Women Like to Slow Dance

It's Friday, have a slow dance with someone you love or, if that isn't possible, your spouse.  Once you convince her that you're not about to confess to something terrible, like investing in a penny stock or buying new draperies in a trout print, her demeanor will start to soften and you will start collecting points for the moment you do screw up.

Statistician's Blues

Beware true believers, or anyone else for that matter, bearing statistics.

The End of Summer

It is my end of summer of ritual. Some people take a vacation; others take the family to the State Fair, but I enroll for my annual training. It is a day when those of us at the bottom gather for a story. Some are ready to suspend disbelief, others of us lean toward literary criticism. In reality, however, it is little more than a compulsory day with someone else's knee is in my back that they may pursue the approval of another; one whose disinterest could not be more self-evident.

"Potato Skins"

I know that it isn't health food but could someone explain to me how it is even possible that this solid food could have oil listed as the primary ingredient?  Whatever the answer, there ain't that much potato in these "potato skins."

Hank Williams said it Best

Every time this songs comes up my oldest reminds me how much he likes it.  Whatever the future holds, I'm optimistic that the kid and I will have some foundation to understand one another.

Have a good weekend.  Be well.

Stoicism in verse

Of all the things that can happen to you, "it's all right."

Of all the things you can do, do right.

I know evil is hard to define but

that doesn't mean we should omit it from the dictionary altogether.



Banjo Friday: Steve Martin

There is a light at the end of that there tunnel.  Don't let that smokin' fiddle fool ya,' that ain't no train coming.  It is just the weekend.

Ten minutes of the Steep Mountain Rangers and Steve Martin joy.

Another Roy Clark Wednesday

No I won't feature him every Wednesday, but I could.  The week is half over.

Monogamy is Hard, say Researchers

No, I suppose monogamy is not natural but that argument has been made in one form or another since the beginning of Western Civilization.  Evolutionary research is drawing the question into the limelight once again and, with the weakening Judeo-Christian tradition of the contemporary West, the value of monogamy is apt to be treated with degree of critique unseen since the rise of the church in the third century AD.  At root of the renewed interest in various forms of polygamy, including serial monogamy, lies a confusion between behavior that is natural and that which is beneficial.

The Guardian reporting on the evolutionary basis of monogamy is typical.

The mystery of monogamy: scientists claim to have the answer

Next, they used simulated evolution from 75m years ago to modern day. As the simulation ran, it showed how monogamy rose and fell for different species. Having run the program millions of times, they found that the evolution of monogamy in primates was preceded by one thing only: infanticide by males.

"You do not get monogamy unless you already have infanticide, and you do not get a switch to paternal care if you don't already have monogamy," said Opie, in research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Opie says the findings are linked to increases in brain size. In primates, brain size expanded as social groups grew larger, which meant that mothers were infertile for longer and more males were close by. For males, infanticide was a strategy to make females fertile again.

"Monogamy is only one strategy for dealing with infanticide. But it's not the only one," said Opie. "Chimps mate with all the males in their group to confuse paternity so males won't attack. But in others, humans included, males stick with females to protect them." Once a species becomes monogamous, paternal care and other behaviours evolve that help offspring to thrive, he said.

  A little more straight forward is this article in Slate where the authors claim we just don't know why homo sapiens are, at best, monogamou-ish.

Seeing as we're neither one thing nor the other, scientists have been left to speculate on how our ancestors might have done their thing. Were they like gorillas, where most males suffered while one dude enjoyed the chance to spread his seed? Or more like chimpanzees—sleeping around, with males competing for multiple partners? Or is there another possibility, like the one championed by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá in their best-selling and soundly criticized paean to free love, Sex at Dawn? According to that book's authors, our ancestors did as bonobos do: They had rampant sex without much bickering.
Such discussions tend to dead-end quickly, though, since we just don't know for sure. Our most recent relatives in common with these other primates lived about 6 million years ago. (I suppose if bonobos could be anthropologists, one of them might write a book on whether bonobo sexuality evolved from something humanlike.) "What this really is," says Barash, "is a Rorschach test for the people asking the question."

