Debt Ceiling Inaction Plan

I am watching with amazement the debt ceiling drama unfolding in the USA.  It is weird to think what a credit downgrade might mean for the reserve currency of the world - USD. Many international financial mechanisms (as I understand it) are built on the USD. The world will face a choice of trying to keep them going with a bad currency, or trying to rebuild international institutions from scratch on alternate bases, or giving up.

In essence, the situation of the US government is not unlike my household with a new child.  We have gone from two full-time incomes and no idlers, to one full-time, one-part time, and one unemployed. (All he does is eat and sleep.  He pays no taxes. He contributes nothing.) The choice we face is to either:

• liquidate our assets (realising a hefty loss) and move to a lower cost lifestyle, 
• moving to a lower cost lifestyle by eating less, driving less, turning off the heaters and lights and doing no washing, not seeing the doctor, not getting immunisations done, making no progress on our existing debts (paying interest-only), although it is unlikely that all this can be brought under our current income, or
• accepting that we will earn more in future years, and increasing our total debt for the moment.

We are choosing the last.  The first two are panicky reactions that would almost certainly be significantly injurious long-term.  To some extent, we could have been wiser, perhaps in years gone by - in the house we chose and so on.  But from where we are now, a little debt is very affordable.

I saw reports of a freshman Congressman hoping aloud that the Lord would bless the economy measurably when his side, the 'No Increase' Tea Partiers won the contest.  If they do win, the Obama Administration will have to administer the obligations of the US Government with insufficient funds - anything up to 40% too little week to week.  I recommend an 'across the board' approach:

• All military members, recipients of social security, welfare, medicare, medicaid and members of congress go in a lottery and 40% of them get nothing.  Maybe if their ID number ends in 6,7,8 or 9.
• US Government Bonds the same.

These are the ridiculous options that the Obama Administration is going to be forced into. It's like me having to sell the house and not take my wife to the doctor and put her back to work in a couple of months to avoid adding $5000 to my mortgage. It's just a pity there is no instrument to default on recipients of the Bush tax cuts.

As I said to a friend this morning, the hope that the Lord would bless a move that forces welching on obligations to debt-holders, to employees, and to aid recipients because you believe He is first and foremost against 'socialism' is a position so confused that I hardly know how to undo it.  First, he is pro-socialism.  He invented it - look at the redistribution of wealth in the Jubilee laws, and then again the practice of the early church. Second, a vote against the debt ceiling increase is a vote against the sick, the poor, the unemployed, and the rich who have opted to do business with you on your terms. He is the Friend of all these categories.

(My one small hope in this calamity is that it may punish Wall Street for its irresponsibility. In the Old Testament, God's judgement against one nation is usually meted out by an even more rabid nation, and Wall Street has got away with being clever and reasonable and offering excellent deals after damaging the global economy with terrible judgment. It would be good to see Terrible Judgment disable them.*)

*pun intended.

Raising Arizona

In Raising Arizona, the union of opposites becomes home to a baby. The criminal dad's fugitive friends see a lot of potential - 'awww he's a real little tearaway' 'a hellraiser for sure'; the policeman mum's friends see a lot too - 'Look how straight up, he goin' be a police for sure.'

My father and I have our share of depression - its mild but it runs deep. (How deep? I call it our share because i sometimes think if more people were out of denial about the awful wrongness of modern life, doing their share, I could be relatively chipper.)

When my son was starting to cry recently, he joked 'The depression sets in.' Hopefully we can do better for him. I hope we can teach him his life rests on greater courage than the troubles of any day.

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Abel

The readership should be interested to learn of the birth of my son, Abel, just over a week ago.  (That was where the north wind went – to get the sun - as the song has it.*)  Naming a boy Abel has some simple benefits (short, pronouncable) which are great strengths in conjunction with a fairly irregular surname.  There are some social complications (the popularity of the name Kane, the many rhymes).  There is a big social implication in the homonym, Able.  This works out as either a terrible burden of expectation, or a ludicrously hopeful piece of nominative determinism.  I will resist both of those.

I will however, read him ‘The Wizard-Knight’ by Gene Wolfe, which has a hero called Able who becomes a great Knight when he is old enough.  This is a story of the great virtue of courage, the virtue without which you can’t stick to your other virtues should you have any.  Able carries a magical item, a thread of the lives of others gifted him when he gained his majority in the middle world, below Sky and above Aelfrice. He is a changeling from our world, and the lives in the thread are our lives strained to breaking and never breaking.

