Gun suicides

Interesting result. From http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/firearms-and-suicides-in-us-states.html:

If suicides and gun ownership were being driven by a third factor we would expect gun ownership to be correlated with all suicides not just gun-suicide. What we find, however, is that an increase in gun ownership decrease non-gun suicide. From an economics perspective this makes perfect sense. As gun ownership increases, the cost of gun-suicide falls because guns are easier to access and as the cost of gun-suicide falls there is substitution away from non-gun suicide.

Put differently, when gun ownership decreases other methods of suicide increase. Substitution among methods is not perfect, however, so when gun ownership decreases we see a big decrease in gun-suicide and a substantial but less than fully compensating increase in non-gun suicide so a net decrease in the number of suicides.

- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/firearms-and-suicides-in-us-states.html#sthash.eq0Uf9z1.dpuf

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

On relativity

I'm not sure what to think of this datum. The result seems consistent with special relativity so I presume it's consistent with general relativity too, but then again I don't really understand the math for a rotating reference frame.

Note: On October, 1971, J. C. Hafele of Washington in St. Louis and Richard Keating of the US Naval Observatory in Washington, borrowed two cesium clocks from the Naval Observatory and bought each a first class found trip seat on commercial flights, one headed east, the other west.  The clocks were strapped into the seats and never moved again until they returned, nor were they observed in transit.  "The experiment may be the cheapest ever conducted" to test relativity, Scientific American explained. When the clocks were returned to Washington, the west bound clock had speeded up by 273 nanoseconds compared to an identical clock that remained at the Observatory, and the east bound clock had lost 59 nanoseconds. The previous position of Einstein was that "Moving clocks run slow", but there had been no prediction of a time difference depending on the direction of travel. The explanation by the relativity theorists involved a new frame of reference and a long defense as to what that reference frame was needed. Beckmann's theory predicted the time differences due to the travel of the clocks through Earth's gravitational field.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Irony

This exchange with Richard Dawkins strikes me as incredibly ironic. (http://www.newstatesman.com/science/2013/10/richard-dawkins-interview-pope-francis-poetry-and-why-jews-win-so-many-nobel-prizes)

IC: One problem with these Darwinian explanations, however convincing they are, is that they aren't really falsifiable.

RD: That is a very common criticism, and it's probably a valid one. That doesn't mean they're wrong, of course. I think from my point of view—I won't say it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong, it's just sufficient in some cases, for me, to be able to say, Well, at least it's not totally implausible from a Darwinian point of view.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Jewish ancestry

[Cc K and B]

I haven't digested the scientific evidence in this post yet, but I want to hold on to it for future reference. The implication which leaped out to me is the same one Cochran mentions later on down: if the DNA evidence is accurate and most mitochondrial DNA is of local extraction, then most Jews are not Jewish through the female line of descent. Furthermore, this makes me wonder about studies which have purported to compare Jewish DNA with American Indian DNA in order to disprove the Lamanite hypothesis. If the Jews can't even keep track of their own lines of descent since classical times, what makes anyone think they are a reliable source of comparison DNA for disproving theories about a population which diverged 600 years before that? We don't even KNOW what Lamanite DNA "should" be like.

http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/jewish-moms/

-Max

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Charity

This story made me laugh. I should cultivate just such a cheerful reaction to lies, instead of offended rage.

In June, I attended a dinner for Bill Clinton, which was educational. Clinton spoke passionately about his foundation, about African wildlife, inequality, childhood obesity, and much else with enormous factual command, emotion, and rhetorical power. But he and I also spoke privately. I asked him about the financial crisis. He paused and then became even more soulful, thoughtful, passionate, and articulate. And then he proceeded to tell me the most amazing lies I've heard in quite a while.

For example, Mr. Clinton sorrowfully lamented his inability to stop the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of private (OTC) derivatives trading, and thereby greatly worsened the crisis. Mr. Clinton said that he and Larry Summers had argued with Alan Greenspan, but couldn't budge him, and then Congress passed the law by a veto-proof supermajority, tying his hands. Well, actually, the reason that the law passed by that overwhelming margin was because of the Clinton Administration's strong advocacy, including Congressional testimony by Larry Summers and harsh public and private attacks on advocates of regulation by Summers and Robert Rubin.

Wow, I thought, this guy is a really good actor.

From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-ferguson/hillary-clinton-documentary_b_4014792.html?utm_hp_ref=media

-- 

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Charlie Munger on technological improvement

I had to dig up this story, sending it to you for future reference. Context was a Facebook conversation on the effect of technological advancement on labor.

