Good morning, err, afternoon.

1. Of witches and psychics on the silver screen.
2. A private zoo.
3. A song.
4. A conversation from the chattering classes Sunday chatfest.
5. A letter to Ms Dunn. More on Ms Dunn (different topic) here.
6. Speaking of past tyrants … Stalin from St. Petersburg (a city, I think, he reviled).
7. Tipping the hat to Mr Obama.
8. The Obama strategy of snubbing allies and talking nice to your enemies continues apace.
9. On lobbying.
10. A race.
11. 4 Seasons.
12. On Obama’s policy toward the Sudan.
13. Various definitions of group (mathematically speaking).
14. Bombs in Iran.

In recent discussions around the term Dependent Rational Animals, a book I hope to return to reading and not just skimming the first few chapters, commenter Boonton and I went back and forth a bit over the use of the term “Dependent.” Mr Boonton argued for inter-dependent instead of “dependent.” In those discussions I had argued that dependence of all necessarily implies interdependence so that the insistence of the “inter-” was superfluous.

But, on reflection, I think that this is wrong. Preferring the term dependent to interdependent is more than an acknowledgement that dependence (of all) necessarily implies inter-dependence. In one of his objections it was pointed out that dependence brings to mind a wife and children depending on a wage-earner. Yet this is exactly right. We are all exactly like the child or the wife depending on others for so much. The notion that the provider in that situation is not dependent is the crux of my mistake. Humans are social creatures. We depend on social interactions to bring out the human nature in each of us. The independent wage earner with a flock of dependants who look to him for sustenance is the myth. There is no (truly) independent person. This isn’t to deny ethical/moral autonomy and independence as a thing to esteem and to acknowledge. But that independence is contained within the context of a network of social and physical dependence.

For further grist for the mill, I refer to this excerpt from a publisher’s blurb on the aforementioned book:

n Dependent Rational Animals, Alasdair MacIntyre compares humans to other intelligent animals, ultimately drawing remarkable conclusions about human social life and our treatment of those whom he argues we should no longer call “disabled.” MacIntyre argues that human beings are independent, practical reasoners, but they are also dependent animals who must learn from each other in order to remain largely independent. To flourish, humans must acknowledge the importance of dependence and independence, both of which are developed in and through social relationships. This requires the development of a local community in which individuals discover their own “goods” through the discovery of a common Good.

1. A cricket race to discuss (for those coming “late to the party”, cricket race is my word for a poll).
2. Corruption in high places, one approach and the last bit with St. Basil might serve as an object lesson (HT: Ocholophobist, the).
3. Forgiveness and a not-completely-unrelated prayer.
4. Money talk.
5. On the senior handout.
6. Ms Palin on healthcare (HT: Politico).
7. More on healthcare here.
8. The apostolic physician.
9. “Because it has a perspective” … just like all the rest. Speaking of which …
10. The Maoist in the White House kerfuffle.
11. Considering recessions and recoveries.
12. Are these the “new rules?”
13. Ms Clinton in Moscow.
14. Working with a beatitude.

This post by the pseudonymous Larry Niven at Rust Belt Philosophy, which is largely against a traditional morality, in part as defined by Scripture (especially the Old Testament). I think this attitude about traditional morality in part is the result of a common fundamentalist tendency common on the non-Christian left, the “new atheists” like Mr Niven follow that methodology. That same group of people would of course bristle at being termed fundamentalist, yet this is in fact a good term to describe them, their approach to traditional (mostly Biblical) traditions is fundamentalists which makes it in turn far easier to reject. Personally I consider myself a fundamentalist … but use the word ‘fundamentalist’ in a different meaning when I do so. Read the rest of this entry

1. Dark thoughts (HT: Ochlophobist, the)
2. Of ethanol and petroleum.
3. Analyzing violence.
4. Atheism and political ethics.
5. Looking at an one of Mr Obama’s aids.
6. A suggestion re the gender wage discrepancy.
7. An answer for a question Mr Sullivan asked.
8. Kept quiet … or not.
9. Is he just trying to buy votes?
10. Of weather (not climate) and economics.
11. The point of the tattoo … missed by the media.
12. V. Havel criticises Mr Obama’s litte compromises.
13. “The meltdown” over Mr Limbaugh’s failed NFL bid … missing only any sort of actual meltdown. 
14. A paper on libertarianism.
15. The mortgage crises was so much fun … let’s line up another. And not unrelated … more bailout problems noted. Here too.
16. Of science and the media. In the conclusion, I think this thought can be more generally applied to the media’s topical response to just about anything, “I want to know what’s going on at the frontier of research elsewhere. I don’t want to know what the crazy outliers do, I want to know what the central problems are. Give me the big picture, give me a basis. If I want to know more details, I’ll look for them.” Replace research, with politics, economics, current events, whatever.
17. A worthwhile celebrity quote.
18. Consider the beard (and ex-beard).

