Canada on drugs

David Warren writes about the latest Canadian statistic showing drug use doubling over the past ten years:

I'm aware that I'm writing in the newspaper in which the semi-legendary Dan Gardner wrote innumerable series of award-winning articles arguing that the legalization of drugs would put an end to all associated organized crime and make the world safe for democracy. It's one of those issues about which, even though I am a vocational pundit, I have never had an opinion. But wait for it, I'm about to come up with one.

The flaw in the libertarian argument, is that people don't need permission to misbehave. That is the part of human behaviour that comes naturally. Instead, it takes a considerable amount of repressive tradition, social stigma, and legal threat, to get anything good out of the species. And while there may be some tactical discussion of what is worth making illegal, and what is not, the idea that you can reduce crime by getting rid of laws is tautological.

In this case, the question of organized crime is tertiary. We have police to take care of that sort of thing, and if there aren't enough, then we need more.

The secondary question is: Do we want to live in a country which is a magnet for all the superannuated hippies in the USA? While the Americans progressively close the border against drug shipments passing the other way? With consequences for all the dwindling number of Canadians who do not happen to be stoned out of their wee minds? But even on this level, drug legalization would be merely an act of stupidity.

The primary question is, do we want the drug culture to become our public culture? For that is the unseen goal we now approach: in a word, Holland.

The flaw in the libertarian argument, which David points out, but doesn't identify as such, is that if recreational drugs are to be legalized, it will deprive us of the freedom to live and raise our children in a drug-free environment. This lack of thought for externalities (consequences to third parties of your actions) is perhaps the main reason why I am not a libertarian. To be fair, libertarians believe that such things can be resolved through private contracts, i.e. that we could develop drug-free neighborhoods where the inhabitants agree contractually not to use drugs. But since most cities are mostly built, such a thing is currently almost impossible. So we have to choose, which freedom do you most value?

Comment:

The terrible truth is that drugs do not cause immoral behaviour.

However, drug laws do.

I'm with the libertarians on this issue.

Agree that their proposed solution of drug-free neighbourhood contracts seems silly and unworkable.

What's more important is to refute present misconceptions about drugs. And also to abolish the forcible drugging of law-abiding people.

Posted by: Tom Robinson at December 3, 2004 04:03 AM Permalink

Comment:

I hope you don't decide you have a right to raise your children in a drug free enviroment. Jailing every drinker and smoker will take some doing.

Posted by: Brett at December 21, 2004 07:58 PM Permalink

Magical Mystery

I was over thirty when I first learned to play a musical instrument. If I try, I can still remember what it was like to listen to music back then. It was magical and mysterious. It made me feel things, indescribable, wonderful, joyous, sad. Each tune, unfathomably unique, its own special musical world. I would sit back and let the music wash over me and marvel at it, each unique note coming down exactly in its place, revealing its secrets.

Then I taught myself music, and I learned its structure. The scale (a term, the meaning of which I knew, but somehow never absorbed), major, minor, chords. I noticed that songs were built around chords, even when not played. And I learned what patterns create what moods. And I noticed that each song, far from being unique, was often very much like many other songs. In fact, whole genres, like blues, were little more than different arrangements of the same tune. Much of the mystery, and the magic was gone. But strangely, I began to enjoy music not less, but more. For all magic and mystery I lost, what I gained deeper, richer, and even more magical.

I often get the feeling that people shy away from certain kinds of knowledge because they don't want to destroy life's mystery. They don't really want to know who they are, or why they are attracted to their spouse. They believe that they should know intuitively how to raise their children, or how to make their marriage work, or how to enjoy life. And there are some good reasons for this: they intuitively do know much, the same way that the musically untrained know much about music. (I realize how much I knew intuitively when I hear non-western music. Though I find it pleasant to listen to, it is almost incomprehensible to me. Though with western music I pick up tunes instantly and remember them easily, with non-western music the tune is forgotten second the music stops.)

