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| Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | | 5:38 pm |
Mafia Morality
So those of you who read here a lot have probably noticed that I link things from P.Z. Myers sometimes, because I enjoy his blog. Sometimes he posts examples of e-mails people have sent him, which he thinks are funny, or which he thinks it would be good to respond to publicly, or both. I was reading one such recent post, and came across this: "Indeed, your claim that morality comes from our culture needs to answer the question, "What if my culture is the Mafia?"" What if your culture was the Mafia? As I understand it (bearing in mind that I don't actually know much about Mafia culture), your morality would be mostly based on 1) loyalty to a group 2) submission to authority and 3) the enforcement of purity, especially on women. Add into that your Mafioso comfort with violence, and you'd have basically conservative morality. The difference between you and non-Mafia conservatives would be what group you are loyal to and what authority you enforce submission to. None of it would require any "implantation by God" (though plenty of it can be observed in the bible) and it would tend to set you at odds, as you are presently at odds, with liberals, whose morality is mostly based on 1) reduce harm and 2) treat others fairly, plus the relatively new idea that violence has an intrinsic moral dimension rather than being a neutral tool in the social toolbox for getting what you want. All of these principles with the possible exception of the enforcement of purity, are frequently seen in animals, especially animals that are closely related to humans, and may reasonably be supposed to arise from something common to all species that exhibit them (hint--which is probably not a soul--at least, not a soul as you understand the term.) | | Monday, November 16th, 2009 | | 9:24 pm |
Past few days
1) I crawled around under the house yesterday, insulating pipes and propping up the pink fiberglass insulation that should have been under the floor and in some cases fell on the pipes. Kip was kind enough to come help. My nose ran so badly I had to blow it on my shirt and I got fiberglass itchies on both arms and all around my waist. But it is done. And I am showered and in clean, fiberglass free clothes. I still need to put a heavier grade of vapor barrier plastic under there but that can wait a while. 2) I went canoeing today as a reward. I spent the morning running around doing laundry and dishes, and errands and didn't get ready to go until 3:30. Fortunately I can put the canoe on the car in 20 minutes from a standing start, and take it off in under ten, so I still got in an hour of canoeing before dark. 3) I have got the end assemblies on my workbench done except that I still have to peg the mortise and tenon joints. I am just about ready to start work on the top. It would be great if I could get that done soon... 4) Someone thinks that pro-choice women are ugly. To which I say "Whew!" Why would I want the attention of someone who didn't think I had the right to control my own body? I say "Me too--I'm very ugly. Very VERY ugly. I am soooo ugly that if you ever looked at me, even accidentally, every mirror in your house would simultaneously shatter from the sheer ugliness of it. And your computer would show the blue screen of death for ever. Maybe you'd better stay home with the shades drawn. You know--just to be safe." 5) Someone wants 2009 over. To which I say "what? Skip my birthday and Kip's birthday and Yule? Are you MAD? You want a fresh start--feel free to declare it Jan 1 2010, and just keep repeating that day until the rest of us catch up with you. I will be over here giving presents and getting presents and eating cake. When I'm good and ready to be done--which will happen, eventually, because nobody can eat cake forever--I'll let you know." | | Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | | 9:07 pm |
Signal Boost
Naomi is a friend and she needs help.What she most needs is a job either for herself or for her partner Callie. But until they find one (or more) of those, she needs to be able to feed her kids and pay her rent. I have already sent what I can this month. I'm working out ways (soda pop is bad for me anyway; I don't need a Kindle subscription to the NYT blog when I can get it on computer; I've been planning for a long time to dial down the DSL speed but hadn't gotten to it; I *like* ramen now and again) to trim some of the fat out of the budget so I'll have something to send next month too. But it won't be much. It won't be anything like what a household of four needs to make it through another month of looking for work. I can't help enough by myself. But together--together even people who can't give much can give a lot. Naomi has a paypal account. Her e-mail address is in her post. Or you can e-mail her for her snail-mail address (which is what I did). Please help. | | 4:17 pm |
Regarding Maine
I know perfectly well that I am lucky that I was able to marry the person I love best in all the world. I know perfectly well that there are lots of my fellow Americans, my fellow humans, out there who aren't allowed to do that. I don't think that's fair. It takes no courage to say it, here on the anonymous Internet, but I say it anyway, hoping getting in the habit will mean that when I meet bigotry face to face it will pop out of my mouth before I think.. Marriage is a basic human right. Depriving gays and lesbians of it is wrong, small-minded, mean-spirited and derives from the worst, cruelest, pettiest, most selfish and frightened little corners of a soul. You could be better than this. You * are* better than this. I expect better of you.It's only a matter of time, you know. You are fighting a doomed rear-guard action; if you don't overturn this injustice, your children will; if they don't, their children will. But you could be the first in your line who rise to the level of treating others humanely even when they are different from you. I'm waiting. Because Matthew Shepard Can't, & I Can - THAT'S why.
| | Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | | 7:38 pm |
Interesting article, but I think they haven't thought it through
There's an interesting article here in the New York Times. Basically the gist of it is that Fox News has been partisan all along (since 2001 at least, which is the earliest they looked at) but got more so during the Bush administrations. However other news outlets, originally pretty much even in Democratic vs Republican viewers, by 2008-2009 were about 50% Democratic to about 25% Republican (very roughly; see the article for the exact numbers.) They take this as evidence of increasing partisanship on the part of these news outlets. However, remember this article I posted about earlier? The one about how nearly two thirds of Republicans believe that Obama is part of a conspiracy to deliberately destroy the United States of America? And how they think people who don't share their belief are the enemy? What if they decided they weren't going to watch news programs from "the enemy"? Let's run a quick set of numbers 2004-2005 Fox News MSNBC 51% 40% Republican 31% 42% Democratic 18% 18% Other Suppose we have 100 viewers for MSNBC. Now suppose that 2/3 of the Republican viewers quit watching MSNBC because that news corporation does not seem to share the belief that Obama is part of a conspiracy to deliberately destroy the country, and why watch news from the enemy; it will only be lies anyway. MNSBC had 40 Republican viewers so 2/3 of that would be about 26, leaving 14 Republican viewers who haven't abandoned MSNBC. Now MSNBC has 14 Republican viewers, 42 Democratic viewers and 18 viewers who are neither (Independents I guess) for 74 total viewers. 14/74 gives 19% Republicans. 42/74 gives 57% Democrats and 18/74 gives 24% Other. Suppose those 26 Republicans went to Fox News.--wait I can't do that because that contains the implicit assumption that Fox News viewership and MSNBC viewership started out equal and I don't know that's the case. Hmm. We can still look at MSNBC, though. 2008-2009 MSNBC (article) (2004 minus conspiracy theorists) 28% 19% Republican 57% 57% Democratic 15% 24% Other. So the shift in viewership could be explained by some (not even all, which is interesting) of the right-wing conspiracy theorists refusing to watch a news channel that didn't play up to their, um, nonstandard beliefs. At the very least it shouldn't be taken as an indication that MSNBC has departed from reality and is now a mouthpiece for propaganda without actual evidence of biased reporting on MSNBC's part. | | Sunday, November 1st, 2009 | | 1:13 am |
A Meagre Halloween
Yesterday I inquired (being new to this neighborhood) how many trick-or-treaters I could expect. Somewhere between 30 and 50, I was told. I got candy (100 pieces). I got a pumpkin (a little one). I got out my big Halloween bowl to put the candy in. Kip came home from his conference, as expected, this afternoon. He brought extra candy. We carved the pumpkin. Around dusk I set up. Livingroom flooded with light, curtains open, bowl of candy handy on the chair, jack-o-lantern on the porch, glowing its tiny best. We got five trick-or-treaters. That's right. Five. And one of them was Kip, who went outside, closed the door, rang the doorbell and cried "trick or treat!" to try to mitigate the disappointment. Five. Well, four. Okay, it was raining, but what kind of wimpy, half-hearted excuses for kids let a little rain keep them from getting candy? Fine. They don't deserve candy. More for us anyway. Hmpf. | | Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 | | 5:35 pm |
October blue
It seems like the last couple of years we've had a spectacular October. Lots of sunny days, with the sky this deep luminous blue, and the temperature finally friendly. Sometimes I would go camping--even canoe camping. This October was more grey and rainy. My tomatoes are still trying to put on flowers but the tomatoes split as soon as they stop being green. But yesterday we finally had a nice day, and about three in the afternoon I suddenly realized--hey! I could go canoeing! There's a launch ramp (not that I need a ramp, but it's a place to park off the road and an easy walk to the water on publicly owned land) not half a mile from my house. I got Kip (home because of Fall Break) to help me put Patience on