From class. It seems there is a general statement might make about the usage of two terms. Compare the usage of the the terms synthesis versus harmonization. When two ideas are seen as far apart, a writer or idea which brings them together is achieving synthesis. If on the other hand these ideas were not very disparate then synthesis is not the correct term, the two ideas are being harmonized instead. It seems that the choice of synthesis versus harmonize tells as much (or more) about the place of the observer than the observed.

The West looking East at theological and monastic trends sees three different strands. St. Basil’s monasticism is compared to the rule based Benedictine monastic tradition. The Evagrian/Origenist tradition is seem to be akin to an intellectual tradition akin to the Dominican monastic tradition in the West. Finally the Syriac monastic tradition is seen as (perhaps) a Carmelite or affective tradition. This tendency is exaggerated by the natural tendency to seek comparisons to things closer to home. However the East does not perceive their traditions the same way. They see the similarities and instead the shared parts not the differences.

An example, St. Diadochos of Photiki whose writings are found in the Philokalia is seen by the West as providing a synthesis of Evagrian and (pseudo-)Makarian or affective theological strands. Yet the East sees this as a harmonization. That Evagrius writings and the Makarian homilies share a common tradition. St. Diadochos is not synthesizing their separate threads but in a harmonious way is drawing from each to express his ideas.

Well, in Le Tour it looks like third place on the podium is the only thing not wrapped up … Bradley Wiggins, Lance Armstrong, Andreas Kloden and Frank Schleck all have a shot. Two Alpine stages left. If I had to guess … I’d say Frank will take that spot.

On to the links.

1. Your group and my group.
2. On false false analogies.
3. With my blog’s name, I had to link this.
4. Libertarian legal bloggers on ACORN.
5. Advice on learning a language.
6. On Russia from Russia.
7. Why is the crises (rush) being invented?
8. This reminded me of that unfortunate incident in Once Upon A Time in America.
9. A prediction.
10. Settled …
11. Of Government and competing models.
12. The secret to 50 year old marriage … it seems “traditional gender models” are statistically quite significant.
13. The changing demographics of Christianity.

1. In vino veritas … for the fixie fan.
2. Two interpretations of Ms Clinton’s umbrella, here and here. Neither of course are on the charts for Mr Obama’s mythical path to a nuclear weapon free world.
3. A “read the bill” response.
4. Does Mr Obama has the wrong map to the Middle East (HT: Mr Lozowick)?
5. And, on the subject of maps … an odd one.
6. Ms Delsol in Unlearned Lessons would counter, I’d offer, that the large (failed) experiments of Fascism and Communism have similar roots, contrary to this suggestion.
7. Mr Obama’s foreign policy as a Bush third term.
8. Of violence and unions. I’d note that being “founded in violence” is not necessarily a bad thing … so were virtually all nation states.
9. Speaking of violence … art?
10. Did he really compare mandated car insurance to health coverage? Where’d the no-fault analogy come in?
11. How to really distance yourself from a the “buck stops here” Presidency … that is to say whining.
12. So … “doff your galoshes and into the breach one more time”, err, I think Shakespeare put it a little more fluently.
13. I do like that phrase, coining the present as “at the edge of Tradition.”
14. An endorsement … lost.

1. Well, that makes my day seem mundane (which might not be entirely a bad thing).
2. What’s going on in Afghanistan … doesn’t seem like a COIN operation, I wonder why not?
3. Well, my second favourite cyclist crashed.
4. One man’s reaction to Microsoft (and a far cry from yum or apt-get).
5. Obama and Up!
6. Indeed. “What happens if cost growth exceeds projections, the way it has in Massachussetts, and AFAIK, every Federal health care program ever?  Where do we get more money?”
7. I’d suggest the biggest reason is on the evening news scientifically predicting the weather every day and getting it wrong so often.
8. Catching Hillary being, well, not thinking exactly.
9. A Soviet scientist.
10. Russia’s schools.
11. It’s not for their good, it’s to ease the possibility of our pain.
12. Obamacare killed?
13. This is something everyone should read … and then ponder Obama’s notion of a moderate Iran and the need to open relations with them.
14. On the living Christian life.

