tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57896315105505510962024-02-20T05:29:52.714-05:00MetaBad puns, Marxist and other leftish thought, nudism, sexuality, and and ideas about the theory of classificationPete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-44434970421071512742015-06-30T23:05:00.001-04:002017-05-29T15:40:48.690-04:00Eat the antebellum rich!!!<p>I've shared a meme over at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/peteschult/posts/10205994540155402">http://www.facebook.com/peteschult/posts/10205994540155402</a> that I won't be taking down but that does need some extended discussion and criticism.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://scontent.fewr1-4.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/17695_10153885329883327_391457130466115085_n.jpg?oh=8fc9ac4945854fed3463335a00485a5d&oe=599D5CD4" alt="A kinda overly simplified meme on the Interwebz? Im shocked!!!" id="the_1.6" title="Claim: 1.6% of the confederacy got the other 98.4% (or at least 48.5%) to support their cause" style="height:450px;" />
<figcaption>A kinda overly simplified meme on the Interwebz? I'm shocked!!!</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here's the data I found in the census report for 1860:</p>
<table>
<caption id="uspopulationin1860">US population in 1860</caption>
<colgroup>
<col style="text-align:left;"/>
<col style="text-align:right;"/>
<col style="text-align:right;"/>
</colgroup>
<thead>
<tr>
<th></th>
<th>People</th>
<th>Families</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Free states</td>
<td>19.2 million</td>
<td>3.63 million</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Enslaving states</td>
<td>12.2 million</td>
<td>1.52 million</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Total</td>
<td>31.4 million</td>
<td>5.15 million</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Enslaved population: 3.95 million</p>
<p>Number of enslavers<a href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[1]</a>: 0.385 million (= 385,000)</p>
<p>0.385 is</p>
<ul>
<li>3.16% of 12.2 (enslaving states)</li>
<li>1.23% of 31.4 (total US)</li>
</ul>
<p>The 1.6% figure in the meme is, thus, not far off, but it is a bit misleading. If I'm not mistaken, the 0.385 million would have basically been the number of households that enslaved, so the comparison should be with households. Moreover, it should only be with those in the enslaving states. 0.385 is 25.3% of 1.52 million.</p>
<p>Thus, we have around a quarter of the households of the enslaving states being active enslavers. This is still a minority, and it may be that many of the households with few slaves were not necessarily better off financially with enslaved workers than they would have been with free, so the meme's central claim that a definite minority of the population of the confederacy was able to get much of the rest of the white population to fight against its own interests stands, but the ratio of beneficiaries to pawns is more like 3:1 than 62:1.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>I couldn't find this figure in looking through the census report itself, but I was not thorough. I got it from the online copy of a print publication for state legislators (<em>State legislatures</em>, June 2008), and they claim to have gotten it from the 1860 census. <a href="#fnref:1" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-78492736150118093642013-10-05T02:05:00.001-04:002013-10-05T02:05:10.082-04:00My politics will be intersectional, ...<p>So I have mixed feelings about <a href="http://mnunited.org/">Minnesota United's</a> campaigning on behalf of GOP legislators who voted for marriage equality in Minnesota. I'm quite aware that <q cite="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner" lang="en-US">politics makes strange bedfellows</q> and that <q cite="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Godfrey_Saxe" lang="en-US">laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made</q>. Nevertheless, it seems, in the bigger picture, to be counter productive to ally with an organization committed to hierarchy and oppression. My idea of social justice is not getting individual groups let into the Club for Cis-Het White Dudes. As <a href="http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/10/my-feminism-will-be-intersectional-or-it-will-be-bullshit/">Flavia Dzodan</a> might say, that's bullshit.</p>Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-25033370611656829012013-09-14T04:29:00.001-04:002015-04-04T23:00:33.007-04:00I'll be a post-feminist in a post-patriarchy.<p>People talk about how Steve Jobs often was and Linus Torvalds often can be a**holes, but they excuse them on the basis of their genius.</p><p>It occurs to me that before we can say we're in a post-patriarchy, we'll have to have it be such that women who are creative, dynamic geniuses can also be a**holes and still command respect rather than being called b***hes or worse.</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/feminism" rel="tag">feminism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/privilege" rel="tag">privilege</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ego" rel="tag">ego</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/arrogance" rel="tag">arrogance</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End --> Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-54723624067404798772013-09-11T03:15:00.001-04:002013-09-11T03:15:03.127-04:009/11 irreverence<p>A reminder for Americans about what many of them were saying during the Kosovo War of the late 1990s:</p><blockquote><p><q>Why are they so concerned about the Battle of Kosovo? That's ancient history.