Good morning.

1. On evening prayers.
2. Orthodox ecumenism.
3. Southeast asia considers the Kerry/Luger bill (even as Americans for the most part ignore it).
4. Human rights and US/Russian relations.
5. For myself, I’m a sucker for little gadgets.
6. Liftoff.
7. Asking history to just stop for a bit.
8. Mr Niven suggests some reading why national exceptionalism is, uhm, crap. In turn, here’s some suggested reading as to why it is not, Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.
9. Some lighter verse … and its application to modern situations.
10. Robo … robo … (wait for it) … Pumpkin!
11. An item list for good discussions.

Well, I had an long day (12 hours is long for me) and am fighting off a bug hanging in the wings. So, for tonight … a few hasty thoughts and we’ll see where that gets us:

Perhaps if we accept the ontological aspect of human dignity as a starting point in a discussion on abortion that might help make the argument more useful. For discussion based on human dignity can serve as on both sides. The dignity of the mother and father as well as the child. One side can point to the necessity of insuring that the parents dignity, specifically the recognition of their personal ethical choices need to be respected. The other to the fact that human life, any human life, needs to be treated exceptionally. Forming policies and arguments that respect both sides of this matter is the essential element. One which the radicals on both sides fail to accomplish.

A few Econ Nobel prizes ago (Stigler I think) taught me one lesson on investing by which I live … and which lead to my portfolio being dominated by index funds. Whether or not it really does beat playing the market or some other complicated (or simple) strategy (which Mr Stigler argues it indeed also does) … there is one thing it does really well, which might be more important. It take the time wasted on the whole investment aspect of life out of the equation. This years prize will be grist for plenty of later blog posts (after I get some reading on the matter behind me). But commenter JA, might need to re-orient his thinking some ultimately … as he has used the tragedy of the commons numerous times in discussions to amplify on why government intervention is necessary … but alas, when you study the matter … perhaps that assumption is wrong.

And getting wrong reminds me that a quote from Paul Collier’s book on Democracy keeps springing back. In which he notes that spreading democracy in the third world as a good thing to do … is an assumption both Mr Bush and Mr Soros agree. To bad it’s wrong.

1. It’s not just “about the kids”, in the post-modern political climate regulation attempts to replace judgement. 
2. Consequentialism continues here.
3. The Book.
4. The church in Ethiopia.
5. More on Ms Ostrom and the tragedy of the commons. Here too.
6. LDS, a painting and Mr Skousen.
7. The OCA a church designed to disappear.
8. Nobel humor.
9. Don’t hate Wal-Mart, it’s just a consequence of Equality by Default … Just a natural outworking of the liberal project.
10. Rights talk.
11. It has been claimed that the left has dropped communism … which might be a premature statement.
12. A new poster/voice at the Agora.
13. So … whadya think? Are the Democrats going to commit political suicide or not? Or in the words of the link, “I’m skeptical.  I think it is more likely is that this thing passes, and fails spectacularly.  There are too many moving parts, and if any of them breaks, the whole thing rapidly starts to spin out of control and eat a gigantic hole in the deficit.” … and subsequently doom them politically.
14. That Zeigeist thing, see the last few sentences.
15. Mr Obama emulating the worst tendencies of the Nixon admin. Hmm.
16. Of maths and economics.

