31.1.04

Malthus

I finally read Malthus's "Essay on Population" last semester, and it struck me that there's a definite difference between Malthus's classic presentation of the theory, and neo-Malthusian ideas today (e.g. "The Population Bomb" and "The Limits to Growth"). Neo-Malthusians see the outpacing of food by population as a scenario looming in our future which we may be able to avoid if we take action. Malthus, on the other hand, saw it as a condition already existing in most places, and unsolvable except by temporary means. I think the differences have to do with the social context in which they were writing.

Malthus's essay was addressed to social reformers who had high hopes of being able to eliminate poverty and usher in an age of plenty. Malthus's response was that the only thing that keeps population in check is the fear that one would not be able to feed one's children. The sexual urge was so strong, in his view, that only very grim and immediate prospects could convince people to keep their pants on. The upshot is that the poor will always be with us, and it's futile to try to help them.

Neo-Malthusians, on the other hand, are writing to a society experiencing affluence, confident in its ability to keep wealth expanding faster than population. Thus, the ill effects of running out of resources are something in the future. By calling attention to the coming crisis, neo-Malthusians hope that we will be more competent than Malthus's paupers and put the brakes on population now, before our children gobble up our surplus.
Stentor Danielson, 17:30,

Ibex Clone

In Bid To Save Siberian Ibex, China Clones One China announced yesterday that its scientists had cloned a Siberian ibex, a threatened mammal that dwells in the crags of central Asia, in a feat sure to heighten debate over whether cloning can help save endangered species. ... Siberian ibex, which resemble mountain goats, were described by state television as "one of the most endangered animals in China." This ibex was born after cloned cells were placed in a common goat in western China. China is seeking to rescue endangered and threatened species - such as the giant panda and the rare freshwater white-flag dolphin - through cloning, forestalling the threat of extinction, despite arguments from some experts that the high costs of cloning would be better spent on protecting animals in their native habitats.

Cloning is appropriate when the species has gone extinct, or when the genetic diversity in the live population is dangerously low compared to the genetic diversity available from dead DNA samples. But even in this case, cloning is only the first step. It does little good -- beyond providing entertainment to the public -- to keep a species alive through cloning and life in captivity. If a population can't survive in the wild without continual restocking, we have a problem. Cloning also perpetuates the myth that high-tech fixes will solve our environmental problems.
Stentor Danielson, 14:18,

30.1.04

Clark-Dean '04 -- Maybe

One interesting outcome of the collapse of Howard Dean's campaign is that the fabled Clark-Dean ticket has become more likely. A few months ago, my view was that the only way that Clark could win the nomination would be to become the anti-Dean, slugging it out with the Doctor in a bitter primary fight. This would make it quite difficult for the two men to make up at the convention and run together. But now, Clark's road to Boston lies through John Edwards and John Kerry. If he pulls it out (his chances are slim, but bigger than Dean's), there will be no bad blood preventing him from choosing Dean for the #2 spot. A Kerry-Dean or Edwards-Dean ticket, on the other hand, is unlikely due to Dean's constant attacks on "Washington insiders." The critical stories in the press about Dean selling out his principles to support one of the very people his candidacy was premised on beating would outweigh any positive benefits of the choice.
Stentor Danielson, 18:57,

In The Biblical Sense

One More Article Explaining That The Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality ... In the United States it did not become illegal for a man to rape his wife until 1993, when marital rape became a crime in all 50 states. Even now, certain exemptions are provided to a husband in the rape of his wife. How much less likely is it that a man was allowed to force himself upon his wife in the time Leviticus was written? Except for shakab there isn't a word in the First Testament used to describe what we think of as rape today. Rape is viewed as a property crime?property is defiled. The perpetrator and the property may be destroyed. Another remedy was that the rapist had to marry his victim. This remedy doesn't consider the damage to the victim, only the reputation of "the property" and the family that owned it (her). I argue that shekab in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 means that a man shall not force, or in any way coerce, another man to have sex, in the way that a man is allowed to force sex upon his wife. In other words, man is not allowed to rape a man, it is an abomination. The story of Sodom supports this interpretation. Remember that the attempted rape of the "men" in Lot's house is seen as a horrible crime, whereas the attempted rape of his daughters, or the rape of the concubine of Gibeah in Judges 19, passes without comment. Though the verses in Leviticus condemn the rape of a man, they say nothing about healthy, mutual, consensual relations between members of the same sex. -- via boy in the bands