</q></p></blockquote><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/9/11" rel="tag">9/11</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-74912653318769346822013-09-08T11:38:00.001-04:002013-09-08T11:38:01.327-04:00Aphorisms #9-#15 <p>More aphorisms from my .sig file:</p><ol start="9"><li><p>Ankh if you love Ra.</p></li><li><p>Apple doesn't have many motivational speakers because, think about it: <em>There is no I in iPad!</em>???</p></li><li><p>If the system is such that <q>good enough</q> isn't good enough, then the system may not be robust enough.</p></li><li><p>It was predestined and foreordained that I would have presbyopia.</p></li><li><p>Reality is what happens whether you believe it will or not.</p></li><li><p>Some look at the dependent variable and ask <q>y?</q> I look at its initial value and say <q>y<sub>0</sub>?</q></p></li><li><p>There's the lost Taoist episode where Kirk does nothing, but the computer, knowing that Kirk destroys computers with illogic, senses that Kirk's inaction is paradoxical and then explodes.</p></li></ol><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags:
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/aphorisms" rel="tag">aphorisms</a>,
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/math%20jokes" rel="tag">math jokes</a>,
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/puns" rel="tag">puns</a>,
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Star%20trek" rel="tag"><cite>Star trek</cite></a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-29689112494156316352013-09-04T18:15:00.001-04:002013-09-04T18:18:51.905-04:00If there is a Ponzi scheme, it's not Social Security but retirement itself<p >tl;dr: <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">In an sense, all retirees are <q>parasites</q>, whether they have large cash reserves or rely on a system like Social Security. Retirement itself is what is a <q>Ponzi scheme</q> that takes what workers produce and gives it to <q>unproductive</q> retirees.</span></p><p>The right-wing seems to have declared a War on Social Security to go along with the more general War on the Welfare State and the War on Women. Their propaganda tries to get people to focus on the idea of ownership of a <q>personal account</q> as the ideal so that they'll demand an end to the pay-as-you-go system that Social Security uses.</p><p>Their shell game with personal accounts relies on faith to a greater extent than does the fiat money that they like to condemn as having nothing at its base. <strong><em>Even if an economy uses hard, imperishable commodities like gold for its money, that money is not what the people in that economy ultimately want.</em></strong> What people want is those things, services, experiences, and so on that they spend their money on. Even in an economy with no credit, no paper money, and no base-metal coins but only with gold as the medium of exchange, if there are no things, services, experiences, and so on that people want, the gold will have no real value to them. To claim that gold or personal accounts will provide for people in their retirement is to require them to have faith that the economy will be productive enough when they retire and that their accounts will be flush enough then. A system like Social Security, on the other hand, only requires that the economy be productive enough.</p><p>In any economy, whether retired people have personal accounts filled with 1s and 0s on hard drives at banks or have personal stashes of gold under their mattresses or rely on an authority to move currency from people still employed within the productive economy to them, it is the total output of the productive economy that is relevant. Again, remember that it is goods, services, experiences, and so on—not 1s, 0s, or gold—that people want. Retirees are, by definition, unproductive and must take from the productive sector. <strong><em>That they give the productive sector some of their 1s, 0s, fiat paper, or gold does not negate the fact that they take output from production without having themselves produced anything during the relevant time period!</em></strong></p><p>Assuming that the productive economy produces enough to meet everyone's needs, there is no reason that anyone in the society should have unmet needs. Relying on the market + personal accounts, though, virtually guarantees that some portion of the society will. If labor is heavily exploited and poorly paid, then laborers will not be able to buy what they produce, and only those with fat accounts will. If inflation erodes the value of accounts or if too many have been unable to save (see the previous scenario after several decades), then most retirees will not have enough <strong><em>even though the economy produces enough for everyone</em></strong> (see the 1920s).</p><p>The solution is for society to actively distribute wealth (that is, goods, services, experiences, and so on) by the proxy of taxing those in the productive economy and transfering the revenues from that tax to retirees. That is what Social Security does. All the talk of <q>Social Security accounts</q> was necessary to sell the idea to people in the 1930s who were too proud to accept <q>welfare</q>, but all that Social Security is is a formal system for transferring wealth from the productive to the nonproductive. However, private accounts are also just a system for transferring wealth from the productive to the nonproductive but with the element of high-stakes risk thrown in. Both systems for retirement are, thus, <q>Ponzi schemes</q>, but Social Security results in justice instead of in a casino.