I have a long-time friend who I grew up with and is also a fellow bulldog. He knew me "back when" I was a Christian. Somewhere amidst the business of growing up I gave up my beliefs (See my category on religion). However, its only been a relatively recent phenomena that I've managed to catch up old friends on my changes in philosophy.

All of that is a bit of back story. Matt is a good friend and we agreed to have a little fun with some debate on the topic of religion. I challenged Matt to make a "case for God" and he obliged with his post Absurdity of the Converse (AotC). Therein, Matt notes:

The case for God that I maintain is that without Him, I wouldn't be able to make a case for anything. The proof of the existence of God is the absurdity of the converse. The atheist has no rational way to account for universal abstracts, particularly laws of thought (e.g. laws of logic, moral absolutes). Any use of the immaterial cannot be explained by the atheist.

AotC strikes me as an argument that presumes the conclusion (Perhaps the fallacy of many questions). Said differently, for someone who believes in God, the idea that God does not exist must be absurd.

As a non-believer, I'd rebut with a similar claim:

The theist* has no rational way to account for the existence of God. If God exists, where? If God exists, how does God interact with existence? Simply put: the theist believes in the immaterial, though it cannot be rationally proven. To an atheist this notion is absurd — thus, the absurdity of the converse cuts both ways.

Beyond the above, I'd argue that moral absolutes and laws of logic are human constructs. They are ideas / information / postulates. Is 2+2=4 proof of God's existence? If so, how?

One might argue that God commanded certain moral absolutes - i.e. the ten commandments or maybe even the laws of physics; however, this again presupposes the conclusion. Even assuming scientifically provable "laws" somehow prove God's existence (Though the mechanics here are all but clear), we still have the problem of turtles all the way down.

*Using this term loosely to refer to a believer in God.

From Simon Heffer over at the Telegraph:

Certain youths have no sense of responsibility because their parents have none. Their parents have none because it is a function of the welfare state to turn adults into children. When self-reliance becomes not merely an option, but an eccentricity, then the ethics of how we conduct ourselves in relation to our fellow citizen become completely distorted.

Heffer has some other memorable lines in this editorial if you want to read the whole thing. However, one horrid contradiction stands out, undermining the entire piece:

In a humane society the state has a role in the private lives of certain individuals. It should see that people are educated. It should see that those who suffer misfortune can cope and, as far as possible, thrive again, whether they be widows, orphans, the indigent elderly, or the mentally or physically disabled.

And immediately thereafter, "However, it does not have the wherewithal to run people's lives . . . "

Such blatant contradictions confound reason. How can you lambast the state for fostering irresponsibility — nay slavery — in one sentence (which he does) and in the next sentence acquiesce to the state the right to educate?

And how do you ever hope to arrive at the answer, which is nothing short of freedom when you make such allowances for the state as providing education to indoctrinate the next generation of "citizens"?

I just had an interesting conversation with a customer service rep for Verizon Wireless.

I was interested in getting access to my call history for the current billing cycle. Of course, I tried to get the information using Verizon Wireless Online first. Unfortunately, all that was available there was the history starting at the last billing cycle -- as far as I could see. I assumed I was doing something wrong, so I called customer service. Then things got interesting.

In his May 2nd, 2008 New York Times article "Determining Who gets to Ride the LifeBoat", Floyd Norris discusses this issue of mortgage "bailouts" and economic downward spirals. Many have acknowledged that the question of "who is worth helping" is a thorny one -- in theory, it would take a court case and judge for each and every underwater borrower to determine if they were culpable or predated upon, and hence worthy of public aid. Obviously, that approach won't work for what must (presumably) be a rapid, broad-brush bailout.

Nothing new there. But what is interesting is the second half of Norris' article, where he takes a cue from a Bush Administration official's mention of the late economist Hyman Minsky. Minsky has been mentioned quite frequently over the past year on blogs and then the mainstream media (and now, apparently, in political circles), in my mind, because of his insights about the importance of the credit cycle to the economy. That immediately leads to exploring the causes of the credit cycle, and questioning how to ameliorate them.

But Norris and many in government apparently now are reading Minsky a bit differently, and the lessons they are gleaning from Minsky deeply concern me.

Now that commodities inflation is undeniable -- it is hard to ignore pan-global food riots -- there is naturally a great deal of bickering over the cause.

