Busy, busy, busy

Bokononism has its attractions. I have several long posts sitting in the edit folder, awaiting my attendance. But for reasons of schoolwork and scholarly completeness, these will have to wait a little longer.

In the meantime, The Nation has again asked me why I bother reading. The uck starts here. The author, Melissa Harris-Perry, `responds' to `criticisms' here, naming in particular Joan Walsh's response at Salon.

The thesis? White liberal disapproval of Obama is indicative of a racial double-standard. The purported evidence? A relatively higher white disapproval of Obama, as extremely precisely measured against the enormous and extremely appropriate data set of `Bill Clinton':

"These comparisons are neither an attack on the Clinton administration nor an apology for the Obama administration. They are comparisons of two centrist Democratic presidents who faced hostile Republican majorities in the second half of their first terms, forcing a number of political compromises. One president is white. The other is black."


Before bothering with detail-work, let's turn to how Harris-Perry categorized the criticisms:

1. Prove it!
   
2. I have black friends.
   
3. Who made you an expert?
   

Both the original article and the `response' omitted a category of interest, which I will be so bold as to propose: (4) the fucking issues. (And I mean both interpretations of this.) There's little reason to discuss the response point-by-point. The categorization of Walsh's piece under (2) strikes me as deeply cynical and lazy. (3) requires no attention. (1) contains an interesting point: "In a nation with the racial history of the United States I am baffled by the idea that non-racism would be the presumption and that it is racial bias which must be proved beyond reasonable doubt." That's agreeable enough, except when we assume this applies to disparate approval ratings purportedly reflecting differing (vaguely-defined) standards of the (ill-defined and un-polled category of) white liberals. On two data points.

And no, Harris-Perry mentions nothing about the fact that Clinton presided over a boom while Obama has (corruptly) presided over a recessions, and nothing about the effect of the Right's obsession with Clinton's sex life. I leave those to Joan Walsh. On another note: nothing about their records on civil liberties was mentioned, where the continuities between Bush and Obama are inescapable. Despite many promises otherwise. Oh yeah, there's that whole promises thing.

I see no need to build on Walsh with boring details. There's only this, under (3):  "Further, I am grateful to live in a time when white Americans are furious about anyone suggesting that they are racist. I much prefer to live in a country and at a moment where the idea of being racist is distasteful rather than commonplace. In many ways the angry reaction about even the suggestion of racial bias is a kind of racial progress." 

Again, I'm probably not a member of the target audience, due to issues of age and general contempt. That proviso provisioned, I'm entirely comfortable with being told I harbor racist sentiments. Well no doubt! I was raised in a petty, very marshmallow city in East Tennessee.

Although I may have managed to exclude myself from the discussion at this point, I am still quite happy drop hints for the benefit of Harris-Perry: progressive disapproval of Obama might just have something to do with his fucking policies. Are white civil libertarians more deeply racist than other white liberals, or was their early alienation a symptom of something else? Say, Obama's continuation of Bush policies, his escalating of the war against whistle-blowers, and his defense of extra-judicial killings (i.e. murder)? Does neo-Keynesian disapproval of Obama have more to do with his economic policy, or with his race?

Apart from the reaction we all expect when `racist' is tossed around - especially when lazily - might the Left be more upset by the fact that some of Obama's defenders are making his color the issue, instead of the criticisms?

Yet I am told that Obama's reelection will be a litmus test of the racial sentiments of white liberals.

Please, my dear Republican readers, nominate Ron Paul.  I don't really like him.  I live in Tennessee, so my socialist vote does not matter.  But I want to vote for something.

Commonplaces and Comments 6

I'm working on an exhaustive post on Pascal's Wager, which is of great length for the sole purpose of revealing how many nails are in this coffin. Which is a lot. I'm working on a variety of other posts as well: some related to ethics, some to formal epistemology/decision theory, and some related to notes from my courses. I am recovering from a wicked cold and recovering my schoolwork in the process, so all these works are slow in the making.

