Quizzing the Anonymous
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Below are the 50 most recent journal entries recorded in the "shkrobius" journal:[<< Previous 50 entries]
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01:37 pm
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Table of contents
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. (F. Bacon)
( Last updated on August 10, 2009 )
Tags: table of contents
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07:41 pm
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Hava Nashira, Shir Halleluia
For obscure reasons, Hava Nashira is a great hit with children choirs in Chicago. After listening to it for the twentieth time (my son sings in a choir) it suddenly downed upon me that this hymn does not sound like a Hebrew song, its lyrics disregarding. It turns out that it was one of the first commercial jingles. The canon was written by Johannes Ockeghem (1425-1497)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Ockeghem
After Ockeghem's death, this canon had been used to promote the virtues of what later (in 1510) became Bénédictine liquor; the lyrics consisted of nothing more than "Benediktiner Munklikör". Little is known about Jan's life, and almost none of his music has survived, though he was considered to be the best composer of his age. For example, his is the first surviving Requiem Mass set to music. It is said this promo-chant eventually became a popular drinking song for those abusing the Benedictiner Munkliqueur.
This drinking song is one of the very few pieces of secular music Ockeghem ever composed, and it is the only piece that is still widely performed -- ironically, as scared Hebrew music. The liquor itself suffered the similar reversal of fate, its secret being lost during the ravages of the French Revolution. It is said to be rediscovered in 1863, but there are no means of checking the claim of authenticity. Hava Nashira is the product of German Reformist Jews who somehow rediscovered this forgotten canon turned jingle turned drinking song and turned it into a hymn as it sounded so... canonical.
Esse homo: for sixty years the greatest composer of his time had been composing inspiring, sophisticated masses and motets in impeccable counterpoint, all of which are presently forgotten, whereas the only drinking song that he wrote has been turned into the ever popular spiritual hymn. Played backwards, this hymn was immortalized in pop music:
Liverpool, England: New technological advances have brought light into an old debate: whether the original Beatles' recordings, played backwards on a record player, yield satanic language... What followed was an amazing reversal of expectations. According to Logan, "First, the jumbled words of the original 'backwards recording' digitally state with clarity, Hava nashira, shir alleluia, which is Hebrew for 'Let us sing, sing alleluia'. Another song clearly yields Shalom chaverim, lehitarot shalom which translates 'Peace until we meet again, friends'." We're working on the other songs, but the backwards language is certainly not satanic. It's just ... Hebrew." http://www.ironiccatholic.com/2007/01/beatles-songs-played-backwards-its.html
Perhaps this is not the last transformation of this 550 year old canon...
Our culture is an unbelievable mess.
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08:33 pm
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Why are animals edible?
If G-d had not intended for us to eat animals, How can He made them out of meat? (Sarah Palin)
from http://aptsvet.livejournal.com/550693.html?thread=7952165#t7952165
Given the predation, why are animals edible? One would think that the best defense strategy would be making oneself inedible, e.g., by poisoning one's tissues - or putting more sinew into muscle, or the bone spikes, etc. This strategy (poisoning) is widely used in various orders of life, but exremely rarely in higher animals. Actually, we (the chordates) had evolved from sedentary urochordates (tunicates); we are an upgraded version of their juvenile, bentic form. The chief defensive adaptation of these tunicates is poisoning their tissues with vanadium extracted from sea water. So the use of this strategy has everything to do with us being around today.
The likely answer is that the evolutionary swings from herbivory to carnivory and back had occurred too often to make it advantageous, and the carnivores do not need being inedible to avoid predation. It is the same answer that explains why higher animals, even the commited herbivores, keep highly acidic stomachs they do not really need. The hoofed animals we consume have not began as herbivores. The earliest ungulates were omnivores, and there were such omnivorous and carnivorous ungulates for millions of years (in fact, the whales are traced to one of these lines, the mesonychids). In the Paleocene, it was not set in stone: chosing either one of the possible life styles was a safety valve required for the longevity of the lineages. There were hoofed predators the size of a wolf
http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/predators.htm
and even larger. Actually, the largest mammalian predator that ever existed on land was hoofed, this one, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrewsarchus
The chief reason the ungulates are so appetizingly delicious is that plant eating is a temporary thing with them, for the lack of a better opportunity. Another twist of evolution and the hoofed predators will be back; however, for the time being, the niches are filled with cats and dogs. Maybe it is better to keep it this way... Just look at this beast below. Its skull was 80 cm long, and the animal weighed a ton. Eating ungulates may not be such a bad idea, given their evolutionary potential.
Why are animals edible?
Tags: whys
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02:03 am
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Traveling in a futile groove
for D.
I was digitizing my old tapes and came across a street tune I recorded on Easter day of 1991 in Paris; the tape was reused and I forgot about it. As I listened to L'Internationale, the memory flashed back and I remembered it all, including the reason I recorded it. It was a scene straight from ee cummings: at the head of the street a gasping organ waving moth-eaten tunes. The association was not accidental, as I brought his poems with me: I fancied reading Cumming's love poems where those were written. Back then I was obsessed with Cummings; I was young, too.
The Frenchman was toothless and old. When the eery melody finished playing, his unsteady hands distributed pamphlets with a large red star on the front cover. More ee cummings came to memory
kumrads die because they're told)
kumrads die before they're old
(kumrads aren't afraid to die
kumrads don't
and kumrads won't
believe in life)and death knows whie
(all good kumrads you can tell
by their altruistic smell
moscow pipes good kumrads dance)
kumrads enjoy
s.freud knows whoy
the hope that you may mess your pance
every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love
The ex-version of a Parisian kumrad was standing before me. He did not look like a man who was unafraid of dying, more like a man who was afraid of living. The altruistic smell, had there been any in the past, was masked by material odors. The Moscow pipes just stopped playing, and there was no music to dance except for that produced by his machine. The melody began to play again, and I left. I do not know what kind of unmitigated hate this man had in his youth but his years in limbo were brutal. Imagine listening to L'Internationale on a pipe organ, 8/7, year after year.
As I was leaving I swore to myself that I'd never end like a human appendix to a machine mechanically reproducing the same tune, even if that tune have stirred the millions. I am fond of theorizing no less than the next person, but there is a line I am not tempted to cross. I am not willing to dream and theorize about bettering the lives of other people. It is much more gratifying simply doing it to the best of one's ability, and I believe people are fully capable of bettering their lives without the benefit of my or anyone else's theories. If the goal is to understand what is before one's eyes, I am all for it. If the goal is pretending that political theorizing of the right kind is going to lead to the universal happiness, count me out. The universal happiness surrounded this man, blended with the fine spring day, and he could've sensed it too would he shut up his bloody contraption and look around.
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12:58 pm
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A forgotten pioneer of renewable energy
...Franco repeatedly placed his faith in hare-brained schemes which he believed would save Spain. On one occasion, a Czech engineer and con-man managed to convince the general that with the waters of the River Jarama, certain herbs and secret powders, Spain could get all the petroleum it needed. On another, he was convinced of a plan to solve the country’s hunger of the 1940s by feeding the population with dolphin sandwiches. (La Memoria Insumisa, Nicolás Sartorius y Javier Alfaya, 1999).
http://iberianature.com/spain_culture/culture-and-history-of-spain-a/autarky
Tags: note to myself
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07:07 pm
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Two dialogues concerning rights and privileges
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/211609.html?thread=1347737#t1347737 (edited)
S. I admit that I do not know why political theory is one of the last remaining strongholds of "mathematical" line of thought. Perhaps it deeply accords with our intuitions about what a political theory is supposed to be.
D. а вам не кажется, что там существует спектр возможностей - от полной интуитивности и субьективности при отсутствии всякой стабильной рациональной основы - до полной догматичности абсолютной теории, которая не обращает внимания на реальность?
S. As a possibility, yes. In practice, no. On their own force, the theories would march to their respective extremes.
D. т.е. вы считаете, что в самих теориях содержится нечто, что с необходимостью толкает их к догматизму. Что же именно? И почему консервативные теории не стремятся к противоположному, столь же опасному волюнтаризму?
S. The internal logic of these theories. The conservative theories are self-defeating. Let me be more precise. There is poetry and there is theory of poetry. Does excellent knowledge of the theory of poetry make one a great poet? It does not. A better poet? Doubtful. Any kind of poet? Perhaps, but only by coincidence. Yet it cannot be denied that poetry can be theorized about and such theories can be useful if only to understand and appreciate poetry. Theory of poetry does not aim at producing better poetry, it seeks understanding what poetry is. Burkean conservatism is of this kind. It does not aim at forcing the civil society into a particular shape. It aims at preserving it so it can shape itself. Conservative thinking is about the means of such preservation. This thinking arrives at many of the tools of classical liberalism (that preceded this thinking, culminating the entire Enlightenment) but from a different perspective, without idolizing these tools. Again, think of a conservative politician, like Churchill. He operated not on any particular political theory but on his love of British civil society, the very civility and freedoms of it, and the desire to preserve it. He did not search for his ideal up in the sky; his ideal was right there, it was palpable. He felt it as strongly in peace time as in war time. He did not worry whether he was a statist or a libertarian. He was worrying about preserving England in the state when someone may occupy oneself with such concerns. This is inherently the matter of judgment which no theory can replace or guide, like theory of poetry cannot guide writing great poetry. If it does, I do not want such a theory and the kind of poetry that results from it.
D. Вы предпочитаете поэзию теории поэзии. Я тут с вами. Я вообще ненавижу теорию поэзии, поскольку несколько лет ею занимался. И вы определяете консерватизм как любовь к поэзии, а либерализм, как теорию поэзии. Однако когда дело касается, к примеру, физической реальности, любовь к ней заменить теории не может. Действия, практика - в случае физической реальности опираются на теорию, а не на любовь. И иногда теория довольно далеко отходит от непосредственного любовного контакта - и часто ему противоречит. Вопрос в том, на что больше похожа общественная жизнь, общество - на поэзию или на физическую реальность.
Вообще же в этом вопросе лучше всего работать на примерах, на конкретных примерах - привести какую-то проблемную ситуацию, показать, как на нее реагируют консерваторы, как либералы. А вы, мне кажется, теоретизируете, возводите ваше деление к математическому мышлению, выстраиваете ригидную классификацию - т.е. грешите именно тем, против чего предостерегаете.
S. Excellent point and well deserved criticism - except that we already had such a discussion:
http://dennett.livejournal.com/233214.html?thread=7657726#t7657726 (edited for brevity)
( Is the right to health coverage an unalienable natural right or a privilege? ) returning back
S. Let's look at this discussion again. It was your thinking that was "mathematical". You wanted only to know whether X is a privilege or a right because if X is a right then it is the duty of the government to protect this right. Whether the civil society agrees or disagrees on X was considered irrelevant; once something is declared to be one's natural right; this right was thought of in the absolute terms. Public opinion, the actual ability of the to deliver, etc. did not matter. It was I who told that the actual realization of this right can only be implemented through seeking consensus rather than labeling something "right" or "privilege." You reduced the situation to the one in which a theoretical structure authomatically leads X to become the norm. Tellingly, the only counter-argument your libertarian opponents were able to furnish was that X is a privilege: their thinking relied on exactly the same logical structure. If this is not "mathematical" reasoning, I do not know what is. The very dilemma makes sense only if you have this kind of reasoning. From my perspective, both positions are attempts to bypass the civil society in order to further one's agenda. Instead of persuation, arguments, analysis and thoughtful observation the problem is reduced to abstractions, with both sides claiming that their reduction of X is correct and the shared conviction that once this reduction is made the opposing view can be ignored. The real life with its pains and everyday concerns is reduced to an abstract proposition. That discussion was the exact replay of Burke's famous essay, and his considerations on precisely this question (rights or privileges?) was the point of departure for conservative thinking.
Politics is not people deciding "yes" or "no" and inserting their decision into a slot of the perfect machine working with mathematical precision and showering liberties and cosmic serenity from the rear end. There is no such a machine, there are only people.
D. Мне кажется, тут вы совсем неправы. Вы даже проблему видите неправильно.
Вообразите подход к политике совершенно лишенный рациональности, не основанный ни на каких теориях и ни на какой логике - вообразите людей, пораженных полным отсутствием логики и абстрактного мышления в политике - и вы увидите, что это гораздо хуже, чем все, что основано на использовании математического подхода. Вот к примеру - фашизм...
Мне кажется, хорошая, правильная политика только выигрывает от НАЛИЧИЯ В ЕЕ РАСПОРЯЖЕНИИ до конца продуманных теорий - и совершенно в этом отношении непохожа на поэзию. Еще раз - устройте мысленный эксперимент - уберите все поэтические теории - и поэзия станет от этого только лучше. Уберите же все политические, философские и этические теории - и политика опустится до дикарского состояния, не в силах легимитизировать свои основные принципы и опираясь на инстинкт и волюнтаризм. В политике конечно существует момент неправильного, догматического применения теорий - как существует он в любом деле, имеющем отношение к реальности - однако настаивать, как это делаете вы, на вредности самих теорий, на ненужности их продумывать до конца, на ненужности рациональности - это довольно примитивная ошибка, в которую вас завлек, мне кажется, критический порыв и увлечение консервативной традицией.
И еще одно - мне кажется, в своем изложении наших бесед, вы поторопились - не выяснив мою позицию, вы изложили ее с искажениями, использовав как жупел для демонстрации заранее существущих выводов и обрезав ненужный вам хвостик беседы. Я - прагматик, но с идеей корректных ориентиров - тогда как вы представили (или представляете) меня догматиком. мне гораздо больше пользы принесла защита взглядов собеседника - и уж точно - полное уяснения оных, с подтверждением от него, что я понимаю его правильно - нежели настойчивое продалбливание своих собственных взглядов.
