Stones Cry Out

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.

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.