Stones Cry Out

1. Mr Roubini.
2. One man’s torture, another man’s mere discomfort.
3. Parliament.
4. Termites? in Church?
5. Liberalism and Conservatism … and abandoning ideology.
6. Fiction with an agenda defined.
7. A book noted.
8. Considering the flu.
9. Unwarranted conclusions noted.
10. A danger on not riding quite enough.
11. Silliness in surgery.
12. In other words, no free lunch.
13. Actually centrism might be correct.

The Galileo/Copernican and the Ptolemaic views of the solar system lay in dispute for the 150 years between Galileo and Newton (specifically between the dates of the publication of Copernicus De Revolutionibus and Newton’s Principia). In the period of time between these events, with the possible admission of Kepler’s third law) there were no facts to distinguish these theories. In fact, glancing far to the future, the negative results of the Michelson-Morley experiment demonstrating that the Earth was at rest would have been a point to the Ptolemaic not Copernican view. The scientific (heuristic) passions of the proponents of the Copernican view is what drove the outlook of astronomers to the point where at the publishing of the Principia the Copernican viewpoint was dominant. Attached to the prologue of Galileo’s thesis was a forward by Osiander expressing the point that this view was not necessarily “true” but instead was a “fruitful” way of approaching astronomy. This is a red herring. Ptolemaic astronomy was a fruitful source of inquiry for thousands of years. Astrology has been fruitful employment for 2500 years, Marixism was (and remains alas)
a fruitful mechanism for obtaining political power. Fruitful by itself is not sufficient. Theories are fruitful in that they are believed to be fruitful mechanisms for getting to the truth of reality.

In 1914 TW Richards was awarded the Nobel prize for an extremely accurate measurement of atomic weights. Fifteen years this result was completely scorned as useless, for as that measurement made no allowance for isotopic ratios those painstaking measurements were rendered useless. This was a measurement, of high accuracy, of a value that was discovered to have no correspondence to any features of nature. Accuracy qua accuracy is of no value. One misconception about science is that it is experiment that drives progress. Yet it is theory that is required before experiments to provide the basis for how experimental data is interpreted and in fact for what experimental data is deemed to have any value at all.

New visions and insights drive theoretical breakthroughs. Yet the history of science is littered with far more failures than success. This is not limited to “lesser scientists”. Einstein’s vision following Mach imagined Relativity and against Mach solved Brownian motion. Yet Einstein same said vision rejected quantum randomness. Major theoretical breakthroughs in science require a major reworking of our view of nature, a replacing of an older view with a newer one. Proponents of the new, driven by their heuristic passionate belief in the correctness of their vision, must pursuade on the basis of future intimations of fruitfulness in the search for truth of their vision. In doing so, they also must invalidate the older vision. This process of invalidation is often rancorous and ugly. This “feature” is common and perhaps not easily escapable.

This then suggests some striking things about the scientific process. Theory preceded and both validates and interprets experiment. Major theoretical breakthroughs require persuasion. The passion of scientific discovery must be transformed and moved to the passion of persuasion that the new vision of the truth has intimations that it might be fruitful for further deepening of our understanding of nature. Yet a problem remains. Is there anything left? What differentiates the project of chasing the structure of matter at CERN and Fermilab from astrology? Why was it right for the Copernican view to supplant the Ptolmaic in the period between Copernicus and Galileo and before Newton? There are good answers to these questions but that will have to wait until a later essay.

The first parts of this essay draw heavily on Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge which is an epistemological inquiry looking toward a “post-critical reality” epistemic framework. It might also be noted, this book predated Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Critical reality is the idea that our physical theories accurately represent reality. This is in contrast to the Positivist (which is not as far as I can tell the same as Logical Positivism). This view espoused for example by Stephen Hawking suggests that the question of whether the underlying matches the theory is irrelevant and that physics (or theory in general) merely is a mechanism for predicting experimental results.

Just ask California and New York.  Attempts to balance the budget by taxing the rich even more has resulted in states in crisis.  Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, writing in the Wall St. Journal, have the details.

Here’s the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.