(I apologize to D. for any possible distortion of his views; the full discussion can be found by following the threads. I was strongly tempted indeed as the topic and discussion exactly paralleled the arguments in "Reflections on the Revolution in France"
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm)
Tags: memorable exchanges
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10:32 am
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Ideology
...Where there is no Property, there is no Injustice, is a Proposition as certain as any Demonstration in Euclid: For the Idea of Property, being a right to any thing; and the Idea to which the Name Injustice is given, being the Invasion or Violation of that right; it is evident, that I can as certainly know this Proposition to be true, as that a Triangle has three Angles equal to two right ones. (Locke)
As much as I love mathematics, the connection between mathematics and ideology is direct and explicit. Ideology originated through the once revolutionary notion that philosophical discourse should follow the structure of Euclid's Elements. Later on, it became fashionable for one's philosophy to be "scientific," but in the 17th century they wanted it to be "mathematical." Ideology is a vestige of these happy times. That seemingly plausible theories about real world can be generated in this fashion was a major discovery; no one expected that. Newton demonstrated this approach for natural philosophy. Spinoza demonstrated it for moral philosophy. Locke demonstrated it for political philosophy. The shared conviction was that this approach makes theories infallible. Hence the statements like those given above.
It all works very well until one observes unpropertied people engaged in most heinous injustices. Then, if one insists on geometric certainty of one's propositions, the only recourse is telling that these injustices are the highest form of justice or telling that that these people are not properly unpropertied. The gap between Locke's demonstrations and the observed reality was not lost upon Locke. To reconcile such abject contradictions one needs certain theory of knowledge, and Locke, being no fool, had it.
The linchpin of Locke's theory was that propositions need to follow from self-evident truths in a manner of geometric proofs. Self-evident truths are considered as the most certain (intuitive) knowledge that is grasped fully and immediately; demonstrative knowledge (proofs) is less certain but it is still acceptable. This is a departure from Aristotle who considered only certain knowledge of necessary truths to be acceptable. Such knowledge is certain because Aristotle's humans are, by design, perceive the essences of substances directly, by reason. Self-evident truths is what they discern. Locke says that, unfortunately, this is not true. It would be wonderful to have all truths certain, but this is technically impossible due to imperfection of human mind. Some of our knowledge must be demonstrative; its legitimacy depends on the certainty of deductions from self-evident truths and this certainty depends on how closely such demonstrations emulate geometric reasoning. If such deductions are correct, then such demonstrated truths acquire nearly the same status as self-evident truths.
In itself, this is not terribly original, but applying this scheme to political philosophy was exciting. Locke chose a set of "self-evident truths" (those that his own mind grasped fully and instantly) and worked out various consequences, claiming mathematical precision at every step. These self-evident truths were based on his highly unorthodox and controversial reading of the Bible, but this point is not important for what follows. The end of Lockean way of knowing is the ideal that is composed entirely from simple ideas. This ideal is fully equivalent to certain truth, and rational mind desires certain truth. Thus rational mind desires the Lockean ideal; this is its objective want. Satisfying this want to the fullest degree is happiness of a rational being. The background to ideology has been laid. Ideology has started as a science of Lockean ideas.
...The word ideology was coined by de Tracy in 1796 assembling the parts idea (near to the Lockean sense) and -logy. de Tracy used it to refer to one aspect of his "science of ideas". He separated three aspects, namely: ideology, general grammar and logic, considering respectively the subject, the means and the reason of this science... Taine describes ideology as rather like teaching philosophy by the Socratic method, but without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require. (Wiki)
Taine had it right: ideology appeals to recognition of truths by intuitive grasp without the recourse to observation. The conceit of the ideologue is the ability to grasp such truths without demonstrative proofs. Such proofs can be furnished in principle, but these are not required because this truth is self-evident and therefore certain. It is as certain as self-evident truths from which the proof would start, which renders deductions redundant, as the agreement between self-evident truths is the property of grasping mind and of this mind alone. The ability to grasp the idea fully and instantly is already proof of its truth. This makes ideology ideally suited for propaganda.
One is tempted to consider ideology as a perversion of Lockean views, but ideology follows from these views very naturally. If the highest certainty of knowledge is in the ability to grasp the concept fully by intuition then any such concept is as good as the basic self-evident truths from which proofs are developed. Developing such proofs is a technical problem unrelated to true knowledge.
What if demonstrations from self-evident truths do not agree with one's observations? Since Lockean approach can only produce certain truths or truths as certain as certain truths, the answer is self-obvious: these are effects of false beliefs. By correction of these false beliefs, the reality should be changed to accord with demonstrations of pure reason. Ideology is a means of such correction: it provides the correct answer without reference to observation, because what is to be observed is about to be changed and the truth cannot be gleaned from observations that do not immediately result in certain truths. The observations can only lead to simple ideas and nothing more, what laymen regard as "observations" are, in fact, fantasms of false belief. The meaning of observation is revealed through demonstrative proofs starting from certain truths; only in this narrow sense theory needs to be based on observation. The very logic underlying liberalism forces it to use ideology as a means of justifying its own truth. This is not a minor defect of this school of thought: it is the consequence of having its philosophy based on proofs applied to self-evident propositions.
All political reasoning traced to Locke shares this feature. The approach has been thoroughly discredited in natural and moral philosophy, but it flourishes in political philosophy. Understanding of political reality is replaced with changing this reality so that it agrees with a deduced ideal and the confronting evidence is rejected as the effects of false belief.
This aspect of ideology is seldom appreciated. Ideology is more commonly viewed as a utopian way of thinking: fixation upon a declared ideal and gauging everything with respect to this ideal (e.g., "progress" = approaching the ideal). In fact, ideology is not that; it is a defensive strategy of a mind failing to find agreement between what it observes and its own deductions from self-evident truths. The observations should be ignored and the reality should be changed so that there is no disagreement. The justification for this approach is that true knowledge cannot be gained from observations that do not result in fully and intuitively graspable truths.
I was blamed by one of the commenters to the previous post for painting all shades of liberalism with the same brush. It is not my fault that it has been constructed in this way by its architect. It is not my fault that in order to work as a coherent political philosophy it must be based on such arcane and antiquated epistemology.
How many people would explicitly subscribe to Locke's theory of knowledge? Yet without this theory the "mathematical" approach to political theory makes absolutely no sense. Locke understood this very well, this is why he developed this theory in the first place. His many followers want his political theory without quite committing to his epistemology that alone makes his approach to theory plausible. Centuries have passed, but liberal political thinking, in all of its shades and implementations, remains recognizably Lockean: it is based on various sets of self-evident truths, it proclaims consistency of its deductions, it recognizes the imperative of changing reality to fit it to demonstrative truths thereby negating the effect of false belief, and it uses ideology to exert such a change (that is, it appeals to how things "should be" rather than the actual state of affairs and considers intuitive grasp of its deductions unsupported by observation as the sufficient criterion for certainty of its truths).
If there is intellectual merit to this mode of thinking, it is lost upon me.
Tags: forgotten topics
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02:39 am
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The death of a conservative
I've read Tanenhaus' "The Death of Conservatism" in a bookstore today. It is his expanded (and largely misunderstood) essay in "The New Republic." His thesis is that classical conservatism of Burke and Disraeli (and Chambers and Buckley) is dead, being eclipsed by ideology-based movements that are conservative in their name only. The idea of civil society as the foundation of actual rights and Burkean rejection of ideology in favor of naturally evolving institutions and tradition are marginalized. Instead, various utopian visions of perfection are pursued.
...What passes for conservatism today would have been incomprehensible to Burke, who, in the late 18th century, set forth the principles by which governments might nurture the "organic" unity that bound a people together even in times of revolutionary upheaval. Burke's conservatism was based not on a particular set of ideological principles but rather on distrust of all ideologies. In his most celebrated writings, his denunciation of the French Revolution and its English champions, Burke did not seek to justify the ancien regime and its many inequities. Nor did he propose a counter-ideology. Instead he warned against the destabilizing perils of revolutionary politics, beginning with its totalizing nostrums. Robespierre and Danton, the movement ideologues of their day, were inflamed with the Enlightenment vision of the ideal civilization and sacrificed to its abstractions the established traditions and institutions of what Burke called "civil society." They placed an idea of the perfect society over and above the need to improve society as it really existed. "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation," Burke warned. The task of the statesman was to maintain equilibrium between "the two principles of conservation and correction." Governance was a perpetual act of compromise --"sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil."
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/conservatism-dead
I must be a dying breed, and it does feel this way. I am not interested in the visions of the ideal projected into hazy future or building the perfect edifice from the set of rigid principles. I do not expect world to be perfect according to my view or anyone else's view; and I do not want it to be forced to fit someone's preconceptions of perfection. I believe this approach to be doomed from the start and find no evidence that it is working or had ever worked. This whole liberal idea of civil life built upon majestic visions and infallible principles is a terrible mistake, an aberration of rationality overestimating its own reach, the appeal of logic unhumbled by the reality check. Yet this view that looks so obviously unidimensional to me, contradicting every grain of my own personal experience, is winning on all sides. Perhaps there is indeed no place for people like me in the future. It is going to be a polarized world of ideologues fighting their pitched battles for the perfect society carved to fit their principles and not willing to accept that the imperfect and the chaotic world we live in is already the work of the greatest perfection.
Tags: complaints
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07:21 pm
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Too late to act
THE ARCTIC OCEAN IS WARMING UP, ICEBERGS ARE GROWING SCARCER AND IN SOME PLACES THE SEALS ARE FINDING THE WATER TOO HOT. REPORTS ALL POINT TO A RADICAL CHANGE IN CLIMATE CONDITIONS AND HITHERTO UNHEARD-OF TEMPERATURES IN THE ARCTIC ZONE. EXPEDITIONS REPORT THAT SCARCELY ANY ICE HAS BEEN MET WITH AS FAR NORTH AS 81 DEGREES 29 MINUTES. GREAT MASSES OF ICE HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY MORAINES OF EARTH AND STONES, WHILE AT MANY POINTS WELL KNOWN GLACIERS HAVE ENTIRELY DISAPPEARED.
( Read more... )
Tags: global warming
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09:02 am
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The great puzzle of incorruptible South
from http://scholar-vit.livejournal.com/212163.html (condensed)
Shvartz: Не прокомментируете гигантский разрыв между разными регионами в одобрении Обамы. Разброс между северо-востоком и югом просто поражает.
scholar_vit: тут не только одобрение Обамы - в конце концов, его можно попытаться объяснить расовыми моментами... Ещё более удивителен тот факт, что "южная идеология" часто противоречит материальным интересам самих южан: скажем, они выступают против роли федерального государства в экономике. Между тем именно южные штаты получают огромные субсидии от федерального правительства (поддержка фермеров и т.д.). Именно прибрежные урбанизированные штаты кормят сельскую Америку. Люди в дотационных регионах громче всего кричат о необходимости уменьшить дотации. Доходит даже до смешного...
gomberg: региональный раздел имеет смысл попробовать рассматривать как культурно-этнический, именно что формирующий предпочтениия. То, как сейчас голосует васпский сельский Вермонт ничуть не менее удивительно, чем как голосует сельская белая Алабама... проще всего объяснить это усиливающимся восприятием республиканцев как южной партии, партии, представляющей интересы "чужих": это, вобщем, довольно зеркально с югом. Американская двухпартийность, порожденная избирательной системой, маскирует это: стабильных региональных партий нет. Но вот не покидает меня ощущение, что добрые янки сейчас стали голосовать за демократов потому что за республиканцев голосуют южане.
PS: A lot of things get clearer if one sees DP for what it is: a party that 140+ years ago hit on the strategy of buying loyal vote of the poor using someone else's money. The ideology was sought and fit to this electorial strategy rather than the other way around. Morality of this arrangement aside, there are problems inherent in this deal. First, one needs more and more money to buy vote of more and more people that want more and more. Second, instead of canine fidelity and adoration, bought people often demonstrate puzzling ingratitude. Third, even the densest of farm hands sooner or later understands that once his loyal vote is secured, the largess is diverted towards those more obstinate, and it will be his turn to get milked. Corrupting people is not as easy as it seems.
Tags: politics
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01:59 pm
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The power of metaphor
...Charles Darwin acknowledged his intellectual debt to Malthus. By Darwin's day, Malthus's theory had entered the mainstream of British thought. Never a full-throated Malthusian in his political attitudes, Darwin nevertheless adapted Malthus's idea to his science. He recognized that he was using the term "struggle for existence in a large and metaphorical sense" to encompass a variety of natural relations. For British evolutionists, this appealed to common sense. Living on a crowded island with a capitalist economy and highly individualist culture, struggle for existence did not seem a metaphor at all, but, rather, a simple and eloquent description of nature and society.
...Russians, however, lived in a very different land. Their own cultural values and experiences would lead them to reject Darwin's Malthusian metaphor. This in turn affected a wide range of research — from studies of the mutual aid among migrating fish to a Nobel prizewinning theory of inflammation and immunity. This Russian response provides a striking example of the way in which metaphors — and the experiences and cultural traditions that they capture — shape scientific thought.
...The experiences of leading Russian naturalists were in many ways opposite to those of Darwin's field experiences in densely populated tropical environments. The contest between organisms seemed obvious there. Most Russian naturalists, by contrast, investigated a vast under-populated continental plain. For them, nature was a largely empty expanse in which overpopulation was rare and only the struggle of organisms against a harsh environment was dramatic. Capitalism was only weakly developed and political supporters of the two most important classes, landlords and peasants, spoke the language of communalism — stressing not individual initiative and struggle, but the importance of cooperation within social groups and the virtues of social harmony. Russian political commentators of the left, right and centre reviled Malthus as an apologist for predatory capitalism and soulless individualism. Small wonder, then, that few Russians shared Darwin and Wallace's respect for Malthus, and that many saw the struggle for existence as an infusion of the British enthusiasm for individualistic competition into natural science.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7269/full/462036a.html
Tags: note to myself
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12:18 pm
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A Shvere Togedike Nakht
Tags: findings
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03:19 am
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Thank you, thank you, thank you...
