Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

In the history of opera many distinctive movements, one might even call them fashions, have come and gone. That known as bel canto continues to have its admirers among the cognoscenti and I will say a few words about it today. The phrase simply means "beautiful singing" in Italian. That is not a phase that comes or goes. Who could not want the singing to be beautiful? What bel canto generally means when used outside of vernacular Italian is (a) a particular style of singing that its admirers deem beautiful, and (b) the view that the rest of the opera exists mostly as a setting for that singing.  The composers and lyricists behind that setting are expected to give the star vocalists plenty of opportunities for exhibitions of vocal gymnastics (coloratura --light agile soprano voices showing off their stuff). They were also supposed to discourage the orchestra from showing ITS stuff. To the mind of a bel canto enthusiast the orchestral accompaniment should be low-key and support...

 As I explained by the last post, the book WEAPONS GRADE is actually by Don Bentley. But let's get over that and say something about the plot. One thing that Clancy fans (and fans of the whole enterprise) like about these novels is that the author can often work in a surprising amount of quite technical exposition, ideally without losing the thread of a suspenseful spy story.  Consider the discussion of the process of enriching uranium into weapons grade material. That is crucial to the book, and in fact gives it the title. On p. 279 you get a full paragraph in which Mary Pat Foley, Director of National Intelligence, is describing this process, in the White House Situation Room, to Scott Adler, Secretary of State.  "The process of enriching uranium is a straight-forward, well-understood task. Feed material in the form of gaseous uranium hexaflouride is fed into a series of linked centrifuges, known as a cascade. The centrifuges spin at extremely high speeds, generating ce...

  Clancy isn't just a (dead) writer, he is a brand. He is the (continuing) spy-thriller factory.  Clancy passed away in 2013, although the brand lives on. Spy thriller paperbacks with the name "Tom Clancy" prominently displayed on the cover continue to be published. Clancy invented the memorable character of Jack Ryan, a dedicated espionage professional who repeatedly saved the world from its bumbling politicians and the evildoers they coddle, in novels like THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. In some of his appearances he is "only" an analyst, though always the crucial one who gets things right. In other novels he has to take a role in the field, and becomes a tough-guy action hero.  In the Clancy timeline, (the Ryanverse, as it is sometimes called) Ryan eventually becomes President of the United States.  Because that is the natural career path for intelligence analysts.  That limits the amount of derring-do of which he can be the center. Fortunately, he passes the mant...

I find that I characteristically refer to my dogs in a way that avoids alliteration.  I have a pair: a boy and a girl. When it is appropriate to praise them I say "good boy" or, for emphasis "goodest boy" to him. I say, "best girl" to her.  The alliterative phrases "good girl" or "best boy" would seem wrong somehow.  That's the post. 

The Federal Reserve has now met for September and as expected has lowered the base rate in the US banking system, known as the federal fund rate.  This is the first Federal funds rate decrease since the spring of 2020, the start of the Covid crisis. The Fed cut the rate to zero back then to juice the economy. By the time that crisis was deemed to have passed, nearly two years later, inflation was the new crisis. Thus, the Fed recently gave us a round of inflation busting rate increases followed by a frustrating period of holding-them-steady. And now at last a decrease by half a percentage point, or "50 basis points" as monetary economists prefer to say.  You, my reader, may have encountered discussions about the Fed funds rate many times over your years as a "news consumer".  But it is possible no one has explained its significance to you before. Consider this your lucky day. I will italicize the next seven 'graphs. You'll see why.  In general, the ups and d...

For no good reason today I look at an  ambitious work with the name Josef Stalin on the title page,  “Marxism and the problems of linguistics” (1950).  There was a theory among Soviet linguists at the time that all languages can be traced to a single primordial language, and that their job was to suss out what THAT proto-language must have sounded like. This was called the Japhetic theory or “linguistic paleontology.” The advocates of this theory thought they were well within Marxist traditions — developing a dialectical view of the history of language. They also adapted their theories to the terminology of classical Marxist theory. Marx had written of the ownership and control of the means of society as the "substructure" of history and of culture as a "superstructure," suggesting something epiphenomenal.  The Japhetic theorists, accommodating their views to this, discussed language too as part of the "superstructure," that is, because the multiplicity of...

There exist relations of "supply" and "demand" in a rain forest, or in a desert, without human presence much less currency as we recognize it. Let us take a look at how they exist and what that should mean to us.   The creatures of a rainforest are not in need of water. It is all around them.  It is, so to speak, cheap. Indeed, they devote time and energy NOT to the task of finding it but to that of warding it off.  Of getting and staying dry!  Water has a negative market value in such a situation.  The creatures of a desert are very much in need of water. They devote a good deal of time and energy to finding it and to storing it away.  Water has a positive market value and a high one.  Once, while arguing with someone in an internet forum (I was in my 'fierce anarcho-capitalist warrior' mode), someone of a different persuasion told me, "markets aren't natural -- they are social constructs -- otherwise they would exist in the rain forest!" I co...

At the end of last year Charter Communications Inc. and Entropic Communications LLC resolved a patent infringement lawsuit related to data transmission over cable technology, the day before a jury would have begun hearing the case. One of those "courthouse steps" settlements.  I don't know the particulars, but I gather the case may be important to the near future of cable television and the semiconductor industries. It is, then, of broad public interest and the documents filed in the case should NOT be sealed.     Yet they have been sealed, and this has become a transparency issue.  "Judicial records belong to the American people; they are public, not private documents."  Bing Hoa Le, 990 F.3d at 417.    Ruling on unsealing court records poses threat to journalism (rcfp.org) Entropic Communications, LLC v. Charter Communications, Inc. | Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org)

I can't look at a package of Land o' Lakes butter without feeling a sense of loss.  Four years ago,  the company dropped Mia, the "butter maiden," from its package design. Mia had been around since 1928. She was a young indigenous woman, kneeling in stereotypical garb and clutching a Land o' Lakes container. The container had ... an image of Mia on it, clutching a Land o Lakes container.   An inquisitive youth without enough to occupy his time could spend much of it staring at the design wondering how many regressions there are, trying to count the boxes nestled within one another.  How do young people today first encounter the notion of infinite recursion, without Mia?  What is worse: there has been no NEW package design.  The old design of a serene lakeside view has been retained unchanged, except for the absence of Mia.  That big "O" in the center of the product name that once framed her face now frames ... nothing.  Literally, it frames w...

