….that’s what He said – PLUS SCI FI!

Matthew,

Thanks for linking that. IT described what I thought the pope was trying to say, which is “we know and appreciate good from God’s natural law”. At least, that’s my take away from it.

Speaking of Natural law, I’m about 1/3rd of the way through the list of joint Hugo/Nebula winners, and I’m on a book by Ursula K Le Guin called The Dispossessed. I think Jeremy would like it, and The Pirate would hate it. Mainly its about a hyper-socialist group of people who once left the homeworld to live in a communistic utopia and their subsequent return/reintegration with a capitalist world. Its pretty riveting even for someone who has zero interest in economic systems/theory.
EDIT: Saw Andy’s post after I posted mine:
Congrat’s Andy, and hope your wife has a speedy recovery!

retractions and modifications

Baumeister’s source for women being more likely to be violent pulls up just a d 0.05, while the d 0.15 of men inflicting injury seems far more significant. Baumeister’s own earlier work established that men are all around most likely to be engaging in violent and criminal behavior, particularly between 15 and 29. He also established that the people most likely to be violent within marriage are men with traditional patriarchal views of marriage and gender. The study Baumeister cited has been relative recent.  It postdates publication of Baumeister’s 1999 book on violence and aggression where RB noted that globally young males rule crime and aggression stats, no surprise.  His observation that patriarchal sympathizing males were at the top of the abusive heap should also not be a surprise to anyone.  Even though the study he cited indicated women are slightly more likely to be violent the d 0.05 seems just a bit too small to seem like it would automatically matter. 

So I retract the earlier Baumeister reference about women being far more likely to be aggressive.  It’s not actually the case.  For that matter not only did I misconstrue Baumeister’s reference but when I finally dug up the cited paper 0.05 seems too statistically negligible to be certain of accuracy.  Daniel Kahneman wrote that many social science studies fall short of viability because they’re conducted with sample sizes too small to avoid sampling bias ruining the viability of the study.  Even assuming that wasn’t what was in play here the disparity between a slightly higher tendency for women and the higher rate of injury for men doesn’t suggest feminist or non-feminist concerns about abusive men are problems.  Depending on the state 85% of domestic violence cases involve men as recently as a year or so ago.  A study done more than a decade ago before the real estate bubble and a few other problems happened is not really applicable twelve years later. 

If the crime stats don’t lie then men are still the most violent and the men who are most committed to a traditionally patriarchal role for men within marriage and for women are most likely to be physically abusive.  Whether or not any or all branches of feminist thought can be considered lies that statistical detail about violent patriarchal men can’t be skated over.  But as Baumeister noted years ago, the tendency toward violence crops up readily when the woman has come from a higher economic, social, or educational status than the man and a conflict arises.  The man in that situation is much more likely to resort to violence to even the score. Baumeister noted that in half the cases of domestic violence cycles of mutual verbal and physical aggression were common.  Of note in the source Baumeister cited is that the sample skews younger. Not that parents needed a big scientific study to observe that teenagers are idiots in risk assessment while they imagine future rewards there’s brain research that shows how that works now.  There’s also brain research showing that when you fall in love whole regions of your brain shut off (congratulations to newlyweds everywhere, part of your brain just shut down for the next three to seven years). 

A matter for consideration, Fearsome, it is tempting to say that people will dismiss something until it’s convenient and on that note you’re Exhibit A yourself within the annals of the BHT: 

http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/07/14/27109/
 Fearsome Pirate writes:
 
He’s not “hugely influential” with me. Can he terminate my lease on my apartment? Shut down my Internet? Call me in for an audit? Fire me? Send me to jail? Take away my TV?
 
 I guess I look at it this way–some people will be stuck in high school forever. Those people usually do not matter (sometimes they get jobs with the TSA, and then they matter). The only significance they have is the significance you give them in your mind.
 
