Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Suppose I put forward the following theory of history: human history (or American history, if I want to be specific) is chiefly about a struggle among the providers of various competing psychoactive ("addictive") substances. People who drink a lot of coffee and smoke a lot of tobacco have for a long time believed that they are doing it right and anybody else is doing mind-chemistry wrong. THAT is the key point. Let us call this Critical Pharmacology Theory. Considering contemporary politics, one thing I would be certain to be asked, were I to find any broad audience for this, would be: is this compatible with or at odds with Critical Race Theory. Leave aside the hookum about CRT as it is supposedly being taught in elementary school, or found in the works of Toni Morrison.  It isn't, and it can't be.  CRT used properly refers to a belief expounded upon by, say Derrick Bell or Richard Delgado. It is, so to speak, part of an intra-left debate. It followed upon and was

The United States seems to have lost a comforting illusion. The Republican trickery of keeping a seat open for a year until their own guy could fill it, then four years later rushing through a confirmation because ... the next guy couldn't be allowed to fill it -- this has been rather hard on the notion that Supreme Court Justices are in some important sense above the grubby world of politics. Should we regret the loss of that illusion?  In a book I wrote decades ago, about the history of the politics of the Supreme Court, focusing on the period from FDR to George H.W. Bush, from the court-packing plan to the Clarence Thomas hearings, I took a broad position I called "minimal formalism."  A full-blooded or maximalist formalist would answer "yes" to this question. Indeed, he would probably say, "It has not always been an illusion, for important parts of American history it has been the truth -- we should regret, first, the fact that it became an illusion and

  Joe Madison, a radio host with a show on Sirius XM Urban View, announced Nov. 8 that he will not eat solid food until, as he put it, “Congress passes, and President Biden signs,  the Freedom to Vote Act or the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.” This could be Big. Bigger than anyone is yet saying. Bobby Sands big. So far as I know he has stuck to it. And there is a clock running. The human body needs food, and seldom survives without it for more than 70 days.  (Bobby Sands, the notorious IRA Provo who demanded he be treated by the Ulster authorities as a political prisoner rather than a criminal, died 66 days in.)  That is Joe Madison, not Bobby Sands, above. 

  An AUMF is a Congressional "Authorization for the Use of Military Force."  Our constitutional scheme contemplates a declaration of war as exactly that, the way in which a President as commander in chief receives authorization for the use of military force.  But the U.S. hasn't declared war on anyone for 80 years. And we made peace with those foes 76 years ago.  Since then, there has been a lot of use for military force. Our executives have not been shy about it. We have the fancy initials AUMF by way of a simulation of the original system. So it would be good to see an Aumf (try pronouncing it as a word, it's kind of fun) repealed. that would be a simulation of making peace.    Putting AUMF Repeal Into Context (justsecurity.org)

Nanotechnology is engineering on a very small scale: atom by atom.  One critical consideration in nanotech is that it works at a scale quantum mechanical effects are important.  I love this stuff. I am of the opinion that contemporary science is much too devoted to distinctions among layers of reality defined by scale. So ... physics deals with atoms, chemistry with molecules, biology with organisms. Each presumes its own set of laws and generally ignores rthe laws of the level below it, aside from general hand-waving acknowledgements when diplomatic. Yet the walls among the disciplines are falling down.  That is a subject for other days, it simply explains why I find nanotechnology -- not so much science as a branch of engineering, operating on the border between physics and chemistry.  Only days ago a team of researchers from two great universities, the University of Toronto on the one hand and Rice University on the other, reported the first measurements of the ultra-low-friction be

I've mentioned before in this blog the book Lost in Math, by Sabine Hossenfelder, a prominent German particle physicist.  The idea behind the title of the book is that contemporary physics is too wedded to the beauty and symmetry (even "supersymmetry," like the kind of symmetry that comes from the planet Krypton) and inadequately concerned with the search for data. It may be that physicists have to accept ugly math that does nothing more beautiful than matching the data, in order to move forward. Today I come back to Hossenfelder and her book in order to quote one particular passage, about Karl Popper. It seems plain enough, but in the context of her broader point there is some ambiguity to it.  For now, I'll just provide the quote: "What I learn [at a certain conference/workshop she attended] is that Karl Popper's idea that scientific theories should be falsifiable has long been an outdated philosophy. I am glad to hear this, as it's a philosophy that n

Several sad stories have now emerged for the victims of the Astroworld Disaster this month. What fascinates me most, though, is the League Table instinct.  You have to imagine editors in budget meetings. "Can we call this the worst concert disaster ever? The worst at a rap performance? One of the top ten ever? I need a league table!" Of course, this is 2021 and you are a tad more realistic if you imagine that as a Zoom meeting than if you think of railing across a single large table. For the drama of the thing of course you can do it either way. It's your imagination, not mine.  Personally, I think Astroworld lends itself to compare and contrast exercises with Altamont.  The Altamont Free Concert in Dem. 1969 had such a huge impact not because of the great number of deaths ("only" four) but because the idea of hiring Hells' Angels as a security crew seems so monumentally boneheaded.    Here's a link to a contemporary account.  The Rolling Stones Disaster

