A mute gospel?

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the  work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a preeminent 19th century figure in American life and letters. The focus at the moment is his essay Nature (see last week's posts).

One thing that struck me the first time I read Nature (and every other time) is how totally pre-Darwinian are many of the ideas discussed. This is only to be expected, since Nature came out around 1836 and The Origin of Species more than 20 years later. Still, the gap between Emerson's universe and the modern scientific view of the same is vast.

Emerson believed that there was a deep correspondence between nature and the soul and that natural facts corresponded to moral facts, a far cry from the amoral universe of relentless natural selection.

Consider this passage:

...every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we deal preach to us.

Nature is beautiful and all but it is pretty red in tooth and claw. In a living world of prey, predators and parasites, I'm not sure how edifying the sermon would be. It is beyond good and evil.

Then he really steps in it:

What is a far but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes the fields.

Let me just say that if Goat Rope Farm is a mute gospel, it is one that didn't make the New Testament cut. Also, if you think about it farming is kind of the opposite of nature--that's why it's so hard. Creatures want to do their own thing, not the thing of the farmer. They also want to do it where they want, which often isn't where the farmer wants. All cultivated species, whether plant or animal, are a far cry from their original natural state, having been bred over many generations through artificial selection. If that were not the case, there would be no need to farm them.

There's something touching about such a cozy view of our relationship with the natural world but it seems to me to be clearly a relic of another time.

SPEAKING OF DARWIN, here's E.O. Wilson on human nature.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Here's a look at the facts about the minimum wage.

REASON 238128 TO EXPAND MEDICAID. It would help a lot of veterans.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What he said

Hats off to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for kicking up dust on the deficit reduction debate. Here's an extract from a recent letter of his to President Obama:

This is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. Decisions are being made about the national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every American for decades to come. As we address the issue of deficit reduction we must not ignore the painful economic reality of today – which is that the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well while the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. In fact, the United States today has, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth.

Everyone understands that over the long-term we have got to reduce the deficit – a deficit that was caused mainly by Wall Street greed, tax breaks for the rich, two wars, and a prescription drug program written by the drug and insurance companies. It is absolutely imperative, however, that as we go forward with deficit reduction we completely reject the Republican approach that demands savage cuts in desperately-needed programs for working families, the elderly, the sick, our children and the poor, while not asking the wealthiest among us to contribute one penny.

Mr. President, please listen to the overwhelming majority of the American people who believe that deficit reduction must be about shared sacrifice. The wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations in this country must pay their fair share. At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction package must come from revenue raised by ending tax breaks for the wealthy and eliminating tax loopholes that benefit large, profitable corporations and Wall Street financial institutions. A sensible deficit reduction package must also include significant cuts to unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon spending.

Please do not yield to outrageous Republican demands that would greatly increase suffering for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. Now is the time to stand with the tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to survive economically, not with the millionaires and billionaires who have never had it so good.

WHAT THEY SAID. Key WV legislators warn Senator Manchin about the dire consequences to the state if Medicaid is cut. Manchin has never been much of a fan of that program. Or of poor people.

ON THAT NOTE, proposed cuts to Medicare could also hurt seniors.

DARWIN. The rap version.

COOL SCIENCE ITEM here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Darwin on the left

I've been meandering lately though some musings on the relationship between human evolution and social life. Some recent posts have looked at how Darwin's ideas were received and celebrated on the political right. A look at how Darwin was received on the left seems to be in order now.

One lefty contemporary of Darwin's who eagerly received his ideas was none other than Karl Marx, who saw some similarities between the former's ideas his own materialist theory of history. He wrote in a letter to another radical leader that

Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a natural-scientific basis for the class struggle in history.

Marx was also amused to find that Darwin projected the workings of capitalism onto nature:

It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labor, competition, opening-up of new markets, 'inventions,' and the Malthusian 'struggle for existence.'

(Marx had snarky things to say about everybody.)

It seems, though, that Marx believed that once people became human, social relations of labor and interaction (including especially economic relations) were the decisive factor. In the "Theses on Feuerbach," he wrote that

the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.

