Attacking Evolution

Published in 1929:

We boast of scientific investigation, and yet we're the only supposedly civilized country where thousands of supposedly sane citizens will listen to an illiterate clodhopping preacher or politician setting himself up as an authority on biology and attacking evolution.

From Dodsworth, by Sinclair Lewis.

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Morals and Witches

From Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue:

What emotivism asserts is in central part that there are and can be no valid rational justification for any claims that objective and impersonal moral standards exist and hence that there are no such standards.  Its claim is of the same order as the claim that it is true of all cultures whatsoever that they lack witches.  Purported witches there may be, but real witches there cannot have been, for there are none.  So emotivism holds that purported rational justification there may be, but real rational justifications there cannot have been, for there are none.

Economist Intelligence Unit: "30% Chance of Global Depression"

On March 20, 2009, the Economist Intelligence Unit—a fantastic source of information on the business climate in every country in the world—predicted a 30% chance for the world economy growing at less than 1% for the next fiver years, which would qualify as a depression.

Depression would be characterised by mass bankruptcies and job losses. In a vicious cycle of debt deflation, the burden of debt would rise in real terms as collateral declined in value and incomes fell. As bad debts piled up, banks' balance-sheets would be weakened, resulting in forced asset sales. These would drive down prices further. Like banks and financial institutions, households and companies would “deleverage”, disposing of assets at fire-sale prices to pay down debt.

Under this scenario, the major developed economies would grow by less than 1% on average over the next five years. Even when growth resumes, it would do so at levels too low to create jobs for a new generation of unemployed.

Alternative scenarios are not good either.

...there is a 60% chance that the stimulus operations now underway will restore stability by 2010/11, albeit at lower growth levels than we’ve been accustomed to.

[...]

A third scenario, in which failing confidence in the US economy leads to mass withdrawal from dollar-denominated assets and a collapse in the US currency, carries a 10% probability.

Though I've heard "May you live in interesting times" is not actually a Chinese curse, it would be a serious curse if it were.

Link to the press release.

US Pension Management Shifted into Stocks from Bonds Before Crash

When investing, a general guideline is that when everyone is doing something is definitely not the time to try it for the first time. Too bad the agency overseeing millions of Americans' pensions didn't go by this one.

Just months before the start of last year's stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks.

Link.

Farm Fields

U.S. Citizenship as an Army Recruiting Incentive

The U.S. is now in the business of trading citizenship for war-making.

The U.S. Army has announced that it will accept immigrants with temporary visas for the first time since the Vietnam War in an effort to fill critical capacity gaps. Immigrants will be offered fast-track U.S. citizenship in return for service.

"The American army finds itself in a lot of different countries where cultural awareness is critical," said Lt-Gen Benjamin C Freakley, the top recruitment officer for the army.

"There will be some very talented folks in this group," he told the New York Times.

"The army will gain in its strength in human capital, and the immigrants will gain their citizenship and get on a ramp to the American dream."

The fragmentation of the U.S. Army into many countries is a sign of what is commonly called overextension. Overextension simply means that the military is failing at what it is trying to do. If it were not failing, there would be no talk of overextension. Overextension is a euphemism.

That the Army "finds itself" fragmented is a sign of poor management by military leaders and insufficient oversight by citizens. The Army does not "find itself" in places, transported there mysteriously. If it is true that soldiers feel this way, then the inadequate rationale for war-making that has infected U.S. culture since the end of World War II continues. How is it that the Army cannot understand how it has gotten where it is? How is it that an Army Lieutenant-General suddenly discovers that the Army has become fragmented, as if he is Rip Van Winkle awaking beneath a tree after a long slumber?

Offering United States citizenship to immigrants in exchange for their services waging war is a reproachable strategy, indicative of a broken volunteer military and an American culture that no longer understands or agrees upon the reasons it takes violence across the globe.

Offering the "American dream" as an incentive at a time when hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing jobs, homes, and retirements shows just how desperate the Army has become. The lack of any public commentary or awareness of this new Army program shows just how ambivalent the U.S. citizenry—we—have become about managing ourselves and our country.

The Regulation of Pants

I recently read the entire LR Village Code. Okay, not all of it. I skipped some sections, like Title 3, Chapter 8: Fire Insurance Companies (abbreviated 3-8). But I did read others that I really should have skipped, such as 3-6: Raffles and 4-6: Explosives and Fireworks. How could I not read 4-6? I'm stuck inside and looking for divertimento.

When sequestered indoors in winter and reading your municipal code for laughs—in other words, when in my situation—the first place to look for amusement is not, paradoxically, 3-3: Amusements Generally. The real action is in...3-2: Liquor Control!

