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.

Officials at Cushing Academy, a Massachusetts’ prep school, have decided that library books are old fashioned and have dumped them in favor of flat screen access to the internet and… a $12,000 espresso machine.

From The New Criterion (HT: Every Thought Captive),

…James Tracy, the current headmaster, finds the whole idea of a library, and the objects they traditionally contain, positively quaint. Speaking to The Boston Globe, he actually said, apparently without embarrassment, “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.”

And here I thought that it was only evangelical churches in America that considered a rational approach towards text to be passe.

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.

Robert George on Kevin Jennings, head of the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, who also happens to be a gay activist.

That’s what the Nobel Peace Prize has become.  This was evident when Yassar Arafat won it in 1994 for pretending to go along with a peace agreement with Israel while continuing hostilities.  This was evident when Al Gore won it in 2007 for his work on climate change of all things, because it might, maybe, in the worst of all possible worlds, lead to conflict.

When Jimmy Carter won it in 2002, it was not so much for his work on peace in the Middle East, because that was in 1978 and when he rightfully should have shared in it.  No, the belated award was a poke in George W. Bush’s eye, and the committee said as much.

Little by little, this award is becoming more about politics & intentions than about actual peace.  And today’s awarding of it to President Barack Obama continues that descent.

For one of America’s youngest presidents, in office less than nine months — and only for 12 days before the Nobel nomination deadline last February — it was an enormous honor.

The prize seems to be more for Obama’s promise than for his performance. Work on the president’s ambitious agenda, both at home and abroad, is barely underway, much less finished. He has no standout moment of victory that would seem to warrant a verdict as sweeping as that issued by the Nobel committee.

When even the Associated Press recognizes that this is entirely premature, that’s saying something.

Lech Walesa had this to say:

“So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far,” former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, said Friday. “He is still at an early stage.”

In 1983, Walesa actually did something to promote peace. That was well-deserved.

12 days after taking office? Again we see, starkly, that for the liberal elite, talk is more important, promises more esteemed, than action actually is.  “If you want what we want in the way we want it, that’s good enough”, is the message.  The Nobel Peace Prize is slowly losing its meaning.

Even in Norway, where Mr. Obama enjoys huge popularity, the decision raised eyebrows among some. “It is just too soon,” said Siv Jensen, leader of Norway’s main opposition party, the Progress Party. “It is wrong to give him the peace prize for his ambition. You should receive it for results.”

She said that the decision to bestow the award on the president was the most controversial she could remember and was one of a number that had moved the prize further away from the ideals of Alfred Nobel.

Others made the same point in somewhat more diplomatic language. Amnesty International, which won the peace prize in 1977, congratulated Mr. Obama but said he couldn’t stop there. “President Obama has taken some positive steps towards improving human rights in the U.S.A. and abroad, but much remains to be done,” said Irene Kahn, Amnesty’s secretary general.

The Nobel Committee, by trying to give clout to someone who hasn’t produced results yet, is watering down the very clout that they’re intending to confer.  If results don’t matter, neither will the prize.

UPDATE: Apparently now I’m a terrorist sympathizer.

Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

No further comment (or… “no comment”).

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

1. A passing noted … and here’s a vivid demonstration of how memory is kept.
2. A conversation (on complexity) continues.
3. A discussion of race and the GOP. I might take issue with the characterization of the GOP as “the party” that uses the race card for political ends. I’d wager that if you took a sampling you’d find the Democrats do that far more often.
4. A first, a student protest in the Balkans noted.
5. One tough dude … and just a little whitewash in the UK press.
6. Projection of modern conceits noted.
7. An earthquake. Big.
8. A battle remembered.
9. How to get lots of blog traffic. I think I’m reconciled to my status as a micro-blogger. 😀
10. Confirmation bias and the media.
11. Popular history … gets it exactly backwards once again.
12. Unhappy with Obama support of a UN resolution and why.

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.

Anyhow, I’m going to attempt summarize the summary. Please bring up any points on which further elaboration would be useful. Read the rest of this entry

Well, mornings are early here (and it’s an hour earlier) so … back to evening links.

1. Desert (patristic) humor.
2. An argument for the existence of God for our armchair philosophers to refute.
3. Training advice for the cyclist … and likely applicable to a wider range of activities.
4. DFW and monastic life.
5. In the aftermath of the news kerfuffle … some words on Mr Polanski.
6. TARP and lending or … oops.
7. Saturn. New rings discovered … very cool.
8. Verse.
9. The whole is/ought thing.
10. A pilgrim’s progress.
11. On silencing the military.
12. Perhaps a thing Mr Obama will be remembered for … that toxic cocktail.

I’m no archeologist, but that’s the claim.

