I don't know, but . . .

Friday, June 03, 2005

Culture, Music, Humor, Misc

Updated 3-Nov-2005

Books

I like to read. I ride the bus. A natural fit... (Who has time to read at home?) Conversations with great and not-so-great minds of the past and present . . . Updated 3-Nov-2005

Science index (obsolete)

Things that stirred my curiosity. Updated 3-Nov-2005

Religion

Observations, mostly about Christianity: Updated 3-Nov-2005

War: obsolete index

War: Blogger won't let me edit the old index posts, so I have to republish them

War

Everybody else already put their oars in, so I guess it is my turn.
Updated 3-Nov-2005
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
...
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace.

A different kind of farm

We've put together a moderately large compute server farm here, and the heat load it puts on the air handler is substantial. We're watching the room temperature graphs, and when the outside air goes about 80 or so we start to lose cooling capacity and our temperature goes up. So, we'll have to watch the weather reports and if it looks like it'll get too hot, we'll have to turn off a rack. Farmers always have to keep an eye on the weather, I suppose.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

I'd seen the first book around the second-hand shops for some years, but nothing about the blurb grabbed me. Another "series writer," so what.

And I didn't make the connection with a series of other books he wrote: Leah, Rachel, and others.

But I read some online comics, and apparently Card stirred up a huge furor: the word betrayal turned up frequently. Hmm? The complaints boiled down to "He wrote so movingly of acceptance and understanding of even the most outcast, and then he wrote this."

That told me a few things: Apparently I'd missed out on a very well-respected as well as popular author, and apparently he was a deep enough writer to understand both toleration (mercy) and judgement, which LeGuin, for all her skill, is not.

The library kept Ender's Game in the Young Adult section; which made it a bit hard to find at first. (I don't understand at all how they decide what goes in that category.)

The thesis of Ender's Game is that an alien insectoid species (Buggers) have twice attacked Earth, which has, under a compromise government, mobilized a space force to defend humanity. The children with the most promising sets of skills and psychological profile (as tested, anyway) are taken to a space station to Battle School. There, though they have ordinary courses, they learn leadership and innovation through (safe) combat games.

Ender is a (rare) third child. Both his older brother and sister were tested and rejected--the brother too vicious, the sister too mild--but all are off-the-charts brilliant. Little, and often a target, Ender goes to Battle School, where he shines despite the harsh treatment and crushing pressure--external and internal.

That much doesn't give anything away. The story is not suspenseful in the sense that there's any doubt who will be the commander--the title tells you that already. But it is a good story about how to try to train someone to be empathic enough to be a good leader, empathic enough to figure out and respond to an alien enemy's strategy, and ruthless enough to destroy and to spend your own men to destroy.

So I picked up Ender's Shadow, a "parallel" book written much later, and from the point of view of Bean, an even younger and brighter child than Ender. Not quite as moving, but well done, and obviously designed as part of a series (which, lo and behold, it is).

Tastes will vary, but I recommend the book.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Band Concert

Tonight was the final high school band concert of the year, and MD Middle Daughter played tuba in the last band. I took piano lessons for a while, but the metronome and I never got along and now I play the radio. It's always a little miraculous to hear someone getting music out of what I only make noise with.

The program order was slightly scrambled, and the sound of the bands was good. The Northwoods piece by Robert Smith was maybe a bit heavy on unusual instrumentation (a saw, bowing muted and unmuted cymbols), but a good time was had.

Up until the final band, with MD. Pastorale went fine, but then something broke on one of the bassoons, and Whatsover Things has a bassoon duet at the beginning. Thus; a plea for a match or a lighter. A student from the back provided a lighter, and announced that it was from "Chad." We had a brief intermission for a soldering session, and when it became clear that it was trickier work than at first appeared, the awards people took the stage. Next year they need to rethink how to manage handing school letters to 34 people on a crowded stage.

The bassoons sounded fine, (as did the tubas!), and then came the student's awards to the teachers. MD complained afterwards that the intermissions dried up the emotional drive.

And the final piece was The Stars and Stripes Forever, with soloists and others coming forward near the end to be heard better.

The contrast of Sousa and almost all the other composers was dramatic. "Fantasy," "rhapsody," "voices of" all meant the music didn't have a strong central theme and drive; but that it tried on one theme for a while, and then did a little color, and tried another theme. OK, Mozart is always strong, I meant the others.

A pleasant evening; and I'm proud of MD.

