Well, the WV legislature just finished its 60 day regular session. It was better than some I've seen but right now it's the last thing I want to think about. Instead, here's some real important stuff:

HONEY BEES are strange critters. We've known that all along. But they may be even stranger than we thought. More on that here. I think it would be awesome if bees had personalities.

I LIVE AMONG DINOSAURS. This items suggests that iridescent feathers on dinosaurs evolved to attract mates. All I have to do to concur is look out the window at the behavior of our turkeys and peacocks.

URGENT VENOMOUS SEA SNAKE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Wake the serpent not

I have no idea what this poetic fragment by Percy Shelley means or where he was going with it. Perhaps the Gentle Reader may have better luck:

Wake the serpent not -- lest he
Should not know the way to go, --
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
Through the deep grass of the meadow!
Not a bee shall hear him creeping,
Not a may-fly shall awaken
From its cradling blue-bell shaken,
Not the starlight as he's sliding
Through the grass with silent gliding.

One hurdle cleared

Random animal picture. Arpad, the big white boy on the right, has been missing since Monday.

Health care reform efforts cleared a major hurdle yesterday, when the Senate Finance Committee approved its plan to revamp the system. While the bill is way better than nothing, it could still be improved. Here is the introduction to an analysis by Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The Senate Finance Committee’s approval of an ambitious health reform plan marks a major step toward enactment of legislation to extend health care to tens of millions of people who lack it, strengthen insurance protections for millions more who are underinsured or face exorbitant charges, and begin to address the nation’s most serious fiscal threat — the relentless rise in health care costs.

The Congressional Budget Office has reported that the bill would modestly reduce the budget deficit both over the next ten years and beyond. This is a fiscally responsible bill that would redirect federal spending and tax subsidies from less productive uses elsewhere in the health care sector. (Read: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2920)

While the committee package represents a vast improvement over the current health insurance system, it has some serious shortcomings that likely would limit its effectiveness in certain areas. Because the health reform bills approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and three House committees are stronger in those areas, policymakers should blend the best provisions from these bills as they move forward.

The rest is worth a look.

THIS IS GOING TO GET UGLY. A public hearing on changes to the mountaintop removal mining permit process got loud and nasty in Charleston. As I've said before, I really hope I'm wrong but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody gets killed before all this is over.

A LITTLE MORE CIVIL was this public forum on health care reform the same night.

PAY CUTS are another feature of working life in the Great Recession.

A VISIT WITH THE DOCTOR. That is, bluegrass legend Dr. Ralph Stanley.

WHO ORDERED THE GIANT SNAKES? They're here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Philosophy in one sentence

Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius.

El Cabrero has been pondering the role of luck and chance in human affairs lately. This is an interesting time to do it, since the goddess Fortuna has been cranking her wheel with unusual velocity these days. Some go up and some go down.

From ancient times, people have grappled with how to live in a world where unpredictable (for us at the time anyway) things can happen at any time. Many have turned to different kinds of divination for clues. Others chalk it off to the inscrutable providence of God, whose ways are not our ways nor are his thoughts our thoughts, to paraphrase Isaiah.

Another way people have dealt with uncertainty is through philosophy. Of the many schools of ancient thought, I've always had a soft spot for the Stoics, a Hellenistic vision of the world that became popular in imperial Rome. Stoicism was all about living a rational life in accordance with the nature of things and accepting external events as they come.

Interestingly, two of its greatest exponents were at opposite extremes of the social scale. Epictetus (c. 55-135) was a slave, while Marcus Aurelius (121-180) was one of the last truly great Roman emperors.

Stoicism was as much a kind of self-help or ancient cognitive therapy as it was an intellectual tradition. It has some features in common with other wisdom traditions such as Buddhism or Taoism.

If I had to come up with one of the most useful single sentences I've encountered in studying philosophy, it would probably be one from the Enchiridion of Epictetus. It simply says,

Some things are in our control and others not.

GOING GREEN. More retail businesses are going green.

THINK BIG. Here's economist Jeffrey Sachs with suggestions for the next administration.

ONE TO WATCH. The lawsuit filed by widows of Massey Energy's Aracoma mine fire has begun.

REMEMBER THE TROOPS WE'RE SUPPOSED TO SUPPORT? The Charleston Gazette reports:

More than half of all West Virginia soldiers who live in the state's most rural counties and recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, according to a recent analysis of data from a survey of the state's war veterans.

About 56 percent of returning soldiers from West Virginia's rural counties suffer from mental health problems compared to 32 percent who live in urban areas, and 34 percent residing at out-of-state military bases.

TUG OF WAR. A new theory of mental disorders suggests that competition between parental genes may be a contributing factor.

I WAS NOT AWARE OF THAT. Did you know that snakebites kill 20,000 people a year in the developing world?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: OCCLUDED

PUBLIC DREAMS?

Heracles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) is probably the most popular interpreter of myths today. Campbell was the author of The Masks of God, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and many other works. His works also inspired Star Wars creator George Lucas.

Campbell's public following grew by leaps and bounds with PBS's broadcast of The Power of Myth, a series of interviews between Campbell and Bill Moyers. Strongly influenced by Jung, he believed that all myths worldwide shared similar themes and spiritual insights. He sometimes spoke of a "monomyth," such as that of the quest of a hero, as if all humanity was basically watching the same psychic movie.

One problem with that approach is that it selectively picks from many diverse myths and imposes a general interpretation on widely diverse traditions with widely different systems of meaning.

He had a knack for catchy phrases such as this one:

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Sounds good but doesn't hold up too well. Myths are enduring stories repeated over time, whereas dreams are physiological events, most of which are not remembered or retold. Myths provide a world of meaning for those who accept them, whereas most dreams are mental static that have little influence on daily life (although we arguably should pay more attention to them than we do).

The problem with overgeneralizing about myths is that in doing so one creates a more or less artificial construct that loses a lot of particularity. As one of El Cabrero's teachers used to say, you can't unscramble an egg. Instead of lumping all myths together into some gigantic stew, it might be more interesting to look at different traditions in their own terms.

THE SURGE IS WORKING? You decide.

THE TREE ARMY. Here's Bill McKibben on the relevance of New Deal era programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps today.

COAL AND/OR HEALTH. A new study by a WVU researcher finds that residents of the state's coalfields are more likely than other West Virginians to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney disease.

SOME DAYS YOU EAT THE BEAR... Here's Dean Baker on the credit crisis and corporate bailouts.

THE WIRE. Here's a critical view of El Cabrero's favorite TV show that talks about all the positive things in Baltimore and other cities that the show ignores.
Point well taken, but can somebody tell the folks at HBO to get that season 5 DVD out soon?

SPIDERS AND SNAKES. New research is studying the question of whether the common fear of snakes and spiders is an evolutionary inheritance or something learned.

LOOK TO THE ANT, THOU SLUGGARD! They invented farming 50 million years ago when we were just a twinkle in a primate's eye.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED