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December 03, 2022

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Rain in Northern California as well. And we are loving it!

Even though we have opted to spend the day outside. It being the 24 Hours of Lemons race just up the road.

Rained here earlier, now cloudy and damp out. Had to come in to work today, coming in about 2 hours before college football SEC championship game next door, crush of fans on train and getting out of station. Game has now just started. Should finish before I leave work at least.

Cooler than average December day here, but at least it's pretty calm. Wind "event" for the last two days, maximums in the 50-60 mph range. Makes you think twice about going to the mailbox. What if your hand slips? You'd never get the mail back.

Here's another version of the OpenAI language model that is a chatbot and free to use though you'll have to create an account. These models were created using a huge chunk of the Internet including Obsidian Wings.

You can have a conversation with it or ask it questions. Sometimes it will complain that it's just an AI that's not connected to the Internet and doesn't know anything about what you're asking. But if you prod it, it does know or will make something up. And it will generate a near-infinite number of poems about winter in Maine or anywhere else.

"Write a poem about winter in the state of Maine.

Winter in Maine is a thing to behold
A blanket of snow that never grows old
Icicles hang from every roof and tree
A winter wonderland for you and me

The air is crisp and the sky is clear
As we bundle up and head out with cheer
Sledding down hills and skating on ice
A magical season that's oh so nice

The trees stand tall, a stark white hue
A picturesque scene, the perfect view
As the sun sets and the stars come out
We cozy up by the fire, no need to pout

Winter in Maine, it's a special time
A season to cherish, to call mine
The beauty and joy it brings each day
A true treasure that we should never delay."

OpenAI: Chat

As I teach English as a foreign language, AI, chatbots and other technological challenges to the Turing Test are something that is often discussed. Some teachers have tried some of them in their courses, but I haven't seen anything that has really had a great impact on outcomes.

Some links about AI, creativity and stuff.
https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/autocomplete

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/why-the-rise-of-ai-is-the-most-important-story-of-the-year/672308/

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3200976/ai-rewriting-rules-creativity-what-does-mean-human-imagination

https://www.fastcompany.com/90808320/writing-with-ai-results

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2022/09/27/design-becoming-writer-s-medium-meet-the-ai-creators-changing-creativity-forever

https://www.wired.com/story/picture-limitless-creativity-ai-image-generators/

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2022/09/27/design-becoming-writer-s-medium-meet-the-ai-creators-changing-creativity-forever
https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2016/09/competitive-cognitive-artifacts-and.html

lj, thanks for the links.

Ok, I know this is a can of worms, but can anyone tell wtf is going on in Israel:

Netanyahu just put Relgious Zionist Smotrich in charge of major posts in the administration of the West Bank and in the Defense Ministry.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-12-05/ty-article/.premium/far-right-defense-ministry-representative-will-call-west-bank-shots-at-militarys-expense/00000184-e172-da6e-a58f-f372fbfe0000

Yes, the guy who recently called for a second Nakba, because "Ben Gurion" didn't finish the job.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-at-knesset-ben-gurion-should-have-finished-the-job-thrown-out-arabs/

Ok, I know this is a can of worms, but can anyone tell wtf is going on in Israel:

Netanyahu just put Relgious Zionist Smotrich in charge of major posts in the administration of the West Bank and in the Defense Ministry.

Bibi is among the would-be autocrats who have opted to embrace the religious nationalist right as the path to power. Not least because, without them, he's not in office. They having no objection to autocracy, as long as it gets them what they want.

Since he needs them, they're in a position to push the limits of what the market will bear quite a ways. And, clearly, they have seized the moment.

Every "never Trumper" Republican needs to send a letter to the RNC stating something along these lines:

Dear Sirs,

I have voted for Republicans my whole life (insert number of years here). I write to inform you that if Donald Trump is nominated to be the party's standard bearer in 2024 that I shall vote straight Democratic Party ticket and donate (insert $ amount here) to the DNC.

This cannot endure.

Sincerely,

bobbyp: your link didn't work. But if it was about his message to suspend the constitution, or indeed much else, I agree with every word.

wj - fixed the link. (There was an extra F in href.)

Fixed bobbyp's link. But I expects it's the wrong one, since it's to a ObWi comment.

FYI, while I can find the RNC snail mail address, I'm not finding an email for them. You can contact them via their website . . . if you are willing to give them your email address and phone number. But do you really want a lifetime of spam emails and phone calls and texts messages?

"while I can find the RNC snail mail address, I'm not finding an email for them."