Contrasts

In the checkout line ahead of me at Walmart Monday was a slim woman in ultra-short shorts and a long-sleeved shirt; with long long tanned legs and very pale face and hands.

Citizen of where?

Koromah Boykins wants to be Don Quixote. "Boykins is among a growing number of African-Americans seeking citizenship in Liberia."

Charles L. Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer of Restore Negroes Heritage to Africa says the thing that stands out the most in his mind is, "there are lots of ordinary Liberians who believe that Liberia was founded as a homeland for freed slaves from America, their descendants, and all people of color who want to live free. That premise we can say is long forgotten, and is totally unfulfilled. Many of the founding fathers descendants who are citizens of Liberia continue to serve the Caucasians of the Western world until this day," says Jones.
Jones says he himself has been involved in trying to reclaim his citizenship from Liberia. "I've been doing this since 1999, when I got back from Liberia, went to the U.S. State Department to seek help for Liberia because the country was in turmoil. Jones says the state department said they could not provide the kind of help that he was seeking, but you can help if you go to Liberia and run from president.
" How can I stand for president in a country I'm not citizen of. Jones says the state department official informed him: "that's where you are wrong, You and every black American are citizens of Liberia."
Jones says when he asked whether there any documents to that effect he was told to conduct research which he eventual did.
"I went and found them on the internet, on the archives and the Liberian congress. It has what is known as Article 9. 1839.
"I'm not a stranger to Liberia or Africa. I have spent fifteen or more years in Liberia. I found many people in the country who agreed with my philosophy. So that's how long I've been involved, he says.
"Once we claim our citizenship to Liberia then we will be restoring our heritage to Africa," says Jones. Jones said the problem now facing him and others seeking Liberian citizenship is whether to put Liberia in a court of law and let the courts interpret the issue as whether they are legitimate citizens of Liberia or not. Or apply for the rights to become citizens of Liberia.

Where do I start? Jones wants to dredge up superceded laws to give him access to another country. I have a picture of a State Department functionary, sick to death of a boring pest, who decides to play on the credulity of his tormenter. Or perhaps State has some genuine nutcases who dislike their own country aboard--there's some evidence for that.

Do we know this family?

Boykins says the meeting was timely and nice. "My family was happy to know that they have a background in Liberia. My grandfather was born in Liberia from the Koromah and massaquoi family. My father, Robert Boykins, is a resident in Baltimore, Maryland.

And Koromah wants to get the British government to persuade Sierra Leone to give him some property that his family may or may not have had a right to back in a day when there was no Liberian government control of the region in question.

In 1989, following the death of Koromah's grandfather George M. Koromah Sr, the family discussed what what was going to be done with the property in Soulema, Sierra Leone. "Our portfolio left by grandfather led to the research of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 These deeds led me to London to inspect the registrar and found everything to be legitimate," says Koromah
"England takes the territory so long in dispute, and which covers a line of sea coast of some forty miles, by cession direct of the so-called King of the Gallinas and Chiefs of the neighboring country, in an " Agreement" concluded at Solymah, March 30, 1882 with Governor Haveloc, which agreement was not ratified for nearly a year, as appears by the Governor's Proclamation of March 19, 1883, conveying "Her Majesty's confirmation and acceptance."
The Region "annexed is described as bordering on the Atlantic Ocean and Extending a "Distance inland of half a mile from high water," and intended " as part of the colony of Sierra Leone." The consideration is an annual stipend of 210 pounds distributed among fifteen native princes and headmen in sums of from 5 pounds to 30 pounds, payment to begin at once.

Somebody needs to take Koromah aside and remind him that the law is generally quite practical. Hundred-year old claims in a land where government has been a rarity are worth precisely nothing. The US is fairly generous with dual citizenship, but not that generous. And blaming all your woes on the "Caucasians" will get you lots of shoulders to cry on, but not a lot of practical help.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Joyful Noise

#3 daughter played percussion in a small ensemble for home schoolers yesterday. She began percussion 6 months ago, with a practice pad and bells set, and got into the ensemble in January. I asked ber, "Now that you've played for six months and been in a concert, how do you like percussion?"

"I like it. I like drums better than wind instruments. Drums don't squeak!"

In transit

The road to church is under construction, which gives us an excuse to drive our favorite back roads. #2 son asked, "Aren't you going the wrong way?"