Well, it’s been a long day, as I noted Sunday night and I thought I’d do something different tonight … and talk about my day and what I’m doing down here in Florida. I’m not going to mention the name of my customer for obvious reasons. Two co-workers and I flew down Sunday night to install two in-motion printers on a shipping/manifesting system, each of which should be able to process 15-20 cartons per minute. It was the middle of last week when we decided the work required would be impossible to complete in two weeks for just two people, so we added a third. I’m the software guy (developer, maintainer, installer, documentation and all the rest) on the job plus the project manager. The other fellows are responsible for the electrical and mechanical installation. When the wiring is completed and the I/O checks out (both digital and serial hardware is tested and verified) one of the installation guys will head out. My nominal schedule has that for tomorrow night. We look to be on schedule for that … but it’s going to be close. So … for the last two day’s I’ve mostly been doing whatever I can to help out the install. Schlepping boxes, pulling cable, climbing ladders, crimping cables. Tomorrow I’ll be verifying I/O as the field wiring is landed in our panels.

So far it’s been a happy project. The overall project manager for the installation is a friendly guy and things seem to be going well. The schedule has slipped some but his customer must not be giving him what-for on that account (and it very well was their fault). The other subs have been pleasant too. While the facility is warm it is somewhat air-conditioned so we don’t have to deal with the Florida heat and humidity all day. We do in fact marvel at the contrast between the Chicago and Florida summer (and flora and fauna). The systems we’re installing are on a high mezzanine with a steel grate on the floor. As that is the case, we’ve been instructed where possible to pass wiring under the floor. So I’ve been up ladders and scissor lifts a lot in the past two days.

My feet are very sore, pads and tendons both. After spending a day on my feet (or two) working on steel or concrete floors I always end up in awe of people who work on their feet for a living. As this week progresses I’m going to be on my seat pounding the keyboard more and more … which will be a welcome relief.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been about lately.

1. SWFs.
2. Shame? Shame!? Few politicians have much, as for Mr Obama, well you decide.
3. According the the cricket race watchers … there is hope.
4. Raindrops.
5. Remind me how this would have gone over in the press (and the rest of the left) if it was Mr Bush doing this.
6. I was going to offer that this post was spot on, but then remembered this is Star Trek … which is not science fiction.
7. Replace “independence of the central bank” with “independence of the actuarial industry” and the reasoning still holds. Congress remains “weakly accountable.”
8. Considering icons of the Theotokos.
9. On global warming.
10. For anyone interested in theology and science, a essay featuring John Polkinghorne.
11. More on that topic here.
12. A quote.
13. Very very (as in Apollo) cool.
14. Liberal bigotry against Christians or just ignorance on the part of a reporter?

There is an aspect to public healthcare that doesn’t get much discussion. The likelihood of it being yet another way in which we willingly give up yet more and more of our freedom to make personal choices is a clear and present danger. Here is how the process would likely work:

1. The first thing that happens is seemingly innocuous from a liberty perspective. The government gets involved in the actuarial responsibilities related to healthcare.
2. Step two is that costs become difficult to control.
3. Step three is that some bright knucklehead in Congress or more likely in a regulatory agency in a matter unrelated directly to healthcare realizes that some policy changes in his or her purview might be made and his reason for pushing it is that it will aid the financial burden pressed on them by healthcare. And consider the nature of policy chances which have an affect on health. Are these changes liable to increase or decrease your ability to make free choices?
4. Then others will notice that worked … and the process will little by little erode the range of reasonable choices left to the non-wealthy.

And this avenue, not really pushed today by those who oppose government healthcare actually gives a big opportunity for a conservative opposition leader to get a big start. The Democrats have come a long way from their populist roots. In their eagerness to push back and distance themselves from the evil “big corporate interests” (in favour of big government interests it might be noted), they’ve also made a mistake. They’ve also distanced themselves from all business, including the small ones. Populism and independence from government was in part the card that Ron Paul played. And he got some mileage with it, which says something because he’s well, something of a flake.