One of the life-coloring differences between the secular culture of the US and religious Jewish culture is the commonplace introspection of the intuitive. Self-analysis is part of the culture. Not psychological self-analysis, but self-analysis to determine whether you're doing things right, being a good person, getting the most out of life. It is common for people to take classes on raising children and on couplehood, in addition to Bible-oriented, or more "spiritual" classes. It is assumed that we know these subjects imperfectly, at best, and that there are things that can be learned by (more or less) formal methodology. In fact, these subjects are considered important aspects of spiritual growth, not just practical wisdom.

Uncovering the little mysteries of life doesn't make it more prosaic, but deeper, richer, and more magical than ever.

Comment:

I would agree that few people spend any time considering who they are and why they believe twhat they believe.

But I think that many people are afraid to take a good hard look inside. It is hard for them to be exposed and to have view their faults.

Posted by: Jack at December 3, 2004 04:23 AM Permalink

Comment:

So, what was the musical instrument?

Posted by: wintermute at December 3, 2004 09:12 AM Permalink

Comment:

I started with keyboard, but quickly decided that being good enough to enjoy listening to myself would take more investment than I was willing to make. So I switched to guitar and harmonica.

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 3, 2004 09:53 AM Permalink

Comment:

How difficult was the guitar?

I had a brief period on the piano when younger, and experienced the alteration in the perception of music that you describe.

Now, like you, I am a post thirties type, interested in picking up an instrument. Your observations as to what it is like would be appreciated.

Posted by: wintermute at December 3, 2004 11:38 AM Permalink

Comment:

Wintermute: I'd like to answer you, but I don't have time at the moment. I'll try to get back to you tomorrow night (EST+7).

BTW, thanks for dropping by! This has some bearing on our other discussion: the way you perceive a culture from the outside is often quite far from the reality perceived by its practitioners.

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 3, 2004 02:02 PM Permalink

Comment:

Beautifully stated David. That is exactly how I feel about genetics, umm, and mathematics, and well, I guess, Life! Why should understanding the intricate, fantastical and magical processes that define our universe lessen the awe we feel?

Posted by: jinnderella at December 3, 2004 11:39 PM Permalink

Comment:

Anything which is understood is not magical. The magic consists in the recognition that the system is incomplete (necessarily so, given that it can never account for its own first principles).

Posted by: Daniel at December 4, 2004 09:19 AM Permalink

Comment:

Nope-- I disagree! (hardly ever happens with you) :)
"any significantly advanced science is indistinguishable from magic"! The magic is that the system works! When black holes moved from theory to reality with the radio-teleoscopy proof, did they become less magical and awe inspiring?
If the statistical theory of jinn particles in quantum mechanics is validated, will the particles become less fascinating and magical? Not to me! :)

Posted by: jinnderella at December 4, 2004 04:34 PM Permalink

Comment:

"Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic" because both amaze the masses, as neither is understood. "That the system works" is either not understood (and so my previous response holds) or is accounted for by another system, in which case there is no cause for awe, as all that occurs is occuring necessarily.

The "fascination" (originally from the Latin fascinum, "evil spell") is not part of the system.

Posted by: Daniel at December 5, 2004 12:51 AM Permalink

Comment:

Personally, I am fascinated when things work, especially when I understand it.

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 5, 2004 01:11 AM Permalink

Comment:

Daniel, I still don't think understsnding the mechanism lessens my awe or fascination one iota (heh. evil spell. I am sure the ID people would agree with you that that is a good definition of interest in evolution). Perhaps we are operating on two different definitions of magic though.

Posted by: jinnderella at December 5, 2004 01:50 AM Permalink

Cognition and Musical Instruments

Wintermute asks:

How difficult was the guitar?

I had a brief period on the piano when younger, and experienced the alteration in the perception of music that you describe.

Now, like you, I am a post thirties type, interested in picking up an instrument. Your observations as to what it is like would be appreciated.

Piano is singularly difficult instrument, in my opinion, because there are only two ways in which the quality of a note can be varied - its length and volume. Of well-known western instruments, only the harpsichord is worse - you cannot even do that! (Okay, on the piano you can use the pedals too, big deal.) In contrast, with all other instruments you are in direct contact with the musical element, and can vary the quality of the note by the way you play, introducing microtones, or different harmonics, through processes cognitively similar to skills you already have.

