I would so do this too

A friend of mine send me a link this weekend to this Washington Post story about some scientists who contrived to sneak as many Bob Dylan lyrics as they could into papers they wrote for serious journals. If I were a scientist, no doubt I'd do the same. The sad part is that I can't think of an appropriate Dylan quote to use right now.

(Maybe it's because I'm burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail...)

THIS IS SAD. It's about how schools in the coalfields are coping with declining enrollment as families move in search of work.

SO IS THIS. Scientists are trying to think of modern day Noah's arks to save species threatened by climate change.

A very palpable hit

There's an interesting story in today's Charleston Gazette regarding the federal prosecutions of Massey Energy officials in the wake of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster which killed 29 West Virginia miners in April 2010. Ken Ward reports:

A former Massey Energy official pleaded guilty this morning to taking part in a decade-long conspiracy to violate mine safety laws and cover up the resulting hazards, and told a federal judge that the company's "chief executive officer" was part of the plot.

An attorney for Blankenship claimed that he was guilty of no wrongdoing. That was a shock.

Apparently, Blankenship has been diverting himself these days with a website, www.donblankenship.com, wherein he touts himself as a "Native of Appalachia," "Job Creator," and "Capitalist and Entrepreneur." Other attributes may come to mind.

HOLY RACIST ART, BATMAN. I used to subscribe to Business Week and learned a good bit there. Occasionally I think about re-subscribing. But not any more.

OF RATS, BRAINS AND HUMANS. A friend sent me a link to this science story, with a comment that things like this worry him about the human race.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

It's hard not to cuss these days

From the AFLCIO:

While 25 million unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers are drowning, CEO pay skyrocketed by 23 percent, for an average salary of $11.4 million in 2010, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Released today, data compiled at PayWatch also show CEOs have done little to create badly-needed jobs, instead sitting on a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

The 2011 Executive PayWatch features the compensation of 299 S&P 500 company CEOs and provides direct comparisons between those CEOs and the median pay of nurses, teachers, firefighters and others. For instance, while a secretary makes a median annual salary of $29,980, someone like Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf rakes in $18,973,722 million—632 times the secretary’s salary. The pay gap between Wall Street and Main Street has widened egregiously—as recently as 1980, CEOs made 42 times that of blue-collar workers.

There's more here and the full report is here.

And let's not forget the fact that the very wealthy are paying less in taxes. And there's a bit more here and especially here on the same subject.While we're at it, this article provides a good account of how things got to be this way.

El Cabrero grew up in a cussing family and I know a thing or two about obscenity. Trust me, it's obscene to talk about gutting Medicare and Medicaid and other programs that help low income and working people in the name of deficit reduction while continuing to cut taxes on the wealthy in a time of growing inequality.

OFF TOPIC BUT INTERESTING. I missed this Washington Post item when it first came out. It's an interesting take on how Glenn Beck kind of lost it.

TALKING SENSE. WV Senator Jay Rockefeller suggest that the US needs to get out of the current wars.

INTERESTING QUESTION. Ken Ward asks in Coal Tattoo whether WV's political leaders believe in science.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Dealing with monsters

Say what you want about human conflict, but literature would be a lot duller--or maybe even non-existent--without it. I remember a high school English class when a teacher explained that pretty much all of it had to do with conflict, either between characters, between characters and nature, or within characters. There might be some exceptions in this post-modern age, but he had a point

Imagine, for example, how dull Beowulf might have been if the creatures in it were expert at resolving conflict. In the epic, the monster Grendel is bothered by the noise of king Hrothgar's mead hall, where he and his boys revel all night:

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,
nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him
to hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall, the harp being struck
and the clear song of a skilled poet
telling with mastery of man's beginnings.

Eventually, he starts eating people there. Imagine instead this scenario instead:

GRENDEL: Sorry to bother you, Hrothgar, but I've been having a little trouble sleeping since you built your mead hall. I know that this is very important for you but would appreciate it if you could keep the noise level down a bit. The thing is, I have a tendency to eat a bunch of people when I get upset and I'd rather that not happen.

HROTHGAR: Gee, Grendel, I never thought about that. We always have such a great time drinking, feasting and listening to the bard that I never thought this could bother anybody. But you have to understand that someone in my position has to have a place like that to give gifts and keep my boys happy--otherwise they wouldn't fight for me when I needed it.

GRENDEL: I totally appreciate that. Maybe we could agree that you guys could revel for a while but try keeping it down after, say, midnight. And since you've recently converted to Catholicism, maybe you could try something like bingo when it gets late.

HROTHGAR: Bingo...I never thought of that. How about we try this for a few weeks and see how it works: we'll tone it down after midnight and will even cut you in some livestock every now and then if you'll refrain from eating my guys.

GRENDEL: Deal. Thanks! See you around.

That just doesn't do it for me.

DUMBING DOWN. Here's Leonard Pitts on our falling away from science.

SWORDS TO PLOWS. Literally. This story is about an effort to help combat veterans from the current wars to try their hand at organic farming.

FOOD, FLOODS AND CLIMATE discussed here.