...Стругацкие на долгие годы закрыли для интеллектуалов два пути естествоиспытания... Выбегалло, осмеянный и ошельмованный, ... строит весьма убедительные социальные модели потребления как энтропии. Именно модель человека всем удовлетворенного, идеальный потребитель, сворачивает пространство и время... Мысль философски безупречная - дубль, подражатель (фанат, лемминг, как угодно) демонстративного потребления доводит мир до катастрофы перепотребления. Со старикашкой Эдельвейсом...это точнейшее семиотическое описание любого процесса диалога. Любое понимание любой информации устроено именно тем же самым способом. Рецепиент получает импульс и обрабатывает его своим же собственным мыслительным аппаратом, своим языковым контуром. Результат именно этой обработки, зависимой от этого контура, и выдается на гора в качестве материальной реакции на импульс. http://egmg.livejournal.com/1327470.html
Tags: no comment
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06:51 pm
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The uses of bigotry
-- Like the origin of science, for example:
...Imagine: A Catholic bishop in a university town goes on CNN to condemn a long list of fashionable scientific and philosophical views. Full details of all 219 heresies — and anybody caught spouting even one of them faces excommunication — are published on his website. In March 1277 in Paris, this, more or less, happened. Today, such an act of clerical censorship seems a textbook example of bigotry blocking intellectual progress. But two eminent historians of science have claimed that Bishop Etienne Tempier’s condemnations of 1277 were a crucial stepping-stone on the way to modern science.
...One of Pope John XXI’s problems was that Arab thinkers were belatedly helping Christendom rediscover ancient Greek science and philosophy. The works of Averroes were especially irksome. He argued, basing his views on Aristotle, that both the creation of the world by G-d and personal immortality were alike impossible. If something has been established as contrary to nature, or physically impossible, then not even G-d can bring it about. It reflected two basic Greek ideas: that human reason could deduce immutable laws of nature, and that the gods were as bound by these as anyone else. Though Aristotle himself often emphasised that his conclusions about the physical world were merely provisional, his medieval followers believed he had established many physical laws, so that it was possible to say definitively what G-d could do, and what not.
...In fact, much of Aristotle’s physics was wildly wrong. In condemning it, Tempier was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. By insisting that G-d had absolute power to do anything He chose — to create many worlds, for example — Tempier and his like prompted Christian philosophers and scientists to explore all sorts of possibilities that dogmatic Aristotelians had ruled out. Plainly, if G-d could make the world any way He fancied, it would be foolish to rely on the armchair ratiocinations of ancient Greeks to find out what that was. Bit by bit over the next few centuries, savants began to piece together a new physics that dispensed with Aristotelian principles and relied on looking instead.
http://www.economist.com/diversions/millennium/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=346780
Good old times. Imagine the invigorating effect on, say, humanities had their 220 most popular theories been declared heretical and prohibited on the peril of losing tenure... They would need to come up with something absolutely new!
Can freedom block intellectual progress? - There is nothing obvious, per se, that people would freely chose the right thing, necessity being the mother of invention and conformity being the norm. I am thinking of myself. Many a time was I forced to change the field of study by circumstance beyond my control. Would not that happen, I wouldn't be where I am. People freely choose to explore the familiar dead end to looking in a new way. Without Tempier’s shock therapy we would probably still study a slightly updated version of Aristotle's physics today.
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09:36 am
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Monogamous kissing
...Mouth to mouth sexual kissing is seen in more than 90% of human cultures. Various theories have been put forward to account for this but none offer a full explanation within an evolutionary framework. As mouth to mouth sexual kissing exposes each participant to the diseases of the other, it must confer significant benefit. Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a ubiquitous infection that carries a severe teratogenic risk if primary infection is acquired during certain critical periods. As HCMV is present in salivary gland epithelial cells and sheds from periodontitis induced lesions, female inoculation with a specific male’s HCMV is most efficiently achieved through mouth to mouth contact and saliva exchange, particularly where the flow of saliva is from the male to the typically shorter female. The current hypothesis proposes that mouth to mouth sexual kissing enables females to control when they become infected with a particular male’s HCMV and so protect their offspring from the threat of teratogenesis from primary infection during vulnerable times in their development. Females only gain this benefit if they also avoid becoming infected by other males. Hence HCMV induced teratogenesis is a strong viral pressure towards the development of monogamy as well as kissing as a behavioural strategy to protect against it. {C.A. Hendrie, G. Brewer, Kissing as an evolutionary adaptation to protect against Human Cytomegalovirus-like teratogenesis, Medical Hypotheses, 2009}
It would be interesting to hear about the evolutionary advantages of strengthening immunity by rubbing noses...
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10:20 am
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Unenforced
...American law is underenforced. Full enforcement of every last law on the books would put all of us in prison for crimes such as "false statements" (a felony, up to five years), "obstructing the mails" (five years), or "false pretenses on the high seas" (also five years). No enforcement of our laws, on the other hand, would mean anarchy. Somehow, officials must choose what laws really matter.
...Why are there dead zones in US law? Sometimes a law was passed by another generation with different ideas of right and wrong. Sometimes, the issue is too sensitive to discuss. And sometimes the law as written is a symbol of some behavior to which we may aspire, which nevertheless remains out of touch with reality.
...In the US, using a computer to download obscenity is a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison. Federal law makes it a crime to use "a computer service" to transport over state lines "any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, motion-picture film, paper, letter, writing, print, or other matter of indecent character." Today, despite these laws, there are very few prosecutions centered on mainstream adult pornography. Over the last decade, and without the repeal of a single law, the US has quietly and effectively put its adult obscenity laws into a deep coma, tolerating their widespread violation with little notice or fanfare. This enormous transformation has occurred without any formal political action. And it illuminates just how America changes law in sensitive areas like obscenity: not so much through action as through neglect.
...During the Clinton years, porn producers felt invincible. When the second Bush administration came to power, many expected a return to the old days. Early on you'd hear comments like this one, from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who said in 2002, "The Department of Justice is committed unequivocally to the task of prosecuting obscenity." Obscenity was made a "priority," and Ashcroft promised Congress a new crackdown on obscenity of 1950s proportions. But nothing happened. Instead, adult obscenity prosecutions declined further during the first Bush term. Bush administration, despite its rhetoric, is looser on mainstream porn than Jimmy Carter or John F. Kennedy was.
...Who, exactly, reached all of these conclusions and made them our de facto law? Not Congress, the courts, or any individual president. Instead it was a combined product, over decades, of the decisions of hundreds of prosecutors, FCC officials, FBI agents, and police officers—all of whom decided they had better things to do than chase around pornographers the way they chase murderers. Their consensus—that normal pornography just isn't harmful in the sense that, say, drugs are—has driven the current law more so than any official enactment. http://www.slate.com/id/2175730/entry/2175733
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(edited comments)
S. It is naive to expect that good laws, higher principles, or clever arguments would do what we are not willing to do, that is to be considerate. Liberties and rights originate in goodness of people rather than the other way around. There is, quite simply, no substitute for good will, and it is this good will that animates law rather than declarations and constitutions. Opposing blasphemy laws on the grounds of liberties is as misguided as using these laws to prevent apostasy. It misses the goal by a mile.
FB: Eсли люди привыкнут к тому, что богохульство - дело государства, они очень легко воспримут мысль, что и сам Господь состоит на государственной службе. На мой взгляд, это и есть худшее богохульство. Раз есть законы, их нужно время от времени использовать. То есть, реально кого-то наказывать. Какое наказание Вы считаете уместным? Штраф? Год тюрьмы? Не будет ли это тоже, с чьей-то точки зрения, богохульством - уравнивать такое страшное преступление, ставящее под сомнение саму угрозу существования, с каким-нибудь мелким хулиганством или мелкой кражей? Так что - вводим смертную казнь за богохульство? Чтоб люди поняли, насколько это серьезно? По крайней мере, это будет последовательно.
S. The Old Testament has capital punishment for all kinds of offences. In Jewish law, these were not enforced for many hundreds of years. For some of these laws there is no historic evidence that these have EVER been enforced (such as sodomy laws). I live in a state (Illinois) that has the capital punishment. For a decade it has been suspended by a moratorium. That was three governors ago. I doubt it will ever be enforced again. The last person in the US jailed for blasphemy went there in 1840; the last person penalized for blasphemy under the US code was in the late 1920s. The state blasphemy laws in most states have not been enforced for many decades.
And this is precisely why I would like these blasphemy laws to stay. Their very presence sends the right kind of message: that these laws are not enacted because there is a higher legal principle that makes blasphemy acceptable or unprosecutable or that the blasphemy is a lesser trangression than infringment of liberties. These laws are not enforced because people demonstrate their good will and trust in the others; the trust that liberties will not be abused. And that good will and trust are not limitless. This is why we have all of these unenforced laws. I like this very much. I hope that all laws will eventually become like these laws.
FB: Мысль иметь законы "на всякий случай, чтоб было" вызывает у меня сильнейший протест - я слишком часто видел, как это работает в СССР и потом в России. Это, в общем, главный принцип - поставить всех в такое положение, что все что-то нарушают, а наказывать или нет - на усмотрение начальства. Ладно, смертная казнь. Я действительно верю, что, если на стене висит ружье, оно кого-нибудь в конце концов пристрелит. Mне кажется очень странным поддерживать закон, который, как сам надеешься, никогда реально не будет применяться. Боюсь, такую логику я на самом деле понять не смогу.
S. When you see before your eyes the loaded guns that did not shoot for 50-100-200-400-2,100 years it is easier to believe in the wisdom of this approach. The usual result of the perfectly logical system of enforced laws is having five constitutions in a century.
***
P. Other people's beliefs should indeed be respected, but not under the threat of violence, and no earlier than the believers learn to respect other people's freedoms.
S. If you expect that beliefs should be respected no earlier than the believers learn to respect freedoms, or vice versa, you will get neither. Unenforced blasphemy laws are a good solution, because they remind people the most important thing: that their exercise of freedoms is not conditional on worshipping abstract principles. If the trust is eroded, if good will is not met, these unenforced laws can become enforced again. It is up to the people to keep these laws unenforced, which is the most natural and organic development of the law. Repealing these laws serves no purpose, because it creates the delusion that something called "freedom of speech" is going to substitute good will and mutual trust. It can't and it won't.
P. I have nothing to say against the idea of unenforced local laws... What I object to is the struggle between freedoms introduced by decrees with the support of threats of interventions and the desire of the local population and politicians to abolish such freedoms altogether. In my view, the former should stop threatening, while the latter should acquire greater respect for freedoms.
S. What greater respect for freedoms do you need than having punitive laws that have not been voluntarily enforced for 50+ years? How do you imagine the transition to the ideal situation to happen in actuality? That is how it is happening, and this is by far the best solution.
PS: Maybe what I am suggesting is not logical. I do not expect law to be logical, and I have seen the results of making law logical. I want it to be just. To be just, it has to live its own life: grow where it needs to grow, shrink where it needs to shrink, and die where it wants to die. It has the life of its own, its own logic and rules, different from our wishful thinking, and the "principles" are no more than attempts at understanding this beast. What I do know is that this approach works. The testimony for that are all these unenforced US and UK laws, hundreds of them. People can collectively decide what laws should and shouldn't be enforced without the help of civil rights activists, court logicians, and government watchdogs. The very existence of such laws is evidence that their good works are not needed. And, boy, how badly they want to eliminate the lasting evidence of the previous iteration of their zealotry and arrogant righteousness...
And this is another reason why these unenforced blasphemy laws have to stay.
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01:14 pm
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Raised aloft by primordial passion.
What is the difference between Giordano Bruno and Charles Lee Smith?
Take one: St Bruno, official hagiography
...The Venetian stage of the trial seemed to be proceeding in a way that was favourable to Bruno; then, however, the Roman Inquisition demanded his extradition, and in 1593, Bruno entered the jail of the Roman palace of the Sant'Uffizio. During the seven-year Roman period of the trial, Bruno at first developed his previous defensive line, disclaiming any particular interest in theological matters and reaffirming the philosophical character of his speculation. This distinction did not satisfy the inquisitors, who demanded an unconditional retraction of his theories. Bruno then made a desperate attempt to demonstrate that his views were not incompatible with the Christian conception of G-d and creation. The inquisitors rejected his arguments and pressed him for a formal retraction. Bruno finally declared that he had nothing to retract and that he did not even know what he was expected to retract. At that point, Pope Clement VIII ordered that he be sentenced as an impenitent and pertinacious heretic. http://iranscope.ghandchi.com/Anthology/bruno.htm
...His trial was overseen by the inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. Instead he appealed in vain to Pope Clement VIII, hoping to save his life through a partial recantation. The Pope expressed himself in favor of a guilty verdict. Consequently, Bruno was declared a heretic, and told he would be handed over to secular authorities. He was turned over to the secular authorities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno#Imprisonment.2C_trial_and_execution.2C_1592.E2.80.931600
Take 2: some clarifications
...An examination of Bruno's actions during this period of exile makes clear that almost all of his misfortunes were brought down upon himself without the Inquisition's help. He outraged the faculty at Oxford with his lectures, he became embroiled in violent quarrels over trivial matters, and generally succeeded in alienating those people best able to protect him. His actions during this period reveal the very hallmark of folly, namely repeated failure to act in his own best interests even when reasonable alternatives were available. His final return to Italy (which resulted in his arrest in Venice a year later) can be seen as being motivated in part by the fact that by 1591 he had effectively burned most of his bridges behind him and thus he had little choice. In many ways, Bruno thrust himself into the flames that rose into the winter skies of the Campo di Fiore on the 17th day of February in 1600.
http://www.setileague.org/editor/brunoalt.htm
...In 1600 there was no official Catholic position on the Copernican system, and it was certainly not a heresy. When Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic, it had nothing to do with his writings in support of Copernican cosmology. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
...Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not G-d but merely an unusually skillful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03016a.htm)
...In Venice, Bruno recanted [his heresies]. Therefore the Venetian inquisitors let him live, but they did not release him, because the Vatican had got wind of the case and was demanding extradition. Venice complied, and in Rome Bruno was retried on essentially the same charges, with a few additions obtained from his cellmates in Venice. One of them reported that Bruno had called Christ “a dog cuckold fucked dog” and had given him the finger. The Roman jurists were more methodical than the Venetians. They tracked down his books, and read them. According to Rowland, they may also have worried that to execute Bruno, who in his exile had enjoyed the patronage of various noblemen, might be politically unwise. Bruno parried with his inquisitors. Twice he offered to recant and then withdrew the offer. We don’t know all the particulars of the inquiry. (The trial records are lost. Only a summary, discovered in the Vatican in 1941, survives.) But, in the end, Bruno gave his inquisitors an unanswerable ultimatum: he told them that if the Pope came forward to certify that the actions he was charged with were definitely heretical, or that the Holy Spirit had said they were, then he would recant. If not, not. The Pontiff did not condescend to join in this discussion, and the inquisitors probably did not invite him to. They insisted on their own ability to recognize false doctrine. So, as in other heresy trials, the conflict came down to a simple quarrel. Bruno was declared an “impenitent, pertinacious, and obstinate heretic,” and he was condemned to die. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/08/25/080825crbo_books_acocella
(retold from Ingrid Rowland's, “Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic”)
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/08/25/bruno/index1.html
[According to Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican appealed the captial punishment with the secular authorities after releasing Bruno to their custody. In 2000, the Vatican expressed "profound sorrow" calling Bruno's end "an atrocious death and a sad episode in modern Christian history." - S.]