His sidekick Friedrich Engels followed suit in viewing humans as uniquely developing through conscious production, which he believed "makes impossible any immediate transference of the laws of life in animal societies to human ones."

This basic denial of human nature was to become a dogma of the communist movement, with disastrous consequences.

RIGHT WING BACKLASH? This writer doesn't think so.

"THE WAR ON ARITHMETIC." Paul Krugman was not impressed with the "Pledge to America."

SIX MONTHS DOWN. Here's a look at what health care reform means, with a special focus on primary care. And here's is coverage of a press conference on the same from the Gazette and WV Public Radio.

A NOD TO THE BOSS. This book excerpt celebrates Bruce Springsteen.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Survival of the what-est?

Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." He doesn't look all that fit to me.

It is a great irony of contemporary politics that social Darwinism is alive and well amongst political conservatives who believe in a literal six day creation.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Darwin's ideas--or what people thought were Darwin's ideas--were first seized upon by people on the political right. Such people were quick to draw public policy conclusions from the "survival of the fittest."

As the idea was popularly conceived, evolution worked for the good of all--or at least all the survivors--by weeding out the weak. Therefore, any aid to people who were poor or otherwise disadvantaged was counter-evolutionary.

What is missing from this picture is the fact that one thing that has enabled humans to survive and thrive is our tendency to care for the sick and weak. After all, every human is born pretty helpless and stays that way for several years. Women in or near childbirth are pretty much out of the game and anyone at any time may become sick or injured and require the help of others.

There is even some interesting archaeological evidence along this line from our human ancestors. A severely deformed skull of someone at least five years of age was found dating back to around 530,000 years ago. This finding suggests that early humans at least some of the time cared for the disabled members of their group despite deformities.

This suggests that at least some early or pre-humans knew some things that some modern humans have forgotten.

SPEAKING OF EVOLUTION AGAIN, one researcher thinks our Neanderthal cousins were smarter than generally thought.

MILESTONE. Today marks six months since the passage of health care reform. Some key changes kick in today.

UNEMPLOYMENT. West Virginia's unemployment insurance system could avoid going broke by making key reforms.

TALKING REDNECK. Here's an excerpt from Joe Bageant's new book about the white underclass.

REALLY NOT WANTING TO TALK. Massey Energy officials have filed suit to keep from being interviewed in the Upper Big Branch disaster investigation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A law of nature

Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution by means of natural selection were first taken up (with many misunderstandings) by those on the political right. Part of the reason for this was that early expositions of Darwinism emphasized competition. It would take a while for evolutionary biologists to look at the other side of the equation by investigating cooperation and altruism.

More to the point, in the Gilded Age, robber barons and financial aristocrats found in them a great rationalization for their own wealth and power.

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie wrote that while capitalist competition may harm some individuals, "it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department."

(That phrase "survival of the fittest," by the way, has its origin in the writings of British philosopher Herbert Spencer rather than Darwin himself.)

In a similar vein, John D. Rockefeller Jr. wrote that

The growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest...This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working our of a law of nature and a law of God.

As the Church Lady would say on the old Saturday Night Live, "Isn't that convenient?"

SPEAKING OF EVOLUTION, this article suggests that our relationships with animals helped make us human.

FORECLOSURES. Here's Dean Baker and what the government could do about the foreclosure crisis but isn't (so far).

FUN LIST. From The Nation, here's a list of the 50 most influential progressive leaders of the 20th century.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB ON STEROIDS. A spider in Madagascar weaves the world's biggest webs with the toughest natural material yet discovered.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Facts and values

Shortly after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, he wrote to a scientific friend that

I have received in a Manchester newspaper rather a good squib, showing that I have proved might is right and therefore that Napoleon is right, and every cheating tradesman is right.

That unknown Manchester journalist may have been one of the first--but far from the last--to make some kind of leap from the fact of evolution to the idea that this makes something right. From then on partisans of the privileged and powerful seized on evolution to "prove" that cutthroat capitalism was a law of human nature.