That said, poetry.

I am not well-versed in verses, but who could not love Auden's work? I can recall from memory one of his shorter yet more famous contributions, a commemoration of the `normalizers' of Czechoslovakia (August, 1968):

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for man.
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate, and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

The mis-attributed inspiration (Nixon) in this small video never ceases to infuriate me. This channel has some excellent readings, including that of one of my favorites, Lullabye. It is the first stanza I love especially, and it is the only part I can recall at command:

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from thoughtful children,
And the grave proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Apart from these snippets, one of the few other bits of poetry I can reliably recall is in Spanish:

Al pueblo le queda claro,
Que tu muerte no fue aislada.
Fue acción del imperlialismo,
Junto con la fuerza armada.

It should be enough to say that this was related from the Reagan era by a Spanish-speaking audience. I came across it via one of Hitchens' pre-warmongering collections, where he found himself near tears or tearful at a Church-full of the oppressed, though I cannot recall it now. Roughly from my rough Spanish and with my likely ill-conceived poetic needs in mind, it translates as follows:

To the people it is clear
Your death was no incidental act.
It was imperialistic action,
Combined with militarist attack.

I wonder how those words sounded in the original, as recited by a hall full of those with dead friends and relatives. I wonder how they were heard when visceral, and not merely language.

Learnin' me a book at skool

My classes are starting up; my apologies for the few-day break in posting. I at least managed to pester a few people on comments sections. If I learn anything interesting, I'll be sure to tell you folks.

Now that I have a library again, I'll be able to check out interesting stuff which I have been unable to find online. One such book is Jeffrey's The Logic of Decision. As this is a modern classic in Bayesian philosophy, I hope to have a commonplaces post up soon. To prevent my subjective Bayesianism from being lazy, I am also reading Jaynes' Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. I plan on comparing and contrasting these - and possibly Howson and Urbach's Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach - assuming time constraints from classes allow me. I'm taking a combinatorics [fancy word for counting stuff] course this semester, so doubtless I'll want to bore you about it.

So much to read, so little life!

On more blog-centric matters, I'm declaring the OTF dead. It has been without a pulse for some time, and its corpse is festering. Nothing but vague effluvia comes hence, so it is time to retire the body. It is Zossima, sans the grace and expectations. If you disagree, you should know where to look. I'll be surprised if anyone even attempts an adequate defense, much less a success.

Hello lurkers!

I hope that there are lurkers, as there are currently no commenters. That's alright; I did not start this blog in order to accrue a following. But if readers would introduce themselves and their interests, I would be quite happy! I could turn my attention to your interests. Hopefully, I will manage to deter you.

I've been away for several days to help a friend move. My apologies. Thanks to a slight injury, I have further perfected the very-much-not-recommended art of self-surgery. I'm pretty proud of myself at the moment.

On the way to the new place, I decided to put my rationality skills to the test. Boredly approaching the Atlantic shoreline in the Carolinas, I made an estimate about the frequency of pine trees as one approaches the beach. I came up with the following estimate as derived from highway observations:

- Approx or above 50% pines, less than 50% deciduous within 150 miles
- Approx or about 75% pines, less than 25% deciduous within 50 miles

where this estimate completely fails close to riversides.

Now here is the question I sought to intuitively answer (and mostly failed to correctly intuit): Why is it that pines/needle-trees become increasingly common once one approaches the Southeast US coast? I recall seeing this before across the Carolinas, Florida, and etc.

Any ideas?

Bayesian Primer

Ok, the rough draft is up. Start here.

I'm doing touch-up work, some expansion, and linking all the bits together. I'm also well into an application, so I'll post that soon.

Edit 1 (7/15/2011): Fixed a few errors and did some cleanup in the presentation. There's definitely more of this to come. I also linked this post in the sidebar to keep it available. Added an application.