I feel that Gene Wolfe has named his Able in an act of prophetic naming (as when one of the prophets names a son ‘Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz’ meaning ‘the spoil flies, the prey hastens’, a boy who was a living sign of danger only getting larger).  He created his Able for an age in which courage is not honoured, because it has spent itself again and again tilting at windmills and other follies.  He is there in the imagination to help us carry our loads when we feel we aren’t able.  This is the meaning of his bad sleep, and exhaustion when the bowstring is nearby – we have drawn on him and he is drained.  (The whole book seems like it could be a letter for the man who lost his kid brother when he was young, some elaboration of the ‘He’s watching down on us’ way of being able to digest death.)

The second association is the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 3.  Abel is a herdsman, while Cain is an agriculturalist.  Abel sacrifices blood to God, which is acceptable, while Cain’s fruit platter does not cut it.  Cain is resentful, and God warns him, but he fights with Abel and kills him.  Abel’s blood ‘cries out to God from the earth’, and God asks Cain: ‘Where is your brother?’  Cain answers ‘Am I my brothers keeper?’

Abel is a good shepherd.  Cain, after declining to sacrifice blood to God, ends up killing his brother. The irony of his answer ‘Am I my brothers’ keeper?’ amplifies that he is no shepherd.

These are associations, but all proper names are just pointers.  The boy himself is the thing.

* 5 points for anyone who can identify the referent here.  As no points have been issued on this blog, you will rocket to the top of the readership leagues.

PS.  Still no progress on the Tristrapedia.  It will be improvised from here.

In the middle of the night...

Listen for the North Wind.

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How I lost my comment argument mojo

Just a few months ago, I was willing to get into arguments at ABC religion online in the comments.  It was the subject of a rather arrogant blog post.  What brought me undone was a discussion of a John Gray essay about the 'new' atheism, in which he tried to point out that 'modern' thought has a few unquestioned beliefs of its own.

I got myself into a discussion about this, in which I was trying to make the points:

• John Gray is not a theist - he could give a pretty thorough critique of religion if he thought it needed it, but, as a realist he wants to subvert a dominant ideology, not a hapless water buffalo that's just waiting for the hunter with the elephant gun...*  The new-atheist commenters where whaling on this obviously ignorant backwater religionist, oblivious to the fact that he has been Professor of European Thought at the LSE and not religious (although, in fairness, he has expressed some residual affection for religion).
• Modern rationality includes / assumes a lot that cannot be proved to the standard that atheism applies to religious belief.  For example, that democracy assumes 'all men are created equal' - which is obviously not true.  People are hardly even alike.  For another example, the critique of Hume's famous 'commit it to flames' rule, which should itself be committed to the flames.

But when I got the response 'No there isn't proof, but I don't think it's that kind of belief' I was stumped for anywhere to go.  Eh?  It's a special category that can't be questioned? You don't see a contradiction in privileging that?  If one can write that without embarrassment I have to admit, I'm wasting my time.  

And so my comment warring came to an end. There is a gap, and I'm not bridging it.

* Roy and HG reference

It's a bad world

Today, a report of a man fighting off a toddler for a life jacket in the Christmas Island boat tragedy.

There is a good, selfish reason to be generous, to refuse to be defensive about border protection. The sight of human indecency is shameful - and I think that reaction is there because there is never nothing to be done. Primo Levi talks about the suspension or transvaluation of morality in a Nazi concentration camp. Those who had real virtue quickly starved by sharing with the even hungrier. Then as now, the earth produced more than enough food for its inhabitants.

Primo Levi - (Wikipedia translation)

If...

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud,
Who does not know peace,
Who fights for a scrap of bread,
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman
Without hair and without name,
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about.
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts,
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.

I would be interested to know whether this is consciously against the Rudyard Kipling 'If'. The fact is, there are, for all of us, circumstances that have us clutching, that reduce us to the fierce amoral animal, old man. Come new man.

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shame

I feel a good deal of shame, much of it well earned, in my life, but few things have i done as poorly as being treasurer of my church. So much accounting and govt regulation arcana, made more difficult by the overlapping church regulation. All my weaknesses have been at the fore, and after handing over months ago, i still can't seem to finish anything.

But as that philosopher mr bennet would go on 'That'll pass Lizzy, and no doubt sooner than it should.'

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Thought for the day

I hope I am scientist enough to admit that I cannot know ahead of time, nor can I know afterward, what I would prefer.

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Ezek 25:17

Zech 11:4 and following...
Thus said the LORD my god: "Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. Those who buy them slaughter them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, 'Blessed be the LORD, I have become rich,' and their own shepherds have no pity on them. For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, declares the LORD. Behold, I will cause each of them to fall into the hand of his neighbour, and each into the hand of his king, anf they shall creush the land and I shall deliver none from their hand."