Try "[email protected]"

Trump's rant illuminates our discussion about the limits of free speech. Absolutely, he or anyone should be able to argue that the constitution should be terminated to appoint them as dictator. But I see no value, and considerable harm, in allowing him to state as a fact that there was "massive fraud" in the election he lost, in the absence of any meaningful evidence to support the allegation.

let's try again:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/12/party-owned-by-donald-trump-fine-with-donald-trumps-call-to-end-american-democracy

wj,

my plea is addressed to GOP members in good standing who, I presume, are already signed up for a lifetime of spam, calls, and texts (my heart breaks). The only folks who can stop Trump from being renominated are Republican voters. The GOP suffers no consequences if the never Trumpers go into the voting both and vote for some obscure third party or take a pass on the presidential vote...only to go on to vote GOP down ballot.

bobbyp: OK, writing other Republican office holders makes sense. I was just taking you literally about writing the RNC.

wj, I don't think you're reading very carefully.

As I read it, bobbyp never said anything about writing to other R office holders. He said to write to the RNC, the closest thing there is to a collective representative of the party, with the message that a voter who normally votes R should declare that they will no longer do that anywhere up or down the ticket if the party nominates Clickbait. Rather: "I shall vote straight Democratic Party ticket and donate (insert $ amount here) to the DNC."

To sidetrack the topic with a warning about the resulting spam is to ignore the central point with a triviality.

The central point is that the R party should be told that if it nominates Clickbait, none of its other candidates will get any votes either. If people who have had enough of Clickbait nevertheless keep voting for other Rs up and down the ballot, the party's power remains essentially intact -- i.e., that same party that thinks it's okay to nominate a treasonous lying criminal scumbag who wants to abandon the Constitution. That collective decision needs to have consequences beyond the possibility of Clickbait not getting elected again.

I, for one, don't have my personal email address in the RNC files. (Although I do get a lot of their spam at my work email. No clue how they got that one.) And I'd just as soon keep it that way. Although you do make a good point that it might be a worthwhile price to pay in this case. I'll have to think on that one.

You could get a throwaway email address to be used only for purposes like this.... I have 2 gmail addresses that I have only ever used for purposes like this, i.e. where I don't want endless spam contaminating my inbox.

Interestingly, I have given a little money now and then to D candidates via ActBlue (usually via BJ in turn), and I tend then to get a rash of email requests from other candidates, but so far unsubscribe has worked -- not generally, but for each particular candidate. I wouldn't be surprised if the Rs don't honor unsubscribe, but who knows.

Lifetime tenure.

Alito jokes about Black kids in KKK outfits during Supreme Court argument
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3762724-alito-jokes-about-black-kids-in-kkk-outfits-during-supreme-court-argument/

Trump's rant illuminates our discussion about the limits of free speech. Absolutely, he or anyone should be able to argue that the constitution should be terminated to appoint them as dictator.

Completely agree, and with the rest of your comment too, Pro Bono. But this particular sentence reminds me of my favourite cartoon about a lot of the public reaction to Trump's campaign from the 2016 election:

https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-is-paul-noth.html

Republican voters didn't think he'd eat THEM. And they voted for him because he promised to eat other people. I really think most people, including Republican voters, have had all along a pretty good idea about who Trump is. The problem is that Republican voters LIKE people like Trump. They'll dump him now that he is a loser, but that has nothing to do with their need to find and worship a thuggish asshole who will smite others on their behalf. THey just don't want o back a loser. DiSantis, here they come!

One of my neighbors seems to be headed toward some kind of breakdown over MAGA and TRUmp. We used to enjoy discussing politics until he started calling me a baby killer and started posting stuff on FB about how we need a civil war. He defines conservatives as people who have real true American values and then lists values that everyone has like "hard work" or values which conservatives do not have like "limited government." He claims the attack on Congress was done by Antifa.
I cut off most communication with him when he called me a baby killer; however, we are still FB friends and can see each other's posts. HIs posts have become vague moaning about how the whole world is a disaster and what, oh what, are we going to do? Pray for strength and endurance!

Of course, he's a climate change denier so unaware of the real disaster the world is facing. Meanwhile, the only "disaster" the US is facing is Republicans got their asses kicked, election deniers are looking foolish, and Trump is a loser. Why is his brain melting over that?

Because the majority of Republican voters have very little interest in policy or programs or legislation. Or anything really except feeling like winners. They feel like winners by making others be losers. The definition of MAGA is "We won!" Their fundamental political belief is that they and they alone are legitimate Americans and rest of us need to either be Republicans or go to the back of the bus.

The disaster is that there are more of us than them and we are not going to sit at the back of the bus.

MAGAs really do disrespect the rest of us, and they will harm us if they can.