Take 3
Giordano Bruno was a blasphemer and a heretic. However, he was not burned alive for his blasphemy and heresy. He was burned alive for his idiotic stubborness and satanic pride. He unconditionally insisted that he would recant his heresies only going through the theatrics. He was given abundant chance to do it on his own accord in front of the others, just like everyone else, and then get lost. He was willing to recant, but only on his own terms. He preferred spending years in jail to recognizing himself a regular human being and chose to die rather than making this simple admission to himself. That admission was all that was standing between him and his freedom. But then he would not be burned alive, and his own prophecy about himself would not come true:
Suddenly I am raised aloft by primordial passion;
I become Leader, Law, Light, Prophet, Father, Author, and Journey,
Rising above this world to the others that shine in their splendor.
I wander through every part of that ethereal country;
Then, far away, as they gape at the marvel, I leave them behind me.
Most people would not be patient with the likes of Bruno for seven years, but his inquisitor, Robert Bellarmine was a saint, literally.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02411d.htm
However, even saints are human, and human flesh is weak. After years of ceaseless toil, Giordano Bruno received what he had always wanted.
Charles Lee Smith also got his reward. The lemonade stand near the courthouse, the walnut tree seen through the window, the fly on the page of an open book, the passionate oration, and then the lemonade stand again, in eternity. Just like he had always wanted.
There is no difference. They received according to their want.
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02:05 pm
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The last blasphemy in Arkansas
...The last U.S. conviction for blasphemy was of atheist activist Charles Lee Smith. In 1928 he rented a storefront in Little Rock, Arkansas, and gave out free atheist literature there. The sign in the window read: "Evolution Is True. The Bible's a Lie. God's a Ghost." For this he was charged with violating the city ordinance against blasphemy. Because he was an atheist and therefore couldn't swear the court's religious oath to tell the truth, he wasn't permitted to testify in his own defense. The judge then dismissed the original charge, replacing it with one of distributing obscene, slanderous, or scurrilous literature. Smith was convicted, fined $25, and served most of a twenty-six-day jail sentence. His high-profile fast while behind bars drew national media attention. Upon his release, he immediately resumed his atheist activities, was again charged with blasphemy, and this time the charge held. In his trial he was again denied the right to testify and was sentenced to ninety days in jail and a fine of $100. Released on $1,000 bail, Smith appealed the verdict. The case then dragged on for several years until it was finally dismissed. (Wiki)
The imagination paints the rest: the familiar visage of an obnoxious, sanctimonious, smug idiot doing his best of trying everyone's patience and taking pride in seeing people steering clear of him on sight. The evenings spent editing "The Truth Seeker" and dreaming of martyr's glory and the coming of freethinking paradise. A sweaty, hot summer noon in a Southern city; the lemonade stand near the courthouse; walnut trees seen from the window. An old, bespectacled judge trying to talk sense to the moron, so he can let him go and see him never, ever again. The passionate self-defense invoking the names of Bruno and Galileo and the great James Hervey Johnson before the jury thinking, oh, when this fool will finally finish, pay his $100, and let them go home. The fly walking across open pages of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." And then the repetition of the same.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why the blasphemy laws are almost never enforced in the US of A. It is not because of logical, clever, and impregnable arguments of the constitutional lawyers and sagely, progressive justices. It is not due to the higher principles of universal good implemented in the Bill of Rights. It is not because of ACLU zealots, pride parades, or preachy presidents. It is not because of monkey trials, exploding heads of cartoon prophets, or televangelists caught with hookers. It is not for a myriad other reasons.
It is because of people like Charles Lee Smith.
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03:26 pm
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Bigamy, perjury, & blasphemy
Can blasphemy laws be objected to from the freedom of speech?
Absolutely -- for a price. The price is not someone's hurt feelings. There is another kind of price involved that is closer to everyone's skin.
Consider bigamy laws. The canon law against bigamy originates in a remark of St Paul forbidding bigamists from becoming bishops and deacons. There were too few celibates to fill these positions, and the line was drawn at one wife, as two were considered the sign of incontinency unqualifying one to become a cleric.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02561a.htm
In English common law, the statutes against bigamy were introduced by Edward I, but it was not considered a crime; the statute annuled all but the first marriage. Bigamy became felony only in 1602. The case for the the absolute prohibition of bigamy is not Scriptural, but precedental. Monogamy was a Roman custom. St Augustine justified strict monogamy by observing that changing the established custom would lead to licence. The case against bigamy for laymen was weak, and historically exceptions have been made. The position was defined primarily by the accepted norm. It all worked well until the Mormons started to practice it in earnest and challenged the norm in the land of the free. Free exercise of freedoms between consenting individuals seems to be the solid case for constitutional approval. Of course, this could involve many other things than bigamy, such as cannibalistic rites, for example. But bigamy came first.
In 1878 the US Supreme Court was searching far and wide for a way to make bigamy unconstitutional. They found
...a letter from Thomas Jefferson in which he stated that there was a distinction between religious belief and action that flowed from religious belief. The former "lies solely between man and his G-d," therefore "the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions." The court argued that if polygamy was allowed, someone might eventually argue that human sacrifice was a necessary part of their religion, and "to permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._United_States#The_bench
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/reynoldsvus.html
It was argued that the established law of the land has primacy over the exercise of freedoms resulting in action. This is why bigamy was ruled unconstitutional in the US. The blasphemy laws also originate in English common law and so were the established law of the land. To this day, several states, including the beacon of progress itself
http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-36.htm
have such laws. The reluctance to enforce these laws stems from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Burstyn,_Inc_v._Wilson
the 1952 Supreme Court ruling that the government cannot "suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches or motion pictures."
This opinion concerns state censorship rather than defending blasphemers from libel actions. This opinion does not contradict 1878 ruling that limits exercise of freedoms through action to the established law of the land, if the blasphemous act is an opinion rather than an action. The question then hinges whether balsphemy is only an opinion rather than the action. I argue that in certain cases, it is the latter. Specifically, breaking one's oath is considered an action rather than an opinion. This is why perjury is prosecuted, this is why desertion is prosecuted, this is why treason is prosecuted. The solemn promise is not considered to be an expression of an opinion.
Then the blasphemy of an apostate who took oath on the articles of faith consitutes an action and so it is not mere opinion and hencefore it falls under the 1878 bigamy ruling. The blasphemy by an atheist is not prosecutable whereas the blasphemy by the apostate is. As the oath is sworn publicly and on the name of G-d it is as valid as other such oaths, including witness, jury and other pledges whithin common law, so breaking this oath is potentially penalizable. I do not think there is legal case for protecting such blasphemers against litigation by second parties. The oath is absolutely binding and breaking this oath waves the freedom of speech protection, as in all other such cases.
I believe that the majority of opponents of blasphemy laws are inconsistent in their views. They should also admit that oath-breaking is not an action; but then perjury, desertion, and treason would not be prosecutable. Alternatively, they may advocate that the exercise of freedoms through actions CAN violate the established law of the land, thereby repealing the 1878 ruling. But then there will be no legal objection to bigamy (as well as incest, statutory rape, and so forth). Maintaining all of these positions simultaneously(oath is binding, bigamy is unlawful, blasphemy laws are unenforcable) is untenable.
Without such clarifications, the case amounts to little. I had an unforgettable LJ discussion with the proponent who (after little prompting) opined that all oath taking should be done with because people cannot make binding commitments. They just can't, poor inconstant creatures. That such a consideration unravels our entire law barely registered. The principled fight for lawfulness of blasphemy turned out to be the garden variety case against justice. Perhaps such confessions should come upfront, so people would not confuse a liberal with a libertine. So I suggest the others to make their mind, too. What goes away - perjury or bigamy? You cannot have all three without the abundant use of dialectics and demagoguery.
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07:09 am
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Coincidence
Viewed as a letter, Republican Schwarzenegger's missive to San Francisco ass-
emblyman Tom Ammiano, appeared to convey a not-so-hidden message. Read vertical
ly, the first letter of each line spelt an obscene two-word insult, the first word beg-
inning with "F" and the second word being "You." Local media reports speculated that the
message was the result of Ammiano's recent heckling of Schwarzenegger at
a Democratic gala event. Ammiano was reportedly angry at Schwarzenegger over state budget
cuts which slashed funding to AIDS programs.
However Schwarzenegger's spokesman Aaron McClear said Wednesday that the
odd wording was nothing more than a quirk of coincidence.
!
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hsYK2KI2gsZSsEksmvpjFE06jCxA
Tags: findings
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06:58 pm
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Why do bad husbands often have good wives?
...It is often seen that bad husbands, have very good wives; whether it be, that
(1) it raiseth the price of their husband’s kindness, when it comes; or that
(2) the wives take a pride in their patience.
But this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends’ consent; for then they will be sure to make good their own folly. http://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francis-bacon-9.html
What do you think of Bacon's explanations (1) and (2)?
Tags: mysteries
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01:36 am
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Over the leaves
Over the Rainbow http://pupyrchaty.livejournal.com/308458.html
Les Feuilles Morte http://brmr.livejournal.com/1221615.html
Intermediate form http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odRpiRBKYK8
La Cumparsita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cumparsita
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07:57 am
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Corrupting men
...In an attempt to address India's 15% failure rate in condom use, researchers at the Indian Council for Medical Research have initiated a project to measure the size and shape of penises of men throughout India. About 60% of Indian men have penises which are 3-5 cm shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6161691.stm
It is claimed that Indian men are too vain to ask for a smaller size condom when they need one, causing higher abortion rates across India.
Thanks to Levitt's book I finally understood what "bihevioral microeconomics" is. It is not a study of how incentives act on people. It is the study of corruption. Retrospecively, the first book was on the same topic, but it was less explicit.
Tags: note to myself
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04:40 pm
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Corrupting monkeys
...The capuchin is a New World monkey. "It has a small brain, and it's pretty much focused on food and sex," says Keith Chen, a Yale economist. "You should really think of a capuchin as a bottomless stomach of want. You can feed them marshmallows all day, they'll throw up and then come back for more."
...It is sometimes unclear, even to Chen himself, exactly what he is working on. When he began to teach the capuchins to use money, he had no pressing research theme. The essential idea was to give a monkey a dollar and see what it did with it. It took several months of rudimentary repetition to teach the monkeys that these tokens were valuable as a means of exchange for a treat and would be similarly valuable the next day. Having gained that understanding, a capuchin would then be presented with 12 tokens on a tray and have to decide how many to surrender for, say, Jell-O cubes versus grapes. This first step allowed each capuchin to reveal its preferences and to grasp the concept of budgeting.
...Then Chen introduced price shocks and wealth shocks. If, for instance, the price of Jell-O fell (two cubes instead of one per token), would the capuchin buy more Jell-O and fewer grapes? The capuchins responded rationally to tests like this. In economistspeak, the capuchins adhered to the rules of utility maximization and price theory: when the price of something falls, people tend to buy more of it.
....But do the capuchins actually understand money? During a recent capuchin experiment that used cucumbers as treats, a research assistant happened to slice the cucumber into discs instead of cubes, as was typical. One capuchin picked up a slice, started to eat it and then ran over to a researcher to see if he could ''buy'' something sweeter with it. To the capuchin, a round slice of cucumber bore enough resemblance to Chen's silver tokens to seem like another piece of currency.
...Then there is the stealing. The monkeys never deliberately save any money, but they do sometimes purloin a token or two during an experiment. All seven monkeys live in a communal main chamber of about 750 cubic feet. For experiments, one capuchin at a time is let into a smaller testing chamber next door. Once, a capuchin in the testing chamber picked up an entire tray of tokens, flung them into the main chamber and then scurried in after them -- a combination jailbreak and bank heist -- which led to a chaotic scene in which the human researchers had to rush into the main chamber and offer food bribes for the tokens, a reinforcement that in effect encouraged more stealing.
...Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys' true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)
...The capuchin lab at Yale has been built and maintained to make the monkeys as comfortable as possible, and especially to allow them to carry on in a natural state. The introduction of money was tricky enough; it wouldn't reflect well on anyone involved if the money turned the lab into a brothel. But these facts remain: When taught to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple incentives; responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex. http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/keith.chen/articles/NYT%20text%206_5_05.pdf
another exciting study
http://economics.uchicago.edu/pdf/Prostitution%205.pdf
(Reading Levitt's new book)
Tags: note to myself
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01:20 pm
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Why do we bathe?
Everyone likes a "hot, relaxing" bath or shower -- or a steam bath. Why do we find it so pleasurable and soothing? To witness the normal reaction to a "hot, relaxing bath," put your pet into a hot tub and see for yourself how soothing it is. Said that, not bathing is considered barbarianism; the most tried approach to demonization of the others is emphasizing their aversion to hot water. It took three centuries to abdicate medieval people for the blame of not taking a regular bath, despite the abundant and explicit evidence to the contrary. It is true that medieval moralists viewed bathing with suspicion and occasionally went overboard, but given that the two genders were often mixed, they had a point.