</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/right-wing%20idiocy" rel="tag">right-wing idiocy</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/economics" rel="tag">economics</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social%20Security" rel="tag">Social Security</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/retirement" rel="tag">retirement</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/production" rel="tag">production</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/productive%20economy" rel="tag">productive economy</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-28772962802885420702013-09-04T16:49:00.001-04:002013-09-04T16:49:22.489-04:00Pun rooted in the archaic<p>The Gaffer was down at the pub having a pint or two and expostulating on Russell's Paradox: <blockquote>Ah, the class of all classes that aren't members of themselves. That's a right, proper class, that is.</blockquote></p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/puns" rel="tag">puns</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Russell's%20Paradox" rel="tag">Russell's Paradox</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/set%20theory" rel="tag">set theory</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/math%20jokes" rel="tag">math jokes</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-73025134388999542522013-09-02T00:24:00.001-04:002013-09-02T00:24:54.749-04:00A bad pun<p>Consider a philosophy department where several professors study <em>ennui</em>: would it be appropriate to call their group a <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">meh lab</span>?</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/bad%20jokes" rel="tag">bad jokes</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/puns" rel="tag">puns</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-48185061857191522342013-07-26T05:23:00.001-04:002013-07-26T05:23:53.327-04:00On Rad Fem trans*phobia<p>It may well be that gender is only a social construct (or close enough for all practical purposes), just like Radical Feminists claim. The research I've seen that actually involves data collection through experimentation (as opposed to evolutionary psychology's navel-gazing just-so stories) keeps finding less and less evidence for the supposed <q>innate</q> differences between men and women.</p><p>At the moment, though, we are stuck within a milieu where even those who are raising their consciousnesses still struggle against a tendency to think in gender-essentialist ways. In some ways, it's like language. Even though come the revolution, we'll all be speaking Esperanto (or better yet, some language not biased towards the Indo-European languages), right now, each of us is stuck with their own native language.</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/trans*phobia" rel="tag">trans*phobia</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/radical%20feminism" rel="tag">radical feminism</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-3427169771308675292013-06-08T03:44:00.001-04:002013-06-08T03:55:28.575-04:00"We have met the enemy, and he is us"<p>I watched <a href="http://www.upworthy.com/know-anyone-that-thinks-racial-profiling-is-exaggerated-watch-this-and-tell-me-when-your-jaw-drops-2">this video</a> this afternoon before I went to work, and it's been occupying my mind all day. Right after I watched it, I shared it on Facebook with some comments about how it gets at 3 clustered sets of assumptions (aka stereotypes):</p><ol><li><p>Young white men doing something that looks very suspicious obviously wouldn't really be doing what it looks exactly like they're doing, so even when they say that they're doing what it looks like, they must be kidding.</p></li><li><p>Young black men are always under suspicion, and even over-the-top behavior must really be what it looks like.</p></li><li><p>Attractive, young white women ... I'm not quite sure. Is it that the guy who offered to help her steal it was back at stereotype (1) (putting her with white men and treating her statement that she was stealing it as a joke), or did he think that helping her steal it might give him a chance?</p></li></ol><p>My sense of it is that the bystanders were not necessarily racists, as such, but subject to society's implicit differential standards for black men/white men/white women (I'm sure some of the bloggers I follow would have something to say about the continued invisibility of black women in society involved in ABC's having left them out of the experiment).</p><p>What I mean by differential standards is that with the 2 white actors, people gave them some level of benefit of doubt: things seemed fishy, so the bystanders felt they needed to think it out before calling the cops. With the black young man, they were immediately ready and ignored anything indicating that things might not be as they seem.</p><p>To my mind, this gets at the kernel of what differential privilege is:</p><ol><li><p>The great majority of a society need to have internalized ideas of what various types of people are allowed to do such that when someone steps "out of line" for their type, a mob of seemingly independent people can put a stop to the "infraction",</p></li><li><p>Members of groups that are allowed more freedom of action within the ideas in (1) need not be aware that they have more freedom. Indeed, in a supposedly classless society, it is "better" if they aren't aware since awareness of that inequity (aka "checking one's privilege") could lead to elimination of the relative privilege.