Me: "Sometimes the benefit of a new technology doesn't flow to the workers or even the business owners, but only to the inventors of the new machinery (and perhaps to the consumers of the product). Charlie Munger tells an interesting story along those same lines."

[Charlie Munger, from http://ycombinator.com/munger.html]

The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. And most people do not get this straight in their heads. But a fellow like Buffett does.

For example, when we were in the textile business, which is a terrible commodity business, we were making low-end textiles—which are a real commodity product. And one day, the people came to Warren and said, "They've invented a new loom that we think will do twice as much work as our old ones."

And Warren said, "Gee, I hope this doesn't work because if it does, I'm going to close the mill." And he meant it.

What was he thinking? He was thinking, "It's a lousy business. We're earning substandard returns and keeping it open just to be nice to the elderly workers. But we're not going to put huge amounts of new capital into a lousy business."

And he knew that the huge productivity increases that would come from a better machine introduced into the production of a commodity product would all go to the benefit of the buyers of the textiles. Nothing was going to stick to our ribs as owners.

That's such an obvious concept—that there are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more money in a business that's still going to be lousy. The money still won't come to you. All of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Asking In Prayer About the Book of Mormon

[from a conversation with B.J.]

When I was in the MTC, they kind of made a big deal about praying about the Book of Mormon to know if it's true.

I'd never done it before, and honestly I was kind of embarrassed to do so, but at the same time I knew that at some point someone (an investigator) was going to ask me if I had and it would be simpler to be able to just say, "Yes," instead of explaining why it was unnecessary.

So I did.

And the way the conversation went, metaphorically, was kind of like this:

[Heavenly Father is reading the newspaper]

Max: Um, Father? Is the Book of Mormon true?

[Heavenly Father raises his eyebrows as if to say, "I know that you know that I know that you know..."]

Max: Yeah, that's what I thought.

[end scenario]

It was kind of embarrassing, and sort of a formality, but we both knew why I did it, and it did make things simpler in the long run.

So that's my story.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Killing

Then I cautiously raised the upper half of my body into the tunnel until I was lying flat on my stomach. When I felt comfortable, I placed my Smith Wesson .38-caliber snub-nose (sent to me by my father for tunnel work) beside the flashlight and switched on the light, illuminating the tunnel.

There, not more than 15 feet away, sat a Viet Cong eating a handful of rice from a pouch on his lap. We looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity, but in fact was probably only a few seconds.

Maybe it was the surprise of actually finding someone else there, or maybe it was just the absolute innocence of the situation, but neither one of us reacted.

After a moment, he put his pouch of rice on the floor of the tunnel beside him, turned his back to me and slowly started crawling away. I, in turn, switched off my flashlight, before slipping back into the lower tunnel and making my way back to the entrance. About 20 minutes later, we received word that another squad had killed a VC emerging from a tunnel 500 meters away.

I never doubted who that VC was. To this day, I firmly believe that grunt and I could have ended the war sooner over a beer in Saigon than Henry Kissinger ever could by attending the peace talks.

-Michael Kathman, "Triangle Tunnel Rat"
as quoted in On Killing, by Lt. Colonel David Grossman

I find this story troubling. I think of myself as someone who is prepared to do what is necessary, but I suspect that I wouldn't have been prepared to kill the guy under the circumstances either, even though it is the clearly rational, tactically correct thing to do. (Who cares if he is pointing a gun at you at that exact instant vs. eating rice?)

Historical evidence is that most human beings are not killers by nature, and resist the act of killing even enemy soldiers in combat. I thought I wasn't like that but now I'm not so sure.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Science challenge

Challenge: in thirty words or less, compare and contrast greenhouses and the Greenhouse Effect (specifically, as it pertains to carbon dioxide).

Here's my attempt: greenhouses trap radiative heat by preventing convection. Carbon dioxide traps heat by preventing re-radiation.

Challenge: explain in thirty words or less why climatologists think carbon dioxide emissions are disastrous.

Here's my attempt: write equations predicting climate change using basic physics. Predictions don't match reality, so increase carbon dioxide coefficient until equation matches. No such thing as an unknown variable. What's falsification anyway?

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief: original tune

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/17054730

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Testing, testing

Multiple choice test, created for (http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/multchc.htm):

Cochlear refers to:
A: The ear
B: The eye
C: The mind
D: Theatre

Epidermis is located:
A: Within the thorax
B: Below the dermis
C: On the periphery of the integument
D: None of the above

Which of the following sorts is the best way to sort 300 million Americans by SSN?
A: Quicksort
B: Insertion sort
C: Bubble sort
D: Radix sort

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Torture: Kratman was right, if horrific

Kudos to Tom Kratman for being right about the (horrific) effectiveness of torture, and to the CIA for being smarter than people give them credit for. Torture done properly is effective; otherwise there wouldn't be a moral dilemma. (This is true whether or not waterboarding constitutes torture--any negative conditioning that can be performed with waterboarding would work as well or better with more horrific punishments.)