Scientists and other technicians excel when offering theories about how monogamy, or anything else for that matter, came about but the question remains unasked, "How is the development significant?"  Take for example the large frontal lobe of homo sapiens.  It developed to allow greater group size, tool making and a variety of other practical reasons related to survival in the African savanna.  Once we began walking the earth with this frontal lobe, however, we found many other uses for it beyond its initial design: philosophy, drama, domesticating livestock, building the Hoover Dam,  going to the moon, and so on and so forth.  There is a difference between cause and consequence, between the origin of something and its value.  Unintended consequences are as likely to manifest as a net positive as a negative. 

Zeus and Hera: trouble always followed the "ish" in monogam-ish.

Still our frontal lobe is not overly efficient.  Monogamy is a long-term commitment so there are good odds that we will all be tempted to reason, at one time or another that if monogamy is an adaptation rather than a natural state, then perhaps I'd be happier if I indulged the (natural) human desire to wander.  As I suggested earlier in the week, the immediate desire for happiness is frequently in conflict with the more long-term commitment to meaning.  It took one day for the Guardian to follow up with another article, So monogamy works for some animals. Doesn't mean it's 'natural' for us.  The author concludes,

We need to get beyond our cultural obsession with what is "natural" when it comes to human relationships, and the common assumption that this equates to what is "normal" and also to what is "good". Instead we should turn our attention to the diversity of ways in which humans connect, and ask ethical questions about how we relate to each other in a world of ever-changing relationship rules.

Setting aside the dualism assumed by the author (everything we experience in a relationship is routed through our brain which, last time I checked, is part of nature and therefore natural), lets assume her instinct is correct and monogamy is a construct of relative value.  Does a stoic understanding of the human experience have anything to add to this assessment of sex, commitment, and the value of monogamy?  Of course it is natural for males and females alike to seek to spread their genetic bets as widely as possible, but regardless of it adaptive origins, does monogamy provide a private or public good?

If we begin with the assumption that polyamorous or monagamous-ish relationships are the more natural state of human affairs, we have not yet demonstrated that polyamory is good for either the individual or society.  Our lives are awash in unnatural practices which we would loath to surrender: vaccinations, electric lights, agriculture, centralized national government, coffee shipped thousands of miles to my west Wisconsin kitchen, and pretty much everything else that fills our days.  They are not natural.  Only eating what I can kill and the wife could gather would be natural but, in our case at least, would result in starvation.  Our cultural advancements have their critics but without them, however, the human population would crash and modern civilization would cease.  A more natural state is not always to be preferred.  As Thomas Hobbes observed, life in a state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  We seem to value society, wealth, ease, civility and length of years.  Each of which is a rather recent innovation in evolutionary terms.

There are academic paper or, if you are in a hurry, this shorter synopsis which give details about the benefits of monogamy.  At least in a state of civilization there would seem to be great benefits to monogamy, or at least monogam-ishness.   Within a stoic frame of reference, however, an individual commitment to monogamy contributes to each person's fulfillment, not because of the power of romantic love or any inherent joy of matrimony.  The practical benefits would, I suggest, teach us that the practice tells us something about the nature of the universe.  If a cell phone works, it's workings are congruent with the laws of physics.  If a relationship type "works" it is also congruent with the nature of human thriving.  How do we connect the experience of monogamy with traditional stoic values?

Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates, empties a chamber pot on his head.