This "ag-flation" surely must agitate many on Planet Wall Street, since they had decided by the beginning of the decade that inflation was dead forever -- vanquished by the "enlightened" Fed and its legion of obedient clones worldwide.

If you ask Ben Bernanke where the inflation is coming from, he'll point to anything other than the Fed itself. Roaring global demand is a popular excuse. A more mysterious answer the man invokes often is "inflation expectations". Whatever the excuse, The Fed doesn't like the damned stuff, which is why they (and other government bureaus) work so hard at stripping any trace of it from their key "inflation metrics" (CPI, core-CPI, PCE, GDP deflator and friends).

But there are big problems with each of Bernanke's excuses.

Here is a video of me explaining my home-made anti-Fed poster at the April 15, 2008 "Grannie Warriors" Ron Paul rally in DC.

The poster puts the anti-Fed movement in historical context: in fact, the United States had two central banks before the Fed: The First Bank of the United States and ... The Second Bank of the United States. The first was effectively shut down by Thomas Jefferson, and the second was knocked off by Andrew Jackson.

Today is Pi day (March 14 or 3.14 ... get it?)! According to the exploratorium, the "festivities" began at "1:59" (har har!) although I can't quite figure out what the festivities are. Also, since I'm sure you need them, here are the first 10,000 digits of pi.

As for my personal homage to pi, I came up with the following pi haiku (pi-iku?):

Can I know a wheel, according to nature round, and never complete?

There is a secret meaning behind this haiku. Can you unleash the nerd within and figure it out?!?

In other news, it's also Albert Einstein's birthday today. Aint that a coinkidink?

Note: this post was originally posted on PD2K6.

I was thumbing through a discussion between Davelj of Professor Piggington and Karl Denninger of Market-Ticker. The discussion itself is interesting and worth reading. However, what I'm including below is a comment by Davelj regarding the difference between experts and amateurs. It's poignant and I'm blogging on it merely to keep it for the record (Also on my Furl)

I've found that any reasonably intelligent person can learn/understand about 90% of almost any industry fairly quickly. The economics, critical profit drivers, financials, etc. The problem is that the last 10% is the only part that matters. That's what distinguishes real expertise from amateurs. There are a LOT of ninety percenters out there that don't even know what they don't know, although they will be quite dogmatic regarding those things that they think they know (but don't). Personally, I've exceeded the 90% threshold in two industries, one of which is banking. If I'm really lucky that number might get to three (or maybe four) before I die. As Mark Twain once said, "It ain't the things you don't know that get you in trouble; it's the things you know for sure that just ain't so." Just something to think about.

Found over at Walter in Denver, a case where onerous government finally drove a man to take matters into his own hands:

So what pushed him so far? It started when Charles Thornton left town for three days. Owning his own construction business, he had 7 vehicles which he parked in the area around his home. He received no complaints about the vehicles in the past, but when he returned from his three day trip, he found 21 parking tickets (one on each vehicle for each day he was gone). He felt he was being targeted for no real reason. He'd caused no harm to anyone. If his vehicles caused a problem, couldn't they have simply mentioned it to him without hundreds of dollars worth of tickets? Well, the Kirkwood Police had found an easy target to bring in some revenue, and they took advantage of the situation. Following this, the Kirkwood police found reasons to give Thornton over 150 citations, which cost him thousands in fines.

Thornton apparently had been involved in other run-ins with the local government, one of which resulted in fines for $18K over code violations.

I think Walter makes an apt point:

it's a credit to the peaceful nature of the American public that these incidents are not as common as they might be.

I agree.

Government can only strip us of our freedoms for so long before we rise up and revolt. That is the lesson of the American Revolution and it is the lesson of Thornton.

Extra credit (Again, thanks to Walter) — Knapp writes:

Over the years, that attitude has become increasingly typical of local government:

We have shiny badges -- we won elections, or were appointed by those who won elections. We will tell you how to live. If you don't bow, scrape and conform (or, worse yet, if you fail to notice and genuflect before our !authorita!) we'll make you pay. If you complain, we'll make you pay more. If you protest, we'll have you arrested. If you resist, our boyos will gun you down like a dog and we'll call them heroes for it.

Below is from an email exchange I had regarding an opinion piece by Rod Dreher titled What child-men need is some tradition. You can read it in its entirety here though the main points have all been included below. Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Con" blog is here.

