Flight Tests–A Review

A review I posted to Amazon.

I knew I was about to read something most definitely not run-of-the-mill when I read the cover that showed the book was endorsed by an organization known as the Live Cowards Club. Since this is a club for which I will handily pass any and all entrance tests, it tickled the old laugh muscles.

Make no assumptions though, this is a very serious book, just written in a humorous manner: that of showing oneself capable of being a good and safe pilot to an examiner. It is mainly written from a South African point of view (so expect to stumble into words spelled weird like ‘manoeuvre’ ;) ) although the laws of physics holds no matter where you fly. As Davis says, this little book “takes you through each flying exercise and tells you what [the examiner] expects of you.”

Each part of the check ride is examined, from pre-flight inspection to steep turns, to cross-country flying. Each section is filled with tips and the strong voice of a very experienced pilot. In essence, this book will help you get mentally prepared for the test. Here's one from near the front of the book:

“Try to do everything smoothly. Imagine that you have your 90-year-old granny in the back, and its[sic] her first flight ever. Do everything smoothly, even small things like applying carb-heat, changing power settings or selecting flap. Passengers should not be able to notice changes of power and speed and attitude.”

With equal parts mindset framing, expounding on the philosophy of good airmanship and practical flying technique information, this is a book that punches above its weight class. Five highly recommended stars.

The American’s Creed

I got a book yesterday, a 1948 edition of the Boy Scouts of America Handbook for Boys. I have a feeling there’s nothing about gay scoutmasters mentioned anywhere in it.
Here’s something I did find:

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy within a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity, for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it, to support its constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its Flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

That was by William Tyler Page. I wonder if this is in the newest edition of the BSA’s handbook, if they still publish a handbook. Absent a shared, organic culture, we need these kinds of coalescing creeds and stories that impart values to the children. That serve as a great Moral Compass for us as we wend our way, a nation of many different peoples.
For example, too many people don’t understand our system of government. People who have grown up here and supposedly been taught it at school. People who react with incredulity at the Electoral College and have no idea why it’s in place even though we’ve been electing Presidents that way for ever.
People who don’t understand the difference between a democracy and a republic and what type of government either one engenders. People who don’t understand that we elect democratically within a republic. People, in other words, who have never read or recited the above Creed.
Here’s the answer to the question “what’s the difference between a republic and a democracy” that I just this second read:

one is a form of government where at[sic] the other is a system is the real answer but democracy doesn't exist

The person who wrote this is 23-years-old. A native-born American. If this doesn’t shake what remains of your hope for America, what would I wonder.
A child reading this ex-classroom would be naturally inclined to ask what the line about a democracy within a republic meant and therein lies a teachable moment as the blowhards say. No one reads this kind of stuff anymore. And they all end up like the 23-year-old who thinks democracies don’t exist.

Move Towards Pain

Another little ditty from Mastery.

When John Keats (1795-1821) was eight years old, his father died in a riding accident. His mother never quite got over the loss and died seven years later—essentially leaving John, his two brothers, and one sister orphaned and homeless in London. John, the eldest of the children, was taken out of school by the appointed trustee and guardian of the estate, and enrolled as an apprentice to a surgeon and apothecary—he would have to earn a living as quickly as possible, and this seemed the best career for that.

In his last few terms at school, Keats had developed a love for literature and reading. To continue his education, he would return to his school in his off hours and read as many books as he could in the library. Some time later, he had the desire to try his hand at writing poetry, but lacking any kind of instructor or literary circle he could frequent, the only way he know to teach himself to write was the read the works of all of the greatest poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He then wrote his own poems using the poetic form and style of the particular writer he was trying to model himself after. He had a knack for imitation, and soon he was creating verses in dozens of different styles, always tweaking them a little with his own voice.

Several years into this process, Keats came to a fateful decision—he would devote his life to writing poetry. That was his calling in life and he would find a away to make a living at it. To complete the rigorous apprenticeship he had already put himself through, he decided that what he needed was to write a very long poem, precisely 4000 lines. The poem would revolve around the ancient Greek myth of Endymion. “Endymion,” he wrote a friend, “will be a test, a trial of my Powers of Imagination and chiefly of my invention …—by which I must make 4000 lines of some circumstances and fill them with Poetry.” He gave himself a rather impossible deadline—seven months—and a task of writing fifty lines a day, until he had a rough draft.

Three quarters of the way through, he came to thoroughly hate the poem he was writing. He would not quit, however, willing his way to the end, meeting the deadline he had set. What he did not like about Endymion was the flowery language, the over-writing. But it was only by means of this exercise that he could discover what worked for him. “In Endymion,” he later wrote, “I leaped headlong into the Sea and thereby became better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and … took tea and comfortable advice.”

In the aftermath of writing what he considered to be a mediocre poem, Keats took stock of all of the invaluable lessons he had learned. Never again would he suffer from writer’s block—he had trained himself to write past any obstacle. He had acquired now the habit of writing quickly, with intensity and focus—concentrating his work in a few hours. He could revise with equal speed. He had learned how to criticize himself and his overly romantic tendencies. He could look at his own work with a cold eye. He had learned that it was in the actual writing of the poem that the best ideas would often come to him, and that he had to boldly keep writing or he would miss such discoveries. Most important of all, as a counterexample of Endymion, he had hit upon a style that suited him—language as compact and dense with imagery as possible, with not a single wasted line.