1. This might spur some discussion. One wonders if Mr Sunstein would apply this law/logic to the left as well? For example the various unfounded and inaccurate Palin rumors.
2. More links. For myself I still have failed to see any credible remarks much less a defense of the Cap/Trade bill in the light of the current economy.
3. Le Tour and the lantern rouge.
4. Jobs and the stimulus.
5. More problems with Mr Obama’s “Russia reset.”
6. Conservatism and marriage.
7. Yet more data for the pro-choice crowd to dismiss as irrelevant.
8. And yet there are those who contended that racism and bigotry does not exist on the left.
9. A passing noted. I think it might be a good idea to read some of his books.
10. Jesus is not safe.
11. Le Tour and the universality of politics.
12. Mr Obama … trying to color the US orange.
13. Considering the popular history market.
14. Posner and Becker on the academic bubbl

1. Humor and the healthcare discussion.
2. For the google reader/firefox audience.
3. Yes, law and society are entangled in a complicated dance.
4. Abortion and public healthcare.
5. Middle east and missile defense.
6. A monk of the Sketis remembered.
7. Pre-soviet Russia … some history.
8. Advice for conservatives regarding public healthcare.
9. Hmm, I’d counter that racism is a conservative thing inasmuch as it is a human and conservatives are human.
10. Yet another liberal that needs to read the Petraeus COIN manual.
11. Mr Obama says he wants to lower the abortion rate.
12. Reflecting on Mr Obama’s Africa sojourn.
13. Mr Obama and corn.
14. But … does it have a name? How about Bob?
15. Left/Right and a cultural comparison.
16. At life’s end … the upside.
17. Cricket races.
18. Afghanistan.

Much of my spare time until the month of August is done will be devoted to trying to make a dent in the large reading assignments handed out in a spirituality class I’m taking. We are getting pretty unrealistic (for the employed) reading loads with the caveat to “get familiar” and not read in depth each piece. So I’m doing a lot of skimming. We’ve been reading a lot of early patristic writings moving forward slowly through the historical documents from the church on this matter. We started with very early texts and some were partially gnostic … the line between gnostic and non-gnostic is not as sharp is pretended. An interesting tidbit from that week was that the conventional wisdom regarding gnostic texts is that they were suppressed by the church. This is a hard accusation to make seeing that most of these documents we have today have been preserved in monasteries.

The next week we read and discussed works of Origen, Evagrius and St. Gregory of Nyssa (his Life of Moses an allegorical reading of the history of Moses). St. Gregory remains overall probably the most prominent non-celibate church father. Even though married and not celibate he penned a famous defence of virginity, in praise of the celibate life. He was happily married, this was not a document motivated by any misogynistic strains. However, his wife and child (children?), died relatively young … this was an age where the average age for women was substantially lower than men because of the risks of childbirth … and children frequently died in their early years. We didn’t read this defence, it would be off topic, but it was mentioned in passing. We also read the St. John Cassian books/chapters from the Institutes on the eight passions. I do really like reading St. John’s writings, which I find refreshingly straightforward and practical.

For next time the large part of what we are reading comes from the pseudo-Macarian homilies, Isaac of Sketis (which I haven’t printed for reading yet), some letters of St. Antony, and Evagrius “on tempting thoughts”. I thought I’d finish tonight with a few observations on what I’ve garnered on monasticism in the early church (3rd century and going forward a few centuries).

What were these men and women doing going into the desert in small cenobitic communities and even solitary isolation? One analogy might be to today’s large scientific projects like the Manhattan or Genome project. This was a project to discover what regimen, what practices and what methods might be used to shape the human self to the ideal they and their community envisioned. It was a radical (or “extreme” in today’s reality TV vernacular) project in which these people, using themselves as both the subject and experimenters. You find a common element in their writing, the urge to observe others and “take the best examples” from each and try to emulate that quality. It seems obvious that we could learn more than a little from their centuries of experimentation.

1. A death in Chechnya … and for myself I don’t know Medvedev well enough to know if the scare quotes are an insult or warranted (but my guess would be that the writer of the article doesn’t either).
2. Double standards and the Middle East.
3. Judges and theologians … and progressivism.
4. Criticism for the GOP and Ms Sotomayor.
5. Analysis of sprinting on a bike … in the context of the world’s best.
6. As a road cyclist I find the notion that a bike can ride over a curb without noticing it … out of the bounds of my experience.
7. Inflation can’t save the debt burden if it is locked into entitlements like healthcare, which burden will increase apace.
8. More on healthcare, in which we discover that for the Dems small business means “hot dog stand.”
9. Two takes on a Carroll essay on science and religion, here and here.
10. Online Feynman lectures recommended.
11. It seems those models on climate on which global warming is based … might not be so good after all.
12. More on science and religion.
13. Assisted suicide POV.
14. Tipping points are not fixed … apparently.

