JayB

Interesting points. But the moral righteousness of bombing and deliberately causing collateral damage deaths on the premise of preventing even more future deaths relies on an assumption that the country choosing to bomb knows with certainty the long term outcomes of either choice (to bomb, or not to bomb). It may or may not be the lesser of two evils, yet it's the course always chosen with this rationale in mind. How do we know that some 12 year old Iraqi boy who otherwise would've become a doctor but whose entire family was blown up in front of him by one of our bombs accidently isn't now instead going to become the guy who drops a huge nuke on New York City in the year 2031? Well we don't, and that's an eccentric example, but the point is, these justifications for war have been recycled forever and we don't know what the wide ranging effects of war really have had- except that there's a cycle of violence within this supposed moral imperative of "no killing". Using airstrikes for assassination in urban areas is certain to cause civilian casualties. War planners know and accept this; therefore those deaths are every bit as deliberate as the in the case of stoning. There is a difference in scale, of course. The stoning kills one person, the bombing many. I would also argue that our nearly psychotic paranoia regarding the vastly overblown terrorist threat is similar to the paranoia of those muslim nations who feel that female infidelity will lead to an unraveling of their social fabric. In fact, I would argue that our society IS unraveling as a result of our paranoia and pre-occupation with national security at the expense of all else. Essentially, we've allowed ourselves to become a pathetic bucket of angry, frightened kittens just because a few pricks took out a couple of our buildings. Lately, however, it seems that we might have a chance to get our balls back and move on. Using the term "I would argue.." followed by a statement of your personal convictions doesn't transmute the said convictions into an argument, much less a convincing one. It bears repeating that private acts of affection and targeted attacks on terrorists are different things, and if you wish to compare the moral codes of two different groups of people in an accurate and rational fashion, you need to compare the precepts that govern their responses to the same activities. I'll help you out here. Compare the legal punishments that a woman is subject to for engaging in consensual sex outside of in marriage under Western Law to the penalties that the same actions are subject to under Sharia. Do the same for the conduct of Islamists with respect to the moral considerations that they undertake with regards to civilian casualties. Islamists not only take no effort whatsoever to minimize civilian casualties. This is because civilians are the target, and they make every effort to maximize the number of civilians that they kill, and use every means at their disposal to do so. Now compare this philosophy to the practice of using precision strikes to kill people in an effort to limit the number of civilians that the terrorists are able to murder. The fact that you keep attempting to tether the practice of stoning women who commit adultery to death with targeted airstrikes against terrorists who may or may not be surrounded by civilians with nothing more substantial than a bald assertion is telling. The reason that you are unwilling to make an apples-to-apples comparison is that the act of doing so would undermine the unreflective moral relativism that you are attempting to pass off as serious moral reasoning. Either that or you would look quite foolish attempting to argue on behalf of arguments that are transparently false, and that not even you believe. If a female relative of yours had an affair and she would be either subject to Sharia or Western moral/legal moray, and the nonsense that you are arguing on behalf of actually represented your sincere convictions, you would not object to someone deciding the matter with a flip of the coin. "Death by stoning or a few folks looking askance at her and maybe a divorce *shrug* - flip away."? Right.