#1 son answered, "The road's under construction. So the wrong way is now the right way."

mrs james

Monday, May 23, 2005

Revenge of the Sith

In The Empire Strikes Back we see Yoda as a mysterious and powerful Master. In The Return of the Jedi we see that Yoda could be wrong. And now, in Revenge of the Sith, we see Yoda as a blundering fathead. In the pivotal scene, when a miserable Anakin is looking for advice about his wife, the great Yoda delivers a Buddhist sermon on the virtues of detachment.

I guess this is supposed to tie in with the whole vague business of "balance" (the Jedi clearly didn't have both oars in the water if they'd countentance things like "truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view"), but I can't be bothered to work out continuity issues for Lucas. He swears there were to be no movie sequels, but one scene leaves an opening for sequels, or for a TV series. . .

Lucas is very good at spectacle, and he delivers. The dialog isn't quite as bad as I'd expected, but the poor dialog and vague acting completely undermine what should have been a climactic scene when Anakin swears himself to the Emperor.

And Lucas tries to lay the foundations for the rest (first) of the series and tie things together, and does a pretty decent job of it. He's never worried too terribly much about continuity before; making sure the plot runs fast has been more important. And so, dark tone or no, it is a pretty fun movie.

But for crying out loud: After nine hundred years, Master grammar Yoda cannot?

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Animal Rights

Peter Young was caught recently. He is a member of the Animal Liberation Front, and was sought for his role in "releasing" hundreds of minks.

They were indicted in 1998 on federal charges including interfering with interstate commerce by threat or violence. Federal authorities call it an animal terrorism charge. Sympathizers scoff at the charges, the most serious of which carry up to 20 years behind bars. "It's a funny terrorist who doesn't harm a single human being," said Steven Best, author of "Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals."

But ALF is a terrorist group, well known for intimidation campaigns. I find it incredible that people can actually believe the sorts of things they do, but they can and do and their hatred is consistent.

"Antibiotic" beer?

National Geographic has an article on how ancient Nubians wound up with tetracycline in their bones.

The bones, the researchers say, contain traces of the antibiotic tetracycline. Today tetracycline is used to treat ailments ranging from acne flare-ups to urinary-tract infections. But the antibiotic only came into commercial use half a century ago. So how did tetracycline get into the Nubian bones? Armelagos and his team say they found an answer in ancient beer. The brew was made from grain contaminated with the bacteria streptomycedes, which produces tetracycline. The ancient Nubians, according to Armelagos, stored their grain in mud bins. A soil bacteria, streptomycedes is ubiquitous in arid climates like Sudan's. "We looked at how the grain was used then and came across a recipe for beer," Armelagos said. The Nubians would make dough with the grain, bake it briefly at a hot temperature, and then use it to make beer.

He goes on to cross-reference their neighbors, the Egyptians, who had a written language (I've no idea why the Nubians wouldn't--they borrowed so much else from the Egyptians, it would be crazy not to learn to write. Maybe they just didn't like writing on stone, or didn't have stuff as durable as papyrus)

Armelagos said the Egyptians used beer as a gum-disease treatment, a dressing for wounds, and even an anal fumiganta vaporborne pesticide to treat diseases of the anus. The anthropologist also believes the tetracycline protected the Nubians from bone infections, as all the bones he examined are infection free.

They don't mention Egyptian bones, and I suspect the Egyptian beer was not similarly innoculated, so I suspect their pharmaceutical uses of beer related more to the alcohol content.

Juxtapositions

Our library has a cart by the checkout line called "Your Lucky Day," where they put new arrivals. You can be the first to read a book they just bought. Monday the shelf was almost bare. There were a few DVDs; mostly "Arthur" this and Arthur that. Right next to "Arthur's Vacation" was "Un Chien Andalou." Hello Dali?

Friday, May 13, 2005

Remodeling and leak-proofing

The large lecture hall was remodeled during the Chamberlin Hall work, to allow for more electronics and for a lecture demonstration prep room in back. The old hall (it is underground) leaked a bit, so the powers-that-be took this opportunity to reseal the courtyard above it. For a couple of weeks workers stripped out the old loose sealant in the cracks, cleaned and ground out the cracks, and filled them with brand new goo.

Apparently they also flushed out the accumulated silt that slowed water flow, because the new hall leaks worse than before, and the prep room has a substantial puddle in the middle of the floor. Dedication is coming up soon . . .

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Problem solving

Our youngest had the following problem in his math homework the other day (I don't remember exact wording): "One student brings a brown bag lunch to school every day for a year. This generates 67 lbs of trash. If everyone in your class brings bag lunches to school for a year, how much trash will that make?" He crunched the numbers.