1. Monogamy as Temperance:
   Searching after a silver bullet is a hallmark of human behavior whether in investment or relationships.  The grass appears to be greener on the other side so there is an impulse to sell our stocks when they are low, and buy them when they are high, to leave one job thinking another will be more satisfying, to add sexual partner to another thinking that in the endorphin high of eros we will find something that we were earlier missing.  Embracing monogamy is a practice that trains us for every other area of our lives.  The hunger of dissatisfaction is natural but but its inability to be satisfied causes it to become destructive after certain needs are met.  The cure for animal desire is human assessment.  The new is never as good as we imagine.  Jumping from one bed to another undermines joy as quickly as jumping from one stock to another undermines a retirement fund.  Yes, like a bad stock, there is a time to leave a relationship but the decision is best made not with primal emotions but human rationale.  Monogamy is, in brief, an exercise in temperance as applied to sexual relationships.  Temperance allows us to enjoy a thing while maintaining perspective on the larger scope of life.  
2. Monogamy is training for Freedom:
   Monogamy requires fidelity and fidelity is practice in the restraint of passions.  In the midst of options keeping your word to a spouse as both of you both age and change is a practice in interpersonal fidelity that has applications in every other relationship.  Passions, whether they be love, hate, greed, or any other undermine our readiness to keep faith to others or, more importantly, with ourselves.  If our passions can dominate us than we are not free but rather under a yoke to our primitive brain, a slave to the apes from which we emerged.  If we are not free to keep faith with ourselves, that is with our conscience, than we are miserable slaves indeed and the ex-spouse deserves the house, car, and the dog; perhaps, then, we'll at least learn something.
3. Monogamy breeds Justice:Monogamy breeds justice as the social benefits of the practice ripple through society (see the study on social benefits above) but on a personal level we are trained to listen to our spouses express their own needs and emotions even when they contradict the needs and emotions we would project upon them.  Having been trained to listen and correct our misconceptions we are better attuned to listen to every other manifestation of the universe that presents itself.  Justice is the faithful exercise of right relationship.  Monogamy is a graduate education in relationship and as we learn to get monogamy right we garner the skills to treat every other thing, our boss, the neighbor's dog, the soil beneath our feet, as they deserve rather than as we desire. 

Monogamy is hard but if it were easy it would be of less personal value as a training for other areas of life.  It would not be totally unfair, if not completely accurate, to describe it as a social construct, but  it is a well entrenched construct with tangible social benefits.  A culture that is monogamous-ish will out perform one that is not.  Evolution, at least in humans living in sophisticated cultures, favors monogamy.  Though monogamy is not yet instinctual, we are capable of monogamy and the adaptation provides social goods and personal benefits for those who would embrace it.  It is one manifestation of the virtues and can be an aspect of the well-lived life.

The value culture places on monogamy is, with the retreat of Judah's god and his commandments, uncertain.  Our animal impulses would love to be free of its constraints, offering promises of leisurely pleasure that does not restrain our future freedom.  That future freedom from commitment comes at the cost of the opportunity to be trained in personal restraint which delivers the abiding joy found in human freedom from the passions.  Whatever its future prospects monogamy was and is of personal benefit and a natural consequence of valuing the ancient virtues of justice, temperance, prudence, and, as anyone who has had to tell a spouse about that thing they spent the grocery money on can attest, courage.  The contemporary stoic would continue benefit from sitting for monogamy's lessons.

Libertarian Campaign Song

I don't know if it would stir the masses like "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow" but I might be willing to knock on a few doors.

Relax, It's Banjo Friday!

Is it still a pre-adolescent crush if at age forty I still have a thing for Barbara Mandrell?

Old Rattler

Bogus Therapy Dogs

It only takes a couple clicks of the mouse to buy a patch that says "therapy dog," purchasing a pass for your dog to enter a wide variety of businesses that forbid any other dog.  I'm not the least bit surprised to learn that this is going on, I'd thought of it myself and entertained the idea from time to time.  I'm not saying it is right, only that it doesn't take a genius to see a way to exploit a system that both asks people to not do something they believe they have a right to do, in this case take their dog where ever they go, and is built on trust.

New Yorkers use bogus 'therapy dog' tags to take Fido everywhere

Phony “service dog” tags have become common among city pooch owners, who use them for everything from taking Fido bar-hopping to pick up chicks to getting discounts on the Hamptons Jitney.
Dog owners can easily snap up bogus tags, vests, patches and certificates on the Internet, circumventing the city Health Department and undermining federal regulations designed to aid the disabled.
“I was sick of tying up my dog outside,” said Brett David, 33, a restaurateur whose tiny pooch, Napoleon, wore an unofficial “therapy dog” patch during a visit to Whole Foods on Houston Street.