Not that I don't like piano music - in fact I love it. But adding emotion to piano music requires mastering the cognitively complex skill of playing many notes in quick succession, or even at the same time, usually with different rhythms, a kind of musical pointillism where each note has to be individually specified. By way of example, imagine playing a simple tune, say "Oh, Susana" on the piano. Playing it straight would be extremely boring. In order to make it interesting, you would have to come up with some sort of complex arrangement for it, something most people can't do spontaneously, even if they can play it. In contrast, I have no trouble playing it on the Harmonica with enough musical interest that I (at least) find it interesting. I can modulate the notes in all kinds of interesting ways, taking advantage of cognitive pathways I already have for voice (after all I have been speaking for a long time). Guitar is somewhere in between - though our hands, unlike our lungs, lips, and tongue, are not normally used for producing sound, it seems fairly natural to map that ability to the way you pick, strum, or bend a string - much more natural than what you have to do with a piano!

If I were to recommend a instrument to start with, I'd definitely choose harmonica. Not only is it easy to add color to your notes, to keep yourself interested, but you can go up and down the scale by simply sliding your mouth up and down the instrument. True, the layout of the notes takes a little getting used to (not much, in my experience), but it has the advantage that the blow notes form major chords (which is why it's called an harmonica), and if you're playing western music, it is very natural to use this as your frame of reference. I just started teaching my four-year-old, we'll see how it goes.

Comment:

To maximize expressiveness, you can play cross harp. Using for example a G harmonica in the key of C, the major is then on the suck reeds and thus far easier to bend.

Posted by: triticale at December 10, 2004 06:02 PM Permalink

Israel: The Brand

Jonathan Medved thinks Israel needs rebranding:

While Silicon Valley still reigns supreme among technology movers and shakers, Israel is clearly in an unassailable second place. In the third quarter of 2004, Israel produced 113 startups that attracted venture capital funding. Over this same period, the entire United States produced only 467 venture-backed companies. This means that Israel, with a population just two percent of America's, has almost 25% of the venture-backed startups relative to the US. Add to this Israel's number of patents filed and granted, its legion of companies traded on Nasdaq, our recent IPOs, mergers, and acquisitions, and the data is truly impressive. Yet these statistics tell only part of the story.

The fact is that the majority of technology-connected people around the world both use and interact with Israeli technology several times a day without even knowing it. Every time you open your Intel-based computer with either a Pentium or Centrino inside, you are using Israeli know-how. The same when you leave a voice mail message on a Comverse mailbox or when you send an AOL or ICQ instant message. Or when you use any electronics that has a circuit card or display inspected by Orbotech, or a flash memory from Msystems or SanDisk.

Whether you know it or not, Israel is there when you are billed for a phone call by Amdocs or when you contact a call center monitored by Nice or Verint.

Almost everyone on the Internet is protected by a Check Point firewall or by a myriad of Israeli antivirus products. This list can go on and on; and yet while this "daily dose" of Israeli technology is a fact of life, we get virtually no credit for it. Most people have no awareness of how much of their indispensable technology is actually "Made in Israel."

Add to this the new life-saving, medical, and green technologies now being developed by Israeli companies such as Proneuron's spinal cord restoration, Teva's cost-saving generic drugs, Given's pain-saving Pill Cams, InSightec's non-invasive cyst blaster, Syneron's cosmetic and skin savers, Ormat's geothermal and wind energy plants, and you have a broad story of Israeli companies working for the benefit of mankind.

I have worked almost my entire professional life in the Israeli high-tech industry, so I am in a position to comment on this. Except perhaps in the internet security industry, all high-tech companies try to hide their Israeli origin - it's considered bad for business. Often they open up headquarters in the US, or (less often) other countries. I have been to high-tech conventions in the US where people have looked at my business card and said, "Israel? Are you kidding?" as if it said Upper Volta (now called Burkina Faso, incidentally a country with more than twice Israel's population). On the other hand, once you get to a certain level in the high-tech corporate hierarchy, there is widespread recognition of Israel's importance in the industry. 

Comment:

Poor hasbara has been a continuous problem for many years now.

Posted by: Jack at December 6, 2004 08:05 AM Permalink

Comment:

It is better to keep low profile.

