Hmmm.
Shortly before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, the chief executive officer of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, gathered his subordinates and ordered a memorandum sent to every single regional and store manager in the imperiled area. His words were not especially exalted, but they ought to be mounted and framed on the wall of every chain retailer -- and remembered as American business's answer to the pre-battle oratory of George S. Patton or Henry V.
"A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level," was Scott's message to his people. "Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and above all, do the right thing."
This extraordinary delegation of authority -- essentially promising unlimited support for the decision-making of employees who were earning, in many cases, less than $100,000 a year -- saved countless lives in the ensuing chaos. The results are recounted in a new paper on the disaster written by Steven Horwitz, an Austrian-school economist at St. Lawrence University in New York. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency fumbled about, doing almost as much to prevent essential supplies from reaching Louisiana and Mississippi as it could to facilitate it, Wal-Mart managers performed feats of heroism. In Kenner, La., an employee crashed a forklift through a warehouse door to get water for a nursing home. A Marrero, La., store served as a barracks for cops whose homes had been submerged. In Waveland, Miss., an assistant manager who could not reach her superiors had a bulldozer driven through the store to retrieve disaster necessities for community use, and broke into a locked pharmacy closet to obtain medicine for the local hospital.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart trucks pre-loaded with emergency supplies at regional depots were among the first on the scene wherever refugees were being gathered by officialdom. Their main challenge, in many cases, was running a gauntlet of FEMA officials who didn't want to let them through. As the president of the brutalized Jefferson Parish put it in a Sept. 4 Meet the Press interview, speaking at the height of nationwide despair over FEMA's confused response: "If [the U.S.] government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis."
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Humor (Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip)
Subject: Humor (Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip)
http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html
Worth four minutes of your time.
-Max
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Iraq strategy: the Egg Came First
[Cc'ed Chaos Manor]
Subject: The Egg Came First
From a White House planner: "As for the benchmarks on political reconciliation from the top down, it is useful to recall that we once thought such political change should precede everything else. That approach did not work. Our new strategy was based on the contrary assumption that security came first, and that parliamentary progress would lag significantly behind other elements."
Pournelle advocated "security and the Rule of Law first" from before we ever went in. It seems the success of the "surge" in Iraq is probably due as much as anything to throwing out neocon (Jacobin) ideas of the magic of democracy and focusing on realism, in the political sense. An excerpt of the article follows.
-Max
A few months after that showdown, however, the progress was all but indisputable. By now, indeed, we can see that the surge has bought precious time for the United States and the nascent Iraqi state to progress meaningfully toward five specific objectives.
First is extirpating the inciters of sectarian violence: al Qaeda in Iraq among the Sunnis and the rogue militias among the Shiites. Second is building up a larger, more capable, and more integrated Iraqi Security Force than existed in 2006.
At the same time, Iraqis are being given the opportunity to create the means of political accommodation locally and from the "bottom up," in ways that reflect the realities of life inside the highly complex mosaic of their country. The achievement of this third goal is the precursor to the fourth, which is to make the central, "top down" government in Baghdad more responsive to the nation's eighteen provinces by opening its pocketbook for projects that will improve the economic and living conditions of the country's citizenry at large.
The final goal is, perhaps, the trickiest: pushing Iraqi politicians to pass legislation on a number of important measures, including the sharing of oil revenues, the funding of infrastructure projects, the reform of de-Baathification laws, and the like. These are the notorious "benchmarks" mentioned by the President in his January 2007 speech and subjected to much derision by skeptics.
A year after Bush first announced the new strategy, progress on the first three objectives has exceeded everyone's expectations, even those who helped design the surge. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been gravely wounded. The rogue elements within the Shiite militias are being pruned away. The Iraq Security Force is growing in size and reliability. And, following the decision of Sunni tribes to turn on al Qaeda and throw in their lot with the United States and the new Iraq, local political accommodation is proceeding at a remarkable pace.
There has also been some movement toward linking the Iraqi parliament's spending to the needs of localities, but so far this is less impressive. As for the benchmarks on political reconciliation from the top down, it is useful to recall that we once thought such political change should precede everything else. That approach did not work. Our new strategy was based on the contrary assumption that security came first, and that parliamentary progress would lag significantly behind other elements. Of course, this has hardly prevented the President's critics from seizing on the failure of the Iraqi government to have completed all of it benchmarks as putative evidence of the surge's overall failure. Even here, however, there has been a measure of progress on the ground: in February, for example, the Iraqi parliament passed legislation addressing several key benchmarks, notably including deBaathification reform and the facilitation of provincial elections as well as of better relations between the provinces and the central government.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Subject: The Egg Came First
From a White House planner: "As for the benchmarks on political reconciliation from the top down, it is useful to recall that we once thought such political change should precede everything else. That approach did not work. Our new strategy was based on the contrary assumption that security came first, and that parliamentary progress would lag significantly behind other elements."
Pournelle advocated "security and the Rule of Law first" from before we ever went in. It seems the success of the "surge" in Iraq is probably due as much as anything to throwing out neocon (Jacobin) ideas of the magic of democracy and focusing on realism, in the political sense. An excerpt of the article follows.
-Max
A few months after that showdown, however, the progress was all but indisputable. By now, indeed, we can see that the surge has bought precious time for the United States and the nascent Iraqi state to progress meaningfully toward five specific objectives.
First is extirpating the inciters of sectarian violence: al Qaeda in Iraq among the Sunnis and the rogue militias among the Shiites. Second is building up a larger, more capable, and more integrated Iraqi Security Force than existed in 2006.
At the same time, Iraqis are being given the opportunity to create the means of political accommodation locally and from the "bottom up," in ways that reflect the realities of life inside the highly complex mosaic of their country. The achievement of this third goal is the precursor to the fourth, which is to make the central, "top down" government in Baghdad more responsive to the nation's eighteen provinces by opening its pocketbook for projects that will improve the economic and living conditions of the country's citizenry at large.
The final goal is, perhaps, the trickiest: pushing Iraqi politicians to pass legislation on a number of important measures, including the sharing of oil revenues, the funding of infrastructure projects, the reform of de-Baathification laws, and the like. These are the notorious "benchmarks" mentioned by the President in his January 2007 speech and subjected to much derision by skeptics.