URGENT BLACK WIDOW SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Back to the salt mines

El Cabrero took some time off between the holidays. Nothing exciting, although it was nice to remember what it's like to wake up naturally without an alarm clock screaming at 4:45 a.m. Now it's back to sleep deprivation and all that. I didn't even turn on the computer for that period, if checking the Precious iPhone doesn't count.

A number of interesting news items came out in the interim but I will avoid commenting at length on all but one. The Dec. 24-Jan. 6 issue of The State Journal, a WV business paper, featured a list of the most influential business leaders in West Virginia. Topping the list was former (as of January 1) Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.

I take no issue with that. For good or ill, Blankenship has no doubt made the most ripples in the pond. But I can't resist mentioning that the article quoted WVU free market economist Russel Sobel, of Unleashing Capitalism fame, to the effect that

The nice thing about this list is these are all people who've done it the right way. Their success is not based on political connections but on competing against others.

I guess buying a state supreme court seat in the 2004 election doesn't count. And apparently neither does trying to buy the state House of Delegates in 2006. If the latter didn't work as well as the former, it wasn't for lack of trying. I imagine some major change was also dropped in the 2008 and 2010 elections as well.

I guess doing things the right way also includes union busting; major environmental and coal mine safety violations--including the highest criminal fines ever levied against a company by MSHA; far too many dead miners; pumping sludge into old mines to contaminate well water and a whole host of fun and games.

The nice thing about subscribing to an ideological creed is that one never has to be bothered with the facts.

HOLED UP. Krugman's latest reminds us that we're still in deep despite recent economic good news.

HATE RADIO. Here's an interesting take on the right wing media and the rage machine.

LOOKING BACK. Here's Wired Science on the biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2010.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

There is a willow grows aslant a brook

Ophelia by John Everett Millais (1852), by way of wikipedia.

Goat Rope's long jag on Hamlet continues, although you can skip the Shakespeare if that isn't your thing and scroll on down to the links and comments section.

I have referred to the character of Polonius as a twit several times. I must now add that twitness of one kind or another seems to run in the male line of that family. After Polonius is killed by Hamlet, his son Laertes returns from France eager for revenge. Once there, he finds that his sister Ophelia has gone mad.

One would have hoped that he would have taken a little time to take care of her and covered some basic bases--like maybe keeping her from drowning herself, for example. But he couldn't be bothered over this small detail.

Here's how Gertrude, the queen of Denmark and mother of Hamlet describes her end:

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

All the men in her life were useless at best, and deadly cruel at worst.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE? That is the question for health care reform and it may be answered fairly soon.

SHARE THE WORK. One of the links in yesterday's post was about the policy of work sharing, which could be a very effective way of helping people get through the Great Recession. Economist Dean Baker has written an op-ed on the subject that is worth a look. Here it is

A RISING TIDE, it is said, lifts all boats. But to benefit from that, first you need a boat. Here's an item from the Washington Post about how the recession and the Recovery Act are affecting minority communities.

YOU'VE HEARD OF THE TEA PARTY. Here's the Coffee Party. I've always preferred that beverage.

THE WAR ON SCIENCE continues.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

How all occasions do inform against me

The theme here lately is Hamlet, although you can scroll down to links and comments about current events if Shakespeare doesn't do it for you.

After Hamlet whacks Polonius, he is ordered to be sent to England under the company of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who unbeknownst to themselves carry with them an order for Hamlet's death at his uncle Claudius' command.

On their way to the ship, they pass the army led by young Fortinbras of Norway en route to fight with the Poles over a worthless piece of land. Fortinbras doesn't show up much in the play, but he serves as an anti-Hamlet, someone who is all action with little forethought.

Hamlet questions the soldiers about their mission and is shocked and shamed to find that they are about to sacrifice many lives for some worthless real estate while he can't even manage to avenge his own father's murder by Claudius.

Here's some of the dialogue:

HAMLET Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?

CAPTAIN Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

CAPTAIN Yes, it is already garrison'd.

HAMLET Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

CAPTAIN God be wi' you, sir.

Hamlet is shamed by the contrast between their action and his own inaction:

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! ...
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. The Economic Policy Institute and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation don't agree on much, but EPI's Lawrence Mishel and Peterson CEO David Walker have published a joint op-ed arguing that job creation needs to take precedence over concerns about the deficit until we get out of this recession.

INEQUALITY MATTERS. Here's another item on how inequality and social status affect health and longevity. The wonky term for this is the social determinants of health.

UNEMPLOYMENT. The unemployment insurance fund of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is heading south despite legislative action last year aimed at ensuring its solvency.

THE WAR ON SCIENCE is on.

CULTURE AND EVOLUTION. It looks like the former has affected the latter.

COOL FOSSIL. One has been found of a snake eating baby dinosaurs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Curse of the zebra mussels

Well, El Cabrero is back in Paradise (he said, with irony) after over a week beside a lake in Vermont. Sometimes I get a little nervous on leaving my beloved state of West Virginia because I'm afraid of missing something, but I was able to monitor conditions here by means of the Precious (aka, the iPhone).