There is anecdotal evidence of animals enjoying hot springs, especially in cold climes, like the famous snow monkeys in Japan. In Thompson Seton's tale of a grizzly bear, the bear was curing his paw in hot sulfur-bath. Leopards do it too,
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/leopard-caught-on-camera-while-taking-a-relaxing-dip-in-spa-hot-tub_100215626.html
That I can imagine: fighting the parasites and infectious wounds by sulfide in hot water. Another reason for liking a spa may be the narcotic effect of elevated CO2 levels over the springs. But hot water or steam alone? What's the point? From the standpoint of hygiene, lukewarm water with soap works better. Yet there is something about heat exposure that we like (basking in the sun, taking a bath). What possible advantage that could be, given the local effect (skin) and brevity? People that enjoy X find the myriad reasons to regard X beneficial. Hot baths are no exception: these are declared to be the panacea for every ailment, being good to one's heart, lungs. liver and what not, clearing the pores, etc. Of course, exactly the same things are being told about cold showers. Apart from the claims of outstanding health benefits, there are subtler "physiological" rationales, like the mild contraceptive effects on males http://www.newmalecontraception.org/heat.htm
or vaginal contraction (bathing rituals viewed as derivative of genital steam bath practiced in Africa; in both cases, a prelude to sex, which bathing often was and is). Or consider the idea that hot tubs and steam baths are to fight skin parasites. Parasitic mites causing scabies get more active in heat! Many of these parasitize birds that have a higher body temperature; they just love it. Without soap and lotions, bathing is pretty ineffectual for lice, ticks and other insect parasites and their eggs. Ditto for nematode worms. Using hot water to combat skin bacterial deseases is nonsense (would that be minimally efficient, they would become heat resistant). As far as I know, only fungi show considerbale sensitivity to temperature. It has been suggested that opposing fungal infestations is the cause for the endothermy in mammals:
...There are roughly 1.5 million fungal species, but only a few hundred are pathogenic to mammals. By contrast, an estimated 270,000 fungal species are pathogenic to plants and 50,000 species infect insects. Frogs and other amphibians are also prone to fungal pathogens. The researchers investigated how 4,082 different fungal strains grew in temperatures ranging from 4º to 45º C. They found that nearly all of them grew well in temperatures up to 30º C. Beyond that, though, the number of successful species declined by 6% for every 1º C increase. Most could not grow at mammalian temperatures. Those that did well in hotter conditions were often from warm-blooded sources. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091015112138.htm
Alas, for those few the generic effect of hot water is zilch (yeast, thrush, ringworm infections are not cured by hot tubs). Communal bathing is more likely to spread the infection than cure the infected.
Is it all in the head? The proverbial "relaxation" is the depressive response to prolonged heat. Its medicinal benefits are uncertain at best. I suspect that the bathing is strictly ritual and cultural; there is no other cause. The Greeks were frank in regarding public bathing in the erotic context without all this nonsense about health effects. The Asians consider steam bath in spiritual terms. For Romans and Early Christians it was socialization. The consensus has always been that bathing is primarily social rather than hygienic. People were, are, and will be bathing and finding excellent reasons to rationalize this behavior, because it is exciting and social.
http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html
It is going through the complex purification ritual that keeps us happy rather than any purported effect of such purification.
Why are we bathing?
http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#5bt2xP/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1094657/PICTURED-The-Japanese-snow-monkeys-enjoy-hot-bath.html
Tags: whys
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11:20 am
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Why do we HAVE to pee? -- or the meaning of (animal) life.
I was asked why do we have to excrete the excess N rather than store it like plants.
Good question, this is really looking into the heart of the problem rather than beating around the bush. I am afraid there is no accepted rationale. I've heard two hand waving answers. One is that excreting N is what animals are for. This is THE meaning of animal life and the rationale for our lineage existence: predation and producing N for dinoflagellate symbionts. The idea is that metazoans started as symbionts with the algae that traded N for carbohydrates and oxygen at the end of the Cryogenian. Our symbiont would penalize any attempt at N storage even if proto-animals had the machinery to store N (which is doubtful, see below).
The second idea is that as N storage is not generally practiced by the bacteria except for cyanobacteria, only those eukaryotes that had such cyanobacteria as their endosymbiont during the eukaryogenesis obtained the biochemical machinery required, as a bonus to photosynthesis. It is a bonus, because the function of N storage in these bacteria was buffering N produced by their nitrogenases so these keep going, avoiding bottlenecks. Generally, bacteria have no incentive to store N because if you have the excess you may multiply, as you should. The cyanobacteria had this unusual incentive. As animal lineage goes to DRIPs and fungi that are parasites and tissue degraders, neither such plastids nor N storage was necessary, because there was plenty of N inside someone else. The problem presents itself for free living organisms and metazoans did not start this way.
Peeing is the celebration of freedom and the reminder of the forty million years in the anoxic desert and living on manna.
In more detail, http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/112225.html?thread=1287777#t1287777
Tags: mysteries
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12:11 pm
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Suboptimal design
What design is best in the long run: optimal or suboptimal? I do not think one can provide the general answer, but there is a lot to say in favor of suboptimality and imperfection.
Optimality means maximizing the efficiency, for example adaptive efficiency. But this notion presumes the constancy of the conditions to which one adapts. As these conditions frequently change, sometimes very drastically, perfecting the optimization does not make much sense because it is death. For example, the most efficient parasite on T. rex has as much future as T. rex, whereas less exclusive, inefficient generalist that also parasitizes rats inherits the world to come. Optimization necessarily means specialization, which also means the loss of general function in the name of greater efficiency, which is needed back when the conditions change. I believe this is generally true, for any kind of evolution.
There are several ways out of this conundrum. One is to adapt very rapidly, stepping from perfection to perfection, - or having the ability to radiate very quickly. In this approach, bacteria are beyond competition. Among animals, the insects are beyond competition. I am being criticized for not loving mammals and admiring the bugs, but it is not my fault that insects is where you find optimally designed animals. It is a vast collection of exclusive specialists bringing near absolute perfection to their tasks while showing amazing innovation and adaptability. By contrast, the mammals are the walking bags of bad decisions and inefficiencies, and one must be blind not to notice those.
Another solution is finding environments that seldom change. This is hard on our inconstant planet, but it is possible; the existence of “living fossils” is the proof of that. Perfectly matching this environment allows great efficiency without paying penalty for this efficiency. The problem, of course, is that most of such environments are marginal. The success is long run, but it is limited. The third way is finding an adaptation so universal that no conceivable change in the environment overrides this skill. One of the examples I gave is slime eels: oozing tons of slime to clog the gills of predatory fish is a solution that worked for 450+ Myr without need for revising this strategy. One hears that human intellect could be such a strategy, but I doubt that because historically having greater intelligence never paid off in the long run. If the smarts were such a sure way of improving the odds of survival, we would see such examples all around us, but we do not. There are better and simpler solutions taking precedence.
Finally, there is an archive of solutions approach: keeping the record of one’s entire evolutionary history and resurrecting previous workable solutions when such solutions become necessary, capitalizing on this rich past. This is different from adaptability proper, because the solutions are not found de novo, but obtained from the library of past solutions. Whether this approach is being used is an open question; generally, genetic drift should erase things that are not needed, but the conditions may change faster than the complete decimation occurs. Furthermore, we have this mysterious unfunctional DNA that we diligently replicate, and who knows what is there. Even if this approach is not used in reality, it is possible in principle.
Yet there is another perfectly reasonable strategy for improving the long odds of one’s lineage: suboptimality, the refusal of seeking (penalized) perfection. Consider the question I’ve asked a while ago: why do we have HCl acidic stomach without the obvious commensurate benefit? The probable answer is that without such a stomach the frequent switches between carnivory and herbivory would be difficult, which makes the long chances of survival slim. Retaining the acidic stomach is the best insurance for the obligatory herbivore that when things go amiss, omnivory or carnivory are still in the cards: the acidic digestion of hard animal parts does not have to be reinvented from scratch (in fact, it has only been invented twice in the entire evolutionary history). In animals not facing this particular problem (insects) – and never needing to face this problem - the acidic stomach is gone, and the efficiency rules. Suboptimal design pays off because what is not optimal today might be optimal tomorrow and this tomorrow is the repetition of yesterday. If you have tossed out an inefficient solution in the name of having a better today, you’ll be toast tomorrow; nobody will know that you were the perfection in your heyday. The organisms stubbornly retaining their inefficiencies may be the most successful in the long run for no other reason than the persistent refusal of seeking optimal solutions (in their ever changing environment) in favor of suboptimal ones, as this suboptimality is their main adaptation, and the changes tend to be cyclical.
These are born conservatives that value their inefficient, historically acquired features as highly as the efficient ones, because these worked for them in the past, and the longevity of this past implies that these will also work in the future. Making the argument that these “bad” features are objectively bad does not matter in the grand scheme of things, because finding the best solutions has never been the goal and, moreover, proved to be suicidal for the lineage. I can badmouth mammals all day long finding numerous faults with them, but they have the last laugh upon me because, given the low adaptability and slowness of vertebrate evolution, it is precisely clinging to archaic solutions that is their greatest advantage in surviving the roller-coaster of environmental change.
There is a lesson here. The common criticism of conservatism is that since X is inefficient, or no longer seems to be efficient, it must be abandoned – in the name of efficiency, future, and progress. This argument is typically made without clear understanding why X had been working for such a long time in the first place. More often than not such understanding simply does not exist. The general idea is that if Y is more efficient, X needs to be abandoned. Our own bodies illustrate the fallacy of this reasoning. X may be inefficient, but having X guarantees inefficient future, whereas efficient Y guarantees death at the first turn of fate. One may survive adopting efficient Y for a while, but then conditions change and following this trajectory also requires adopting Z, W, V etc. in quick succession; at some point, it becomes impossible to change rapidly enough to follow this – initially efficient - path. Nobody has been able to do that, and that is why we have X rather than Y. This is the strength of the suboptimal design. If you lacking the inherent ability to implement Z, W, V, it is better to stick to X.
Unfortunately, it requires the long view perspective that people (including yours truly) are not inclined to take, hence the painful arrival at X and the persistent effort of trying Y. It is important to know the pitfalls of X, but it is equally important to understand that without X we would be dust.
Why aren’t we perfect?
Tags: forgotten topics
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09:53 am
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What comes to mind
The New Yorker had a long article about Larry Summers
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/12/091012fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all
...By the time Summers returned to Cambridge, he was becoming a star in [economics] profession. The Boston Globe ran a fourteen-page profile of him in 1986. The piece included this observation from Summers: “When I look out the window at my backyard, I can’t think of anything interesting to ask. I mean, it’s green, it’s growing—but nothing occurs to me that any concentrated effort of thought could possibly enlighten. Whereas in economic, statistical, or mathematical kinds of things, I can think of lots of questions.”
I thought: an extremely clever man at the very top of his profession, and he cannot find anything interesting to ask about what he sees out of his own window? What a curse it should be if you can ask interesting questions only about money and statistics, or look at interesting questions only through economic perspective...
An illustration, from another star of economics profession: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/shleifer/files/comestomind_061009.pdf
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11:27 pm
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Quote of the day
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. (RP Feynman)
from http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/10/astronomical-and-economical-numbers.html
Now it is more like the number of planets in the Galaxy...
Tags: quote of the day
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08:54 pm
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The smelly smell
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. (Proverbs 26:11)
It is that time of the year when female maidenhair trees (ginkgo) yield their fruit. The part of the city we live in was developed 130 years ago, and they planted a lot of gingko trees everywhere, both male and female. As these trees grow fast, these are the tallest trees in the neighborhood. I've parked my car near a gingko grove a couple of days ago; the stench was so strong I had to pinch my nose. The fruit smells even while it is on a tree; when it hits the ground and stays there for a few days, the reek of vomit is overpowering. The smell is from butyric and hexanoic acids in the flesh. Dogs can smell 10 ppb of it, humans can detect 10 ppm. I am sure that the tree does not make the acids; the path to the butyrate is via fermentation of glucose by anaerobic bacteria. It is not known how gingko is using these (symbiotic?) bacteria to its ends, but it is a recruiter par excellence; this tree knows how to get what it wants. So I started wondering: why would a tree produce an intentionally foul-smelling fruit? Is not the game in attracting me by something that tastes good and in this way spreading the seeds? The nut of gingko is edible (and the tree was cultivated in China for its nuts, which explains the skewed sex ratio in preference to the females therein), but the pulp is not only smelly, but also containing toxins (urushiols) similar to those found in poison ivy. Technically, it is not even a "fruit", as gingko is a gymnosperm, it is sarcotesta, like in the cycads. Gingko is a strange tree, a "living fossil"
...fossils recognisably related to modern Ginkgo are from the Permian, dating back 270 Myr. The most plausible ancestral group is the Pteridospermatophyta, also known as the "seed ferns." The closest living relatives of the clade are the cycads, which share with the extant G. biloba the characteristic of motile sperm. Morphologically, G. gardneri and the Southern Hemisphere species are the only known post-Jurassic taxa that can be unequivocally recognised. G. biloba had occurred over an extremely wide range, had remarkable genetic flexibility and, though evolving genetically, never showed much speciation... Ginkgo represents a pre-angiosperm strategy for survival in disturbed streamside environments. Ginkgo evolved in an era before flowering plants, when ferns, cycads, and cycadeoids dominated disturbed streamside environments, forming a low, open, shrubby canopy. Ginkgo's large seeds may be adaptions to such an environment. The fact that diversity in the genus Ginkgo drops through the Cretaceous at the same time that flowering plants were on the rise, supports the notion that flowering plants with better adaptations to disturbance displaced Ginkgo and its associates over time. (Wiki)
I found a paper claiming that the putrid flesh is an adaptation to a cold climate. It acts by DELAYING germination of the seeds. The seed is fertilized around the time the fruit falls down, when it begins to smell. The germination occurs the following spring. The flesh is not supposed to be eaten; it is supposed to shrivel, insulate the emryo, and thereby delay the germination of the seed next spring. The vomit smell and the poison may prevent animals from consuming the fruit. It is a barrier, like a pine cone, only more efficient for its stinking fleshiness.
http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/reprint/84/6/870.pdf?ck=nck
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3474/is_4_73/ai_n29406674/pg_3/?tag=content;col1
...the drastic climatic changes during the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous, around 140 to 150 million years ago, were responsible for the transformation of the ovulate organs of the G. yimaensis type into the modern G. biloba type,” including the development of short shoots, the reduction and protection of ovulate organs, and the production of larger seeds. Ginkgo biloba’s temperature-sensitive, embryo-developmentdelay mechanism could well have been another climate-induced Cretaceous innovation—an evolutionarily primitive but ecologically functional form of seed dormancy. http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1907.pdf
This sounds convincing, but is it true? Some nocturnal scavengers and carnivores are attracted by the vomity smells of gingko
...Researchers studying various ginkgo populations in Asia have reported a number of animals feeding on, and presumably dispersing, the malodorous, nutrient-rich seeds. In China, dispersal agents include two members of the order Carnivora: the leopard cat and the masked palm civet. In Japan, where ginkgo was introduced from China some 1,200 years ago, the raccoon dog has been documented feeding on ginkgo seeds, and its droppings have been found to contain intact seeds which germinated the following spring.