the car and off we went. I went down the lake with the sun at my back, low and golden, and the colors were amazing. The trees are just getting started on turning and there's still plenty of green. The lake was very quiet--just the faintest breath of wind most of the time. I went around the shore to the north on the east side of the lake--there's still a lot of wooded land there, although often if you peer up the hill you can see roofs silhouetted against the sky, almost hidden by the trees. I paddled all the way up to Black Oak Marina (which shelters an establishment called "Planet Wings" which has pretty good wings, but I didn't eat there this time) spent a while talking to a sailor who was putting his boat to bed for the winter, and then paddled back again. The water was well down the ramp (though not as low as I've seen it in the past) and I had a bit of a time carrying the boat back up to the car. I had to set it in the grass and rest, and then pick it up again to get it on the roof of the car, which is not the most efficient way to do things. Setting a canoe down and picking it up again takes a lot of energy. Unfortunately I didn't have my yoke handy, so I had to take the full weight of the canoe mostly on my arms (one gunwale on one shoulder with the hand on that side propping the gunwale a little in front of the shoulder to control pitch, other gunwale overhead, braced by one arm with the elbow as locked as it would get, which wasn't completely, to control roll, yaw managed by turning my whole body). I made it most of the way up the hill and then the not locked arm kept trying to lower the canoe on my head. I'm pretty sure I could handle her better in August but I haven't done much canoeing or weightlifting since then. And maybe having put in two solid hours paddling before I tried to carry the canoe had something to do with it too. Anyway I had a good time. And the sailor really liked my canoe. Hopefully it wasn't the last canoe trip this year but if it was that's not so bad a note to end on. | | Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | | 1:21 pm |
Interesting survey
Democracy corps recently posted an analysis of the differences between far-right conservatives (20% of the electorate) and regular conservatives. Fascinating stuff. The good news from the survey of the focus groups, such as it is, is that the majority of the far-right conservatives do not seem to be motivated by racism. The bad news is that they share a common belief that Obama is head or puppet of a conspiracy to deliberately destroy the country. They believe they have special knowledge of his shady past and ill intentions that the rest of us are too lazy or misguided to seek out for ourselves. And they are 20% of the electorate which makes them, what, 40-50 % of the Republican Party? This worries me. I sure hope the survey is wrong. | | Friday, October 9th, 2009 | | 9:11 am |
A bit premature, in my opinion
I woke up this morning to the news that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.I'm not sure what to think. He's a lot better than the last guy who held his office (and it's ironic that the last guy thought he was going to get a Peace Prize and didn't), but, um. I normally expect these things to correspond at least somewhat to actual accomplishments. And given that Obama is quarterbacking with the (in my opinion) screaming toddler (birthers, anyone? death panels?) of the Republican party wrapped around one leg, accomplishments are going to be hard-won. Josh Marshal points out (hat tip to filkertom for the link) that it may be simply that Obama is, however slowly and imperfectly, steering the country away from the dark aberration of lawlessness and might-makes-right bullying that was the previous administration. Which seems believable. And being compared to George Bush, well, that would set anybody off to good advantage, I think. My best guess (and I know nothing about it, so I'm pulling this out of thin air) is it's a combination of the contrast and the Nobel Committee trying to add to his moral authority to make accomplishments possible, which I think is a laudable goal. But I do think there are other peace and human rights activists, some working at the risk of their lives, who arguably deserve it more. | | Sunday, September 20th, 2009 | | 7:55 am |
More Shop!
I spent a happy day yesterday puttering around constructing shelves and tool racks and lumber racks on my wall-mounted 2 x 4s. My thought was that I may not know exactly where I want everything, but a few extra holes in the 2 x 4s won't matter so if I don't like where I put something I'll just move it. ( Read more... ) | | Saturday, September 19th, 2009 | | 6:51 am |
My Shop!
Okay, so you may recall I was making doors. Well, it took a lot longer to finish them than I thought. (doesn't it always?) ( The short version is that the doors are finally finished and hung. Hooray! )There's a lot more overhead space now, and the doors look plain, but presentable from the outside. They can only be opened from the inside, but I never got the remote for the previous garage door opener to work, so that situation hasn't changed. And these doors scare me a lot less than that garage door opener did--I was always worried that something would get caught in the door, because I was completely across the room when I opened and closed it. And the new shop lights (all seven of them) are quite satisfactory; there is plenty of light in the shop now. The 2 x 4s on the walls are not quite what I wanted but they will do. So now I still have to make shelves and brackets and tool racks and align my Shopsmith and put it through its periodic maintenance, and make a workbench, but progress is happening. | | Sunday, September 13th, 2009 | | 9:25 pm |
| | 1:13 pm |
I condemn the murders of Mike Fuoss and James Poullon in separate attacks, allegedly by the same individual, one Harlan Drake, who allegedly also planned a third murder. I bring this up because James Poullon was apparently "pro-Life" (as in graphic pictures of chopped up "babies" outside the local school) and there is some reason to think this is why Drake attacked him. In case there is any doubt--because for some people (hopefully no-one on my friends list, but just to be sure) there *is* doubt-- I condemn all murder. Mike Fuoss, on the other hand, apparently owned a gravel-pit, was a dedicated worker and boss, and let a neighbor hunt on his land. Aside from that, I haven't been able to find out much about him. I expect Poullon will get a lot more airtime and sympathy than Fuoss, and I think that's a crying shame. | | Thursday, August 20th, 2009 | | 8:24 pm |
I got back about this time last week
And I need a vacation to recover from my vacation. Actually, more to recover from driving to and from my vacation, but you know. It was wonderful. At some point I intend to tell you all about it, but I just want to cover one high point now. I went canoeing in Quetico Provincial Park. Out in the roadless wilderness, where the only tracks are the portage trails. It was wonderful. And Patience did great. She kept up with my brother's Minnesota II (big, fast tandem canoe). When the wind came in with a two mile fetch across Bailey Bay and the waves kicked up to a foot and a half or two feet high, she did better than the Minnesota II (not too surprising; tandems, with the weight at the ends, don't rise to waves as well as solos, with the weight in the middle). Patience may not be tame, but I never felt afraid--at least not afraid for me. There were times when I felt like now would not be a good time to quit paddling to look at the map, but with the paddle in the water I always felt--not safe, but competent. In control; on top of things, solid and sure, having fun, even. If I hadn't been so tired by the time we got to our camp spot I would have gone back out into the waves just to dance on them. She got a lot of compliments too. And now I've got boat fever, but bad, and I want to build another one. | | Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | | 10:04 pm |
Cool thing I only found out about today
Apparently the Quakers (the Society of Friends) in Britain appear likely to 1) approve gay marriage within the church (they've had same sex relationship blessings for years but they are likely to equate these to marriages) and 2) ask the British government to change the law to allow gay people to marry.
At least according to this story in the BBC News.I think that's cool. I had no idea. And since I complain sometimes about stupid or mean things that various religions do, let me go on record as pointing out and applauding this nice thing. In other news I will be going off LJ in a day or two and be out of touch for a couple of weeks. Don't panic; it's nothing bad. However I can pretty much guarantee I won't be able to catch up with two weeks of LJ when I get back. Just so you know. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in Jefferson city who has walked around her block, more than once, with her canoe on her head. Well, her shoulders really. The clamp-in yoke works. The neighbors' dogs were *so* freaked. You would think my smell wouldn't have changed any... | | Friday, July 24th, 2009 | | 9:23 am |
| | Sunday, July 19th, 2009 | | 9:17 pm |
Connected, sort of.