Judging by page counts in the LR Code, liquor is at best the most heavily-regulated activity in LR and at worst tied for most regulated with 7-6: Sewer Use and Service, and that only due to the latter's abundance of definitions for things like Properly Shredded Garbage, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Compatible Pollutant, Slug, Floatable Oil, Effluent Criteria, Useful Life, and Control Manhole (the last of which goes straight onto my list of potential gay bar names). Without those useful definitions, 3-2 wins by many, many pages, this even though it only defines two terms! Really, who needs to have liquor explained? Answer: far fewer people than need sewer use and service explained.

The LR Code sets out the law of the Village, similar to, but distinctly different from, the law of the Jungle. Law in general has been described in many ways, including "invisible forces in the air", "something people get paid too much for", and "that shit that no one understands or likes". The LR Code contains the law that the people of LR have determined will guide and regulate their tiny piece of the world. Delightful things are in the LR Code. Delightful things are in 3-2: Liquor Control.

In Section 6 (3-2-6): Restrictions on Issuance of License, the citizens of LR define who among them may not obtain a liquor license. Such persons include

3-2-6D: A person who is not a citizen of the United States.
3-2-6F: A person who has been convicted of being the keeper of a house of ill fame.
3-2-6G: A person who has been convicted of pandering or other crime or misdemeanor opposed to decency and morality.
3-2-6P: Any elected public official, law enforcing officer, the Village President or member of the Village Board of Trustees, LR officer or employee or member of any LR board or commission.

The citizens thus exclude from obtaining a liquor license both keepers of houses of ill fame as well as elected officials, panderers as well as the Village President. 3-2-6P protects against conflicts of interest. Determining what 3-2-6D protects the village from will require more analysis.

If you should be so lucky as to avoid inclusion in the exclusions of 3-2-6 and you successfully obtain a liquor license, your first step will likely be hiring employees to sell your liquor. Your second step will be deciding what those employees will wear, naturally. To do so, turn first to LR Code 3-2-16: Attire:

3-2-16A: Every licensee and every employee...shall be properly and decently attired during the course of the sale [and] distribution...of alcoholic liquors of every description.... Topless or similar costumes are prohibited.

Shirts? Check. But, you're probably asking, what about pants?

3-2-16B: It shall be unlawful for any licensee or employee...to: 1. Expose his or her genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, natal cleft, perineum, anal region or pubic hair region.

"Dang!" you may say. "How will I sell copious amounts of booze to people if unable to attract them to my bar with pantsless employees?" But, an idea occurs: "What if I have my employees wear devices, costumes and coverings that make them appear to be pantsless?! Yes! Yes, this is the answer!"

3-2-16B: It shall be unlawful for any licensee or employee...to: 2. Expose any device, costume or covering which gives the appearance of or simulates the genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, natal cleft, perineum, anal region or pubic hair region.

"Damn you LR Code!"

You have found, as I did, that the LR Code is always, if not two, at least one step ahead of prurience.

"But," you may stammer, "but what if my employees wear shirts with no fronts? Yes! Again, yes, the answer!"

3-2-16B: It shall be unlawful for any licensee or employee...to: 3. Expose any portion of the female breast at or below the areola thereof.

"No! This can't be! How, how will I sell booze?!" Well, good person, may I make a suggestion? Seeing as 3-2-16B.3 applies specifically to "the female breast", perhaps a male gay bar would be profitable? If you are interested, I have a list of potential bar names that I might be willing to sell you. Let us only hope that 3-2-16A intends the same discrimination toward females as 3-2-16B.

Lest you begin to think that the LR Code only concerns itself with persons of ill fame, it should also be noted that the Code also contains moments of civility by prohibiting anyone from selling liquor "to any person known by them to be an habitual drunkard, insane, mentally ill, mentally deficient or in need of mental treatment" (3-2-18), as well as to minors (3-2-19).

Beyond the regulation of alcohol, the LR Code offers many morsels of insight into the social mores of the LR community and the values of LR citizens. Consider the legal definition of VEHICLE as outlined in 4-5-1:

A machine propelled by power other than human power designed to travel along the ground by use of wheels, treads, runners or slides and transport persons or property or pull machinery and shall include, without limitation, the following: automobile, truck, trailer, motorcycle, tractor, buggy and wagon.

Consider also the legal definitions from 5-2-1 for ANIMAL:

Any and all types of animals, domesticated and wild, male and female, except man,

for CAT:

Any cat, male or female,

and for DOG:

Any dog, male or female.

Lest you begin to think that the Village of LR consists only of marginally-drunken pet owners prone to inebriated buggying, know also that LR citizens care for all of nature, including both noble plants like trees and ignoble plants like weeds. Diseased trees harboring Dutch Elm Disease or the breeding activities of the Elm Bark Beetle are defined as nuisances and are to be removed and burned within ten days of identification for the protection of healthy trees (4-4-1A, B).