And the evidence that we discovered in our new study for the American Legislative Exchange Council, "Rich States, Poor States," published in March, shows that Americans are more sensitive to high taxes than ever before. The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies — old and new — have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

And yet, as the article notes, some governors still listen to the siren’s song sung "by recent studies by left-wing groups like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities that suggest that ‘tax increases, particularly tax increases on higher-income families, may be the best available option.’"  Siphoning off existing economic activity is less useful than increasing overall economic activity. 

The rich are able to move away because, well, they’re rich.  They can afford it. 

What does this mean for those states with low or no income taxes?  Do they have to cut services, such as police and education?  Some say they do, but…

They’re wrong, and New Hampshire is our favorite illustration. The Live Free or Die State has no income or sales tax, yet it has high-quality schools and excellent public services. Students in New Hampshire public schools achieve the fourth-highest test scores in the nation — even though the state spends about $1,000 a year less per resident on state and local government than the average state and, incredibly, $5,000 less per person than New York. And on the other side of the ledger, California in 2007 had the highest-paid classroom teachers in the nation, and yet the Golden State had the second-lowest test scores.

Or consider the fiasco of New Jersey. In the early 1960s, the state had no state income tax and no state sales tax. It was a rapidly growing state attracting people from everywhere and running budget surpluses. Today its income and sales taxes are among the highest in the nation yet it suffers from perpetual deficits and its schools rank among the worst in the nation — much worse than those in New Hampshire. Most of the massive infusion of tax dollars over the past 40 years has simply enriched the public-employee unions in the Garden State. People are fleeing the state in droves.

It only seems counterintuitive if you don’t understand that taxation changes behaviors.  People avoid pain, and over time higher taxes are a pain.  This will modify behavior.  Penalize something more, you get less of it.  It’s a human truism that the Left needs to learn.

1. Some thoughts on spaces and communities in the modern world.
2. Trying to parse Mr Obama’s notions on the Israel, Iran, and Hamas.
3. Austrian econ.
4. Angels &* Demons and a “worst novel” noted.
5. An absurd op-ed noticed.
6. Getting away with it. It occurred to me that we outside the beltway and the business of politics are always confused why politicians assume they can “get away” with blatant lies and flat denials of the obvious. I think one suggestion is that they do it because from their point of view it usually works.
7. On marriage, the plastic mask, and the lack of good role models.
8. On the demand driven economy.
9. A health update from David.
10. Spending some money, suggestions sought.
11. A paper (linked from here).
12. An interesting post, but it kicks off with a quote which is flatly wrong as a generalization.
13. Heh.
14. A criticism of “thinking globally” as an excuse.
15. Gossip and history.
16. Mr Greenwald excuses Ms Dowd somewhat lamely, claiming “And anyone who spends any time writing a blog, or anything else for that matters, should consider it a good thing when their work is used, with or without credit.  Nobody would engage in that activity in the absence of a belief that they have something worthwhile to say and a desire that it have some impact on political discussions.” Bloggers link what they quote. And to assume that there is any one generic reason common to the millions who blog is errant foolishness.

1. Beware the battlefield tinybots.
2. On Johnny Cash and his book on St. Paul. An interesting quote, “Tons of material has been written …, but I discovered that the Bible can shed a lot of light on commentaries.” Hmm.
3. Sri Lanka. The left may be taking the “peace at any price be worth it” tack, the right … not so much.
4. Harp.
5. Charity in the workplace.
6. Nocebo? Placebo confused. So … how to confuse the nocebo similarly will be an exercise for the reader.
7. Cool.
8. Freedom.
9. Aquinas for Protestants.
10. Not trusting Obama. For those who consider that the accusations that Mr Obama is specifically seeking personal power, when has he refused or failed to not consolidate power given opportunity?
11. An important note on slavery in today’s’ world.
12. Kilns and cheap energy.
13. A cyclist to watch.
14. Maudlin hymns.
15. Obvious in retrospect.
16. Abortion and a cricket race result. For those who have used the argument of public opinion as relevant in the abortion debate, does this mean anything. And if not, why did you use that argument before?

I’ve begun reading John Behr’s (so far) two volume series (three are reported as planned) subtitled Formation of Christian Theology. The first volume, in soft cover from SVS Press, is entitled The Way to Nicaea. This books covers aspects of the formation of Christian theology, focusing on the development of the answer to Jesus query to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Volume 2 is split into two books and covers in some detail the controversies surrounding the two councils which developed the Nicene creed.