With these lessons in hand, in the years 1818 to 1819, before he became gravely ill, Keats would produce some of the most memorable poems in the English language, including all of his greatest odes. This added up to perhaps the most productive two years of writing in the history of Western literature—all of it set up by the rigorous self-apprenticeship he had put himself through.

***

By nature, we humans shirk from anything that seems possibly painful or overtly difficult. We bring this natural tendency to our practice of any skill. Once we grow adept at some aspect of this skill, generally one that comes more easily to us, we prefer to practice this element over and over. Our skill becomes lopsided as we avoid our weaknesses. Knowing that in our practice we can let down our guard, since we are not being watched or under pressure to perform, we bring to this a kind of dispersed attention. We tend to also be quite conventional in our practice routines. We generally follow what others have done, performing the accepted exercises for those skills.

This is the path of amateurs. To attain mastery, you must adopt what we shall call Resistance of Practice. The principle is simple—you go in the opposite direction of all of your natural tendencies when it comes to practice. First you resist the temptation to be nice to yourself. You become your own worst critic; you see your work as if through the eyes of others. You recognize your weaknesses, precisely the elements you are not good at. Those are the aspects you give precedence to in your practice. You find a kind of perverse pleasure in moving past the pain this might bring. Second, you resist the lure of easing up on your focus. You train yourself to concentrate in practice with double the intensity, as if it were the real thing times two. In devising your own routines, you become as creative as possible. You invent exercises that work upon your weaknesses. You give yourself arbitrary deadlines to meet certain standards, constantly pushing yourself past perceived limits. In this way, you develop your own standards for excellence, generally higher than those of others.

In the end, your five hours of intense, focused work are the equivalent of ten for most people. Soon enough you will see the results of such practice, and others will marvel at the apparent ease in which you accomplish your deeds.

See Yourself As Others See You

I’m at the start of reviewing the new book by Robert Greene, Mastery. So far, really good stuff if a little dense. And I mean that literally, this is packed of information and can read a bit dry but if you stick with it, there’s gold in thar hills, like this:

Growing up with autism, Temple Grandin had much to overcome in life, but by the end of high school she had managed to transform herself—through keen desire and discipline—into a gifted student with a promising future in the sciences. She understood that her greatest weakness was in the social arena. With animals, she had almost telepathic powers to read their moods and desires, but with humans it was the opposite. People were too tricky for her; they often seemed to communicate with one another through subtle, nonverbal cues—for instance, falling into a pattern of laughter in a group, according to some interpreted rhythm she could not fathom. She felt as if she were an alien, watching these strange creature interact.

It seemed to her that there was nothing she could do about her awkwardness with people. What she could control, however, was her own work. She decided she would make herself so efficient in whatever job she had that her social handicap would not matter. But after graduating college with a degree in animal behavior and entering the work world as a consultant in the design of feedlots and cattle handling facilities, she realized, through a series of mistakes on her part, that this was completely unrealistic.

On one occasion, Grandin had been hired by the manager of a plant to improve its overall design. She did an excellent job, but soon she began to notice that the machinery was constantly breaking down, as if it were the fault of her design. She know that the malfunctioning could not be because of any flaws in her work, and with further investigation she discovered that the machinery had problems only when a certain man was working in the room. The only possible conclusion was that he was sabotaging the equipment to make her look bad. This made no sense to her—why would he deliberately work against the interests of the company that had employed him? This was not a design problem she could solve intellectually. She simply had to give up and leave the job.

On another occasion, a plant engineer had hired her to fix a particular problem, but after a few weeks on the job she noticed that there were other parts of the factory that were poorly designed and clearly dangerous. She wrote to the president of the company to point this out. Her tone in the letter was a bit brusque, but she was annoyed that people could be so blind to such design issues. A few days later she was fired. Although no explanation was given, it was clear that her letter the president must have been the cause.

As she mulled over these incidents, and other similar ones that had marred her career, she felt that the source of the problem had to be herself. She had known for years that she often did things that rubbed people the wrong way, and that they avoided her for that reason. In the past she had tried to go about her life ignoring this painful reality, but now her social deficiencies were threatening her ability to make a living.

Ever since she was a child, Grandin had the peculiar ability to see herself from the outside, as if she were looking at another person. It was more of a sensation that would come and go, but as an adult she realized she could use this gift for practical effect, by looking at her past mistakes as if watching another person in action.

For instance, in the case of the man who had sabotaged the machinery, she could clearly recall how she had barely interacted with him and the other engineers, and how she had made a point of doing everything herself. She could see in her mind the meetings in which she had presented her design ideas with rigorous logic and not opened them up for discussion. In the case of the letter to the president, she could recall how she had bluntly criticized people in front of their peers and had made no attempt to interact with the man who had hired her. Visualizing these moments with such clarity, she could finally understand the problem—she was making her coworkers feel insecure, useless, and inferior. She had injured their male ego and had paid a price.

Her realization of what had gone wrong did not stem from empathy as it might have for other people—it was a intellectual exercise, like solving a puzzle, or a design problem. But because her emotions were not so deeply involved, it was easier to go through the process and make the necessary corrections. In the future, she would discuss her ideas with engineers, involve them as much as possible in her work, and never directly criticize people for anything. She would practice this in every subsequent job until it became second nature.