A year after Bush first announced the new strategy, progress on the first three objectives has exceeded everyone's expectations, even those who helped design the surge. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been gravely wounded. The rogue elements within the Shiite militias are being pruned away. The Iraq Security Force is growing in size and reliability. And, following the decision of Sunni tribes to turn on al Qaeda and throw in their lot with the United States and the new Iraq, local political accommodation is proceeding at a remarkable pace.
There has also been some movement toward linking the Iraqi parliament's spending to the needs of localities, but so far this is less impressive. As for the benchmarks on political reconciliation from the top down, it is useful to recall that we once thought such political change should precede everything else. That approach did not work. Our new strategy was based on the contrary assumption that security came first, and that parliamentary progress would lag significantly behind other elements. Of course, this has hardly prevented the President's critics from seizing on the failure of the Iraqi government to have completed all of it benchmarks as putative evidence of the surge's overall failure. Even here, however, there has been a measure of progress on the ground: in February, for example, the Iraqi parliament passed legislation addressing several key benchmarks, notably including deBaathification reform and the facilitation of provincial elections as well as of better relations between the provinces and the central government.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Public Education
From a comment on Selenian Boondocks:
I dropped out of the 6th grade in Texas in 1969. When I went back to night school in Florida in 1975, I was not behind students that had dropped out of the 11th and 12th grades. My only reading in the meantime was recreational. There is no way 5 grades can be skipped and still be on a level playing field IF those students had been getting a legitimate education.
In my case, no schooling actually matched public schooling. All four teachers in that semester told me to get a GED and quit wasting my time in their classes.
OTOH, I still don't quite deal with people as well as those that did school with their peers. And I used to be much worse.
Anecdotal but frankly not surprising.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
I dropped out of the 6th grade in Texas in 1969. When I went back to night school in Florida in 1975, I was not behind students that had dropped out of the 11th and 12th grades. My only reading in the meantime was recreational. There is no way 5 grades can be skipped and still be on a level playing field IF those students had been getting a legitimate education.
In my case, no schooling actually matched public schooling. All four teachers in that semester told me to get a GED and quit wasting my time in their classes.
OTOH, I still don't quite deal with people as well as those that did school with their peers. And I used to be much worse.
Anecdotal but frankly not surprising.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Climate change
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."
Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."
Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"
Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.
"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."
Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"
Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."
Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"
Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."
Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."
Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."
Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."
Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"
Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.
"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."
Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"
Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."
Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"
Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."
Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."
Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Slavery
This is an interesting (eyebrow-raising) article. I've thought to myself that many modern Americans believe in the doctrine that "all men ought to be equal," which is a very different thing from "all men ought to be free." If this stuff were going on in America I would absolutely be in favor of stamping it out. I might even potentially be in favor of foreign intervention to suppress it in the American Pond, if I knew a way to do it effectively. I'm a conservative, but that doesn't mean I'm heartless--but I want to know what's possible before I spend American "blood and treasure" on a gesture.
Skinner met with slaves and traffickers in 12 different countries, filling in the substance around a startling fact: there are more slaves on the planet today than at any time in human history. Skinner speaks with Anthony Brooks about his experience researching slavery.
Though now illegal throughout the world, slavery is more or less the same as it was hundreds of years ago, Skinner explains. Slaves are still "those that are forced to work under threat of violence for no pay beyond sustenance."
Something disturbing has changed however — the price of a human. After adjusting for inflation, Skinner found that, "In 1850, a slave would cost roughly $30,000 to $40,000 — in other words it was like investing in a Mercedes. Today you can go to Haiti and buy a 9-year-old girl to use as a sexual and domestic slave for $50. The devaluation of human life is incredibly pronounced."
Frankly, this blows me away. My understanding had always been that slavery was doomed when the industrial revolution made it uneconomical. (Serfdom was doomed when the invention of the horse collar, which lets a horse pull a heavy plough without strangling, made horses more economical for most farm labor than serfs. American slavery was doomed by industrial machines which were cheaper than slaves, although slavery hung on in the South for social reasons such as being a mark of status and a cherished "peculiar institution.") Why have slaves become cheaper? Is this a byproduct of the Green Revolution? I don't understand this.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Skinner met with slaves and traffickers in 12 different countries, filling in the substance around a startling fact: there are more slaves on the planet today than at any time in human history. Skinner speaks with Anthony Brooks about his experience researching slavery.
Though now illegal throughout the world, slavery is more or less the same as it was hundreds of years ago, Skinner explains. Slaves are still "those that are forced to work under threat of violence for no pay beyond sustenance."
Something disturbing has changed however — the price of a human. After adjusting for inflation, Skinner found that, "In 1850, a slave would cost roughly $30,000 to $40,000 — in other words it was like investing in a Mercedes. Today you can go to Haiti and buy a 9-year-old girl to use as a sexual and domestic slave for $50. The devaluation of human life is incredibly pronounced."
Frankly, this blows me away. My understanding had always been that slavery was doomed when the industrial revolution made it uneconomical. (Serfdom was doomed when the invention of the horse collar, which lets a horse pull a heavy plough without strangling, made horses more economical for most farm labor than serfs. American slavery was doomed by industrial machines which were cheaper than slaves, although slavery hung on in the South for social reasons such as being a mark of status and a cherished "peculiar institution.") Why have slaves become cheaper? Is this a byproduct of the Green Revolution? I don't understand this.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Room-temperature superconductors?
Silicon-hydrogen compound superconductor. It is refrigerated but not supercooled. Rather, it's super-compressed.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Charts and numbers
Some interesting charts:
Defense spending during WWII was 34% (!!) of GDP. No wonder civilians haven't felt a crunch from the Iraq War; in historical terms, the cost of this war is minimal. This suggests that people who want to blame the current economic situation on the Iraq War should look to other causes.