MAGAs really do disrespect the rest of us, and they will harm us if they can.

In short, in their minds we are "deplorables". Or is that slot already taken...?

Nope, deplorable means something to lament (shed tears) about. If one finds someone deplorable, one pities him.
The only pity MAGAts have is self-pity (including for being pitied). They want others to shed tears. The more extreme want to shed other people's blood.

wj, that's a fine summary of what's happening, it's just so depressing..

I guess I'm longing for the days long gone when there was at least a pretense to come to some sort of a practical solution by the means of statecraft, but all we have now is some corrupt autocrat trying to save his own skin by any means (cf. Trump).

Some useful context for Alito's bizarre comments.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/303-creative-gay-rights-free-speech-supreme-court.html

I hadn't realised quite how manufactured a case this one is.

From Nigel's link:

Before this litigation, Lorie Smith appeared to be a normal website designer who advertised her services to all potential customers. In 2016, after ADF took her on as a client, she rebranded as a conservative Christian who channeled her faith in God through her work. Indeed, her revamped website included language seemingly finessed to transform her into a First Amendment test case, explaining that her “expressive content … communicate[s] ideas or messages.” Also worth noting: No same-sex couple has ever asked Smith to make them a wedding website; in fact, she has never made a wedding website for anyone.

(...)

...Colorado law does not compel Smith to create a wedding website for a same-sex couple, or for anyone else. It only insists that once Smith has designed a wedding website, she must allow same-sex couples to purchase that product. In essence, Colorado says she must sell her website template to all customers, regardless of their identity. She need not create a new template or “speak” in support of any marriage. At most, if she makes a wedding website for Henry and Fiona, she must sell the same template to Henry and Frank. As Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson acknowledged, she could even make a template that (for some reason) condemned same-sex marriage. This speech is permitted. Colorado targets only the conduct of refusing to sell that product to gay people.

So no one is making her say anything or preventing her from saying anything in this "free speech" case. They're just saying that once the words she already - of her own volition - produced are publicly for sale, she has to sell them to people regardless of however those people identify themselves (at least within identities constituting protected classes).

We're just not getting this whole "reeducation camp" thing right, my fellow liberal tyrants. Do better!

This is on point.

I'm always surprised that nearly all religious liberty cases seem to focus on denying LGBTQ people things that most other people can get: a website designed, a cake baked, a job offered. Moreover, few cases focus on far more basic religious beliefs that could be offended.
https://twitter.com/JamesMartinSJ/status/1599872923795279872

There's no real cause of action. It's a case which shouldn't have come before the court, and the comments of Alito et al show that they have no real interest in dispensing justice.
They are just legislating the prejudices from the bench

Missed this.
Fnckin Alito.

...Maybe Justice Kagan will also be familiar with the next website I’m going to mention, AshleyMadison.com …” “I’m not suggesting,” Alito chuckled. “She knows a lot of things.”...

Nigel -- thanks for that link. Interesting that it's by a Jesuit. (Go Ignatius? I have a friend who's a Jesuit...whom, I like to think, I helped bring around to sanity on gay stuff.)

Interesting also, to me, that he is making an argument that I made over and over again during the various gay rights referenda in Maine: Why aren't they having hissy fits about having to serve people who eat meat on Fridays? What if Buddhist vegetarians decided not to serve Christians because they eat meat sometimes? (And of course much more salient things relating to religious beliefs than food.)

Blah blah.

Also, I have watched only a very few minutes of Alito giving a speech (my son keeps urging me to watch the entirety of his speech before the Federal Society a couple of years ago...), and I've read snippets like this sneering crap from yesterday, and I think he is the sickest puppy of the bunch. It is just amazing, and terrifying, that a person with such a horribly twisted mind is in the position he's in. In a way it bothers me more than Clickbait... There's the same "saying the quiet parts out loud" thing, but it's it's more like the Inquisition than an out of control carnival huckster.

Alito's speech, for anyone who thinks they can stand it.

Freedom of Religion American Style means so-called Christians get to control women's bodies and discriminate against all who exhibit any form of gender-nonconformance.

Am I being too dramatic? I don't think so.

Am I being too dramatic? I don't think so.

I don't think so either. There is simply no concept of mutuality. There is no freedom "from" (their) religion, for anyone. There is potentially punishment for everyone who doesn't conform to their rules. There is an implied and to some extent still real hijacking of the machinery of the state to impose their rules.

Funny, though, I say all that and then I have to come back to the fact that most of the rules that matter in this formulation are the ones having to do with sex and gender. Too many people are just fucking terrified of letting anyone outside the lines in relation to those areas of life.