"Two different societies striking a balance between removing a threat and the harm its willing to inflict to do so." The problem here is that these are, by definition, two entirely different things. One is intentional, the other is not. The fact that people choose to believe otherwise doesn't negate this difference anymore than the existence of people who refuse to believe that two plus two equals four refutes the truth of the proposition than they do. You seem to think that noting the fact that there are varying opinions on the matter is tantamount to a logical proof of some kind that actually renders them equal to one another. It's really hard to know where to begin with someone who presents observations as arguments, but lets start with the statement that's central to your examples. "Two different societies striking a balance between removing a threat and the harm its willing to inflict to do so." Yes - we have two societies. We also have two entirely different phenomena that actually have nothing whatsoever in common with one another in any objective sense. We have a woman who has had sex with a man outside of marriage. The acts she has committed will lead to no direct physical harm of anyone else. If her society fails to prevent her from engaging in this action, no direct physical harm will come to her anyone else from her actions alone. We have individuals that have already intentionally slaughtered, or plan to intentionally slaughter as many civilians as possible. Failure to prevent the attack has already cost, or will potentially cost, several, several hundred, or several thousand lives. The threat here is completely different than the threat posed by a woman engaging in consensual sex outside of marriage. It is impossible to equate the two in any objective fashion whatsoever. An additional distinction - and a critical one - is that failure to take action against the terrorists may lead to a death toll well in excess of the number of innocent bystanders who are incidentally killed in the act of killing the terrorists. Failing to avert a mass slaughter that may involve hundreds of people for fear of killing a much smaller number in order to prevent the said attack involves moral considerations that are completely absent from and nothing like those involved in stoning a woman who has engaged in a consensual act of affection outside of marriage. The differences don't end here, but those are sufficient to establish a larger point, which is that pretending that using stoning to punish female adultery with precision bombing undertaken to prevent people who plan on intentionally killing an untold number of civilians are morally equivalent to one another is not just a grotesque distortion of moral reasoning, but a complete abdication of one's responsibility for the same. The same holds for the notion that the moral systems within which these actions occur are in any way equivalent to one another. If you want to actually compare the moral perspectives and claims of one group versus the another, its necessary to compare the manner in which they treat the same thing. Brutal rape, for example. Same brutal rape. Culture A abhors it, culture B detests it. Culture A sanctions it, culture B punishes it. Here you have the beginnings of the information you need for a real, legitimate comparison of the two moral codes under consideration. Systematic moral relativists then find themselves in the uncomfortable position of arguing on behalf of something that is both false, and which they themselves do not believe, which is probably why concrete comparisons of this sort rarely make their way into either the consciousness or the arguments of the average systematic moral relativist. This is why most of them revert to comparing how two societies treat things that actually have little or nothing in common and trying to devise distortions with which to render them morally equal to one another.

Despite the physical equivalence, these two actions are in no way morally equivalent to one another. It's one thing to deny that different moral codes exist, another to insist that all moral codes are equally rational, just, and humane. Maintaining a moral distinction between intentional and incidental homicides - mowing down a pack of pedestrians because you want to murder them, and hitting suffering a stroke while driving which results in the same outcome, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, - is a basic element of any moral system worthy of the name.

So we made them up?? If we came from animals they don't have these. How did we get them? Group cooperation has been strongly selected for in evolution, and the shared behaviors that govern the behavior of social animals are every bit as much the product of natural selection as their eyes, ears, fur, etc. Show me a social animal, wolves, lions, monkeys, or even social organisms like ants, and I'll show you a very strict set of behavioral norms that govern their interaction. Most of our most fundamental moral instincts - don't eat your children, etc - are the product of our evolutionary inheritance, rather than abstract reasoning. Once the capacity for abstract reasoning emerged, so did the capacity to refine and modify the behavioral code that we inherited - but our morals are no more the product of pure reason than our bone structure is.

So did this paradigm shift relate to climbing's place in the hierarchy o' priorities, or something else?

A ghost from the "Anyone gonna get after this?" threads of yore re-emerges. I first spotted that line 3-4 years ago from the top of Exfoliation Dome, and immediately went home and looked through the Beckey guide to see if there'd been an ascent. I suspect that I was about the 400th person to do so. The line looked amazing, but after getting a better look at the snowfield looming above it, I figured that the odds that I'd find the route and myself in the right condition to climb the thing were next to none, and the move to the Least Coast put the matter to rest. That's an impressive effort on a beautiful line. Thanks for posting the photos for everyone else's vicarious gratification. Gets my vote for this year's Golden Snaffle award. On a related note? How did you guys feel about the objective hazards on the route? Seems like even folks that are solid at the grade would have to spend a long time underneath a big snowfield that looks like it'd catch some early morning sun. Old Photo: Incidently, it's always looked as though continuing up the couloir that branches up to the right would be a worthy outing in its own right, if not quite as spectacular as the plum that these gents picked.

Thanks for your input Alpinfox. But coming from a new parent who is not vaccinating my newborn…..”easily opting out” is really not that easy. I have run into snags all along the way. We knew this going into it….so I am not complaining about our decision. But it is not easy to tell the daycare who will only take vaccinated children to go to hell. I suspect the same difficulties coming from Texans I'll put the "never try to reason a man out of something he wasn't reasoned into" philosophy into practice here and simply ask what your primary area of expertise is and how you came arrived at this decision.

The New McCoffee is actually not too bad.

I've already got the name "Reinhold," picked out, and plan on reading plenty of Austrian econ texts in a cozy armchair with the dog curled up at my feet. If read aloud, this should only reinforce his natural tendency to avoid approaching competitive situations with a zero-sum mentality, and to engage in mutually beneficial transactions with the cats. The odds are quite good that the dog will answer nature's call on old copies of The Wall Street Journal though, unless someone wants to donate a stack of Mother Jones magazines from their hermetically sealed, temperature and humidity controlled archive for that explicit purpose.