One big insight came my way last week: the wheels of karma may turn slowly but they do turn. Sometimes anyway. Pity me not but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold...

Several years ago on another visit to the in laws up there, we stopped and splashed around in Lake Champlain. At one point, my mother in law attempted to dissuade her grandson from venturing further into the lake by warning him about zebra mussels.

I must admit that this struck me as hilarious, a typical grown up way of scaring a kid into not doing something, as in "if you go one step further into the lake, a savage pack of carnivorous zebra mussels will tear you limb from limb."

I've laughed about that ever since, most recently last week when I decided to take a swim in the selfsame lake. But no sooner had I ventured out to where it was neck deep than my own toe was seriously sliced open by...you guessed it...a zebra mussel shell.

I was hoisted on my own petar...this is what happens when you mess with my mother in law.

FROGS IN HOT WATER are us.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, a number of economists are talking about the need for a second stimulus.

SIMPLE LIVING, by itself, may not cut it, according to this item.

TOP TEN SCIENEC MUSIC VIDEOS here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Excellence and fragility

The classical scholar Martha Nussbaum opens her book The Fragility of Goodness with a quote from the ancient Greek poet Pindar, who made a career for himself writing odes for victors in the Olympic and other sacred games. He wrote:

...human excellence
grows like a vine tree
fed by the green dew,
raised up, among wise men and just,
to the liquid sky.
We have all kinds of needs for those we love--
most of all in hardships, but joy, too
strains to track down eyes that it can trust.

In other words, most of the good things or qualities we have are not inherently ours--even if they are things we've worked hard to achieve or attain. They depend on many other and external conditions, all of which are changeable and subject to loss and reversal.

Nussbaum expounds on Pindar thus:

The excellence of the good person, he writes, is like a young plant: something growing in the world, slender, fragile, in constant need of food from without. A vine tree must be of good stock if it is to grow well. And even if it has a good heritage, it needs fostering weather (gentle dew an drain, the absence of sudden frosts and harsh winds), as well as the care of concerned and intelligent keepers, for its continued health and full perfection. So, the poet suggests, do we. We need to be born with adequate capacities, to live in a fostering natural and social circumstances, to stay clear of abrupt catastrophe, to develop confirming associations we other human beings.

We are all, in other words, subject to fortune and reversal. One of the functions of Greek tragedy, the theme these days at Goat Rope, is to remind us that no one is immune and to warn us against assuming that fleeting good luck is something we own.

50 HERBERT HOOVERS. This NY Times editorial talks sense about the fiscal crisis many states are facing.

GOD ON THE BRAIN. Here's a link to a recent NPR series on science and spirituality.

RELIGION IN THE WAR ROOM. Here's an item about how briefings for for former president Bush were laced with biblical language.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? Here's an item from Wired Science about why we stare.

TEXTING could be bad for teenagers'
health.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Whose nanny state?

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the bankruptcy of "conservative" economic theory, which is pretty clear these days. But before getting there, I think it's a good idea to clear up some misconceptions.

One such is the idea that progressives want to use the government to redistribute wealth, while those who call themselves conservative believe in leaving it to "the market."

As the economist Dean Baker has pointed out over and over again, the reality is that both use the government to redistribute wealth. The main difference is that the former use it to distribute wealth upward and the latter prefer to use it to benefit those with low or moderate incomes--and this has been true for well over a century.

As Baker points out in his free web book The Conservative Nanny State (linked above), there are any number of ways that state power has been used to spread the wealth upward. These include:

*chartering corporations. These were not present from the day of creation. In fact, corporations are legal entities recognized by governments which protect investors from legal liabilities and enjoy the same legal rights as persons. If a sole proprietor or partnership incurs serious debts or liabilities, the owners are responsible for the whole thing. Corporations protect investors by limiting what they can lose if things go south.

*issuing patents, which give some businesses an artificial monopoly for a period of time as a reward for innovation. I'm not debating the value of the idea, just pointing out that in a really free market system, people would be free to make knock offs of inventions and sell them for less than those who came up with them.

*using state power to break strikes and thwart labor organizing.

*using tax policy to impose relatively heavier burdens on labor than on investment income.

The list could go on and on but you get the idea.

STIMULATE US. If your congressperson is sitting on the fence about the American Renewal and Reinvestment Act, which would help those hardest hit by the recession and help get things moving again, this would be a good time to give them a nudge.

RESTORING THE BALANCE. Here's Robert Reich on the role unions can play in rebuilding the middle class--but we'll need the Employee Free Choice Act to get there.

MILITARY MARRIAGES are often another casualty of war.

SCIENCE IS BACK, which is probably a good thing.

URGENT SPITTING COBRA UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ISAIAH THE ECONOMIST

Russian icon of Isaiah the prophet, courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has a certain friend who regularly reads this blog and who breaks out in hives anytime the topic veers toward the Bible or religion. I think this may be due to early exposure to Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. You know who you are...

Here's hoping the person in question can momentarily endure because I'm about to make a non-sectarian biblical allusion.