The first chapter of this book begins with a look at how the Scriptural canon for the Christian church developed and was set. There were a lot of alternative canonical choices at the end of the second century when the canon was set. But the result, to summarize Behr, was that two key criteria were used to select what books and epistles were included in the New Testament canon. They are that the books chosen were “according the the Scriptures” and that the cross (the passion) was central. The phrase “according the the Scriptures” meant specifically that the acts and narrative account in the selected book connected these actions with the accounts and prophecies of the Old Testament. This meant that books like the Gospel of Thomas and other gnostic works were excluded. Behr defends his interpretation of this development of canon by examining the methods and arguments used by St. Irenaeus in discussing various heresies of his day at the close of the 2nd century.

David Schraub blogging at the Debate Link, dislikes the term “Judeo-Christian”. This term admittedly can be misused. The above historical notes demonstrate how this term is at the same time correct and how the traditions diverged. For certainly in the context of investigating first and second century theological currents and ideas that term is relevant. Throughout the first century the majority of Christians were Jews who felt that Jesus was in fact the awaited Messianic figure, the fulfillment of Scriptural promise. At the same time, there is here a key difference which will form the basis possibly for the contention that this term does not make sense. Christians over the centuries following embarked on a program to reinterpret the Jewish Scriptural canon through the “lens of the cross”, i.e., via the life and passion of Jesus. That is they re-examined and reinterpreted, often as “type”, events and prophecies of Scripture to be interpreted specifically in the context of Jesus message, and his crucifixion and resurrection. Christian theology at the end of the second century defined itself and its theological methods in the light of Jewish writing. At the same time however, it was beginning to highlight the differences by beginning a program of returning to and examining that same canon in a radically different way (although it might be noted that “different” way was himself a 1st century Jew).

Hugo Chavez would be proud.

A report Friday said federal officials are pressuring Bank of America Corp. to revamp its board and bring in directors with more banking experience.

The story in The Wall Street Journal called the regulators’ move "unusual" as the government does not own a stake in the company, and most of the bank’s problems are the result of its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co., which was advised by regulators.

Bank of America said last week it was looking for new directors, but gave little detail. The announcement came as the government, after completing its stress test of the bank and 18 other financial companies, said Bank of America needed to raise nearly $34 billion. The bank has received $45 billion in government funds as part of the Treasury Department’s $700 billion financial rescue package.

The government is pulling the strings to change the makeup of the board, but it doesn’t even own any part of the company.  There’s nothing wrong with a bank having more experience on its board.  The question is, should the government be exerting pressure to do so? 

For the first time since the Gallup organization has been polling this issue (1995), more Americans consider themselves pro-life than pro-choice, and the percentage of pro-life designations is the highest ever.

(Click on the picture for the source article.)  Gallup calls this jump a "significant shift".  Increases were found among the individual demographics Republicans, conservatives, moderates, Protestants, Catholics, men and women. 

1. Looking at the Didache.
2. Abortion and cricket races.
3. Stimulus, Chicago style moves nationwide.
4. Evil and God.
5. Student debt and academic spending.
6. Twilight as a Mormon narrative.
7. Giro recap and a suggested future tactical role for Mr Armstrong.
8. Hmm.
9. Earmarks.
10. Post-modern conservatism.
11. Various documentary hypothesis considered.
12. Hacking academia.
13. Praise for Ms Rice’s books on Jesus.
14. Spreading the word.
15. A homily for Photina, or the Samaritan woman … which is the designated reading for this Sunday in the Pascha -> Pentecost cycle.
16. The desert fathers viewed as sort of a normative ethical Manhattan project.
17. In Athens.
18. The myth of the reporters role in the Abu Ghraib narrative.
19. Zooooming while blind.
20. 8000 mpg.

Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty has started reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Achipelago. If it his purpose would likely be better served by reading The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Mr Solzhenitsyn had a number of polemical points he was making in his three volume of the Achipelago . The purpose of the detailed descriptions of NKVD atrocities was in part to establish scope and then to tie historical threads inescapably connecting those atrocities to the figure of Lenin (still revered in parts of Western Academia and the left) with Stalin whom normally gets the brunt of the blame. Post-Stalin Communist and Soviet apologists attempted to fix the blame for the terror on Stalin and exonerate his predecessors including and primarily Lenin. Solzhenitsyn demonstrated clearly that this was a flawed understanding. Yet, another major theme in these books is one of optimism, of the unquenchable human spirit and the value and perhaps the necessity of the Christian faith in the face of such suffering. It is this last theme that Mr Kuznicki will not find as useful. Mr Solzhenitsyn found the problems of East and West rooted in atheism and “the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness” … a theme not often found to get a good reception at Positive Liberty.

Solzehnitsyn, born in 1918, was raised and trained in mathematics and he tought for some time. He was a loyal and unquestioning Soviet and fought (and was decorated) in WWII as an artilleryman. He was then caught in Stalin’s web and sent to various work camps, i.e., the gulag. It was there he became Christian (for an excellent example of the epitome of that, this book Father
Arseny is very inspiring). Somewhat like Edith Stein of whom I’ve written before, it was the example of Christians in response to hardship and loss of life that inspired a person to the faith in the modern world.

I offer this in the light of 9/11, note that this was an address to the AFL-CIO and was given in 1975, which I quote from here. I thought the mention of the towers intruiguing.

“Is it possible or impossible to transmit the experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to suffer?  Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not?  Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger?… The proud skyscrapers stand on, point to the sky and say: it will never happen here.  This will never come to us.  It’s not possible here…  Humanity acts in such a way is if it didn’t understand what Communism is, and doesn’t want to understand, is not capable of understanding… The essence of Communism is quite beyond the limits of human understanding.  Its hard to believe that people could actually plan such things and carry them out…
“Communism has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil…  Among enlightened people it is considered rather awkward to use seriously such words as ‘good’ and ‘evil.’  Communism has managed to instill in all of us that these concepts are old-fashioned concepts and laughable.  But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left?  Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will decline to the status of animals.
“That which is against Communism is for humanity.  To reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being…  It’s a protest of our souls against those who tell us to forget the concepts of good a evil…
“I understand that you love freedom, but in our crowded world you have to pay a tax for freedom.  You cannot love freedom just for yourself and quietly agree to a situation where the majority of humanity over the greater part of the globe is being subjected to violence and oppression.
“Yet when one travels in your country and sees your free and independent life, all the dangers which I talked about today indeed seem imaginary.  I’ve come a talked to people, and I see this is so.  In your wide open spaces even I get a little infected.  The dangers seem a little imaginary.  On this continent it is hard to believe all the things that are happening in the world.  But gentlemen, this carefree life cannot continue in your country or in ours.  The fates of our two countries are going to be extremely difficult, and it is better to prepare for this beforehand…
“Two processes are occurring in the world today.  One is a process of spiritual liberation in the USSR and the other Communist countries.  The second is the assistance being extended by the West to the Communist rulers, a process of concessions, of détente, of yielding whole countries.

I will add, I think Mr Kuznicki’s program of trying to establish a consequential argument against torture to be flawed in principle as well as in fact. Evidence that the previous Administration was ineffective at getting information from torture is not a good argument. In the early years in Iraq a lot of what we tried to do was ineffective and badly done. A person making consequential argument against Mr Kuznicki has just to reply that “they did it badly” and that Mr Obama’s boys will “do it right.”

Again the better argument is that, torture is wrong. We don’t do it because it is un-American and unethical. We understand that there may be real costs in setting this aside. We have to say that we accept those costs. America is fond of the free lunch. Alas, in the real world, there is no free lunch.

One final note, a politicial thesis of Solzhentisyn has been argued by Mahoney that it is not out of touch with modern Libertarian or Conservative thought:

Mahoney locates a crucial element of Solzhenitsyn’s political teaching in his analysis of Peter Stolypin,
the Prime Minister of Russia from 1906–11. Solzhenitsyn’s appreciation of Stolypin has been largely unknown because it appears in the second
edition of August 1914: The Red Wheel I (1989), which few have read. What Solzhenitsyn claims in the Stolypin chapters is that a
moderate alternative to Tsarist autocracy existed in Russia in the early twentieth century—namely, a peaceful evolution toward a
European–style constitutional monarchy under the enlightened statesmanship of Prime Minister Stolypin.