So here is a different story: gingko's fruit smelling of vomit as its target dispersal animal is not a herbivore/omnivore, like me, but a scavenging animal. Furthermore,
...In 2002, Zhou and Zhang reported the discovery in China of a long-tailed bird (Jeholornis sp.) from the Early Cretaceous with a large number of ginkgo-like seeds in its crop. This provides direct evidence that early birds potentially could have been involved in seed dispersal activities, although the seeds’ intact nature suggests they were destined for digestion in the gizzard. In general, Ginkgo biloba seeds do not fit the typical profile of a fruit dispersed by modern birds. Prior to the discovery of Jeholornis, most of the speculation about Cretaceous ginkgo dispersal agents centered on dinosaurs, based primarily on their temporal overlap. If dinosaurs were involved with the dispersal of ginkgo seeds, it probably would have been carrion feeding scavengers, with teeth adapted to tearing and swallowing flesh, rather than herbivores with grinding dentition that would have crushed the thin-shelled seeds.
For 120+ Myr, the gingko might have been recruting - alone among "fruiting" trees - various scavnegers: first scavenging dinosaurs, then birds, then mammals. Its latest recruitment success is the certain omnivirous biped with highly developed aesthetic feelings. And look: this tree is still around! It may be that attracting scavengers is a better long term strategy than attracting herbivores: gingko is the living proof of this counter intuitive proposition.
But there is another possibility. As the ancestral gingkos used to grow around the streams, their intended, original dispersal agent could've been a fish. Such methods of dispersal are still common in tropics. Fish have different perception of smell from the land animals. In the air, the odor strongly depends on volatility. In water, it must be much stronger than in the air. Perhaps producing butyric acid is a clever way of attracting fish on the cheap.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119866045/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=67CCE0582E588269CFDA4BF35E4739B2.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=701
Why does it smell?
Tags: mysteries
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09:30 pm
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National Affairs
Good start.
http://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-new-middle-class-contract
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/who-killed-california
Tags: note to myself
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06:48 pm
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Why do we eat other animals? Part 2
I've mentioned that obligate herbivory leaves coprophagy as the only way to supply B12 vitamin "naturally".
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/202989.html
Our ancestors did not have the option of buying their vitamin supplements in a supermarket. For five days I've been explained that coprophagy is not a big deal. It is perfectly normal human condition that has little effect on its practitioners, except for a slight impairment in the aesthetics department. My protestations were ignored.
Very well, have it your way. So we have our coprophagous vegans that are mysteriously uninterested in greater nutritional value of meat and slowly reaching a higher plane of human existence. As exclusive herbivores, they eat their plants, they poop and then they eat more plants and this poop. Is such a way of life sustainable in a long ran? Certainly, it would not last long if there is a way to be more efficient herbivores than our coprophagous vegans are - and this is their whole game, after all: being the best herbivores they can be.
Plants are excellent but imperfect foods. They have tons of carbohydrates but little protein; still one can live on plants. The problem is that the plants seldom want animals to live on them, especially those parts of the plants that are rich in protein. The protein and amino acids they prefer to store for themselves, as nitrogen is expensive, instead providing animals with carbohydrates, which are cheap. As the animals crave protein, chemical defenses need to be deployed. One of these are cyanogenic glycosides. These are stored in vacuoles, released in cytoplasm and enzymatically converted to HCN. HCN is very toxic for all animals. Many of food plants, especially root crops like taro, sorghum and cassava, have these compounds; their wild cousins have tons of these toxins. Wheat, rice, maize, barley and millet had those in their grains before domestication. Even domesticated sorghum has 100-800 mg HCN equivalent per kg. Fatal poisoning of foraging animals by sorghum is common.
In general, the more valuable is a wild plant as a source of N-rich food, the more cyanogenic glucosides it contains in the most nutritious parts. Our rustic vegan faced a vexing problem (which is not posed before the modern counterpart that capitalizes on 7000 years of plant domestication): how to detoxify itself from the toxins in "healthy, natural foods"?
The common pathway for cyanide detoxification involves reacting the cyanide with S-containing amino acids methionine and cystine. The latter is converted to 3-cyanoalanine and then to harmless aspargine. That's how insects survive on plants and how the plants themselves detoxify their HCN. We are not that advanced; we use thiosulfate to convert cyanide to thiocyanate. The latter is derived from (mainly) cystine; it is cumbersome biochemistry. The problem is that these S-containing amino acids are difficult to find in plants and plants are the only source of S in the herbivores. This is part of the survival strategy of a plant: there is no point in producing a toxin and an antidote to this poison. So the latter is minimized and the former is maximized. On the other hand, all parts of animals have high concentration of these S-containing compounds, in protein. Eating animals provides a way to detoxify plant toxins based on cyanogenic glucosides, which are one of the most efficient plant weapons against the herbivores.
Thus, a "meat-eating herbivore" (that does not have the complex stomach of the ruminants, which is a different story) is a more efficient as a herbivore than the exclusive herbivore even if it does not derive any caloric advantage and cheap organic N from meat. Recycling sulfur is yet another reason for coprophagy in the obligatory herbivores: they need to retain as many of the S-rich compounds as possible in order to detoxify HCN their plant food. Some life.
In other words, the path to improving the efficiency of herbivory and more inclusive and nutritious plant diet is, precisely, through meat eating. This is particularly important for the first experiments with domestication of plants as the attempt to live on many of these N-rich parts of the wild plants can be lethal, but these are, nutritionally, the best parts. As our coprophagous vegan wants to eat as much and as many plants as it can, and maximize the nutritional benefit of the plants, the very logic of the situation dictates switching back to omnivory. Otherwise our vegan is eclipsed - at its own game of vegetarianism - by less high-minded but more efficient plant eaters that complement their vegetable diet with meat eating. Again, this is not taking into account the nutritional value of meat. All we want is to have a more efficient human animal relying almost exclusively on herbivory. The key word turns out to be "almost". To be the most efficient herbivore, one needs to have an occasional pheasant.
Do we eat other animals to be more efficient plant eaters?
PS http://nature.berkeley.edu/miltonlab/pdfs/meateating.pdf
Critique http://www.springerlink.com/content/rr78052089583418/fulltext.pdf
Tags: whys
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09:11 pm
[Link] |
Miss Bigotry
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/09/01/shanghai-black-girl-lou-jing
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1925589,00.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_n19_v90/ai_18709814
Italy 1996; China 2009
Tags: round and round
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01:28 am
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Why do we eat other animals? Part 1.
The nice thing about us humans is that we are omnivorous. Why is that good? Because animals need B group vitamins, such as B12, but only bacteria make it. These bacteria do not occur in plants; these occur only in animal gut. Exclusive herbivores have only two choices: (1) having complex stomachs (ruminants) and cultivating B12-producing bacteria in their rumens, with the cud regurgitated and chewed or (2) producing B12 in their hindgut and reingesting their own feces. This is what hares and rabbits do: they breed the bacteria in their blind gut (caecum) and then...
...Leporids have long been known to reingest soft faeces. However, it was recently found that they regularly reingest hard faeces, too. During the daytime, both soft and hard faeces are defecated and all of the faeces are reingested. Excreted at night are the hard faeces, which are normally discarded but reingested in starvation. The separation mechanism in the proximal colon, which diverts fine particles into the caecum and thus only passes large food particles, produces hard faeces. When the mechanism ceases acting, fermented caecal materials are excreted as soft faeces. The reingestion of soft faeces, rich in vitamins and microbial proteins, is physiologically imperative. Hard faeces are basically a refuse, but their thorough mastication at reingestion reduces poorly digestible large particles to fine ones good for fermentation. The regular reingestion of daytime hard faeces thus promotes food digestibility. The temporary use of night-time hard faeces allows leporids to do without food for some time. It thus gives leporids behavioural flexibility and thereby an ecological advantage. Reingestion is also known in other small- to medium-sized herbivores, which are all caecal fermenters. Leporids are the largest of the reingesting species except for the semi-aquatic Coypu, and reingestion by leporids is certainly the most sophisticated. This development of a reingestion-involved digestive system has probably brought them to their present niche, as terrestrial medium-sized generalist mammalian herbivores. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120701755/abstract
This is unpleasant, but there is no other way. Since the primates do not have the complex stomach, there is no question about what our ancestors have been doing for millions of years. The ones that are most exclusive vegetarians are also the most dedicated crap eaters, like ring-tailed lemurs, capucins, and mountain gorillas.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/114096074/abstract
http://www.springerlink.com/content/hm240083835n6mux
Of course, chimps do it too, for more than one reason, e.g.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/wpkv7m0nna0g38lu
Naturally, one eats mainly one's own stuff to reduce the risk of ingesting parasites from the others. Consuming carrion, meat, intestines, liver liberates an animal from this shameful dependency, so the transition from vegetarianism to hunting in our hominid ancestors was quite a relief. As a reminder of these not-so-happy olden times we still have the caecum and its terminus: vermiform appendix. Many of exclusive carnivores do not have those. Carnivory is not only a very efficient way of getting nutrients, it is a way of getting all kinds of valuable metabolites. Without carnivory and cooking we would be a sorry sight.
I cannot say I have much sympathy to those lambasting humanity for eating animals. Whatever moral failings such practice may entail, it pales in comparison with the alternative. I'd like to see what kind of moral perfection can be expected from a rational being habitually dining on its own feces.
Why do we eat other animals?
Tags: whys
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08:28 pm
[Link] |
The perfect lens, or in praise of mammals
...nuclear architecture of rod photoreceptor cells differs fundamentally in nocturnal and diurnal mammals. The rods of diurnal retinas possess the conventional architecture found in nearly all eukaryotic cells, with most heterochromatin situated at the nuclear periphery and euchromatin residing toward the nuclear interior. The rods of nocturnal retinas have a unique inverted pattern, where heterochromatin localizes in the nuclear center, whereas euchromatin, as well as nascent transcripts and splicing machinery, line the nuclear border. The inverted pattern forms by remodeling of the conventional one during terminal differentiation of rods. The inverted rod nuclei act as collecting lenses, and computer simulations indicate that columns of such nuclei channel light efficiently toward the lightsensing rod outer segments. http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(09)00137-8
Here it is explained better:
...the C-bands of all the chromosomes including the centromere coalesce in the center of the nucleus to produce a dense chromocenter. Second, a shell of LINE-rich G-band sequences surrounds the C-bands. Finally, the R-bands including all examined protein-coding genes are placed next to the nuclear envelope. The nucleus of this cell type is also smaller so as to make the pattern more compact. This ordered movement of billions of basepairs according to their “barcode status” begins in the rod photoreceptor cells at birth and continues for weeks and months. Why the elaborate repositioning of so much “junk” DNA in the rod cells of nocturnal mammals? The answer is optics. A central cluster of chromocenters surrounded by a layer of LINE-dense heterochromatin enables the nucleus to be a converging lens for photons, so that the latter can pass without hindrance to the rod outer segments that sense light. In other words, the genome regions with the highest refractive index — undoubtedly enhanced by the proteins bound to the repetitive DNA — are concentrated in the interior, followed by the sequences with the next highest level of refractivity, to prevent against the scattering of light. The nuclear genome is thus transformed into an optical device that is designed to assist in the capturing of photons. This chromatin-based convex (focusing) lens is so well constructed that it still works when lattices of rod cells are made to be disordered. Normal cell nuclei actually scatter light. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/04/shoddy_engineering_or_intellig.html
That's absolutely amazing piece of engineering. Bravo, mammals!
Tags: evolution
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01:10 pm
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Why do the pines smell of pine? The Grand Isoprenoid Conspiracy.
The pines smell of terpene pinene. Why do the forest trees produce these volatile terpenes (aka volatile organic compounds, VOCs)? This is a major operation. The trees transform up to 10% of the C they bind into these VOCs that are permanently lost. This is comparable to the amount of carbon that gets into the soil when the tree dies (and has a chance to fossilize there). One can look at a forest as a chemical machine taking CO2 from the atmosphere and transforming it into the isoprene derivatives that are returned to the atmosphere. Why? No one really knows, there are only educated guesses:
...The functional role of VOC emission from plants is not much understood. The isoprene emission has been implicated in a variety of roles including protection of photosynthetic apparatus from sudden temperature fluctuations, as flowering hormone, as an antioxidant or simply as an overflow to get rid of excess of carbon. Plants emit monoterpenes under specific circumstances for various purposes. Some of the monoterpenes released from plants have an allelopathic function i.e. control of seed germination and growth of other species to avoid competition. Monoterpenes are also known to act as defense compound against pathogens and herbivores.