Posted by: jaimito at December 9, 2004 12:51 PM Permalink

Killing burglars

Instapundit writes:

I agree. [That it should be legal to kill burglars in your home - DB] In fact, as self-defense against burglars generates positive exernalities, by reducing the number of burglars, and their willingness to break into homes which might be occupied (thus reducing the risk that people will suffer Mr. Symonds' fate), there's a good economic argument that it ought to be not simply tolerated, but actively encouraged and even subsidized.

It is interesting to compare this with halakha (Jewish law). According to halakha, you are required to kill burglars who break into your home, in self-defense. (In Jewish law, self-defense is not an option, but an obligation.) The reasoning is that a burglar who breaks into your home, as opposed to a thief who steals surreptitiously, comes prepared for opposition - i.e. he is prepared to kill you if he meets you. Therefore, killing him is by definition self-defense.

UPDATE: Instapundit links to a Daily Telegraph article. It is a shocking account of what happens to a society when it refuses to defend itself. It tells us a lot about what's going on in Europe today. Sample:

When I debated this issue with the eminent lawyer Lord (Andrew) Phillips on the Jeremy Vine radio show, he argued that while the number of burglaries would drop if there were an unqualified right of self-defence "the number of injuries to householders will vastly increase because the burglars will get their retaliation in first... It is an iron rule, criminals are more violent than victims."

The victim always has a psychological advantage over the attacker: If the price of aggression becomes to high, the attacker can walk (or run) away. Criminals don't want to get hurt, they want to get away with their actions.

After John's murder my mind was filled with violent thoughts. I imagined his killers strung up on gibbets in Trafalgar Square, being pecked at by the pigeons. Then I received a letter from his friend and fellow Catholic, Lord Grantley, who said: "John would have wanted us to pray not only for his family, but also for his murderers, that they should repent, for otherwise they would perish, a fate he would not have wished on anyone."

There is no contradiction between praying that murderers repent, and killing them in self-defense.

Trackback from Serenade, Make my Day:

The more I read about Jewish law and morals, the more convinced I become that 5000-odd years of refinement have actually been good for quite a lot. I found this item on Rishon Rishon (one of my favourite Israeli blogs, by the way):

Comment:

In Colorado, we have the "make my day law". Most burglars think twice.

Posted by: jinnderella at December 7, 2004 09:37 PM Permalink

Knowledge of Intuition

Amritas responds to the post where I talk about my fondness for complex systems, such as evolution and economics, which are created by the application of simple, easy-to-understand rules. He talks about one of my other great intellectual loves, intuitive knowledge:

One does not need to spell properly or to get an 800 on the English portion of the SAT to get through life as an Anglophone in America. One does, however, have to decide to use a(n), the, or nothing before a noun on a regular basis. Such decisions are at the 'heart' of the language - the core known to all native users regardless of level of education. No native English speakers hesitate to choose between a(n), the, or nothing in the middle of a spoken sentence. Even a child can do it correctly. It seems self-evident - though it's also so hard to explain. If someone asked, "When do you use the?", could you give an instant (and short!) answer?

When I use the term intuitive knowledge, I'm referring to things that people know (which are true) but which people can't explain rationally. I find this kind of knowledge fascinating because people usually equate their thoughts with their self, e.g. "I think, therefore I am" - when the reality is that there is a great deal of thinking that we do which we are not even aware of.

Almost everything that we do, we do intuitively: walk, eat, see. To those who think that these things are innate, and therefore not thinking, I say: have a baby, you will see that these things are learned. But that doesn't tell the whole story: we are physiologically built to learn them. Children who don't learn these things at a young age will probably never be able to learn them, or will learn them poorly, and with great trouble. Language falls into this category. How many of us know the grammatical rules of our own language? Even professional linguists don't know all the rules of their own language. Learning language by learning grammar and vocabulary can only take you so far, the rest must be done intuitively, through usage. There are innumerable little rules in every language, that you must learn in order to be proficient in it. The amazing thing is that every everybody successfully masters those rules at least for one language. Even profoundly retarded people usually do a very good job of it, just as they learn to walk, eat, and see. (Anyone who has tried to write optical recognition software knows how hard it is, rationally, to distinguish objects from visual input. Yet people do effortlessly.)