This kind of leap from an "is" to an "ought" is a fallacy pointed out as early as 1739 by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. One way this shows up in popular culture is the conflation of the idea of "nature" or things that are natural with that of "goodness." One doesn't have to turn over too many rocks, however, to find quite a few things in nature that seem downright nasty to most people. At the ancient sage Lao Tzu put it, "Heaven and earth are not humane."

Evolution by means of natural selection, then, isn't good or right. It just is. People have to decide questions of value form themselves.

THE CLOCK IS TICKING on a program credited with creating 240,000 jobs in the recession. The Emergency TANF program, part of the Recovery Act, will expire at the end of the month unless it is reauthorized. This item highlights efforts in the Senate to keep it going. If you haven't done your good deed for the day, getting in touch with your senators' offices on this would fit the bill.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Tabula rasa?

John Locke, an influential British philosopher of the 17th century, believed that all knowledge comes from experience and that the human mind was a "tabula rasa" or blank slate.

Every so often, I've been blogging about the possible connections between human evolution and social life, an area often fraught with controversy and misconceptions. For years, I was biased towards the view that social conditioning and environmental factors were the decisive force shaping what is frequently called human nature.

Plus, when I was young, I was attracted to the philosophy of existentialism, which in some forms emphasized human freedom to choose. As Jean Paul Sartre put it, we were (supposedly) "condemned to be free." I still have a soft spot for those views and don't think they are entirely wrong, but the tide of science has been pulling the other way.

I'd like to give a shout out to two books, one big and one little, that deal with this subject in interesting ways. The big one is Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and the little on is Peter Singer's A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation.

Pinker takes aim at three cherished myths: the idea that humans are silly putty totally moulded by social influences; the idea of the "ghost in the machine," i.e. that the mind is somehow independent of the brain; and the idea of the Noble Savage, which idealizes people in an imaginary "state of nature."

Singer argues that while we do carry evolutionary baggage that makes a peaceful egalitarian utopia a bit problematic, this doesn't mean we can't successfully work for a more just and fair society.

More on that to come.

DYING TO WORK. Jim Hightower takes aim at death on the job.

TAX THIS. House minority leader John Boehner made headlines this weekend when he said he might accept letting Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy expire as a compromise if cuts for the middle class were preserved, something no one else in his party seems prepared to do. A recent Gallup poll found strong support for ending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

HERE'S SOMETHING ELSE for the coal industry to deny. A new study of the health effects of coal-fired power plants found West Virginia to be the hardest hit state in the country, as the WV News Service reports. Here's another article on the topic and here's a link to the full report.

IDENTIFIABLE VICTIM BIAS. A study of jury verdicts found that penalties for damages go down when the number of victims go up. It seems that people are more likely to impose severe penalties when the injured party is someone concrete rather than a bunch of unknown people. This reminds me of a characteristically evil remark attributed to Stalin that when one person dies it's a tragedy but when a million die it's a statistic.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Pendulums

For most of the 20th century, disciplines like sociology and anthropology emphasized culture as the main shaper of human behavior and were skeptical of suggestions of biological or genetic influences on human social life.

They had some reason on their side. Anyone who thinks human nature is fixed by heredity has a lot explaining to do about our species' variability across time and space. Also, many previous attempts to bridge the gap between biology and society were suspect on many grounds.

So-called Social Darwinists misused Darwin's ideas to justify cut-throat unregulated capitalism in the Victorian era. Eugenics was the rage on both the right and left up until the mid 20th century. Racists and imperialists misused "science" to reinforce their bias and social positions. The Nazi movement imagined a struggle for existence between races. No wonder people wanted to focus on culture.

Lately, with growing knowledge in the fields of biology and genetics, things have begun to change. Biological determinism is still out as a catch-all explanation for social life, but there seems to be a greater willingness to consider the genetic bases of at least some behavior at the group and individual level.

More on this to come.

STATING THE OBVIOUS is a good thing these days. Here's another op-ed on the need for more action to create jobs. Krugman throws in his two cents here.