The main features of Stolypin’s plan were the preservation of the Romanov dynasty and Orthodox Church, combined with
economic and political reforms—reforms that would have given land to peasants and established local self–governing councils. Tragically,
Stolypin was assassinated by terrorists who feared the success of his plan (which Solzhenitsyn estimates could have created an independent
peasantry in twenty years and prevented Communist revolution). Mahoney’s analysis shows Solzhenitsyn to be a Burkean–style admirer of
constitutional monarchy that gradually evolves toward ordered liberty while preserving his nation’s distinctive traditions.

It is in part from this that my personal ideas of the coming collapse of freedom in this country and the need for localization, the “local self-governing councils” in early 20th century Russia, are required to be started and fostered here or we too will lose our liberty. It can happen here.

Amazing.

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

How someone can first create quadruple the deficit of his immediate predecessor, and then say this is beyond me.

1. Bad news from Burma.
2. Clock as tech art.
3. The bottom billion problem.
4. A quote.
5. Strength.
6. Some remarks on the Giro.
7. What is not the point of creation.
8. EO is rebooting.
9. A countdown.
10. Mr Fernandez offers some links.
11. Some words on immigration.
12. Sex and the single, err, simple virus.
13. A recommendation for Castle.
14. Memory and monument.

Tuesday night I attended the choral concert at my daughter’s middle school. Stylistically speaking choral arrangements of 20-30 year old popular songs and show-tunes are not my cup of tea. Before the concert I began, at long last, reading Matt Ruff’s Bad Monkeys and am now about a 1/3 of the way into the book. “Bad Monkeys” we discover is the short-hand phrase for the place on the org chart of the secret “evil fighting” society of which Thiour main character was(is?) a member.

• The Department for Optimal Utilization of Resources and Personnel — Cost-Benefits
• The Department of Ubiquitous Intermittent Surveillance  — Panopticon
• The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons — Bad Monkeys. Bad Monkey’s are the “assassins” who remove from circulation people who are, well, irredeemable. A common weapon used is an NC gun, NC stands for “Natural Causes,” this gun works at short range and has two settings, MI and CI which stand for myocardial and cerebral Infarction respectively.
• The Department of Organizational Counterintelligence — Catering

Our narrator is a young girl who is being interviewed by a doctor in a criminal psychiatric ward. She is recounting how she became a Bad Monkey and some of her exploits. Anyhow, judging from the cover the rest of the story is going to have its share of twists, turns and weirdness.

Let them brand themselves.

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

No, no, no, no, no.  Let their actions speak for themselves, from purchasing interests in financial and auto companies, to ignoring bankruptcy law when dealing with those companies in order to pay off special interests, to spending billions (and taxing more) on universal health care, they can pretty much fill out the "Hello, my name is" badge themselves. 

I’m with Michael Steele on this.  All this will do is give the media and the Democrats a tool to hammer Republicans with.  "They’re comparing him to Hugo Chavez" or something like that.  While the truth is that they’re pulling us in that direction and not letting a crisis go to waste (as Mr. Emmanuel has declared), labeling them doesn’t change minds, or at least not for long.  Pointing out why their policies are flawed will.

That’s the introduction from a Bible Quiz master in our denomination when he or she is about to quote someone’s words and is asking who spoke those words.  So here’s a similar question for you; who said these words?  One hint is that it’s from a category of people, not a single speaker.  Another is that they’re talking about Arab extremists and our foreign policy towards them.

"Openness for the sake of openness makes the situation more complicated and sends the wrong message."

Appeasing extremists tells them, "that extremism is the most effective way to attract the U.S.’s attention, and to compel them to conduct dialogue."

When Pakistan was too soft on terrorists, the result was “more murders and torture of those opposed to the movement and more suffering for the people."

“Despite all [Obama’s conciliatory actions], violence has increased….None of these elements have changed their positions–despite everything Obama has done since assuming the presidency. Every step [Obama] takes towards [his foes] will only prompt them to challenge him."

So who said it?  Neocons?  The staff at National Review?  Former Bush administration officials?  A conservative think tank?

If you guessed any of them, the quiz master takes away 10 points for an error. 

If you guessed moderate Arabs, you get 20 points.  Barry Rubin has the details.