Slowly, developing social intelligence in her own way, Temple ironed out much of her awkwardness and her career prospered. In the 1990s, as she grew famous, she was increasingly invited to give talks—initially about her experiences as a professional who had overcome autism, and later as an expert on animal behavior.

In giving these talks, she had imagined that they had gone quite well. They were full of information and appropriate slides to illustrate her ideas. But after a few such lectures she was handed the evaluations from the audience, and what she read was shocking. People complained that she made no eye contact, read her talk mechanically from her notes, and did not engage with the audience, to the point of rudeness. The audience had the impression that she was simply repeating the same talk over and over, with the same slides, as if she were a machine.

Strangely enough, none of this bothered Temple. In fact, the idea of these evaluations excited her. They gave her a clear and realistic picture of herself as other saw her, and that is all she ever needed for self-correction. She pursued this process with great zeal, determined to transform herself into a skilled lecturer. As enough evaluations came in, she pored over them, looking for patterns and criticisms that made sense. Working from this feedback, she taught herself to mix in anecdotes and even jokes, and to make her slides not so logical and tight. She shortened the length of her talks, trained herself to speak without notes, and made sure to take as many questions as the audience wanted to ask at the end.

For those who had seen her initial efforts and then attended her lectures years later, it was had to believe she was the same person. She was now an entertaining and engaging speaker, one who could hold the attention of an audience better than most. They could not imagine how this had come about, which made her transformation seem all the more miraculous.

***

Almost all of use have social flaws of some sort, ranging from the relatively harmless to those that can get us in trouble. Perhaps it could be that we talk too much, or are too honest in our criticisms of people, or take offense too easily when others do not respond positively to our ideas. If we repeat instances of such behavior often enough, we tend to offend people without ever really knowing why. The reason for this is twofold: first, we are quick to discern the mistakes and defects of others, but when it comes to ourselves we are generally too emotional and insecure to look squarely at out own. Second, people rarely tell us the truth about what it is that we do wrong. They are afraid to cause conflict or be viewed as mean-spirited. And so it becomes very difficult for use to perceive our flaws, let alone correct them.

We sometimes have the experience of doing work that we consider to be quite brilliant, and then are rather shocked when we receive feedback from others who do not see it eh same way at all. In such moments we are made aware of the discrepancy between our emotional and subjective relations to our own work, and the response of others who view it with complete detachment, capable of pointing out flaws we could never see. The same discrepancy, however, exists on the social level. People see our behavior from the outside, and their view of us is never what we imagine it to be. To have the power to see ourselves through the eyes of others would be of immense benefit to our social intelligence. We could begin to correct the flaws that offend, to see the role that we play in creating any kind of negative dynamic, and to have a more realistic assessment of who we are.

To see ourselves objectively, we must follow the example of Temple Grandin. We can begin this process by looking at negative events in our past—people sabotaging our work, bosses firing us for no logical reason, nasty personal battles with colleagues. It is best to start with events that are at least several months old, and thus not so emotionally charge. In dissecting these occurrences, we must focus on what we did that either triggered or worsened the dynamic. In looking at several of such incidences, we might begin to see a pattern that indicates a particular flaw in our character. Seeing these events from the perspective of the other people involved will loosen the lock our emotions have on our self-image, and help use understand the role we play in our own mistakes. WE can also elicit opinions from those we trust about our behavior, making certain to first reassure them that we want their criticisms. Slowly, in this way, we can develop increasing self-detachment, which will yield us the other half of social intelligence—the ability to see ourselves as we really are.

Evolutionary Truth

An interesting book recently published, contains:

Notice something else. The atheist naturally thinks that our belief in God is false. That’s just what atheists do. Nevertheless, most human beings have believed in a god of some sort, or at least in a supernatural realm. But suppose, for argument’s sake, that this widespread belief really is false, and that it merely provides survival benefits for humans, a coping mechanism of sorts. If so, then we would have additional evidence—on the atheist’s own terms—that evolution is more interested in useful beliefs than in true ones. Or, alternatively, if evolution really is concerned with true beliefs, then maybe the widespread belief in God would be a kind of “evolutionary” evidence for his existence.

You’ve got to wonder.

Indeed.

Shiro’s Tips

Reading Shiro, a memoir by Shiro Kashiba, famous Seattle sushi pioneer, I ran across this tip by the sushi ‘sensei’:

In Seattle, there are plenty of sushi bars that serve raw salmon. I highly recommend that you don’t indulge unless you know that is has been flash-frozen first. I’m afraid that in some establishments, the process is skipped because the chefs don’t know their fish.

Not any fish can be eaten raw and fresh. Sometimes, for safety’s sake, it’s necessary to lightly frill or flash-freeze a fish to kill the bacteria and parasites inside. It’s the same reason we started cooking meat long ago.

Salmon (and many other river fish) are highly susceptible to parasites. The flash-freezing process kills them off. Plus, it still tastes great. So make sure you or your sushi chef don’t skip this process.

I had no idea this was something to look out for! I wonder if I’ll annoy the next sushi chef I ask about it. Here’s the book:

And another tip, which happens to cover a pet peeve:

I don’t know how many times I’ve had I’ve had to hold my tongue behind the sushi bar when a diner soaks a piece of sushi in soy sauce as if putting a tortilla chip in a bowl of guacamole. Using too much soy sauce kills the fresh flavor of the fish and rice. Remember that sushi rice has already been seasoned. Dip the fish side of the sushi briefly in the soy sauce to enhance the flavor, not overpower it.