I have a number of thoughts about Dreher's op-ed on "child-men".  I can't recall where, but I had read this a few days ago, so I've had some time for his thoughts to fester.  As I'm wont to do, I'm going to Dreher's points by quoting them piecemeal.

The student asked a question - What is an artist? - for which his culture no longer provided an authoritative answer. But if you ask a far more important question - What is a man? - the culture comes up equally short, and for the same reason.

To be sure, the definition of manhood is culture-bound and has been talked about since time immemorial. The first-century Roman teacher Quintillian warned against spoiling boys. "If the child crawls on purple," the tutor wrote, referencing the imperial color, "what will he not desire when he comes to manhood?"

Dreher repeatedly speaks of "culture", "community", "tradition" and "authority" throughout his article.  What I find curious is Dreher's appeal to culture and authority as sources for answers to fundamental questions.  Of course, culture is an incredibly ambiguous word -- what is culture but the sum total of paradigms from some defined group of people?  And which culture are we to look to for answers?  Is it the culture of Americans in total?  The culture of moderate southern Baptists?  What about the culture of black muslims?  Or liberal northerners?  It's a tough problem to appeal to culture for answers because culture is as varying as there are individuals. 

Faced with such a dilemma of picking any one culture (To say nothing of defining one), Dreher is forced to revert to "authority" for answers.  And though I'll harp on this later, Dreher's entire article is an appeal to the authority of tradition or conservatism.

Here, Dreher cites an important question, "What is a man?"  He then indicts the current culture (Which I'll assume is some majority-American culture though I can only guess) as having no "authoritative answer".  Only then does he note, "the definition of manhood is culture-bound and has been talked about since time immemorial".  To Dreher: what is the "authoritative answer" to a question that has been asked for centuries?

Today's child-men have been formed by a culture that has lost - or, rather, thrown away – a relatively fixed standard of manhood. It used to be that virtue was the measure of a man. Was a man just? Was he brave (and not necessarily in terms of physical courage)? Was he honorable in his dealings with those weaker than he? Did he respect women? Did he believe in something higher than himself? Did he submit to the concepts of duty and respect?

It's not that all men, or even most, lived by this general code. It's that they recognized that they would be judged by it, and judged themselves by it.

Dreher appeals to virtue, as defined by some pre-Boomer generation (I think).  He cites as virtuous: justice, bravery, honor, respect, and of course, submission to authority.  He says that even those who didn't live by this code knew that they would be judged by it.

And it sounds lovely.  I've heard similar appeals to times-past made many times and I always get a little misty-eyed with their innate romanticism.  I've been guilty of making the similar appeals. It's easy to romanticize the past -- we all do it whether the past means a year or decades (Even when we weren't alive to experience those times). 

So I question how Dreher's knowledge of concepts regarding manhood as they were 70 years ago.  I think Dreher's depiction of man is probably more an extension of his own beliefs regarding manhood. To supporting these beliefs, the entire piece works:

[Man defined by his virtues, as defined by others is] mostly gone, replaced by a therapeutic model in which the autonomous self is its own judge, and personal satisfaction is the measure of a life well lived. For 40 years now, we have been living through a cultural and psychological revolution that has rendered young men (indeed, most people) incapable of recognizing and submitting to authority. As social critic Philip Rieff foresaw at the dawn of this revolution, the loosening of traditional constraints would make man free, but it would be a liberty fraught with anxiety, even psychological paralysis.

Our email dialogue is diverse in that we each bring different perspectives to the table regarding how we should be judged.  I take exception to Dreher's indictment of the "autonomous self".  For one, I cannot fathom how anyone could be a better judge of my life than me.  According to Dreher, I should recognize and submit to authority; rejecting authority's chains is wrong, foolish, or wicked. 

Why?  And of course I have to ask that -- Why?!?  At the base of an autonomous paradigm is the question, "why?"  Am I wrong to ask always the question, why?  If so, then how could other men, authorities, ever be righteous?  After all, they've asked and answered the question, "Why?"  That's what makes them authorities!

Therein lies the nonsense of Dreher's argument: he believes it right for men to submit to other men, some super-men, the authorities, but wrong for men to act as authorities over their own lives.  This is nefarious poppycock.  Why? Because "it's turtles all the way down", to paraphrase Hawking.  How can you have authority over others but no authority over yourself?