If this turns out to be a problem that needs to be solved (some problems are preferable to the solution), there are two possible ways forward.

1. End the special treatment of therapy animals by freeing businesses to decide whether or not to allow animals onto their premises.  If some want to cater to dog-lovers, or any other animal owners for that matter, allow them to do so, as long as they can still pass any applicable public health or safety regulations.
2. Require the owners of therapy dogs to carry their papers at all times and instantly ask any owner who cannot produce verification to leave the business in question.  Likewise, there could be a fine involved for misrepresentation of your pooch as a therapy animal.  

I confess a preference for informal policing and market solutions to the heavy hand of the state.  My first instinct is to prefer the first option though I am well aware of some of the problems that might arise.  My terrier doesn't care much for children and my heart jumps every time I see a toddler make a dash for "the puppy."  It definitely impacts where I decide to take him but I'm not confident all dog owners would use the same discretion.  I am not confident that even with the best discretion available that all problems would be avoided.  I know they wouldn't and our flawed expectation that Fido to act like a little person would result in trouble, even for responsible dog owners.  So if we are going to allow special treatment for therapy dogs, perhaps we do need insist on sanctions for those who would break public trust by passing their dog friend off as a therapy animal.

There is one thing that I don't quite understand: when using a therapy dog to pick up chicks do the girls being chatted up not care that you're a guy who needs a therapy dog or do they not care that you're a guy who would violate the public trust by passing your dog off as a therapy dog?  If the former, good for them.  If the latter, they are getting the quality of man they deserve. 

The Guitar Wizard

A little Odd Couple instrumental to commemorate the middle of the work week.

Bitchy/Asshole Resting Face

Don't judge me. 

Musket has the watch



Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle

Stringbean and Estelle died too young but they died better than most.  Everyone must die.  Not everyone lives refusing to be a victim.

The Trek from Meaning to Happiness

I do not know what most people mean when they use the word happy.  I am happy that my dog is learning to go into a down/stay when we are visiting new places but can a person have a happy year or a happy life?  What would that mean?  You can have a year that is filled with joy, but I would suggest that is more an issue of learning to notice the joy around you than a description of exterior accomplishment.  Marriages can be fulfilling and perhaps that is what we mean by having a happy one.  I understand the idea of the "happy home" but these are both expressions of having put work into relationships and sometimes foregoing short-term happiness for long-term meaning.

I suspect that either we do not know what we want when we speak of a desire to be "happy." Either that or we do have an idea and there is a conflict between the hedonism of our desire and the altruism of what we think we ought to desire.  Unwilling to address the conflict, we speak and think in the terms of "happiness," as something the universe will grant it to us because we are good or deserve it.  The universe, however, cares not a whit about your next breath, let alone your happiness in doing so.  Meaning, however, is something we can pursue, if we are willing to sacrifice in service of others.

Living in service of a meaning, however, will entail opportunity costs.  There will be things you can not do,

You keep on using that word.

vacations you cannot take, relationships you cannot pursue, things you cannot buy, and time spent in mundane tedium that makes the dynamic possible, that must be surrendered in service to the meaning you embrace.  Insofar as your internal state of happiness, it matters little the content of the meaning you serve.  Though if you are going to dedicate yourself to something or someones, I would recommend taking a dispassionate look at the situation.  Will you be content to die knowing you poured yourself into this meaning?  If so, I suspect you will find a path that at least will raise the possibility of happiness.

The mainstream is starting to take notice of this conflict in popular culture.  In the Alantic we read this description of what researchers found when they began to ask what people mean by happiness,

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors of the study wrote. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need.” While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me, "Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy.”

My take is that we evolved a tribal species yet Western culture in particular has developed in a highly individualistic manner.  Are tribe is the people around us on an everyday basis. People with whom we identify and whom we could find ourselves serving with little regard for the opportunity cost.  For some people this would be their family or co-workers, others will look to a cause like animal protection, battered women or gay rights, others will find it in a hobby like beekeeping or hunting groups like Ducks Unlimited.  The name of your tribe(s) is unimportant, only that it be worthy of the meaning you give it and the service you offer.