The next question: "What could you do to reduce the amount of trash?" His answer: "Home school."

mrs james

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Immigrants

Middle Daughter MD noticed a new student (he's in the local paper today) earlier this school year. He was tall, black, and didn't slouch. Her first thought that day was "He must be an immigrant."

And so he was, and apparently a fine student and athlete. Interesting that "not slouching" is the mark of a foreigner.

Very odd, but not really complaining

Earlier this year, Middle Daughter MD had her calculator stolen from her band locker. It was pretty distinctive, with duct tape and her and her brother's names written all over it. Luckily the graphing functions (required for Algebra classes) weren't actually needed in Physics class, so we were able to find a suitable replacement.

Last week, the calculator reappeared, sans duct tape, in her locker. There's a kind of honesty there . . .

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Chimeras?

From the NY Times article: Chimerism--having cells from another person in your body.

One route to this odd state, called chimerism, is the vanishing twin. Dr. Helain Landy of Georgetown University, who has no involvement in the Hamilton case, has found that 20 to 30 percent of pregnancies that start out as twins end up as single babies, with one twin being absorbed by the mother during the first trimester.
Others researchers have found that in some cases, before the twin is absorbed, some of its cells enter the body of the other fetus and remain there for life. The cells can include bone marrow stem cells, the progenitors of blood cells.
Another route to chimerism is through the cells that routinely pass from a mother to fetus and remain there for life.

Perhaps instead we should think about reinterpreting the meaning of the DNA analysis. Does the "chimerism rate" represent an error rate in the tests?

So many "breakthroughs" have been anounced based on DNA analysis that I'm starting to become quite skeptical. Every other month or so we hear that animal X is really related to animal Y instead of the animal Z that it looks just like.

Maybe.

School violence and inequality

OK, which is the cause and which is the effect? LeTendre and Baker say that

"The more school systems produce a set of academic winners and losers, the more likely they are to create an atmosphere leading to in-school violence. This does not mean that nations should stop trying to raise scores, but they should be careful to raise the performance among all students. Persistent inequality in national resources produces both long-term and immediate problems for nations, the most pressing of which may be school violence."

I haven't read the book, but the the Penn State press release doesn't indicate how they tried to distinguish causes from effects, and they seem to rely on student evaluation of how violent a school is--which is a bit unobjective, to say the least.

I wouldn't rule out the theory that both violence in schools and inequity in performance stem from the same source. In this country you can very plausibly argue that an aggressively anti-establishment subculture (which I call a "ghetto subculture") drives both school violence and degraded performance. So which do you try to deal with first? Do you try a zero-tolerance policy for school violence? Do you try to hire more teachers (oops--they don't like being attacked in the halls either)? Do you try to address the underlying cultural conflict between civilization and barbarism?

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Mother's Day

Pneumonia knocks the stuffings out of people. Mom's been home for almost a week now, hadn't finished a sentence all week. Voice sometimes stronger, sometimes not.

Yesterday I replanted the flowerpots on her patio for Mothers' Day. We wheeled her into the living room (O2 concentrator has 50 feet of line) so she could see them. I said she could either enjoy the fresh air and look at the patio flowers, or get dressed and we'd go for a drive. Took her for a half hour drive, past the llama and sheep farm, brief stop at the truck stop famous for massive cream puffs, then through the park and home. Had a small slice of the cream puff and she was ready to take a nap, but color looked better.

This morning I have been blessed with a plush Rose Breasted Grosbeak, courtesy of #1 son; a Lindt raspberry chocolate bar, from #3 daughter, and a yellow feathered memo clip from #2 son. We're taking Mothers' Day in installments so that kids can take turns spending a little time with Grandma.

Yes, I'm cooking on Mothers' Day. But everybody else gets to clean up.

mrs james

Saturday, May 07, 2005

Wood in Ancient Rome

Youngest Daughter (YD) is studying Ancient Rome, with particular fascination with Pompeii and Herculaneum. One curiosity, to my eyes at least, is the paucity of furniture in Roman homes. The books applaud this as a lack of clutter, but I'm a bit puzzled. Cabinets are such useful things . . .

Perhaps this was just the fashion at the time, or perhaps termites were so troublesome that wooden furniture wasn't all that desirable.

Or perhaps wood was just hard to come by. If they burned their forests for cooking and cremations, then after you've built a few ships furniture starts to get rather expensive. But I can't get the numbers to come out right--I keep estimating only a few square km per year deforested.