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/01/the_case_for_torture_ex_cia_officials_explain_enhanced_interrogations.html

'Hayden acknowledged that prisoners might say anything to stop their suffering. (Like the other panelists, he insisted EITs weren't torture.) That's why "we never asked anybody anything we didn't know the answer to, while they were undergoing the enhanced interrogation techniques. The techniques were not designed to elicit truth in the moment." Instead, EITs were used in a controlled setting, in which interrogators knew the answers and could be sure they were inflicting misery only when the prisoner said something false. The point was to create an illusion of godlike omniscience and omnipotence so that the prisoner would infer, falsely, that his captors always knew when he was lying or withholding information.'

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

"Where babies come from"

Whenever I eventually have to give my kids the "where babies come from" talk, I plan on giving them the full scientific treatment. The discussion will include words such as "chromosome," "ovipositor," "meiosis", "fission," and "spermacyte." There will be a brief discussion on alternatives to mammalian fertilization techniques, including ovuliparity (external fertilization, as in fish), oviparity (internal fertilization but egg-laying, as in birds), and viviparity (internal fertilization, as in mammals).

Then I will simply say, off-handedly, "humans are a hemotrophic viviparous species like most other mammals," and refer them to textbooks for further details.

My kids will know so much about sex that they'll view it as boring stuff for old people only.

'My dad said a penis is kind of like a mammalian ovipositor for males, except instead of a rotting tree, the host is a female of the same species, and fecundation occurs after implantation instead of before. Yech. Oh yeah, and there's some kind of pleasure stimulus involved.'

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Doubt is essential to faith?

Lesley Hazleton has a talk in which she thoughtfully asserts the importance of doubt.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lesley_hazleton_the_doubt_essential_to_faith.html

I see her point, but I think she misstates things when she says that the absence of doubt leaves behind nothing but fanaticism. I think a willingness to entertain doubt to far more important than doubt.

It doesn't particularly matter at any given moment whether I doubt a proposition, say, the reality of my own mind as an actual mind (as distinct from "the brain": a stimulus-response system constructed from neurons and governed entirely by physical laws) as long as I am willing to entertain doubt if and when it becomes appropriate. (Say, someone manages to build a device which can control my mind.)

I understand the Pythagorean theorem well enough that I have zero doubt of its truth (in the Euclidean domain). Hazleton's formulation would make that lack of doubt a statement of arrogance, fanaticism, and self-righteous zeal, but in fact it's nothing of the kind. It is simply knowledge. I am willing to allow challenges to that knowledge, but I know full well that those challenges will be met. I have comprehended it and it is true.

Faith is what you do while you are waiting for either falsification or comprehension.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Excessive Force

Snippets from a fascinating article on modern law enforcement.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/

Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn't a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.

Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. "To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends," a friend of Culosi's told me shortly after his death. "None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia–Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation." Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that's when they brought in the SWAT team.

On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadn't slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi's heart.

Sal Culosi's last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: "Dude, what are you doing?"

[snip]

Indeed, that's exactly what happened to seventy-two-year-old Aaron Awtry in 2010. Awtry was hosting a poker tournament in his Greenville, South Carolina, home when police began breaking down the door with a battering ram. Awtry had begun carrying a gun after being robbed. Thinking he was about to be robbed again, he fired through the door, wounding Deputy Matthew May in both arms. The other officers opened fire into the building. Miraculously, only Awtry was hit. As he fell back into a hallway, other players reporting him asking, "Why didn't you tell me it was the cops?" The raid team claimed they knocked and announced several times before putting ram to door, but other players said they heard no knock or announcement. When Awtry recovered, he was charged with attempted murder. As part of an agreement, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. Police had broken up Awtry's games in the past. But on those occasions, they had knocked and waited, he had let them in peacefully, and he'd been given a $100 fine.