I am very much a second-language speaker of Hebrew. If I concentrate, I am capable of producing Hebrew that Israelis will mistake for native, but this level of concentration is usually incompatible with thought. I have settled on an accent which Israelis have told me is "not bad" - which means that it is clearly foreign. And though I know the rules of Hebrew grammar, when I'm tired, or concentrating on a difficult thought, my production ability declines dramatically. Nevertheless, most of what you read about Hebrew on this blog are not things that I learned in school, rationally, but the results of thought-experiments performed on myself. Though I gained fluency in the language only as an adult, I was capable of absorbing through osmosis innumerable rules that rationally I don't know about.

There are those who claim that knowledge of God should be on the list of those things we know intuitively. I'm not so sure. What I am sure about is that worldview is on the list, and God may or may not be part of it. Our worldview enables us to interpret the events of our lives, in much the same way that sight enables us to interpret visual images, or language ability enables us to interpret speech. Hardly any of us even know that we have a worldview, or what it is if we do. Certainly it's not something we've learned rationally, in school (though the school environment is important in forming it: why I am so adamantly in favor of school choice). It's something we pick up through osmosis, like language, first from our parents, then from society at large. In my opinion it's the most important thing in our lives, and most of us pay no attention to it, neither in ourselves, nor our children.

Comment:

yes, i agree, god is an emergent property, not an atomic one. an analogy i would use:

language:monogenic trait
god:polygenic trait

that is, if the language gene is 'faulty' you are retarded, you can't speak, if it isn't, you can talk. it is an on-off feature. god is influenced by a host of background variables, so so tweaking one might not change your views too much, and different people can have very different views because of the combinitorics that emerge out of all the different variables (the gene analogy does not imply that all the variables are genetic obviously!)

Posted by: razib at December 6, 2004 10:13 PM Permalink

Comment:

I don't think that language is a monogenic trait, but I do think it's a physiological unit. Like a car, it can have many components, any one of which can incapacitate the car if it breaks. While performance can be better or worse, there has to be a very high degree of quality for it to work at all. I think we have a physiological unit for worldview too, when it doesn't work we get schizophrenia (an incoherent worldview). Godliness is a characteristic of worldview, not of the worldview unit.

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 7, 2004 10:42 AM Permalink

Comment:

I find language to be amazing, just incredible. One of the things that I have noticed is that when you count to yourself it is typically in the language you learned to count in.

It doesn't matter how many languages you speak, most of the time you will rever to the initial language.

I don't have scientific references for this, just my own empirical observations gained from many discussions with multilingual friends and family.

Posted by: Jack at December 7, 2004 07:45 PM Permalink

Comment:

Jack: I have made the same observation. My data is unanimous, I so I think it's pretty good even if unscientific.

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 7, 2004 07:50 PM Permalink

Comment:

david, no, "language" is not monogenic, but there is probably an outsized role given to on particular regulatory gene. that is, the expression of hundreds of genes downstream might be contingent upon the character of this gene.

Posted by: razib at December 8, 2004 04:08 AM Permalink

Comment:

Razib: Thanks for the link, it's VERY interesting!

Summary for my readers: The FOXP2 gene is responsible for regulating (turning off and on) many genes which are important for producing language. (Presumably it also regulates genes which have nothing to do with language.)

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at December 8, 2004 09:56 AM Permalink

Decency and Defiance

John Ray tells the story of Marxism, Leninism, and Fascism, tracing the ideas back to American progressives:

They were the ideas of the American "Progressives". And who was the best known Progressive in the world at that time? None other than the President of the United States -- Woodrow Wilson -- the man who was most responsible for the postwar order in Europe. So Mussolini had to do little more than read his newspapers to hear at least some things about the ideas of the American Progressives.

And what those ideas were is pretty amazing. "Progressive" was the label favoured by the American Left of the day -- as it still is -- and yet they believed in such things as war being a purifying force, the subjugation of democracy to elite leadership, book-burning, stiff-arm salutes, loyalty oaths, flag ceremonies, the inferiority of blacks and Jews and, of course eugenics. And who said this: "Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty." It could easily have been Mussolini or Hitler but it was in fact Woodrow Wilson.