From the Cranky Professor
.....Deforestation is greatly overstated in most of the current histories (esp. the popular ones). Archaeology is beginning to show that the flora base of the Mediterranean has never really been all that different during human history (at least for the last 15,000 years or so). Poets weeping about deforestation seem to be engaging in an "everything runs down" theme rather than real observation. My copy of _The_Corrupting_Sea_ is at school or I'd offer some references.
.....Furniture almost never survives. ALL the surviving ancient furniture is accidental. We would have had much more from Pompeii if they'd invented the plaster-casting-the-voids technique earlier. There is a significant amount of hardware surviving from chests. On the other hand, the rooms probably were simpler than ours.

Music tryouts

As YS is heading for Middle School next fall, we insisted that he try out various instruments for orchestra or band. (He's been learning piano and basic percussion at home.) He vehemently rejected the tuba: "Playing the tuba is too much for my lips!"

Creativity

On the lighter side, Youngest Son (YS) has been reading The Way Things Work, that entertaining work which uses mammoths to illustrate principles of science and technology. (I recommend it.) YS decided to recreate the descriptions of various scenes involving levers and mechanics using Legos, a small stuffed mammoth, and some yarn. He did a darn good job, too--his improvised pulley worked. Hours of fun acting out scenes from the book . . .

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Near death

I got a call Tuesday at 4:20 in the morning saying that my mother-in-law was "in the process of dying," and would I like to notify my wife. That proved a bit difficult, but I eventually got word to her.

In the meantime I was sitting by my mother-in-law's bed, talking to her and reading some familiar Bible passages to her. Over the hours she started breathing regularly again, and by the time my wife was able to get there I think the original hospice nurse would have had a different opinion. Certainly the new one did. The chaplain came and talked about death issues, and the patient's breathing became more and more regular.

She's partly recovered now, able to eat some things and talk a little--and object to "the valley of the shadow of death" when the chaplain was reading the 23'rd Psalm. A sense of humor again . ..

I'm pretty tired; my wife is even more so. The homeschool schedule went ashcan, but I'm not as worried about that as the beancounters at Education: a lot of the most important things to learn aren't in the curriciculum.

One day at a time.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Train horns and clarinets

Yesterday I took #2 son to see a friend's model railroad layout. Imagine a basement area about 12' x 15', with an HO scale layout around the edges and a long peninsula of track down the middle, set at chest high. Miniature billboards ca. 1950, names of railroad lines on the boxcars that you haven't seen for decades because they have disappeared under conglomerate logos and graffiti. Houses and businesses and miniature people, and a tiny cat, less than a centimeter, curled up on the roof of an 8" farm house. Trees made of winter weed tops about 5" tall and sprayed green, a few of which had been felled by an adventuresome mouse who wanted to build her nest in one of the tunnels.

We then went to meet #1 daughter on campus, after a Geology field trip. While waiting we channel hopped on the radio and ran across a clarinet concerto; written to be a bit dissonant in places but played with grace. Since #2 son had recently tried mouthpieces for band instruments (looking forward to band at the middle school next year) and since he'd done especially well with the clarinet, he was interested to hear what you could do with a clarinet. I explained to him what a concerto was and pointed out a few details, but mostly we just listened. When we picked up his sister, he told her about the trains and the "clarinet contralto."

mrs james

Saturday, April 23, 2005

One of those days

My better half is extremely tired today, and told me "I'm coherent as long as I don't try to talk."

Friday, April 22, 2005

Non-essential services

The University's main computer systems had some cooling problems this morning , so they closed down some non-essential systems. They kept "our major systems, i.e., WiscMail, WiscCal, etc." going, but library access was turned off. That says something interesting about the nature of the work we do here, and what we find most important . . .

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

OK, I like this

Work is play when pumping water.

Monday, April 18, 2005

The price of fame

I wrote in a comment to somebody's advice column, and the columnist printed it,with my name on. Ok, that's how she usually does it; no surprise there. But a nice old slightly cracked lady called me the afternoon the column appeared, with a rambling commentary that I found a nice polite way of deflecting and ending.