To put this chart in perspective: Defense budget in 2008 (including both Department of Defense and Iraq operations) totalled $717 billion, about 25% of total spending but about half of the "voluntary" budget. (Total spending was $2.9 trillion, total income $2.66 trillion, according to the Death and Taxes poster that hangs on my wall.) The chart suggests that entitlements are therefore about 50% of total spending, and that other spending (Department of Education, Agriculture, Justice, etc., and interest on the national debt) make up the other 25%. This chart strongly suggests to me that politicians like Obama who talk about expanding social programs with the money "saved" from pulling out of Iraq and reining in the military will find that there's not much to plunder from that piggy bank, not enough to fund the programs they want.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
)
Defense spending during WWII was 34% (!!) of GDP. No wonder civilians haven't felt a crunch from the Iraq War; in historical terms, the cost of this war is minimal. This suggests that people who want to blame the current economic situation on the Iraq War should look to other causes.
)
To put this chart in perspective: Defense budget in 2008 (including both Department of Defense and Iraq operations) totalled $717 billion, about 25% of total spending but about half of the "voluntary" budget. (Total spending was $2.9 trillion, total income $2.66 trillion, according to the Death and Taxes poster that hangs on my wall.) The chart suggests that entitlements are therefore about 50% of total spending, and that other spending (Department of Education, Agriculture, Justice, etc., and interest on the national debt) make up the other 25%. This chart strongly suggests to me that politicians like Obama who talk about expanding social programs with the money "saved" from pulling out of Iraq and reining in the military will find that there's not much to plunder from that piggy bank, not enough to fund the programs they want.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Modern liberalism
Thoroughly Modern Do-Gooders.
The venture-capital ethos means instead that these social entrepreneurs are almost willfully blind to ideological issues. They will tell you, even before you have a chance to ask, that they are data-driven and accountability-oriented. They're always showing you multivariate regressions or explaining why some promising idea "didn't pencil out." The highest status symbol in their circle is a Rand study showing that their program yields statistically significant results.
Bill Gates, who fits neatly into this world, came to dinner with journalists in Washington last week. He looked utterly bored as the conversation drifted to presidential campaign gossip. But when asked about which programs produce higher reading scores, the guy lit up and became a fountain of facts and findings.
The older do-gooders had a certain policy model: government identifies a problem. Really smart people design a program. A cabinet department in a big building administers it.
But the new do-gooders have absorbed the disappointments of the past decades. They have a much more decentralized worldview. They don't believe government on its own can be innovative. A thousand different private groups have to try new things. Then we measure to see what works.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
The venture-capital ethos means instead that these social entrepreneurs are almost willfully blind to ideological issues. They will tell you, even before you have a chance to ask, that they are data-driven and accountability-oriented. They're always showing you multivariate regressions or explaining why some promising idea "didn't pencil out." The highest status symbol in their circle is a Rand study showing that their program yields statistically significant results.
Bill Gates, who fits neatly into this world, came to dinner with journalists in Washington last week. He looked utterly bored as the conversation drifted to presidential campaign gossip. But when asked about which programs produce higher reading scores, the guy lit up and became a fountain of facts and findings.
The older do-gooders had a certain policy model: government identifies a problem. Really smart people design a program. A cabinet department in a big building administers it.
But the new do-gooders have absorbed the disappointments of the past decades. They have a much more decentralized worldview. They don't believe government on its own can be innovative. A thousand different private groups have to try new things. Then we measure to see what works.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Epistemology
[J. I've been having a discussion about why atheism is not abnormal, in what ways I think like an atheist, and why I believe the things I do in spite of insisting that belief without evidence is stupid. I think you might find this interesting. Also Cc'ing blog.]
You wrote: "Maybe you could pm on what the evidence your'e writing about is. That goes just beyond the topic drift level I'm comfortable with. But darn it, I'm curious now."
Sure. I'm actually not really sure where to start because I'm so immersed, but one obvious place is the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith said the book came from a record he got from an angel, which he translated with divine help. I've read the book. I've read the testimony of three witnesses who said that they prayed with Joseph, and they all saw an angel who told them the book was true. (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bm/thrwtnss) All three of those witnesses joined the Church that Joseph Smith founded. All three of them left it after a while, although two came back at one point. All of them always maintained, even while criticizing Joseph and the Church, that they actually had seen the angel and knew that the book was true. They took enormous amounts of flack for doing so. That speaks to me of someone who really believes what he says, not someone who supported a fraudulent scheme for some crazy reason. There were another 8 witnesses who didn't see the angel, but had a chance to make a thorough, reasonable inspection of the metal plates from which the book was purportedly translated and testify that it actually existed (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bm/eghtwtns). Many of them also left the Church eventually, and if they hadn't actually seen the plates someone would have spilled the beans. That gives them credibility in my opinion.
Then you move on to the personal level. There have been numerous occasions when I found that some moral principle which I believed in but most people didn't seem aware of was, surprise, something that the Prophets had taught. Never anything huge, but if the scriptures and the church are true you expect to find them teaching true things, no? Then there's the internal consistency as I learn more about the scriptures and various gospel doctrines--it all makes perfect sense.
And more personal yet. The scriptures say that the Lord will bless you for certain things, like paying tithing, and I've found that as I do those things I am blessed. If he weren't actually there and actively fulfilling his promises, you'd expect paying 10% of gross income to the Church would cause significant financial strain, but he keeps his end of the bargain and things work out pretty well.
He answers my prayers. Doesn't always bail me out completely, but that's also what you would expect from any human relationship. When I ask for help with personal weaknesses, or for the answers to questions, I have _always_ gotten what I ask for. The problem is usually more along the lines of when I don't ask, or don't take the advice I'm given.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are, Be witty if you can, But be cheerful if it kills you.
Civil Rights
I don't know if this guy is a liberal or a conservative, but if he's a liberal, this is the aspect of liberalism that I respect. Excerpt:
In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would say that Barack Obama's "momentous" speech on race settled on merely "explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America.
He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.
In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.
-Max
P.S. Also,
I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would say that Barack Obama's "momentous" speech on race settled on merely "explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America.
He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.
In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.