Yesterday Rod Dreher wrote one of his little essays on pornography and its prevalence and its harmful effects.

The typical reaction from the left (and perhaps the libertarian) is to note something like this, defending by some statistical correlation with a drop in rape correlated with an increase in porn consumption. There are a few problems with the underlying groundwork that goes along with the statistical correlation, which is undoubtedly right even while it is wrong. There are three problems with this assumption.

1. First the problem isn’t rooted in merely private pornographic consumption or access. We live in a pornographically soaked culture today. The notion that “less access” to the Internet means less porn is not exactly salient. Those with “less” access to porn are still soaked in sexually drenched imagery on a almost continual basis. All this study tells us is that continually tantalizing a population with subtle and not-so-subtle hints of pornography but not giving ready access to the same … causes an increase in rape. Consider for example, New England to the other colonies (or the other three folkways borrowing from Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed). Rape and other such crimes were down and there was less “drenching” in casual sexuality too. There are other factors besides porn if rape is you only concern.
2. Which leads us to the second problem. Porn doesn’t come from the the foetid imagination of CGI artists. It’s production is not a victimless activity. One of the libertarian blogs I follow (a few weeks ago) noted that in towns where prostitution is legalized along with that there is a distinct rise in underground sexual slavery. Pornography production itself undoubtedly (I have no statistics dug up on this) has its own particular trafficking patterns worldwide. As well, even if rape is decreased … Mr Dreher notes: He said he worked in a counselor’s role there as well, and routinely dealt with students who were seriously messed up by their porn habits. For example, he said, he believed that many of the guys he worked with had no idea how to relate to women in a healthy way; the power of pornography, working consciously and subconsciously, caused the men to have badly distorted views of women, views that stunted and even paralyzed the men emotionally. Pornography, even if it reduces the incidence of rape, may ultimately still be more harmful from a societal standpoint than the alternative even if one does nothing to also reduce the rape (that is the prior and next points that I make here).
3. St. John Cassian was a Christian theologian and monastic born in about 360. He was born in either modern Romania, some say France (Gaul). From there he traveled to Palestine and then spent time with the monastic communities near Sketis in the Egyptian desert. Some time later he (and a friend) returned eventually to the bringing the monastic tradition with him. St. John wrote extensively, somewhere I read his writings were almost as voluminous as St. Augustine’s. In his Institutes he devotes 8 books (of 12) to the eight passions. It was a later innovation to cast the eight passions noted by the desert communities as the well known 7 deadly sins. St. John cites the first passion as gluttony. Gluttony he teaches must be conquered before any other of the passions can and should be faced. By fasting (and prayer) one can face and defeat the body’s craving for food. After you have mastered and attained the self-discipline to master that craving and only then can the other passions be taken up (which isn’t to say you should just give them free reign of course in the meantime … just that you might not expect to attain any manner of complete victory before then). The point here is that we live in a culture which is drenched with food as well as porn. In the US Immediate gratification of our urges is, well, expected. The only thing that the culture would say is wrong with gluttony in fact is that it results in one being overweight. St. John teaches us that we really won’t be successful in facing the second passion (sexual sin), even as a culture until we’ve mastered our gluttony.

1. The other fine line, between funny and stupid.
2. On healthcare, dissing both sides and even providing a suggested alternative. I’d go futher and suggest all our entitlements should be strictly means tested.
3. The reprise of the cursed with a child meme.
4. Bland understatement of the day, “perverse incentives” indeed.
5. The result of hope and change … and waking up.
6. Girls and books.
7. The brewery that brought us quantum mechanics not seen in a good light (and yes, the Carlsberg brewery contributed to funding the Copenhagen institute where Niels Bohr and many others did a lot of the seminal work to develop quantum mechanics).
8. Big bank profits noted.
9. On porn.
10. You’d think Ms Sotomayor would have her facts straight on matters involving the recent high court.
11. Praise for Ms Palin.
12. Another elephant.
13. A debate which reveals as so often is the case more about the debaters than the topic under discussion.
14. This observation is not unrelated.
15. Was that song right?
16. On community.