Posted a comment to a news blog and got a certain amount of tinfoil beanie snarkiness in response. That'll teach me to watch my wording.

mrs james

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Death on a Friday Afternoon by Richard John Neuhaus

Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross

The book is in the form of a reflection of meditation. I hope speed-readers (I often wish I were one) will find themselves slowing down and maybe even putting the book aside from time to time just to think about the mystery. The book is not entirely meditative, however. Arguments are also advanced, and there is some vigorous wrestling with traditional doctrine--"doctrine" being just another word for "teaching"--about the death of Christ. And there are stories about people today who in their troubles find themselves, as they say, at the foot of the cross. Sometimes they find themselves there in anger, sometimes in joy, but always in a deeper awareness of the mystery of their lives within the mystery of life itself

And so it is. Sometimes his "wrestling" with doctrine overwhelms the meditation, as in his defense of the hope that all will be saved, or in listing the (traditional but speculative) virtues of Mary. More often he wrestles with what it means to be a sinner, and how terribly far from God we are even at our best; and how unexpected and yet central Jesus' sacrifice was.

Never mind the warts. Go read it. Slowly.

Friday, April 15, 2005

The Long Truce

by A.J. Conyers

How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit

Conyer's thesis is that the meaning of the word "toleration" began to change back in the 17'th century from a respect for other's values based in humility to its modern meaning, which is a radically solipsistic denial of universal values. This meaning has proved useful to governments interested in power and economic well-being, but inimical to all other social organizations; whether the family or the church or the city or the trade union.

At the conceptual level, what makes this process possible is the steady conversion of society, over a long period of time, but at an accelerated rate in the twentieth century to the notion that social life is framed by a national government at one end and the autonomous individual at the other--the bipolar vision of society. It is a vision that serves the interests of centralized power. This vision contrasts, as we have seen, with Johannes Althusius's understanding of society as a symbiotic relationship of many groups, some more comprehensive than others, from the family, to the collegium, to the community, to the region, to the state, to the church, to the human family as a whole. Each association or group has about it its own goals and its own internal discipline, each linking by degrees and in its own way the individual with the whole of the world, including the state. By this idea, and by the similar Catholic social doctrine of subsidiarity,the state is by no means the only significant social association that an individual belongs to, nor does in constitute what it means for a person to belong to a society. The individual is not first and foremost, let alone exclusively, a citizen of the state.
What we have seen is that the modern doctrine of toleration plays a key role in this process of the bipolarization of society. It has done so, and continues in this role, for the following reason. Each association and group develops out of a sense of its purpose. The purpose might be quite practical and limited, such as one might find as the raison d'etre of the collegium or association of workers and professional people. Or it might exist out of a sense that is highly refined, transcendent, and even theological in nature, such as one finds in the case of the church or a religious body. The more the group exists on the basis of a telos or purpose that transcends in significance the practical purposes of the state (or the ideological vision of the state), it becomes thereby an indegestible, alien, and resistant object that frustrates the simple bipolar power arrangement.
The society that exists easily between the poles of state and individual is a society that has become featureless. It is a society in which "voluntary" organizations decline, as many sociologists have lately observed in the United States. It has become a "mass" society. Its mode of existence is a secular one. And the individual in such a society stands more or less defenseless against the demands of a powerful state. Commenting on the results of the French Revolution, Benjamin Constant saw this operation clearly: "The interests and memories which spring from local customs contain a germ of resistance which is so distasteful to authority that it hastens to uproot it. Authority finds private individuals easier game; its enormous weight can flatten them out effortlessly as if they were so much sand." The idea of toleration, in the modern sense, calls into question the validity and even the ethical appropriateness of attaching oneself too strongly to the kinds of loyalties and the kinds of transcendent convictions that are the very soul of the association. It targets the intractable loyalties, along with the intrinsic disciplines and moral commitments, of the family and the church or the synagogue. It does so not out of a commitment to a certain conspiracy to undo these institutions but out of the tacit and almost intuitive recognition that here are the most formidable barriers to the spreading efficiency of central administration and the centralization of authority. The passions must be harnessed to the larger agenda and not be distributed and made disorderly in the untidy natural associations that spring up so freely in a society not well organized, nor rational, nor subservient to the goals of commerce and power.

The cover illustration was selected to remind us why tolerance is important, now and far more so back in the 1600's. It shows a helpless man being piked by a gang of gleeful murderers: the monk and the cap with the cross giving clues to the motive. When the power of the state was put at the service of enforcing orthodoxy Europe suffered through truly horrible times; times of a cruelty not seen on that scale again until the power of the state was put at the service of enforcing ideological orthodoxy in the twentieth century.