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT. Massey executives went deep into the Upper Big Branch mine shortly after the disaster, which raises lots of questions.

FRAME THIS. Here's George Lakoff on politics, morality and messaging.

TAX THIS. Here are some reasons why raising taxes on the wealthiest makes sense.

PLATO, POP CULTURE AND VIDEO GAMES here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A Malthusian future?

Now that's a crowd. Image from the 2008 Olympics by way of wikipedia.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, Darwin's idea of natural selection was shaped by Thomas Malthus' ideas on population. Simply put, he argued that humans tend to multiply faster than resources do, which leads to hunger and scarcity and all kinds of nasty checks on population.

This turned out not to be the case for industrial societies, which have been able to dramatically increase production and maintain growing populations. There is also a tendency for population growth to slow as living standards rise. But Malthus might have been at least partially right. There have been numerous cases where pre-modern civilizations collapsed due to over-stressing their environment and growing beyond its carrying capacity. Jared Diamond's book Collapse gives several examples and is a compelling read.

The scary part is that if we don't work towards a sustainable approach to economy, energy, ecology and population, we might head that way ourselves. If that happens, it will be more due to our doing wrong than to Malthus being right.

BIG CHANGES. The Recovery Act is making big changes in technology and clean energy, most of which have been under the radar, as Time Magazine reports.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Recovery Act has lowered unemployment by up to 1.8 points in the last quarter. The problem is that it wasn't big or targeted enough, as Paul Krugman again argues here. Now things have gotten to the point were firefighters are being laid off in many cities.

NOT THE BEST PR DEPARTMENT. The Manhattan Mosque controversy might not be sending the best message around the world.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING WHY FISH IN THE ARCTIC DON'T FREEZE, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Darwin, Malthus and Scrooge

Scrooge and Marley's ghost in Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution by means of natural selection were shaped in part by Thomas Malthus' theories of population. Malthus believed that human population tended to increase faster than available resources.

These ideas became very popular amongst conservative Victorians, who used the idea to argue against social reforms for the poor, which presumably would only lead them to have more children and become poorer.

This showed up in popular culture in the words of the as yet unrepentant Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Early in the story, Scrooge is visited by two humanitarian gentleman soliciting Christmas donations for the poor. Here's how Ebenezer responds to their request:

``Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.

``Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

``And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. ``Are they still in operation?''

``They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `` I wish I could say they were not.''

``The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.

``Both very busy, sir.''

``Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. ``I'm very glad to hear it.''

...


``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''

``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''

``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population...''

TALKING SENSE. Here's an op-ed by Robert Greenstein and John Podesta on letting Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy expire.

THE NEW UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's an op-ed by yours truly about how being unemployed has changed in this recession.

310 MILLION WHAT? Attacks on Social Security, rhetorical and political, are getting hotter.

DOING GOOD might make you unpopular.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The struggle for existence

Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834.

I've been musing off and on here lately about Charles Darwin and the legacy of his thought. If you like that kind of thing, check out some of last week's posts.

As Darwin began to build his theory of evolution, he struggled for some time with finding the mechanism that might drive it. He found a clue in reading Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population, which incidentally became very popular amongst Victorian era reactionaries who opposed any improvement in the condition of the working classes.

Malthus' basic idea was that production of food and other necessities could only increase arithmetically (think 2+2+2...), whereas population tended to increase geometrically (think 2*2*2...). As he put it,

I think I may fairly make two postulata. First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state. These two laws, ever since we have had any knowledge of mankind, appear to have been fixed laws of our nature, and, as we have not hitherto seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that they will ever cease to be what they now are...

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.

(Malthus' ideas caused all kinds of political mischief, but I'll leave that for another day.)

For Darwin, the basic dynamic Malthus discussed was useful in looking at the evolution of species. The tendency of plants and animals to produce more offspring than could possibly be supported led to a "struggle for existence" with which natural selection could work. Given that struggle, those organisms best adapted to environmental challenges would be more likely to live to maturity and produce offspring.