One of the coolest passages in the Hebrew Bible is the 40th chapter of Isaiah, which deals with the return of exiles from captivity in Babylon. In the middle of all that is a short and sweet critique of idolatry:

The workman melts a graven image and the goldsmith covers it with gold and casts silver chains. He who is poor chooses a tree that won't rot and seeks out a skilled workman to make a graven image that shall not be moved.

The speaker here thinks it is absurd for people who can think, see, hear, and feel to make something that can't and then worship it. We do that all the time with the economy, which we often speak of as if it was a conscious being ruling over us.

I suggest that the way we think about things is important since it can affect how we respond to them. If we think of a given situation as intractable, we're not likely to do anything to change it.

But here's the deal: people make the economy and people can change it and are doing so every day and have done so ever since early humans began to barter and produce. The Greek word from which economy is derived means something like the rules of our household. The Greeks also distinguished between things that exist as a part of nature (phusis) and things that people create (nomos). That's the "onomy" in economy.

In other words, the economy is a good, not a god.

WATER AND WEATHER AND FOOD, OH MY! It's scarier than lions and tigers and bears.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN? Several scientists weigh in here.

SPEAKING OF SCIENCE, could you use a little more in your life?

MORE PIE IN THE SKY for the late great Utah Phillips is here.

CHARM SCHOOL DROPOUT DEPARTMENT. Vice President Dick Cheney dissed El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia recently. Many of our elected officials were not amused. The best response came from Congressman Nick Rahall, who said "We may owe the vice president a debt of gratitude for yet another great West Virginia slogan: 'Dick Cheney is not from here.'"

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THAT OF WHICH YOU NEED A BUSLOAD

Caption: Venus is a goat of little faith.

One of El Cabrero's favorite Lou Reed songs is from the album New York. The point of this very dark song is that there's not a whole lot to depend on in this life and that "you need a busload of faith to get by." Here is is by way of YouTube.

Assuming that to be true, what is faith anyway?

There is a classic definition by Mark Twain:

faith is believing what you know ain't so.

The unknown author of the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews famously said that

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

On the other hand, as Nietzsche observed:

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

The great Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber in his book Two Types of Faith distinguished between faith as trust, expressed by the Hebrew word emunah, which he believed was the approach of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus, and faith as belief in the truth of certain propositions, as expressed in the Greek word pistis, which he argued was the approach of Paul and dogmatic forms of Christianity.

One of the most interesting approaches to faith was that of the great 20th century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, who laid it out in a powerful little book The Dynamics of Faith. He had a way of looking at theological concepts in a way that could speak to anyone regardless of religious background or lack thereof.

About which more tomorrow.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY is observed today, almost a week after his real birthday. It took a busload of faith for he and the millions of others who struggled for civil rights to get as far as they did. So here, again by way of YouTube, is his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

All kinds of events are going on today across the country to observe this occasion. El Cabrero will be attending the third annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast with amigos. Three years ago, we used it as the occasion to kick off a successful effort to raise the minimum wage in West Virginia. The focus still is on economic justice, with a special focus on keeping working families healthy and a campaign for paid sick days for workers. As Dr. King said,

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American [worker] whether he is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer.

BUSHWHACKED. Here's a good critique of Bushonomics by Larry Beinhart.

TARGET IRAN? One would hope not, but I wouldn't put it past our current clique.

LABOR ON STIMULATING THE ECONOMY. The AFLCIO recommends an economic stimulus package that includes the following:

*Extension of unemployment benefits.

*Increased food stamp benefits.

*Tax rebates targeted to middle-income and lower-income taxpayers.

*Fiscal relief for state and local governments to avoid the economically depressing effect of tax increases and budget cuts.

*Acceleration of ready-to-go public investment in school renovations and bridge repair.

SPEAKING OF BRIDGES, here's the AP on America's hugely neglected infrastructure.

FUN WITH SCIENCE (IF YOU'RE NOT AN ANT). Nature is one clever Mother. According to this Wired Science item,

a newly discovered parasite makes its ant hosts turn red and swollen, like berries. Berry-loving birds then eat the ants, and spread the parasite in their droppings.

The ants were unavailable for comment. However, a parasite spokesperson issued the following statement: "Na na na boo boo! Take that, ants!"

WV IN THE NEWS. The fallout from the WV Supreme Court/Masseygate story along with a major fine for Massey Energy has drawn a good bit of national media attention the last few days. Here is one from the NY Times about the fine and one about the Court from the same source. Here's the Washington Post on the fine. On a related note, here's Ken Ward from the Charleston Gazette on how the state has dropped the ball on environmental enforcement.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Lately, the theme of this blog has been about how people who want to make the world more just and less violent can learn from the study of conflict and strategy. A special focus has been on the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu. In fact, in some cases, his approach echoes that of the modern theory of nonviolent action.

I'm convinced the United States today would be stronger, safer, more peaceful and more prosperous if its leaders would have taken a leaf from Sun Tzu's The Art of War in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

As discussed this week and last week here, Sun Tzu believed that

the best policy is to attack strategies; the next to attack alliances; the next to attack soldiers; and the worst to assault walled cities.