</p></li></ol><p>Thus, my using a quote from <cite>Pogo</cite> for the title of this post: Society is a thing, and what it is is that mass internalization of standards, mores, memes, and so on. That means that a great many of us will have internalized some of the crap that our conscious selves disavow. To get society rid of that crap, we must as individuals become aware that we have that crap and deal accordingly.</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/privilege" rel="tag">privilege</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/marginalization" rel="tag">marginalization</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/racism" rel="tag">racism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/color-blind%20society" rel="tag">color-blind society</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-3759922887667961622013-05-19T22:32:00.001-04:002013-05-19T22:36:34.119-04:00It's time to revise our ideas about "protecting" children<style type="text/css" scoped>
.strong-emph {font-style:italic;
font-weight:bold;}
.really-strong-emph {font-style:italic;
font-variant:small-caps;
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</style><p>I saw this article—<a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/florida-teen-fights-expulsion-and-criminal-charges-for-same-sex-relationship">"Florida teen fights expulsion and criminal charges for same sex relationship"</a>—that came out a couple days ago. Florida seems to be intent on winning the label of Cesspool of the Universe what with trying to let George Zimmerman get away with killing Trayvon Martin (until public pressure forced them to do something), then trying to <del>persecute</del><ins>prosecute</ins> Kiera Wilmot (again, pressure). Now, the parents of a 15 year-old girl are siccing the state on their daughter's 18 year-old girlfriend.</p><p>Before people say <q xml:lang="en-US">Well, Kaitlyn <span class="strong-emph">was</span> breaking the law, after all</q>, let's look a little more carefully:</p><ol><li>This is about whether the parents of the 15 year-old approved of her relationship. We all know people with officially underage kids in relationships with someone a little too old (generally, more than 24 months older) to legally be in a relationship with them. The parents we all know like their child's friend, though, so they shield the couple from the law.</li><li>The community is persecuting Kaitlyn (and her girlfriend) for being a lesbian and for having a same-sex romantic relationship. The legalities of the situation are merely the vehicle that lets them bring the power of the government into the situation.</li></ol><p>Clearly, as a culture we need to get rid of the homophobia that is central to this situation, but I actually want to talk about getting rid of the vehicle used for the persecution: the notion that minors are incapable of consent. First, let me state that I have a daughter who is, at the moment, 16 (lest anyone try to say <q xml:lang="en-US">You'd change your tune if you had a kid</q>). As one of her parents, I share responsibility with my wife for protecting our daughter's interests until she turns 18. For example, my understanding is that she could sue us if we badly mismanaged funds that grandparents have established for her with us as the named custodians. <span class="really-strong-emph">As her parents, we do not have rights so much as responsibilities.</span></p><p>That is the key, here. The law should not be set up so that abusive parents can use it to impose their own narrow visions of the world or morality on their kids (much less so that prosecutors can use it to persecute kids for sharing nude images of themselves with their friends, and, yes, persecution of teen sexting is part of the motivation for this post). The law needs to be such that sex without consent is called rape but not such that minors are incapable of giving consent.</p><p>We need nuance in the law, and that nuance should be informed by facts about adolescent development and how adolescents can and do give consent. It should not be based on fantasies of juvenile innocence or the preservation thereof. I am neither a lawyer nor a psychologist, so I have no specifics for a proposal for how the law should look, but I <span class="strong-emph">do</span> know it should look more like my vision than like the status quo.</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/parenting" rel="tag">parenting</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/sexuality" rel="tag">sexuality</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/children's%20rights" rel="tag">children's rights</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/lgbtq%20equality" rel="tag">lgbtq equality</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-52951087289603466822013-04-10T02:13:00.001-04:002013-04-10T02:13:24.538-04:00Aphorisms 3 through 8A collection of aphorisms I've been using in my .sig file:
<ol start=3><li><p><em>Cacti</em> instead of <em>cactuses</em>? To me, that makes no more sense than saying <em>Hamburger</em> instead of <em>hamburgers</em> or <em>bazaarhaa</em> instead of <em>bazaars</em>.
</p></li><li><p>I find it interesting that the US, with one of the lowest rates in the industrialized world of acceptance of the theory of evolution through random mutation and natural selection, should be one of the most devoted to the social Darwinism of capitalism.