1. Farming in Sri Lanka … and politics.
2. On that topic, development and tech.
3. Repression … another view.
4. Nuclear weapons, the Middle East and Pakistan.
5. The shatter zone near Iran.
6. On corporate law and the bailout … and the implications of a large stake-holding government sharesholder immune to corporate and private commerce regulations.
7. On the “Invention of lying” a good premise gone astray (twice?).
8. On Ms Ostrom, here and here and here.
9. Hobbes and the Kingdom of Darkness.
10. Anti-Semitism and the dog that didn’t bark in the night.
11. Afghanistan.
12. Human rights and healthcare. 
13. A life in pictures. 😀
14. More humor here.
15. Democrat policy and employment.
16. Democrats and incentives (and some media bias noted as well).
17. And a film recommended.

H1N1 vaccinations are a subject for debate. One might ask, will they be required of students? Or of other organizations. “H1N1 required” pulls up a list of links. If I was more playfully disposed, I think this might be an interesting venue to push the argument in a real legal challenge by refusing to disclose vaccination (or not) of myself or (more likely) my children. Vaccinations of a variety of sorts are required for school attendance. Where and why the challenge? Because the abortion “right to privacy” is exactly the same right that is not protected by the school system (and thereby the government’s) right to demand vaccination.

Now normally I get a flu shot and will likely get the H1N1 and the seasonal flu shot this year … and so will my kids. But that in itself is irrelevant to a challenge. Typically with vaccination requirements the parent is required to prove vaccination with a doctors affidavit. This is the part I would refuse. If abortion is legal, it should not be legal for the government to require vaccination. The argument is the same. Abortion is therefore legal because a woman has a right to the disposition of  her body. Vaccination is programming of our immune system and clearly part of your body. Requirement of vaccination therefore is just in this case the state violating that right that abortion establishes.

In prior discussions on this point, the argument was put forth against it, that abortion and vaccinations differ in that getting a vaccination is for the public good and is not very harmful to the recipient. I’m not sure what bearing that has on the argument, but one might point out that children too are required for the next generation and are in general public good.

Good morning.

1. Denmark and economics.
2. Speaking of economics.
3. St. Nilus of Calabria.
4. So who would you listen to for advice on what strategy will work, McCrystal or Biden/Emmanuel? There’s really only one choice there … but we shall see what the President decides.
5. The unaccountable and academia.
6. Some academic questions tackled. Ought/is and complexity.
7. Two types of last stands (there may be a third, the one nobody but the relatives of the slain remembers).
8. How to get people to do things. 
9. Uhm, no. Our willingness to accept failure is proportional to the cost of failure.
10. Well, MacIntyre and his Dependent Rational Animals has come up in discussion. Here’s the man himself.
11. Intrusion.
12. Politics in a bottle.

Well, a sort of busy weekend, and the muse isn’t striking quickly with ideas to write (or at least ideas that won’t take more work than I’m ready to put into it tonight) so … links + extended remarks is on the docket for tonight.

1. Now this is just stupid, and on something called “science blogs” to boot. Yet, right up there with the “depends on what the definition of is is” kind of pendantic doublespeak. Now Mr Brayton’s grandfather might have been a aboriginal hunter/gatherer or from an migratory herding culture … but for most of us these days traditional harks back all the way to the 50s or even further back to the Victorian era … or even stretching it to the mid-19th century. And guess what, monogamy was in fact traditional in those times.
2. On Russia’s relationship with the past, especially Stalin. It seems to me, from a somewhat casual view … so I’m not really going to defend it very vigorously against someone who argues that they are actually speaking with some authority on the subject, but Russians really do know all about the bad things Stalin did. It’s not news to them (and speaking on that particular subject, I just finished reading Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna this afternoon. Highly recommended.). On the other hand, one of the thing Stalin did do, irrespective of his methods, was to recast Russia from an large resource rich but still a poor agrarian nation into an industrial and military power which for some time in the latter 20th century, was regarded as one of the two super-powers. This remolding, in part required to survive Hitler’s aggression, is the source it seems to me of the reluctance to utterly condemn everything Stalin did or stood for. And I have no clue where this guy fits in the picture.
3. Here’s a post on immigration that exemplifies the right way to go about discussions on this sort of politically charged topics. 
4. Today I went to church with my parents, a Lutheran church. For the last few years almost all the church I’ve been to has been Eastern rite Orthodox … so (as a convert) the contrasts are getting more and more evident. One thing I missed was this, well not the “video presentation” but the beatitudes are sung every (ordinary) Sunday at the beginning of the service in the Eastern rite. I think centering liturgy on that is something that the West would do well to recover. Of course it was less penitential, but that I expected.
5. Praise from the right for Mr Obama’s administration. I’ll offer another, connected with #3 above. Mr Obama’s highly celebrated, before the fact) and not so much after, trip to plead at the Olympic committee on behalf of Chicago suffered from what I in the past have termed a lack of epistemic humility, an overconfidence by the Administration in their smartness, their cleverness, and their rhetorical skills. Long time Olympic watchers had noted the “Byzantine” complexities of the Olympic committees movements, ways and politics. Yet the Admin thought they were smart enough to waft in casually at the last moment, offer a few touches, a little pomp and save the day … and they came in last place, not first. Their Mideast policy smacks of this too, assuming that their cleverness will succeed where so much has failed in the past. So, where is my praise? I’ll praise the Obama administration for not touching immigration.

