A Curious Little Blog

When I was in high school, an older student informed me that the goal of a prep was not to be "cool," but "smooth."  I'm not sure what he meant by that (and I doubt he totally was either), but smoothness makes me think of sprezzatura.  Sprezzatura was a concept invented by Baldasare Castiglione in his "Book of the Courtier" to describe doing something in an apparently effortless way.  It wasn't important that it actually be effortless; it just needed to appear that way. Castiglione's book was the most famous of many from the 16th century that offered advice to would-be courtiers.  In an age of absolutist rulers, the quickest way to advance was to be impress the ruler in person.  This was very different in substance from the ideas of ataraxia and patience that ancient authors had espoused; it wasn't a general approach to life, but rather a specific way of getting ahead.  Nevertheless, it wasn't entirely new (of course); there had alway...

When I was young, I was the opposite of cool, and I had a correspondingly low opinion of the concept.  Sure, I liked Fonzie, but when I thought of people being cool, I thought of classmates putting on airs to get attention. Now I'm much older.  I'm still not cool, but I have a much better appreciation of the concept.  "Cool," it turns out, was not invented in 1957 (pace Miles Davis's album "The Birth of Cool" from that year), and not even in the modern era.  The original cool goes back to the ancient Greeks and the Stoics' concept of "apatheia," or equanimity.  They aimed to free themselves from their passions to attain this state of calm, and what is a cool person but one who remains calm and collected in the face of upsetting circumstances?  The concept was adapted and extended by Epicurus, who used the term "ataraxia," or tranquility -- freedom from stress and worry. Another philosophical school that promoted a...

Today is Peace of Westphalia day -- the 365th anniversary of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia -- in honour of which I traditionally make a Mazarin cake .  Cardinal Mazarin was the French premier throughout the negotiations leading up to the peace.  Admittedly, I have no evidence that the cake was named after him, but how many other people named Mazarin have you ever heard of? In fact, Mazarin is the namesake of a surprising number of modern items.  There is the Mazarin cut diamond, which is a precursor to the modern brilliant cut; and the Mazarin desk, or " bureau Mazarin ," an early kneehole desk.  He was a renowned collector:   a famous Japanese chest is known as the Mazarin chest because it is believed he owned it, and there is also a " Mazarin Venus ."  He was especially avid about collecting books; the Gutenberg Bible is sometimes known as the Mazarin Bible because it was in his collection.  In fact, his personal library bec...

There is another side to imposing the least possible burdens on citizens:  namely, the citizens themselves have to behave in the most reasonable possible manner.  That's vague, so let me pose it in the form of a mathematical thesis:  any sufficiently unreasonable citizenry requires a despotic government. In other words, the more willing people are to violate the law, the more despotic the government must be. There can be no legal remedy for a people that will not obey laws in general.  You can tighten the laws and increase the punishments, but that is precisely what you are trying to avoid.  If people will not obey some laws, those laws could be adjusted; but if people will not obey laws in general, there is no solution beyond changing the culture of the society. People are inclined to obey laws that they think are just (see " Why People Obey Law ," which I have not read but it looks interesting).  But it is not sufficient if people only obey laws tha...

When I was growing up, swimming pools typically had a high diving board and a low diving board.  Swimming pools today only have a low diving board and a lower diving board -- lawsuits have made high dives too costly to insure .  I lived in a neighbourhood where we had a pool and a very popular waterslide.  The neighbourhood association had to increase the number of lifeguards to run the waterslide to three:  one at the top of the slide to tell kids when to go, one at the bottom, and one at the bottom of the stairs to check that kids met the minimum height restriction.  Obviously, this was expensive, because these lifeguards were unable to keep an eye on the rest of the pool while the slide was open, so there had to be at least 5 lifeguards on duty to operate the slide.  Even with all that, there was discussion every year about shutting down the slide, because it was basically uninsurable. What does this have to do with laws?  It relates to the idea, ...