-Max
P.S. Also,
I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
The clothes make the man; Solar variability
Jenn,
Amusing note: yesterday, I was scheduled to participate in my ward's session at the temple sealing offices that evening, and I also had a midterm review scheduled with my manager, so somewhat on a whim I decided to wear a suit to work and go to the temple directly after getting off of work. I didn't realize that Microsoft had a dress code, but apparently we do. Somewhere between twelve and twenty people stopped in to ask me what I was dressed up for. Eventually I gave up trying to explain the nuances of the situation--neural networks, right? there's never just one factor behind any decision--and just said, "I'm going to the temple after work today," which satisfied most people's curiosity. I sort of liked how I felt--a little more professional, a little more focused--but it's too much hassle for me to repeat the experiment with any frequency. However, now that the questions are out of the way, maybe I'll repeat the approach when I'm intending to go to the temple--for instance, on date night. BTW, is next Tuesday good for you?
On another note, here's an interesting brief from a physicist and some kind of mathematician:
The most debated issue in contemporary science is the cause or causes of global warming, with the popular media contending that the issue has been resolved and that the majority of scientists concur. The "majority opinion" is based on the analysis of global warming done using large-scale computer codes that incorporate all identified physical and chemical mechanisms into global circulation models (GCMs) in an attempt to recreate and understand the variability in Earth's average temperature. The IPCC report1 concludes that the contribution of solar variability to global warming is negligible, to a certainty of 95%. It is reported that the "majority" believes the average warming observed since the beginning of the industrial era is due to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.1 concludes that the contribution of solar variability to global warming is negligible, to a certainty of 95%. It is reported that the "majority" believes the average warming observed since the beginning of the industrial era is due to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
Someone once told me something about Velikovsky: that geologists thought his geology was nonsense but his anthropology was intriguing, and anthropologists thought his anthropological ideas were absurd but his geology was intriguing. The climate scientists can't seem to convince anybody outside of their own subspecialty. Fortunately it will all be over within a decade. Given that this particular episode of climate alarmism was much more widely-publicized than the last one (the "Big Freeze" scare before I was born, in the 1960's I think), we can hope that once it is discredited people will be a little more skeptical of the next one. That could be bad in some ways, if it made people reluctant to act when improbable emergencies really do occur (suppose somebody really does locate a comet with a 1 in 10 chance of hitting the Earth), but overall I think it's a good thing if people are cautiously skeptical of big threats--since we're neurologically wired to overestimate them.
Anyway, have a nice day.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Amusing note: yesterday, I was scheduled to participate in my ward's session at the temple sealing offices that evening, and I also had a midterm review scheduled with my manager, so somewhat on a whim I decided to wear a suit to work and go to the temple directly after getting off of work. I didn't realize that Microsoft had a dress code, but apparently we do. Somewhere between twelve and twenty people stopped in to ask me what I was dressed up for. Eventually I gave up trying to explain the nuances of the situation--neural networks, right? there's never just one factor behind any decision--and just said, "I'm going to the temple after work today," which satisfied most people's curiosity. I sort of liked how I felt--a little more professional, a little more focused--but it's too much hassle for me to repeat the experiment with any frequency. However, now that the questions are out of the way, maybe I'll repeat the approach when I'm intending to go to the temple--for instance, on date night. BTW, is next Tuesday good for you?
On another note, here's an interesting brief from a physicist and some kind of mathematician:
The most debated issue in contemporary science is the cause or causes of global warming, with the popular media contending that the issue has been resolved and that the majority of scientists concur. The "majority opinion" is based on the analysis of global warming done using large-scale computer codes that incorporate all identified physical and chemical mechanisms into global circulation models (GCMs) in an attempt to recreate and understand the variability in Earth's average temperature. The IPCC report1 concludes that the contribution of solar variability to global warming is negligible, to a certainty of 95%. It is reported that the "majority" believes the average warming observed since the beginning of the industrial era is due to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.1 concludes that the contribution of solar variability to global warming is negligible, to a certainty of 95%. It is reported that the "majority" believes the average warming observed since the beginning of the industrial era is due to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
Someone once told me something about Velikovsky: that geologists thought his geology was nonsense but his anthropology was intriguing, and anthropologists thought his anthropological ideas were absurd but his geology was intriguing. The climate scientists can't seem to convince anybody outside of their own subspecialty. Fortunately it will all be over within a decade. Given that this particular episode of climate alarmism was much more widely-publicized than the last one (the "Big Freeze" scare before I was born, in the 1960's I think), we can hope that once it is discredited people will be a little more skeptical of the next one. That could be bad in some ways, if it made people reluctant to act when improbable emergencies really do occur (suppose somebody really does locate a comet with a 1 in 10 chance of hitting the Earth), but overall I think it's a good thing if people are cautiously skeptical of big threats--since we're neurologically wired to overestimate them.
Anyway, have a nice day.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
One thing I like about Hillary Clinton
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/clinton-praises-petraeus/
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
More on Obama (long)
[Cc'ed blog]
Dear Jenn,
Well, Obama finally gave another substantive speech. It's titled "A More Perfect Union." We see here a lot of the Obama that I like--frank, honest acknowledgement of certain issues with his campaign--and then we see the Obama that scares me. He's honest, and he's open-minded in the sense of listening to opponents, but I'm terribly afraid that he isn't honest in the fundamental, scientific sense that Feynman talks about, holding your own beliefs up to scrutiny. In any case, at the point where he stops talking about his campaign and starts talking about national policy, he says a lot of things that are wrong.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Logical fallacy here. There are no segregated schools in America today. There are good schools and bad schools, with good students and poor students. What really matters is the end product--good/poor student--but a good school is one that produces more good students than you would expect from the human raw material it receives. Obama observes that "segregated schools," by which he means "schools with many black and few whites or Asians," have more than the usual amount of poor students, from which he infers that the schools are bad schools. I don't know what he would suggest as a solution, a way to make "segregated" schools turn out large numbers of good students, but anyone who is familiar with public education (for instance the case of Kansas City school district) should know that pumping more money into education does not help. I don't know why communities of black students underperform, but blaming it on "segregation" is stupid. If I had to guess I'd look into 1.) heritable factors (a smart African-American has kids just as smart as anyone else's, but the population was not selected for that originally and the mean IQ of the African-American subpopulation is lower than the American mean. It's interesting to me that slaves were the only immigrants to America who did not undergo a self-selection process. I wonder what that did to their gene pool...), 2.) culture (by all reports, teenage male culture among African-Americans is hostile, even toxic, to school and intellectual pursuits--it's seen as "whitey" stuff), 3.) social structure (fatherlessness, etc.). None of this is stuff you should blame on the schools, although it does affect schools.