Mr Obama has won a Nobel Peace prize. One reaction, from the left reads:

Of course the Republicans are going to freak out. Our guy wins a Nobel Peace Prize after 9 months in office, primarily for tinkering with the worst excesses of the wars their guy started. That’s humiliating. Humiliated Republicans lash out, news at eleven.

Hmm. Lash out? With remarks like this?

We appreciate his effort for peace which he just initiates and we have to wait for the result.

Isn’t it a bit premature for him to get the prize? We are not sure how it will affect his mindset.

or this?

Does Obama deserve The Prize? Has he done anything to warrant it? Does giving it to so young a man, in the infancy of his Presidency, devalue all those who worked long and hard to earn it? Or does it not matter at all, because the Nobel is such a political prize anyway (as anybody who has read Irving Wallace’s The Prize will know), given to Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin?

or this?

This may well turn out to be the watershed year in the decline of Nobel Prizes. What were the committee members eating or smoking?

President Obama may well deserve this award in years to come. But not at this time. He has just begun his strive and is yet to leave a mark on world peace.

Oh, wait. Those weren’t conservative wingnuts at all. That was a collection of South East Asian blog reactions. Try Egypt.

There is a point here. The “conservative” bloggers  and “Republicans” are “lashing” out in exactly the same way as, it seems, is the rest of the world with at best, a collective “huh, wtf?” And if you don’t find that sort of reaction reasonable and ordinary … I suggest you need to dial the tension down your partisan wig and let some blood flow return to your little grey cells.

Good morning.

1. A cricket race of a different sort, i.e., not directly about issues.
2. How not to report on race and religion.
3. Plugging a razor.
4. Trying to correct impressions of the Puritans does not require mistaken interpretations of catholic teaching.
5. Standing firm against the tyranny implicit in the libertarian movement.
6. Progress and people.
7. Family life and a photo journal.
8. An leaning car.
9. On healthcare polls.
10. Radioisotopes and batteries.
11. Split cycle engine.
12. No, Mr Obama didn’t “sell out” the anti-war movement … it can be more plausibly argued that he wilfully misled them for political gain. He more clearly campaigned with the idea that Afghanistan was the more important military front, so not pulling out should not be a surprise to anyone.
13. One reason why added spending on healthcare might not be a good idea right now.
14. A very interesting soda-pop ad.
15. On the “clip” front, a song.
16. The attitudes about the GOP attitude toward gays needs updating.
17. If we don’t see criticism of this from the left, they’ve jumped the shark.
18. Poverty.
19. Sharia.

No country with nuclear power today has solved the waste disposal problem. The preferred solution being sought today is to disperse the waste in repositories hundreds of meters below the earth’s surface. The (perceived) absence of success in this area is a dominant obstacles that the nuclear industry faces. Last Friday, I after a discussion of nuclear energy started, with a lot of half-remembered data on my side and in order to stop that feature of the conversation, I dug up on the net an authoritative report on the “future of nuclear energy.” These papers are in pdf form:

1. The full document is here. This is a study by a group of MIT professors on the status of Nuclear power in the US and the world.
2. The summary is here. This is a summary of the findings in the prior document.
3. Finally, in 2009 (the original documents were written in 2003) an update of the current situation given the economic and political conditions is given here.

In the discussion last night (on this post) waste seemed the dominant topic. As noted, that post last night was a summary (of a summary). So I’m going to delve in to the report’s waste chapter for more grist. Read the rest of this entry