So 20th century Fascism was in fact an American invention, or more precisely an invention of the American Left. Like many American ideas to this day, however, it proved immensely popular in Europe and it was only in Europe that it was put fully into practice. As it does today, American conservatism kept the American Left in some check in the first half of the 20th century so it was only in Europe that their ideas could come into full bloom.

It makes me think that what we have here is a conflict between intellectual fashion and basic decency. Ideas come and go with the winds of fashion. Only basic decency keeps them from inspiring tyranny (sometimes).

Hanuka

Tonight is the first night of Hanuka (חנוכה). Hanuka is the best known of the Jewish holidays, at least in the US, it is therefore assumed to be the most (or at least, one of the most) important. It is not. Its prominence in the US is due solely to its proximity to Christmas, giving Americans an excuse to call December the "Holiday Season". (Personally, I have always found this patronizing, we all know what holiday the "Holiday Season" is really about. Rather like a parent making a big deal about winning the consolation prize.) In fact, Hanuka is one of the least important Jewish holidays. It is not one of the seven holidays of the Tora (Pesah, Shvi`i shel Pesah, Shavu`ot, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kipur, Sukot, Simhat Tora), it's a far younger holiday, added in historic times, to celebrate the victory of the Jews over the Seleucid Greeks, and the rebirth of the Jewish state in 165 BCE.

Hanuka in Israel is fun precisely because it's not so serious. If you don't have children, you probably won't feel it much at all. But children love it. In most families, every member of the household lights a hanukiya (חנוכיה) - the special candelabra made for celebrating the holiday. A kosher (fit) hanukiya has eight candlesticks in a row, a the same level (actually, to be more precise, they must be arranged such that when viewed from the front, no two candles are overlapping). A ninth candlestick must be either not at the same level, or not in line with the others - this candle is called the shamash (שמש). The Hanuka candles are specifically the eight candles in a row - the shamash is emphatically not a Hanuka candle, which is why it must be distinguished from the others. Its presence is required because of a singular restriction on the use of Hanuka candles, namely that you can't. It is forbidden to use the Hanuka candles, it is permitted only to enjoy them. When lighting the candles we say the following:

הנרות הללו אנו מדליקים, על הניסים, ועל הנפלאות
ועל התשועות, ועל המלחמות שעשית לאבותינו
 בימים ההם בזמן הזה, על ידי כוהניך הקדושים
וכל שמונת ימי חנוכה, הנרות הללו קודש הם
ואין לנו רשות להשתמש בהם
אלא לראותם בלבד
כדי להודות ולהלל לשמך הגדול
על ניסיך, ועל נפלאותיך, ועל ישועותיך

Hanerot halalu anu madliqim, `al hanisim, v`al hanifla'ot
V`al hat'shu`ot v`al hamilhamot she`asita l'avoteynu
Bayamim hahem bizman haze, `al y'dey kohaneykha haq'doshim
V'khol shmonat y'mey hanuka,hanerot halalu qodesh hem
V'eyn lanu r'shut l'hishtamesh bahem
Ele lir'otam bilvad
K'dey l'hodot ulhalel l'shimkha hagadol
`Al niseykha, v`al nifl'oteykha, v`al y'shu`oteykha

These candles we are lighting, for the miracles, and for the wonders
And for the victories, and for the battles that you made for our forefathers
In those days at this time, by means of your holy priests
And all of the eight days of Hanuka, these candles are holy
And we don't have permission to use them
But only to look at them
In order to thank and praise your great name
For your miracles, and for your wonders, and for your victory

"Your holy priests" refers to the priestly family, the Hashmona'im, who led the rebellion against the Seleucids, and the passage as a whole is meant to remind us not to use the candles. The purpose of the shamash is to be the candle that we use (i.e. if the other candles weren't lit, the light of shamash would be enough), if we need to.

