Some hobbyists collect stamps; others probe the very heart of matter

(above) Richard Handl, whose name is sometimes transliterated as "Ray Palmer"

To each their own. Via the Washington Post:

 A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

…

Although he says police didn’t detect dangerous levels of radiation in his apartment, he now acknowledges the project wasn’t such a good idea.

“From now on, I will stick to the theory,” he said.

Usually, I find private experimentation that could potentially bring harm to unwitting bystandards reprehensible—hell, I don’t even like fireworks. But for some reason, I can’t help but admire Handl.

I’m brought to mind of Michio Kaku, the theoretical physicist who as a teenager built a functional particle accelerator in his parents’ garage. Both stood upon the shoulders of giants and reach to touch the world’s deepest core with their own hands, reaffirming the accessibility and practicality of knowledge we usually assume can only be uttered in the esoteric cloisters of the ivory tower.   

Which is not to say what Handl did was probably not incredibly reckless and deserving punishment. Yet I still hope Handl gets a light sentence and, before fading from the public consciousness, goes on to become a popularizer and demystifier of nuclear physics. As the industrial world burns off its fossil fuels, the much maligned specter of nuclear power could use a friendly public face.

A travelogue

0:09 hrs., 8.2.2011-I have cast the mosquito nets, and now lay to rest after my first perturbing day in Meinong’s jungle. It was one of unending frustrations. We failed to meet Holmes at the rendezvous point, delayed by the fact that the point is Euclidian, and thus unextended in any dimension and thus unfindable in principle.

The map was little help to us. Though I indubitably ordered a polygonal map (I have the recipt), this one is a round square, and fiendishly difficult to read.

Also, we may or may not have been eaten by a tigerless tiger.

Happy Non-Parents Day!

 

Happy Non-Parents Day!

 

August 1 is the day the National Alliance for Optional Parenthood unsuccessfully petitioned to have recognized as a day affirming the decision of childfree couples not to pollute the world with another gobbling mouth and greedy pair of hands.

 

To thank them for stemming the flood of humanity into the innocent world, hug a non-breeder today (but not too tight, so you don’t make a baby)!

Monday Morning Surrealism

André Masson, "The Tower of Sleep," 1938

Rorty and James

Earlier this week, an essay collection by the iconoclastic American philosopher Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism. I am still unacquainted with his most thorough exposition of his worldview, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, so I will not attempt to make a statement on Rorty’s thought in general in this post. But I think making it through this shorter and more topically wide-ranging work is enough to give me the privilege of articulating my initial impression of Rorty, and make a comment on one of his recurring refrains.

My free-associative takeaway: a truly painful ambivalence, characterized by alternating hostility and sympathy. I am not technically proficient enough so that my own worldview can rightly be associated with the sophisticated doctrines of professional philosophers, but I am committed to a crude version of the realism and representationalism Rorty attacks. Even so, for the first 100 pages or so, I found Rorty to be wrong in the big picture but full of insightful and valuable observations. But halfway through, he started talking about “texts” and became simply vacuous. And all throughout, I found his writing, despite its unimpeachable lucidity and grace, to be annoying.

His posture towards traditional philosophy is one of unselfconscious condescension; he constantly insults his opponents, but honestly doesn’t seem to realize the flippancy of his tone. Whenever he calls something “uninteresting,” he acts as if he’s proven something. But his most annoying rhetorical habit is writing “The pragmatist believes…” when he means “I, Richard Rorty, believe…” He not only treats his claim to the pragmatic tradition as uncontroversial, but also claims he speaks on behalf of William James and John Dewey*. Some authors take this claim at face value; others do not. I believe the latter camp is in the right. Not only Rorty’s philosophical prescriptions, but the questions he approaches with his method in mind, are alien from those of the classical pragmatists.