Don't take this too seriously, Murray. The only reason it caught my eye is that it seemed so counter to kind of uncritical cultural relativism that's making a run at becoming Canada's prevailing ethos. I am certainly not in favor of giving the government the power to regulate what people wear in the course of their daily lives. However, if you insist that wearing something that obscures your identity is a fundamental religious obligation that you are not at liberty to deviate from, society is under no such obligation to indulge this proclivity in certain places - like the lobby of a bank, for instance. At that point the burden is entirely on the person who has chosen to encumber themselves in their religious costume to work around the obstacles and inconveniences that this choice generates for them, not society. Wanna fly? Better be prepared to lift the veil upon request or restrict yourself to transport options that existed in the seventh century. With respect to the "racist," bit, I can understand why one might have this this viewpoint, but the fact of the matter is that being a Muslim is an identity that one chooses to retain, rather than a racial category that one is confined to by birth. Evidently per-Sharia the penalty for renouncing one's Muslim identity is death at the hands of one's fellow Muslims, and this is but one of the precepts of this particular ideology that may account for the less-than-positive sentiments that dressing in a manner that advertises one's voluntary adherence to this particular creed inspires amongst some non-believers. I also understand that the Muslim community has adopted a conscious strategy of trying to shield their beliefs, customs, and conduct from fair, rational, and reasonable scrutiny by conflating any of the above with racism or homophobia. This accounts for the appearance of expressions like - "flying while Muslim," "Gee - that sounds lot like 'driving while black,' so it must be the same thing..." "Islamophobia? I'm no fan of homophobia, so this too must be discrimination based on an irrational fear of or dislike for someone based on characteristics that they're born with, too. Sounds the same, so it must be the same thing! No Islamophobia for me, thanks!" - on the linguistic landscape. The fact of the matter is that if you mixed East-Indians and Arabs together, dressed them in sweatsuits, and made a "Spot the Muslim" gameshow you'd confound just about everyone in North America. Is the fact that East Indian Hindus enjoy a very positive reputation, and Muslims enjoy an increasingly negative reputation a consequence of the elements of their appearance that they were born with, or the beliefs that their particular mode of dress signals that they are likely to have internalized? I support the right to wear a Klan get-up or a Nazi-costume in public, public, and for the Klansman's/Nazi's right to do so without suffering from any physical violence or harassment - but it's a bit much for anyone who chooses to advertise their convictions in this manner to expect those around them to suspend judgment of their convictions. In a free society, you should be able to wear whatever you like, including full Islamic garb, but the rest of society is free to judge you on the basis of your appearance. Having said all of this, the issue of dress was but one of many items on the roster. I suppose the larger issue here is whether or not Canadians consider it racist to expect immigrants who voluntarily seek citizenship in their country to understand that when their particular customs or convictions conflict with Canada's laws, they must accept that it is Canadian law that will prevail in that contest.

My personal theory is that if you are acquiring new pets it's much better to introduce a puppy to mature cats, rather than a kitten to a mature dog, especially if the dog mid-sized or larger. Seems like once a curious or playful puppy gets a swipe across the nose, it will be cowed for life and not be tempted to get rough with the cats again. At some point down the road when and if we buy a house, I'd like to get a dog to compliment the two step-cats that I acquired by marriage, and have sold my wife on the idea based on the "young-puppy + old-cat dynamic." Is this pretty consistent with other peoples experiences? I plan on getting a Saint Bernard, and socializing, training, and neutering the hell out of it, so the probability of any aggression problems should be quite low.

Which part?

Large domestic trucks purchased with 7 year loans at interest rates of over 10% often serve in the place of or compliment pit-bulls in the socio-compensation category.

"It's a breed that can be safe but too often irresponsible people gravite towards it. It's a shame." True - it's not clear to me whether things would be different if the owner population were more responsible and took the time necessary to train and socialize their pets properly. Having said that, it seems as though some of the traits that make the dogs more likely to behave in aggressive and territorial fashion were deliberately bred into them, so it's hard to believe that they'd behave in the hands of the average dog-owner, as the average dog-owner seems to lack the ability to train a dog to consistently sit on command, much less raise and maintain a pit-bull in a manner that will minimize the potential for attacks. It's still not clear to me why the average person would want to own this kind of a dog. Most of the people who own aggressive dogs tend to be men with a low socio-economic status who seem to gravitate towards them as a means of compensating for the humble station that they've come to occupy.