Thomas Aquinas asked:  what is the point of laws?  We know bad people will ignore them, and good people won't want to do those things anyway, so what good do laws do?  His answer was that laws help in the marginal cases -- people who might do bad things, but who are deterred by laws. It is important to keep in mind that laws do not work perfectly, as Aquinas noted.  While some will change their behaviour to obey the law, others will never have wanted to do what the law forbids in the first place, and still others will continue their behaviour even if it violates a new law.  Another group of people will attempt to continue their behaviour within the bounds of the law by looking for loopholes, exceptions, and work-arounds.  That will lead to calls for more laws to close the loopholes. More laws come at a cost.  There is an administrative cost, of course, but there is an equally important civic cost:  we expect people to obey the law, and to obey...

A recent article draws attention to several high-end restaurants that have eliminated tipping, and suggests that this might become a trend.  If so, I say good riddance. I'm glad to have the restaurant increase its prices and eliminate tips.  It's not the money; it's having to figure out how much to leave.  Not the arithmatic, of course, but the psychological burden of deciding how much a person deserves for bringing me food.  The whole server-servee relationship is awkward in America , where no one wants to be a servant and all but the very wealthy feel uncomfortable being served. The practice of tipping goes back to actual servants, whom masters offered additional incentives for difficult tasks or rewards for a job well done.  Americans originally didn't like the implied master-servant relationship when tipping was introduced from Europe, and the practice was fought on several levels:  some private citizens formed an Anti-Tipping League, while a numbe...

Let's suppose for a moment that you believe, as I argued in my last post, that we have too many laws.  The obvious question is, why?  One reason is what a friend of mine calls "government by anecdote":  something dramatic happens, and everyone says, "the government should do something about that!" I agree with him that this is a terrible way to govern.  Sometimes tragedies require immediate action, but usually they do not; often, there is nothing obvious that the government can do.  As a result, lawmakers resort to symbolic laws that have little or nothing to do with the tragedy itself.  There is a school shooting; Congress calls for banning "assault weapons," even though the definition of assault weapons is irrelevant to the shooting in question.  Maybe people would feel better if there were no guns with bayonet sockets or grenade launchers, but is anyone going to be any safer?  How many shootings have occurred using grenade launchers? The ...

Both conservatives and liberals spend a lot of time complaining about oppressive government, so you might think they would agree more often.  I think there are some issues where they do agree, and where they should co-operate because they can do something useful to reign in a government that sometimes get out of control. I found such an issue when I was reading the DailyKos website.  I visit the DailyKos because the people who comment there can be counted on never to say anything nice about a Republican or a conservative.  In that sense, they are much like mainstream news media, but are less restrained about their views and therefore give me a sense of the motives that underlie liberals' arguments.  On this occasion , I was surprised to find an article that I agreed with almost 100%.  The subject:  the state of Wisconsin was alerted to an animal shelter that held a deer, which is apparently against some state law or regulation.  They raided the shelt...

The following are links to images to accompany the book  Westphalia: The Last Christian Peace Chapter 1 p.1: Portrait of  Queen Christina , source of many of the quotations in this book and reigning Swedish monarch at the time of the Peace of Westphalia. 7: Witch scares : alive and well in the 1640's. 9: D'Artagnan and  Cyrano de Bergerac were both duelists as well as French couriers at the Congress of Westphalia 10: Galileo died under house arrest in 1642. Rembrandt as a young man and as an old man 11: Michelangelo's statue of David (left) next to Bernini's Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa Fall of the Damned by Rubens Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I Velazquez, The Surrender of Breda Marie de Medici as the Roman goddess Bellona, by Rubens The coronation of Marie de Medici by Rubens 12: Map showing the disparate realms of the elector of Brandenburg Map showing the divided realms ruled by Philip IV -- and this just includes...

The liberal argument against George Zimmerman is based on the premise that he was profiling Martin because Martin was black.  Everything else about their defense depends on the idea that Zimmerman was wrongly "stalking" or even "hunting" Martin based on the colour of his skin.  I have seen liberals who, in other circumstances, would argue that it is never right to initiate violence, admit that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman but exonerate him because of his right to "self-defense" against this suspicious person stalking him.  If there was no racial angle to this case, there would be no argument about self-defense against someone who was merely observing.  Indeed, if a white person had tried to claim self-defense to justify an attack against a black person who he thought was stalking him, liberals would be singing an entirely different tune. The thing that strikes is that the idea that George Zimmerman is a racist is prima facie absurd.  He is one-quart...