Rorty is a thoroughgoing historicist with a strong affinity for Hegel; James was rather famously arch-rival to his Hegelian friend, Josiah Royce, and believed historicism was theoretically untenable and morally abhorrent. Now, Dewey did have much use for Hegel and constructivism—but in this he was opposed for James. How, exactly, Rorty can claim to be heir to both thinkers is beyond me. But for me, Rorty’s most striking departure from the classical pragmatists was his total disinterest in empirical accounts of knowledge, either for phenomenal particulars or metaphysical generalities. James was not a positivist, but certainly an empiricist—in fact a self-described “radical empiricist.” In his hands, it is easy to see how the pragmatic theory of truth, in its simplest form (“The truth is ‘what works’”) was derivative of the ideal of Baconian science. “What works” was understood as “what best accounts for the facts as we find them,” not as mere coherence within the “rules” of the “language game” we happen to be playing at the moment.

Now, Rorty is correct in saying that such an approach to philosophy is anti-Platonic. Instead of trying to arrive at eternal, axiomatic truths a priori, James prescribed philosophizing a posteriori, formulating axioms based on patterns of experience, and leaving those maxims open to revision in the event of contradictory evidence. And Rorty is correct in saying that this approach, especially in light of the additional Jamesian notion that “the difference that makes no difference is no difference” dissolves several philosophical problems.

But this does not mean that James was trying to “transcend” all metaphysics and epistemology, and radically break with all speculation before him, as Rorty claims. James recognized some novelty in his methodology, prescriptions, and beliefs, but saw his project as continuous with antecedent philosophical traditions. Tellingly, he subtitled Pragmatism, his boldest statement of purpose, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Much of his work dealt with traditional questions of speculation, like the nature of the mind. Jamesian essays like “Does Consciousness Exist?”  and “Human Immortality,” for example, float various hypothesis on the fundamental nature of mind and the world. The claims are often tentative and noncommittal (though “Does Consciousness Exist?” takes a firmer stance on the nature of mind)—but they do treat the entities mind and world as actual, even if we cannot pin down their precise nature.

Rorty would not allow even this skeptical stance, and condemns any philosophic theory which tries to discuss entities in-of-themselves at all. Rorty recommends to “pragmatists” that when conversational partners begin discussing existential questions, that they “change the subject,” for discussion of existence itself, outside the construction of historically received paradigms, is a futile effort.

Agnostic as he was, I cannot believe James would have submitted to this noncognitivism; philosophy was for him a form of therapy. He believed that even if we cannot make claims with absolute certainty about the existence gods, freedom and immortality, to contemplate them with seriousness gave us some grip on those awe and terror-inspiring concepts. To say not only will we never have an adequate idea of reality, but to deny we can even discuss the idea of “reality” coherently, would likely have seemed to James a form of despair, a surrender to forces beyond our comprehension.

Of course, a theory’s conduciveness to moral edification counts nothing towards its truth-value. But James’ project was founded on belief in human agency; his philosophical project was always an effort to find on what grounds the beliefs of the average person might be justified that they might command their own fate as far as possible; for him to have engaged in such an undertaking at all, he had to have believed such a thing was possible. (At least, he had to believe it most of the time.) Unfortunately, the essentially hopeful character of James’ project lead him to frequently reject ideas not because they were irrational or unsupported, but because they cast doubt on optimistic accounts of human agency. In The Dilemma of Determinism, for example, he all but admitted traditional accounts of free will were untennable, but neccessary to accept for action and moralizing. So even if James had ran abutt to Rorty’s skepticism and could not find the tools to refute it, it is not difficult to imagine him refusing to submit to it himself.

*Stunningly, Rorty writes Pierce entirely out of the pragmatic tradition, claiming he gave pragmatism “nothing but a name.”

Following Kenny speech, Vatican withdraws envoy from Ireland

A nation with an 87 percent Catholic population no longer has an ambassador to Rome. Via Irish Times:

The Vatican has recalled its envoy to Ireland following Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s trenchant criticism of the Holy See’s role in covering up cases of clerical child sex abuse. Deputy Vatican spokesman Father Ciro Benedettini said Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, the Apostolic Nuncio of Ireland, had been recalled from Dublin for consultations in the wake of the Cloyne report.

Fr Benedettini confirmed Dr Leanza had already arrived in Rome. He said the principal aim of the recall was to make it easier for its secretary of state and other officials to prepare the Holy See’s official response to the Government in the wake of the Cloyne report into the mishandling of child sex abuse claims.

“The recall of the nuncio, being a measure verily adopted by the Holy See, denotes the seriousness of the situation and the Holy See’s desire to face it objectively and determinately,” he said. “Nor does it exclude some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions.”