In service we find significance and in significance we find a happy life.

Meaning can result in happiness if you measure the giving over a long period of time.  Serving others, serving a tribe, building something whether it be a community, an organization, a farm, or a monument can result in plenty of "unhappy" days, months, or even years but the happiness arises from having done something you find worthwhile, not necessarily in the day to day doing itself which might be arduous.  Time is the factor we tend to neglect.  Are you chasing after the ever changing day to day happiness "hit" or are you living a life that, over time, will grant the deeper, heavier, sustaining happiness of having done something.worthwhile.

The Pups make a Catch

OK, so I helped them out a little.

Religious Shift to Orthopraxy

Damian Thompson over at the Telegraph posits an interesting, if speculative, theory, the world's religions are de-emphasizing orthodoxy (right belief) for a renewed focus on orthopraxy (right behavior).  This is neither good nor bad, just a change of discussion.  Orthopraxy is just as apt for abuse as orthodoxy, and perhaps more so since it is easier to hide your divergent beliefs than aberrations of behavior. It would also seem to suggest a confession of defeat on the part of the faithful.  We can not win a philosophical debate, therefore we will not engage in one.

The Amish, Hasidic Jews and Salafist Muslims are all good at holding on to their flocks. These three groups have different attitudes to conversion – almost no one joins the Amish, a few secular Jews become Hasidic, lots of Muslims embrace strict observance – but their emphasis on behaviour rather than belief gives them a certain robustness in a sceptical 21stcentury. Mainstream Christianity, in contrast, still requires adherents to believe “six impossible things before breakfast”, to quote Lewis Carroll – and then to debate them earnestly with others.The Amish show that you can spend most of your time living the Gospel rather than thinking about it. (An example: when a gunman killed six Amish girls in 2006, their parents shocked the media by promptly forgiving him.) Perhaps there’s a hint of this in Pope Francis’s sermons, which focus on deeds rather than doctrine. At any rate, it’s a pleasing thought that the visitors gawping at the beardies in their buggies may, to some extent, be looking at the future of Christianity.

Musket digs Sculpture

The bride had a biennial family reunion yesterday.  The kids had friends their own age and playground equipment.  The bride had cousins and second cousins and fifth cousins twice removed with which to socialize.  Since the absence of college students had the place looking like a ghost town, the over-sized terrier and I decided to take a walk in Eau Claire.

The big disappointment was that none of the bars had patio furniture out, so I had to forego any adult refreshment.  The good news was that Eau Claire has added some sculpture to its streets.  Some of it wasn't bad.  Some of that was even photogenic.  We started and ended our walk in Carson Park, home of rocks, trees, fishing holes and small town baseball.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Ain't nobody's fault (but mine)

White Flag Syndrome, Creeping Authoritarianism, or both?

Victims are made, not born.

Victimhood is a state learned helplessness.  It is nothing more than a state of mind, but a state of mind that bleeds out in every unscripted word and thought.  The more you embrace it, the stronger the mental habit becomes.  The more you distinguish between what is within your power and what is outside it, and regard only that which is within your power as significant, the less the victim you become.  Bill Clinton beat Newt Gingrich, Eisenhower outlasted the John Birch wing of the Republican Party, everyday some kid out there knocks down a bully, the list of human beings choosing courage over victimhood is endless.  If the President is impotent, it is because due to either skill or character, not the fact that he does not control every lever of power in the American state.

The most powerful victim in the free world is still just a victim.  I look forward to his Hawaiian retirement and my opportunity to forget that he exists.

WhatIf Obama Can't Lead?