"In an unprecedented find, a group of Egyptian researchers and archeologists has discovered a cache of coins from the time of the Pharaohs. Its importance lies in the fact that it provides decisive scientific evidence disproving the claim by some historians that the ancient Egyptians were unfamiliar with coins and conducted their trade through barter.

"The researchers discovered the coins when they sifted through thousands of small archeological artifacts stored in [the vaults of] the Museum of Egypt. [Initially] they took them for charms, but a thorough examination revealed that the coins bore the year in which they were minted and their value, or effigies of the pharaohs [who ruled] at the time of their minting. Some of the coins are from the time when Joseph lived in Egypt, and bear his name and portrait.

"There used to be a misconception that trade [in Ancient Egypt] was conducted through barter, and that Egyptian wheat, for example, was traded for other goods. But surprisingly, Koranic verses indicate clearly that coins were used in Egypt in the time of Joseph.

[…]

"The researcher identified coins from many different periods, including coins that bore special markings identifying them as being from the era of Joseph. Among these, there was one coin that had an inscription on it, and an image of a cow symbolizing Pharaoh’s dream about the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, and the seven green stalks of grain and seven dry stalks of grain. It was found that the inscriptions of this early period were usually simple, since writing was still in its early stages, and consequently there was difficulty in deciphering the writing on these coins. But the research team [managed to] translate [the writing on the coin] by comparing it to the earliest known hieroglyphic texts…

"Joseph’s name appears twice on this coin, written in hieroglyphs: once the original name, Joseph, and once his Egyptian name, Saba Sabani, which was given to him by Pharaoh when he became treasurer. There is also an image of Joseph, who was part of the Egyptian administration at the time.

Eric Scheie at "Classical Values" points out that the word "deregulation" doesn’t mean what some users of it think it means.  After noting that some consider it an unmitigated evil, it seems that they are making it the scapegoat for many of our economic ills when in fact quite the opposite is true.

I’m no economist, but the problem is that deregulation is being seen in a vacuum, without reference to the bigger picture, and I think the bigger picture was influenced — possibly even dominated — by something worse than regulation.

I refer to the complete absence of any standards. Not long ago, Glenn Reynolds made a nostalgic reference to the stuffy uptightness of old-fashioned bankers:

You know, we may just find that all those "stuffy" and "uptight" traits that old-fashioned bankers used to be mocked for were actually a good thing. . . .

Truer words have never been spoken and I’ve blogged about this before. It used to be that you had to actually qualify for a loan. You had to demonstrate income, creditworthiness, equity in the home, that the downpayment wasn’t borrowed, etc. before the stuffy uptight pinstriped guys would even think about giving you a loan. It was good that they were uptight. The "system" (for lack of a better word) worked.

So, what made these stuffy uptight guys decide they could get away with ditching the old uptight unfair standards that said (among other things) that some people are more worthy of getting loans than others?

The answer, as most of us know, is the government. It wasn’t as if these guys just stripped off their pinstripes and dove into the economic orgy room; they did something that’s really perfectly in character for stuffy uptight guys — they did as they were told. And they were told not to ever under any circumstances do anything that might in any way be interpreted by anyone at ACORN to have so much as a smidgen of an appearance of anything resembling discrimination. (A word denoting pure, unmitigated evil.)

Bad as the loss of banking standards might be, it’s not what I think is the overarching problem.

In my view, the biggest the loss of standards came in the form of the all-encompassing government guarantee. It was a gigantic blank check, and it operated to cover all sins. That no bank could ever be allowed to fail, and every mortgage would be backed by big daddy at FANNIE and FREDDIE meant that there really was no downside to anything, whether deliberate irresponsibility or government-mandated irresponsibility. The taxpayers would be responsible.

This may be many things, and it may of course be profoundly immoral, but to call it "deregulation" or "an excess of the free market" is absurd.

This is the same thing as when Barney Frank blamed the housing crisis on a failure of the free market.  At the time, Republicans wanted to regulate more heavily Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; two entities that are themselves a demonstration of how non-free-market the mortgage industry is.  Democrats are blaming all the usual suspects and hoping their base isn’t paying attention.

Regular commenter JA offers today the following observation:

However, I would (and do) distinguish between tribalism for minority “tribes” and tribalism for the majority in the most powerful nation on Earth. Black pride, Jewish pride, Mormon pride, Catholic pride — these, while (and this is where I probably disagree with Sharansky) still falling short of the ideal of universalism, can be useful for societies which contain them. It’s when the primary group of a powerful society shows too much tribalism that it becomes dangerous. But, again, I think universalism is ultimately best.

A few remarks might follow from this. (I might note that these remarks stem from the book Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, by Nathan Sharansky) Read the rest of this entry