</p></li><li><p>I see no reason to "correct" the grammar of a native speaker of a language. If native speakers can easily understand each other's dialects, neither needs to adopt the rules of the other's.
</p></li><li><p>I was thinking that if a native speaker of a language is unsure about how they would express themself in their language or if they have the idea that non-native speakers speak their (the native's) language better than them, then they must have been subjected to some pretty serious psychological abuse with respect to the use of their native tongue.
</p></li><li><p>I'll consider using "a whole other" instead of "a whole nother" when prescriptivists call fruits from <em>Citrus ×sinensis</em> trees "noranges" instead of "oranges."
</p></li><li><p>The fact that someone holds certain values stubbornly does not make them absolute definitions of right and wrong.
</p></li></ol><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/language" rel="tag">language</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ethics" rel="tag">ethics</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/politics" rel="tag">politics</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-17531120462849525062013-01-09T18:48:00.001-05:002013-01-09T18:48:54.584-05:00Political etiquette<h4>This was a post I made to Facebook on January 5, 2013 that I thought I'd put out on the larger Web:</h4><p>In 2010, the federal government temporarily reduced the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2%. That reduction expired at the end of 2012, so people are noticing somewhat smaller paychecks.</p><p>This event, of course, gets spun in different ways, depending on political orientation, so I have a proposal for an etiquette rule for political discussions about such temporary measures:
</p><ol><li><p>Since Republicans will want to characterize the expiration of the measure as a tax hike, they are not allowed to complain that it's only temporary when discussing the measure around the time that it passes. Use of the word <q xml:lang="en">temporary</q> in or near such discussions is an automatic bar to their later being allowed to use the words <q xml:lang="en">tax</q> and <q xml:lang="en">hike</q> near each other when the measure expires (except insofar-as to remind Democrats that they are now subject to Part 2 of this rule).
</p></li><li><p>Conversely, since Democrats will want to characterize the expiration of the measure as just going back to normal levels of taxation, in all discussions of the measure in or around the time of passage, they must not only use the word <q xml:lang="en">temporary</q>, they must put stress on the word (through the usual phonetic means in speech or by <b>bolding</b>, <i>italicizing</i>, or equivalent in writing). Any failure to do so is an automatic bar to their being allowed to object to Republican characterizations of the expiration as a tax hike (except insofar-as to remind Republicans violating Part 1 of this rule that they are in violation).
</p></li></ol><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/civility" rel="tag">civility</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/politics" rel="tag">politics</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/etiquette" rel="tag">etiquette</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-84193151766475422532012-10-30T01:54:00.001-04:002012-12-01T02:09:51.796-05:00Aphorisms #s 1 & 2<ol><li><p>Some liberals think the U.S. national motto should be <q xml:lang="la">e pluribus unum</q> like it was 220 years ago. Most right-wingers want it to be <q xml:lang="en-US">in God we trust.</q> Neither motto captures the dominant U.S. philosophy: <q xml:lang="de">Arbeit macht frei</q>.</p></li><li><p>Rebecca West said <q cite="http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/8111.Rebecca_West" xml:lang="en-GB">I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.</q> Stealing the pattern of that quotation, I myself have never been able to find out precisely what political correctness is: I only know that people call me PC whenever I confront them for expressing their sense of being entitled to their privileged status.</p></li></ol><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/aphorisms" rel="tag">aphorisms</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/political%20correctness" rel="tag">political correctness</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Amerika%20%C3%BCber%20alles" rel="tag">Amerika über alles</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-68329969625038582182012-10-16T01:15:00.001-04:002012-10-16T01:15:27.015-04:00Towards a more gnuanced atheism<p>The caricature of gnu atheism has it as obsessed with wiping out every vestige of religious belief. A more accurate view of what many atheists want is just to eradicate the meme-pair that demands conversion of the world to the religion that it infects and condemns those that don't convert to hell. Though the pair may infect other religions, fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam seem to be the major hosts right now. Those 2 groups thus face off, each with the idea of eradicating the other. If they just did that and left the rest of us in peace, it might not be so bad, but since they might just take the whole planet with them (keep in mind that, depending on which party is in power, fundamentalist Christians either control the US government or at least influence it strongly), we all have an interest in getting rid of the meme-pair.</p><p>That is why I am much more interested in working with theists who don't condemn or try to convert good people who don't share their beliefs than I am in increasing the number of atheists. We all have a common cause of reducing the influence of the idea of conversion by the sword.