This is an interesting argument. However, the idea of wives as property seems to cast doubt on the author's subsequent claim that homosexuality is found in approving contexts in the Bible, such as David and his good friend Jonathan:

The First Testament does describe loving relationships between members of the same sex. The author seems to respect the privacy of the subjects of these stories by describing the loving relationships and not the blow-by-blow accounts of hot male-on-male action desired as proof by the lurid conservative Christian. Even "heterosexual" relationships are not described this way, sex being alluded to in terms of the marriage contract, the births of children, and various rapes. In Deuteronomy 13:6 it is written, "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers ..." This verse lists a man's relations in order of closeness, descending to ascending: brother, son or daughter, wife, friend which is as thine own soul. This suggests that the man in this society maintains a relationship with another man that is closer than that of his wife, a relationship which is as close "as thine own soul."

I'm not convinced that talk about close relationships between men in the Bible is a wink-wink indication of homosexuality (though there's also no evidence that it definitely isn't). Human beings generally have a need for emotional closeness to others. In our society, that need is usually paired with the need for sex, so that one's lover is also supposed to be one's closest confidante and source of emotional support. A good argument can be made that sex needs closeness, but there's no reason why closeness must be accompanied by sex. I imagine most people have had very close friendships with people they would not want to have sex with, even people of the appropriate gender.

In a society where a woman is treated as the property of her husband, it seems likely that this sort of emotional bond would be more often made with a member of one's own gender. Perhaps I'm unusual, but I would find it exceedingly hard to form a close bond of respect and emotional support with someone who I viewed as my property. This is amplified by two sociological factors. First, marriage in premodern societies was often done for reasons having little to do with the love and friendship that we take as the basis of marriage today. Marriage was about establishing kinship ties that paid off economically and politically. It would be no surprise in this situation that husbands and wives wouldn't be each other's closest friend, and wouldn't be expected to be. Second, men and women inhabited separate domains. This would result in less time together, and fewer shared experiences (such as the emotional intensity of battle that David and Jonathan shared) that would form the foundation of a close bond.
Stentor Danielson, 18:20,

Which God Is Allah?

tacitus takes issue with this article arguing that the use of "Allah" in referring to the god worshipped by Muslims incorrectly perpetuates the idea that Christians and Jews worship a different god. I agree with tacitus that the sameness of the gods is an unprovable either way (indeed, I think it's nearly meaningless*), and that therefore there should be no opprobrium attached to believing that you worship a different god.

However, I agree that it would make sense to talk about Muslims worshipping God rather than worshipping Allah. For one, it's an issue of translation -- we wouldn't talk about monotheists in Latin American "worshipping Dios," or Finns "worshipping Jumala." Second, it reflects what the majority of people who use the word "Allah" for their god believe. The problem with saying "Allah" is that it's misleading about what Muslims believe and are saying by their use of the word, not that it's misleading about the actual facts of God.

*If I had to take a side I'd probably say they're the same, similar to the assertion that Copernicus and Ptolemy were talking about the same sun despite the "behavioral differences" it had in their respective astronomical systems.
Stentor Danielson, 11:40,

29.1.04

St. Paul The Non-Revolutionary

Wives Submit To Your Husbands: Yeah Right Paul is creating a model for leadership as Christians. It is a given for him that wives submit to their husbands, and that a husband is the head of the wife. What is not a given is how the husband should exercise this headship. The answer: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Christ’s model of leadership was not dominance it was servitude. He did not wear a crown. He gave no orders under pain of arrest or execution. He did not visit his wrath upon wrongdoers with violence. Instead he served. He washed feet. He healed the sick. He ate with sinners. He died for our sins. Any man who thinks he has, in this passage, a scriptural warrant to be the ruler of his wife/slave is sorely wrong. In fact, the husband in this passage gets a far harder charge than just to submit. He is charged to be Christ-like. -- via kysandra

This more or less captures my interpretation of Ephesians 5:21-33. St. Paul was not out to change the world on a social level. You can also see this in his direction to submit to whomever happens to be the human ruler. One reason, of course, is that he expected the Second Coming to be just around the corner. There was no time for humans to work toward realizing God's kingdom in the physical world. The task was to get our spiritual lives in order in anticipation of God doing that work. Rev. Page asserts that this passage is in part an affirmation of marriage (in response to Gnosticism), but I'm a bit skeptical. Elsewhere Paul's attitude toward marriage is something along the lines of "there's no need, but go ahead if you can't keep it in your pants" -- probably a combination of his own success in subordinating his libido to his zeal for Christ, and his expectation that Jesus was about to return and thus fooling around with Earthly institutions is a waste of time.