As the saying goes, even a wild hog can dig up something useful sometimes. More on Malthus to come.

INTOLERANCE. Here's a photo essay on intolerance in America by way of Time Magazine.

SOLAR ENERGY might be getting more affordable soon.

CRY, CRY, CRY. It seems to serve an evolutionary purpose.

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL is the topic of this NY Times editorial. I don't think they're for it.

THE GROWING GAP. America's widening class divide is the subject of this Gazette rant.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

God, wasps and caterpillars

I wouldn't want to be the green guy. That wasp has the unsportsmanlike habit if laying eggs in live caterpillars so they'll have a nice warm meal when they wake up.

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species kicked off a battle between science and religion that is still raging. Darwin's own religious views went through quite an evolution of their own from moderate Anglicanism to agnosticism.

Ironically, it wasn't so much his theory of natural selection that killed his religion as much as the difficulty of reconciling the idea of a benevolent God with suffering.

As he put it in a letter to American biologist Asa Gray,

With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.– I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I [should] wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

The problem of theodicy, or reconciling the justice of God in a world full of suffering, is an ancient one. It was probably old when the Book of Job was written. And it hasn't been neatly resolved since Darwin's day.

SPEAKING OF SUFFERING, here are some stale excusing for not dealing with the kind caused by unemployment.

WHICH, BY THE WAY isn't looking real good right now.

YOU ALREADY KNEW THIS, but poverty is bad for your health.

URGENT ANCIENT BIG MEAN BIRD UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Doesn't everbody do barnacles?

One of the things that makes Charles Darwin admirable as a scientist was his ability to do detailed grunt work as well construct groundbreaking big picture theories. He also belonged to the last generation of gentleman naturalists, i.e. non-academic private individuals of some means doing scientific work in their Victorian homes.

As a prime example of detailed grunt work, Darwin spent fully eight years engaged with a study of barnacles, eventually producing four large volumes on the subject. I get bored just thinking about it.

The barnacle business was such an accepted part of the growing Darwin household that his children came to believe that every adult male did the same in his spare time. There is a great anecdote that his son Francis once asked his friend, "Where does your father do his barnacles?

A WAY OUT? Here's an op-ed by a friend of mine on the economic mess and how to get out of it.

COUNTRY LIVING. This item about country living in the New Yorker seemed familiar to me.

SOFT STYLE. Score another therapeutic point for tai chi.

ZOMBIE ANTS, ANYONE? This is just plain weird.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A reluctant revolutionary

Like some of history's best revolutionaries, Charles Darwin was a reluctant one. He disliked controversy and delayed publishing his main ideas for years until he was nudged into action when the younger scientist Alfred Russel Wallace came up independently with the idea of natural selection.

Although he was ignorant of contemporary developments in the science of heredity-- such as the experiments of Gregor Mendel--and grasped for an explanation of its mechanism, his key ideas of natural selection have stood the test of time. His later work on the similarity of emotions in humans and animals was also ahead of its time and has received significant backup from studies of human and animal brains as well as behavior.

It's another discouraging sign of the times that many Americans deny evolution, which is regarded by scientists as the unifying theory of biology. These are often the same people who deny the science of climate change. I could probably think of any number of snarky Darwinian comments about that but will spare the Gentle Reader.

JUST FINES. Massey Energy led the coal industry in fines and citations in the last quarter, the Charleston Gazette reports.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Progressive billionaire George Soros' hedge fund just increased its ownership of Massey stock to 2.2 million shares.

MEDICINE CABINET BLUES. It looks like El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is the most medicated in the country.

OUR FAMILY TREE. Mitochondrial DNA research suggests a common mother for humanity around 200,000 years ago.

URGENT ANCIENT TURTLE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A good gig

I have always been a big Darwin fan. I've been both fascinated by his big ideas and his personal life and habits. He had a lot of things going for him, starting with luck. As Cervantes said, "To be lucky in the beginning is everything."