So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders. And I took two staffs, one I named Favour, and the other Union. And I tended the sheep. In one month I destroyed three shepherds. But I became impatient with them and they also detested me.

So I said 'I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die. What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. And let those who are left devour one another.'

So I took my staff Favour and I broke it, annulling the covenant I had made with the peoples. So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep traders, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the LORD.
Then I said to them 'If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.'

And they weighed out as my wages 30 pieces of silver. Then the LORD said to me, 'Throw it to the potter' - the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the 30 pieces, and threw them into the house of the LORD, to the potter. Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

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A well-formed tool

A well-formed tool is better than instructions and administration.  Write it on your diary.

I am often amazed at the bone-headed mis-apprehension administrators of information companies seem to make.  Several Australian banks out-sourced their IT departments.  They would have done better to realise the IT was all there was of them.  Really, maintaining the massive data set and supporting data transactions is the business: all the rest (rates, fees, tellers, branches, big financing deals) is window dressing.

Equally amazing is the sheer bulk of the Australian system of laws.  Just the tax code can crush you to coal.  Of all these laws, only the tax code comes with even modest equipment for compliance.  With e-tax, the tax department save everyone the horrors of reading instructions and filling out dumb forms that you have to do your own additions on.  Brilliant.

Recently at work, a manager was complaining that the centralised work of data maintenance for a particular administrative task was likely to be pushed out to her workers, so that instead of filling out the form for the change and faxing it off, they would have the entire responsibility for making the change in the database.  I asked why this person could fill out the form with all the necessary details and yet another person needed to be involved to effect the change.  The answer seemed to be that the tool was clumsy and great skill was required in its use.

Please, if you run a large company, invest in the tools you want your people to use.*  Don't issue an instruction that has no correspondence in the tools they will use.  Don't accept Microsoft's idea that an electronic typewriter (Word), electronic  folders and email (and its folders) are a logically satisfying pairing for handling words in your office - why are they even a pair?  They are a pair because of it was easier to design and sell two programs to replicate administrative processes recognizable from hundreds of years ago, than to invent and sell a new way of working to senior folks.

More and more, a professional information worker with no programming skills will be like a manual worker without hands.

* Also, you might want to think about where you're getting your advice.  I am just some nut on the internet.

On the other hand...

Gawker has a story about Richard Dawkins weighing in rather unpopularly on a bit of behavior within the skeptic community.  A man, at the end of a long conference party, slipped into the same elevator as a woman and invited her to come back for coffee.  The woman was married, had given a talk about sexist behaviour in the 'skeptical community'.  She rebuffed him and he went away.  Then her mild complaint was taken up by a horrified geek chorus, and then the Dawk weighed in, trying (very clumsily) to make the point that there probably needs to be space in the skeptical community for bad manners to be practiced without them causing injuries. Society is a rough and tumble place, he could have said.  This man might be a creep, but unless you want him to ask your father, husband or older brother first, this kind of experience might be the price of sexual freedom, and its impact depends entirely on your willingness to accept that you are powerful enough.  If you are seeing yourself primarily as vulnerable, then this sort of thing is going to be terrible.  If you're not, then this sort of thing is yet another reminder that you're better.

This, I suspect, is at the bottom of a lot of men's worries about feminism.  If a man thinks he's equal to another man, he doesn't set up a lot of special conditions for his entry into the contest.  He's equal. If women are so equal, why all the special pleading?  Go for it - compete and win.  Do excellent work, share solidarity with each other.  Axiom of this position: Power cannot be given, only taken. Power given is power that can be rescinded.  (I think this is the reason that Bob Ellis and Scott Adams both seem to react to societal expectation of respectful sexual behaviour as if it required cutting their johnsons off.)

No one can look at the vulnerability of women and think it is the same as that of men. A woman and a man in an elevator are not equal.  The woman is probably not as strong as the man.  They can be equal in Adorno's 'bios' political life, but not in physical 'zoe' existence.  (The man, of course, can't bear children or inspire 4am sex pleas, and is vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation and social pressures, to karoushi (working to death)).  It's like saying Rock and Paper are equal.

The other problem, of course, is that there are no agreed standards of behaviour.  This strategy might have worked several times before.  It might work in a less defensive community than the skeptical community, which is defensive from the ground up.  (These are folks forming a huddle to beat the intellectual stuffing out of astrology together. They will spend days at it.)  If this was a well-defined solecism, it might be easier to get a conviction, but if you're going to define that as a solecism it might be difficult to maintain properly casual sex for the young atheist.