The citizenry also knows its weeds, so well that it delineates between Noxious Weeds and mere Other Weeds (4-3-1A, B). Noxious Weeds are: Ragweed, giant and common; Canada thistles and all of its varieties; perennial sow thistle; European bind weed; hoary cress, leafy spurge, Russian knapweed. Other Weeds: Burdock, cocklebur, jimson, blue vervain, common milk weed, wild carrot, poison ivy, wild mustard, rough pigweed, lambsquarter, wild lettuce, curied ock, smart weeds (all varieties), poison hemlock, wild hemp, ox eye daisy, goldenrod, yellow hemlock, buckhorn or other weeds of like kind.

Who know that LR harbored such a plant-menagerie? (If these plants were to be displayed in the Village as a kind of menagerie, the proprietor would have to obtain a license for the "exhibition of inanimate objects" costing $5.00 per day under 3-3-2, control for crowding under 3-3-4A, guard against the show becoming indecent under 3-3-4B, and prevent rioting and any other public disturbance under 3-3-4C, all common occurrences at exhibitions of inanimate objects.)

The LR Code is a fun read if you are predisposed to legal fascination and ruminations on the ability to hold up to 5 pounds of dynamite in one's residence (4-6-2A). The LR Code and other municipal codes reveal to a certain extent how citizens and elected officials think about acceptable and unacceptable activities for humans. These laws regulate how we all live and establish the circumstances under which the state can exercise violence against its citizens through fines, seizure of property, and even imprisonment.

In this way, the municipal code outlines the activities that negate a citizen's quotidian protections against state violence that are outlined in other documents, like the United States Constitution. It is rather remarkable that such an important, consequential line is drawn in nearly incomprehensible legal language. However, the legal language is the way it is because it attempts to do something impossible for the written word: avoid ambiguity.

The law is a system for settling disputes and tries to establish the rules for all parties such that the actions of all people can be equally judged. However, all parties do not interpret language the same way. As an extreme example, consider someone with no knowledge of English. What meaning would they glean from the US Constitution? Words contain no meaning but are instead imparted meaning by their reader. Ambiguity is the unavoidable result of leaving the meaning of words up to every individual who reads them.

Nevertheless, the LR Code defines what is and is not permissible in the Village, but, if challenged, the meaning of the words would be interpreted by the legal system, by lawyers, judges, and juries charged with the responsibility—and power—to decide what words mean and impart consequences on people based on those decisions. This is the basis of one of my greatest fears: to be charged with and punished for something that I do not consider a crime. What I think about it really doesn't matter because deciding if something is a crime is not an individual decision, it is a social decision. (Dostoevsky's book Crime and Punishment—and much of his other writing—explores this fight between individuals and society (often religion) to define right and wrong.) Social decisions often get very messy because society's mores change faster than the individual values making up the society. It is a rare elderly person who thinks kids are doing the right things. And as we all know from the parental cliché, not knowing something is wrong does not excuse you from being punished. How else are you to learn that it is wrong?

Incidentally, this is the same principle underlying one of my major pet peeves. Dog owners in LR rarely if ever discipline their pets that jump on me while walking or charge toward me, murder in their eyes. The dog gets a yell from its owner, and the dog probably gets as much meaning form that yell as it would if it tried to read the LR Village Code. I, however, get serious negative reinforcement to ever step out of my house. Which is fine because it's winter.

Multi-national agriculture, drive by water.

Saudi Arabia, China, and South Korea are all leasing or buying land in other countries on which to grow food. Water demands for agriculture have overwhelmed the water each country has access to domestically, forcing them to look elsewhere.

When a country devotes 40% of its renewable water resources or more to irrigation, it starts to face these water allocation issues.

By 2030, under business as usual, all of South Asia will reach the 40% threshold; the Middle East and North Africa region will have hit 58%.

Agriculture almost always loses out to the industrialising economy, especially to the energy and manufacturing sectors, in such water allocation decisions.

Current trends suggest that by 2030, demand for extra water will soar.

Rapidly industrialising economies across South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, which support approximately 2.5 billion people, will be forced to look elsewhere for water-rich land for their food.

Story from the BBC, which has had several great water stories today!

How much water is in your blue jeans?

A fascinating article from BBC on Unilever's efforts to reduce the water used in their products includes these choice quotes:

"For far too long, businesses like ours have been effectively shipping water around the globe," says Gavin Neath, a spokesperson for Unilever.

"In the past, especially in the US, big was always best," explains Mr Rutherford.

"And the more bubbles and foam the better."

The point of Unilevers water-use reduction? Profit, of course:

Smaller bottles mean less packaging, meaning fewer carbon emissions.

"It also means more can be transported on fewer lorries which reduces fuel, which in turn lowers emissions.

"And making a more concentrated liquid means more goes further, so customers don't have to lug as much detergent from the supermarket as often."

The most exciting thing offered by this story is an interactive graphic that shows how much water is involved in the production of some common goods. The graphic might make me drink much less coffee. See it and the story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7785479.stm