But even that's not right, because many of the people who would like to impose their rules about sex and gender on the rest of us violate their own rules with regularity (adultery, closet homosexuality, serial monogamy, not-missionary-position sex with a member of the other gender). The *really* bad thing isn't *doing* that stuff, it's saying that it's okay.

One of things I used to point out (and probably did point out, in an op-ed or two back in the referenda days) is that you do not get to sacrifice a virgin in the public square these days in the name of "freedom of religion." The so-called "freedom" is not absolute

Also, it applies to everyone. Yes, that probably creates some gray areas where people's rights come into conflict, as does every single aspect of living together in the public square.

But we're not talking about the fringes here. We're talking, as hsh points out, about the most intimate and private aspects of human life: whether to bear a child, with whom to share intimacy.

It is none of their damned business.

There are people -- some (but not of course all) of them in Texas -- who would like to criminalize going out of state for an abortion, or helping people do that:

Joanna agreed, saying she’s not sure what Texas lawmakers will push for, but nonetheless added, “I think you can expect that there will be additional efforts to prevent interstate abortion care."

So -- not only making laws to control people within state lines, but making laws to control what people do with their bodies when they're not even in Texas's jurisdiction.

Our bodies are not ourselves, they're not even ours.

Some useful context for Alito's bizarre comments.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/303-creative-gay-rights-free-speech-supreme-court.html

I hadn't realised quite how manufactured a case this one is.

Basically, Aloto is coming out of the closet (not that he ever appeared that far in) as the raging bigot that he is.

As for the case getting on the Court's calendar, when so many do not. Well, all it takes is 4 Justices agreeing to hear the case. When we've got 3 political hacks and a couple ideologues, it seems we will be seeing a lot more opportunities to legislate from the bench appearing. I just hope too many legitimate cases don't get shoved aside to make room.

The central tenet of a lot of fundamentalist evangelical christianity (of the Focus on the Family school) is patriarchy. Everything else in the worldview goes through that.

And it's a hopelessly shallow and ahistorical understanding of family at that.

Am I being too dramatic? I don't think so.

I don't think so either. There is simply no concept of mutuality. There is no freedom "from" (their) religion, for anyone. There is potentially punishment for everyone who doesn't conform to their rules.

I'm wondering how successful they will have to be (God forbid!) for the coalition of evangelicals and conservative Catholics to fracture over doctrinal differences. Those differences were enough, not that many centuries ago, to spark major wars in Europe. And both factions have enough guns to skip the get-the-government-on-my-exact-doctrine step and go straight to kill-the-heretics. Probably even skipping the rest of us in pursuit of purity. Sort of like primarying someone who can win, but isn't pure, to get a losing candidate.

So -- not only making laws to control people within state lines, but making laws to control what people do with their bodies when they're not even in Texas's jurisdiction.

I'm waiting for the first time someone merely changing planes in Texas, who doesn't even live there and never has, gets arrested for once upon a time having had an abortion somewhere else.

Because, given how much people move house, it's hard to distinguish between someone going out of state for that purpose and someone who just happens to move temporarily. Do they set a threshold for how long you were gone?

Those differences were enough, not that many centuries ago, to spark major wars in Europe.

Yes. The christian nationalists are doing their best to roll back the liberality of the Enlightenment state. They want to stamp out secularism. And they are ignorant enough of the actual history to know what that would look like (or unimaginative enough not to consider what it would be like to actually live in such a world).

This is what the far right in Hungary and Poland have been after and it is the romantic ideal of a lot of the religious right here as well. Hence the love being showered upon Orban at CPAC and the like.

The christian nationalists are doing their best to roll back the liberality of the Enlightenment state. They want to stamp out secularism.

It's secularism now. But how soon do they refocus on heresy -- i.e. doctrinal differences among different (Christian) sects?

And how hysterical will the evangelicals be when they pick up on the fact that most of the conservatives on the Court aren't evangelicals but Catholics. Oh, the horror! The whole court-packing thing to do over.

One thing at a time...

House January 6 committee has decided to make criminal referrals, chairman says

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/politics/january-6-committee-criminal-referrals/index.html

Rambling here, but I remember Gregory Bateson writing something (maybe in "Steps to an Ecology of Mind") about how Catholics and Marxists were the only people who paid any attention to history these days.

The vague connection I'm making is that there is a strand of Catholicism that hugely values education (look at the Jesuits). If there's any strand of evangelicalism that hugely values education, I haven't heard of it. No, Liberty University doesn't count. A lot would have to change before the obsessive credentialism that gets people onto SCOTUS relaxes enough to let a bunch of evangelicals replace the current crop.