The second reason, I think, might be an overreaction to Jesus' upsetting of expectations regarding the Messiah. First century Jews generally expected a political messiah, paralleling the way God's will is carried out politically (via conquests and captivity and escape from slavery) in the Old Testament. But Jesus framed himself as a spiritual messiah, challenging the Roman overlords not by driving them out, but by acquescing to their punishment but not letting it get him down. Paul recognizes this the paradox of the Cross. But he may have taken it too far, refusing to challenge the order of this world and separating it off from the spiritual world.
Stentor Danielson, 21:40,

28.1.04

So ...

This isn't an apology, exactly, or trolling for pity. I'm not sure what it is.

You'll notice I haven't posted anything of substance in a while. I've been following the news and all (perhaps too much, given the other things I should be working on), but I haven't had anything very original to say (or perhaps I should say I haven't been able to convince myself that my banal-as-always thoughts are original enough to write down).

This could change any moment. I could wake up in a blogging mood tomorrow. Heck, there's a 50/50 chance this post will jinx me into thinking of something subtantive to post. But for the moment, academically as well as blogically, my critical thinking skills don't feel up to the task.
Stentor Danielson, 18:04,

New Hampshire Results

With 97% of precincts reporting, Ed O'Donnell has 80 votes. Sadly, Lyndon LaRouche -- who had been trailing O'Donnell all night -- has jumped into the lead with 86.

I didn't write my predictions down anywhere, so you'll just have to trust me that the results are fairly close to what I was expecting, though I thought Clark would do a few percent better and Lieberman and Kerry a few percent worse. The actual results look fairly inconclusive for the race as a whole. Lieberman didn't do badly enough to get forced out of the race the way everyone except his supporters were hoping. Dean did well enough that he won't drop out or bleed support the way he did after Iowa, but not well enough to provide a basis for a comeback, especially considering his weakness in the next round of primaries. Neither Clark nor Edwards can claim advantage or momentum going into their battle for the south.
Stentor Danielson, 00:15,

27.1.04

An Inadvertant Clarkie

The topic of the New Hampshire primary came up at the end of my meeting with a professor today (specifically, the fact that having to wait for him was no big deal because it kept me away from the internet so I couldn't be constantly checking for updates). He said something about how he thought "your man Wesley Clark" was going to do well. Have I been praising Clark without realizing it?

I don't actually have a strong preference between Clark, Kerry, and Edwards. Clark has some provocative ideas, but I get the impression he's not as interested in and knowledgeable about domestic issues as the others, and we need someone sharp enough to point out how Bush's policies are fooling us by sounding like they solve problems. But my main complaint against Clark is that he has the same name as my university. If he wins, it will create confusion in my editorial cartoons. Of course, if I was voting strictly on cartoonability, I'd vote for Bush -- I'm getting pretty good at caricaturing him, and that "W" is really handy for labeling metaphors.
Stentor Danielson, 17:42,

Ed O'Donnell Hits The Big Time

Our favorite member of the Colgate class of '70 and Maroon-News correspondent got a mention on Daily Kos:

The ballot lists not only the name, but also where they live. Gephardt and Braun are still listed. There's 23 names listed. The strangest is "Randy" Crow, from Wilmington North Carolina. The only local running is Edward Thomas O'Donnell, Jr. from Lebanon, NH. There are 14 persons on the Republican ticket, including a very local, Michael Callis, from Conway, NH.

Stentor Danielson, 00:28,

26.1.04

Materialism, Marx, Sauron*, and a Monk

PCs Killed The Mix-Tape Star I miss the way I used to make mixes. I'd sit in front of my tape deck, with a stack of CDs or records on one side of me, and a beverage (adult or otherwise) on the other, and spend a couple of hours or more finding just the right combination of songs to put on the tape. The levels would all match; loud songs got softened and soft songs got a boost. I would attempt to take the mix right to the end of the tape; I'd spend over an hour finding that perfect minute-and-a-half song or snippet that would fit musically with the rest of the mix. ... Compare the way I used to do my tape mixes with the way I do things now: I sit in front of my PC and either rip an entire CD to disk or download files from any of the legal services like iTunes or Musicmatch (in pre-litigation days, I will admit I downloaded the occasional song via Kazaa). I drag the song titles from my song list to the playlist window; I check to see if there are any abrupt endings or bad transitions, but I rarely listen to the songs all the way through. Once I'm satisfied, I pop in a CD-R, hit "record" and go to sleep. No muss, no fuss. And not nearly as much fun. ... That's a shame. The process of making a mix tape gave people a connection with music that the electronic version simply can't replace. Because it is so easy to drag and click a mix into existence, the sense of satisfaction with making what many feel is a work of art gets diminished.