Also, when eating sushi, you don’t need to put wasabi in the soy sauce [emphasis mine]. First-time sushi-goers might not realize this, but the sushi chef applies the wasabi when making the sushi.

This is different from sashimi, where you may want to add a hint of wasabi to your soy sauce before lightly dipping the slab of fish in.

So remember: soy sauce with sushi is not like ketchup with fries. Just a drop or so will enhance the taste. That’s all you need.

Preach it, Shiro! Great, easy-reading book about what sushi was like in America before it became a craze, from one of the first, actual Japanese Itamae in America.

Finding The Walls Of A Box Canyon

How do you fly into a mountain on a perfectly clear day? You don't see it, that's how. You look everywhere but where you should be looking; you see everything but what you should be seeing; you do everything but what you should be doing.
You fail to see that fucking mountain.
You don't fly the airplane like a commercial pilot; you fly it like a student or a child or a fool. You fly it like someone who thinks he is lucky to be in Alaska, someone excited to be out there in the wilderness, like a tourist seeing wolves for the very first time.
You never think to look for it, and so you fly right into a mountain that you didn't know was there.
And within a week, your company hires someone else to take your place, and he doesn't know a damn thing about mountains either.
Welcome to the Last Frontier.

(From The Map of My Dead Pilots by Colleen Mondor)

Veritas Odium Parit

Terence, in his Andria, wrote that truth can breed hatred.

From Crimes Against Logic:

The slogan, “You are entitled to your own opinion” is so often repeated that it is near impossible for the brain of a modern Westerner not to have absorbed it.

Like many other views that have at times enjoyed universal assent, however, it isn’t true. You don’t really have a right to your own opinions. And the idea that you do, besides being false, is forever invoked when it would be irrelevant even if it were true.

The Irrelevant Right

Before showing that this cliché is false, let’s first be clear that its common use in discussion or debate really does amount to a fallacy. It is often used preemptively, when an assertion is prefaced with the acknowledge that “Of course, you are entitled to you opinion, but …” Yet its more basic use, which the above acknowledgement is intended to preempt, is false.

Jack has offered some opinion—that President Bush invaded Iraq to steal its oil, let’s say—with which his friend Jill disagrees. Jill offers some reasons why Jack’s opinion is wrong and after a few unsuccessful attempts at answer them, Jack petulantly retorts that he is entitled to his opinion.

The fallacy lies in Jack’s assumption that this retort is somehow a satisfactory reply to Jill’s objections, while, in fact, it is completely irrelevant. Jack and Jill disagreed about Bush’s motivation for infacing Iraq, and Jill gave reasons to believe that Jack was mistaken. She did not claim that he had no right to this mistaken view. By pointing out that he is entitled to his view, Jack has simply changed the subject from the original topic, the reason Iraq was invaded, to a discussion of his right. For all it contributes to the invasion question, he may as well have pointed out that whales are warm-blooded or that in Spain it rains mainly on the plains.

As with most of our fallacies, once seen, it is obvious. Here is a simple way of putting it. If the opinions to which we are entitled might nevertheless be false, the entitlement cannot properly be invoked to settle a dispute. It adds no new information on the original matter; it does nothing to show that the opinion in question is true.

Interpreting the cliché to exclude the possibility of falsity—that is, to mean that we are entitled to have all our opinions be true—has two problems. First, it is ridiculous. Second, it does not in fact make the entitlement to an opinion relevant in deciding who is correct in any dispute. If Jack has a right to his true opinion then presumably Jill has a right to hers too. But then, since Jack and Jill disagree, one of them must be suffering a rights violation; one of them has a false belief. So, even if we had the right to true beliefs, that would only show that it is a right that is violated all the time, on precisely those occasions when our opinions are in fact false. In any dispute, to know whose right to a true belief is being violated we would first need to settle the original dispute—in the case of Jack and Jill, about President Bush’s reason for invading Iraq. And a diversion on the matter of rights gets no one any closer to answering that question.

So, even on the strongest, and utterly incredible, interpretation of our opinion entitlement, it is irrelevant to anything else we might be debating. Why then is insisting on one’s right to an opinion such a popular argumentative ploy?

In part, it is encouraged by an ambiguity in the word entitlement. It has a political or legal interpretation, by which we are all entitled to any opinion we might have, however groundless. But it also has an epistemic interpretation, that is, one related to, or concerned with, truth or knowledge. You are entitled to an opinion, in this epistemic sense, only when you have good reasons for holding it: evidence, sound arguments, and so on. Far from being universal, this epistemic entitlement is the kind you earn [emphasis mine]. It is like being entitle to boast, which depends on having done something worth boasting about.

So, the two senses of entitlement could not be further from each other. Yet it is too tempting to muddle them. The implied argument of the muddler runs as follows:

1. If someone is entitled to an opinion then her opinion is well-supported by evidence. (This is precisely what it means to be entitled to an opinion.)
2. I am entitled to my opinion (as is everyone in a democratic society).
3. Therefore, my opinion is well-supported by evidence.