During Hanuka, we insert the following words into every prayer, and the blessing after every meal. A short history of the day:

 ועל הנסים ועל הפורקן ועל הגבורות ועל התשועות
 ועל הנפלאות ועל הנחמות ועל המלחמות
 שעשית לאבותינו בימים ההם בזמן הזה
 בימי מתתיהו בן יוחנן כהן גדול חשמונאי ובניו
 כשעמדה מלכות יון הרשעה על עמך ישראל  להשכיחם תורתך
 ולהעבירם מחוקי רצונך
ואתה ברחמיך הרבים עמדת להם בעת צרתם
רבת את ריבם דנת את דינם נקמת את נקמתם
מסרת גבורים ביד חלשים ורבים ביד מעטים וטמאים ביד טהורים
ורשעים ביד צדיקים וזדים ביד עוסקי תורתך
ולך עשית שם גדול וקדוש בעולמך
ולעמך ישראל עשית תשועה גדולה ופורקן כהיום הזה
ואחר כך באו בניך לדביר ביתך ופינו את היכלך וטיהרו את מקדשך
והדליקו נרות בחצרות קודשך וקבעו שמונת ימי חנוכה אלו
להודות ולהלל לשמך הגדול

V`al hanisim v`al hapurkan v`al hagvurot v`al hatshu`ot
V`al hanifla'ot v`al hanehamot v`al hamilhamot
She`asita l'avoteynu bayamim hahem bazman haze
Bimey Matityahu ben Yohanan kohen gadol Hashmonay uvanav
K'she`amda malkhut Yavan harsha`a `al `amkha Yisra'el l'hashkiham toratekha
 Ulha`aviram mehuqey r'sonkha
V'ata b'rahameyhka harabim `amadta lahem b`et saratam
Ravta et rivam, danta et dinam, naqamta et niqmatam
Masarta giborim biyad halashim, v'rabim biyad m`atim v't'me'im biyad t'horim
V'r'sha`im biyad sadiqim, v'zedim biyad `osqey toratekha
Ulkha `asita shem gadol v'qadosh b`olamekha
Ul`amkha Yisra'el `asita t'shu`a g'dola ufurqan k'hayom haze
V'ahar kakh ba'u baneykha lidvir beytekha ufinu et heykhalekha v'tiharu et miqdashekha
V'hidliqu nerot b'hasrot qodshekha v'qav`u shmonat y'mey Hanuka elu
L'hodot ulhalel l'shimkha hagadol
 

For the miracles, and for the salvation and for the mighty deeds and for the victories
And for the wonders and for the consolations and for the battles
That you made for our forefathers in those days at this time
In the days of Matthew son of John the high priest,  the Hasmonean, and his sons
When the wicked kingdom of Greece stood over your people Israel to make them forget your Tora
And to make them transgress the statues of your will
And you in your great compassion stood with them at the time of their troubles
Disputed their disputes judged their judgments, avenged their vengence
Delivered the strong at the hand of the weak, the many at the hand of the few, the defiled at the hand of the pure
And the wicked at the hand of the righteous, and the wanton at the hand of those who busy themselves with your Tora
And for yourself you made a great and holy name in your world
And for your people Israel you made a great victory and salvation as this day
And afterwards your children came to the sanctuary of your house and cleansed your Temple and purified your holy site
And lit the candles In the courtyards of your holiness and established these eight days of Hanuka
To thank and to praise your great name

A Tax Cut Parable

I hardly ever point to something when I have nothing to add, but this is too good:

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

* The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
* The fifth would pay $1.
* The sixth would pay $3.
* The seventh $7.
* The eighth $12.
* The ninth $18.
* The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."

So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal.

So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

* The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
* The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
* The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
* The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
* The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
* The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10!"

What happened next? See for yourself!

Trackback from Solomonia, A Parable of Taxation:

Here. (via Rishon Rishon) Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay...

Universities promote uniformity

I've known for a long time how uniformly leftist universities are (I went to one once myself), now I know why:

The truth is that it is very, very hard to get a tenured faculty position at a university. And the hiring process is unlike anything in a private business. In most cases, one needs a unanimous vote of the professors in one’s department to get tenure. This puts a high priority on intangibles like collegiality, which often translates into sharing the same politics and ideology.