I found this article via John Quiggin, who treats Joel Keller's lament as an instance of the general argument that something is lost when a highly skilled activity is replaced by an easy-to-use machine. Quiggin sees the core of the Keller argument as being that if something is hard to do, people will invest the effort to do a good job of it, so quality will be (at least on average) higher than if you could just slap something together. That's an important point (though see the comments section of his cross-post at Crooked Timber for some scorn heaped on Keller), but I was struck by another side to the Keller argument.

Regardless of the quality of the final product, the attachment of the maker to it suffers. A mix tape we labored over for hours means more to us than a WinAmp playlist we threw together, even if from an objective musical standpoint the playlist is better.

This is related to Karl Marx's idea of alienation. Marx's main point was to show how workers are alienated from their products because the boss or factory owner gets to keep the product and sell it. In the process the workers are alienated from themselves, because they put part of themselves -- their labor, which according to Marx is the source of all value -- into the product which is then taken from them. What Keller is pointing out is that with new technology, the amount of labor that goes into making a mix -- the amount of one's self that is tied up in it -- is reduced.

Unless we work for the company that puts out those "Greatest Country Hits of the 60s" compilations you see advertised on TV, no capitalist is appropriating our mixes. But we can still be alienated from our product -- for example, Keller mentions a tape deck that destroyed some of his creations. When this happens, there's an advantage to having less invested in the product. If we spent hours and hours working on a mix and lost it, it would be a big blow to us, whereas we'd hardly care if we lost a WinAmp playlist we slapped together in a few minutes. It's like Sauron in The Lord of The Rings, who invested so much in the creation of the One Ring that when the Ring was destroyed, he was too.

This is a sort of paradox of modern materialism. We have more things, and probably depend more on things in general, than we used to. But because our things are so easily produced, so interchangeable, so easily replaced, we're far less attached to particular ones. I'm reminded of a parable I read a while ago -- I believe it was from India -- on the subject. A monk who had taken a vow of poverty was staying at the house of a wealthy man. During the night, the house caught on fire, and the two men ran out. The wealthy man calmly watched his riches burn to the ground. But the monk dashed back inside to rescue his sleeping mat, the one possession he had.

The big question is whether the increased attachment to things in general that technology makes possible is balanced by the decreased attachment to particular things. One could also expand the argument to ask about the side effects of either form of materialism (for example, to the environment). Attachment to particular things can be a good check on waste, but it can also slow the transition to better ways of doing things.

*You know, if Tolkien had kept Melkor as his villain instead of turning things over to Sauron at the end of the First Age, I could have had an alliterating title.
Stentor Danielson, 10:23,

25.1.04

Modern Day Alchemy

Killing Germs, Reducing Waste, Making Oil: TDP Might Be The Next Big Thing ... TDP [thermal depolymerization] turns just about anything into oil and fertilizer. And when I say "anything," I mean that: animal waste, medical waste, human waste. Used diapers, used computers, used tires. Anything that's not radioactive can be tossed into the hopper. ... Dioxins and PCBs are two particularly nasty kinds of chemical. Right now, we don't really dispose of what we make; we burn or bury it, which means it ends up forgotten but not gone. More specifically, it ends up in the grass and water, and thus back in the food chain. ... But thermal depolymerization is good news. It breaks down industrial and medical wastes and poisons. So instead of burning that stuff and introducing nasties like PCBs and dioxins into the environment, you can run them through a TDP system where they get broken down into their components, which include — lest we forget — oil.

The industrial waste destruction part is what really struck me, since I've been reading a lot of summaries of Superfund cleanup plans. The most depressing part was the fact that the contaminants usually couldn't really be fixed -- they could just be sealed away or hauled off-site. I'm sure there's a downside (given my general skepticism about technical fixes), but I haven't been able to figure out exactly what it would be. This is one of those times when I wish I had more than a handful of readers, so that I could hope for a lively comment section with input from someone who knows more about this than I do after reading a couple of popular press articles.