This is a beautiful example of the fallacy of equivocation, i.e., slipping between different meanings of a word in an argument that would be valid only if the word were used with the same meaning throughout.

Once pointed out, it’s easy to see that this confusion of the political with the epistemic notion of entitlement is a mistake. And though, strictly, that will do for the purposes of this book, I don’t want to leave the matter here. Even if the cliché that we are entitled to our opinions is not employed in the truly egregious way so far discussed, it is part of a mindset that increasingly impedes the free flow of ideas and their robust assessment. Many people seem to feel that their opinions are somehow sacred, so that everyone else is obliged to handle them with great care. When confronted with counterarguments, they do not pause and wonder if they might be wrong after all. They take offense.

The culture of caution this attitude generates is a serious obstacle to those who wish to get at the truth. So it is important to strip away any bogus ideas that support the attitude, such as the idea that we all have a right to our own opinions.

Rights and Duties

To see that there is really nothing at all to this idea that we have a right to our opinions we need only understand one basic point about rights, namely, that rights entail duties [emphasis mine]. I don’t mean to endorse the fashionable slogan, “No rights without responsibilities,” which is supposed to justify policies whereby the government imposes good behavior conditions on the receipt of social welfare. I mean something more fundamental about rights: they are defined by the duties to which they give rise.

The law gives all citizens a right to life. Your right to life means that everyone has a duty not to kill you. This is not something that a government may or may not decide to associate with your right to life; it is that right. A law that did not impose on others a duty not to kill you would fail to establish your right to life. Does your right to life mean that others have a duty to feed  you, to house you, or to provide you with medical care? These are hotly debated questions, but no one doubts that the answer to these questions about others’ duties are what define and delimit the right to life.

So when anyone claims a right, first ask which duties does this right impose on others; that will tell you what the right is supposed to be. And it also provides a good test for whether there is, or should be, any such right. It will often be clear that no one really has the implied duties, or that it would be preposterous to claim they should.

Mary Robinson, in her former role as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, claimed that we have a human right to be healthy. Yet, without qualification it is difficult to know what she could possibly have meant. According to the World Health Organization:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Yet everyone ages and dies. And when they do, their physical, mental, and social well-being are less than complete. So the simple fact of human mortality means that everyone’s right to be healthy is ultimately violated, and someone has failed to do his duty. But what could that duty be? To find a remedy for human mortality, presumably. But who could possibly bear this burden? Surely not each of us, who mostly know so little about the mechanics of human aging.

There is, of course, no unqualified human right to good health, any more than there is a human right to all those other things that it would be nice to have—such as long eyelashes and silk sheets—but which no one has a duty to provide. If she wanted to make sense of her claim, Mary Robinson should have started with the duties rather than the right. What duties does each of us have with respect to others’ health or governments with respect to the health of its citizens? Then we would know what this right to good health is supposed to amount to.

Opinion Duties

What then are the duties that the right to your opinions might entail? What am I obliged to do to respect this right? Let’s start from the boldest possible demands and word down to the more humble.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to agree with you?

No. If only because that would be impossible to square with the universality of the right to an opinion. I, too, am entitled to my own opinion which might contradict yours. Then we can’t both do our duty toward each other. And think of the practical implications. Everyone would have to change his mind every time he met someone with a different opinion, changing his religion, his politics, his car, his eating habits. Foreign vacations would become as life-changing as the brochures. claim.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to listen to you?

No. I haven’t the time. Many people have many opinions on many matters. You cannot walk through the West End of London without hearing some enthusiast declaring his opinions on our savior Jesus or on the Zionist conspiracy or some other topic of pressing concern. Listening to them all is practically impossible and not therefore a duty.

Does your right to your opinion oblige me to let you keep it?

This is closest to what I think most mean when they claim a right to their opinion. They do so at just that point in an argument when they would otherwise be forced to admit error and change their position. And this is also the weakest possible interpretation of the right and thus the most likely to pass the test.

Yet, it is still too strong. We have no duty to let others keep their opinions. On the contrary, we often have a duty to try to change them. Take an obvious example. You are about to cross the street with a friend. A car is coming yet your friend still takes a stride into the road. Knowing that she is not suicidal, you infer she is of the opinion that no cars are coming. Are you obliged to let her keep this opinion?

I say no. You ought to take every reasonable measure to change her opinions, perhaps by drawing her attention to the oncoming car, saying something like, “Look out, a car is coming.” By so doing, you have not violated her rights. Indeed, she will probably thank you. On matters like whether or not a car is about to crush them, everybody is interested in believing the truth; they will take the correction of their errors as a favor. The same goes for any other topic. If someone is interested in believing the truth, then she will not take the presentation of contrary evidence and argument as some kind of injury.

It’s just that, on some topics, many people are not really interested in believing the truth. They might prefer it if their opinion turns out to be true—that would be the icing on the cake—but truth is too important. Most of my friends, though subscribing to no particular religion, claim to believe in a “superior intelligence” or “something higher than us.” Yet they will also cheerfully admit to the absence of even a shred of evidence. Never mind. There is no cost in error, because the claim is so vague that it has no implications for action (unlike the case of the oncoming car). They just like believing it, perhaps because it would be nice if it were true, or because it helps them get along with their religious parents, or for some other reason.