There are two simple ways to attack strategies:

*figure out what the opponents wants to do and deprive them of the opportunity of doing it; and--more to the point--

*figure out what the opponents want you to do--and don't do it!

It seems pretty clear that the organizers of the 9/11 attack wanted, in addition to inflicting high casualties and causing material damage to several significant and symbolic targets, to provoke the United States into launching an indiscriminate response which would alienate world opinion and drive more people into hostility to the US and win more supporters to their cause.

Unfortunately, by invading Iraq--which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks--the Bush administration did not attack their strategy. It fell for it. State Department reports on terrorism in the years since the invasion of Iraq have noted increases in terrorist attacks and have even attributed much of the increase to the war.

Here's an article that appeared in May 2007 in the Washington Post to that effect. Iraq has become a training ground where an unknown number of people have learned how to carry out an unknown number of future terrorist attacks in other unknown places.

The Bush administration also lost many opportunities to attack the alliances of those who planned the attacks. In the wake of 9/11, there was a huge international wave of sympathy for the US. If, instead of squandering it, US leaders had used the opportunity to improve relations with the world community, initiate diplomacy with countries like Iran and Syria, push for resolution of long-standing regional conflicts, and focused on international cooperation in dealing with those who planned and supported the attacks, we'd be in a very different and probably better place today.

In fact, rather than attacking the alliances of the terrorists, the Bush administration in effect attacked its own allies with its arrogant drive to war with Iraq, straining relations with even longtime European allies. This entanglement has cost the lives of nearly 4,000 US military personnel, tens of thousands of Iraqis and injured or traumatized tens of thousands more. In terms of material resources, the war is costing or will cost the US around $720 million dollars per day.

This isn't anything new. Lots of people all over the world tried to raise some of these points during the buildup to the war, but the powers that be weren't interested in listening. Much damage has been done and it will take a long time to undo the damage that can be undone.

STIMULUS AND (NO) RESPONSE. Here's a good column by Marie Cocco about the need for a timely and target economic stimulus. And here's a good proposal for stimulating the economy from the Economic Policy Institute.

THIS WOULD BE INTERESTING. A growing number of people are calling for a presidential debate on the subject of science.

SPEAKING OF SCIENCE, read more about the scandal of teen pregnancy. Among dinosaurs, that is. Maybe that's why they all got drowned in Noah's Flood. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the gay ones tried to get married too.

MORE ON SCIENCE. Along the same theme, it looks like the US is in danger of falling behind in science and technology. Here's an excerpt from a NY Times article about a National Science Board report:

Many Americans remain ignorant about much of science, the board said; for example, many are unable to answer correctly when asked if the Earth moves around the Sun (it does). But they are not noticeably more ignorant than people in other developed countries except on two subjects: evolution and the Big Bang. Although these ideas are organizing principles underlying modern biology and physics, many Americans do not accept them.

“These differences probably indicate that many Americans hold religious beliefs that cause them to be skeptical of established scientific ideas,” the report said, “even when they have some basic familiarity with those ideas.”

DO YOU HAVE A HEALTH CARE STORY YOU WANT TO SHARE? Here's the place to do it.

THIS IS JUST GREAT. Not. President Bush has threatened to veto a new bill that would strengthen mine safety.

JUDGE NOT. Here's the latest on the friendship between Massey CEO Don Blankenship and WV Supreme Court justice Spike Maynard.

BOOK REVIEW. Here's a review of WV novelist Ann Pancake's Strange as This Weather Has Been from Orion Magazine and here's her website. The novel deals with mountaintop removal mining. If memory serves, she may be a distant cousin of another great WV writer, Breece D'J Pancake who came from and wrote about a disguised version of El Cabrero's home town.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE JINGLE-MAN

Welcome to Edgar Allan Poe Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts.

In some ways, Edgar Allan Poe is the Rodney Dangerfield of American literature--he don't get no respect.

T.S. Eliot said some snarky things about him, for example, once stating that Poe "had the intellect of a highly gifted young person before puberty."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the literary eminence of the early and mid 1800s, famously referred to him in a letter as "the jingle-man." To be fair, if you do read or hear more than the proper measure of his poetry, the jingles are very audible.

But here's the deal, Ralphie and Tommy Boy: more people know The Telltale Heart and The Raven than Self Reliance or The Waste Land.

(Note: I'm not implying that this is necessarily good thing.)

John Allan, his foster father, had a pretty sharp take on Poe's genius: "His talents are of an order that can never prove a comfort to their possessor."

Here's James Russell Lowell's take in verse:

"There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge,
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make people of common sense damn metres,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind."

The snooty Henry James--who was nowhere near as cool as his brother William--wrote that

With all due respect to the very original genius of the author of the Tales of Mystery, it seems to us that to take him with more than a certain degree of seriousness is to lack seriousness one's self. An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.

