Wednesday, October 19, 2005- - -
11/07/2005
Help!! I'm being held captive by a Blogger Bug!
I haven't touched my template or made any other changes anywhere. Blogger will take a post and "publish" it, but all newly published posts after this one don't appear on the blog. Oddly, if I make a post everyone else who tracks blogroll activity and has me on their blogroll (and, of course, everyone who is anyone has me on their blogroll ;)) shows that I've made a new post. The only symptom I can see on the blog is that I don't have archives for 11/01/2005-11/30/2005, nor a link to the current blog.
Unfortunately, I'm faced with a choice of a) Hunting; b) Fishing; or c) Debugging HTML (Assuming I've developed a kink in my template somewhere). The last of the hunting seasons are over by mid-January...
Ps. Bahh! That didn't work either. I thought I'd try editing a post that was already up and visible, but none of this is appearing!??
Paul who?
Something's missing from Glenn Reynolds' recent post on the woes of General Motors .. any reference to Paul Krugman's recent OpEd on the same topic. Not as if there aren't plenty of places to link to Krugman either; I read it in the CasperStar's dead tree edition but also found it at their website. Of course, there's always the chance that the InstaPundit didn't see any point in linking to Krugman, who seems determined to prove that he didn't learn anything in economics class...
@6:36 AM
Sunday, October 09, 2005- - -
 New Toys!
Whether it's getting back to Wyoming where all six of us share the cell phone circuits, or Blogger adding more disk capacity, we've got pictures again! In this case, a lightly used Weber Beartooth, from Elderly Instruments. The ebony peg head veneer shows off the Weber logo, celtic knot, and tuning buttons, all mother-of-pearl, and the triple binding of antique celluloid. This photo doesn't do it justice. A very, very nice piece of work.
I've been playing it now for a couple of weeks and I'm amazed at what a difference a straight neck and low action can make! It's much more playable than ol' Maynard, which had a bad warp in the fingerboard down around the 10th fret, making the action below that point unplayably high. In fact, when the Weber arrived I took one look at the action and thought it would buzz uncontrollably. The old 'nickel on the 12th fret' trick showed that the action was truly very low, with enough string tension to hold the nickel against the frets, when a 'normal height' setup would just allow a nickel to slip under the strings. My misgivings were unwarranted however. With a very straight neck and perfectly leveled frets, the low action never buzzes or rattles, no matter how hard I wail on it, and it plays beautifully.
 It has a short, 24-fret ebony fingerboard with simple mother-of-pearl diamond inlays and an adjustable ebony bridge. When it arrived it had a Gibson-style two-piece stamped tin tailpiece, but I've since installed a Weber cast bronze one-piece tailpiece that makes it infinitely easier to change strings. The gold-plated bronze with 'W' logo matches the gold hardware on the rest of the instrument and looks a lot better than the stamped tin affair shown in this photo, which was not original, having a mis-matched gold-plated tailpiece and nickel cover. It came in a TKL shaped hard case which has seen considerable wear and tear, and is missing a little grooved pad that secures the neck, allowing the headstock to waggle from side to side inside the case. Nevertheless, the case did its job in protecting the instrument.
 The Beartooth is Weber's top-of-the-line A-style mando and this one has some of the most gorgeous wood I've seen. The finish is a little dark for my taste, but then I picked it up for well over $1000 less than original retail, so I can live with it. Especially when I see it glow out in the sun. Definitely an out-door instrument!
The fiddleback grain results from 'compression fretting' which forms in the stump of the tree as the weight of the tree compresses the wood. The density of this maple stump wood gives the wee thing an amazing ring and clear, mellow tone. It sounds good and plays easily and, unfortunately for my workload, I could play it for hours every day.
A strap button has been added to the heel of the neck, saving me the angst of drilling a hole and installing one,and an internal McIntyre pickup has been expertly installed. I don't know if these operations were original from the Weber shop, or added at a later date, but both are expertly done. I like the strap button at that location and I just might invest in a small amplifier, just for fun.
@6:48 AM
Saturday, October 08, 2005- - -
"Meme un bohemien a des normes."
"Yes, Bluegrass music may be comfortable, but I could not deal with the bib overalls ... Even a Gypsy has standards." -- Django Rheinhardt
@5:51 AM
Tuesday, October 04, 2005- - -
An encouraging note on the Miers nomination..
Blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Kopel approvingly quotes Miers, who wrote this for the Texas Lawyer back in 1992:
"The same liberties that ensure a free society make the innocent vulnerable to those who prevent rights and privileges and commit senseless and cruel acts. Those precious liberties include free speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of liberties, access to public places, the right to bear arms and freedom from constant surveillance. We are not willing to sacrifice these rights because of the acts of maniacs."
