admission to me.
12. Pragmatic? I think that means without principles these days.
13. Doubting consequences. I concur.
14. Cinema.
15. For draw Muhammad day, Muslims drawing their founder.

So, minors can’t be given a life sentence. A kid under 18 commits a completely heinous and extensive serious of assaults and he’s by law now going to be out again at some point? Do you think that’s a good idea?  He just has to “not kill” his victims, say he “just” rapes girls and amputates their arms and legs. Still think he shouldn’t get a life sentence? Is that a useful or meaningful restriction? 

Good morning.

1. Spectacle and Art.
2. The cross.
3. Conservatism.
4. And why do pundits so lack a clue? The tea party popularism is not a GOP movement, duh.
5. The new theologian.
6. Heh.
7. Econ links.
8. Our dysfunctional Senate.
9. A site devoted to slamming the Grey Lady, defends it.
10. Dissident or not?

It has been noted on the left that it is counted as a political victory in taking Mr Murtha’s vacated seat, e.g., here. The right has noted that this victory in a state with a hotly contested Democratic primary and no such race on the other side with the winning candidate being a Democrat who campaigned taking a hard line against Obamacare, against abortion, and for gun rights. Well, if you want to call that a victory on the left, more power to y’all. If more Democrats pushed for smaller government, against abortion, and for gun rights … there’d be less obstructionism by the GOP in Congress too.

Good morning.

1. Fiscal responsibility.
2. Warming and reporting.
3. Economics linkage.
4. For the Palin fans in the crowd. This is not unrelated.
5. Considering Death.
6. Iron Man scriptwriters never heard of Christianity … apparently.
7. “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it” and we begin to find out?
8. High Energy news.
9. Hard data for the Kagan discussion.
10. Next comes waterboarding? 
11. On Libertarian movements afoot in KY.
12. Some awesome pole dancing.
13. A commission reporting.
14. The fall of the Soviet regime.

Today we find the announcement that Mr Obama and the White House are launching a commission to figure out what happened in the oil spill.

I predict the same thing will happen as is occurring with the financial crash … more Democrat stupidity is what will happen. And no. I don’t expect that “if this was a GOP President and Congress” there would be any lack of GOP stupidity. But … today we have a Democratic President and Congress so they own the stupidness (which isn’t a word … stupid mess?)

What is occurring with the financial crash you ask that is evidence of Democrat stupidity in action? A commission was launched to study the causes of the financial meltdown. And the report on the findings of that commission is due in three months. Yet today and not in three months time the Democrats are rushing to put in place 1,400 pages “redefining” and restructuring how banking is done in the country … before the results of the study are out.

So here’s my prediction. That similarly there will be an exhaustive and complete restructuring of the oil industry and how it operates pushed through with great fanfare. Well in advance and like the financial package completely and obviously ignoring the results of the commission and any study launched with much fanfare.

Now the argument that the politically charged studies of this nature produce no meaningful results likely has merit. I think that argument is can find a lot of good historical backing and that later careful studies done show that those initial high stakes commissions produce results which are worse than a random stab at the cause or answer. But … if that is the case, then the news about this new commission is just yet another great big waste of taxpayer money. If we had a press corps with cojones, there’d be hard questions asked about the nature and expected effectiveness of such a commission which highlights the failures of the same in the past and pointing out essentially that “isn’t this commission just a way of pretending you’re doing something useful when you aren’t?”

It is not necessary for the beltway buffoons to be experts in oil drilling. It is in fact impossible for them to do so, they lack the time, the resources, and any incentive to do so. What would be good is for the beltway to get a clue about regulation. Regulators work when they have an personal stake and an incentive in regulating well. Oil drilling safety regulators would far better being beholden to insurers and not the platform operators. In the financial world, there is much noise about the problems with bond/security ratings companies getting their money from the bond issuers themselves. The (wrong) government solution is to have the government pay for (or in essence do) the ratings themselves. But that is just skewed in a different (and wrong) direction. It will cause bond ratings to skew for political purposes which are just as inaccurate. Inaccurate ratings are the problem. The solution of “who should” pay for the ratings is the same as the answer to the question “who most clearly depends on accurate ratings?” That is the same agent that should be paying for the ratings. In coal mines, the canaries might be said to be the ones wanting to be hiring the safety commission. In general the person or agents that have the most at stake, who depend the most keenly and sharply on regulation to get it right should be paying and funding said regulation (it should be noted that this is a quite different group from those who directly oppose the activity in question).

Good morning.