Walt Whitman was more charitable:

Poe’s verses illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page—and, by final judgment, probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature, brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat. There is an indescribable magnetism about the poet’s life and reminiscences, as well as the poems.

(If it's any consolation, they loved him in France. But then they liked Jerry Lewis and Derrida over there too.)

But here's the deal: it doesn't really matter what the critics think. Poe has won the verdict of popularity. He was the father of the modern detective story and horror tale and a major early influence on science fiction. Those are three of the most popular literary genres (i.e. they are things people read voluntarily).

The accursed heart still beats...

AN ANNIVERSARY TO REMEMBER. Seventy five years ago this month, FDR--peace be unto him--was elected to the presidency.

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY is the subject of this article from Time.

SPEAKING OF MORALITY AND SCIENCE, here's a good slam on economic libertarianism with a science slant.

FOR A 425 MILLION YEAR OLD PETRIFIED VELVET WORM UPDATE click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

NO DOUBT

Caption: This man is no Cartesian; he didn't think, therefore he swam.

El Cabrero has been musing this week on the nature of scientific knowledge. I haven't got very far, but it is Friday, which should count for something.

There are two influential thinkers of the early modern period who are often credited with getting the ball rolling. One, Francis Bacon, was the subject of yesterday's post. Today's is about his polar opposite, Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who gave us both analytical geometry (to which I have never been formally introduced) and, indirectly, the "Matrix" movies.

As I mentioned yesterday, Bacon believed that empirical induction was the way science needed to proceed. For him, experience was the key. He was mistrustful of deductive reasoning and math was way down on his list.

For Descartes, experience and observation were problems, not solutions, since we could easily be deceived by our senses. He recommended a deductive, mathematical approach to the development of the sciences, with experiment and observation way down on his list.

However, most people remember Descartes for his famous thought experiment of systematically doubting everything in order to arrive at some kind of certainty:

I had long before remarked that, in relation to practice, it is sometimes necessary to adopt, as if above doubt, opinions which we discern to be highly uncertain, as has been already said; but as I then desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought that a procedure exactly the opposite was called for, and that I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable.

This included doubting the senses and even the existence of the external world:

Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning, and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams.

Then he hit what he thought was bedrock:

But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.

All this is from his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, although he develops these ideas again in a different form in the Meditations on First Philosophy.

It's there that at least one of the inspiration for the Matrix movies came from. In the course of his doubt (from which he extricates himself with a not altogether convincing ontological "proof" of the existence of God), he imagines that

some malignant demon, who is at once exceedingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his artifice to deceive me; I will suppose that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all external things, are nothing better than the illusions of dreams, by means of which this being has laid snares for my credulity; I will consider myself as without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, and as falsely believing that I am possessed of these; I will continue resolutely fixed in this belief, and if indeed by this means it be not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of truth, I shall at least do what is in my power, viz, suspend my judgment ], and guard with settled purpose against giving my assent to what is false, and being imposed upon by this deceiver, whatever be his power and artifice.

In modern times, this is known as the Brains in a Vat problem (as in how do we REALLY know that we ain't?), which is one of the main ideas behind the Matrix movies.

All I know is my legs would be a lot less sore if you could just download martial arts like they do in those movies...

WHEN SQUIDS ATTACK...Jumbo squid around 7 feet long and weighing 100 pounds are becoming more common off the coast of California. And they're mean.

STICKER SHOCK. For the latest on the costs of the Iraq war (what we've paid for so far anyway), click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ANYONE WANT BACON?

It's interesting that two thinkers widely recognized for launching modern scientific thought had opposite ideas on where to proceed.

I'm thinking about Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626). As Steven L. Goldman points out in his Teaching Company lecture series "Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It," the contrast could hardly be sharper.

For Bacon, the mind was the problem. We are all to eager to concoct theories and explanations of reality at the drop of a hat. He wrote some interesting essays on "the idols of the mind." These included

*the idols of the tribe, or common human fallacies;

*the idols of the cave, or our own private hobby-horses;

*the idols of the marketplace, or false conceptions derived from popular phrases and ideas (memes?); and

*the idols of the theatre, or prejudices derived from older philosopical systems and received wisdom.

He advocated instead a disciplined approach based on observation, experience and induction, a slow collection of facts that would lead to sure knowledge.

It sounded good at the time, and was probably a needed antidote to stale scholasticism, but science doesn't seem to work that way now, and didn't at the time, either.

Next time: Descartes and the Matrix.

SPEAKING OF SCIENCE, Pope Benedict XVI is talking sense. He called the creation/evolution clash "an absurdity,"

This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.

He also noted that evolution doesn't answer all questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”

And he once again drew attention to global climate change:

We all see that today man can destroy the foundation of his existence, his Earth... We cannot simply do what we want with this Earth of ours, with what has been entrusted to us.

TO YOUR HEALTH...AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE. These days stating the obvious is pretty important. Here's an item about what's missing in discussions of health:

The public generally believes that poor lifestyle choices, faulty genes and infectious agents are the major factors that give rise to illness. Here's the rest of the story.

Research now tells us that lower socio-economic status may be more harmful to health than risky personal habits...