You can't. 

And if nothing smacks more of absurdity its the implicit statement that free men are anxious, psychologically paralyzed beings.  I'll circle back to this shortly.

Dreher goes on, hammering the point home:

Quintillian and his successors through the ages knew that the process of becoming a man requires a juvenile male to subordinate his own desires to an objective
code of conduct – which is to say, some sort of higher authority.

Though he starts off suggesting men submit to some "objective code of conduct", which at least implies that men came together to make a determination of right and wrong, he soon replaces that idea with submitting to "some sort of higher authority".  I'm not sure the two are all that different: both require man to put aside his own ability to reason and apply logic and replace it with the decisions of other men.

In this sense, the self could only be understood and realized in relation to one's community and its values.

I can only imagine what Dreher means here, but in the context of his write-up, it comes across as more replacing the self with the hive, the collective, the authority of other men (Indeed, any man but me).

Here is where it gets really interesting.  Dreher starts talking about culture keeping men "in a permanent state of adolescence" -- a "dependency tailor-made for a consumerist economy built on creating and exploiting wants".  Perhaps shockingly, I agree with Dreher here.  However, it seems as though he is actually indicting a highly authoritative culture.  After all, the authorities are the ones who have crammed the consumerist culture down our throats.  We're told to buy, buy, buy!  Indeed, the current economic stimulus plan is an unequivocal directive by authorities to "buy!" 

And what is adolescence but wanting to be free while having no choice but to do as you're told, submit to your parents, teachers and other adults?  Look at our education system.  Teachers speak out of both sides of their mouths.  They tell students they are unique and special snowflakes destined for great things while simultaneously cramming the same subjects down our throats for twelve years.  The choices students are allowed to make are silly choices: weight lifting or spanish 2; physics or biology.  We're shuffled from classroom to classroom taking the same poorly taught subjects year after year (English, Social studies). 

What happens when we finally complete the relay race?  We're told that we're still not ready for assimilation into the world!  No, we need to go to college so we can get jobs.  Yet college is tragically just more of the same authoritative, hoop-jumping hogwash.  Yes, we finally get to pick some of the classes we take for the first time in our lives.  But after four years, we get a degree spits us into some corporate job where the authorities tell us once more that we have no say in our lives, that we should submit graciously to others who have "paid their dues".  Convinced that we just haven't adjusted yet to "the real world" we march on with hopes that it will get better in time.  Only our time to figure life out is running short -- at least, if we want to have famlies of our own.

Then, we wake up one day miserable with our work but driven on by familial responsibilities, completely out of time, having been denied the very essence of existence: the freedom to make our own way.

Dreher is right that something seems wrong with my generation.  And though I think he rightly points the finger at the boomers, his root determination as to the cause of mess couldn't be any more wrong.  It's not a lack of tradition or authority, it's a lack of freedom.  We have been told we know nothing.  We've been told to submit to authorities and to pay our dues.  We've not been told how to reason, philosophize and try to answer the fundamental questions about life -- like "Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is right or wrong?"

The failure of prior generations and generations to come is in binding man.

What is a man? A man is free. A man questions and reasons. From there comes all else.

Authority? It's the anti-man, which is why I reject it and anyone who wishes to exert it over me without hesitation or apology.

I got this in my inbox this morning -- a "thank you" note of sorts from Ron Paul:

Amazing! I have to admit being floored by the $4.2 million dollars you raised yesterday for this campaign. And unlike the fatcat operations of the opposition, the average contribution from our 36,672 donors was $103.

I say "you raised," because this historic event was created, organized, and run by volunteers. This is the spirit that has protected American freedom in our past; this is the spirit that is doing so again.

I'm not one to contribute to many causes. However, Aaron let me know about the thisnovember5th.com campaign so I donated a small amount.

It's hard to have hope when the deck is so stacked against us, but here's to trying.

I received a most unusual email today:

Hello..

I am a nurse and my late grandma was a bulldog breeder, she died about 3 months ago and left behind a male and a female english bulldog ( Sire & Dam), the female bulldog recently had a litter of 6 puppies, they are so adorable, my job as a nurse cannot allow me to take of [sic] these puppies.

I want to find them loving homes, if you [are] interested in having them, please contact me immediately.

Have a nice day.

Celine

Note: The pic was not included.

