A day devoured by locusts. A very few words on Pope Francis and the distributists.

View 802 Tuesday, December 17, 2013

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

Another day devoured by locusts. I had to answer mail in the morning, then our walk, then I had to go out to Kaiser to let them drain out five vials of blood for whatever tests they do. One thing about going out to Kaiser just after noon, I can be pretty sure that most of the people I see there who aren’t staff are likely to look older than me. Some of them probably aren’t.

I went from there to Target to shop for puppy biscuits. Most people would call them doggy biscuits, but I read the original Thurber story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and while I have forgotten most of the story other than detail – the Danny Kaye and Boris Karloff movie was easier to remember – the one line I recall is “Puppy biscuit.” He was sent to buy some.

Target has a great line of puppy biscuits, and I need all of them. Sable first was diagnosed with cancer 13 months ago and given about 6 months to live even if we cut her right foreleg off – which she would have hated, being a very active and somewhat vane dog. We decided that we’d keep her whole and so long as she was a happy doggie we didn’t have any decisions to make. Still, the diagnosis was serous and we couldn’t help treating her as if she were sick, and she noticed that. Husky dogs are very intelligent, and they are also sensitive to what they are entitled to. Not that they think they are equals. They don’t. They know they are dogs – well, possibly wolves – but they can also get a good sense of what they are supposed to have, including what time they are to be fed; and while they seldom bark, they are very good at talking. And Sable is very good as sounding unhappy, which always gets us a bit concerned, and she has now figured out an elaborate routine for after dinner, complete with a series of doggy treats each one different, and her medication before she goes to bed, and a final doggy treat, all at fairly specified times. She also gets a grooming session while we watch some TV show. And of course that happens on the couch which for the first ten years of her life she wasn’t allowed on, but when she got the sore leg and — well, you get the idea. It’s pretty hard to tell your friend whom you don’t expect to have with you more than a couple more months that she’s a bad doggy for begging, and send her out of the room. At least it’s hard for me.

Anyway, Target has a very good line of doggy treats, and I went out there to buy some. The last time I got them I thought would be the last time I’d be buying them, but here we are buying more. I am not fooling myself, every day we have her is still a gift, but there have been many days, and she’s nearly as active and certainly as happy now as when she was first diagnosed with all this. And I have a two month supply of puppy biscuit.

I also found presents for two of the grandchildren. Not sure how well they will go over, but we’ll see.

At Target no one was older than me. The store was fairly crowded, mostly with attractive and very determined women who seemed to know what they wanted and where they would find it. Unlike me. I know I needed the puppy biscuit, but shopping for a 5 year old girl and her one year old brother is a bit out of my recent experience. I already found something good for my oldest grandchild and got that sent, and tomorrow I’ll get everything sent out, leaving me with the perplexing problem of what to give Roberta. She wants me to finish Mamelukes, but that’s not likely by Christmas. Maybe by Easter.

If you’re looking for a way to pass the time, try this. It might even be instructive.

38 Test Answers That Are 100% Wrong But Totally Genius At The Same Time | buffy willow

Jerry

Don’t be drinking coffee when you look at these:

http://distractify.com/fun/fails/test-answers-that-are-totally-wrong-but-still-genius/

Ed

I have enough trouble drawing and adding all the little arrows in Feynman’s QED, and one can spend years learning how to do it more efficiently (I didn’t, learn that of course). But we always knew it was a Rube Goldberg device, and Feynman never had a real theory on why it worked so well. New we have something new. If the distractions above didn’t use up enough time, you can spend the rest of the week contemplating this one:

Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics – Wired Science

Jerry

Quantum chromodynamics is a Rube Goldberg device that is wrong, but it is all physicists had. Now that has changed. A lay explanation:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/amplituhedron-jewel-quantum-physics/all/

Looks interesting.

Ed

Interesting is an interesting word.

I was going to continue to muse about Pope Francis and capitalism, and in particular the concept of distributism, which is not a movement to make everyone equal, but one to make more people free. The argument is that great concentrations of wealth and power, whether in the hands of individuals or of governments, make everyone less free. Strict equalitarianism doesn’t work, and communism fails in the absence of religion – that is an order of monks and live in equality but it will generally also be in poverty. If you would have wealth, you must allow your people to pursue and keep that wealth. However, unrestrained striving for wealth does not lead to a good society, or indeed to a stable society. With great concentrations of wealth come temptations: to those who have not the wealth, and to those who have it. And the vast discrepancy in power and freedom between those at the top and those at the bottom makes for a not very lovely country.

The distributist position is that taking wealth from the wealthy and giving it to the poor doesn’t work very well either, and often harms the poor. However, taking it and using it to build a governing class is even worse. The goal is to use distributist methods to reduce the big gap between top and bottom, but not in a manner that simply rewards indolence. None of that is easy, and it may not at all be possible. We do not know what the limits are or should be. How wealthy is wealthy enough? There will be great discrepancies in wealth – but how great?

Distributists and the Pope are in total agreement when the Pope says

"Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills… A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits."

This is quite different from what the Socialist tradition desires.

For more on this, see this morning’s article in the Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303293604579256021556967710