This is a sure-fire way to get uniformity - and mediocrity. The most original people are almost by definition controversial. (Not necessarily disliked, but disbelieved.) A system to promote diversity would be designed differently, with say, professors taking turns on a small tenure committee, or even having outsiders be in charge. The system described above sounds more like a self-perpetuating aristocracy or cult than anything else.

The article concludes:

Unfortunately, fixing this problem will take a long time. It is certainly not amenable to a legislative fix, such as a quota for conservatives. It would help, however, to shame universities into treating intellectual diversity the same way they now treat race and gender. But first they have to admit they have a problem. That hasn’t happened yet.

I disagree about it not being amenable to legislative fix. At least in the public sector, any state legislature that cared to do so could begin fixing the situation by appointing trustees or administrators dedicated to diversity. The problem is that half of them like the bias on campus, and the other half think it's not worth the fight.

Comment:

Agreed. Leftists think that diversity is to do with ethnicity, gender and financial background, instead of ideas and opinions.

It's also important to assess students solely on academic competence. Factors like attendance and participation should be made irrelevant to grading.

-- Tom

Posted by: Tom at December 8, 2004 11:12 PM Permalink

Comment:

a few points

* i think the non-monetary prestige accrued to being a university professor appeals more to leftists than rightists. that is, being a professor is a way to be upper-middle-class, but not money-grubblingly so, and still have a lot of prestige.

* the university faculties have been *much more resistant* about imposing quotas on their own hiring policies than have been when it comes to pushing quotas in terms of student admissions. while departments might have a "token" (that is, a token female in the engineering dept.) here & there, they are much less open to proportionality....

Posted by: razib at December 8, 2004 11:39 PM Permalink

Comment:

In an academic environment there is a big push to be one of the "boys" because many are afraid to stand on their own, they do not want their research challenged.

You are correct, this is very disturbing. It is very important to have free thinkers and to allow them to work without encumberance.

Nothing profound there, but fighting bureaucracy and groupthink can be challenging.

Posted by: Jack at December 12, 2004 04:04 AM Permalink

Semitic Consonants

Amritas writes a nice post, in which he talks about the word 'shalom', in the context of Semitic roots and patterns. He also links to this table in JPG form. For me, at least, the table is quite blurry and hard for me to read, so I have reproduced it below. In the process, I have turned it on its side, and replaced some of the original graphs in order to make it more amenable to the blog and HTML format. I also added a column for my own Hebrew transcription, that I use on this blog, which is meant to represent a superset of modern Hebrew pronunciations.

Original Notes: (1) In Akkadian the consonants gh, `, h, ', h, and usually y were lost, although there is evidence that they were present in the oldest stages of the language. (2) In Hebrew and Aramaic the non-emphatic stops b, p, d, t, g, k become fricatives (pronounced v, f, dh, th, gh, kh, respectively) after vowels unless they are doubled; *w at the beginning of words became y.

My Notes: (1) Underlined letters and q, except for h, are "emphatic". The original pronunciation of emphatic consonants is unclear, but in modern Hebrew and Arabic they are velarized, or uvularized (the back of the tongue is raised during pronunciation, in the case of q, this means that it is pushed back to a uvular stop). (2) In Modern Hebrew the process of stops regularly becoming fricatives, described above, has reversed itself for dh, th, and gh, which have reverted to d, t, and g respectively. Modern Hebrew spelling reflects the sound system in the Hebrew column of this table, which does not correspond one-for-one with my transcriptions. (3) By and large, Semitic languages are quite closely related, more comparable to the Germanic language family than the Indo-European family. Armed with this table, it is quite easy for amateurs to figure out cognates. For example, when I hear an Arabic word, I can usually come up with a Hebrew cognate.

Maladapted to our Habitat

For millions of years we lived in tribal units, stretching back in time far beyond the origins of our species, and continuing almost up to the present. A mere 10,000 years ago, all our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers. Probably, most of our ancestors were still hunter-gatherers only 5,000 years ago. But even after that date, we lived in small villages - from a social point of view not too different from a hunter-gathering tribe. Modern life, intimately bound to the social milieu of the city, became the native habitat of the majority only about a hundred years ago, and then only in the most technologically advanced countries of the world. It is a profound change for mankind tha