 I dunno, I have a hard time expressing this. About a year ago, I had this epiphany where I realized that I get to decide what’s important to me, that I don’t have to let someone else make that decision for me. I realized that 95% of the people that various media sources (religious and secular) tell me I should be obsessed with actually have no effect on my life, and I stopped caring about them. It was really liberating. To a lot of people, Mark Driscoll is a Very Important Person. To me, he’s just some idiot with a Twitter account and some kind of showbizaplex in a city I hope to never visit.
 
 @ 7:10 pm July 14, 2011 | Permalink
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2012/09/11/33463/

My wife and I read Real Marriage together. It was pretty good. We enjoyed it. There was some stuff that was kind of meh, but you could say that about any book.

How exactly did Mark Driscoll go from “he’s just some idiot with a Twitter account … ” to having written a book you and your wife enjoyed in the time it took you to become a newlywed?  Even you can be shown to decide someone’s an idiot not worth paying attention to until he suddenly becomes worth paying attention to because you’ve managed to get a wife.  Well, falling in love does cause parts of the brain to shut down  so maybe that’s how the idiot with a twitter account suddenly managed to write a pretty good book while you weren’t paying attention to him. ;-)

On FP I think I figured out why I love the posts o…

On FP I think I figured out why I love the posts of Fearsome Pirate and most others are put off by them. http://t.co/QBlx6lTY

On FP

I think I figured out why I love the posts of Fearsome Pirate and most others are put off by them.

I suspect, although I am no fortune teller, that there will eventually be a kickback to the trend towards shaming those who are not on board with the same sex agenda.

I doubt it. Who controls the schools? All it takes is a single generation of Americas’ kids being taught about same-sex couples beginning in first grade (oops, am I attacking the government’s monopoly? “You don’t care about children! You don’t want poor, black kids to learn to read! You’re a racist!”), and “homophobic bigots” will be as tiny and marginal a group as overt racists are today. Remember, the conservatives’ strategy for cultural victory is:

1. Let the radical left control the intellectual and moral formation of their children.

2. Hope that the kids subscribe to National Review when they turn 30.

With that being said, I’m curious Fearsome Pirate, and I’m not using this as a rhetorical strategy or anything, just wondering – do you see a concerted effort on behalf of one or a few groups that are complicit in the framing and toxicity of the current argument?

Yes. And it’s not just a few groups, either. It’s whatever the cause celébrè of the left currently is. You frame the discussion in terms of “Explain why you’re a heartless bastard and don’t care about the sick/the poor/the gays/the blacks/the women/etc,” and you win. Why do you think the race card gets played so aggressively? It’s because it works. The right comes up with any policy, anything, and you make some tenuous connection to hurting black people, accuse them of racism, and shout “Southern Strategy!” over and over until you win. It’s worked pretty well so far.

Facts and logic don’t matter. It’s about polarizing the argument into good and evil, and making one side prove they’re not evil while you prove nothing.

Fearsome Pirate writes:

Your example doesn’t support this at all.

Fair enough, rereading my post I wasn’t clear. I guess I’m not assigning the framing of the argument to radicals on both sides, but rather saying (tried to say) the radicals on both sides are the ones who are getting more play, or more of a voice, or whatever. I stand corrected, as you were attributing the causation of this framing to the more radical left (if I understand you correctly), and I was making probably a lesser and simpler point about the involvement of the radicals.
Also, I would agree with you on Phelps, that it is the left that gives him the spotlight and it serves a purpose. That post was not my best in regards to logical flow, but I was in a bar, so…

So what was I saying? Well, I’m just unsettled. And I guess I didn’t and don’t want to attribute the toxicity of the climate solely to the left of this discussion – regardless of who are better framers at the moment. I suspect there are probably plenty of “conservative” pastors who frame those with same sex attraction in a bad way as well. My thoughts are more along the lines of what a reactive environment looks like and that it will not be a good thing for anyone. I suspect, although I am no fortune teller, that there will eventually be a kickback to the trend towards shaming those who are not on board with the same sex agenda. I fear the kickback will be from the more reactive group on the right. Again, I may be wrong, but when an environment of pure reactionary emotion is fostered, then that is what we will probably get. And at the end of it all, people who would be reasonable are shouted down. I would also say that I know there are reasonable people who are to the left of me because I am surrounded by colleagues who are to the left of me. Some are less than helpful (I’m being careful since my real name is on here) and some work just fine with our differences. As the “conversation” plays out at our denominational gathering, it is rarely the helpful people from either side who drive the discussion.

With that being said, I’m curious Fearsome Pirate, and I’m not using this as a rhetorical strategy or anything, just wondering – do you see a concerted effort on behalf of one or a few groups that are complicit in the framing and toxicity of the current argument? If so, who and how does that work? Or is it more of a methodological move that tends to be found alongside more ‘progressive’ worldviews? Or some other option? Who is playing the game you mention in your post?

New BHT Post by Fearsome Pirate http://t.co/uc2jms…

New BHT Post by Fearsome Pirate http://t.co/uc2jmsWM

FP: Neither Bush nor Blair were spies; they had to rely on their spies to get it right, and the spies got it wrong. It is fundamentally and morally no different than when an artillery battalion shells friendly troops because they received faulty intel. Tragic, yes. But the captain didn’t “lie” about enemy troop positions.

FP gets a “here, here” from me as well.  And, this — from the conclusion of the declassified study Pirate referenced earlier:

A liability of intelligence analysis is that once a party has been proven to be an effective deceiver, that knowledge becomes a heavy factor in the calculations of the analytical observer.  In the [Iraq] example, this impression was based on a series of undocumented revelations of unilateral destruction combined with unexpected revelations from a high-level, well-placed defector, leading analysts to be more likely predisposed to interpret similar but unrelated behaviors observed after 1996 as proof of continued forbidden activity (p. 14 in original, emphasis added)

Keeping with FP’s analogy, if the enemy has been known to put his forces in a specific area, time and time again, and if the battalion commander receives new and reasonably plausible intelligence that the enemy has, once again, placed his forces in the very same position, it’s not hard to accept that the battalion commander is likely going to believe the new intelligence and act on it.  Unlike the swiftly-spoken caveat at the end of commercials for investment vehicles, in the arena of war and international security, past performance is often a very good indicator of future results.

If I can climb on a soapbox for a moment, I’ve always been struck by the desire to talk about the causes of the Second Gulf War in terms of a single variable (“It was just about oil!”  “It was Curveball’s fault!”).  I’ve always thought it had four aspects: (1) the intelligence we’ve been talking about re: Iraq and WMD; (2) Saddam’s connection with terrorism, including Ansar al-Islam (see here and here for information regarding what’s come out on this topic following analysis of documents captured in 2003 — let’s just say that there’s greater connection than the left has put forward, and less than the right has made hay about); (c) the long-standing “fingernail pulling” quality of Saddam’s regime (see FP’s totalitarian comment); and finally, (4) the very real concern that Saddam — in light of the three previous points and [EDIT: his] offensive (military) action back in 1990/1991 — was firmly sitting on what is probably the second largest reservoir, after Saudi Arabia, of proven (and more easily recoverable) 21st century oil.

That deserves one of those slow claps.

I don’t know what the posting excuse is for the rest of you (except Kurt who inexplicably had another child after two rounds of no sleep). I’m in school for two more days. Engage the Pirate for crying out loud.

I suppose I should clarify that I wasn’t hating on Emergents per se in that post.

The whole Emerg{ent,ing} thing is Not Me At All, but I can see (with varying levels of grudgingness, depending on my mood (sw)) that for many people it provides a way to stay in (or return to) a church from which they otherwise feel completely alienated.

What I do object to is the type of bullying rhetoric that pronounces the Emergent Church to be the Next Big Wave Of History, so that you need to get with the programme or be found to be opposing God himself, etc.

PS: Fearsome Pirate: *applause*. A particular favourite bit:

So you read Aquinas and think he’s smart. BFD, so did John Calvin. Do you think the pope is infallible? No? Hi, you’re a Protestant, welcome to the club you never left.