ifconfig

Blut Und Eisen

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:53:00 +0000

… translates to ‘blood and iron,’ from a speech by German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck:

Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood.

Bismarck was an interesting fellow, to be sure. His ideas about governance, welfare, and even education are still to this day keeping an eye on modernity like a gargoyle in a cathedral.

But that’s a topic for another day. In this post, I want to write about something I’ve always dabbled with then dropped under varying circumstances: weightlifting. Literal blood and iron.

Back in ought-one (2001, you pikers) I lost my job when the so-called ‘dot com’ bubble burst and stayed unemployed for a while. I decided, fat bastard that I was, to join a gym while I worked as a consultant on the side. Right about then, my wife’s friend had a boyfriend who was the Strength and Conditioning trainer for the FAU sports teams. Keith was a powerlifter and trained me in a state-of-the-art gym at the school. The (painful) salad days, as I like to call it.

He was brutal, and I loved every minute of every iota of pain inflicted. I pushed, pulled, spun, turned, and manhandled an immense amount of cold steel. Well the steel actually wasn’t cold, but it always sounds better for steel to be cold. Moving on. I got to be in reasonably good shape until the bastard had the bad form to get married and move away to Pennsylvania.

I tried to carry on as best I could, but the welcoming, soft, swinging underarms of pain-free laziness beckoned and I wish I could say I had the fortitude to resist, but as anyone who knows me can attest, I can resist anything but temptation. And so it was up the pounds ladder I once again climbed with not a little difficulty.

That was a while and several pounds ago until I became a papa and the shit just got real. I believe the imperative to lose fat, gain muscle, live longer just sort of combines with the recent ‘upping’ of life’s stakes, don’t you? What’s more, I hear it told that bouncing grandchildren on one’s knees are great, especially the part at the end when the ~~snotty bastards~~ sweethearts go back to mommy and daddy so I can go home and fucking read in peace.

So it’s once more unto the breach dear friends, once more. This time it’s personal. And stuff.

So it is has come to pass that for the last 2 months, I’ve been speaking the language of (cold) steel, moving iron from here to there. Strange new words now cross my lips like front squats, step ups, cable wood chops and epiglottal grunts aplenty, accompanied by clenched teeth and sore muscles.

Apart from the downsides to visiting the gym, it’s been great getting back (don’t tell my muscles, they ache. Terribly.) Even 3000 miles and years between my Florida and Idaho gyms, the same dead-eyed dipshits look at me past droopy eyelids and the blondebots are still spending forever training their “NO” muscles, as Phung calls them:

The old guys who’ve been given the news by their physicians: either start now or start never shuffle in and half-heartedly poke at dumbbells and elliptical machines. The wrinkly bones (or is it bony wrinkles) of middle-aged try-hard women who could afford to let themselves go a bit and still no one would give a shit, spend every wasting moment prying open the steadily closing grip of The Destructor and failing. Make hay, bitches.

And then the upper body behemoths who hate lower-body exercises as much as they did elementary Geometry. These heavy browed cousins of Paranthropus boisei waste time on hack squats and fucking Smith Machines, while the empty and solitary squat rack looks at them, shaking its head.
They’re all there and for three hours a week, I wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else.

2012 — Fight

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:19:00 +0000

A thought for the year?

After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to
know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly
understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man. —Thomas Hughes in Tom Brown’s Schooldays

Scrappy New Year.

Manimal

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:57:00 +0000

Once upon a time there were two animals …

The Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias, is an animal.
The Human Being, Homo sapiens, is an animal.
The males of the species Carcharodon carcharias copulate with the female of the species.
The males of the species Homo sapiens copulate with the female of the species.
A male Carcharodon carcharias forcibly copulates with a female of the species.
A male Homo sapiens forcibly copulates with a female of the species.
The male Carcharodon carcharias forcibly copulates with the female.
The male Homo sapiens rapes the female.
The male Carcharodon carcharias is an animal.
The male Homo sapiens is an animal.
What is or are the philosophical difference(s), if any, between 7 and 8?
If there is or are any philosophical difference(s), what is the grounding for it or them?
If there isn’t or aren’t any philosophical difference(s) between 7 and 8, why not?

Do They Care It’s Christmas?

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:19:00 +0000

The black and white television started glowing after the click of its on knob was turned. Shadowy figures of white people started filling in the screen as the generator 15 feet away filled the air with a fetid cocktail of noxious gases and a steady ‘k-k-k-k-k-k-k’ sound.

My stomach was empty and had been for the last three days, but these few minutes of watching TV was the highlight of my day and took my mind off the gnawing hunger in my distended Kwashiorkor ravaged belly. The flies buzzing about looked quite succulent, feeding as they were on the generalized human misery and waste in our refugee camp. We were too weak to chase these insect fighter jets though so we allowed them free access to the numerous sores on our faces, arms, and legs, a privilege they undertook with not a little gusto.