Apology to Readership

I've been alerted to the fact that you (all) find my writing to be somewhat, not to state it too baldly, involute or perhaps convolved - concerned to parenthetically run-on thought to thought as if to fully qualify every utterance by including the understanding or sense, or worse, to communicate entirely in coded references to things I happen to have seen or heard. I may not have been the best.... well, the most... well. I am aware of those things.*


*American Dreamer reference.

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The First Desktertainment Unit is Away!

Since the earliest times, Man has dreamed of a thing with a sloped surface to put things on and in.  Note St Francis' early example of the type.



I am please to report that the desktertainment unit has reached initial operating capability.

This below is a bit of ikea hacking: a vika alex with a 40mm hole in the back and two extension leads into the top two drawers.  The two laptop chargers live in the drawers, with the laptops when not in use.

Below is a photo with the camera handle flopping into it, and over-exposed to billy-oh: it is intended to show that if you cut an inch out of your standard drawer runner with a hacksaw, you can get a 'slide and then hinge' action for under $10 - a manufactured hinge to do the same thing is more like $50.

The gap at the top is larger than I would have wanted, but it looks less gaping across the room.

The underside showing the cutout.

I have turned the cutout into a funky bench / coffee table / seat.  But that is for another day.

Us men don't like this civilisation one bit

So Bob Ellis, retired labor speechwriter, has a bee in his bonnet (bat in his belfry?) about how left wing politicians are always being destroyed by sex scandals, and it seems so unfair that only feminism can explain it. Idiot.  A longer critique by John Birmingham here.

He is in company with Scott Adams, who drew fire for his 'Pegs and Holes' blog post about how men can't get no satisfaction because of society as constituted, and that this makes them unhappy. In fairness, Scott is making the same observation that Freud made in 'Civilisation and it's Discontents', and pushing back (as Freud pushed back) against 'unrealistic' expectations gaining moral force. If he had read Freud, or thought about it at all, he might have realised that there is more to being a satisfied man than having a satisfied penis.

The problem for both these doofuses (doofii?) is that these expectations became expectations because of the moral force, not the reverse. The problem is not feminism, it is of creating and sustaining a just society. Keeping one's pants on is the creation of, and a sustaining of, the kind of trust that can enable anxiety-free sex. Don't let anyone say it can't be done by any man; but don't think creation of something this good will be easy.

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Interpreting my dream

I have had a question from the reader, and have responded as follows, which I thought might be of interest to posterity:

My theory of dreams (based on what I know of the relevant science from John Kihlstrom at Berkeley's course on Consciousness and a few other relevant inputs) is that your brain takes itself off-line from most of the motor systems, and cycles over a lot of content from memory (today and elsewhere) during REM sleep which is a very low activation and a very great rest.  Your brain is at its free associative best shortly before and after waking up (I think its Alpha wave), and so those memories that are being chewed over (which can be remembered feelings calling up appropriate scenes rather than the other way around) get assembled into a story if you retain any of them as you wake.  If there is anything to be made of dream interpretation, it comes from asking the question of what story you made of the raw ingredients - what was in the observer that got imposed on the memories.

For my dream, I think the key part of the story is that having seen a monster, I immediately assumed his 'parents' made him that way for their own purposes and that he was lonely.  And I thought that was terrible. I am hypochondriac enough to see myself in the monster, and anxious enough about parenting to wonder whether all my talk of tristrapedia's is going to turn out to be abuse. I'm also anxious about my biceps, because I haven't been exercising as much as I was.  

I don't really think there's a dangerous level of monsterism in this.  You give your children the best you've found or won for yourself, and hope they are like enough to you that it does them some good. If you can give them some guidance into your roads not taken, so much the better.

Dream

I dreamed I was in a war zone in a large, sunny city. I was looking for somewhere for someone to rest, eat and drink, but stealthily, as if fearing discovery.

In a house with a long hall there was a kitchen. As i looked about me I realised someone else was in the house. He sat in a large chair, bored and restless. He had a big head, but his jaw was swollen and distended by steroids. He threw his arms overhead impatiently and they were monstrous - the bicep was healthy and thick but the triceps were atrophied and hollow. Somehow he seemed lonely, pretending to relax and watch an old television

He grunted and made to get up. I hit the floor in a panic, but he headed out toward the front of the house. Shortly heavy machine gun fire broke out.

It seems to me now that he was born and shaped by others' purposes, that he was younger than he seemed but grievously altered by interventions so that he could fight his parent's battles. Though he was a monster, he was innocent. He was the reality of which Duke Nukem is the fantasy, a hideously strong man-child who will do the dirty work of war.

Dreams are odd. The raw ingredients mean nothing, your brain is in ultimate fitting-it-all-together mode.

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