Conyers illustrates the changes in the philosophy of government from Hobbes and Locke to Mill and Dewey: Hobbes' view of meaningless existence seems to have pretty much carried the day. And if there isn't any meaning, the state's purpose of maintaining order isn't limited. Certainly I hear very little of "natural law" in discussions about law: everything revolves around interpretations of statutes, as though the sometimes arbitrary decisions of government were the ultimate definition of law. The current debates about "homosexual marriage" reflect this reductionism: marriage is reduced to a contract (albeit an easily broken one) and the family is merely the company of those covered by such a contract. Does a family really involve no meanings or obligations beyond those spelled out by statute? You'd think people would recognize a reductio ad absurdum, but people can get used to anything, I guess, and it is always possible to make things worse.

Conyers does not offer a cure, exactly--he wants us to change our philosophies of government and toleration to recognize the natural human organizations and to, in humility, recognize that even someone obviously disastrously wrong may somewhere have some insights we lack.

I think he'd have done better to be more explicit in his definition and contrast of the different meanings of toleration.

Someone--I think C.S. Lewis--wrote that many things in a society are as invisible to the people within it as water is to a fish; and that a later historian would look back on the twentieth century and see such fierce adversaries as Hitler and Churchill standing side by side in firm agreement on some ideology. I suspect that Conyers has a piece of that picture here. The West has grown up around the notion of the centralized nation-state, with other institutions and power centers deprecated. Go read the book.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Some info on placebo in rats

I'd puzzled about placebos in rats earlier. I asked Dr. Coe for information, and he was very helpful.

If one broadens the definition a bit to include 'conditioned effects' and anticipatory effects, then there is even more in the animal literature.
For example, one can condition an allergic person to have an allergy and histamine response to a color or odor by associating it just once with the allergen.
An interesting observation in the Viagra studies is that it is hard to see a drug effect over the placebo effects. 30% of men report enhancement of sexual performance when given sugar pills.
In rats I wouldn't necessarily talk about it as placebo, but any time you do something repetitively in animals, they both will anticipate it and show a conditioned response.
Doesn't necessarily even require the brain. Expose a rat repeatedly to bacterial endotoxin, and there is the development of tolerance by the second exposure. So even the immune system has elements of learning and memory.
Habituation and sensitization are important features of many processes, and are probably related to the placebo effect.
Certainly with pain, which is in a real sense a created experience both out in the periphery and in the CNS, there is plenty of opportunity for modulation to occur. We have been conducting studies on fibromyalgia, where there is real pain, but also a big influence of psychological factors on pain symptoms.

In the clouds

Last evening, I was glancing at jet contrail clouds in the clear blue sky. One jet must have been changing altitude, because the contrail bent and spread: it looked like a white cobra rearing up and spreading its hood.

2004 Bumper Stickers

This is Madison, so before 2-Nov-2004 we were awash in Kerry bumper stickers. You could see a few Bush stickers, but I'd guess they were outnumbered 8 to 1 or so. Then we had the election. The next week, the Bush stickers outnumbered Kerry by about 2 to 1. Shame and resignation vs triumphalism? I don't know. But I looked about me recently, and found that Bush stickers were disappearing, leaving about equal numbers.

The funny part is that the number of Feingold stickers has always stayed high, and he wasn't even running in the last election.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Ever heard that old saw, "God doesn't give you anything you can't handle?"

Horsefeathers.

God does not give un anything that He's not prepared to carry us through, every step of the way. God doesn't just know what we need because He's God Almighty and knows everything anyway; He created us, and He also walked the earth as a human being, Jesus, born to a very young mother whose neighbors counted on their fingers to reckon how many months after the wedding that baby showed up. He had to put up with schoolmates who thought He was weird because He never sinned. He lost people He cared about on earth, was rejected by his neighbors and his best friends.

I make this speech again because I have just come back from my Uncle's memorial service. My aunt is one of those Self Reliant New Englanders, who somehow thinks she's supposed to keep everything together and never lose control of herself; who is always taking care of other people. The other day she wondered how long people would want to "babysit" her because she doesn't have it all together. I think on the 17th or 18th or 19th repetition, I finally got across to her that it's ok to let other people take care of you once in a while, and that God doesn't expect her to carry the whole load by herself; He's there for her and He has provided a lot of people who care for her. We read some Psalms together,especially 139.