Kopel reads this as expressed support for the Second Amendment, certainly a plus in a Supreme Court nominee, but I find the "freedom from constant surveillance" bit at least as encouraging. Remember the Total Information Awareness system? I don't believe for one second that such Orwellian fantasies have been purged from the minds of goverment. In this era when technological advances make constant surveillance of the citizenry a definite possibility, it is a very good thing to have folks on the Supreme Court who think freedom from constant surveillance is one of our precious liberties.
@8:35 AM
Sunday, October 02, 2005- - -
Science under seige
"No honest, rational observer really believes the impetus behind the campaign to insert Intelligent Design into school curriculums is anything other than a Christian fundamentalism that wishes to see Biblical mythology enshrined as "science".
Bill Quick started a fascinating brouhaha with this statement that really underscores the problems with discussing evolution vs. ID/creationism. I weighed in with a link to a National Academy of Sciences discussion that carefully outlines what a scientific theory is, why evolution is a scientific theory and why ID/creationism aren't, and concludes:
"The theory of evolution has become a central unifying concept of biology and is a critical component of many related scientific disciplines. In contrast, the claims of creation science lack empirical support and cannot be meaningfully tested. These observations lead to two fundamental conclusions: the teaching of evolution should be an integral part of science instruction, and creation science is in fact not science and should not be presented as such in science classes."
Now bear in mind that this isn't just my opinion, it's the considered opinion of no less august an authority than the National Academy of Sciences. After some intervening give and take the irrepressible Misha I responds:
"Seems to me that, at some point, secular scientists got so infatuated with themselves and their ability to discover and explain things that they decided that anything they couldn't discover and explain simply didn't exist. …
"But I love the irony in the so-called "rational" preachers of Evolution having now taken the place of the ignorant religious zealots of the Middle Ages, screaming "heresy" whenever anybody as much as doubts their pet theory. …
I'll leave the tolerant and rational burning at the stake of heretics to the "reality-based alliance of militant atheists."
Okay, at this point I pretty well lost patience and started sharpening the stake, building the pyre, and pouring on the volatile oils, but commenter Obi-Wan responded in his own patient words:
"I don't care what you believe, or where you talk about it, including a public school, What I care about is the corruption of science. That's all I'm talking about.
"Teach science in science class. Creation and ID are not scientific theories at all, nor even valid hypotheses (Eric), regardless of who believes them. Science is not defined by how many people, or what people, believe something. Non-scientific ideas therefore should not be taught in a science class, since that class is for, you know, science."
Which elicits this rather telling response from Misha I:
"Your problem seems to be that you claim to have a monopoly on what is "science" and what is not.
"Now we can debate 'till the cows come home and we'll probably find each other in agreement on quite a lot of points, but the bottom line is that evolution isn't one bit more of a "science" than believing that we all originated from the Grand Arkleseizure is."
[Arggghh!! More wood! More oil!!] But once again the unflappable Obi-Wan responds:
"Evolution, simply put, is:
""...a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations."
"That's it. That's what all the fuss is over. Silly isn't it — all the fuss over something so obvious? It's simple and to the point. Impossible to refute and remain intellectually honest. And scientific, by the very definition of science already given."
Indeed. Somewhere around there I made the observation that the whole flap often doesn't seem to be so much about including ID and creationism in the public schools' science curriculum, as in discrediting and excluding the teaching of evolution because, 'it isn't science!!', an astonishing assertion considering that it was made directly in the face of the National Academy of Sciences' statement to the contrary. I think Obi-Wan hits the nail on the head in noting that the concept of evolution seems to threaten some folks religious beliefs. Why this should be is the puzzle to me.
We see the process of evolution every day. Look at a couple and their children: Are the children clones of their father, or identical in every way to their mother? No, of course not. They are unique individuals, yet you can see that they have inherited something from their father and from their mother. We are painfully aware of the times when this inheritance goes wrong and a child has a birth defect of one sort or another. Just as a child can inherit a defect, on fortuitous occasion a child is born with a special gift which may make the child better able to compete in music, sports, math, or what have you, just as the child with a defect may require special help to survive at all. These are observable facts. The theory of evolution simply adds that, in a very broad and general sense, those who are gifted are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass their gifts on to their children [which seems an entirely plausible assumption], and that over a number of generations this 'survival of the fittest' will cause the species to change measurably, which is probably the point where Biblical literalists balk and the ID contingent steps in to say, 'well, if a species changes it must have been by design, and not just due to adaptation to a changing environment!'