There's another assumption underlying Obama's words which is just as bad, in its way. "Segregated schools are... inferior schools. We still haven't fixed them." Implicitly, he's endorsing relative quality as opposed to absolute quality. The problem is that "non-segregated" schools aren't very good either. I believe that you absolutely COULD make changes to "segregated" schools that would have them outperforming non-segregated schools today. Just because Kansas City couldn't do it doesn't mean it couldn't be done. Begin by deciding that the job of schools is to maximize the output of educated, productive citizens. With the goal settled, it becomes clear that there are a lot of students who will have to shape up or ship out, for real. (I'd leave it up to the local school districts to choose those criteria, but it will not be possible to threaten teachers with physical violence and continue going to school.) You'll lose a lot of gang-bangers, but not all of them, and the ones who stick with it will have a shot at a real life. I'd also concentrate on making sure that everybody can read by grade two. It's not uncommon today to see a high school senior to be a functional illiterate, and that's crippling. It means he's just wasted twelve years of his life in school, since benefitting from normal instruction absolutely requires the ability to read. We know this is possible. Jerry Pournelle's wife wrote and sells a program for teaching students who were unable to learn to read in school. Jerry says he's never seen a student using his wife's software fail to learn to read, in the sense of bringing his reading vocabulary up to match his speaking vocabulary.
Anyway, it's possible to whip "segregated" schools into shape, and we should do that, but the "segregation" aspect is a red herring--we should do that to ALL schools.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
It would be hard to be unsympathetic to the plight he describes... but asserting that "that history helps explain..." is not the same thing as establishing a causal relationship, much less establishing an ongoing causal relationship. My fear would be that, having zeroed in on historical and ongoing discrimination as the cause of the discrepancy, as long as any discrepancy remained he would keep hammering away at discrimination as the cause. That's thinking inside the box. That's not scientific honesty.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
Sigh. Hostility and assumptions--no display of real understanding. I've no time to comment on this, but this passage jumped out at me as worrisome. Yet there are still things that I like, such as this:
And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Yes. Read to your children. But then he says this, too:
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
No discussion or apparent thought as to why it's unprofitable to operate a company in America, or how we could make it more profitable. Barack Obama's a nice enough guy, but I'm afraid he's also a shallow thinker.
We'll see in November who buys it.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Dear Jenn,
Well, Obama finally gave another substantive speech. It's titled "A More Perfect Union." We see here a lot of the Obama that I like--frank, honest acknowledgement of certain issues with his campaign--and then we see the Obama that scares me. He's honest, and he's open-minded in the sense of listening to opponents, but I'm terribly afraid that he isn't honest in the fundamental, scientific sense that Feynman talks about, holding your own beliefs up to scrutiny. In any case, at the point where he stops talking about his campaign and starts talking about national policy, he says a lot of things that are wrong.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Logical fallacy here. There are no segregated schools in America today. There are good schools and bad schools, with good students and poor students. What really matters is the end product--good/poor student--but a good school is one that produces more good students than you would expect from the human raw material it receives. Obama observes that "segregated schools," by which he means "schools with many black and few whites or Asians," have more than the usual amount of poor students, from which he infers that the schools are bad schools. I don't know what he would suggest as a solution, a way to make "segregated" schools turn out large numbers of good students, but anyone who is familiar with public education (for instance the case of Kansas City school district) should know that pumping more money into education does not help. I don't know why communities of black students underperform, but blaming it on "segregation" is stupid. If I had to guess I'd look into 1.) heritable factors (a smart African-American has kids just as smart as anyone else's, but the population was not selected for that originally and the mean IQ of the African-American subpopulation is lower than the American mean. It's interesting to me that slaves were the only immigrants to America who did not undergo a self-selection process. I wonder what that did to their gene pool...), 2.) culture (by all reports, teenage male culture among African-Americans is hostile, even toxic, to school and intellectual pursuits--it's seen as "whitey" stuff), 3.) social structure (fatherlessness, etc.). None of this is stuff you should blame on the schools, although it does affect schools.
There's another assumption underlying Obama's words which is just as bad, in its way. "Segregated schools are... inferior schools. We still haven't fixed them." Implicitly, he's endorsing relative quality as opposed to absolute quality. The problem is that "non-segregated" schools aren't very good either. I believe that you absolutely COULD make changes to "segregated" schools that would have them outperforming non-segregated schools today. Just because Kansas City couldn't do it doesn't mean it couldn't be done. Begin by deciding that the job of schools is to maximize the output of educated, productive citizens. With the goal settled, it becomes clear that there are a lot of students who will have to shape up or ship out, for real. (I'd leave it up to the local school districts to choose those criteria, but it will not be possible to threaten teachers with physical violence and continue going to school.) You'll lose a lot of gang-bangers, but not all of them, and the ones who stick with it will have a shot at a real life. I'd also concentrate on making sure that everybody can read by grade two. It's not uncommon today to see a high school senior to be a functional illiterate, and that's crippling. It means he's just wasted twelve years of his life in school, since benefitting from normal instruction absolutely requires the ability to read. We know this is possible. Jerry Pournelle's wife wrote and sells a program for teaching students who were unable to learn to read in school. Jerry says he's never seen a student using his wife's software fail to learn to read, in the sense of bringing his reading vocabulary up to match his speaking vocabulary.