I appreciate the Navy people who came to help out at the funeral, since my Uncle was a WWII Navy veteran. My aunt had just asked for someone to sound the Bos'n's whistle. They sent the bos'n, a bugler, and a young man who presented the flag; all three of them 19 years old and 5'7 inches tall. They were a very considerate and serious lot. I talked to them briefly afterward; I told them about a few of the Navy careers in our family. They told me a few of theirs; the flag man in particular was proud of his family's service. I said our ancestors made their history; now you're making yours.

mrs james

Sunday, April 10, 2005

WCRP w/ candy

We were faced with a superfluity of Easter candy, including those all-too-soon stale Peeps. I proposed that we buy a Tombstone cheese pizza, sprinkle it with excess Peeps, and make a Peepza.

We didn't.

Saturday, April 09, 2005

John Paul II

I haven't tried to comment on his life and death, partly because I didn't know him very well and those who did have written so much better. I have nothing new to contribute.

And I don't want to spend time kvetching about the ubiquitous commentators whose eulogies boil down to "he was a great man but too traditional." Fisking is a bitter sort of amusement.

Nor do I want to spend time noting all the points we agreed and disagreed on. I don't have to measure everyone against myself.

But I think if he were reading the newspaper stories calling him instrumental in the fall of the Soviet Union, he'd wear a wry smile as he began to recite Psalm 115.

Job Applications

Our middle daughter is looking for a summer job, and among the local stores she visited Jacobsens, a butcher chain that makes very good bratwurst. The lady behind the counter said that they were hiring, and asked if she could be there the next evening (Friday). When middle daughter said no, she had some obligations at church, the wrinkled lip and changed tone suggested that the invitation to fill out an application wasn't quite sincere.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Ah, the joys of taking Asperger kids ("aspies") out in public!

#2 son has all the timing and sense of a rhinoceros. He has memorized half of the science books out there, but doesn't base his own inventions in reality, so started to rattle off some of his far out imaginary inventions at people. Had to remind him a few times to let the presenter say his or her piece.

He passed up Shakashiri in order to see all of the displays; went through them much more slowly than his sister. Not so interested in the biology except the bird beaks, which were more "mechanical"--a tool matched to a bird's beak showing how a bird gets its food. So the "kiwi" beak was chop sticks tied together, for picking gummi worms out of a pile of oreo crumbs, a pelican's beak was a strainer spoon for scooping miniature marshmallows out of a bowl of water, etc.

Spent the most time at the alternative energy display. Saw the solar cooker, made of a plywood box containing a smaller box of cardboard lined with foil, and old newspapers for insulation, with a glass top. Had heard of these, for use in third world countries to keep down overuse of timber resources. #2 son played with a lot of motors, loved his spectrum glasses and the display of spectrography, comparing the spectra of nitrogen, neon, and white light. He didn't like shaking up the vial of wheat germ +water+soap+alcohol for nearly 3 minutes, but did enjoy drawing a lot of DNA goop out of it.

Asked one presenter about his project, which involves controlling runoff at Aldo Leopold Nature Center, which is in our old neighborhood and is a favorite place. Cringed when I heard him talk about a rainstorm as a "rain event."

We brought home a bag of "loot", including his vial of DNA Goop from wheat germ, the prismatic glasses, lots of maps and worksheets. He gave his chocolate covered "Peep" (TM) to his sister.

A good messy time had by all. But my feet hurt.

mrs james

Science Show

The UW held a science exhibition, aimed at younger students. We took our youngest two. The youngest son YS stopped at every booth, and sometimes explained things to the presenter. Our youngest daughter YD was much more picky, but hung around a long time for things like the demonstration of how different bird beaks were used for catching different foods. I made her stick around for the demonstration of spectral lines, but didn't have to ask twice about the chocolate exhibit. They were melting chocolate over oreos--the conveyor belt had lots of holes for excess to drip through, and it bounced to help get all the drips off. She was fascinated by the fetal alcohol syndrome table, with microscopes focussed on chicken embryos. And she stayed for the whole stem cell display. The YS was with my wife, so she'll have to describe his enthusiasms.

Shakashiri's "Science is Fun" chemistry show was put on by a bunch of graduate students, who did a creditable job. Though Mike, the intro guy, might want to tweak his spiel a bit: "Next Saturday we're hosting a "Women in Science" show. There'll also be a hands-on portion of the program ..."

YD was adamant that she didn't want to see Shakashiri, but I made her go anyway, and she was chuckling along with everyone else quickly enough. One reaction was the catalyzed decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, which released oxygen and steam in a plastic bottle (which shrunk). I though it'd have been cool to drop a lit match in the bottle to watch it flare before it hit the water, but they explained later that they'd not ever done that--they didn't like working with oxygen.