I have a new girlfriend and she's better than you,
She's got hotter breasts and a higher IQ!#

The Wonderful State#

The Revealer explains how the Army is trying to develop "spiritual fitness" in soldiers and prepare them to die.#

The test is useful among non-suicidal soldiers too, identifying trainees "who did not seem to have a good connectedness with God or other people," and referring them to support groups moderated by therapist/theologians. Captain Scott McCammon, another Maryland chaplain, uses the test, and reminds his soldiers about the atheist/foxhole adage. "You can know how to dig a foxhole," he told Palmer, "but unless you are spiritually fit, you won't have the courage to stick your head out of the hole…[I] encourage them not to wait until they get into one to start praying. Soldiers need someone or some being stronger than themselves to lean on. They must come to grips with the fact that they are warriors. Is the war just? Do they see a difference between killing and murder, and if so, can they articulate it? Are they ready for death? True character builds through struggling with these questions. They must practice spiritual fitness to live the life the Army calls them to. There is no other way."

If only the United States were religiously homogeneous, then we could claim it was a holy war and they would be rewarded in heaven for their sacrifice. We already know that works for other people.

But because we are not religiously homogenous, a new God must be created without that name, and he is the State. Don Boudreaux comments:#

This, then, is my candidate for the most dangerous idea of modern times: the deification of the state. By this I mean the widespread belief that a particular set of people who proclaim a selfless love of humanity and who follow prescribed rituals that take place in official temples (usually made of marble) can achieve whatever is asked of them by the laity -- if only the priests aren't corrupt and the laity have sufficient faith and tithe generously.

VQP at Kuro5hin.org writes about how to take care of states who aren't subtle enough in their ways of enslaving the population.#

The world would be a better place if all countries were run by caring leaders, dedicated to do their best to get the favour of the voters.

But as we all know, not all countries are like that. Some of them are ruled by merciless dictators that subjugate vast percentages of the population. External states should help those majorities but they currently lack a proven succesful method for that task.

Gender Issues#

Alexander Tabarrok writes about the politically incorrect paper of the month on gender performance in competition.#

The authors compare male and female performance at solving mazes across different incentive systems. In a simple piece-rate system men perform slightly but not markedly better than women, on average the men solved 11.23 mazes in 15 minutes compared to 9.73 for the women, a difference of 1.5. But in a tournament, in which only the highest-paid performer wins, the men significantly improve their performance and the women hardly improve at all. As a result, the gender-gap in performance rises (men complete 15 mazes, the women only 10.8 for a difference of 4.2, stat. significant at p=0.034).

Now here is where it gets really interesting. One might think that this shows that women are less competitive than men. To test this the authors run single-sex tournaments. Surprisingly, in the single-sex tournaments the women's performance improves considerably relative to both their performance in the piece rate system and to their performance in the mixed tournament. Women do like to compete just not against men! Men's performance stays about the same as in the mixed tournament. As a result, when comparing the peformance of the all-male groups versus the all-female group, the gender gap shrinks considerably. Results are summarized in the figure below.

Wendy Koslow writes about rape trials and what is most important.#

I said to the people I was talking with yesterday, "Do you know how much I care about innocent until proven guilty?" I held my fingers an inch apart. "This much."

In most cases, that tenet is very important to me. In capital crimes particularly, since I am vehemently against the death penalty. In non-violent crimes as well, because I'd hate to have someone's life ruined because of something that didn't injure anyone.

But, you're saying, what about the accused rapist? Well, I say, what about the woman whose life has been ruined by the rape? What if she's lying, you say? It's damn unlikely that someone would go through the examinations, the fear, the exposure, the horrors of a trial or potential trial, the invasions of privacy, just to get back at someone or get some attention. But it happens, you say. Not as often as misogynists would like you to believe, I reply.

Leftovers#

Ryan Overbey writes about Buddha images and how more Buddhists don't seem to have a coherent argument against the "Buddha Bikini."#

I'm still terribly amused by this. Here's another angle of thinking about it. The bikini manufacturer is engaging in mass reproduction of Buddha images. Last I checked, producing Buddha images is a meritorious action. All those folks on the factory line must be raking in the punya. Now, if people decide to wear the bikinis, and you can find some rational justification for why this is a desecration of the Buddha image (which, incidentally, I've not seen yet from any of the outraged people—the reaction is always an appeal to common sense or unspoken assumptions), then doesn't the blame lie with the wearer of the bikini? What if I bought a Buddha bikini and hung it on the wall, high above my head, and offered food and incense to it? The bikini manufacturer hasn't done anything wrong here, has it? Rather than harassing Victoria's Secret HQ, you should be attacking individuals wearing the bikini in ways you find disrespectful.

I should stop being snarky and pedantic about this, I know. But it never ceases to amaze me how quickly sophisticated Buddhist discourse on image production, merit generation, and skillful means are chucked out the window in favor of (get ready for the adjectives!) popular, base, degraded, deeply misogynistic cultural prejudices. It's a sobering lesson to all us academic folks studying Buddhism: we can study Buddhist philosophical systems and deep thinkers out the wazoo, but it really doesn't mean much when dealing with the real world.

Make sure you check out the comments where Ryan beats them off.

Moxie writes about her Earth Day.#

1:10 PM: Call President Bush's cell phone and suggest new ways to sacrifice the environment to fatten our wallets.

1:15 PM: Let the shower run for a long time until the water is good and hot. Turn up the central air and open a few windows because it's too steamy in the bathroom.

1:45 PM: My driver takes me to target practice in the Hummer. While cruising on the freeway empty a full ashtray out the window. Laugh maniacally.