How many people in life get the chance for a perfect job right out of school? The budding natural historian (as people interested in life science were then called) was a reluctant clergyman-to-be on completing his studies. He was saved from a life as a minor character in a Jane Austen novel by an offer to travel around the world as a scientist on H.M.S. Beagle on a five year voyage.

It was the mother of good gigs.

He then had the tenacity and persistence to work methodically through his specimens, observations and ideas for years to come as he developed his theory of natural selection. He could go micro as well as macro, not only pondering the evolution of all life but getting down to the nitty gritty studying humble creatures like barnacles and earthworms.

He was also a devoted family man, truly in love with his wife Emma and a doting father to his children. The kids even got into the act. There are delightful anecdotes about his children playing musical instruments to the earthworms to see whether they responded to such stimuli (they didn't as far as anyone could tell).

More on this to come.

ONE, TWO, MANY HERBERT HOOVERS. Job losses at the state and local level are threatening the economic recovery.

FALSE CHOICES. Dealing with the joblessness crisis will require overcoming deficit mania--at least until the economy improves..

WHACKADOODLE NATION. Here's a look at the top 10 conspiracy theories on the far right.

OFF THE HOOK. Here's what happens when a group of scientists go unplugged in the wilderness to study the effect of technology on the brain.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The sky is falling?

I've often written here and elsewhere about how the coal industry and its allies have been doing their best to create a climate of hysteria over the Obama administration's approach to mining, mountaintop removal, and climate change. These have sometimes been portrayed as an outright war on coal.

The recent EPA ruling on the Hobet 45 mountaintop removal mine permit shows that this rhetoric is out of touch with reality. What the agency did was basically grant a permit after getting the company to reduce the damage that would otherwise have been done. This may be a sign of what we can expect from the administration in the coming months.

While this obviously won't please opponents of this type of mining, it does show that the Chicken Little hissy fit, aside from being dangerous, is just plain wrong. But as Ken Ward noted in a Coal Tattoo post yesterday, West Virginia's more coal-friendly media outlets haven't exactly been tripping over each other to tell the tale.

That's too bad, because a responsible media could help tone down what could become a very ugly situation.

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS will be on the top of the US Senate's list when it returns later this month.

NEED A LITTLE DARWIN FIX? Click here.

IT'S A WRAP. El Cabrero apologizes for this late post, but I stayed up late last night to finish watching the very last season of The Sopranos. I can now put "Mission Accomplished" on my aircraft carrier.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Stars

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

(Editorial note: Apparently I got up so early yesterday morning that I thought I posted the following but didn't. My bad. On the bright side, this fact relieves me from having to think of something new for today. Just to be safe, I'm scheduling this in advance lest I sleepwalk again through the morning. If anything really bad happens between now and then please accept my condolences.)

A while back a friend visited Goat Rope Farm at night and commented on how bright the stars were. I guess one thing about living out is that you get kind of spoiled about certain things--like having bright starts. My friend, however, lived in a major city where light pollution makes the nightly light show dimmer if not invisible.

It reminds me of something Emerson said in his essay Nature:

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!

I guess we take things for granted.

IT CAN BE DONE. Student activists have just won a major fight against sweatshops.

HUNGER hit a 14 year high in the US.

JOBS. Here's a call to action for serious action on un- and under-employment.

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. Here's a look at 2012 hysteria.

RACIAL DISPARITIES. A new report found some major ones between whites and African Americans in Kanawha County, WV.

THOSE DARWIN FINCHES are at it again on the Galapagos Islands.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The fog of war

There are plenty of good reasons for reading the classics, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. One of the best I've found is that it's a pretty good description of real life.

El Cabrero doesn't spend a lot of time at the legislature of my beloved state of West Virginia, but I was there enough this time to have a little mock Homeric deja vu.

In the Iliad, the tide of battle often switches back and forth, as various humans fight away and as various gods intervene here and there. No one really knows everything that is going on. As in the Aeneid, Rumor is the swiftest of the gods.