</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/fundamentalism" rel="tag">fundamentalism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/religion" rel="tag">religion</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/atheism" rel="tag">atheism</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/islam" rel="tag">islam</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/christianity" rel="tag">christianity</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-22273558765180009172012-10-13T03:01:00.001-04:002012-10-13T03:01:55.853-04:00Nonsense about marriage<p>There's this meme out there that the answer to marriage equality is for the state to get out of the marriage business and let it become just a religious notion. This is a bad idea for at least 2 reasons.</p><p>First, regardless of what you call family relationships, society will have an interest in various issues that they involve: What happens if the relationship ends? Should remaining partner(s) get more favorable treatment with respect to inheritance than people outside the family? Can 1 partner be compelled to testify against the other(s)? I doubt that many opposite sex couples would want to have to engage a lawyer to draw up all the appropriate documents that some kind of laissez-faire, libertarian view of marriage would entail. What marriage equality demands is that same sex couples be given the chance to have all the rights that opposite sex couples have the chance to get and to get them in the same way: by getting married.</p><p>The other reason I think it's a bad idea is that it gets history completely wrong. Its proponents claim that marriage used to just be religious, but until the Enlightenment, talking about secular law, religion, and culture as separate concepts would be hard indeed, even if all talk of marriage had been in religious terms. But I really doubt that it was, anyway. Since marriage was an economic relationship back before the Romantic Era, the secular law would have played a large role in its regulation even back in the day.</p><!-- Technorati Tags Start --><p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/marriage%20equality" rel="tag">marriage equality</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/libertarian%20nonsense" rel="tag">libertarian nonsense</a></p><!-- Technorati Tags End -->
Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-53001228450040771612012-09-20T00:48:00.001-04:002012-09-20T00:48:19.981-04:00Skeptical?<p>It's useful to remember that many of those who clam to be skeptics about evolution or climate change accept without question the myth, fabricated during the heyday of temperance movement, that Jesus drank grape juice and not wine.</p>Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-69857877742862615502012-07-04T02:07:00.001-04:002012-07-04T02:07:53.717-04:00Learing at 9/11<p>Goneril and Regan (in unison to Cordelia): Why do you hate our father so much?</p>
<hr />
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Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-48405115172067643002012-06-13T01:12:00.001-04:002012-06-13T01:14:47.742-04:00Fathers' Day<p>An early Fathers' Day present from my daughter:</p>
<p>She generally rolls her eyes at my bad jokes (and sometimes hits me over the head with a rubber chicken for them), but today when I told one, she repeated to herself, as if reciting a mantra, <q xml:lang="en">X's are worse; X's are worse</q> (where X is a friend of the family who also likes bad, geeky puns).</p>
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Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-24435269998428589162012-05-04T00:55:00.001-04:002012-05-05T03:04:19.058-04:00The concrete and the abstractIn 1886, Leopold Kronecker famously said <q cite="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker" lang="en">God made integers; all else is the work of man.</q><sup><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5789631510550551096#note1">1</a></sup> For me, even this claim admits too much abstraction into reality, and a better formulation might be <q lang="en">God made quarks, leptons, and photons; all else is the work of man.</q> Abstraction is useful, but I'm thinking that a given set of facts can yield more than 1 abstract model for them.<br />
The lesson for those who develop taxonomies is that there is not a single taxonomy defined by reality. A taxonomy—like any other tool for gaining understanding of a domain, for organizing such tools, or for what have you—is defined by reality and by the intended audience.<br />
<hr /><sup><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5789631510550551096" name="#note1">1</a></sup> Well, actually he said <q cite="http://www.zeit.de/2008/29/N-Mathematik-und-Realitaet" lang="de">Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk</q>, but it comes to much the same thing.<br />
<hr />Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/classification" rel="tag">classification</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/reality" rel="tag">reality</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/abstractness" rel="tag">abstractness</a>Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-91857778865775282672012-04-18T23:16:00.001-04:002012-04-18T23:16:38.084-04:00Decalogue<p>There are no absolutes, right? So I've decided it may be time to compromise on the question of whether public schools, courthouses, and other government buildings can post the 10 Commandments.<sup><a href="#1">1</a></sup></p>
<p>Here's my offer:
<ol>
<li>Believers get to post the 10 Commandments in a prominent place in government buildings.</li>
<li>Stores, advertisers, and others who profit from rampant consumerism will be required to prominently display the commandment against coveting.</li>
<li>Everyone in the following list will be required to get the commandment listed tattooed onto their forehead (along with the citation for <a href="http://bible.cc/leviticus/19-28.htm">Leviticus 19:28,</a> just for the irony).