Also, what nous said: one thing at a time. Skipping over the mess we're in now in hopes of the far right eating each other alive after they've ground the rest of us into dust is . . . getting just a little ahead of ourselves.

A lot would have to change before the obsessive credentialism that gets people onto SCOTUS relaxes enough to let a bunch of evangelicals replace the current crop.

At the risk of trashing my reputation for optimism, not all that much. The same criteria, the same Federalist Society "credentials", and the same Senate confirmations got us folks like Aileen Cannon, who is hearing the Mar-a-Lago case. You know, people that the bar association rated (accurately) "unqualified."

If you are looking for something resembling an intellectual tradition amongst evangelicals, then you are probably looking at Calvin University, Wheaton College, or Moody Bible Institute.

This is not an endorsement, just a report of reputation.

wj, I was making a very rough point about how much the various religious factions value education. Cannon went to Duke and the UMichigan Law School, both of which are among the best schools in the country. (For certain values of "best.") She is certainly not a counter to my framing of SCOTUS candidates as coming from devotees of "credentialism."

As an aside, it's not clear from her wiki page what her religious affiliation is, if any.

Okay, and yes, i was making a point about who gets onto SCOTUS. I think it's at a different level of scrutiny than district court judges.

YMMV, and obviously does.

If you are looking for the political influence of evangelicalism in academia, however, look to Liberty, Regents, Hillsdale, and Claremont.

Related:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Enough already with the Supreme Court justices with Harvard and Yale degrees. That’s the message from one of Congress’ top Democrats to President Joe Biden, and a prominent Republican senator agrees.

Eight of the nine members of the current court went to law school at either Harvard or Yale. But it would be good if the person named to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer doesn’t have an Ivy League degree, according to Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Democrat, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican. The bipartisan message from the two South Carolina lawmakers neatly aligns with the background of the South Carolina judge they’ve praised as a good candidate to fill the seat.

Biden, a Democrat, has pledged to make history by nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Clyburn, Congress’ highest-ranking Black member, says Biden should be concerned about the court’s lack of educational diversity, too.

“We run the risk of creating an elite society,” said Clyburn, a graduate of South Carolina State University. “We’ve got to recognize that people come from all walks of life, and we ought not dismiss anyone because of that.”

We don't already have an elite society?

Anyhow, then we got Ketanji Brown Jackson. Harvard all the way.

I have gone back to find the Bateson quote, and it's in "Mind and Nature," not "Steps." If I had time I'd copy it in here, if only for the fun of what nous would say about it. :-)

Unfortunately, there's no eBook version. Maybe later. But it certainly takes me vividly back to a certain point in my intellectual "development," in this case something that I was doing on my own, outside any classroom....

Anyhow, then we got Ketanji Brown Jackson. Harvard all the way.

At least Jackson had been a defense attorney instead of a prosecutor.

This looks like it might be the bit that JanieM is referencing from Mind and Nature:

I have taught various branches of behavioral biology and cultural anthropology to American students, ranging from college freshmen to psychiatric residents, in various schools and teaching hospitals, and I have encountered a very strange gap in their thinking that springs from a lack of certain tools of thought. This lack is rather equally distributed at all levels of education, among students of both sexes and among humanists as well as scientists. Specifically, it is lack of knowledge of the presuppositions not only of science but also of everyday life.

This gap is, strangely, less conspicuous in two groups of students that might have been expected to contrast strongly with each other: the Catholics and the Marxists. Both groups have thought about or have been told a little about the last 2,500 years of human thought, and both groups have some recognition of the importance of philosophic, scientific, and epistemological presuppositions. Both groups are difficult to teach because they attach such great importance to "right" premises and presuppositions that heresy becomes for them a threat of excommunication. Naturally, anybody who feels heresy to be a danger will devote some care to being conscious of his or her own presuppositions and will develop a sort of connoisseurship in these matters.

I think it telling that the intellectual right is so taken with Leo Strauss and his defense of revelation as a counterbalance to reason.

Evangelicals as a whole have difficulty with the reason/revelation conundrum, and Francis Schaeffer was little help for them with resolving that. Without a serious attitude towards hermeneutics the whole enterprise devolves into curve fitting at some point. Literalism is their most cherished idolatry.

Thanks, nous, that is the passage. Is it fair to say that what he is calling "presuppositions," a lot of people now call "priors"? (I have never taken a philosophy class.)

That's more of a question for someone like Hilzoy than for me. I took it to refer to a notion of a grand historical metanarrative, which I'm sure many on either side of his Catholic/Marxist divide might exercise themselves to qualify, but both really do make use of those long narrative arcs in their apologetics.