Fr Benedettini added: “The recall of the nuncio should be interpreted as an expression of the desire of the Holy See for serious and effective collaboration with the (Irish) Government.”

Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore, who met Archbishop Leanza earlier this month, said the recall was a matter for the Holy See.

“The Government is awaiting the response of the Holy See to the recent report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, and it is to be expected that the Vatican would wish to consult in depth with the nuncio on its response,” he added.

In language never used by an Irish leader, Mr Kenny last week accused the Vatican of downplaying the rape and torture of children in order to uphold its own power and reputation. At the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, last night, Mr Kenny said he had received “thousands” of messages from around the world in response to his speech. This reflected the way people felt about this issue, he said. Mr Kenny added he was “astounded” by the number of clergy who had been in touch to say it was “about time” someone in his position spoke out. The Taoiseach received a standing ovation when he finished delivering the annual lecture in honour of Nobel laureate and former SDLP leader John Hume at the opening session of the summer School. Referring to his Dáil speech last Wednesday on the Cloyne report, he said: “I made a few remarks this week about children, which means a lot to me, I have to say.

“I just wanted people to understand that, when I say we live in a republic with laws and responsibilities and rights, I mean it. The fact that I have had thousands of messages from around the world speaks for itself about the impact and the way people feel.

“The numbers of members of the clergy who have been in touch in the last few days, to say it is about time somebody spoke out about these matters in a situation like you are, has astounded me,” Mr Kenny said. “I haven’t made any other comment except to say that we await the response from the Vatican.”

“I like to think that part of what we do in Government is to create the environment where the innocence of children can develop naturally through their formative years,” Mr Kenny said. He said this was in the hope, “that when they grow up and grow old they will look back with a sense of pride and a sense of respect for where they came from”.

Vatican obstructed abuse investigations as late as 2007

Via the Irish Times:

[Roman Catholic parliamentarian and leader of the conservative-Christian democratic Fine Gael party] Taoiseach Enda Kenny today told the Dáil the Cloyne report exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate the inquiry into clerical sex abuse.

Addressing the House, Mr Kenny said: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.

“Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St Benedict’s “ear of the heart” . . . the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. . . . This calculated, withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman Church was founded.”

“The revelations of the Cloyne report* have brought the Government, Irish Catholics and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture,” the Taoiseach said.*

*Published earlier this month, the published findings from a comprehensive investigation into the efforts of the Irish Catholic Church and sympathetic governments and educators to cover up the abuse of minors in Church care in the Cloyne diocese.  

“It’s fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. But Cloyne has proved to be of a different order.

“Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic . . . as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism . . . the narcissism . . . that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

Mr Kenny said the Cloyne report told “a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children”. He said although the report had shown the need for the Vatican “to get its house in order”, it also revealed how the State had failed victims too.

“For too long Ireland has neglected its children,” he said.

“This is not Rome. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011, a republic of laws,” Mr Kenny said.

Mr Kenny was speaking during a Government motion on the report that “deplores the Vatican’s intervention which contributed to the undermining of the child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish State and the Irish bishops”.

It expresses “dismay at the disturbing findings of the report and at the inadequate and inappropriate response, particularly of the church authorities in Cloyne, to complaints and allegations of child sexual abuse.”

Also speaking in the Dáil this afternoon Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said the report’s findings were unambiguous.

“We cannot correct past wrongs perpetrated on our children, but we can take action to prevent, insofar as is possible, the wrongs of the past being perpetrated on our children in the future,” he said.

“We cannot depend on the undertakings of others to correct failings and introduce robust and effective structures of protection. Cloyne irrefutably confirms that some who, in the past, gave such undertakings acted in bad faith,” the Minister told the Dáil.

Earlier today, Mr Shatter said comments made by Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi about the Cloyne report were “somewhat unfortunate and disingenuous”.

Making his first extended comments on the implications of the report, Fr Lombardi said yesterday there was nothing in the advice given by the papal nuncio to Irish bishops which could be interpreted as an invitation to cover up abuse cases.

Fr Lombardi said a controversial letter from papal nuncio Luciano Storero in 1997 was grossly misinterpreted following publication of the report last week.