<ul>
<li>Newt Gingrich: the commandment against adultery,</li>
<li>All bankers: the commandment against stealing,</li>
<li>All soldiers and Florida gun owners: the commandment against killing,<sup><a href="#2">2</a></sup> and</li>
<li>All trial lawyers (prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, and civil litigators): the commandment against bearing false witness.</li>
</ul></li>
</ol>
</p>
<p>That oughta do it. After all, why tell the kids and the hoi polloi to follow them if the elites won't?</p>
<hr />
<p><a name="1"><sup>1</sup> There are more than 10</a> individual commandments given in Exodus 20:1–17, and there are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Two_texts_with_numbering_schemes">3 traditional systems for compressing them into 10 units.</a> We can let the various groups of believers fight amongst themselves over whose list gets posted.</p>
<p><a name="2"><sup>2</sup> If the believers insist</a> that this commandment only forbids unjustified killing, then I'm OK with having the tattoo state <q>Thou shalt not kill without a just and proper cause.</q></p>
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Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-75152265413278091672012-04-02T11:52:00.001-04:002012-04-02T11:52:07.610-04:00Term limits<p>I don't know whether the 2-term limit for presidents is good in the abstract, but since its only effect so far has been to keep Ike and Reagan from going on for another term each, I can't complain.</p>
<p>(The <cite>irony</cite> tag is because it was Republicans, in reaction to FDR's 4 terms, who passed the term limit amendment.)</p>
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Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-89322015285894915022012-03-30T02:29:00.001-04:002012-03-30T02:29:10.962-04:00Blessed are those with a persecution complex? - Guest Voices - The Washington Post<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/blessed-are-those-with-a-persecution-complex/2012/03/23/gIQAZJiUWS_blog.html">Blessed are those with a persecution complex? - Guest Voices - The Washington Post</a>:</p>
<p>The kicker:</p>
<blockquote>I am sorry to dash anyone’s hopes, but being required to honor a contract you have voluntarily entered into is not persecution. Being required to abide by your employer’s dress code and other rules is not persecution. Being required to carry out the job you are paid to do is not persecution. Not being exempted from laws that apply to everyone else too is not persecution. Not even if you are religious, and no matter how much you had set your heart on the promised heavenly reward.</blockquote>
<blockquote>These cases are the very opposite of persecution: they are self-serving, self-aggrandizing demands for special treatment. More seriously, they are an insult to Christians around the world for whom the word <q xml:lang="en">persecution</q> means something altogether more deadly.</blockquote>Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-23336504573174695722012-03-26T01:44:00.001-04:002012-03-26T01:44:04.770-04:00What are we educating for?<p>I've been thinking lately that what we need kids to learn is not facts or theories but skills. There is some foundation knowledge that may remain relevant long after graduation, but it will be far more important for the kids to be
<ul>
<li>flexible, questioning, and able to change their understanding of what is true,</li>
<li>able to learn new skills and material, and</li>
<li>interested in the world.</li>
</ul>
</p>Pete Schulthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107593040254606556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789631510550551096.post-3344014810510178452012-03-25T13:22:00.001-04:002012-03-25T13:22:53.069-04:00Life imitates Monty Python<p>Geoff Pullum, one of my professors from when I was in grad school in linguistics, posted a <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3861">blog entry</a> over at <cite>Language Log</cite> talking about how some high schools in the UK seem to be having their students who are native speakers of a non-English language take the proficiency exam for their native language in order to pad the high schools' average scores for GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exam scores.</p>
<p>I won't take a position here on the ethics of the practice, but I was reminded of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhj6gy1Syss">this sketch</a> from <cite>Monty Python's flying circus.</cite> Note, however, that no-one is claiming that the high schools are having native French speakers (for example) take classes where they endure constructing sentences on the pattern of <q xml:lang="fr">la plume de ma tante ...</q> (modify appropriately for other languages).</p>
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