Trump Organization found guilty on all counts of criminal tax fraud

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/politics/trump-organization-fraud-trial-verdict/index.html

Literalism is their most cherished idolatry.

Funny, I came in from outdoors and read the comment quickly, and it first I read it as "liberalism." LOL.

it first -> at first

about how Catholics and Marxists were the only people who paid any attention to history these days

This made me laugh with pleasure, and I like Janie's half-remembered formulation better than the original.

I thought when he said One thing at a time... nous was actually speaking in the voice of the evangelicals, who need to finish their current job transforming America before starting on the court-packing project wj was referring to.

I thought when he said One thing at a time... nous was actually speaking in the voice of the evangelicals,

Catholics and evangelicals both. No sense in splitting hairs over who counts as christian when there are so many heathens to overcome first.

And I was running with it in relation to wj's prediction that they might break into factions once they'd subjugated the rest of us. It will be no consolation (though I probably won't be alive) to see them fracture, presuming that they won't fracture until their alliance has crushed the rest of us. Let's stop them from crushing the rest of us in the first place. I.e., "one thing at a time" has meaning for both sides.

That Bateson quote fascinates and tickles me. It makes sense that the two groups who "think historically" would be Marxists and Catholics.

Catholics do because, well, they're the oldest of the Christian sects and, for most of the Christian Era, the most powerful. So they have a lot of history to be thoughtful about.

Marxists are trained to think in terms of the Materialist Dialectic, which demands thinking of and about history. I don't know if Marx was the first to link history with socio-economic change, and analyze on an arc-of-centuries basis, but he's the first person I heard of who did. A Marxist might get a lot of things wrong, but at least they're trying to base their arguments in something more robust than "because God says so."

I'm Jewish, and instantly wondered about whether and how Jews think in historical terms, historical patterns. Many Jews have - Marx, of course; and Spinoza come immediately to mind - but the problem with historical-based analysis for Jews is that our history is one long catalog of oppression, where no matter what Jews do or don't do, the tides always turn against us. Which kind of discourages using historical analytical thought on a collective basis.

Might I be permitted to assist?

"I have taught various branches of behavioral biology and cultural anthropology to American students, ranging from college freshmen to psychiatric residents, in various schools and teaching hospitals, and I have encountered a very strange gap in their thinking that springs from a lack of certain tools of thought. This lack is rather equal!y distributed at all levels of education, among students of both sexes and among humanists as well as scientists. Specifically, it is lack of knowledge of the presuppositions not only of science but also of everyday life.

"This gap is, strangely, less conspicuous in two groups of students that might have been expected to contrast strongly with each other: the Catholics and the Marxists. Both groups have thought about or have been told a little about the last 2,500 years of human thought, and both groups have some recognition of the importance of philosophic, scientific, and epistemological presuppositions. Both groups are difficult to teach because they attach such great importance to 'right' premises and presuppositions that heresy becomes for them a threat of excommunication. Naturally, anybody who feels heresy to be a danger will devote some care to being conscious of his or her own presuppositions and will develop a sort of connoisseurship in these matters.

"Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how."

Nice to see that Bateson is on our shelves. :-)

Let's stop them from crushing the rest of us in the first place. I.e., "one thing at a time" has meaning for both sides.

Hard agree.

"Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how."

If that.

Let's stop them from crushing the rest of us in the first place. I.e., "one thing at a time" has meaning for both sides.

Clearly what we need is a case of an evangelical baker refusing to make a cake for a Catholic wedding. Or vis versa, of course. On the grounds that the only real wedding is one done by his particular sect.

A while back, when Typepad.com was having all sorts of problems, JanieM brought up the subject of a catastrophic failure that would lose all of the Obsidian Wings content forever. This thought disturbed me. A fairly quick check demonstrated that most of the content could be recovered from the Wayback Machine, although there would be gaps.

Typepad eventually got most of their act back together. The "export database" function did not, and still does not work. But with the server up and stable, I thought to myself, "Making a copy is amenable to brute force." At times in my life I was notorious for that. To quote one of my grad school professors, when walking around the room handing back people's homework, and remarking on anything unusual they might have done, paused behind me, "And Mike, of course, simply beat the problem to death with a computer."

Some amount of scripting later, I have a complete copy of the site's posts and comments on my desktop machine. Stored in a format most blog software will import, should it come to that. With enough stuff that I can run incremental updates and upload all of it into the cloud to a place where JanieM can copy it.