The author's website includes a pdf of a photocopy of a recent Discover magazine article on TDP, which goes into more detail about how the process works. A box at the end of the article discusses the question of global warming. According to TDP's proponents, the box says, the technology could reduce global warming. The main contributor to global warming is carbon dioxide, and the main source of carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels. Thus, we're taking a stock of carbon that was taken out of circulation millions of years ago and putting it back into circulation. But wide use of TDP would allow us to stop drawing on that underground reserve of carbon, instead only recycling the carbon that's already at the surface. This prognosis misses two things. One is that fossil fuel extraction probably won't halt for a while. TDP looks like the elusive coal-to-oil process that has been pursued so long, since less efficient fossil fuels like coal and oil shale are far more abundant than petroleum and natural gas. So in the search for feedstocks, coal seems like an obvious choice -- though perhaps the economics of it will alter things. Second, there's the issue of the carbon getting "stuck" in the atmosphere. If we take things like sewage sludge and garbage, which at present keep carbon sitting here on the surface, and convert them into oil, that oil will be burned and the carbon will wind up in the atmosphere. The crucial question is whether we can take that carbon back out of the atmosphere as fast, or faster, than it's put in. Even without the re-introduction of fossil carbon, global warming could be caused by an increase in the proportion of available carbon that exists as atmospheric carbon dioxide at any given moment.
Stentor Danielson, 22:19,

Dean Vs. Deanism

For those of you who can't get enough of my opinions about Howard Dean, I offer my latest Open Source Politics post.

The post is pretty pessimistic about Dean's chances, yet fairly positive toward the man himself. As noted there, my gut has long been barracking for Dean. But the intensity of my interest has waxed and waned. When he was the insurgent, I rather liked him. Then this fall, as he became the front runner, I got disillusioned. Clark started to look pretty good, while I piled up misgivings about Dean. Then, after he lost Iowa, I suddenly found myself back in the Dean camp, perhaps more strongly than before. I wept for him, and prayed for a revival in New Hampshire, even as I wrote his obituary.

I wonder if there's a eulogizing impulse taking over. When Carol Moseley-Braun dropped out of the race, everyone had something good to say about her and the classy campaign she ran (though none of us had been willing to say that to the pollsters or our check books while she was still running). Similarly, when Dick Gephardt called it quits, the topic of conversation was his long record of respect-worthy service to the country and the liberal cause (though we'd all said "good riddance!" when he stepped down as Minority Leader in the House). So perhaps it's the very fact that I think Dean is toast that makes me look so favorably on him. If he were still the frontrunner, I'd be second-guessing myself about whether he was really the candidate or the president we wanted.
Stentor Danielson, 14:01,

PR Firefighting

Cedar Fire Water Drops Used Just To Calm Critics Ineffective and cosmetic air drops of water were made over San Diego County during the biggest wildfire in state history in response to extreme pressure from critics, the director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said yesterday. "Unfortunately, due to public pressure, some examples can be cited where cosmetic, expensive and ineffective flights were made," CDF director Andrea Tuttle told a blue ribbon panel dissecting the response to California's deadly fall wildfires. She did not provide specifics. ... During the fire, Republican politicians criticized state forestry officials for dragging their feet on seeking approval to use military planes to help fight the region's wildfires. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, who lost his home in the fire, had contacted Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to have military C-130s in other states flown to California to help fight the fires.

It's hard to judge Tuttle's assertion without more evidence, but I don't know of any good reason to say it's not true. The debate over the use of aircraft, which was quite heated while the fires were burning, illustrates something problematic about the public's view of fire. There's a reliance on technical fixes -- like heavy-duty firefighting airplanes -- that we hope can allow us to control nature. To not use the fanciest equipment looks like sitting on our hands.

The subtext of the article seems to be that it would be better if the public, and their elected representatives, would just butt out and let the firefighting experts do their jobs. There's something to be said for not micromanaging and second-guessing people who have been hired and trained to perform a certain function, especially during the height of crisis. But there's also something to be said for the democratic ideal of public oversight to keep the bureaucracy responsive to the needs and interests of those it's supposed to be serving. For the public to just butt out would be to hide the deeper issue. We need a cultural change of attitude to find a way to live with fire, rather than depending on an agency to implement a "fix" for the problem. This requires a broad consensus and a broad sharing of responsibility.
Stentor Danielson, 00:12,