Good morning.

1. Wrecked ships.
2. The Chicago machine and what it means w.r.t. our current President.
3. Data and the CBO.
4. A modest suggestion.
5. Jokes in the Chavez regime.
6. Go left.
7. Laptops in lectures.
8. On the Toyota recall.
9. A sign you might be wrong.
10. Free market and correction.
11. On Greece.
12. Google maps and the bike route.
13. Heh.
14. On fear and terrorism.

Good morning.

1. Concerning Mr Trotsky.
2. Russian/Iran relations.
3. Mr Krugman and Mr Krugman.
4. For the crowd that follows Ms Palin.
5. Armenian genocide again.
6. Unemployment.
7. Water damage and books, DIY fix.
8. Our classy administration … not.
9. Class and the ladies of the silver screen.
10. Grenada and their economic outlook.
11. Biking pic of the day, do you vote (A) or (B) or (C)?
12. Corruption of blood? Huh? You know when you start out saying ” I admit I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes …” making stuff up doesn’t help.
13. Could there possibly be collusion between big media and the administration to protect government owned industries?
14. Climate trends.
15. Loser letters.

Good morning.

1. Hmm, wishful thinking? That is, “that mass killings are remembered by history is a critical factor in deterring or enabling future perpetrators for enacting similar atrocities.” Cite? Evidence? Furthermore evidence that a “house bill” will have anything to do with “how anything is remembered” is to assume an inflated view of the effect of symbolic legislative actions (hint: nobody notices nor cares). More here.
2. Mr Obama and the left on the show trials.
3. Grandstanding (and a gymnast years later).
4. Panic and thought.
5. Green and profit.
6. I have “100% consistency” on that morality exam. (YNNN YNYN were my answers for what its worth).
7. Big box.
8. To the sun.
9. Letters evolving.
10. Heh.
11. Insincerity and the White House.
12. On Iran.
13. Somebody named Mr Chait admits do being amazingly dense.
14. Min. wage and unemployment.

Good morning.

1. When to read.
2. A defence of market, in a word, it sucks less.
3. Theology and the cross.
4. Casting.
5. Examining incentives and stimulus.
6. Speaking of incentives …
7. Immigration fail.
8. Pay/Go.
9. Balkanization.
10. Abortion and stigma.
11. Tech as art.
12. Why scare quotes on “skeptics?“
13. Amusing verse for a Friday.
14. The fundamental truth of political discourse … now for homework apply that to the healthcare debate.
15. And another fundamental problem with the healthcare bill exposed.

Good morning

1. Not approving of gifts.
2. In the land where stones are sacred.
3. Pressures on police.
4. German hyperinflation … back in the day.
5. Rehabilitation.
6. Mencken applied to healthcare.
7. Dinging China.
8. Why Lent.
9. Mr Obama on reconciliation. Hypocrisy?
10. Iran and the Administration.
11. Reconciliation ‘splained.

First century Middle Eastern society was very different than today’s Western European & US societies and subcultures. Ideas of self, ethics, and economics differed radically from our notions of these concepts and features in today’s world. These difference in turn affect our hemenuetic as we approach text that is passed down to us from that era as distinct from how it would have been received by the contemporary and those audiences nearer to that period. Nearer here is not restricted to temporal shifts but more a cultural distance. This yields several different hermeneutical choices for the modern scholar approaching matters written back then. One can view the text absent any historical/cultural context, one can take from the text the meaning that would have been received from the contemporary (or near) listeners, or one might take a parallel or analogous meaning to the one the contemporary listener might have derived into a modern context. But consider the last two options one must undertake to understand at salient features of society in the first century Middle East. Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. Climate change, part of the problem with the AGW proponents, is that cold weather is never evidence of climate change, as it gets the response, “climate is not weather.” What’s the problem with that, well, the problem is that every example of warmer weather is in fact used as evidence for climate change.
2. Not unrelated to the above.
3. In fact, 25, oops, 15 year trends aren’t, apparently, significant either.
4. An interesting data point.
5. Chile, Haiti and the Chicago school.
6. Of Cuba.
7. GM vs Toyota and the government response to recall.
8. If you need another reason why government shouldn’t be involved at all in healthcare.
9. That defence is an indictment.
10. Mech art, very cool.
11. For those who key on Ms Palin.
12. Tactics and praise. And aside: I played a little ASL when I was younger, enough to realize how very cool it was. I never got very good at it however.