• Well, I got a good 3 hours of LSD in today. Btw, LSD in distance sports means Long Steady Distance not the other thing, in zone 2 mostly with a few zone 4/5 kicks on hills for fun. That felt really good. Cloudy skies medium wind and lower to mid 80s. Nice. Hopefully I’ll be able to repeat that Thursday.
• Well, during the ride I was thinking I’d try to work on thoughts for an essay. But … I’ve got reading to do and time is short, so it’s going to be brief and likely a bit scattered [hah! like that’s different than usual?]

When I wrote an essay on one reason “why I’m conservative” it engendered an oddly heated response. I was considering the opposite, “why I’m not a liberal” and one reason was that I see the elephant in the room they seem to miss. Some examples:

• A year or two ago, Mr Schraub suggested some books for me to read. One of these was called Covering, which was an narrative account by a gay lawyer of the “covering” up of a persons identity to fit in the job he of his choice and how hard that was. Yet, the elephant he missed was the reverse effect Badging. He had to “cover” to hide personality traits and lifestyle “badges” that were not accepted in his chosen workplace. Yet badging is done and in fact sought out by everyone. As I have noted before, cyclists shave their legs as a “badge” demonstrating to those in the know that they belong to that group. Yes, professional cyclists have practical reasons to shave their legs, but the rest of us amateur cyclists do so as well even in the absence of those reasons … to badge. Covering in essence is a violation of badging. It is camouflage, i.e., deception … which is why society reacts poorly to it. But the point here is not about the details of badging vs covering. It is that liberal/progressives focus on the element that they are sensitive to, and ignore the larger elephant, i.e., reason for the practice.
• Take marriage. Progressives are up in arms about the equality and the rights for gays to marry. When last discussing this, I ran some numbers for the village in which I reside, Lemont.  Lemont  has a population of just under 16k. My rough calculation yielded that for towns in general in the states about 15 gay couples would like to marry in this town (total not per year). Furthermore the population in Lemont contains a good proportion of Hispanic and Eastern European immigrants. It is likely that demographic would depress this number by a significant fraction, so my guess would be that the real number would be around 4-6 couples. Yet the elephant is missed. This is one of the big hot topic family issues for progressives. Yet, if you listed and polled and did a real study of problems families and couples face in Lemont. Then order them by the numbers where do you think by the numbers that SSM would appear? I’m guessing it wouldn’t show in the top 100. Yet this is the one that gets airtime. Now I can understand when actual gay bloggers and writers who wish to get married discuss this. I don’t get it when the rest do. There’s something else going on here. Why are they ignoring the elephant?

Now it’s likely that a progressive might be able to make the same accusation turned around at me, a conservative. Claiming on some other issue I’m ignoring the big picture for a seemingly insignificant detail. So, is this a generic feature of our divide? Or is it a right looking left one?

1. Criticism of Mr Obama from Israel.
2. Inconsistency on Mr Obama’s part regarding democracy.
3. Mainstream press marginalizes itself, and the case of Ms Palin is demonstrative.
4. The monastic tradition.
5. Redefining the renewable car.
6. Who’s “betting” against him? Now working against him, that’s another story.
7. And here’s a reason why it’s important to work against him.
8. Ethics of empathy as will to power.
9. Learning from literature, duh. If you learn nothing from, say, A day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch or Brave New World or The Brothers Karamazov or …. (the list goes on) you can’t learn anything.
10. The latest news from David Wayne and his cancer.
11. The left, still trying to keep life hard for the poor.
12. Well, now that the employment is completely recovered it can be kicked around again.
13. The risings costs of veterinary costs matching (human) healthcare is a meme being kicked around. Both sides try to swing this in their favor, when really it’s just a sign of the fact that both are skilled labor intensive endeavours.
14. GI Joe.
15. Memory Eternal.
16. Of shop class.
17. Probably.