[thermoregulation is the classical explanation, see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v374/n6525/pdf/374769a0.pdf]
...(1) defense against generalist and specialist insect and mammalian herbivores, (2) defense against insect-vectored fungi and potentially pathogenic endophytic fungi, (3) attraction of entomophages and pollinators, (4) allelopathic effects that inhibit seed germination and soil bacteria, and (5) interaction with reactive troposphere gases.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/kr53726128522t31/fulltext.pdf
The main problem with this kind of functional explanations is that the "predators" of the trees cannot live without these terpenes. The steroids and sterols in animals are produced from the terpenoid precursors. The retinal in our eyes is from the carotenes that serve as accessory pigments in photosynthesis. Surely, many of the terpenes have functional role. Guttapercha is polyisoprene made of the terpenes, the sap, etc. I can see how the terpenes might be useful in plant tissues, but the defensive function of the VOCs is a stretch. All such defenses are easily thwarted and a pine tree in a pine forest would have a very strong incentive to cheat if the function is the attraction of insectivores, etc. Very little would be needed, too. Inhibition of soil bacteria does not require volatility, etc. etc.
There are more subtle ideas, such as that the VOCs serve as a metabolic ‘safety valve’ preventing the unnecessary sequestration of phosphates, see
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6920/pdf/nature01312.pdf
This is difficult to prove, but at least this is reasonable. Another reasonable idea is that there is no dedicated function. It is opportunistic use of inavoidable waste:
...because potent biomolecular activity is an inherently rare property for any chemical structure to possess, organisms have to generate substantial chemical diversity for a few compounds to have any likelihood of possessing biomolecular activity. The hypothesis proposed several properties of secondary metabolism that would enhance the production and retention of chemical diversity. One prediction was that some enzymes involved in secondary product synthesis will make chemicals with many different physical and chemical properties and it is predictable that some of these substances will be volatile. Hence the production of VOCs, some of which do not individually benefit the producer, is predicted. http://www.ecostudies.org/reprints/Firn_Jones%202006_Owen_Response_TIPS_11_112-114.pdf
In principle, this makes sense, but it is hard to justify SUCH waste. This does suggest a function, even if it is difficult to pin it down. In fact, the fate of the VOCs after being emitted is hardly a secret:
...Oxidation of biogenic VOCs tends to produce low vapour pressure compounds that partition to particulate matter to form secondary organic aerosol, SOA, although some large biogenic VOCs (e.g. sesquiterpenes) may partition directly to aerosol particulate matter. Secondary organic aerosol may affect the critical saturation ratios of clouds, lead to global dimming and provide a surface for further heterogeneous chemistry to occur. The surface chemistry on SOA leads to the formation of large compounds and oligomers with very low vapour pressures. Two of the largest components of the biogenic VOC budget are isoprene and pinene. http://www.rsc.org/ej/FD/2008/b702199b.pdf
see also Formation of Secondary Organic Aerosols Through Photooxidation of Isoprene, Science, 303, 1173 (2004)
Oxidized VOCs not only produce the aerosols themselves, they adsorb on mineral dust and other inorganic aerosol and make this aerosols more efficient for seeding clouds. In fact, the pinene appears to be especially apt at undergoing ozonolysis. So the VOCs are good at destroying the tropospheric ozone and creating aerosols. The latter shield solar radiation, either directly or by seeding the clouds. While the idea that the trees influence the climate by changing carbon cycle (e.g., via sequestration of CO2) and heat balance (e.g., by changing the albedo) has long been accepted, the idea that they might be manipulating climate in other ways is not seriously discussed. Yet they do it. The only question is whether they do it intentionally. Can the forest has a group interest in producing the VOCs? Observe that such interest may not be even present today. The heyday of the forests was in the Eocene and before. The configuration of the continents was different, the climate was different, everything was different - except for the trees themselves. Then as now, the trees were producing the terpenes and releasing them in the air.
To what end? It would help the tree if the tropospheric ozone levels are lowered; what these levels were in the distant past is anyone's guess. The conifers prefer cool climes, so they might emit aerosol-yielding VOCs to cool the climate. The climate did cool since the Eocene. The tropical forests may be trying to lower direct sunlight and induce more rain. That was especially important as the continents split and the climate become more arid. Interestingly, it is the forests that mainly produce the VOCs, so the advantage should be to the trees over other plants. The steppe grasses prefer the aridity and warmth because otherwise the forests would take over. As most of the VOCs are produced in the tropics, the chief beneficiary would be the (presently) tropical forest which relies on abundant rainfall. Seeding the clouds to increase the rainfall would be an ingenous adaptation, certainly paying off despite the high individual cost. The mechanism would be especially important in the past when there was single landmass (Pangea) with relatively dry interior and flat terrain.
http://web.me.com/uriarte/Earths_Climate/Triassic.html
The ability to increase the rainfall would be critical for inland forests in the Mesozoic.
The current climate is exceptional (it has not been seen on Earth since the late Carboniferous) and it seems unlikely that the trees have developed their metabolism to what, geologically, is nothing. The conifers appeared at the end of the Carboniferous when so much CO2 was removed from the atmosphere that the glaciations (and drying) have began (as now). Any trick to increase the rainfall would be of tremendous advantage to the (then) uninterrupted forests.
Incidentally, the effect of such VOC aerosols on the climate is unknown, quite possibly matching in the magnitude the effect of green house gases (see the figure below). Any reasonable answer about the direction of the climate change requires answering another question, viz.
Why do the pine trees smell of pine?
Tags: whys
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12:33 am
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1885-> 2009
A journalist posing as a brothel-keeper pairs with a faux-prostitute to spin the story of trafficking minors across the border. He writes down his experiences in sordid detail, and publishes it in a major newspaper. The story becomes an instant hit and a national scandal. The public outrage follows, with the march of 250,000 protesters in the capital requiring the immediate action of the legislature. Shortly thereafter the public attention is focussed on the issue of violating the minors and the age of consent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Armstrong_case
http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/tribute/index.php
Tags: round and round
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08:47 pm
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Jumping beans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_jumping_beans
Tags: findings
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06:54 pm
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Левацкие штучки
http://avigdor.livejournal.com/152311.html
http://arbat.livejournal.com/384127.html + discussion
Tags: unforgettable discussions
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11:04 am
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Waiting a bit...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/326/5949/28-a
...and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...
BTW, this same issue of science has a nice paper on the ozone depletion:
...By comparing the ozone depletion potential (ODP)–weighted anthropogenic emissions of N2O with those of other ozone-depleting substances, we show that N2O emission currently is the single most important ozone-depleting emission and is expected to remain the largest throughout the 21st century. N2O is unregulated by the Montreal Protocol.
...even though NO + N2O’s ODP is roughly one-sixtieth of CFC-11s, the large anthropogenic emissions of N2O more than make up for its small ODP, making anthropogenic N2O emissions the single most important of the anthropogenic ODS emissions today... The global anthropogenic emission of N2O now (produced mainly as a byproduct of fertilization, fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes, biomass and biofuel burning, and other processes) is roughly 10M tons per year compared with slightly more than 1M tons from all CFCs at the peak of their emissions. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/326/5949/123
There are also poorly understood natural sources of N2O and MeBr, another ozone destroyer.
...increases in anthropogenic N2O emissions or decreases due to abatement strategies would affect a number of issues of importance to stratospheric ozone: N2O could be an unintended byproduct of enhanced crop growth for biofuel production or iron fertilization to mitigate CO2 emissions. Such an enhancement would lead to the unintended "indirect" consequence of ozone layer depletion and increased climate forcing by an alternative fuel used to curb global warming.
A tricky thing: saving the world... I have no idea what are they going to fight now.
Tags: warming
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11:07 am
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How did the incarceration begin?
Why do we lock offenders in prisons? This practice is against both Roman and Jewish Law (the latter allows jailing before a trial, but forbids punitive imprisonment, see the commentary in
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/PrisonerRights.html
http://jlaw.com/Articles/ch_incarceration.html)
The practice is usually explained as the effect of incompletely eradicated pagan Germanic customs eroding medieval Christianity. I've been mystified by this explanation because it is hard to believe that such customs had suddenly appeared after being abandoned for hundreds of years. Below is a more sensible explanation of how we have descended into the current situation. It turns out that the original idea was thoroughly Christian, but then the modernity caught up. The original intentions were good and had they known how it would turn out they would have none of it. Perhaps that's why the Mosaic law stipulates it so explicitly: there is a seemingly reasonable line of thought that naturally leads to the justification of incarceration through conceiving prisons as earthly purgatories. In a short while, these purgatories turn into hellholes, but this foresight is lacking in people who have not seen this transformation before, however wise they might be. Perhaps the Israelites and the others did and so it was thoroughly impressed on them. The experiment has been abandoned for three thousand years before some agile medieval mind stepped into the same logical trap ignoring the warning by glossing things over. The gloss did not last long, and the evil resumed.
Having turned it round and round
In my mind, I have conclusively concluded,
That the prison is the best place in the world.
Where can one lead a better life?
Where are happier days spent?
He is mad who complains about it.
It keeps us safe from enemies.
In Roman legal thought, which dominated medieval jurisprudence, incarceration was considered an illegitimate punishment – a measure “dismal to the innocent, but not harsh enough for the guilty.” Yet, as mentioned above, punitive imprisonment was favored by the Church on account of its non-violence, and even featured as a leitmotiv of Christian asceticism. Thus, the medieval imaginary of the prison was founded on a tension between misery and spiritual growth, and for nearly a millennium prisons were widely held as earthly purgatories rather than earthly hells.
...with the proliferation of municipal prisons, this image was challenged and often modified... The increasing recourse to incarceration in the secular world undermined
the prison’s traditional image as a place of penance. No longer a mere metaphor for the vita angelica, imprisonment was redefined on a civic register, since the foundation of prisons was now seen as a symbolic act of secular political autonomy. Among the Italian city-states, for instance, debates over the establishment of new prison facilities convey a proud sense of progress and civic charity. Extant deliberations of city-councils routinely emphasize
the new regimes’ break from their oligarchic past and the latter’s alleged neglect of non-noble citizens.While such texts deliberately criticize earlier aristocratic regimes, they also illustrate how urban magistrates were interested in presenting their new prisons as formidable and yet rational, more efficient and salubrious institutions. Reflecting similar sentiments, chroniclers of that period approvingly described the foundation and use of local prisons. Late medieval descriptions and depictions of urban prisons confirm that
these institutions were perceived as legitimate symbols of hard-won urban liberties.
...while most Florentine prisoners were debtors, others were incarcerated for minor crimes such as theft, gambling, and bearing arms, and an even greater number for defaulting on fines assessed against them for a wide range of offenses, from fraud to violent assault. Slaves(mostly female) and children were occasionally imprisoned explicitly “pro emendare” (for correction).
...The years c.1250–c.1350 a watershed period in the history of the prison. How to account for this shift? The proliferation of prisons coincided with a period of intense urbanization and a growth of urban (communal) liberties. As a reflection of this process, in the attempt
to consolidate their judicial administrations, urban communes sought to confine deviants, dissidents, and criminals in the building of the prison, which the magistrates usually founded in or near the main government compound. Unlike today, then, most medieval prisons were both central and visible.
...Beyond its symbolism, however, the typical prison’s location addressed some practical needs. Medieval polities rarely provided their prisoners with the range of services that are customary (and mostly free) today, such as meals, medical aid, spiritual guidance, and recreational and educational programs. Accordingly, the prison’s centrality ensured that inmates – and not just the edifice – were visible and accessible. And in fact, many different
people frequented these compounds: local magistrates and prosecutors, of course, but also priests, physicians, families, friends, charitable officials, business partners, and even prostitutes.Thus, medieval inmates were never fully cut off from surrounding society, which, in turn, placed a further check on the staff ’s conduct.
Human traffic flowed both in and out of the prison. Just as the prison became a sine qua non of the urban landscape, so its inmates were integrated into the local human panorama. They left their cells to beg, pursued their legal affairs, and attended family events. Three or four times a year, during the major liturgical feasts, prisoners were “offered” by some governments at the local cathedral on behalf of the city. As their numbers grew, so did
their visibility. And it is no wonder that donations to alleviate prisoners’ conditions and for the release of the poorer among them peaked in that very period. According to one study, over 25 percent of Londoners’ wills between 1376 and 1531 contained bequests for the material benefit of prison inmates. Prison life in the Middle Ages was as far from its present stereotype as a “hellhole,” as it was from our modern conceptions of prisons
as “total” institutions.
...All this is not to argue that medieval prison life was pleasant, only that it was mostly tolerable. Supervision over inmates was not total, which left them free but also vulnerable. Lacking means to pay off their debts or fines, prisoners could languish for years, inflicting their families with financial ruin. Food could be scarce or unaffordable, and those who could not rely on steady supplies from outside survived on charitable offerings, sometimes as
little as a loaf of bread per day. Violence – verbal, emotional, sexual, and physical – was arguably the greatest pain of medieval imprisonment.
...In contrast to the strict regimentation of time in modern prisons, medieval inmates lacked a real daily routine. Prisoners seldom worked, and diversions were scarce: visits were necessarily limited, reading material hard to come by, space for recreational activities mostly unavailable, alcohol prohibited and prostitutes rare. Financial and legal affairs could occupy some of a prisoner’s time, but these were often over within several weeks, and seldom guaranteed an occasional leave. Begging outside the walls was only intermittently allowed even before certain administrations opted to employ penitential friars for this purpose.
...This brief account of medieval prisons does not seek to move the prison’s birth as a total institution five-hundred years back in time, nor to demonstrate the application of punitive imprisonment in the Middle Ages on a modern scale. Although fourteenth-century Europe saw a greater recourse to incarceration than it had ever known before, prisons were nowhere the basis of local penal systems; and despite the fact that these facilities served as important cogs in the administration of contemporary justice, they were never as regimented or enclosed as their modern counterparts. Prison walls in the late Middle Ages did not describe the borders of a social island: their location, routine, and permeability prevents us from defining life inside as hell on earth, even if the perception of prisons as earthly purgatories had by then lost its favor. http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/~medrens/Geltner-reading-07-08.pdf
the book is http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8825.html
The concept completed the transformation from the earthly purgatory to hell around 1500. There is a name to a media outreach specialist who engineered this change of public perception. It was a Renaissance man effortlessly combining in himself a third-rate poet borrowing his imagination from Dante and Petrarch, a beloved playwright for Venetian progressives, a celebrated pop-music composer, and the occasional jailbird knowing his subject inside out:
...In 1541, the Venetian poet Giovanni Piero Manenti completed this shift by passing from infernal allusions to an outright identification of the prison with earthly hell. In his Dantesque voyage through Venice’s justice system, Manenti dealt with the republic’s prisons – whose layout dates back to the late thirteenth century – under the title “Inferno del mondo.”