Responses#

Michael Feldman writes about different languages and translation.#

In this sense, any writing, or speech, is a sort of translation, from the internal linguistic landscape of one human being to another. Given the astounding diversity of our inner lives, is it any surprise that different interpretations and misunderstandings are the rule rather than the exception?

When moving from one language to another, the differences in memories, resonances and cultural cues evoked are magnified and multiplied. The mysteries of the origins of modern languages are a source of discussion and disagreement among linguists and anthropologists everywhere. Almost all cultures which have been studied have some variation on the Babel myth: that at some point in the misty dawn of civilization all peoples spoke a single, universal language, and that a cataclysmic cultural event resulted in the fragmentation of our linguistic heritage. Whether this is an echo of an actual event or an allegory for the transmigration and differential evolution of cultural groups is open to debate, but the universality of the myth speaks to the importance of language diversification in the lives of tribes and nations from prehistory to the present.

Yesterday I was in school and I was practicing my Chinese characters. A fellow student said something to me about how this was amazing. He said he really wanted to learn one of "those languages" (presumably Asian) because they are "so expressive." Although I did not say this to him, I thought about how naïve he was being.

I draw a parallel to this in the way that many people think Buddhism or Hinduism is very warm, fuzzy, and completely without the bad spots that are in religions of the Book. Obviously those Asians must have a more expressive language if they write with those funny symbols, right?

I wondered to myself if he had ever read Shakespeare and if so, why he would ever begin to think that English was not expressive enough. This turned me to at first suppose that all languages are equally expressive and that possibly different cultures encourage or discourage it--compare letters of English aristocrats to nearly illiterate young people today.

But, I also began to think that perhaps some languages have advantages over others in what is typical meant by "expression."

I will first assume that by "expression" one means the ability to create beautiful poetry or prose, not by the ability to express reality. I think this is reasonable because every language lives in the same world and if one language discovers something first they just have an advantage in that. (For example, see how many English words are used in other languages with regards to computer science.)

I don't think that I could completely categorize everything that influences expression, but I do feel that I can mention a few cases that should demonstrates my mode and encourage it in you, if you are interested.

First, one may be inclined to notice that some languages have an advantage in rhyme if possess few word endings or a large number of words that end the same. Take, for example, Italian verbs--very few special cases and many of the different tense/gender/plurality combinations end the same.

Secondly, one may be concerned with variety. If a language possesses a large number of synonyms then speakers of that language have an advantage in maintaining a diversity of words.

Thirdly, consider allusions and multiple interpretations. If a language has a large number of homonyms or words that are made of very similar (yet distinct from many other words) then an author can cause the reader to bring these in to their mind and thus influence the reading. Also, if a language is built with vagueness of any other kind it can lend itself to this sort of creativity--for example, in Chinese many characters have multiple meanings or are used in very vague ways (i.e. the near lack of expressing that something is plural.)

I wonder if such a great list can be found or could be made of instances where one language is actually "better" than another in a specific case--other than in terms of subsection of reality.

I should also note that because I am an elitist I consider it an impossibility that this vulgar student who caused my mind to track these paths had thought along these lines and that this was what he was referring to.

Grant Henninger responds to a little jab I made about the possibility that welfare can improve the utility of the economy.#

Grant Henninger tries to make an economic argument for why robbing people is actually good for them, and others.

Thanks for the link, Jay. All I'm saying is that taxes and welfare can improve the utility of the economy, just like 'trade makes everybody better off'. Trade doesn't make the people whose jobs get outsourced better off. But overall, both trading partners benefit from trade. Same sort of concept.

Firstly, I hope that my manner was not too rude of insulting. I was merely trying to draw attention to the claim by rephrasing in a way that turns the euphemism, "welfare", into the more accurate, "robbing people and giving their money to someone else while taking a cut for ourselves."

Secondly, I would agree that in the short run people who lose their jobs are not better off but in the long run when the prices of goods decrease and they get better jobs, they are better off. A country cannot be better off than another, but the people in that country can. And everyone in a country benefits from free trade in the long run.

So how can this logic be extended to include robbery and wealth redistribution? Obviously this is a large task and I do not imagine I could possibly argue against all points, I do think that some of the lower hanging fruit can be protected.

If I am robbed of one dollar, and it is given to a poor person, then I am worse off and they are better off. This is the short run, but in the long run? Maybe I want to buy labour from them, but if they are being supported indefinitely by money (and the money of my fellow wealthy friends) then what is the reason they would want to work if they didn't have to? Maybe because they want to not have to rely on me, but they could do that before and I would have had more money to pay them if they were worth it.

I don't see immediately why this is good and I recognize that you don't offer that either. You seem to just suggest that it may be an interesting way to look at money--as if it does not have an absolute value that does not change. I agree that this would be an interesting way to look at money but I don't want to trust it right away as justification for robbery.

Cynthia Rockwell wonders about Misery and Delusion as previously posted on makeoutcity.#

Just yesterday I was staring out the window at work and wondering if it's better to be a delusionally happy person all the time or a semi-miserable person all the time. The drawbacks being that if you're delusionally happy about how great you are and how great is the world around you, you're happier most of the time but then have that much farther to fall when something inevitably goes wrong and reality bursts your bubble. It hurts that much more. It's more devastating, earth-shattering, etc. But if you're semi-miserable all the time, you don't have far to fall. The inevitable intrusion of reality merely re-affirms your worldview, so there's little that can devastate you. So, which is better--super-happy all the time and vulnerable to catastrophic losses? Or semi-miserable all the time but protected from utter devastation? I don't know. I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. Just different. Nor do I think one needs to try to become the other. I suppose the goal is to be somewhere in between. But I worry about people trying to create cookie-cutter personalities. Do we all want to be equally happy all of the time? Do we all want to react the same way to stimuli all of the time?