My mother had died a few days ago and I didn’t care. I didn’t know who my father was, although I remembered a man with a very large gun who would stop into the hut where my seven brothers and sisters eked out an existence in the place I’d been told was Ethiopia. He would always bring food and other gifts for my mother, but he would leave again after one night. I think he was my father. Nine months after every night, my mother gave birth to another one of my brothers and sisters.

But she was dead and along with her, two of my sisters and one of my brothers. Never mind that now, tonight I was going to watch the UN-provided TV that brought shows from far away places for us to watch as long as there was fuel in the generator. Children from all over the camp would be allowed to sit near the TV in a rare show of courtesy by the emaciated Big People. Normally they treated the children like slower flies, swatting at us as we wandered the camp and throwing stones and evil words at us. I think the White People whose TV it was made the adults behave a bit better, but I can’t be sure.

The White People smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and patchouli. They were very nice, always trying to help us. There were even some White People doctors who would arrive once in a while and treat the worst wounds on the women and children, but they would leave again just as suddenly as they showed up, like Angels returning home to heaven. The wounds would get pretty bad again within a day or two so people soon stopped going to see the White People doctors when they showed up. They either lived with the pus, odor and the ever-present flies or would pack the sores over with mud if the flies got unbearable. Every so often, the legs would have to be cut off and more often lately, the people just died and their bodies were taken away. That seemed to clear the air for a bit afterwards.

The White People’s TV could only run once a week, because of the scarcity of gasoline for the generator but tonight was the designated TV-watching night! I looked around me and saw a mass of coal black children, men and women. Slack-jawed and listless, the only sign of life was the light in their eyes reflected back from the TV in the inky night. As long as there’s life, there’s hope is what I’ve heard people in our camp say again and again, but now that people were dying at an ever faster rate, I had started to doubt whether this saying was totally true.

I was interrupted by the sound from the television set. On the flickering screen, a thin white man with wild, bushy hair led other strange-looking white people—although if I squinted, I could make out one or two other people who were black like me—in a song about Christmas. The White People later told me this was a very, very, special thing we had seen on the TV. The thin white man with wild hair was a good and wise man named Bob Geldof. The other strange white people singing to the accompaniment of bells and drums were singing to make our lives better because of Christmas. I didn’t know what Christmas was and I didn’t understand how a song about it could make our lives better, but I had long ago stopped thinking too hard about what White People did, so we all just nodded and hoped they had some grain for us coming soon, a thought which kick-started the hunger pangs afresh.

With tears in their eyes, the camp’s White People wanted to make sure we understood that Bob Geldof and the others were really going to change our situation for the better now that the whole world knew about us and what was happening to us. The listed all the people who were singing, saying these were very important singers; I kept hearing them talk about a man named Sting, but as I knew no one was stupid enough to be named for the dangerous end of a TseTse fly, I decided I had heard wrong. It seemed these White People had called their group Band Aid, and the camp’s White People looked at us with a knowing smile dancing on their faces, as if they expected us to understand what Band Aid meant. After some adults said they did not understand what the Band Aid was, the White People explained that it was something white people put on cuts and scrapes. I looked down at the two-inch wide, half-inch deep sore on my right foot and, swatting away feeding flies, tried to imagine how big a band aid would need to be to cover it.

I wondered if, now that Band Aid had sung about Christmas, we would receive a bowl of millet once a day instead of once a week. I wondered if they would send in fresh water so that I did not have to drink water from the well in the camp. I tried not to drink that water because, as if on a timer, within five minutes of taking one sip, I would have to drop the cloth around my waist and start pissing out of my anus. I tried very hard not to drink that water.

For five months we waited for Band Aid to come out of the white aeroplanes that landed on the hardened red earth two miles from the camp. I wanted to see if Bob Geldof looked anything like the wild haired, goat-looking man on the TV. I thought maybe I could ask if Sting was his real name. But after two months, I began to get a feeling they would not arrive and by month four, turned by attention elsewhere. By this time, the only food I ate were bits of raw wheat on the floor of my shanty. The wound on my foot was now covering almost my entire foot so I couldn’t run to get the millet the White People brought in and I couldn’t go see the white doctor when she came to the camp a few weeks after that.

The night I died was cold, I remembered. The hunger had settled in now and was like an ever-present companion, the puppy dog I had always wanted. That’s what I called it—my puppy dog—because it growled and growled. The wound on my foot had stopped throbbing and all at once, I got nice and warm—which was weird, I thought because it was so cold. Out in the center of the camp, the old TV must have been turned on because I heard the now-familiar “bong, bong” of the opening bars, Band Aid was about to Feed The World. Ah, what a nice song. It was the only White People’s song I had ever heard in my life and it had grown on me. Now that I could understand some of the words, they were comforting:

It's Christmas time
There's no need to be afraid
At Christmas time
We let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world
At Christmas time

Ah, such nice words from such nice people. I pushed my mother’s sleeping cloth back down, I was so warm. Then I went to sleep.

Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:39:00 +0000

Another rivulet of snot tried to forage a new path down my top lip, to meet its demise in the fluffy prison of a guarding Kleenex.

Being awoken at 4.30am by another sniveling Woodbridge (fils, not mere) then incapable of re-entering slumber is a touch of hell, especially when combined with the biochemical riots underway in the various and sundry avenues of my sinuses. So I decided to stay home, work will wait.

Shuffling around house and home in a house coat, it suddenly struck me that my whole life has been one of the pursuit of happiness, happiness being never less than a fingertip away from a sure capture. Sometimes (much) farther, but never closer, it taunted in a way that seemed to say that it actually did want to get caught, but alas, it couldn’t. Some unknown Natural Law was firmly in place, disallowing fraternization between yours truly and itself.

Surrounded by a nasal cacophony representing my body’s interminable war against microbes, happiness seemed farther definitely than a fingertip’s length away right now. A-tchoos crescendoed, heralding I hoped, the triumphant cry of a successful repelling of some detachment of miniscule attackers along a vital part of the city’s walls. Give it to them good, boys!

Yet though the din and haze of biological warfare, I cast about for a time when I could maybe, perhaps conclude that I was happy and like figures appearing out of an Oregon Coast fog, I could just make them out here and there: running down the guy who’d beaten everyone on the soccer field and dispossessing him of the ball to the eternal gratitude of the goalkeeper. The first time I stepped into the cockpit of a Boeing 747 in flight (thank you, British Caledonian of late memory). The stinging tears as my Southwest Airlines flight pushed back from the Boise airport carrying, not my girlfriend and me as I’d wished, but only me. Walking down the long, long green carpeted hospital hallway carrying a Flip video camera as I padded my way towards room 319 two years ago to meet for the first time ever, my son and heir.

The pursuit of happiness is the only guaranteed part of the happiness hunting business. One always runs after, seeks out, but never finds happiness in the present or the future. One always remembers happiness, always remembers being happy this or that time. It seems happiness always has its hand in ours even as we think it doesn’t.

Government Bearing Gifts

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:06:00 +0000

Here’s a pithy summation of why higher education isn’t either:

There's something of a pattern here. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we'll have more middle class people.
But homeownership and college aren't causes of middle-class status, they're markers for possessing the kinds of traits -- self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. -- that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class.

Read the rest.

Gentlemen, Shall We Join The Ladies

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:27:00 +0000

Margaret, Baroness Thatcher. Iron Lady. A truly remarkable woman.

Quote Of The Day

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:42:00 +0000

“… for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father.” —Pericles

Patriarchy for the win?

Veritas Odium Parit

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:48:00 +0000

Terence, in his Andria, wrote that truth can breed hatred.

From Crimes Against Logic:

The slogan, “You are entitled to your own opinion” is so often repeated that it is near impossible for the brain of a modern Westerner not to have absorbed it.

Like many other views that have at times enjoyed universal assent, however, it isn’t true. You don’t really have a right to your own opinions. And the idea that you do, besides being false, is forever invoked when it would be irrelevant even if it were true.

The Irrelevant Right

Before showing that this cliché is false, let’s first be clear that its common use in discussion or debate really does amount to a fallacy. It is often used preemptively, when an assertion is prefaced with the acknowledge that “Of course, you are entitled to you opinion, but …” Yet its more basic use, which the above acknowledgement is intended to preempt, is false.

Jack has offered some opinion—that President Bush invaded Iraq to steal its oil, let’s say—with which his friend Jill disagrees. Jill offers some reasons why Jack’s opinion is wrong and after a few unsuccessful attempts at answer them, Jack petulantly retorts that he is entitled to his opinion.

The fallacy lies in Jack’s assumption that this retort is somehow a satisfactory reply to Jill’s objections, while, in fact, it is completely irrelevant. Jack and Jill disagreed about Bush’s motivation for infacing Iraq, and Jill gave reasons to believe that Jack was mistaken. She did not claim that he had no right to this mistaken view. By pointing out that he is entitled to his view, Jack has simply changed the subject from the original topic, the reason Iraq was invaded, to a discussion of his right. For all it contributes to the invasion question, he may as well have pointed out that whales are warm-blooded or that in Spain it rains mainly on the plains.

As with most of our fallacies, once seen, it is obvious. Here is a simple way of putting it. If the opinions to which we are entitled might nevertheless be false, the entitlement cannot properly be invoked to settle a dispute. It adds no new information on the original matter; it does nothing to show that the opinion in question is true.