For the first time in my life, I am now the proud (if somewhat disconcerted) possessor of a cell phone. I got one of the kind where you buy the phone and buy the minutes to put on it. So if I don't like it I just put it in a dark box for ninety days and it quits being an issue--I'm out fifty dollars but at least I have no ongoing committment. Yes, ninety days--I opted for the phone that had the minutes that lasted ninety days instead of thirty because thirty is just a racket, even if the ninety day minutes cost a bit more. I'm not telling you what the number is, though I do know it. No offense, but posting it on the web would just be stupid; I'm sure there are spiders that crawl around the web looking for defenseless phone numbers and pouncing on them and paralyzing them with one bite and then wrapping them up in silk for later and maybe even laying their eggs... Okay that metaphor got a bit out of hand. Quick, stamp on it before the eggs hatch. But I'm not planning on using it much. However I'm having the kitchen remodeled (the whole "bad back plus a kitchen designed for someone eight inches shorter than I am" thing) and I'm worried that the bloke delivering, say, the sink, will call me to see if I'm home and I'll be in the back yard turning the compost heap and won't hear the land line, and he'll say to himself "blast! Well, I guess I'll deliver this toilet to Knoxville then. She'll have to call and reschedule; it's her own fault for not keeping her phone on her." So now I have a phone I *can* keep on me. ( There's lots more about the phone but I'm cutting for the sake of the rest of the world, who did this ten years ago and are *so* over it. ) | | 7:26 am |
| | Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | | 4:51 pm |
Okay, This Is Interesting...
Bill Moyers interviews Wendell Potter (who was, until recently, a major executive of the health insurance company Cigna. The transcript is here. It is very interesting, and in some places moving. For instance, Potter details the insurance industry's playbook for marginalizing Michael Moore after he filmed Sicko. I think I have been played for a patsy and I resent it. However, the part I thought was most interesting was this: BILL MOYERS: Why is public insurance, a public option, so fiercely opposed by the industry?
WENDELL POTTER: The industry doesn't want to have any competitor. In fact, over the course of the last few years, has been shrinking the number of competitors through a lot of acquisitions and mergers. So first of all, they don't want any more competition period. They certainly don't want it from a government plan that might be operating more efficiently than they are, that they operate. The Medicare program that we have here is a government-run program that has administrative expenses that are like three percent or so. BILL MOYERS: Compared to the industry's-- WENDELL POTTER: They spend about 20 cents of every premium dollar on overhead, which is administrative expense or profit. So they don't want to compete against a more efficient competitor.
Yes, you read it (t)here first folks: The health insurance industry is afraid that a government-run health insurance plan might be more efficient than they are. Either Cigna believes that government can, too, be efficient---or Cigna believes that health insurance companies are really inefficient. And it looks like they may have the numbers to back it up. And apparently--get this--the part of the money the insurance companies take in, that gets used to pay claims (you know, the point of insurance?) is called "the medical loss ratio." And of course any good company tries to reduce losses, and they have--it's down from 90% in the 1990s to just slightly over 80% now.
Interesting.
| | Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 | | 6:38 pm |
Why Parental Notification laws about abortion are a really bad idea
There's a great article here by someone who works for Jane's Due Process--a group that tries to help girls who can't get parental consent (parents dead/jailed/serving in Iraq/abusive) negotiate the judical bypass process, which is basically a joke but is all these girls have left. For my own part, it looks pretty cut and dried to me. Those parents who are not whacked out and abusive about sex will be the first people their pregnant daughters turn to for advice, so in this case the law is unnecessary and even insulting. And those parents who *are* whacked out and abusive about sex don't T DESERVE a say in what their daughters do, and in this case the law is actively harmful. Unnecessary when it isn't actively harmful: pretty much the definition of a bad law. |
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