But truth really is not the point, and it is most annoying to be pressed on the matter. And to register this, to make it clear that truth is neither here no there, they declare, “I am entitled to my opinion.” Once you hear these words, you should realize that it is simple rudeness to persist with the matter. You may be interested in whether or not their opinion is true, but take the hint, they aren’t.

H. G. Wells On Humanity

Sink me, I’ve taken to Twitter and abandoned ye olde blog. Sorry about that, but I know no one reads this darn thing anyway.

Tough Questions Answered’s Bill Pratt wrote about H. G. Wells’ conversion from naïve humanist to shell-shocked realist. In his book, A Short History of the World from 1937, Wells wrote:

Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, and that our children will live in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever-widening circle of achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state…form but the prelude to the things that man has yet to do.

To be followed by this after World War II, from A World at the End of Its Tether:

The cold-blooded massacres of the defenseless, the return of deliberate and organized torture, mental torment, and fear to a world from which such things had seemed well nigh banished—has come near to breaking my spirit altogether…“Homo Sapiens,” as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.

Pratt’s point is one that should—but doesn’t and never will—resonate with too many: Mankind cannot pull itself out of the quicksand, we need a supernatural hand up. Our very natures are immensely flawed and as such, you cannot save yourself.

Live with it or die with it.

Penn And Fredder

I had quite the Twitter interaction with Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller and a bunch of other guys.

One of the funnier ones with with a guy, TalonNYC who asserted that all religions are true. After pointing out that many religions have beliefs that directly contradict each other (Judaism and Islam, for example, do not believe that Jesus Christ is God while Christians do) hence to say that all religions are true is an illogical statement. They can’t all be true—although they can all be false.

This is philosophy of religion 101, as it were, but it astounds me how many people don’t give any thought whatever to beliefs they hold! The very thing they accuse Christians of doing. Talon’s flimsy refuge was to point out that they’re all true to different people. Which of course continues the fallacy—either something is true or it isn’t. True for you but not for me is relativist nonsense and doesn’t hold in the real world.

Another guy, a likeable fellow name Mike Rigsby, made the claim that ‘faith isn’t rational.’ That one took me aback a few seconds. I asked him if he knew there was a difference between blind faith and rational faith. His reply was unclear. Whatever, the meat of the Twitter really comes between Penn and Me.

Penn started the whole thing with the following:

I've been playing bebop jazz for 10 years. Today, I'm dusting off the electric bass and I'm going to play some rock and roll. NoGod Band

to which I responded:

for someone who knows there's no God, you're awfully concerned by Him. The noGod band? Case of stalking The Big Guy?

He said:

I'm really concerned. The damage from superstition hurts us all.

With a slight tongue-in-cheek, I said:

aw come on Penn, including Santa?? ;)

Obviously in jest.

That started the whole heap. Here are some various statements by the big man himself, all made without providing proof:

Any belief in god is a negation of love for other people. (Asked him why he believed this, no answer.)

Morality is strictly human and not god. It's based on love and survival. Religion has no morals (After I said: “find humor in Penn talking moral rights bcos I wonder what his source of this right is, if not God.”)

I replied:

love subjective; practical for you not same for me. For you, morality choice. No objective standard,yes?

Or if base morality strictly on survival, how different are we from animals who eat their own young?

He then said:

Not just survival, also love and practicality. As far as killing one's young, that's a bible thing.

Oooh, snarky, snarky, snarky! Of course, all this proves it’s quite difficult to converse in less than 140 characters.

He continues:

Yes, "faith" is the true hate and evil.

After I said:

On love. So whatever I "love" is my morals? How about if I love killing Jews? That's OK by your defn?

He goes:

Yes, the religious have been big on killing jews.

Completely dodging the question with another cute little ad hominem which I pointed out with “nice sleight of keyboard, Penn! ”

Here’s where it got exciting, when he made the following statement with me and him going back and forth:

@fwoodbridge - Atheism doesn't need to be provable. There's nothing to prove. It's an absence of belief.

@pennjillette you need to look at a dictionary, Penn.

@fwoodbridge - Check the Oxford English dictionary. Absence of belief or disbelief - like everyone is most gods.

@pennjillette simple question: does God exist?

@fwoodbridge How would anyone know that? I know that I'm not taking your word for it, and that makes me an Atheist.

@pennjillette So you're not an Atheist, you're an Agnostic

@fwoodbridge  - Nope, agnostic is an epistemological term, once your agnostic you still have to be Atheist or Theist.

@pennjillette One doesn't necessarily go from "I don't know" to "I know: No God" Penn

I decided to use his much-loved OED (to which I happen to have access!) to define the terms:

@pennjillette Agnostic-One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown

@pennjillette OED: Atheist-One who denies or disbelieves the existence of a God.

He continues with this howler:

@fwoodbridge - If you don't know, you can't believe and if you can't believe, you're atheist.

@pennjillette Penn, you can't go from NOT KNOWING to KNOWING enough not to believe. Illogical.

@fwoodbridge It's just epistemological. How things are known. In the meantime, there's no god, and I believe you know that.

@pennjillette You believe I know this. On what grounds do you believe I KNOW there's no God?

@fwoodbridge - Saying I KNOW there's no god, is the same as saying I don't believe in god, unless I AM omniscient. I'm not god.

@pennjillette BTW, happy to see you know one property of God is omniscience. Which makes Him different from Santa or unicorns!