Interpreting the cliché to exclude the possibility of falsity—that is, to mean that we are entitled to have all our opinions be true—has two problems. First, it is ridiculous. Second, it does not in fact make the entitlement to an opinion relevant in deciding who is correct in any dispute. If Jack has a right to his true opinion then presumably Jill has a right to hers too. But then, since Jack and Jill disagree, one of them must be suffering a rights violation; one of them has a false belief. So, even if we had the right to true beliefs, that would only show that it is a right that is violated all the time, on precisely those occasions when our opinions are in fact false. In any dispute, to know whose right to a true belief is being violated we would first need to settle the original dispute—in the case of Jack and Jill, about President Bush’s reason for invading Iraq. And a diversion on the matter of rights gets no one any closer to answering that question.

So, even on the strongest, and utterly incredible, interpretation of our opinion entitlement, it is irrelevant to anything else we might be debating. Why then is insisting on one’s right to an opinion such a popular argumentative ploy?

In part, it is encouraged by an ambiguity in the word entitlement. It has a political or legal interpretation, by which we are all entitled to any opinion we might have, however groundless. But it also has an epistemic interpretation, that is, one related to, or concerned with, truth or knowledge. You are entitled to an opinion, in this epistemic sense, only when you have good reasons for holding it: evidence, sound arguments, and so on. Far from being universal, this epistemic entitlement is the kind you earn [emphasis mine]. It is like being entitle to boast, which depends on having done something worth boasting about.

So, the two senses of entitlement could not be further from each other. Yet it is too tempting to muddle them. The implied argument of the muddler runs as follows:

If someone is entitled to an opinion then her opinion is well-supported by evidence. (This is precisely what it means to be entitled to an opinion.)
I am entitled to my opinion (as is everyone in a democratic society).
Therefore, my opinion is well-supported by evidence.

This is a beautiful example of the fallacy of equivocation, i.e., slipping between different meanings of a word in an argument that would be valid only if the word were used with the same meaning throughout.

Once pointed out, it’s easy to see that this confusion of the political with the epistemic notion of entitlement is a mistake. And though, strictly, that will do for the purposes of this book, I don’t want to leave the matter here. Even if the cliché that we are entitled to our opinions is not employed in the truly egregious way so far discussed, it is part of a mindset that increasingly impedes the free flow of ideas and their robust assessment. Many people seem to feel that their opinions are somehow sacred, so that everyone else is obliged to handle them with great care. When confronted with counterarguments, they do not pause and wonder if they might be wrong after all. They take offense.

The culture of caution this attitude generates is a serious obstacle to those who wish to get at the truth. So it is important to strip away any bogus ideas that support the attitude, such as the idea that we all have a right to our own opinions.

Rights and Duties

To see that there is really nothing at all to this idea that we have a right to our opinions we need only understand one basic point about rights, namely, that rights entail duties [emphasis mine]. I don’t mean to endorse the fashionable slogan, “No rights without responsibilities,” which is supposed to justify policies whereby the government imposes good behavior conditions on the receipt of social welfare. I mean something more fundamental about rights: they are defined by the duties to which they give rise.

The law gives all citizens a right to life. Your right to life means that everyone has a duty not to kill you. This is not something that a government may or may not decide to associate with your right to life; it is that right. A law that did not impose on others a duty not to kill you would fail to establish your right to life. Does your right to life mean that others have a duty to feed you, to house you, or to provide you with medical care? These are hotly debated questions, but no one doubts that the answer to these questions about others’ duties are what define and delimit the right to life.

So when anyone claims a right, first ask which duties does this right impose on others; that will tell you what the right is supposed to be. And it also provides a good test for whether there is, or should be, any such right. It will often be clear that no one really has the implied duties, or that it would be preposterous to claim they should.

Mary Robinson, in her former role as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, claimed that we have a human right to be healthy. Yet, without qualification it is difficult to know what she could possibly have meant. According to the World Health Organization:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Yet everyone ages and dies. And when they do, their physical, mental, and social well-being are less than complete. So the simple fact of human mortality means that everyone’s right to be healthy is ultimately violated, and someone has failed to do his duty. But what could that duty be? To find a remedy for human mortality, presumably. But who could possibly bear this burden? Surely not each of us, who mostly know so little about the mechanics of human aging.

There is, of course, no unqualified human right to good health, any more than there is a human right to all those other things that it would be nice to have—such as long eyelashes and silk sheets—but which no one has a duty to provide. If she wanted to make sense of her claim, Mary Robinson should have started with the duties rather than the right. What duties does each of us have with respect to others’ health or governments with respect to the health of its citizens? Then we would know what this right to good health is supposed to amount to.

Opinion Duties

What then are the duties that the right to your opinions might entail? What am I obliged to do to respect this right? Let’s start from the boldest possible demands and word down to the more humble.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to agree with you?