1. Email is not private.
2. Austrians on reserves.
3. Puncturing Krugman on a silly claim of his.
4. Not my daughters toys … which include some dolls, rockets, r/c planes and soldering kits. Coming up, … archery?
5. Too big to fail, two posts of note … noted.
6. “Released”, is bs. It’s already out.
7. Tea party consequences?
8. Restraint in the judiciary as a tactical error?
9. Music for your day.
10. Budget movement … is it for real? When or can we follow?
11. 4 from Moscow.
12. Orthodoxy in America as noted in the press.
13. A study sure to roil the waters if validated.
14. Reporting on religion and biases in the press noted.
15. VAT.
16. Our future.

Good morning.

1. Well, now that he’s done finger pointing everybody else should now stop too.
2. Freedom of speech in the UK, exhibits one and two.
3. Not unrelated to the above.
4. Go girl!
5. Art.
6. A book dismissed.
7. Setting aside the American Trinity.
8. Not the cowardly lion.
9. Nixon and China.
10. The hood.
11. Pacifism and war.

Two well known strands of Protestant theology are the Calvinist and Arminian. There are a number of differences between these two schools but one of them keys on soteriology (salvation). Calvinists would hold that once a person is saved, he is always saved. Arminians dispute this idea. Consider the following thought experiment:

1. A person, we’ll call him John, is born and arrives in his twenties. He is a devoted and sincere Christian.
2. Then, in his twenties a series of circumstances arise and he loses his faith. Through his mid-thirties he is a not-Christian.
3. Finally late in life and to his death he returns to the faith of his birth and is again a devout and sincere Christian.

We add to this mix “device X.” Device X is trained on John and makes him into an human Schrödinger‘s Cat. If a particular nuclei is seen to decay … he dies. The state of this nuclei is tested at points 1 and 2 during his life. So we now consider if he dies at points 1,2, and 3 in his life and the soteriological implications of this.

My (limited and likely flawed) understanding of the Calvin/Arminius dispute is that an Arminian would say he was saved at points 1&3 and a Calvinist would say at point 2 that even though John was not a believer that he (John) is still one of those saved that He (God) would still call him saved because He (being omniscient) knows that John will live through to point 3 and will return to the fold.

This is where the Many-Worlds theory comes in. An Arminian could argue that each of points 1,2, and 3 the universe splits. In one universe he lives. In the other he dies. Therefore the Calvinist argument that God can know the result is impossible. Just before point 1, there is one universe. After point 3 there are three and in two of them John goes on to be saved and one in which he is not.  Therefore if Many Worlds is true God cannot say which John He is judging at point 1 … which is the Arminian statement on this question. Thus the Arminian view is compatible with Many Worlds while the Calvinist view is not.

If one take (the seemingly obvious and innocuous) view that belief or non-belief in the quantum theory known as the “many worlds hypothesis” is adiaphora. It is not essential to salvation whether you give the theory credence or not … and that given the dependence of this particular dispute between these two schools on this point … that therefore this point is thus also adiaphora and not dogma.

I think I’m going to start calling myself a progressive. If one labels place on the axis regarding social or cultural change … progressives want to move away from the status quo toward something new, conservatives are cautious about movement along that axis, and reactionaries also want cultural change … but back toward a past relationship. Conservatives in that light are at the zero point, the origin of a generic “social movement” metric. This is (in the light of prior discussion) not a “retconning” of the definition of progressive, reactionary, and conservative but indeed the standard ones. However it might be noted that in popular parlance, progressive and conservative have come to mean ill-defined but definite political party affiliations … and this is not the usage of these words I am applying here. The other meaning however is also well known and common and I don’t think there are really any alternatives words to use in their place.

Sometime past the topic of Honor/Shame cultures came up in a more sympathetic setting than I had experienced before. I think the so-called ‘conventional wisdom’ regarding H/S cultures is a confused message from the liberal academic establishment. The conventional wisdom is that their treatment of woman (and gays) is appalling and that life in these societies is horrible. Our news services flood us with messages giving us a feeling of superiority regarding our culture, with stories of older men marrying or abusing pre-teen and young women. Yet as was pointed out what is missing in those stories are numbers and any sense of comparison of different flaws which appear in our own society. That is to say, that yes, while women suffer some problems in those societies that is not necessarily the norm but that these are outliers or abuses that appear at the edges. On the other hand, in our society rape, murder, suicide and mental illnesses like depression which are apparently far rarer in those societies and serve the similar role of outliers and breakdowns at the edges of our society. The upshot is that if one sets aside these two sets of outliers people in the Western individualistic society are wealthier people in H/S/non-individualistic cultures are happier. Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. Of public transportation and markets.
2. Again on Ms Kagan … and blind justice.
3. On the Soviet gulag system.
4. Global warming strikes again.
5. On the Middle East.
6. Mr Cuomo.
7. Banking and profit.
8. Diversity studies.
9. For President?
10. For discussion.
11. The intentionally (?) dense Mr Holder.
12. Firearms and airports.
13. Supporting genocide?
14. Schools.