@pennjillette In which case, you've just made a truth claim. Now prove it.

@fwoodbridge - Well, you're thinking enough that I think you'll be atheist is a little while. I hope it works out for you.

@pennjillette Ah, the well-known "wish you well" dodge to providing proof! :-D Thanks, Penn. A real pleasure chatting with you!

@fwoodbridge - Thanks, man. It's really not a dodge. I did explain my point, and I think you understand it well.

Well, if you consider not answering any questions with any definitive answers, getting the basic idea behind agnosticism and atheism wrong, indulging in ad hominem utterances, he was a really great guy with whom to speak!

I’ll still catch his very entertaining show though. I just won’t trust his judgment on matters religious—especially when you consider this is his next book!!

Verily, Verily

My Amazon review of Verily, Verily by Jon Sweeney:

For many Christians and non-Christians alike, the King James Version of the Bible--also known as the Authorized Version for reasons you'll find outlined in good detail--is a work of art, a work of immense social and cultural influence and, not least, a work of beauty.
So says author Jon Sweeney in Verily, Verily and I believe he does a convincing job of it. In fact, so convinced was I that it was only after a few chapters that I ventured out to my local used bookstore to find a copy. This was a step I'd never taken before because, like many, I didn't grow up reading that particular translation, preferring instead the modern--more understandable--ones like the New International Version among others. Like Sweeney, I now this is a mistake and, also like Sweeney, I urge others so inclined to get one and see again (or maybe for the first time) what an astounding piece of work was the KJV.
After opening with a sad tale of this translation's neglect, the reader gets introduced to what I've come to understand is the unseen hand of the KJV influencing everyday language ("in the twinkling of an eye" comes from 1 Corinthians 15:52; "seek and ye shall find" Matthew 7:7) and, in its role as a religious book of course, we see it influencing the law, politics, science, and philosophy.
So why isn't the KJV read more these days? Sweeney believes that it is because slowness is required, just as in the reading of poetry, yet another discarded staple of yesteryear. "Our time and attention is splintered in ways that Benjamin Franklin never could have imagined possible. As a result, few of us practice the discipline of reading slowly, and the KJV demands the slowest, most careful reading of any translation."
After a chapter detailing the history of the process by which the KJV became both the King James Version and the Authorized Version, in itself a resoundingly fascinating tale of Kings James and Henry, and the English Civil war, the reader begins to understand the travails a lot of devout people went through to bring this translation of the Bible to us. If Henry VIII hadn't wanted out of the Catholic church, it isn't a lie to say that the Latin Vulgate Bible, which only the most educated (among which were priests) would have been able to read much less understand, would have been the only Bible for millennia.
In essence, and ironically since it was authorized by a King, the KJV is the symptom of a democratization of religion, bringing God to the common people as it were. Sweeney continues on to show how the KJV affected the work of literary luminaries such as Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson, but also people like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. and even "African-American" spirituals.
It was right around here that I began to sense a slightly defeatist tone to Sweeney: he starts alluding to the Bible's generally "difficult past" with respect to its seeming condolence of slavery and "the contradictions of the Bible on matters of justice" which "have been evident ..." While he does make some attempts at explaining and justifying certain parts of the Bible, I felt he could have done a bit more scholarship. Paul Copan's new book, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God is the type of work that tackles and resolves a lot of what Jon Sweeney was to ready to throw up his hands on. I suggest those interested pick that up.
Such illustrious atheists as Christopher Hitchens will readily admit that the King James Version is a masterpiece of English literature (irrespective of its content, of course, in Hitchens' case) and more care should be allotted to its study. Sweeney responds in chapters seven and eight by quoting and explaning at length different verses from the KJV. He recounts that one of the aims of the translation committee was to translate in such a way as to provide an easy oratory: the King James Version was meant to be read aloud and these verses show that up to good effect.
If you enjoy history, language, or British history for that matter, or are a curious and studious Christian, "Verily, Verily" will draw you in and thoroughly entertain. I recommend this despite some misgivings about strictly, overly pedantic theological matters. Let's not let this wonderful book die out; after all, it has provided four centuries of tutelage and wonder to humanity.

Hope you get it, it’s a great read.

Good Motto

Who Made God?

Professor Edgar Andrews on answering that question:

The question "if God made everything who made God?" is an unanswerable question only because it is a nonsense question because it fails to define what it means by God. If you define God as I do as the God of the Bible, the uncreated creator of all things then you can see how foolish it is to ask who created the uncreated one.

H’m, makes sense to me.

What’s So Great About Christianity

My review of Dinesh D’Souza’s book, on Amazon:

Dinesh D'Souza is a battle-hardened Christian apologist who has taken on such notable atheists as Christopher Hitchens, Michael Shermer, Daniel Dennett, and Peter Singer all recorded for posterity on YouTube. A notable characteristic of each debate is that his opponents have all been extremely congratulatory of D'Souza, they've actually walked away licking some wounds!

Of course, before picking up this book, I did not know any of this. D'Souza has long been a favorite author and I was surprised to see he'd written such a book so I picked it up to find a well-written collection of a case for Christianity, based solely on logic and science. He promises this right out of the gate and stuck to this promise throughout the book: no revelatory expositions, no pointing at this or that Bible verse. He writes on page 11, for example, that his "modus operandi is one of skepticism, to view the claims of religion in the same open-minded way that we would view claims of any other sort. The difference," he continues, "between me and my atheist opponents is that I am skeptical not only of the allegedly irrational claim of religion but also of the irrational claims made in the name of science and of skepticism itself."

Like a prosecuting attorney building a case against atheism, D'Souza deftly and succinctly handles all the most important questions raised by the New Atheists: the question of evolution, the question of evil (how can a good God exist in the face of such evil), the question of an objective morality not dependent on opinion, the veracity and historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Chapter 15 in particular (The World Beyond Our Senses: Kant and the Limits of Reason) is a brilliant precise of how we know what we know and whether we can trust it.

All this combines to make a strong case that religious faith in general and Christianity in particular is not altogether unreasonable and that while there are no absolute proofs on its side, the skeptical atheist also bears the burden of proof, only this time of proving that God doesn't exist. A burden, he surmises, they cannot rationally support. In the end, 'What's So Great About Christianity' did end up proving certain things: that D'Souza here, as always, is a steadfast good writer of formidable intelligence, a fact attested to by none other than Christopher Hitchens on several occasions. That the religion of Christianity doesn't require blind, unthinking faith and is thoroughly defensible against atheistic and secular attacks and that we today live in a world positively molded by the tenets of Christianity.

For the budding Christian apologist setting out on the path, this book sits high on the list of recommended titles. Those who understand the basics can then move on to William Lane Craig's [[ASIN:1433501155 Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics]]. Be careful however, for this is an area of philosophy that is not only fascinating beyond belief (no pun intended), but also rigorous.

Highest recommendations.

Complexity

Quote of the day:

No, the real lesson is that under conditions of true complexity—where the knowledge required exceeds that of any individual and unpredictability reigns—efforts to dictate every step from the center will fail. People need room to act and adapt. Yet they cannot succeed as isolated individuals, either—that is anarchy. Instead, they require a seemingly contradictory mix of freedom and expectation—expectation to coordinate, for example, and also to measure progress toward common goals.

My takeaway from this is the idea of managing from a center.That's what'll end up kicking your but.
Buy and read this book, it's truly excellent.

The Moral Atheist

A moral atheist is like a man sitting down to dinner who doesn’t believe in farmers, ranchers, fishermen, or crooks. He believes the food just appears, with no explanation and no sufficient cause.” —Greg Koukl, Relativism

Get the book:

Something I Read Today

In Classical Education and the Home School by Douglas Wilson et al:

“The education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. To it all politics, all war, all literature, all money-making, ought to be subordinated; and ever parent ought to feel, every hour of the day, that, next to making his own calling and election sure, this is the end for which he is kept alive by God—this is his task on earth.” — R.L. Dabney, On Secular Education

Well. It seems I’ve got work to do.

A Vision

Reading Twitter has become one of my favorite pastimes. It is rather wonderful just how much information it is possible to impart even under the limit of 140 characters.

This morning, one of my regular posters, @fedupjeff who, as you may be able to tell from his moniker, is fed up, posted a link to a DailyCaller interview of Reid Buckley. Reid is the brother of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. and has written a new book titled The Idiocy of Assent in which he expresses some rather troubling thoughts on the future of the conservative movement in particular and of the United States in general.

Here’s a snippet of an answer about the dark future for conservatives whom he calls a “base that is bit by bit disappearing”:

Number one, the American public is almost incredibly ignorant [about] the founding of the Republic. Number two, there is a paganization in our culture. And number three, we have to absorb a whole bunch of Hispanics and also Asians, who in all their history, going back before the middle ages, have never experienced free government or the notion of a republic. That takes a huge change in their native reflexes, and it requires acculturation which is not done by the immigration services.

My wife was born in Spain, raised in Spain, she’s now an American citizen. And I can tell you, the instructions she got to become an American citizen were incredibly superficial — none of the major philosophical questions that brought up our republic.

She doesn’t really have much understanding of the structure of the government. And why should she? Nobody is really giving that kind of instruction any more.

H’m. As one who arrived on the shores of the United States more than a decade ago, I can attest to this fact. I was lucky enough to have been born an American by birth, and it was all too easy for me to take the road much travelled and affix my lips to the American teat while ignoring the rich philosophical history that created this exemplary singular nation.

In fact, I did start down that path until—as I’ve written about in the past—I read Shelby Steele’s wonderful book. This is not the way many Americans, especially those born here see America today and much the poorer we are and will be for it!

Obama’s Rage

Get yours and up his!

Fact and Fable

Thomas Sowell’s column on Medical Facts and Fables contains the following difficult truism:

The most basic fact is that it is cheaper to remain sick than to get medical treatment. What is cheapest of all is to die instead of getting life-saving medications and treatment, which can be very expensive.
Despite these facts, most of us tend to take a somewhat more parochial view of the situation when it is we ourselves who are sick or who face a potentially fatal illness. But what if that decision is taken out of your hands under ObamaCare and is being made for you by a bureaucrat in Washington?

At 2400 pages, putting BO-Care into practice is sure to be “interesting” but Sally Pipes’ new book, The Truth About ObamaCare lays the facts out in “plainest English,” as Sowell puts it. In effect, what is the expected quality of healthcare under BO-Care? If government-run healthcare around the world is any guide, it’s going to be rough.