Speaking in favour of the all-party Oireachtas motion, Sinn Féin spokesman on children Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said it was “high time” the church stopped believing itself to be above the law. He asked how many inquiries would be needed before real action was taken on this “dreadful neglect”.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore last night ruled out expelling the current papal nuncio, however. A spokesman said the Government needed to ensure that diplomatic channels remained open in order to communicate its views to the Vatican and receive its response. Mr Gilmore said the Government was awaiting a formal response from the Vatican to the Cloyne report.

His spokesman said: “While a deadline for a response was not set, the Tánaiste has made it clear that if a response is not forthcoming in a reasonable time frame, it will be followed up on.”

Selling free trade to the left

Jadish Bhagwati writes in The American Interest:

[C]ritics…argue that trade-driven growth benefits only the elites and not the poor; it is not “inclusive.” In India, however, the shift to accelerated growth after reforms that included trade liberalization has pulled nearly 200 million people out of poverty. In China, which grew faster, it is estimated that more than 300 million people have moved above the poverty line since the start of reforms.

In fact, developed countries benefit from trade’s effect on poverty reduction as well. Contrary to much popular opinion, trade with poor countries does not pauperize rich countries. The opposite is true. It is unskilled, labor-saving technical change that is putting pressure on the wages of workers, whereas imports of cheaper, labor-intensive goods from developing countries help the poor who consume these goods.

If freer trade reduces poverty, it is presumptuous for the critics to claim greater virtue. In truth, the free traders control the moral high ground: with at least a billion people still living in poverty, what greater moral imperative do we have than to reduce that number? Talk about “social justice” is intoxicating, but actually doing something about it is difficult. Here the free traders have a distinct edge.

As the historian Frank Trentmann has demonstrated, the case for free trade was made in nineteenth-century Britain in moral terms: it was held to promote not just economic prosperity, but also peace. It is also worth recalling that US Secretary of State Cordell Hull was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for policies that included his tireless efforts on behalf of multilateral free trade. It is time for the Norwegian Nobel committee to step up again.

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Even moderate alcohol consumption may increase cancer risk

Buzzkill via the Eryn Brown of the Los Angeles Times:

In a piece published Monday, Paule Latino-Martel, a cancer researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, and co-authors argued that many countries’ alcohol consumption guidelines — which typically define a moderate, “sensible” level of drinking designed to help consumers drink safely — fail to take into account long-term risks associated with drinking.
 
The U.K. introduced the concept of “sensible drinking” back in the 1980s. Such limits were intended to prevent hospitalizations due to alcohol abuse, which had been on the rise in the country.  In 1984, the British established recommended limits of 18 drinks a week for men and nine drinks for women; in 1987, they raised those limits to 21 drinks for men and 14 for women.  U.S. guidelines recommend no more than two drinks per day for men, and no more than one for women.

(According to the study, the standard drink size in the U.K. is 8 grams, or about 3 ounces; a standard drink in the U.S. is 13.7 grams, or about 5 ounces. Average recommended daily limits for alcohol are therefore slightly higher in Britain than in the U.S.)
 
The problem?  Such rules may have kept people from getting too drunk, but they failed to take into account the growing body of work linking alcohol use with cancer, according to the authors.  In recent years, alcohol consumption has been shown to increase the risk of mouth, throat, breast, colorectal and possibly liver cancers, in such reports as this one from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research and this one published in the journal the Lancet in 2009.

For this reason, Latino-Martel and coauthors cautioned health authorities — including the government of Canada, which is expected to release new drinking guidelines later this year — against telling consumers that any amount of drinking is truly safe, at least, when it comes to cancer risk.

“It can be concluded that there is no level of alcohol consumption for which the cancer risk is null,” they wrote. “Thus, for cancer prevention, the consumption of alcoholic beverages should not be recommended.”
And no: the reported benefits of drinking for heart health don’t change that, they added.  Recent research has pointed out flaws in studies showing a positive link between alcohol use and cardiovascular health, they said.  The team also pointed to a World Health Organization committee’s recent conclusion that “there is no merit in promoting alcohol consumption as a preventive strategy” for heart disease.