Scary. Seems to me that the pit-bull is an especially malignant and dangerous breed that the world could easily do without. Not that such a thing will ever happen, but it wouldn't bother me a bit if all of the pit-bulls in the world magically disappeared.

Anyone else here been attacked by a dog? I've only been attacked once, while I was on my bike riding home from work just as it was getting dark. Nothing too dramatic, I just happened to ride within about 40 feet of an unleashed dog and it's owners, and then I heard the barking getting closer. At first I wasn't sure if it just wanted to play chase, but after it made the first lunge for my leg I knew it was kujo-time. Since there was no chance of out-riding the thing at this point, I didn't have much of a choice but to unlock the cleats and start kicking, and it must have taken 5 or 10 solid shots to the grill before the thing backed-off. "Blam! - bark - pedal-pedal-pedal, Blam! - bark - pedal, pedal, pedal..." over and over again. Quite an experience - nothing makes the limbic system kick in and take you back a few evolutionary epochs like being on the wrong side of the predator-prey relationship. There have always been dogs in my family, and I consider myself a dog lover, but if your are attacked by an uncontrolled dog IMO you should feel free to inflict whatever level of violence is necessary to end the attack, using whatever means you have at your disposal.

The fundamental problem with the argument from design is that it it extends to "the designer" as well as the designed. The being that you postulate must by definition be more complicated than any object or being than the being designed. Per your argument, it is far more improbable that the being that you postulate could exist without itself being designed by some other agent. If you insist that that - say - the bacterial flagellum could not come into existence without being designed by a higher intelligence, then this condition must also be true for the designer. To deny this is to deny the fundamental proposition that this particular argument is based upon. Wow, Deep. Need to think about that. Are then saying that God is controlled by our limited reasoning? At the very least, I am saying that arguments that contain clear logical flaws are not a very sound basis for either proving the existence of or inspiring belief in a supreme being. Or for attempting to construct a compelling challenge to evolution.

I knew this was coming back to the evolution debate again. Once again Evolution is a Theory. It takes just as much faith to beleive in evolution. So please don't try to teach my son something that is your religion (evoluction). You want to beleive you came from nothing fine, but don't shove that crap down my or my sons throat. I personally beleive they should leave eloution and creation out of classroom and teach science. There is plently to learn about the elements and how they work, that everyone can agree on. Science can move forward. so are you saying evolution is bunk on all levels? FUCK JESUS , FUCK GOD STRIKE ME DOWN PLEASE SO I DON'T HAVE TO SHARE A PLANET WITH SEAHAWKS ANYMORE. anyone who would take on the user name of a nfl team is cheddar in my book anyway. LOL nice post. Not sure what your doing with your post. Being funny, Being an ass, or just an angry person. Three way I could go. 1. Evolution I beleive in micro not macro. But see your willing to hate me over this I think. 2. Maybe angry with God for somereason? Maybe being funny? who knows? 3. Seahawk name. Hell this coming from someone with "pink" and a "666" LOL okay you must be taking the humor route. seahawks, i am definitely an ass, but i save it for dumb shit's like yourself. i am not angry but making decisions on informartion given. anyway if god made you then who the fuck made god. tell me, who made god and why did he make you so dumb. Maybe just maybe Pink God comes from a place where there is no time. Just becuase this universe had a beginning and everything around us has a time, doesn't meen there not another place with out a start. Something will be mysterious until you die. Dumb?? shit look at every living thing. Not even the highest super computer in the world can even figure out a rats brain. Oh wait they just mapped it. it comes down to belief. choice or not. Hope your right for you not for me. if you find a watch in a field would you say it just appeared? Or someone made it? You see what around you, choice. But since I choice to beleive you want to call me a clown. Go fuck yourself with Hitler. The fundamental problem with the argument from design is that it it extends to "the designer" as well as the designed. The being that you postulate must by definition be more complicated than any object or being than the being designed. Per your argument, it is far more improbable that the being that you postulate could exist without itself being designed by some other agent. If you insist that that - say - the bacterial flagellum could not come into existence without being designed by a higher intelligence, then this condition must also be true for the designe. To deny this is to deny the fundamental proposition that this particular argument is based upon.