Not much has happened to cause me to change my original interpretation of the George Zimmerman case .  We now know that Trayvon Martin described Zimmerman as "a creepy-ass cracker," and we have definitive evidence that Zimmerman was seriously injured in the struggle.  (I have heard people question whether Martin inflicted the wounds to Zimmerman, but I haven't heard a plausible alternative scenario.  Do they think Zimmerman broke his own nose to create a cover story?  Do they think he was on neighbourhood watch with a broken and bleeding nose?) We still don't know how the encounter between the two of them went, having only Zimmerman's statement that he was ambushed and little else to go on.  Some people claim he was the one on top in the struggle, and it was Martin screaming for help.  This is only credible to me if Martin managed to turn the tables on him, because I don't see why Zimmerman would have pulled a gun when he was on top.  If he wanted to...

Many items from the link below aimed at pro-life Texas legislators, e.g. "I will drown @Scott_SanfordTX in blood & bile then feed his corpse to territorial crows," but mostly of the more mundane sort -- I hope you die, I hope your daughters get raped.  Repulsive, and enough to make some representatives feel physically threatened.  Of course, I don't blame Democratic legislators for the actions of these crazies, but I do think it is incumbent upon them to denounce it, just as Republicans are expected to denounce violent statements and actions against abortion clinics. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/352711/texas-pro-life-legislator-receives-violent-threat-betsy-woodruff

Stoicism is such an attractive philosophy. How can anyone object to being calm in the face of adversity, undisturbed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? It is not only personally promising, but also appealling in others, because we all admire someone with grace under pressure, someone who is always cool, calm, and collected. I have always admired stoicism and aspired to be more stoic myself (without much success, I admit).  There seems something fundamentally wrong about railing against fate, whether you are religious or not.  If you are, surely God knows better than you; if not, the actions of inanimate forces are not worthy of your anger.  I think of the line from "The Color of Money," when Paul Newman's opponent loses and says, "I didn't deserve that."  Paul Newman just asks, "Is this your first tournament, Duke?"  What is the point of saying you didn't "deserve" to lose a pool game or to miss a particular shot?...

Just a brief update to my post on offensive mascots :  The Washington Redskins have been under more pressure recently to change their name, but apparently not from Indians .  The chief of one tribe said "I’m a Redskins fan, and I don’t think there’s any intention for (the nickname) to be derogatory," and another added, "About 98 percent of my tribe is Redskins fans, and it doesn’t offend them, either." Should we care what they think?  I'm sure liberals would say something like they have internalized the values of their oppressors.  I would say that getting rid of the name Redskins would represent a loss for Indians more than for non-Indians, and I can't think of anything more condescending or derogatory than telling someone else what to be offended at.  I'm normally a Dolphins fan, but for today, I say, "Go Redskins!"

The most persuasive argument in favour of same-sex marriage is also the most specious:  why should we care what other people do?  It's persuasive because we have a libertarian culture (or a permissive one, depending on your point of view) and we are reluctant to condemn anyone for anything.  It is specious because this has never been about allowing people of the same sex to get married, and it is clearer all the time that this is not the goal. First of all, the recently-overturned DOMA did not prevent states from recognizing same-sex marriages; it merely defined marriage on a federal level as between two people of a different sex.  The Supreme Court made the bizarre ruling that the federal government has to yield to the states on the definition of marriage, even for purely federal purposes such as estate taxes.  It is a wrong decision because marriages have to be defined at the federal level in some way, and allowing the states to define them differently creat...

The principle of philosophical pragmatism is that we should judge an idea by its practical effects.  This is so contrary to common sense that I have always dismissed it as unworthy of further consideration.  When I listened to a lecture on pragmatism by a university professor, he was apologetic about the apparent absurdity of his subject, but was unable to make it sound any more reasonable. I gave it yet another try only because I happened to work for a company, Pragmatics , which was named after this very philosophy -- so much so that the main conference room in the headquarters building was named the Charles Sanders Peirce room.  Since the founder of the company seemed to be an intelligent person, and since he was impressed by pragmatism, I figured there was probably something to it that I wasn't grasping.  There is, and I think I understand it better now. The central tenet of pragmatism is the " pragmatic maxim ," in which Charles Peirce explained:  "Cons...