No. If only because that would be impossible to square with the universality of the right to an opinion. I, too, am entitled to my own opinion which might contradict yours. Then we can’t both do our duty toward each other. And think of the practical implications. Everyone would have to change his mind every time he met someone with a different opinion, changing his religion, his politics, his car, his eating habits. Foreign vacations would become as life-changing as the brochures. claim.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to listen to you?

No. I haven’t the time. Many people have many opinions on many matters. You cannot walk through the West End of London without hearing some enthusiast declaring his opinions on our savior Jesus or on the Zionist conspiracy or some other topic of pressing concern. Listening to them all is practically impossible and not therefore a duty.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to let you keep it?

This is closest to what I think most mean when they claim a right to their opinion. They do so at just that point in an argument when they would otherwise be forced to admit error and change their position. And this is also the weakest possible interpretation of the right and thus the most likely to pass the test.

Yet, it is still too strong. We have no duty to let others keep their opinions. On the contrary, we often have a duty to try to change them. Take an obvious example. You are about to cross the street with a friend. A car is coming yet your friend still takes a stride into the road. Knowing that she is not suicidal, you infer she is of the opinion that no cars are coming. Are you obliged to let her keep this opinion?

I say no. You ought to take every reasonable measure to change her opinions, perhaps by drawing her attention to the oncoming car, saying something like, “Look out, a car is coming.” By so doing, you have not violated her rights. Indeed, she will probably thank you. On matters like whether or not a car is about to crush them, everybody is interested in believing the truth; they will take the correction of their errors as a favor. The same goes for any other topic. If someone is interested in believing the truth, then she will not take the presentation of contrary evidence and argument as some kind of injury.

It’s just that, on some topics, many people are not really interested in believing the truth. They might prefer it if their opinion turns out to be true—that would be the icing on the cake—but truth is too important. Most of my friends, though subscribing to no particular religion, claim to believe in a “superior intelligence” or “something higher than us.” Yet they will also cheerfully admit to the absence of even a shred of evidence. Never mind. There is no cost in error, because the claim is so vague that it has no implications for action (unlike the case of the oncoming car). They just like believing it, perhaps because it would be nice if it were true, or because it helps them get along with their religious parents, or for some other reason.

But truth really is not the point, and it is most annoying to be pressed on the matter. And to register this, to make it clear that truth is neither here no there, they declare, “I am entitled to my opinion.” Once you hear these words, you should realize that it is simple rudeness to persist with the matter. You may be interested in whether or not their opinion is true, but take the hint, they aren’t.

Who Beauty, Who Beast?

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:13:00 +0000

A wedding announcement from the New York Times:

These two “… met in Washington in May 2006. Introduced by a mutual friend at a bar in Georgetown, they discovered that they were planning to play kickball in the same league, though on different teams. The two competed against each other every Wednesday evening on the Washington Mall and later chatted at Kelly’s Irish Times, a bar in downtown Washington.”
The beginning of a fairy tale, Princess competes against Prince in a stickball league. Prince grabs Princess by her slender, manly waist, “marry me at once, darling!” Right?
Wrong:

After 10 months of convincing, he finally asked her out to dinner the following March. “We were really good friends, and I guess I didn’t have the guts to ask her out right away,” he said. “But we had a great time, and from that point forward, we were always together.”

If guts is what it takes to ask her out to dinner after 10 months, I despair to think what he’d say the Marines storming Iwo Jima had … maybe a soupçon of chutzpah?

Law, Regulation, and Morality. Oh my!

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:58:00 +0000

From a razor sharp essay, Mark Steyn:

When people get used to complying with micro-regulation, it’s but a small step to confusing regulatory compliance with the right thing to do — and then arguing that, in the absence of regulatory guidelines, there is no “right thing to do.”

Another:

“When we say ‘we don’t know what we’d do under the same circumstances,’ we make cowardice the default position.”

The Dark Passenger

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 20:25:00 +0000

I like Twitter especially for the view into the metaphysics of human thought and psychology. It’s awesome how much information it’s possible to convey in 140 characters or less.

One such event came up a few days ago on November 13 when, apparently annoyed at jewelry store advertisements, Klinker* reached into his subconscious and sent this soaring through the twitterverse:

I'll tell you this, ladies: if I love you, I'm going to Cartier or Van Cleef & Arpels, not Jared.

Wow.

Others instantly retweeted the succulent tweet, but one caught my eye (which is how I found the original tweet):

#Betty*Approved –> 'll tell you this, ladies: if I love you, I'm going to Cartier or Van Cleef & Arpels, not Jared.

Betty* is an early-twenties girl.

(* Not their real twitter “names.”)

It seems that Klinker started feeling a bit, shall I say, over-exposed and within minutes had re-thought his position on the issue and started backtracking with replies to some of his followers:

@User74 My previous tweet was too snobbish, I regret it now. Not everyone has the chance to shop for expensive engagement rings.