[snip]

In 2010 a massive Maricopa County SWAT team, including a tank and several armored vehicles, raided the home of Jesus Llovera. The tank in fact drove straight into Llovera's living room. Driving the tank? Action movie star Steven Seagal, whom Sheriff Joe Arpaio had recently deputized. Seagal had also been putting on the camouflage to help Arpaio with his controversial immigration raids. All of this, by the way, was getting caught on film. Seagal's adventures in Maricopa County would make up the next season of the A&E TV series Steven Seagal, Lawman.
Llovera's suspected crime? Cockfighting. Critics said that Arpaio and Seagal brought an army to arrest a man suspected of fighting chickens to play for the cameras. Seagal's explanation for the show of force: "Animal cruelty is one of my pet peeves." All of Llovera's chickens were euthanized. During the raid, the police also killed his dog.

[snip]

But Stamper says that like many aspects of modern policing, dog shootings may have had a legitimate origin, but the practice has since become a symptom of the mind-set behind a militarized police culture. "Among other things, it really shows a lack of imagination. These guys think that the only solution to a dog that's yapping or charging is shooting and killing it. That's all they know. It goes with this notion that police officers have to control every situation, to control all the variables. That's an awesome responsibility, and if you take it on, you're caving to delusion. You no longer exercise discrimination or discretion. You have to control, and the way you control is with authority, power, and force. With a dog, the easiest way to take control is to simply kill it. I mean, especially if there are no consequences for doing so."

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Religious analogy

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/07/02/stranger-in-a-mormon-land

My visit to the Mormon ward was far removed from all of those experiences.

The closest analogy might be something along these lines: Imagine that you are an observant Jew attending a Christian church for the first time. There are many things that you will recognize, including concepts and even scriptures, but they will be recast in a way that is weird, in fact, utterly foreign to you.

Sure, members of this relatively new faith will use the same Hebrew Bible, but they will call it something different, the "Old Testament," which hints at a divide. They also use other authoritative books, and their method of interpretation has little to nothing to do with your own tradition. They have transformed the Passover meal into something barely recognizable to you. They profess faith in a messiah, but their idea of him is different from your own hopeful notion of the savior of the Jewish people and the world. They affirm the truth of your religion to a point, but insist on a newer, fuller revelation from God that has superseded yours, and invite you to join them in this final dispensation.

My visit to the Mormon ward was a bit like that...

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Bunny inspectors redux

[Cc B. and K.]

D.,

This may amuse you if you're in the right humor. USDA regulations now say magicians' rabbits need full-scale disaster plan. Death by paperwork.

-M.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/1/agriculture-department-tells-magician-write-disast/

"My USDA rabbit license requirement has taken another ridiculous twist," he continued. "I just received an 8 page letter from the USDA, telling me that by July 29 I need to have in place a written disaster plan, detailing all the steps I would take to help get my rabbit through a disaster, such as a tornado, fire, flood, etc. They not only want to know how I will protect my rabbit during a disaster, but also what I will do after the disaster, to make sure my rabbit gets cared for properly. I am not kidding–before the end of July I need to have this written rabbit disaster plan in place, or I am breaking the law."

Mr. Hahne also detailed the guidelines the USDA reportedly gave him:

• The new regulation became effective Jan. 30, 2012.

• The written plan must be completed by July 29, 2013.

• Mr. Hahne and his wife, Brenda, must be trained to implement the plan as written.

• The written plan must be available for review by USDA inspectors by Sept. 28, 2013.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Intelligence and agency

[Note: I could be wrong about everything. I frequently am. I do however find my own insights convincing or I wouldn't bother to share them. ]

Dear Sister G.,

"Intelligence." "Agent." These words are used in the scriptures. I think they are well-chosen. Obviously the gospel concept predates the word choice--the gospel was true before English was invented--but I think Joseph Smith did an even better job than he probably knew, translating them into English.

The scriptures say that men are "agents unto themselves," and the JST of Moses 7:13 says, "in the garden of Eden, man had agency." The word "agent" comes from Latin "agere" (ago/agere/egi/actus). Textbooks often give the meaning as "to do, to act, to make, etc." but what it really is is a generic verb which gets its specific meaning from the associated noun, just like the English word "do." (Consider the difference between "I did my taxes", "I did the dishes", "I did my duty", and "I did him in".) Basically it means "to whatchamacallit." In English, "agent" can refer to something which catalyzes or acts (as in chemistry, or expressions like "agent of change"), or to someone who acts ON ANOTHER'S BEHALF. When the scriptures say then that men are "agents unto themselves," I feel like the Lord intends for us to see 1.) we have the power to act, to do, to make, etc., 2.) when we do so, we represent ourselves--but we also have the choice to become HIS agents, to act at his direction and on his behalf. It's a good, subtle choice of word and I love it.