The email was sent from celine1@inmail24.com with a reply-to: celine2@2itb.com. My first reaction was, "Aww, puppies!" I'm more of a cat person (See: Zeke use the toilet), but a friend was looking into getting a puppy recently, so I immediately hit reply. That was when I noticed the bizarre email addy and realized immediately that this was spam.

You have to understand that I get a lot of emails due to the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, so seeing an email about puppies only struck me as slightly more odd than the latest tip about a faltering lender.

My question is: am I naive? Missing something? Is there some black market for puppies? What is the point of a spammed email about English Bulldogs? Is there an embedded message about v1agra or hoodia (WTF is hoodia, anyway?)? Is this some new spam tactic? What is going on here?

Update 12:11 P.M., September 24, 2007

A reader has commented that she received a response from Celine after emailing her back. Celine (who responded using a third different email addy) said:

Hello,
I was directed to contact you by your daughter (Jessica), I need help in placing both adults and puppies into a responsible caring and loving homes. Puppies are 10 weeks old and they come with complete shots and worming. I am located in Thailand and will like to ask you some few question to know if you will be capable to have my babies.Where are you located? do you have other home pets ,are they indoors or out door pets?

I will send you a copy of the below papers before shipping. Asking price is $ 400 for adoption to cover for the vet expense made and shipping is $350.

Click on the site below to view my babies.

http://www.zyworld.com/adorablebabies/Home.htm

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Have a nice day,
Celine.

I didn't realize you could ship puppies globally. And for only $350!! What a "steal"!

At 10:45 this morning, the Senate voted on a motion to "restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States."

The motion required 3/5 to pass. It failed by four votes: Results.

Republicans across the board voted against the motion.

Today was transformative for me.

Not because I met Ron Paul in the flesh for the first time -- though that did happen, at the campaign rally in Greenville, South Carolina. I even shook his hand, and suggested he quiz Fed Chairman Bernanke on how exactly the shadowy and mysterious "inflation expectations" he always cites could be the source of actual inflation.

No, the day was a watershed for me not because of Ron Paul -- whom I understand pretty well and am already in support of -- but because of everyone except Ron Paul at that rally. The surprise to me was the people.

Ok, you think this is going to be about Ron Paul, right?

Well, it's not! Hah!

Well, it kinda is, but only in a round-about way, and that actually bodes well for our beloved "Dr. No". From the article:

... are Americans merely frustrated with the current Democratic leadership of the House and Senate, or are they disenchanted, as well, with the leaders of the Republican caucuses?

An indication of the indignation with Republican leaders came from a unique Georgia special election Tuesday, in which two Republicans ran against one another. Under Georgia law, candidates of all parties run together in primaries to fill open House seats. Then the top two finishers -- no matter what their partisan affiliation -- face each other in a runoff.

In the overwhelmingly Republican district of the late Congressman Charlie Norwood, primary voting last month produced a run-off featuring two conservative Republicans.

His opponent, Paul Broun, was a quirky physician who claims to be "the only doctor in Georgia whose practice is almost exclusively house calls." A frequent candidate who was very much on the outs with party insiders, Broun barely squeaked into the run-off and most pundits stopped paying attention to a race it was assumed Whitehead would win with ease.

On Tuesday, Broun came from far behind to lead Whitehead by 394 after Tuesday night's count. The win came thanks to a remarkable coalition of very conservative voters in the rural counties of north Georgia, more liberal voters in Athens -- the home of the University of Georgia -- and African Americans.

With such a close result, a recount is likely. But Broun's come-from-behind win is likely to hold, and it is already being described by Georgia media as a "stunning upset."

And there's more than just house calls to this guy:

Broun emphasized a Ron Paul-like committment to "work to restore government according to the Constitution as our Founders intended." While the Georgian appears to be a more cautious constitutionalist than the maverick Texas congressman who is making a longshot bid for the party's presidential nomination in 2008, Broun borrowed one of the most popular of Paul's principles, promising that if elected he would assess any new legislation by first asking: "Is it constitutional and a proper function of government?"

No one was going to confuse Broun with a liberal, but he did display a Paul-like libertarian streak, suggesting that the federal government ought to stay away away from issues like gay marriage and legalizing marijuana -- matters that the candidate suggested are best handled at the state level.

So freedom is popular. And it is possible to throw a wrench in the party machine.