Our words

Self-supplied shorter David Brooks: New York Times, May 21, 2013, "What our words tell us"

Evidence from crude data sets like these are prone to confirmation bias. People see patterns they already believe in. Maybe I’ve done that here.

Yes, you have. Welcome to Big Data. Also, in English we generally say "evidence...  is", not "evidence... are".

It turns out, a particularly eminent member of the fraternity of bloggers dedicated to exposing the errors of the philosopher David Brooks is Professor Mark Liberman of Penn, editor and chief contributor to the Language Log. I never noticed this before! Perhaps it's because whenever Brooks says something especially egregious about the social and behavioral sciences I'm busy trying to write the column up and have no time to read Language Log.

This week, in any event, Brooks's errors are demanding ones, and I'm particularly fatigued for unrelated reasons and have not been able to write the column up to my satisfaction, so I'm very glad to point to a masterly takedown here. As well as this, by the great Robin Lakoff.

By Jayson Musson from The Art of Obama.

The voice of that woman

Re Medea Benjamin:

Mr. Obama then departed from his text and said: “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to. Obviously I do not agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasn’t listening to me in much of what I said. But these are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong.”

Folks, I do believe that's the first time in my life a US President has gone so far even as to acknowledge the humanity of the hippie resistance—let alone suggesting that it could somehow make a contribution to the national discourse. The speech would have had me on the Obot end of the pendulum swing anyhow, but this one beats all: My gob, it is smacked.

Image via Robert Sietsema, Village Voice.

Because the world needs more Jean Valjean

Bob Greenstein, Huffington Post:

In today's Senate debate on the farm bill, Senator David Vitter offered -- and Senate Democrats accepted -- an amendment that would increase hardship and will likely have strongly racially discriminatory effects.

The amendment would bar from SNAP (food stamps), for life, anyone who was ever convicted of one of a specified list of violent crimes at any time -- even if they committed the crime decades ago in their youth and have served their sentence, paid their debt to society, and been a good citizen ever since.  In addition, the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members.

So, a young man who was convicted of a single crime at age 19 who then reforms and is now elderly, poor, and raising grandchildren would be thrown off SNAP, and his grandchildren's benefits would be cut.

But hey, he'll still be able to get a gun, right? Senator Vitter wouldn't interfere with that! So he can just knock over a grocery store.

Image from CBS8 SanDiego.

You can never be too rich or too thin

Wrong:

It should be, you can never be too rich and too thin. You can easily be too thin if you're not rich enough.

Alhambra grounds, Granada. Photo by DitchtheCube.

When servants go uncivil

Edward Lear, Uncle Arly.

Brooks's column, "When Governments Go Bad", begins with a quote:

Government, Clinton Rossiter once wrote, is something like fire: “Under control, it is the most useful of servants; out of control, it is a ravaging tyrant.”

This is however an awfully carefully pruned version of what that humblest of American New Conservatives actually said in his Conservatism in America: The Thankless Persuasion (1955): [jump]

Cheap shots and asparagus shoots

Correction:

Correction: May 13, 2013

An earlier version of this column contained an erroneous byline. The column was written by Bill Keller, not the Editorial Board.

Moapa people in Las Vegas as it was. Wikipedia.

Via Juan Cole:

“Southern Nevada’s Moapa Band of Paiutes are calling for the closure of the Reid Gardner coal plant and a transition to clean renewable energy future for [jump]

Sixteen Scandals (continued)

David Brooks can tell a perfectly lucid story, you know, when he feels like it, especially when it's more or less true—truthfulness being a good writer's most elegant technique for achieving verisimilitude, though little appreciated.

Mosaic from Leptis Magna, Libya, via Mosaik.

Not that he's off the hook for today—in fact he turns out to be more than usually slimy—but truthful lucidity is one of the things he does with his column on Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman at the center of the BENGHAZI! scandal, as some have called it:

Call for signatures

Tell President @sbyudhoyono of #Indonesia to stop the plan to kill orangutans and #SaveAceh: Sign & RT! avaaz.org/en/the_plan_to…
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) May 14, 2013

From Wired.

By Sean Crane.

 Please sign. It's not just for the orangutans but for the carbon-absorbing forest and its biological diversity, the lungs of future generations, and the conscience of President Yudhoyono (apparently he just started tweeting, so he might like getting the message).

Rhetorical Questions Department

Can't find a credit for this painter, evidently 20th-century and perhaps Mormon? It depicts Jesus teaching a very young, bearded McCain to waltz in the water, for some dream-logic reason in the Verde river near Sedona.

Nicole Belle at Crooks & Liars on Sunday morning:

So why on earth is John McCain on my screen again, for the tenth time this year?

What the hell is that? Lack of imagination? Lack of creativity? Or is it more likely a lack of interest in having any kind of real conversation or discussion of the issues?

My vote is the latter.

This negative view is undoubtedly correct, but it cannot answer the question completely, since it would be easy to have a television program with no real conversation or discussion of the issues without John McCain. Indeed, a lack of real conversation and discussion of [jump]

Preach, Brother Leitch, Preach!

Mr. Disqus keeps inviting me to share things I read in awkward ways and sometimes I give it a click. Today seems to be religion day anyway. But all I had was a comment, not a damn essay.

Will Leitch, via Mollie at GetReligion:

When Josh Hamilton electrified Yankee Stadium in the Home Run Derby in 2008, here's what he said afterward: "It's amazing, the last few years, what God's done in my life, and how quickly he's done it."

Now, here's what non-believers hear when he says that:

God decided that I would start hitting a ton of home runs. He likes me more than He likes anyone else in this competition. Therefore, He helped me launch those blasts. I am so close to God that He has decided I should be great in this Home Run Derby. A couple of those balls I hit, God picked them up and carried them extra feet so they would get over the fence. God cares, specifically, about this Home Run Derby, more than He cares about poverty, starvation and disease. If God liked you as much as He liked me, you might hit home runs too. But He doesn't.

But this is absolutely not what he is saying. What Hamilton is saying when he thanks God is not that God somehow chose him over others. He is in fact saying the opposite: It is a humble acknowledgment that nothing any person does can ever be attributable to themselves. It's a guard against pride.

Christianity isn't some peripheral notion of Hamilton's life; it is his life. When you live a Christian life, everything you do, from showing up to church on Sunday, to going to the grocery store, to pumping gas, to hitting a home run, to striking out, is done for the glory of Christ. Hamilton isn't thanking Jesus for helping him hit a homer; he is thanking Jesus for everything. From the homers to the strikeouts to the millions of dollars to all the boos.

Sorry, I don't get it. Leitch's account of what the non-believer hears is from this non-believer's point of view spot on. But the alternative interpretation not so much. It's amazing, the last few years, how much time God has given me at the grocery store, and how many boos He has permitted me to hear? That was not what Hamilton meant.

Don't believe I ever saw any pictures of Tim Tebow kneeling in the gas station either.