The scriptures also talk about "intelligence," especially in D&C 93 (which refers to "intelligence" as a singular undifferentiated "mass noun" like "information", without discrete subsets) and in Abraham 3 (which refers to "intelligences" as a synonym for premortal spirits). The word "intelligence" comes from Latin "intellegere" (intellego/intellegere/intellegi/intellectus), which textbooks say means "to understand." It comes from "legere" (lego/legere/legi/lectus) which means "to read". "Inter" (between) + "legere" (to read) = "to read between [the lines]", "to understand". But here's the neat thing: I learned a few years back that the original meaning of "legere" was actually "to choose." Because reading consisted of picking the right meaning out of a set of letters, "legere" also came to mean "to read" as well as "to choose". So "intellegere" not only means "to read between", it must also mean "to choose between". That makes "intelligence" an extremely appropriate word for the scriptural concept of that which not only sees and understands, but also chooses a course of action.

We are intelligence, endowed with agency.

Love,

Max

P.S. Moses 7:13 originally said, "the Lord said unto Enoch, behold, these thy brethren, they are the workmanship of mine own hands, & I gave unto them their knowledge in the day that I created them & in the Garden of Eden gave I unto man his agency;". During revisions by the Prophet, the word "knowledge" was crossed out and replaced by "intelligence", the phrase "in the day that I created them" was crossed out, "gave I unto" was crossed out, and "his" was partially crossed out and rewritten as "has". "I gave unto them their knowledge & in the Garden of Eden man had agency;"

I mention this both because it's interesting doctrinally and because it says something interesting about the process by which revelation comes: line upon line, precept upon precept.

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Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Textbook awesome

Dear B.,

Today I read a truly awesome sentence in a genetics textbook.

I don't know how much you remember about cellular meiosis, but to refresh your memory: in cellular mitosis, a cell splits into two cells, each with its same chromosome count. In meiosis, a cell splits into four cells, each of which has the normal chromosome count, so that it can be combined with another cell during fertilization to produce a new organism. The reason this works is that before mitosis or meiosis, each chromosome builds up an extra chromotid--a copy of itself, still attached to the original chromosome through a centromere--which splits during meiosis to produce two chromosomes.

The splitting takes place in two phases. In the first part, the two versions of each chromosome (e.g. the X chromosome you got from your mom and the one you got from your dad) pair up into what are called "bivalents": like two little X's attached to each other. Then one chromotid of each swaps parts of itself with a chromotid from the other, so you wind up with four chromatids (one identical to the mother's, one identical to the father's, and two that are part of each). Then the cell splits, and one chromosome goes to each new cell. In the second phase, the chromosome itself splits the chromatids apart, and the cell splits again, with each cell getting one chromatid. (This second part is just like mitosis, only the cell already only has half the right number of chromosomes.)

Okay, so the awesome sentence went something like this: "During zygotene [a subphase of meiosis], each chromosome somehow seeks out its homologous pairing in order to recombine." Key word there: "somehow." The textbook went on to acknowledge that the mechanism is not well-understood. It's kind of mind-boggling when you think about it: if a chromosome is just a string of genes, how does your chromosome #11 from your mom know that it's chromosome #11 and is supposed to pair up with your other chromosome #11 from your dad? Rather, the chromosome itself MUST have some extra information that says, "Hey, I'm a #11" The reason I think this is awesome is that here is a fascinating scientific question that most textbooks would probably just gloss over because the answer isn't known, but THIS textbook specifically calls out the fact that the answer isn't known--and questions are the essence of science. Knowing how to ask questions, and what to do to find real answers, and tell them from false answers.

I wish this kind of thing were more common. I wish the average 10th-grade high school student finished the school year knowing more than just a bunch of facts and accepted theories about biology--I want them to know what we don't know as well. Do we know where new phenotypes originate? (If a giraffe evolves a longer neck, where did the gene for longer necks come from in the first place?) That evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium that you just taught us--do we know if it's true based on paleontological evidence, or is it just a theory still looking for evidence? Do we really understand how neurons pass information to each other? How do homologous chromosomes find each other? (Maybe there are answers to some of these questions. It's hard for me to tell the difference between 'the details are so complicated that I just won't mention them here' and 'nobody knows how it works but I don't want to admit that in a textbook.' It seems like you need a lot of expertise in a subject to be able to confidently assess which questions are unsolved--you can't easily learn this on your own even with the Internet, which is another reason it should be in textbooks.)

"Somehow." This is my new favorite science word.

Love,

Max

-- 

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Hydrogen generation

Replacement for platinum in electrophoresis?

http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/Schaak6-2013

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I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

'If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser you will enter heaven, and if you will follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my back load. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you.'