The rest is worth a look.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: OVER THE TOP

SCIENCE WARS

Caption: Goats study the science of irritating humans. Actually, they've perfected it.

Let's start with an unsolicited product endorsement. El Cabrero is a big fan of The Teaching Company and Recorded Books' Modern Scholar series, both of which provide audio courses on all kinds of topics by recognized scholars.

Many public libraries carry these items. With them, you can "read" and learn while, driving, jogging, mowing the lawn, chasing the goats, etc.

One that I'm enjoying at the moment is Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How they Know it by Steven L. Goodman.

Goldman points out early on that just as the natural sciences reached their highest level of prestige in the mid-20th century, they came under attack from a number of different directions. Here are some:

*In the wake of the Vietnam War and concerns about nuclear devastation, many people criticized the sciences for their collaboration with governments and corporations engaged in making and using destructive weapons and products such as napalm and Agent Orange. This was not a criticism of science as such but rather of the uses to which it was put;

*Within the sciences and the field of the philosophy of science, there was a growing movement which questioned the objectivity of science and the claim that it was value free and neutral. Some authors, such as Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, suggested that science was more a matter of developing paradigms or models of the world that accounted for observations than of "reflecting" objective processes;

*In the field of literary and social theory, some people argued that the sciences were social constructions and that knowledge claims were often based on the interests of powerful groups who inflicted their power/knowledge on others. Later, post-modernists claimed that science was just one of many possible narratives for describing the world and had no special claim to validity;

*From a completely different direction, there was a rising fundamentalist backlash against the findings of the natural sciences on areas such as evolution, the origin and age of the universe, etc.

All of these tendencies have left their mark on the current state of the public view of science and contemporary confusion about its nature and role.

AT LEAST NOW WE KNOW about that UFO/Air Force dogfight over Braxton County in the 1950s.

THIS JUST IN. If you are looking for scientific data on how to deal with a drunk person you are shocking with electricity, click here. The take home message seems to be that people who are drunk are less belligerent when distracted.

BACKLASH AGAINST GLOBALIZATION. From the UK Financial Times:

A popular backlash against globalization and the leaders of the world’s largest companies is sweeping all rich countries, an FT/Harris poll shows.

Large majorities of people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalization...

The issue of rising inequality is now high on the political agenda of every country and will feature prominently in the 2008 US presidential election.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GODS AND EARTH GIANTS

Caption: Seamus McGoogle is a keen student of the science of hummingbirds.

It's interesting that some of the current debates on the nature of science and knowledge have ancient roots.

Consider the following questions: does science give objective knowledge about the world that is certain, universal and necessary? Or are all it's results provisional and tentative?

Other ways of putting it might consist of asking whether "laws" of science are discovered or made up? Is it about what is true or what seems to work best to account for experience?

This one goes all the way back to Plato, and probably farther. Plato, inspired by his teacher Socrates, believed that universal knowledge of truth was possible beyond the realm of senses or opinion. His main enemies were the sophists, traveling teachers of reasoning and rhetoric, who tended to be relativistic and pragmatic.

One such was Protagoras, who said "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." Plato was not amused.

In his dialogue The Sophist, Plato, through the character of the Stranger, describes this controversy as a war between gods and giants:

There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence...

Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body...

And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these matters.

Plato, of course, thought he was on the side of the gods. It looks like the earth giants have won a few lately though.

SPEAKING OF GIANTS, congratulations to Jean Edward Smith, professor of history at El Cabrero's alma mater, Marshall University. Smith has won kudos for his recent biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt--peace be unto him. The title is FDR and the publisher is Random House. It has gained many positive reviews around the country.

Dr. Smith was quoted in the Marshall Magazine as saying "Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt stand head and shoulders about the 40 other men who (have) occupied the White House. Washington founded the country, Lincoln preserved it and Roosevelt revived it." Amen.

In El Cabrero's childhood home, it was less risky to make irreverent religious jokes than to dis the Roosevelts. It is now safer for my (legally) adult kids to do the same in my presence.

SPEAKING OF MARSHALL, the same issue of the magazine has an interesting article about how public investments in research at Marshall is starting to (literally) pay dividends. This is yet another example if any is needed of the vital role that public investments in education, research and infrastructure can lead to a high road approach to economic development--in contrast to the low roaders who want to cut these investment, eliminate the minimum wage, and eliminate regulations that protect workers from injury and death on the job.

NATTERING NABOBS OF NEGATIVISM. On a similar note, here's an op-ed by yours truly from yesterday's Gazette about the good things that are happening in WV that can get and keep us on the high road.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FRANKENSTEIN: LIVING THEMES, UNSOLVED PROBLEMS

This public domain image comes courtesy of www.moviewallpapers.net.

El Cabrero hopes you have enjoyed Frankenstein Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries, which discuss current events in addition to Mary Shelley's novel.

To wrap it up,this story is a gold mine of themes and inter-related stories which literary scholars refer to as “intertextuality.” Here are some examples:

*The story echoes the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a key influence on the French Revolution and the later Romantic movement. For Rousseau, people are good by nature but are corrupted by society.