It's always tempting to do things with a big pile of data. Say, answer the question of are the most prolific writers and commenters, going back to November 2003, when Moe Lane set it up. (Side note: Most of the "SuperUser" posts are Moe's. Others have used that account to post things. I added a bit of code to pick up bylines if they appear and correct the post author.) As of sometime this morning,

Number of posts: 8791
Number of post authors: 33
Top 20 prolific post authors:
hilzoy 2420
publius 903
SuperUser 809
Eric Martin 723
Edward _ 695
von 672
liberal japonicus 589
Doctor Science 456
Sebastian 315
WarrenPeese 195
Katherine R 187
Ugh 171
wj 146
russell 121
JanieM 69
Andrew 68
Slartibartfast 55
Jacob Davies 54
Gary Farber 50
Lindsay Beyerstein 34

Number of comments: 507015
Number of comment authors: 12534
Top 20 prolific comment authors:
Gary Farber 19783
russell 18065
wj 16336
cleek 15565
Slartibartfast 15535
Jesurgislac 13543
liberal japonicus 12702
hairshirthedonist 11209
hilzoy 10368
Ugh 8222
bobbyp 7314
sapient 7177
Countme-In 7056
Marty 6570
Hartmut 6459
Sebastian Holsclaw 6376
Anarch 5861
Phil 5768
Girl from the North Country 5582
Brett Bellmore 5541

Baby steps.

At times in my life I was notorious for that. To quote one of my grad school professors, when walking around the room handing back people's homework, and remarking on anything unusual they might have done, paused behind me, "And Mike, of course, simply beat the problem to death with a computer."

It is startling how many problems are amenable to the BFMI** approach.

** BFMI: Brute Force and Massive Ignorance. (NB: not suitable for human interactions.)

Clearly have some catching up to do.

I wonder if you add John Thullen’s comments to Count’s how much he moves up the list. There was also the relatively short-lived nooneithinkisinmytree (or something like that) handle. That guy was a one-man thread at times, often much to the annoyance of many.

Michael Cain - that's fascinating. I find it astonishing that I make the list of 20 most prolific commenters! Further to the subject of your beating the problem to death with a computer, will we ever get the Archives (by date, that used to be underneath Recent Posts) back? I didn't use it often, but when I wanted to it was useful.

bobbyp: baby steps indeed, but encouraging. I hope it's getting a lot of coverage in the US.

Apart from that, fingers crossed for Georgia.

hsh: good point. He has to be way up there.

Countme-In                      7056
John Thullen 4780
Countme-a-Demon 2756
nooneithinkisinmytree 1307
John D. Thullen 1286
John D Thullen 740

Total 17925

Also, I'm on the list at 2245 comments. Looking manually, the first one in 2004. This seems hard to believe.

And Mike, of course, simply beat the problem to death with used a computer.
corrected.

I had to write some code in school, but what Michael Cain describes and does seems like wizardry to me.

And Mike, of course, simply beat the problem to death with used a computer.

corrected.

Almost 45 years ago. Computer time was still expensive*. They wanted to teach clever tricks so that problems could be solved by hand. Or at least, without using much computer time. At least once, after I had beat the problem to death, the prof tossed me the whiteboard marker and said, "Your approach with the computer was really clever, and generally applicable. You get to do the lecture today." In the long run, this was not a great strategy. In the short term, companies would pay handsomely for solving the problem(s) within the computer constraints of the day.

* Amongst certain people, I was also known for stealing time. In graduate school at that point, in that program, everyone else was using time provided by the engineering school, who were miserly with it. The head of the Sociology Department had given me unlimited permissions on that department's DEC mainframe. There's a certain satisfaction to being clever. But a graduate student's hours are always in short supply, so given free cycles, sometimes I just substituted brute force for cleverness.

I have started hanging out at Balloon Juice and you see the result.

Michael, I hope you understand I meant that as a compliment.

Nowadays brute force is often a sensible choice as computers are so much faster and cheaper. There are still problems, though, that require finesse.

My takeaway is that I talk too much

Oh, russell!

Michael – that's great stuff. Very fun to poke around in those #s and lists.

Your story about “stealing time” reminds me of a story of my own....

Margaret "Scotty" MacVicar was already a legend at MIT when I started there in 1968; she founded the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program shortly after that. I did a couple of UROP projects, for one of which I applied for and got funds for a card that gave me borrowing privileges and a stack pass to the legendary Widener Library at Harvard.

As the wiki page says, it has “57 miles (92 km) of shelves, along five miles (8 km) of aisles on ten levels” – although I think in those days it had a mere seven levels.