Two New York Times reporters recently posited for President Obama this grim scenario: Low growth, high unemployment, and growing income inequality become "the new normal" in the nation he leads. "Do you worry," the journalists asked him, "that that could end up being your legacy simply because of the obstruction ... and the gridlock that doesn't seem to end?" Obama's reply was telling. "I think if I'm arguing for entirely different policies and Congress ends up pursuing policies that I think don't make sense and we get a bad result," he said, "it's hard to argue that'd be my legacy." Actually, it's hard to argue that it wouldn't be his legacy. History judges U.S. presidents based upon what they did and did not accomplish. The obstinacy of their rivals and the severity of their circumstances is little mitigation. Great presidents overcome great hurdles. In Obama's case, the modern GOP is an obstructionist, rudderless party often held hostage by extremists. So … get over it. His response to The New York Times is another illustration that Obama and his liberal allies have a limited—and limiting—definition of presidential leadership.
I call it the White Flag Syndrome.

Daniel Henniger of the Wall Street Journal argues that the flying of the white flag is, by intention or reaction, a feint, with the result of a creeping authoritarianism.  If you are righteous and you are a victim, what are you to do but unseat the evil oppressor by any means necessary?  Gridlock and balance of power are different words for the same reality.  We are gridlocked because the American people are divided.  By playing the victim Obama legitimizes the concerns of his opposition.  If they have done nothing morally wrong, other than having a different point of view, you send the likes of Charlie Rangel out to smear them with racial 
epitaphs.

To create public support for so much unilateral authority, Mr. Obama needs to lessen support for the other two branches of government—Congress and the judiciary. He is doing that.Mr. Obama and his supporters in the punditocracy are defending this escalation by arguing that Congress is "gridlocked." But don't overstate that low congressional approval rating. This is the one branch that represents the views of all Americans. It's gridlocked because voters are.

I would like to think that Victim-think is a pathology with no victim other than the individual who indulges in it.  In reality, however, victim-think, imagined or justified, breeds oppressors as the perceived oppression justifies a suspension of virtue in the name of efficacy.  You do not have to be of any particular political persuasion to question whether or not the President is playing with fire.  You can extend the power of the administrative state, but your party will not always control the White House.  Consistent libertarians are a minority in the American electorate.  Every persuasion, however, will see a day when they wish the Chief Executive wielded less power.       

Don't Run Anymore

Friday is here.  The weekend is sprinting in your direction.  Starting today, stop running.  Build the habits necessary to live a life you won't have any reason to be ashamed of, even if it kills you; it will kill you nonetheless.

The nature of daughters

G: Look Dad.  See how far away from you I am!  See how fast I can run!
DW: Yes I see.  Such is the nature of daughters.  Such is the nature of the universe.

Winter is coming

The summer of 2012 was long and fall came as a welcome relief.  Unknown to us then, the next spring would be delayed, with snow well into May.  Add them and divide by two and you get two average years. 

The lesson: at it's conclusion your life may look "average" but that does not account for the the swings that will be encountered while calculating the mean.  Prepare while you can, winter is coming.  Winter is always coming.



Art Bell returning

Art Bell returns to late night radio.  This time on XM/Sirius.  I have to hope their will also be a podcast.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Art Bell, radio's master of the paranormal and outward edges of science, will return to the microphone on Sept. 16 with a new nighttime show on Sirius XM Radio.

Bell was one of radio's top syndicated voices in the 1990s before walking away from his nightly show in 2002 due to family issues. He worked occasionally after that but hasn't been on the air since Halloween 2010.

"I missed it terribly," said Bell, 68, whose weeknight show will air live from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET. Sirius is building a studio at Bell's rural Nevada home where he will work.

A Sirius representative contacted Bell through social media a few months ago, leading to the formation of his show, "Art Bell's Dark Matter." He'll talk about things like UFOs, ghosts, near-death experiences and weird aspects of science. He'll do interviews and take calls from viewers.

I, Claudius

Overheard:

The key moral I learned from I, Claudius as a child of eight or nine, was, regardless of your assessment of another, to always be polite.  You never know who will become the next emperor and, consequently, have the authority to remove your head from your shoulders.

Carolina Chocolate Drops: Country Girl

Why didn't any of you hip young people tell me about this group?  Have you been holding out on me?