  If anything screams "established science" it is the image of the periodic table. Invented 152 years ago, it now adorns the walls of every high school science classroom on the planet.  I knew there had been changes over the years -- those two rows at the bottom especially turn out to be the fruit of discoveries subsequent to Dmitri Mendeleev.  So I recently did some googling, looking for celebratory articles about this two years ago, as the icon passed the 150 years mark.  What I  found was disturbing. The mountains may crumble and Gibraltar may tumble type of disturbing. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132190-400-three-reasons-why-the-periodic-table-needs-a-redesign/  

Writing in a vote is generally an admission of futility.  "Rather than vote for X or Y, I'll write in a vote for Mickey Mouse," one says. If there is only one name on a printed ballot for a particular post, that candidate, then, is generally regarded as a  shoo-in. But like the propositions discussed by Sportin' Life in  Porgy and Bess , it ain't necessarily so. (Sportin' Life is portrayed above, as performed by John W. Bubbles in 1935.)  A write-in campaign was launched this year by the mayor of Buffalo, New York in order to retain the post of Mayor. It has established that, when the candidate is an incumbent, it can work.  Byron Brown, a Democrat who has served four terms as mayor, lost the primary election in June to India Walton: a nurse, union activist, and socialist. The Republican Party did not offer any nominee. So the only candidate listed on the ballots when they were printed up in September was ... India Walton.  What might have been seen as a death

  How important is this? Let us think it over. An "organic" molecule is a molecule that contains carbon-hydrogen bonds. All earthly life depends on carbon-hydrogen bonds. The reverse is not true. Not all organic compounds are parts of organisms.  Still, think of this in Bayesian probability terms. Suppose you had yesterday some reasonable guestimate as to how likely it is that the planet Mars does or has ever harbored recognizable life. Today you learn a new fact. You learn for the first time that Mars has organic molecules.  It is pretty clear that your guesstimate of that probability will have to increase from its prior.  NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered organic molecules such as ammonia on Mars | Daily Mail Online

For years now it has been an axiom that five stocks, each representing companies known for consumer technology, are leading the stock market. The accepted acronym for them has been "FANG," if the A is allowed to do double duty.  Literalists write it out, accordingly, as FAANG.  The stocks are: Facebook, Amazon [Apple], Netflix, and Google.  But Google and Facebook have both changed their names. And other customer-electronics firms are also playing a leading role.  So the wise guys have created a new acronym, "MANA MANA."   Meta -- formerly Facebook Alphabet -- formerly Google Netflix Amazon Microsoft  -- no longer bound. to Windows, still or again a powerhouse Apple Nvidia Adobe. That's cute, and as the title indicates it sounds like muppets singing.  One more thing to say: about Microsoft. It was not included on the original FANG list because Microsoft was at that time considered a company in decline -- a giant that had linked itself too tightly to Windows, wh

I had high hopes for Glenn Youngkin as long ago as ... well, his victory in the primary election against the other (more Trumpian) Republicans in the field. He, like Mitt Romney before him, comes from the world of private equity, and the masterminds of that world are much-maligned, their work does have a disruptive effect that draws enmity. But they do much more good than harm -- amidst those disruptions there is a lot of productive innovation and the displacement of settled inefficiencies. Like Romney's Bain, Youngkin's Carlyle is the object of lurid stories about how it throws people out of work. There is some truth to it. And I feel sympathy, drawn from personal experience, for anyone who has been laid off. During the 2012 campaign, Romney made himself seem utterly unsympathetic toward those experiencing the downside of Bain-stoked disruption. He notoriously said "I like being able to fire people." He was trying to make a point about healthcare policy but this, com

I'll just give the joke as I remember of it and will skip explanation of how it came up.  St Thomas Aquinas walked into a bar and ordered a lot of mead.  The bartender said, "You really plan to drink all that? You have problems?" Because in jokes bartenders are always eager to hear your problems. Aquinas said: "Yes, I just lost my manuscript. An important one, too. I called it the SUMMA THEOLOGICA. It was going to be the definitive explanation of Catholic philosophy, incorporating Aristotle's insights into the body of faith. It was brilliant. I was inspired by God to write it."  Bartender says, "And now it's gone?" Aquinas, "Yes, and I can't help but wonder what message God is trying to send me. Why would he inspire me to write a great work like this and then let me lose it???"  Bartender, "Maybe he was just trying to say, 'You win Summa, you lose Summa.'" 

By most accounts, Elizabeth Holmes' trial for the scam she called "Theranos" is now about half over.  The trial has not gone entirely smoothly. The number of alternative jurors is getting low, in part because one of the alternates seemed more interested in Soduko than in the testimony.  This is ironic in the sense of combining "who would have thought" with "it figgers."  Soduko is a crossword puzzle for 'numbers people.' If that juror is a numbers person, Theranos seems likely to have been the near-perfect trial for them! Yet they missed it. Playing a game with numbers rather than grappling with those the real world provides.  Here's a number: $100 million. That's how much Lisa Peterson put into Theranos on behalf of the DeVos family.  Lisa Peterson is an investment manager for the DeVos' family office. Think of Tom Hagen, who in The Godfather runs a law practice entirely for the Corleone Family. Peterson is the IM equivalent.  Be