In the case of WV, the great god Randomness seems to have a lot of clout as well. Also prominent deities are Hades, god of wealth, Hermes, god of merchants and thieves, not to mention the great god Biscuit, patron of those who oppose menu labels with calorie information and the god of the gutless whose name escapes me at the moment.

At crucial times, Zeus weighs the fates of the combatants on his golden scales, which tip one way or another.

Of the many skirmishes this time, one of the most important ones had to do with the fate of WV's unemployment compensation fund, which is heading towards emptiness in the non-Buddhist sense.

A decent version passed the state senate, which included things that neither labor nor business was all that happy with. Then things hit the house side and everything was on again. In the end, a decent bill seemed to pass after some amendments.

The tide went one way and then another and even people I usually turn to find out what is really going on wasn't all that sure what was happening.

It can be quite a show but, alas, it is an epic without a bard.

AFTER THE BUST, a boom in bankruptcies.

WHAT'S NEXT? How bout doga, or yoga with dogs? While we're at it...

BETTER THAN A DOG? That may have been a factor in Charles Darwin's decision to marry. I could think of any number of things to say but will relinquish the opportunity.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No moral, just story

How good is your kung fu? Image courtesy of wikipedia.

As a rule, El Cabrero tries to keep a healthy distance between himself and our insect friends. But some of them are pretty cool.

My personal favorite is the praying mantis (even though the mating behavior of the females strikes me as totally unsportsmanlike). I even had the honor of being beat up by one of them once.

As I've mentioned many times here, I've long enjoyed practicing the martial arts. I've dabbled in several but spent the most time with Okinawan/Japanese karate, which traces itself back in legend anyway to Shaolin kung fu.

Now, if the Gentle Reader has watched the proper measure of Chinese movies, he or she will know that many Shaolin styles are based on the movements of animals. Five big ones are tiger, crane, snake, leopard and dragon.

(Don't ask me how they researched the dragon part...)

There are several other animal styles, including praying mantis. According to that legend, a monk who lost many matches gained insight by studying and emulating the movements of that insect.

One day several years ago, I was going with Rob, a karate buddy of mine to Parkersburg, WV to meet with community folks about how to respond to hate group activity. When we stopped at the sacred Milton Go Mart, there was a big beautiful mantis on the wall.

I asked my buddy if he thought this one knew his stuff. I thought they were bluffing. To find out, I picked a blade of grass and gingerly poked it at him. KAWHAM! He/she flew at me so fast that I was startled and tripped and hit the ground.

I've been stung and bitten by many insects in my day, but that was the first time I lost to one in a fair fight. I just felt like sharing that today.

OK, back to business...

INEQUALITY can be bad for your health.

READING can be good for your morals.

DARWIN, DARWIN EVERYWHERE, including in art and human creativity.

MORAL SENTIMENTS. David Brooks writes here about the evolutionary origins of morality and its basis in emotion. But the Scottish Enlightenment people like Hume and Smith got there first.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Scour the anchor

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Perhaps the Gentle Reader has noticed that people who are actively engaged in doing productive things tend to be less quarrelsome that those who aren't.

El Cabrero came across a similar sentiment in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. When Franklin was working with a group of men on defensive preparations during the war between England and France in the 1750s, he noticed

...that, when men are employed, they are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natur'd and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with the pork, the bread, etc., and in continual ill-humour, which put me in mind of a sea-captain, whose rule it was to keep his men constantly at work; and, when his mate once told him that they had done every thing, and there was nothing further to employ them about, "Oh," says he, "make them scour the anchor."

GETTING IT RIGHT. Can we avoid the Mother of All Depressions? Can we make instead the Second Cousin of All Recessions? Only if we do just about everything right.

LABOR GOES GREEN. Here's a post from the AFLCIO blog on green jobs and good jobs.

ON THE SUBJECT OF READING CLASSICS, here's a cute item.

SPEAKING OF A CLASSIC, here's Nobel winning economist Amartya Sen's take on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments.

DARWIN AND LINCOLN, not necessarily in that order, are the subjects of David Gopnik's Angels and Ages. Here's an interview with the author.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED