Why Are We Doing This, Again?

As the worst drought in over a half century took its toll, investors went on a buying spree, boosting corn prices by more than 50 percent from late May to fresh record highs above $8 per bushel. The U.S. government on Friday released fresh crop data that revealed shocking cuts for this year's grain and oilseed output as the drought spread through America's breadbasket.
So, the obvious response is to stop putting the stuff into gasoline, right? I mean, E10 -- that is, the gas blend that contains ten-percent-ethanol -- is incredibly destructive to small engines, and it's driving food prices up at a time when grain prices are already ruinously high. There's just no excuse for continuing our current policy.

Naturally, then, we'll be making a change in that policy.
Of course. I should have known that would be the solution.

The Limits of Theory



The very next paragraph begins:


Bailout Nation

President Obama wants to repeat the auto bailout: "I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry."

That's a great idea, Mr. President. Have I told you about my horses*** manufacturing business?

That idea will fit right in around here.

Socrates and De Charny on Friends and Enemies

The Arms of Geoffoi de Charny










P: That is true....





Notice, though, two things:




LawDog on Satwant Singh Kaleka






Bounty of Summer






The Fortress of Saladin

Time has a series of photos from famous castles located in Syria, near where the fighting is ongoing, including one belonging to Saladin and visited by T. E. Lawrence.

Earlier this spring, rebels based in Krak des Chevaliers descended to destroy a loyalist fortification. The kind of building where the loyalists were holed up will be familiar to any of you who went to Iraq.

Hey, Here's a Song Ya'll Know

Everybody knows George Thorogood.

But just for the record...

That's a familiar character, is it not? In fact, by now, you even know which Hank Williams that one was.

Let's Hear Some Mormon Jokes

Allahpundit writes on the new Obama campaign ad:
They won’t attack [Romney] for being Mormon (I hope), so calling him a murderer will have to do.... You know what’s really interesting about this spot? It’s not even a health-care ad. It’d be sleazy under any circumstances, but there’d at least be a concrete policy angle if Burton was selling it as an argument for, say, single-payer, to decouple insurance from employment. He’s not. There appears to be no actual policy argument here at all, unless The One now opposes layoffs on principle, for fear that someone somewhere might be left without insurance.
The policy argument doesn't need to be explicit, I think: decoupling employment from insurance is clearly going to happen under Obamacare. As Dad29 was pointing out the other day, it's clear from the way the incentives and penalties are structured that the real desire is that employers should drop coverage, putting people on the public (i.e., government run) exchanges. Otherwise, how do you make sense of the fact that dropping coverage for all employees nets you a $2,000 annual penalty, but it's a $35,600 fine per employee per year if you fail to provide free birth-control, including sterilization and abortifacients?

The complexity of the regulations and the scale of the penalties will make compliance expensive even for those without moral objections -- especially as HHS appears to believe it has been given a free hand to revise the mandated requirements at any time. You can hire lawyers and accountants to keep you in compliance, risking massive fines if you should miss something; or you can pay $2,000 total and opt out for the year.

Just a cost of doing business, that.

As for attacking Mormonism, coincidentally Adam Gopnik just finished a piece for the New Yorker on the history of Mormonism. The upshot of the piece is that Mormonism is clearly a fraud perpetrated by an unstable madman, has weird doctrines, and was imposed in Utah through extreme brutality including the massacre of a large number of innocents who had accepted safe passage from Brigham Young's riders. We learn that it was so dangerous that the US Army was called out to quell it, avoiding war only because the Mormons surrendered key doctrines of their faith.

However, the piece concludes, all is well now because the Mormons sold out. Having left off pursuit of the stranger aspects of their faith for pursuit of vast, vast wealth, they are no longer the danger to society that once they were.

'But hey!' the piece concludes: religions selling out for money is a good thing. The Mormons are role models for the rest of you, who ought to sell out your values like they did. That brings us back around to the business about the huge fines and the contraception mandate, after all.

I'd assume that the timing was coincidental, except Mr. Gopnik explains that it isn't:
As he goes on to point out, his piece is not alone: in addition to "four scholarly books" on the history, there are a ton of "Mormon jokes" and "a Mormon-themed Broadway show" engaging the attention of New York City right now.

Now, I haven't heard any Mormon jokes. Religious jokes can be funny, if they're in the right spirit. Are they?

Money in Politics

The AJC describes the state of the race for the Georgia 9th Congressional District in an article entitled "Money frames a mountain vs. tea party race in the 9th."

The thing is, neither the mountains nor the Tea Party have much money. The recent T-SPLOST victory in Atlanta was fought by the Tea Party with a budget of around fifteen grand. Their opponents spent millions lobbying for it. When the spirit of the times is on your side, though, sometimes you don't need a lot.

The figures here are on the same scale. I don't think the money will matter, really: I'm not sure how much money really does matter in politics. Remembering the Wisconsin runoffs, it was never possible to determine just how much each side had really spent, and how much of an advantage either side had -- but the final vote totals were almost precisely the same as the vote totals from the previous election (i.e., the recall didn't change any minds; people voted the same way the second time). Likewise, we've seen unprecedented expenditures from the Obama campaign designed to demonize their opponent, but the needle on Romney hasn't moved very much. The people who were going to vote for him are still going to vote for him, and I am not sure all that many people exist who are both genuinely undecided, and interested enough to turn up on Election Day.

It may be that we have vastly overestimated the capacity of political advertising to change peoples' minds. I tend to think they vote their interests and personal values; and that's why I'll be voting for Dan Collins in the runoff. He's mountain-born, carries the endorsement of the last politician in America I truly respect, he's a former military chaplain and he spent time in Iraq. I think he'll serve with honor.

I think Zoller's a good candidate too, though; she's a firebrand and a Tea Party activist. We need all of those we can get. Even so, my sense of what I want is pretty set. I don't think they can move the needle on me with a slick ad, not even when the needle would only have to be moved a little bit. This causes me to believe that, more than we admit, people usually do what they want to do no matter how persuasive you are.

Civil War Buff Disarms Knife-Wielding Robber

So says the headline... but note that they mean the English Civil War.
Mr Thompson, a member of the Sealed Knot, grabbed the robber’s hand and dragged him over the shop counter. The grandfather wrenched the knife from the man’s hand and then pinned him to the counter while the shopkeeper dialled 999.

During the brawl, the masked robber drew a second knife – but Mr Thompson disarmed him again before pinning him to the floor and waiting for police.
Well done, Cavalier.

Against Hedonism, or, Why Happiness Does Not Equal Pleasure

Here is a good popular reading of why hedonistic ethics and politics must fail -- including modern utilitarian ethics and political thought.  You can maximize pleasure, maybe; maybe you can even structure a plan that maximizes pleasure for a group of people, given a level of resources.

What you can't do is plan to maximize happiness, because it's not that kind of a thing.  As Aristotle says, and rightly, happiness is an activity -- it is the particular activity of fully engaging your virtues in the pursuit of excellence.  As such the question 'are you happy?' does not especially relate to the question 'how many resources do you have?', beyond a lower boundary that gives you adequate nutrition, etc., to ensure that you have the physical capacity to pursue excellence.

All virtues require developing good habits and good training, but there is also a certain amount of capacity that either is or is not inborn.  By the way, the Greek word he mentions -- eudaimonia -- doesn't quite mean 'having a good guiding angel.'  A daimon is not exactly an angel:  it is a kind of spirit, one that the Greeks metaphorically said rode on  your shoulder:  that is, you couldn't see it, looking forward.  Other people could see your daimon, and could tell whether it was a good one or a bad one, but not you.

There is some wisdom in this.  We fail to be able to discern whether distant people are happy -- rich and famous people should be, shouldn't they? -- but we are often able to help people we know well to see that they are happier than they realized.  In fact, it is in relating to others that we do discover how happy we are:  what really matters is not our internal sensation of pleasure or cheerfulness, but the relationships we build with others whom we love, respect, or honor.  That is the field in which we best express our virtues, and thus the field in which we are most likely to discover how happy we can really be.

Customer Service

Two weeks ago I ordered some motorcycle parts. They were shipped on the first of August, with a note that they would arrive in one to three days. In fact they arrived today, in the following package:

I can't imagine why the Postal Service is having so much trouble with its competition.

UPDATE: ...and unsurprisingly, one of the parts -- a headlight replacement bulb -- was broken.  Beautiful.

A Workman Is Worthy of his Hire


Which states would those be?
What? Why?




Bearing True Faith

Temple President Satwant Singh Kaleka, killed trying to tackle and restrain yesterday's gunman. Here was one who understood the kirpan.


A great name for a space probe, Curiosity landed on Mars either yesterday or this morning depending on where you live.

NASA seems pleased. It looks like they got the old Babylon 5 folks to do their graphics.

The Fiscal Cliff

"The Fiscal Cliff" is what the New York Times calls what we usually call the union of Taxmageddon and Sequestration. However, it happens that the NYT is in favor of both higher taxes and massive cuts to defense programs (although it largely wants to see that spending redirected into "investments," i.e., other kinds of government spending). So where are we on this, in their reading?



So if we don't solve the problem, we get a renewed recession; if we do 'solve the problem,' it means increased deficits because we can only 'solve' it by agreeing to smaller tax cuts and redirected spending.

Seems like I've heard this story before.

On the Occasion of a Sikh Massacre

There are few religions in the world that I admire more than the Sikh faith. These are my brothers, at least in one of their most sacred concepts.
[A]ll baptised Sikhs (Khalsa) must wear a kirpan [sword or dagger] at all times....

It is a shame that none of them were able to bring the kirpan to its proper use today. Perhaps we shall learn that some of the fallen were trying. In any case, they are a fine and noble people, and I am terribly sorry for their loss.

News That Was Obvious Twenty Years Ago

Social Security? Not such a great deal after all, and it's only going to get worse.

Of Course It Would Have to be John

All US Presidents but one are cousins of King John of England. You remember King John?

The song isn't very good history, really: John not only was the first King John of England, he was the last one. The "mom" he allegedly calls for was Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is the consolation prize: if all our Presidents are related to John, they're also related to her, and to his brother, Richard the Lionheart.

Still, good history or not, the song does bear a certain similarity to current events...

Stand up