There is currently, as is well known, a debate on health policy. Within this debate it seems to me there is a fundamental misunderstanding between right and left on this matter. I’d like to make as pointed a expression of this misunderstanding in the hopes that those on the left might clarify for my their views on this matter.

The left makes the following claims:

1. Restructuring healthcare is required because of the millions without any health insurance coverage.
2. Controlling the rising costs of healthcare is a major concern as well. Therefore the healthcare bill contains measures to contain and regulate pharmaceutical and insurance firm profits as well as doctors compensations. 

These items are problematic especially in the light of the three proposals on the table from the left.

Regarding item 1, a plan which would provide a minimal adequate universal catastrophic health care coverage is neither complicated nor cost prohibitive. It does not require a 2.5k page plan, one more of the nature of 40 pages would suffice, i.e., not much larger than the heath care coverage legal statement/booklets which most of of have for our own plans. This is not by any stretch of imagination the healthcare plan on the table. Therefore it cannot be construed that this issue is in fact a real feature/concern of the plan(s) in question.

As to item number 2, the first and more natural explanation for rising costs is due to a relationship between supply and demand. That is rising costs are symptomatic of rising demand in comparison with a supply. The bill(s) in question instead of consisting of a mechanism for increasing supply and/or attempting to ameliorate expectations or demand is instead more of the nature of a price control and regulatory scheme. In the real world, price controls of commodity items lead to lowered supply and scarcity … not increased production. That is price controls are in reality very good ways to choke off and decrease the supply of a thing. Furthermore the profit margins of insurance companies and “big pharma” are not out of line when compared to comparable industries. Expectations of large cost savings by regulation are not warranted, and this is in addition to the above noted deleterious effects of cost controls.

Putting these two remarks and their objections together alongside the much touted (by the left) reminder that those on the left are so very much smarter than we knuckle-dragging dim-witted conservatives that the left is aware of this disconnect between their policy proposals and the expected effects of their proposal. Thus those clever fellows on the left realising that a universal reasonable catastrophic insurance coverage plan is 40 pages and that cost controls do lead to shortages. 

Now one might propose that the Democratic politicians and pundits are aware that their proposals and justifications for the same have little if anything to do with each other and that instead that they prefer these proposals for very different reasons than those stated. For example, these proposals may ease the passing of any number of other social measures which the increase in social control and power these bills might afford. That, while dishonest at best, is at least understandable after all they see this measure to be one which is to their personal advantage. The problem is the rank and file member of the left. Why do they support a bill which so badly fits the stated aims? This, for me, a mystery.

Good morning.

1. Living where pictures like this … can be taken.
2. Columbia and constitution.
3. Slow news day? Or not.
4. Setting a situation on its head.
5. Spending on construction. The stimulus benefits are clearly obvious … well, actually they are not.
6. A film and the military.
7. A Welsh saint and national holiday, noted here too.
8. Mr Boudreaux on swipe fees.
9. Words.
10. My youngest would love to do that.
11. Church or not.
12. Consider war.
13. Flying and the airbus … or French practices.

Good morning.

1. An ode to snow.
2. Interesting hermeneutic. Heh.
3. An economics test case.
4. A book on St. Paul.
5. For the kids, a much abused theme.
6. Lent and the American south.
7. St. John Cassian in East and West.
8. A complicated Jew.
9. Fast boot.
10. On the Lenten fast … and not “getting it.”
11. Entitlements.
12. Solar power.
13. Facebook.

Good morning.

1. A reflection for the day.
2. Using bad-faith charts to claim bad-faith seems, hypocritical at best.
3. Knives on the bus … and I certainly hope its “allowed” I wear one of these everywhere I go (except on airplanes).
4. Talking tea.
5. Faith and illness.
6. When he says “sexy”, I don’t think that word means what he seems to think it does. 😀
7. Equality and defaults. A friend of mine asked his daughters if they would prefer having one get 4 cookies and the other 6 or both get 3. They preferred the latter, which makes little sense to me.
8. Statistics and counterinsurgency.
9. Drones.
10. The economy and the last bubble.
11. Nuclear power and things that block it.
12. Billion?  Huh?
13. No-fault divorce.

Satan. A word which the LXX and translators of the Masoretic Old Testament chose different methods. A translator has two different choices when dealing with a proper name or title. Transliteration or translation … that is make the word sound the same, or literally translate the meaning of the title. The LXX more often than not used the latter method, thus translating for example Philistine (transliterated) as Allophyle (or “Other”) which is a translation. Similarly with Satan, the term “the slanderer” is used instead of the transliterated Satan. My thesis in the following is that there is a hermeneutic, all to common, which is best described as Satan’s (the slanderer’s) hermenuetic and that this in turn is to be set aside where and when ever one notices its use.