*The subtitle of the book is “The Modern Prometheus,” referring to the myth which was the subject of an ancient Greek tragedy by Aeschylus and a verse drama by Percy Shelley himself. In the myth, the titan Prometheus fashions humanity and gives it the gift of fire. In the book, Victor dreams that "A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me." It didn't quite work out that way. Victor had plenty of troubles and Prometheus was chained to a rock by Zeus. An eagle or vulture would tear out his liver each day. At night, the wounds would heal only to be reopened.

*The creature is also compared to Adam in the Biblical narrative and resembles Satan from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is one of the books the creature read. (See yesterday's discussion of a monster's reading list.) Like Milton's Satan, he reached a point where he said, in effect,

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.
Evil, be thou my good.

Here are a few of the lasting human themes of this story I came up with:

*The tragic tendency of people to overreach their proper limits, cross forbidden boundaries, and bring about their own destruction (a common theme in myths, literature, history, and... uhhh...politics);

*The dangers of scientific and technological research unchecked by ethical considerations;

*The danger of bringing a being into the world without caring for it;

*The unintended consequences of human action;

*The relationship between emotion and intellect and the dangers of the unchecked will to knowledge (another mythic theme);

*Today, the book reminds me of the increasingly blurry line between the living and the non-living.

Official Goat Rope verdict: Mary did pretty good.

EFCA GOES TO THE SENATE. The Employee Free Choice Act, which passed the U.S. House in March 241-185, is moving to the Senate, where it may come up for a vote as soon as June 20--WV Day. EFCA would effectively restore the right of US workers to form unions by recognizing representation when a majority of workers sign cards indicated their willingness to join. It would also increase penalties on companies that harass, intimidate, or retaliate against workers who try to organize. Among WV's delegation, only Shelley Moore Capito opposed it.

JR. JET SET. According to The Week Magazine,

Wealthy New York City parents are hiring private jets to take their children to summer camp, says The New York Post. Charter company Revolution Air has set aside more than 20 jets for the service, which charges $8,000 per child and offers a special menu of ice cream, chicken fingers, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches...

THE PENTAGON'S latest assessment of President Bush's Iraq strategy paints a grim picture that tells us what we already knew: the "surge" isn't helping matters.

NEW NOTES. For the Rev. Jim Lewis' latest "Notes from under the Fig Tree," click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A NATURALIST'S TALE AND (WHY NOT?) AN ITEM ABOUT THE LOCH NESS MONSTER ((and the WV Supreme Court))

Caption: Can you find the ants in this picture? E. O. Wilson could.

This has inadvertently turned into Darwin week at Goat Rope so I may as well stay the course and recommend a good but not terribly recent book, Edward O. Wilson's 1995 autobiography Naturalist.

While El Cabrero was never a huge fan of sociobiology, one of Wilson's many brainchildren, it's hard not to like Wilson himself (no known relation). Before and after he moved into evolutionary grand theory, he was--and remains--a naturalist's naturalist, turning over rocks and logs in search of nature's wonders.

And he has become a real leader among scientists in defending the environment, recently calling for Christians to join the fight to preserve the natural world.

Wilson ignited quite a controversy in the 1970s with his suggestions that genes influence human society to a degree largely unimagined. He was attacked--sometimes unfairly--for promoting an ideology which some said could justify inequality, male dominance, xenophobia, war, etc.

In fact, he didn't believe biology was destiny and was not much of a political animal, describing himself as a "Roosevelt liberal turned pragmatic centrist." One could do worse--much worse.

The debate over the role of biology in social life is destined to go on for a long time, but his other contributions both to natural science and protecting the environment are beyond question.

Here's sample from Naturalist about his beloved ants:

They are everywhere, dark and ruddy specks that zigzag across the ground and down holes, milligram-weight inhabitants of an alien civilization who hide their daily rounds from our eyes. For over 50 million years ants have been the overwhelmingly dominant insect everywhere on land outside the polar and arctic ice fields. By my estimate, between 1 and 10 million billion individuals are alive at any moment, all of them together weighing, to the nearest order of magnitude, as much as the totality of human beings.

He left out the part about them getting in your pants and making you dance, but otherwise the book is a keeper.

DROPPING ALL PRETENCE OF SOCIAL RELEVANCE, Goat Rope is sticking to the theme of weirdness this week. In case you missed it, here's a recent item on a possible sighting of the Loch Ness monster, complete with a video clip. After more than 6 years of the Bush administration, nothing seems weird to me anymore...

WHATEVER... This is inside baseball for West Virginians. The masterful "just-the-facts" blog of all things pertaining to El Cabrero's beloved state is Lincoln Walks at Midnight, which has this item about state Supreme Court justice Brent Benjamin in which he claims that he won in 2004 not because of coal baron and Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship's money but rather due to the mistakes of his opponent, Warren McGraw.

Far be it from El Cabrero to deny that his opponent made a mistake or two, but I find the whole Loch Ness thing MUCH easier to believe.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UNDER THE WATER