Tags: forgotten topics
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07:16 pm
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The Charge of the Light Brigade
Poor man. I'd rather face what comes to me than being defended by deranged well-wishers. Errol Flynn comes to mind...
...In 1961, mother Florence Aadland wrote The Big Love, a book detailing Flynn's sexual relationship with her 15-year-old daughter, Beverly. In 1980, author Charles Higham published a controversial biography, Errol Flynn: The Untold Story, in which he alleged that Flynn was a fascist sympathizer who spied for the Nazis before and during World War II. The book also alleged he was bisexual, and had affairs with several men. That Flynn was bisexual was also claimed by David Bret in Errol Flynn: Satan's Angel, although Bret denounced the Nazi claims. He was previously accused of sympathising with Hitler based on his association with Dr. Hermann Erben, an Austrian who served in the German military intelligence. Declassified files held by the CIA show that, in an intercepted letter in September 1933, Flynn wrote to Erben: "A slimy Jew is trying to cheat me... I do wish we could bring Hitler over here to teach these Isaacs a thing or two. The bastards have absolutely no business probity or honour whatsoever."
Subsequent biographies — notably Tony Thomas' Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was and Buster Wiles' My Days With Errol Flynn: The Autobiography of a Stuntman — have rejected Higham's claims as pure fabrication. Flynn's political leanings, say these biographies, appear to have been leftist: he was a supporter of the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War and of the Cuban Revolution, even narrating a documentary titled Cuban Story shortly before his death. According to his autobiography, he considered Castro a close personal friend and drinking partner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errol_Flynn
Verily, some reputations are better off without defense... Before Flynn's was defended, he was a glittering Hollywood womanizer. When they were finished, he was dirt.
Tags: americana
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04:56 pm
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In memoriam: Мишугенер Янсон
Как долго помнят о тех, кто никому не известен при жизни?
В 1961 году, приехав в Палангу, я поселился в крохотной конуре под лестницей. По этой лестнице то вверх, то вниз топотали курчавые внуки и внучки, повинуясь окрикам невидимой старухи. Команды и проклятья раздавались на прибалтийском идише, который я понимаю примерно на уровне собаки. К третьему дню стало очевидно, что старухин речитатив мне хорошо знаком - в нем звучали сочные выражения из лексикона моей бабушки. Многие из них к тому времени были мною расшифрованы самостоятельно или с помощью матери и дяди, но одно - "мишугинер янсен" оставалось неясным. Первое слово здесь означает сумасшедший, дурачок, но этимология второго... И я решился.
Старуха встретила меня не слишком приветливо, а, узнав, что общаться с московским евреем нужно по-русски, стала просто грубить. Тем не менее, она ухватила суть проблемы: "Откуда родом ваша бабушка?". Короче, оказалось, что обе лавки стояли рядом, моя прабабка хорошо готовила, но была слишком сурова с дочерями, рядом жили те самые Вовси, а Янсен - она его не помнит, но от матери слышала о легендарном даже для нее местечковом юродивом.
Так вот, прогремели войны, рухнули империи, миллионы растворились в неизвестности, но след на земле от вилковишского дурака таки остался, пусть слабый. Старушки поведали о нем своим внукам, а я, один из них, вручаю память о Янсене вам.
http://vivovoco.ibmh.msk.su/HOME/PAPERS/TEXT/ONEDAY.HTM
Tags: in memoriam
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06:13 pm
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In memoriam
My father passed away two years ago today. Perhaps the best way to remember him is by letting him speak:
...В повседневной жизни мы избегаем лжецов и стараемся окружить себя честными людьми. По большей части, это удается, хотя иной раз мы ошибаемся в каком-то человеке. Однажды в молодости мне попалась на глаза логическая задача, в которой требовалось установить истину, хотя все персонажи в ней лгали. Задача имела решение, однако найти его было далеко не просто. И я подумал, как же тяжело жить в мире, где все лгут! Сколько умственных сил и времени в нем приходится тратить на непрерывное решение логических задач.
...Я знавал немало людей, по большей части молодых, для которых художественная литература служит источником не столько эмоций, сколько информации. То ли склад ума у них такой, то ли школа их изувечила, а может и литература... А вам не приходилось, наоборот, испытывать эмоциональные потрясения при чтении литературы научной, рассчитанной вроде только на передачу информации? Со мной такое случалось, и не раз.
...никто из действительных членов клана ученых никогда не признается в этом, не скажет: "Да, я ученый!" или "Я как ученый..."? На прямой вопрос они ответят, как Жанна д'Арк о пребывании в благодати: "Если ее нет на мне, молю господа ее даровать; если же она на мне, молю господа ее сохранить". И будут правы, потому что ученый это не профессия, а особое состояние разума; я назвал бы его раскрепощенностью опрятной мысли. Раскрепощенность и острота разума, думается, есть природный дар - ими вряд ли удасться наделить, хотя их можно пробудить. А слово опрятность, по-моему, лучше всего подходит к тому выстраданному человечеством способу мышления, которое принято называть научным. Оно отражает непредвзятость и строгость и оттеняет отношение к любым обманным ходам. Такая опрятность и объединяет ученых в клан; проникнуть в него нельзя, а приобщиться можно и не будучи гением, потому что этот способ или, скорее, свойство мышления определяется не столько талантом, сколько воспитанием.
...Как всякое чувство, любовь к своей профессии отчасти иррациональна. Я бессилен передать ощущения, испытываемые химиком-органиком, когда "выходит" синтез, кристаллизуется затираемое масло или просто держишь в руках изящно выдутую колбу. Такие "плотские" эмоции чудесны, они знакомы всем умельцам и служат, пожалуй, лучшим индикатором свободного владения секретами ремесла. И мой собственный опыт, и взгляд окрест, однако, говорят, что технические навыки, чисто профессиональные знания и даже определенные научные успехи не дают еще полного удовлетворения от своего труда. На этом уровне мало быть ученым.
...Где плоды той образованности, за которой ты вольно или невольно гонялся всю жизнь? Где твоя Нобелевская премия? Сколько у тебя печатных работ и каков индекс их цитируемости? Ну и что, я готов признать: не в коня был искомый корм. Труднее определить, является ли этот корм витамином или необязательной, хотя и пикантной приправой. Похоже, время работает на тех, кто полагает верным последнее, ибо непрактичная тяга к образованности и податливость увлечениям придает жизни полноту, но вряд ли способствует победам в битве за настоящие кормушки. И чем только утешатся победители, случись неприятности по службе? Впрочем, у победителей их не бывает.
...[меня часто упрекают] в своего рода стерильности: как в раю - чисто, светло и ни души. Люди, с их заботами и печалями, остались где-то вовне, а здесь - вытаскивается из небытия и назойливо всучивается никому не нужный хлам. Я нарочно углубил оттенки, потому что и сам часто думаю об этом, употребляя куда более крепкие выражения. Моя деятельность - протест, которому я попытался придать конструктивную форму, совместимую с моими наклонностями и возможностями.
Tags: in memoriam
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10:42 pm
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On Mars, Life and Perchlorate
A year ago, the Phoenix mission to Mars found high concentration of perchlorate (ClO4-) in martian soil. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5936/64
On Earth, there is almost no natural perchlorate, but since NH4ClO4 is added to solid rocket boosters, it is found near the launching sites. Actually, it is a way of detecting this kind of activity. There is the single exception, though: the Atacama desert in the Andes, the driest place on the planet. There are (were) massive nitrate deposits containing various oxoanions, including the perchlorate. How it got there is a mystery; there are UFO enthusiasts conjecturing that this is the falloff from the nearby Nazca launching pad for flying saucers. Jokes aside, the only chemical path seems to be via the poorly known part of Cl atmospheric cycle involving salt aerosols (the reactions of Cl atoms with ozone on such particles). Contrary to the popular notion that this chemistry is well known, it is barely understood, and the inability to account for the ClO4- geochemistry is one of the many conceptual failures.
The situation with Mars is even more dire because the surface chloride seems to be mainly in this form, but there is little oxygen and almost no ozone in the atmosphere. Nobody has the slightest idea where this perchloride could be from. I've suspected as much but now I know (I had to educate myself on this subject as I had to review a proposal on the Atacama desert research today).
I was thinking: we are sending all these probes to Mars to find the traces of life, perhaps even intelligent life. Now we have found a chemical which is (on our planet) anthropogenic through and through. It looks as if the Martians built the rockets with perchlorate boosters and took off for the greener pastures, leaving the perchlorate laden soil on the dead planet they left behind. But no one will consider this scenario seriously. We will be looking for a "natural" explanation of these deposits and we'll probably find a forced, speculative, and contorted way of explaining this discovery "naturally". What is the point of sending these probes that cost a lot of money if, in the end, we do not want to accept the findings? It is and it was pretty obvious that we would not find a barking dog and a mooing cow down there; at best, it will be some metabolites and/or other cues that can be interpreted both ways. Abiogenetic explanations would always be preferred over the biogenic ones; that's another given. With such an attitude, what is the point of this research?
Said that, I immediately started to fantasize about the chemistry in the martian soil and the atmosphere that can produce this perchlorate. Something stronger than reason tells me that this is the right thing to do.
What do we actually want: to find alien life or be assured that we are alone? I've searched myself and realized what I want: to find it DEAD.
Tags: mysteries
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11:30 am
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A post stamp
Istvan Banyai
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09:29 pm
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Helping grass to grow
...Herbivorous and carnivorous insects use plant volatiles when foraging for food. In response to herbivory, plants emit a blend that may be quantitatively and qualitatively different from the blend emitted when intact... It has been well established that carnivores (predators and parasitoids) are attracted by the volatiles induced by their herbivorous victims. This concerns an active plant response. In the case of attraction of predators, this is likely to result in a fitness benefit to the plant, because through consumption a predator removes the herbivores from the plant. However, the benefit to the plant is less clear when parasitoids are attracted, because parasitisation does usually not result in an instantaneous or in a complete termination of consumption by the herbivore. Recently, empirical evidence has been obtained that shows that the plant's response can increase plant fitness, in terms of seed production, due to a reduced consumption rate of parasitized herbivores. However, apart from a benefit from attracting carnivores, the induced volatiles can have a serious cost because there is an increasing number of studies that show that herbivores can be attracted. However, this does not necessarily result in settlement of the herbivores on the emitting plant. The presence of cues from herbivores and/or carnivores that indicate that the plant is a competitor- and/or enemy-dense space, may lead to an avoidance response. Thus, the benefit of emission of induced volatiles is likely to depend on the prevailing faunal composition. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119034185/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Translating this into plain English: in response to herbivory, plants produce volatiles serving as cues for the predators of these herbivores.
No wonder I like the smell of freshly mowned lawns...
PS: here is another piece of devilry - some plants, including maize, when eaten by caterpillars, secrete cystein proteases that digest glycoprotein lining midgut epithelium. Apparently, this is the second most common defense after using protease/proteinase inhibitors of insect digestive enzymes (like trypsins). There is an ongoing battle between the proteases and their inhibitors, with both sides relying on hypervariable domains; not unlike our immune system, actually - to control who digests whom! Maybe I was too enthusiastic about insect digestion... Its peculiarities open creative ways for plants to defend themselves.
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/20/13319.full
see Ch 11 Schaller "Induced plant resistance to herbivory"
PPS: Speaking of defenses http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/4/355
A frog that breaks its own leg bone and uses the protruding pieces as a claw.
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03:12 pm
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The power of art
to this http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/09/21/explosive-new-audio-reveals-white-house-using-nea-to-push-partisan-agenda
Civil servants redistributing wealth
Community organizer advising the needy
Not One Dime Health Care Plan revealed
GOP Lane
...
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01:16 pm
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How to kill an aphid with splendor
Four years ago I wrote about Hamilton's leaf signal hypothesis (explaining why leafs turn red in the fall) here
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/2005/10/21/
but it seems that the subject needs some biochemistry background that even an enthomologist may not have, so here are additional explanations (that nicely tie the subject with the recent discussion on digestion).
Hamilton's idea is this: the tree is advertizing its fitness to combat infesting insects, especially aphids. The tree is telling: I have so much nutrients stored for winter that I can make the anthocyanins (in general, flavonoids) depleting my sugar reserves now, when I do not even need these flavonoids. So do not mess with me: I am very fit, I will also make something for you. I will make tannins, cyanogenic glycosides, alkaloids for my pests. You better lay your eggs elsewhere. It is not the red color the aphids avoid but what this color implies.
The anthocyanins are derived from proanthocyanidins, the flavonoids also called condensed tannins. The tannins induce protein precipitation; insects generally keep away from them. If the stuff does not kill them right away, it reduces food digestibility very considerably. It is taking advantage of the aphids' weak spot: Tree sap has little protein, so the aphids rely on their gut bacteria to break sugars and make essential amino acids that they absorb. The tannins interfere with the operation. To deactivate these tannins they need to change the pH of their midgut, weakening the tannin-protein interaction and making the tannins easier to oxidize and dispose of. But the bacteria do not grow well at high pH and the digestion becomes less efficient. So much sugar, but no way of making amino acids from it... So the insects make special surfactants to make the insoluble tannin-protein complexes soluble again. That costs them dear. The more tannins the plant makes, the more difficult it is to break even, energetically speaking.
Living on sugary water has its problems: vulnerability to certain simple defenses. Seeing all these anthocyanins displayed in the fall is scary, because it means starvation next year. The tree is hinting that its phenylpropanoid biochemistry is working with deadly efficiency.
http://ivanov-petrov.livejournal.com/1270773.html?thread=62228725#t62228725
I do not think that aphids enjoy seeing the beauty of our forests...
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09:27 am
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Quote of the day
...The scope of the conference is exemplified by S. Rasmussen’s characterization of hydrogen as “a colorless, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/325/5948/1632.pdf
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