Whatever. As some sage once quipped, 'there's plenty of room for God in the details'. I guess what infuriates me is how quickly some would dismiss the best minds in science today as a bunch of 'so-called "rational" militant atheists' who are out to 'purge religion from society'. As Obi-Wan notes elsewhere in Bill's comments, this isn't rational argument, it's repetition of talking points that were planted on the issuer by someone who knew full and cynically well their audience was too damned dumb to know the difference.
Ps. Hmm.. I forgot where I was going with this. What's so very sad about all this is that teacher friends of mine avoid like the plague uttering the 'E-word' in their classes. They've learned that broaching this subject will generate a flurry of irate letters to their administrators — 'how could you be teaching such an out-dated and discredited, totally unscientific theory?!' — and of course, every parental complaint must be addressed and taken seriously. All of this takes time, creates a distraction from the many other chores of teaching, and threatens to have the teacher labeled a 'troublemaker' by controversy-adverse administrators. Far safer to simply avoid the topic and let the neo-Luddites win by default. It's probably a violation of Godwin's Law, but I'll note that Misha I characterized himself as a member of the "American Taliban" which is more accurate than he may have intended.
PPs. Since I'm undoubtedly headed for hell [at least I'll be among friends!] I'd might as well go out with a bang. ... Jacob Sullum has an interesting comment:
"When schools are run by government, the details of ninth-grade biology classes, the propriety of patriotic rituals, and every other educational issue — ranging from how to teach math and reading to the contents of vending machines — becomes a political issue. Even when the arguments don't end up in court, they generate acrimony and resentment that could be avoided if education were entirely a private matter."
You were expecting that Sullum would argue for more government oversight? Sullum in turn points to a very interesting discussion written a few years ago by Ronald Bailey. Origin of the Specious: Why do neoconservatives doubt Darwin? Bailey notes the irony in neocons such as Irving Kristol and Robert Bork discounting evolution and embracing religion just as Pope John Paul II was officially recognizing that "the theory of evolution is more than an hypothesis."
Bailey continues:
"But the neocon assault on Darwinism may not be based on either science or spirituality so much as on politics and political philosophy. … the key to it can be found in Bork's assertion in his book that religious "belief is probably essential to a civilized future." …
"Political scientist Shadia Drury, a passionate critic of [Leo] Strauss, puts it this way: "For Strauss, the ills of modernity have their source in the foolish belief that there are no harmless truths, and that belief in God and in rewards and punishments is not necessary for political order. … [H]e is convinced that religion is necessary for the well-being of society. But to state publicly that religion is a necessary fiction would destroy any salutary effect it might have. The latter depends on it being believed to be true. … If the vulgar discovered, as the philosophers have always known, that God is dead, they might behave as if all is permitted.""
How delightfully cynical. But it is a bit odd. The Slouching Towards Gomorrah crowd usually warn that any erosion of social mores will inevitably lead to sex in the street with dogs. For once they are in agreement with the Darwinists, who would also warn against this: Interspecies sex doesn't contribute to survival of the species.
Okay, now that I've offended everyone my work here is done.
@1:42 PM
That obscure, sly smile explained at last ..
I was perusing Hit and Run when I came on this post about the "... gore-for-porn ..." story. If you needed further proof of my low-brow sense of humor, I'll be all day trying to get the picture of Big Honest Al nursing a woody out of my mind.
And speaking of pictures, Blogger is still refusing to upload (no, I've not been messing with photoshop, I'm not that perverted). I'm beginning to suspect that the problem is on Blogger's end, as the rest of the internet is working with decent speed in the wee hours of this Sunday morn'. Perhaps they didn't reckon on nuts like me uploading 200 Mb of photos a month? Ah well, we shall endeavor to persevere.
@6:38 AM
Saturday, October 01, 2005- - -
I'm not quite dead yet!
But we are visiting the M-I-L in Ft. Morgan, Colorado, where the telecommunications systems appear to consist mostly of tin cans and string (it took about half an hour to log on and post this little note). Posting photos has become impossible -- they won't upload, no how, no way.
It probably has to do with the fact that new housing is springing from the ground like mushrooms after a good rain all across the Front Range in CO. I don't know what the current growth rate is here, but it's got to be phenomenal, and I can imagine that it puts a bit of a strain on the infrastructure.
We'll be here for another week or so and I suspect that blogging will continue to be limited. And just when I had cool pix of my latest toy. Dang it!
@6:21 AM
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