And:

@UserQ @User74 I should never have written that. It's unfair to disparage those places.

And:

@User1229 Well, I can't put the genie back in the bottle now, but I should not have written that. It was uncharitable.

Rounding it all out with:

I apologize for my earlier tweet. It was completely uncalled for to use my annoyance at tons of jewelry store commercials that way.

Well, good on the young man! After some introspection, I’m sure he realized what kind of an elitist, jerk-y thing it was to have written what he did in 2011 America. Not that it was elitist or jerk-y, just its appearance. I think if he weren’t an elitist jerk, he probably wouldn’t have typed that out, annoyed or not.

There are some underlying issues that I want to discuss, however. The “dark passenger” on this rhetorical bus that like the subtext of a good drama, reveals deeper truths, if you will.

Why was it “unfair” and “snobbish” to criticize Jared—for the record, I’ve never bought anything at Jared so I couldn’t care less if its reputation is besmirched. And, like Klinker, I despise those bloody commercials.

I suppose one could say that it is indeed snobbish to prefer Van Cleef & Arpels or Cartier, but even the people—the 99%?—who go to Jared would rather shop at those former establishments themselves, an assumption I make with some confidence! Girls like swooning Betty up there (tellingly, she deleted her tweet once Klinker publicly “repented” his snobby sin. Ha!) seem to gauge the level of commitment and—dare I say—love by the source of a beau’s baubles. Why is a topic of analysis for another time. Suffice it to so it’s not as simple as mere materialism for womanity.

As for being unfair, Klinker seems to think it is because many other—let’s face it, men—can’t walk into ~~Mordor~~ Cartier and expect to come out with anything more elaborate than a letter opener unless they were possessed of mens rea, donned a balaclava and carrying a Beretta. Klinker, one may assume, possesses enough disposable material wealth to be free of such shopping accoutrements. As a Free Market exponent, I don’t see this as unfair at all. Jared exists so that the female targets of lower-income guys can “enjoy” the same, rather short-lived tingles as their more wealthy compatriots. Klinker may think it unfair, I call it economics.

So if it’s barely snobbish and not at all unfair, where is the dark passenger? Well, it’s something so well-hidden, so entrenched in western (read: American) society, that it is all but invisible to the 99%. It is the mindset, swallowed whole by Klinker and Betty, that men are intended, nay designed to sacrifice their very selves utterly in the pursuit for women.

Even for Klinker, buying what is essentially a completely symbolic and practically useless ring from the chi-chi Van Cleef & Arpels or Cartier—or Jared for that matter—entails an outlay of funds (which further entails an expenditure of time, effort, sweat, schooling, etc.) for the stated honor of the women’s hand in marriage. In a world where male and female are utter and complete equals, it is the logical conclusion that simply being the owner of a vagina is the equivalent of a man’s time, effort, sweat, etc. If it were otherwise, one would I suppose, expect to see women also buying large chunks of pressurized, glinting carbon for men.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Man, Animal

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:13:00 +0000

The BBC and Richard Attenborough do it again. This is not only fascinating, it's exquisitely shot and narrated. The message is rather incredible. To me, this belongs in the pantheon of heroic human deeds, next to--but perhaps somewhat less than--the battle at Thermopylae:

Sclerosis

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:57:00 +0000

As Mark Steyn ably—and so humorously, as usual—points out, even the revolution isn't revolutionary:

America is seizing up before our eyes: The decrepit airports, the underwater property market, the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet, curiously, the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged "revolutionary" movement itself. It's the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It's more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don't mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al, but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old "unemployed cosmetologist" with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it's London, 1977, and she's killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that's three-and-a-half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America's revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can't even invent their own hideous fashion statements?

Heave a sigh and try to enjoy the decline, folks.

♀

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:31:00 +0000

H’m.

Chesterton On Political Speeches

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:30:00 +0000

“Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.” G.K. Chesterton, ‘On the Cryptic and the Elliptic’

Panorama

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:52:00 +0000

I don't see ‘Heathen.’

[Hat tip: Redeemed Mind]

Point, Counterpoint

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Richard Dawkins: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." [1]

C.S. Lewis: "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." [2]

Resources:

1. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, p. 55.
2. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[Thanks, Truthbomb!]

Language, Young Lady!

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 11:46:00 +0000

Thank you, teacher!

The Banging Gong

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:06:00 +0000

It never fails that on the days I most need my brain cells, they take a rousing drinking vacation, damned things.

Here’s a quote from a post on a blog which shall remain nameless for now, dealing with the Big Bang and whether the ‘material universe’ either (1) may not have started at the Big Bang or (2) may not actually have a cause and therefore, needs no explanation.