What then might be meant by Satan’s (or the slanderer’s) hermeneutic and what is the point of discussing such a thing? The term hermeneutic normally means how we extract meaning from text, but one might expand it to mean (as I do in this case) to mean how we extract meaning from any of a variety of forms of communication, i.e., including not just text but speech as well. Satan’s hermeneutic is then is when we (all too often) take the words of another, usually because of associations external to the topic at hand, and interpret them in the worst way we can find. We take the narrowest (or widest) or most literal (or most figurative) interpretation possible. Whatever way we can find to interpret their words in the most outrageous or most negative way possible is the meaning to which we attach their words.

This hermeneutic is often seen in discussions between parties arrive in a conversation with an implicit or explicit understanding that they have important or strong disagreements. Whether it is for lack of confidence in one’s one position,  a debaters desire to “win points” in an argument and not a seeking just to understand the other’s position, or just a customary discussion style seen in the blogging and debating environments. And I have to say, this is a failing (sin?) of which I participate fully in just as do my interlocutors in discussion threads.

The primary problem, not just that this is a Satanic hermeneutic and should therefore be avoided on principle, is that in my experience it has the opposite effect from the one intended. Time after time in discussions with parties on both sides resorting to this method my observation is that the ultimate effect of this discussion is that one comes away convinced more than before the conversation began of the correctness and mistakes of your and the other points in discussion.  The lesson here is obvious, … don’t do it. Instead of hunting for the most unreasonable interpretation of the others words, seek to find the core of their point and address that.

Good morning.

1. Waiting lists, that won’t go over very well.
2. Toyota and the recall … an a stupid thing said at the hearing noted.
3. Those ideas we live by … or think we do.
4. The CBO jobs report, remarked upon here and here.
5. New York or not New York.
6. Considering the deacon.
7. A 1600 y/old joke book from Eastern Rome.
8. Cool, Mr Kuznicki is blogging a the Ordinary Gentlemen … although he’s started with (at least) one error in his post. The most recognisable Levitical verse is “love thy neighbor.” 
9. Considering the topic of the last post, this post stands in stark disagreement with the last.
10. Adding to our economic woes … the Administration piles on.
11. A book on evolution noted, here too.
12. Greece.
13. A short tale about equality and freedom.
14. On conflict of interest.
15. That nearby star.

I’d like to pose a question to any out there who might support SSM. Allow me a moment to set the question up with some numbers.

The percentage of the population, based on a John Fund essay some years ago which I’m not going to dig up for y’all, offered that if finds that upwards 6% of the population are gay then in Canada, where SSM was legalized, then it was observed that about 6% of that gay population was availing itself of the opportunity to get married. This means that the SSM question affects just under .4% of the population. Conversely 94% of the population is not gay, and a considerably higher proportion of that population does get married. Within that larger set, a certain number of the marriages are “weak”, that is have significant difficulties in staying hitched. Today’s high divorce rate is a symptom of that fact.

Marriage itself is a institution and a practice which involves many things, including the relational aspect between the two individuals, the community, and immediate and extended family (that is kids). The arguments for SSM stress the first as being the primary aspect, i.e., that marriage is primarily a bond between two people in a loving and nurturing relationship. This argument consequentially reduces the emphasis on the other aspects of marriage. For the “weak” marriages above that in turn improves the chance of those marriages breaking up, because if marriage is “about” relationship and the relationship is sour or lost, then there is no point in continuing.

So here’s my question: If SSM were enacted, say federally, it seems quite plausible that the number of SSM marriage partners is roughly commensurate with increase in the number of children from broken families due to a new emphasis on the partner aspect of marriage. So, for argument, grant that these numbers are about the same, that is the number of people in new gay marriages is equal to the number of children abandoned to state care. If that were the case, would legalizing SSM still be the right thing to do?

Good morning.

1. Another reason to fast … or to help you keep to the narrow path. More words on fasting here.
2. ACORN examined.
3. Jobs and government stimulus … 1000 word version.
4. Global warming and calling out stupid.
5. Mr Moore.
6. Laptop cameras and the school surveillance, an story which is getting “odder.”
7. Blogging and fame.
8. The mantra on Ms Palin examined.
9. A movie, the Last Station, of the life of Lev Tolstoy reviewed.
10. Who notices?
11. Another non-barking dog.
12. The arts, architecture and the modern evangelical.