  This is not a day-to-day politics blog. Even in the midst of the final stretch of a Presidential campaign, that is NOT what this is, as my readers have surely noticed. I will not, for example, be reviewing this week's debate here.  Nor is it a personal commentary on J.D. Vance, the VP nominee on the Republican side.  But Vance does seem likely to eclipse even Sarah Palin in the annals of unforgotten unforgiven running mate choices. Not long ago a reporter for a local television station, (a Fox station, if it matters) asked Vance the following simple question. It was phrased as two questions, but we may treat it as one, "What makes you smile? what makes you happy?"  This is known as a softball. Nobody gets the Pulitzer for them, but they aren't "bogus," either. They are generally an opening for a candidate to get an uncomplicated message out. If someone asks a politician, "what makes you smile?" -- what is a non-JD answer? A normal US politician...

  Stop me if you've heard this one.   An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a pub in London. The first one says to the bartender, "I'll have a pint of your finest lager."  Second one, "I'll have just half a pint." Third one, "I'll have a quarter of a pint."  Bartender raises his hand in a "stop" gesture and says to the whole infinite line, "That's enough-- I'm fetching you the full two pints you're asking for." Calculus in one lesson.      

  One dictionary definition of "eudaemonism" is "a theory that the highest ethical good is happiness and personal well-being."   If we are going to relate eudaemonia (literally, a good guardian spirit) to the English word "happiness" we should understand that happiness as so understood cannot be merely pleasure, or some positive sum count of pleasures versus pains. I won't attempt a formal definition, but it suggests a long-term pattern of living well, in an inner condition of serenity, and possessed of the resources adequate to a temperate and rational creature.     I am thinking of this because I recently found the phrase "a pragmatist sort of eudaemonism" in a book review.  I gather that would be a view that actions should be judged by whether they help the actor (and or affected-persons-in-general) achieve happiness.  Not pleasure ...happiness. A sort of midway point between Bentham and Aristotle.  It is small wonder that the phrase was N...

During the final day of August this year, SPD Silicon Valley said that it would become a wholly owned unit of the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, under the name Shanghai Innovation Bank.  Why do I care?  Isn't this just a name change on the other side of the world from me? Well, it IS that. But it has some symbolic significance.  SPD Silicon Valley began life as a joint venture of Shanghai Pudong Development [SPD] on the one hand and the important northern California financial institution, Silicon Valley Bank, on the other.  Silicon Valley Bank was what one would imagine it was from the name: it was for years a bank important to the venture capital and high-tech entrepreneurial world in the Bay Area. It arranged an alliance with SPDB in order to try to make itself a player of global reach, not merely an important regional institution. The creation of their joint venture, SPD Silicon Valley, was an expression of that alliance.  In March of 2023, Silicon Valley ...

  A story from Bloomberg begins: The Biden administration is following the paper trails of some biodiesel producers amid heightened concern the fuels are at times being made with deceptive ingredients that violate federal law. The action by the Environmental Protection Agency comes as farm groups and a growing number of lawmakers press the government to address worries that used cooking oil, or UCO — a valuable ingredient for making renewable fuels - could be fraudulent. The audits seek to track the source of UCO, with at least two probes nearing completion and others expected to start soon, according to people familiar with the matter. Reuters earlier reported the EPA probes. ---------------   The problem is palm oil. Palm oil is one of the world's most frequently employed vegetable oils.  It ends up (sometimes after the recycling of its original use as a culinary oil, hence the term UCO above) as a component in biodiesel, a fuel on which many hopes for a sustainabl...

I'm happy to see that a certain trial in Nevada has come to a conclusion whereby a smug  and  privileged murderer is going to get what is coming to him.   As August ended a jury found Robert Telles guilty of the murder of Jeff German, a reporter for the Las  Vegas  Review-Journal. His beat for the paper had entailed organized crime and political corruption.    Telles stabbed German to death outside of his home in early September 2022. German's editor, Glenn  Cook, gave a wonderful interview after German's body was found, describing the deceased. Cook said  "you could tell" when he was about to break a big story, "he had almost this kind of grouchy streak and  if he was walking around the newsroom with a furrow in his forehead, you knew something big was up and that he was close." Telles was the object of some of German's stories, as Clark County Public Administrator. He was about  to feature in another such story at the time of...

Newsweek offers the following confusing prose, about a case out of Arizona. Italics added.  " The court [SCOTUS] issued an order related to a case raised by the  Republican  National Committee asking the justices to block a lower-court order that blocked enforcement of a 2022 law that would bar registered voters who have not previously provided proof of citizenship from voting in presidential elections, or by mail in any federal elections." The order declined to do so. (Subject to a qualification I'll get to later.) All these negative signs. It's algebra. Two negative signs is a positive number.  Three negative signs is a negative again. Four negative signs (counting now the underlying law as the first negative) give us a positive result again. The people whose ability to vote was contested, CAN vote.  The law says certain people can't vote. A lower court said to Arizona "don't enforce that!" So those people can vote.  The state asked the Justices...