For a book lover and not-always-math nerd such as myself, it was heaven, even if you just counted the bragging rights….

A few years later, when I was finishing my dissertation while living back in the Boston area, and thus without obvious access to a good research library, I lucked out and had a friend get out of library school and land her first job -- at Widener. A library staff member could have up to three “research assistants” – who could have, you guessed it, a Widener Library card with stack privileges.

I used to go into Widener sometimes just to sit amongst all those books. Eventually things changed so that you couldn’t even get into the building without some kind of Harvard ID, although you could (and can) also pay $ to get a card for building access and book-borrowing if you’re among the unaffiliated. But it looks like no amount of $ can buy you a stack pass these days.

Sometimes I wonder how it happened that I didn’t become an academic. Then I remember what I was actually up to in my younger days, and the question goes away again.

(Margaret MacVicar died in 1991 at the age of 47. IIRC she had lung cancer, even though she had never been a smoker. I can't say how much I admire the women who went before me and made a path through the barriers that were put in their way. That reminds me of a bunch more stories, but not for tonight.)

#7315: Warnock for the win

Yeah, I am so happy! I thought it would be a cliffhanger but, no, it's decisive.

Wow, Micheal Cain! Though reading the list did make me feel sad. This blog is the only one I ever bonded with in the sense of making comments. Right now, I read very few blogs and comment very, very rarely. I think my first comments here were in 2004.

Happy not to be ashamed for my state of residence tonight.

My takeaway is that I talk too much.

My foirst thought (about me) as well.

Yeah, I am so happy! I thought it would be a cliffhanger but, no, it's decisive.

And the result was foreshadowed early on, when only small (deep red) counties were counted. Walker was leading there, of course, but by noticably less than in the general election.

Also, the largest margin Walker was ahead was 50,000, when the balance of outstanding votes was heavily weighted to metro Atlanta. I had hoped for a decisive surprise early, but it was clear the numbers would come in ok.

My takeaway is that I talk too much

You don't.

Michael has clearly learned the fine art of "computer abuse", an absolutely critical segment of knowledge in these times.

Time for another dose of Jamelle Bouie. Good stuff.

@nigel: My takeaway is that I talk too much

You don't.

(About russell.)

Seconded.

*****

@bobbyp: thanks for the Jamelle Bouie link. Good op-ed. Concise and to the point, and the point needs to be spread around as much as possible.

You don't.

(About russell.)

Seconded.

Emphatically thirded. I must say, when I saw my numbers, I was shocked. But I guess it might be because I often indulge in actual back and forth conversations. Which I have no intention of giving up!

Hallelujah for Georgia! Let's see if they (Rs) think better of their absurd, simplistic ideas about tokenism (I've mentioned before the R friend who defended McCain's choice of Palin on the grounds that it would win over otherwise HRC voters).

Onward and upward.

A clip form the Midnight Train to... lyrics seems appropriate.

...(A superstar, but he didn't get far)
But he sure found out the hard way
That dreams don't always come true (dreams don't always come true)
Oh no (uh-uh, no, uh-uh)..

But what about such a ridiculous candidate being necessary to get a sane and (to my knwowledge) decent person elected there in his stead? And not to forget that there is such a thing as an incumbency bonus.

It's a classic sign of bad writing when the only way the good guys win is through the opposition consisting of 100% idiots.

wonkie:
I think my first comments here were in 2004.

November 15, 2004, 4:47 PM.

It's a classic sign of bad writing when the only way the good guys win is through the opposition consisting of 100% idiots.

Well, in this case Walker was a gift opponent. But it could easily have gone the other way, if the Rs had been clever enough (or not so in thrall to Trump) to pick a more respectable candidate. I have no doubt this, plus the midterms, have hammered that message home. One's enemy adapts (I first put mutates, but decided that was a questionable insult. YMMV), and one has to adapt to counter it.

It's a classic sign of bad writing when the only way the good guys win is through the opposition consisting of 100% idiots.

It's not at all clear to me that this is the only way the good guys win. It's not even clear that Sen Warnock would have necessarily lost to a less idiotic opponent. Even in a state where every other statewide GOP candidate won.

Now a less reactionary opponent, i.e. one who was say as moderate as Sen Romney, might be a different story. But getting that kind of Republican nominee seems problematic, given a party membership which elects people like Rep Green.

What's interesting to me is that Gary Farber hasn't been here in a while and still tops the list of commenters by number of comments. That tells me that he probably tops the list of commenters by number of words by an even larger margin. Gary could write some lllooonnnggg comments. (Good ones, but long.)

I'm sure I'd be lower on the list if counting words, mostly because I'm lazy.

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