Anyway, it's possible to whip "segregated" schools into shape, and we should do that, but the "segregation" aspect is a red herring--we should do that to ALL schools.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
It would be hard to be unsympathetic to the plight he describes... but asserting that "that history helps explain..." is not the same thing as establishing a causal relationship, much less establishing an ongoing causal relationship. My fear would be that, having zeroed in on historical and ongoing discrimination as the cause of the discrepancy, as long as any discrepancy remained he would keep hammering away at discrimination as the cause. That's thinking inside the box. That's not scientific honesty.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
Sigh. Hostility and assumptions--no display of real understanding. I've no time to comment on this, but this passage jumped out at me as worrisome. Yet there are still things that I like, such as this:
And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Yes. Read to your children. But then he says this, too:
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
No discussion or apparent thought as to why it's unprofitable to operate a company in America, or how we could make it more profitable. Barack Obama's a nice enough guy, but I'm afraid he's also a shallow thinker.
We'll see in November who buys it.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Friday, March 14, 2008
One thing I really like about McCain
Is that he fights fair. Not your stereotypical politician, although perhaps many of them aren't.
(Aside: I've been reflecting recently on politics in America, and how much weak-kneed apparent cowardice is a consequence of the fact (?) that politicians in Washington are acutely aware that they do not have the power to make promises that bind the voters. A moratorium on earmarks was just voted down. How many politicians would have liked to vote against earmarks in principle, but were afraid of the wrath of their constituents if their own particular earmarks were ended? Not all, but perhaps some. Note that the actual feelings of the constituents in question with respect to earmarks is irrelevant; only the fear of their wrath is necessary.)
-Max
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/john_mccains_full_hour_on_hann.html
HANNITY: [You said that] "I'm sure that Senator Clinton would make a good president."
MCCAIN: But what I mean by that, from the standpoint of the philosophy and beliefs that they -- in other words, I think she's a person of integrity. I think Senator Obama is a person of integrity. It's not that they're not good people. It's that they are liberal Democrats, and this is a fundamental clash between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican.
I respect their views; I just strongly disagree with them. So when it -- so when that's taken out of context, quote, "good," good for the policies and programs and ideology that she and Senator Obama hold. I mean, they're good -- they're decent people.
HANNITY: Well, let me ask...
MCCAIN: But it is a strong difference of views. And I think there's going to be more stark differences in this campaign than there's been in a long time.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
(Aside: I've been reflecting recently on politics in America, and how much weak-kneed apparent cowardice is a consequence of the fact (?) that politicians in Washington are acutely aware that they do not have the power to make promises that bind the voters. A moratorium on earmarks was just voted down. How many politicians would have liked to vote against earmarks in principle, but were afraid of the wrath of their constituents if their own particular earmarks were ended? Not all, but perhaps some. Note that the actual feelings of the constituents in question with respect to earmarks is irrelevant; only the fear of their wrath is necessary.)
-Max
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/john_mccains_full_hour_on_hann.html
HANNITY: [You said that] "I'm sure that Senator Clinton would make a good president."
MCCAIN: But what I mean by that, from the standpoint of the philosophy and beliefs that they -- in other words, I think she's a person of integrity. I think Senator Obama is a person of integrity. It's not that they're not good people. It's that they are liberal Democrats, and this is a fundamental clash between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican.
I respect their views; I just strongly disagree with them. So when it -- so when that's taken out of context, quote, "good," good for the policies and programs and ideology that she and Senator Obama hold. I mean, they're good -- they're decent people.
HANNITY: Well, let me ask...
MCCAIN: But it is a strong difference of views. And I think there's going to be more stark differences in this campaign than there's been in a long time.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Supreme Court
[Cc'ed a couple of friends]
You may find this Obama quote interesting:
Indeed, in setting forth the sort of judges he would appoint, Obama has explicitly declared: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old--and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges." So much for the judicial virtue of dispassion. So much for a craft of judging that is distinct from politics.
There are a lot of things I like about Obama, including his open-mindedness, but after you've listened to all sides there's still the problem of which side of the issue you come down on, and his position on judicial picks (passion over dispassion) is contrary to the rule of law and worries me. An activist Supreme Court has the potential to mess up the country in ways that take years to fix (because the Court is so far removed from democratic influence).
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
You may find this Obama quote interesting:
Indeed, in setting forth the sort of judges he would appoint, Obama has explicitly declared: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old--and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges." So much for the judicial virtue of dispassion. So much for a craft of judging that is distinct from politics.
There are a lot of things I like about Obama, including his open-mindedness, but after you've listened to all sides there's still the problem of which side of the issue you come down on, and his position on judicial picks (passion over dispassion) is contrary to the rule of law and worries me. An activist Supreme Court has the potential to mess up the country in ways that take years to fix (because the Court is so far removed from democratic influence).
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Moral paradigm
[From another conference]
That raises an interesting question, since I wasn't thinking of our Word of Wisdom discussion as a worthiness issue at all: how do you (generalized "you" here) view the commandments? Why do you do the things you do? (I apologize to Orin if I'm running off in a direction he hadn't intended to imply.)
See, I keep the Word of Wisdom (to the extent that I succeed in doing so) because I believe in it, independent of Church policy. I don't _like_ people touching my brain while I'm using it. There are other commandments that I keep out of sheer obedience[1] (I don't watch R-rated movies because President Hinckley ordered me not to--that wasn't in a Church-wide meeting so most of you weren't there and don't have to pay attention, but I take it personally), but even there, there's no fundamental separation between my will and the Lord's. I'm obedient because I consider it a point of honor, having pledged obedience, to make good on that pledge. However, there are plenty of other commandments that I just plain believe in. I wouldn't use foul language even if the Lord didn't care about it at all, although I was quite relieved as a kid when I realized that the Lord felt the same way I did, even though other people didn't.
I don't see morality as a thing which should or can be imposed by an external force, so the "goodness" or "badness" of a thing in a moral sense rarely comes up as a consideration in my world. It's mostly "good idea" or "stupid" (or neither), with the implicit understanding that everything the gospel says is bad comes under "stupid" when you understand how things really work. (D&C 93:24.) That said, there are a lot of things which are non-stupid and perfectly fine.
This isn't to say that I don't worry about what the Lord thinks, because I do. In some cases it matters tremendously to me that I'm doing things he approves of. However, this is less out of fear of censure than because I relate to him and admire him--he's exactly the kind of person I want to be when I grow up. My concern is based on the quality of the relationship and the nobility of his character, which is the way a father & son relationship should be, IMHO.