That’s assuming, of course, that the Big Bang is indeed the beginning of the material universe, which might not be the case. Even if the Big Bang should turn out to have a material cause, though, the general principle will still hold true: time is a property of material reality, and the law of cause and effect is bound to time (since the cause must occur before the effect in order to be an actual cause), and therefore there will never be a time when material reality, in some form, does not exist. Ultimately, material reality must be an uncaused cause, which has no beginning, no cause, and no “explanation.”

If wading through my mental miasma will allow me, it seems there’s something intrinsically wrong with this quote, perhaps an equivocation—or maybe an obfuscation—of the meaning of time and of causality. It seems it’s asserting that the presence of time is a necessary and sufficient factor for causality so that if it doesn’t exist (as it doesn’t before the Big Bang) it is impossible to have causality.

What’s wrong with this, if anything?

Exercise

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:10:00 +0000

I’m in for it!

My job consists of sitting. The only exercise I get is from my fingers picking at various keys none of which are more than two inches from each other (exercise idea: keyboards with more than two inches between the keys). That and walking. And oh yes, eating.

To read the literature, this sedentariness is killing me faster than if my wife were to start spiking my coffee with small doses of carpet cleaner. As a new father, this won’t do, of course. But there’s the rub: the only time I can possibly hit the gym and stop the company which owns said gym from royally helping me rip myself off, I’d need to get underway by 5am. Which means a 4.45am wake up. Which means a 9pm sleep time if I’m going to be of any use the next day, which means ad nauseam.

I trust you see my ‘quadrilemma.’ So, it’s die slow faster, or die fast slower, or die fast faster, or die slow slower. Or something. And while I’m figuring all this out, there’s food—as in consuming less, but better. It seems you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Curses! So there’s that as well.

Strangely, in High School, I was a jock of sorts. I ran the 100m sprint (badly), the 400m (badly), threw Shot Put (badly), the Javelin (badly) and played Soccer (NOT badly). Arriving on American shores, not unlike Cortes, seems to have been a bad move for your humble correspondent (for the arteries in my case, and for the Indians, in Cortes’) because I immediately started sitting—for school, for church, for watching sports—instead of playing—for, well just about everything. America is the Seating Capital of the World. We sit better than any Goddamned People in the Universe, a boast I can make unless they discover The Milky Sit.

The other question I must answer before it’s too late (ie. I die, in case you’d forgotten what this was all about) is what kind of exercise I should half-kill myself doing. I hate being a human being because [a] nothing is easy, and [b] everything is a paradox. So, to get better, I have to work at self-inflicting pain and now I’m trying to decide exactly what version of pain I should be enduring so I can take even more pain in the future.

I’ve read (which I do a lot of) that getting the heart and other stalwarts of the cardio-vascular system to work better is indeed better. So it’s cardio. But I don’t like cardio and I’ve read (some more) that lifting weights, in addition to building muscle which helps “burn” fat—even though the only burning taking place is the cozy campfire in your lungs—also is “cardio-protective.” I’d rather something that was “death-protective,” but surely I ask for too much, aye, what?

I think what I’ll do is to start a cardio program for the next four weeks then switch to moving masses of iron inches first this way then that. My only regret is I should have decided this before the onset of Old Man Winter because absolutely nothing sucks (sorry Professor Mondo) more than walking from the car to the gym wearing gym clothes at 5am on February mornings in Boise, ~~Global Warming~~ Climate Change notwithstanding.

Wish me luck.

We're Slugged

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:18:00 +0000

G'bye men and thanks for all the sperm.

The College Bubble

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:07:00 +0000

Sorry Freddie, things may be a bit tougher for you when you’re ready for college than it was for me …

For Athol

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 07:19:00 +0000

Note: This is a reply to a post elsewhere. Read on if you like, but it was meant for Athol Kay.

[I decided to put in a longer comment in response.]

FW: You're making a category mistake when you talk about Odin, Zeus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the same vein “definitionally” as God. By definition, Odin, Zeus, and the FSM are man-made. God, by definition, isn’t.

Athol: It's a common religious viewpoint that everyone else's god is man-made except their own definition of god which is the true one.

[I’m not sure you understand what I mean by a category mistake. Say what you will about the various religions’ definition of God, god, G-d, Odin, Zeus, the FSM. In point of fact, you can show, on first principles, and without subjectivity, that Odin, Zeus, and the FSM are all man-made creations. We have good reasons to know that these do not exist. By definition (whether you agree with this definition or not, doesn't matter at the present. To show that the definition is wrong is an argument that can be made in the future, but not in the context of what I’m pointing out, ie. A category mistake. Also, important to note is the fact that I’m not talking about a Christian God, or any other particular religion’s God.
Regardless, it is a well-established principle of argumentation that one starts discussions of our sort with definitions then proceeds from there) God—according to the OED—is “The creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.”
When I speak of God, I am referring to this definition. Because of this, you are making a category mistake by lumping such, definitionally, with Odin, Zeus, the FSM. It’s like saying “most bananas are atheists.”]