Interesting Aside: "Circumcision and HIV transmission. * Quinn TC. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, USA bThe Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To review the recent literature on male circumcision and its effect on HIV acquisition. RECENT FINDINGS: The report from the randomized clinical trial of male circumcision in South Africa demonstrating a 60% protective effect in preventing HIV acquisition provided the first clinical trial evidence of efficacy of male circumcision in protecting men against HIV infection. This protective effect was consistent with both ecological and epidemiologic studies which also show a protective effect of 50-70% in men at high risk for HIV infection. Biological studies also demonstrate an increased number of HIV receptor cells in the mucosa of foreskin providing additional evidence of HIV susceptibility in the uncircumcised male. Male circumcision may also have a beneficial effect in preventing HIV acquisition in women and lowering selected sexually transmitted infections in both sexes. SUMMARY: The results of two ongoing randomized clinical trials of male circumcision in Kenya and Uganda are awaited with interest, however male circumcision should be carefully considered as a potential public health tool in preventing HIV acquisition. If other trials confirm the results of the South African trial, implementation of this surgical procedure will need to be carefully scaled up and integrated into other prevention programs with emphasis on surgical training, aseptic techniques, acceptability, availability and cultural considerations." While I'd agree with the notion that all religions are essentially equal in the respect that they ultimately have to appeal to faith - belief in the unprovable - at some point, I think that it's patently absurd to insist that this renders all religious codes and the behavior that they inspire in their followers morally equivalent to one another. Are you really prepared to argue that because the codes that inspire both the beliefs and the conduct of the Quakers and the Salafis are both religious, there can be no distinctions made between them? As far as circumcision is concerned, the practice needs to be viewed in light of its intentions and in the social context within which it occurs. Is male circumcision undertaken within a social context in which men are systematically denied rights and liberties available to women? Is the modification undertaken to deny men the capacity for sexual gratification as part of a larger strategy to enforce their obedience to their wives? These are only a couple of distinctions that separate male circumcision from the varieties of surgical desexualization practiced in the Islamic world. It's worth repeating again, that physical equivalence and moral equivalence are two different things. In this case, the distinctions are obvious and quite elementary to anyone with a capacity for making moral judgments that extends beyond a cheap and impulsive relativism that's as shallow as it is facile.

It's one of the few books that I've read lately that I can honestly say will appeal to all readers of all political persuasions, and that has no explicit partisan axe to grind. Can't say the same about the book that I'm about to take to lunch with me - Schumpeter's "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy." Great stuff, though.

You should read the book, or at least read some of the reviews and then decide if it's something that you'd be interested in reading.

"Canadian town to immigrants: you can't stone women." TTAWA (Reuters) - Immigrants to the small Quebec town of Herouxville must not stone women in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules made public by the local council. The declaration, published on the town's Web site, has deepened a debate in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province over how tolerant Quebecers should be towards the customs and traditions of immigrants. "We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here," said the declaration, which also says women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property. "Therefore we consider it completely outside these norms to ... kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them etc." No one on the town council was immediately available for comment on Tuesday. Herouxville, which has 1,300 inhabitants, is about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Montreal. Andre Drouin, the councillor who came up with the idea of the declaration, told the National Post newspaper that the town was not racist. "We invite people from all nationalities, all languages, all sexual orientations, whatever, to come live with us, but we want them to know ahead of time how we live," he said. The regulations say girls and boys can exercise together and people should only be allowed to cover their faces at Halloween. Children must not take weapons to school, although the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled that Sikh boys have the right to carry ceremonial daggers. The Herouxville declaration is part of a wider discussion over "reasonable accommodation", or how far Quebecers should be prepared to change their customs so as not to offend immigrants -- figures from the 2001 census show that around 10 percent of Quebec's 7.5-million population were born outside Canada." http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070130/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_stoning What the hell is going on up there? First that madman Harper gets elected, now this band of fanatics have the audacity to suggest that the norms and values that have hitherto defined the country and the manner in which it has been governed shouldn't necessarily be jettisoned in favor of whatever system of beliefs that immigrant groups happen to bring with them without at least a bit of debate about the respective merits of each. I hope that the more astute cultural relativists up there nip this one in the bud before things get truly out of control. Dru - your hour has arrived!

Que the high-hat for SC. What are you reading these days?

"The Looming Tower" provides an excellent overview of some of the broad historical trends and specific personalities involved in the events that lead up to 9/11. The book has been praised by folks who view 9/11 from both sides of the partisan divide, and I hope that some of the nuttier folks on this board actually get around to reading it someday.

Definitely an improvement.