So, what's your moral paradigm?
-Max
[1] In the sense that if the commandment were revoked I can imagine circumstances where I would do them. There are some movies that I think the MPAA rated incorrectly which I would probably watch if it weren't a point of honor.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
That raises an interesting question, since I wasn't thinking of our Word of Wisdom discussion as a worthiness issue at all: how do you (generalized "you" here) view the commandments? Why do you do the things you do? (I apologize to Orin if I'm running off in a direction he hadn't intended to imply.)
See, I keep the Word of Wisdom (to the extent that I succeed in doing so) because I believe in it, independent of Church policy. I don't _like_ people touching my brain while I'm using it. There are other commandments that I keep out of sheer obedience[1] (I don't watch R-rated movies because President Hinckley ordered me not to--that wasn't in a Church-wide meeting so most of you weren't there and don't have to pay attention, but I take it personally), but even there, there's no fundamental separation between my will and the Lord's. I'm obedient because I consider it a point of honor, having pledged obedience, to make good on that pledge. However, there are plenty of other commandments that I just plain believe in. I wouldn't use foul language even if the Lord didn't care about it at all, although I was quite relieved as a kid when I realized that the Lord felt the same way I did, even though other people didn't.
I don't see morality as a thing which should or can be imposed by an external force, so the "goodness" or "badness" of a thing in a moral sense rarely comes up as a consideration in my world. It's mostly "good idea" or "stupid" (or neither), with the implicit understanding that everything the gospel says is bad comes under "stupid" when you understand how things really work. (D&C 93:24.) That said, there are a lot of things which are non-stupid and perfectly fine.
This isn't to say that I don't worry about what the Lord thinks, because I do. In some cases it matters tremendously to me that I'm doing things he approves of. However, this is less out of fear of censure than because I relate to him and admire him--he's exactly the kind of person I want to be when I grow up. My concern is based on the quality of the relationship and the nobility of his character, which is the way a father & son relationship should be, IMHO.
So, what's your moral paradigm?
-Max
[1] In the sense that if the commandment were revoked I can imagine circumstances where I would do them. There are some movies that I think the MPAA rated incorrectly which I would probably watch if it weren't a point of honor.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Hunh
A good article on the subprime crisis and individual accountability... and then I look and it turns out to be written by George McGovern. Hunh. I didn't think Democrats thought that way. Good for him.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485275086518279.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
One thing I like about Barack Obama
It's cool to hear that the open-mindedness is genuine.
On this occasion, he had an important topic to discuss: the controversy over President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance of international telephone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists. I had written a short essay suggesting that the surveillance might be lawful. Before taking a public position, Obama wanted to talk the problem through.
In the space of about 20 minutes, he and I investigated the legal details. He asked me to explore all sorts of issues: the President's power as commander-in-chief, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force and more.
Obama wanted to consider the best possible defence of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counter-argument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said that he thought the programme was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides. He thanked me for my time.
This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side.
I can live with my disagreements with a person who is genuinely doing their best. As Joseph Smith said, "Truth will cut its own way."
I still don't know whether he'd make a good President, but I can wish him good luck and a fair campaign. Ultimately it's the American people who are in charge, and we'll see what they think in November.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
On this occasion, he had an important topic to discuss: the controversy over President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance of international telephone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists. I had written a short essay suggesting that the surveillance might be lawful. Before taking a public position, Obama wanted to talk the problem through.
In the space of about 20 minutes, he and I investigated the legal details. He asked me to explore all sorts of issues: the President's power as commander-in-chief, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force and more.
Obama wanted to consider the best possible defence of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counter-argument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said that he thought the programme was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides. He thanked me for my time.
This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side.
I can live with my disagreements with a person who is genuinely doing their best. As Joseph Smith said, "Truth will cut its own way."
I still don't know whether he'd make a good President, but I can wish him good luck and a fair campaign. Ultimately it's the American people who are in charge, and we'll see what they think in November.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Noblesse oblige?
Dear J.,
You may find this interesting. It turns out that (the famous science fiction writer) Jerry Pournelle has an IQ of 180. He says,
"I don't mean this as braggadocio. I had no hand in being born with an IQ of 180; that was God's will, or the blind workings of chance, as you choose; but it certainly was not to my credit. I am responsible for what I did with those talents. On the record, not as much as might be predicted. I did not conquer the world, nor win a Nobel Prize. I did have some effect on the Cold War, and I will take some of the credit for that key victory of Western Civilization; and I like to think that some of my writings have been valuable to a great many readers."
An interesting statement from an interesting person. It caused me, for the the first time in a long time, to wonder what my IQ is, since I've always thought of Mr. Pournelle as an intelligent and insightful person but not incomprehensibly so, what I would call "the bright side of normal" in my ideal world. It's hard to express why I'm thinking about this--when I the above paragraph my twin reactions were "That's interesting" and a rush of relief, as if to say, "Pournelle's smarter than I am and he hasn't done all that much with his gifts either."[1] Or maybe it's the opposite, "Maybe I'm making more of a difference than I think." I dunno. My relative impotence in this world is one of my little insecurities.
Of course, everybody's impotent. Said Moses, "Now I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed." I must ruefully agree as to my own nothingness. I hate being a kid.
Love,
M.
[1] I'm not denigrating Pournelle. My assessment is that he's correct about the influence of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy on the outcome of the Cold War, and Chaos Manor is a uniquely valuable resource.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
You may find this interesting. It turns out that (the famous science fiction writer) Jerry Pournelle has an IQ of 180. He says,
"I don't mean this as braggadocio. I had no hand in being born with an IQ of 180; that was God's will, or the blind workings of chance, as you choose; but it certainly was not to my credit. I am responsible for what I did with those talents. On the record, not as much as might be predicted. I did not conquer the world, nor win a Nobel Prize. I did have some effect on the Cold War, and I will take some of the credit for that key victory of Western Civilization; and I like to think that some of my writings have been valuable to a great many readers."