FW: In essence then, you’re positing a claim, hidden though it may be: the universe was here because humanity needed a “place in the sun,” so to speak, in order to experience it . What proof do you have for this claim?

Athol: You're positing that claim for me. We don't need to be here, we just are.

[Au contraire, I’m *interpreting* your claim. You’ve now changed it from a asserting a claim to a non-assertion which, begging your pardon, is a cop out. You see, you’re not simply stopping at asserting without evidence that there is no need for humanity to be here (and all the attendant corollaries), but you’re taking a massive leap in logic to concluding that therefore, there is no God. *It could very well be there we do not need to be here and that we just are. BUT this is NOT a sufficient AND necessary condition for God’s non-existence.* It could be that God exists AND we do not need to be here and that we just are. To say that there is no God, Athol, is a claim to knowledge. And again, every claim to knowledge requires supporting evidence. So, what are your reasons for this claim to knowledge?]

FW: The science is very clear on the issue: the Universe “started”. How is not quite clear or universally agreed upon, but that it did start existing at some point isn’t a bone of contention. Why did it start? Wel … If, according to the laws of Physics and Logic, anything that begins to exist has a cause. The Universe has a beginning. Care to posit what caused the Universe?

Athol: My point is that it doesn't matter what caused the universe. You're determined for there to be an answer to "why". There isn't one.

[I suppose you have proof that there isn’t an answer as you so confidently claim. Again, every claim to knowledge requires evidence. I’ll await yours.]

Athol: Also you seem to be trying to posit intention to the laws of physics. Things may have causes, but no intent to cause an effect. Water does not intend to become a river. Excess rain may cause the river to flood, but it does not intend it to flood.

[In order to make such a statement as “water does not intend to become a river,” you’re ascribing properties to water that it simply cannot have. Intent is a property of a moral, personal agent. Water is not a moral nor is it a personal agent and so you’re again making another category mistake.]

FW: You ask why not, supposing (I assume) that you already know the answer to your question—I assume because you wouldn’t have brought it up otherwise, no? Would you care to explain your answer? And of course, also be prepare to back it up with evidence?

Athol: I'm pointing out there is no answer to that question. You just have to accept reality as being what it is and figure out what you want to do in life.

[This sounds suspiciously like relativistic nihilism. Do you know for certain there is no answer to that question? The only way to provide such an answer is to have a full and complete knowledge of the Universe. For all you know, you and everything you “know” is an illusion, and you’re but a brain in a vat of salt water whose “knowledge” is being provided through electrodes placed to titillate your brain. Unless you know this is not true, you simply cannot say with any definitive certainty that life has no answers. I presume you’ve not read Kant.

Unless, of course, you have proof positive there’s no answer. In which case, I again await your evidence.

An addendum: what are the practical implications of your worldview? How indeed, to quote you, does one “accept reality” and therefrom, figures out what to do in life? Who’s to say what you’ve figured out is your reality is real and true and you’re not hallucinating? If you were in front of Hitler and he asked you why he shouldn’t destroy all those millions of Jews because, in his reality, they were Untermensch and deserved to be slaughtered in the gas chambers? On what basis would you tell him his reality was *WRONG* or *NOT REAL* when it is very real TO HIM?]

FW: As for me, the ontological answer to "why" is clear from the evidence and again, I can explain the evidence further, if you care to take this discussion any further.

Athol: You're like a baby looking at a mirror. I'm telling you all you see is light reflecting off the mirror. You keep telling me you see another baby in there.

[Cute.]

The Spider’s Web

noreply@blogger.com (Fred) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:21:00 +0000

A question on the LSAT, first:

Poor nutrition is at the root of the violent behavior of many young offenders. Researchers observed that in a certain institution for young offenders, the violent inmates among them consistently chose, from the food available, those items that were low in nutrients. In a subsequent experiment, some of the violent inmates were placed on diet high in nutrients. There was a steady improvement in their behavior over the four months of the experiment. These results confirm the link between poor nutrition and violent behavior.

Then:

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

Some of the violent inmates who took part in the experiment had committed a large number of violent crimes.

Dietary changes are easier and cheaper to implement than any other type of reform program in institutions for young offenders.

Many young offenders have reported that they had consumed a low-nutrient food sometime in the days before they committed a violent crime.

A further study investigated young offenders who chose a high-nutrient diet on their own and found that many of them were nonviolent.

The violent inmates in the institution who were not placed on a high-nutrient diet did not show an improvement in behavior.

Well, what do you think is the correct answer and, if you like, why? Bonus question: how many of the Wall Street Occupiers do you think would be able to answer this question and get the wrong answer?