An interesting statement from an interesting person. It caused me, for the the first time in a long time, to wonder what my IQ is, since I've always thought of Mr. Pournelle as an intelligent and insightful person but not incomprehensibly so, what I would call "the bright side of normal" in my ideal world. It's hard to express why I'm thinking about this--when I the above paragraph my twin reactions were "That's interesting" and a rush of relief, as if to say, "Pournelle's smarter than I am and he hasn't done all that much with his gifts either."[1] Or maybe it's the opposite, "Maybe I'm making more of a difference than I think." I dunno. My relative impotence in this world is one of my little insecurities.
Of course, everybody's impotent. Said Moses, "Now I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed." I must ruefully agree as to my own nothingness. I hate being a kid.
Love,
M.
[1] I'm not denigrating Pournelle. My assessment is that he's correct about the influence of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy on the outcome of the Cold War, and Chaos Manor is a uniquely valuable resource.
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Nanoparticles as antibiotics
Advances in medicine...
"Our ultimate goal is to use these nanoparticles as a treatment for children in underdeveloped countries," said Fred Stutzenberger, a retired professor of microbiology at Clemson who is publishing a review of the research next month in the journal Advances in Applied Microbiology.
The researchers made a microscopic ball of polystyrene, the same plastic used in CD cases. Threads hang off of the ball, and at the end of each one is a molecule that, to certain bacteria, looks like sugar. E. coli, salmonella, and other potentially deadly bacteria latch onto the molecule but can't process it, and essentially glue themselves to it. Eventually dozens of nanoparticles attach themselves to the bacteria, making it very difficult for an infection to develop or spread...
Since the nanoparticles latch onto an area of the cell critical for triggering an infection, it would be hard for the bacteria to develop a resistance to the nanoparticles (the same process that leads to antibiotic-resistance bacteria) and still cause an infection.
I really like this idea, for the same reason I like bacteriophages. Unlike with antibiotics, you are attacking the intrinsic characteristics of the microbe. It can't do its job without becoming vulnerable to your countermeasures.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
"Our ultimate goal is to use these nanoparticles as a treatment for children in underdeveloped countries," said Fred Stutzenberger, a retired professor of microbiology at Clemson who is publishing a review of the research next month in the journal Advances in Applied Microbiology.
The researchers made a microscopic ball of polystyrene, the same plastic used in CD cases. Threads hang off of the ball, and at the end of each one is a molecule that, to certain bacteria, looks like sugar. E. coli, salmonella, and other potentially deadly bacteria latch onto the molecule but can't process it, and essentially glue themselves to it. Eventually dozens of nanoparticles attach themselves to the bacteria, making it very difficult for an infection to develop or spread...
Since the nanoparticles latch onto an area of the cell critical for triggering an infection, it would be hard for the bacteria to develop a resistance to the nanoparticles (the same process that leads to antibiotic-resistance bacteria) and still cause an infection.
I really like this idea, for the same reason I like bacteriophages. Unlike with antibiotics, you are attacking the intrinsic characteristics of the microbe. It can't do its job without becoming vulnerable to your countermeasures.
-Max
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
The measure of intelligence
As an aside, one useful (but not quantifiable) definition of intelligence is the size of the intuitive leaps a person is able to make: how complicated things have to be before they're not "obvious" to you. This is part of what can make it hard to communicate with people of lesser intelligence. (Note that "intelligence" in this context is as much crystallized as fluid.)
For example, I may read a mathematical theorem, and where the author says, "Because [X], it is obvious that [Y]," I get totally confused and have to spend thirty minutes figuring out how they got from X to Y, and even when I get there it's kind of fuzzy in my head and I have trouble following the steps after Y. I'm just not following something that's obvious to the author, and if I told him so, he might look confused and throw out a glib explanation that would also baffle me. (Or, if he has experience teaching people at a lower level, he might have a good explanation worked out.) It's hard to relate to people who just can't see things that you see.
I remember an individual who, when she was 10 and I was 12, didn't realize that the Word of Wisdom's "hot drinks" included iced tea. I recall friends from high school who didn't think the prohibition on early dating applied to having boyfriends, only to going on formal dates with them. I still can't wrap my head around either of these conclusions--how can it not be obvious that they're wrong? How can an active Latter-day Saint not realize that coarse language is abhorrent? Our mathematician might be just as baffled that I can't follow his arguments. In fact, there are lines of reasoning which are obvious to me now which I distinctly remember being non-obvious to my younger self, which is one reason I believe that you can increase your intelligence with time and effort.
-Max
P.S. I should note that exactly who is the "lesser intelligence" in a situation may depend upon subject matter and context, too. Americans, generally speaking, are enthralled with the idea of a soul mate, someone who intuitively "gets" you. Someone to whom your thoughts and feelings are as obvious as they are to yourself. It should be apparent why this is a high bar to clear. :)
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
For example, I may read a mathematical theorem, and where the author says, "Because [X], it is obvious that [Y]," I get totally confused and have to spend thirty minutes figuring out how they got from X to Y, and even when I get there it's kind of fuzzy in my head and I have trouble following the steps after Y. I'm just not following something that's obvious to the author, and if I told him so, he might look confused and throw out a glib explanation that would also baffle me. (Or, if he has experience teaching people at a lower level, he might have a good explanation worked out.) It's hard to relate to people who just can't see things that you see.
I remember an individual who, when she was 10 and I was 12, didn't realize that the Word of Wisdom's "hot drinks" included iced tea. I recall friends from high school who didn't think the prohibition on early dating applied to having boyfriends, only to going on formal dates with them. I still can't wrap my head around either of these conclusions--how can it not be obvious that they're wrong? How can an active Latter-day Saint not realize that coarse language is abhorrent? Our mathematician might be just as baffled that I can't follow his arguments. In fact, there are lines of reasoning which are obvious to me now which I distinctly remember being non-obvious to my younger self, which is one reason I believe that you can increase your intelligence with time and effort.
-Max
P.S. I should note that exactly who is the "lesser intelligence" in a situation may depend upon subject matter and context, too. Americans, generally speaking, are enthralled with the idea of a soul mate, someone who intuitively "gets" you. Someone to whom your thoughts and feelings are as obvious as they are to yourself. It should be apparent why this is a high bar to clear. :)
--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)