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2013년 12월 31일 화요일

Why Dolts Should Like the Iran Deal

Why Dolts Should Like the Iran Deal

People with no idea how so-called "hawks" view the Iran deal probably have no clue how Iran views this deal.

This guy has no business telling me why I should actually like the Iran deal:
The reflexive reaction of Iran hawks to condemn the interim accord struck in Geneva this weekend is as wrongheaded as the triumphal assessments of those suggesting it ushers in a new, more hopeful era in the region's history. This deal, hard-won as it has been, is just a tentative if hopeful step down a long and twisting road fraught with dangers.

For the hawks to suggest that the deal freezing Iranian uranium-enrichment efforts above the 5 percent level, halting work on the heavy-water reactor near Arak, and granting daily inspections to Iran's centrifuge-laden facilities at Natanz and Fordow makes matters more dangerous in the short term is just indefensible on its face. Absent such a deal, all enrichment and technological advancement efforts would continue unabated and without inspections. Iran would almost certainly move more quickly toward having a bomb without this deal than with it.

Wrong.

One, freezing enrichment is meaningless given that Iran repeatedly draws down their stock to avoid crossing Israel's red line for having too much enriched uranium for Israel to feel comfortable. Why this agreement would have more of an impact than fear of Israel is beyond me.

As for that Arak reactor halt? Well, never mind:
Iran will pursue construction at the Arak heavy-water reactor, Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was quoted as saying on Wednesday, despite a deal with world powers to shelve a project they fear could yield plutonium for atomic bombs.

Fancy that.

We'll see how the daily inspections go. As long as they only want to go to places Iran is confident have nothing of important going on, I'm sure Iran will be happy to let them go.

Further, what about other locations perhaps more important to other lines of research and development? And what about other lines of research or technical/production programs not covered by the agreement?

So really, the only reason I should like this deal is that it is a "tentative if hopeful step down a long and twisting road fraught with dangers."

Yeah, that's comforting. When we've agreed in our interim agreement with the statement that Iran will not ever seek or develop nuclear weapons, "hopeful" outweighs that road we're supposed to travel. Watch out for the Iranian EFPs, eh?

Sure, in the short run the deal doesn't make the situation worse. But without the deal, the situation isn't likely to have been different.

It's the long run that is the problem with this deal. We've broken the momentum of international sanctions, granted Iran 6 months free of our military threat to continue to work on areas not covered by the interim deal (even assuming they don't cheat or simply have a different understanding of more areas we supposedly agreed on), and provided economic relief that allows Iran to continue to back Assad and which will give Iran the ability to keep their economy going for much more than the 6 months the deal covers.

If the Iran deal was likely to halt Iran's nuclear weapons work, I'd like the deal. Really. Don't pretend to school me on what I should and should not like about this deal, as if I'm an idiot unable to read the agreement (well, the White House fact sheet about the deal, anyway) and remember just who we are dealing with.

But grant the author this much: he surely explained as well as anyone why dolts should like the Iran deal.

UPDATE: This is a bad deal for us.

The Need For a Photography Park

The Need For a Photography Park

My wife and I went on a weekend trip with another couple to Carters Lake, in the North Georgia mountains. As always, the place we pick is a compromise. The girls want to shop. I want to take photographs. My friend wants to fish. Carters Lake is near Ellijay and looked like fun for everyone.
Carters Lake is a pretty place. It's an Army Corp of Engineers project. That made the encroachment of private homes somewhat surprising to me. Trophy houses in the mountains ceased to surprise me a long time ago. What did surprise me was how close they were to a Federal facility. The approach roads to the various picnic areas, fishing docks and boat ramps were littered with expensive homes. And they were, of course, visible from all over the lake.

I'll never accept the stupidity and arrogance of trophy houses. No one comes to the mountains to enjoy the view marred by trophy houses on the hills. Yet everyone wants to own (or rent) a house they know will ruin the view of others. And they'll keep building them until they have spoiled the very beauty of the place that attracted people to the area in the first place. Oh well. Let's get back to the subject at hand.
After arriving the first afternoon (check in time was 3 PM), I'm stuck with the typical photographer's dilemma: I need to find a place for the rapidly-approaching sunset and find a place for the sunrise. You have to think about the details. After sunset it's dark. To get to a place before sunrise, you have to be able to find it in the dark. There's nothing like getting up two hours before sunrise, driving (or walking) to an unfamiliar place, stumbling around in the dark, waiting for many minutes in the cold, and then finding out you've chosen a horrible place for a sunrise picture. Another detail that escapes non-photographers is that the Sun "moves". It doesn't set at 270º West and 90º East all year. Currently (around here) it rises at 115º and sets at 244º. (The U.S. Naval Observatory will calculate it for your location.) I carry a compass with me wherever I go so I can make an educated guess as to what might make a good sunrise/sunset location.
The trail from our rental cabin to the lake is about a 10 minute hike. Not a problem. My buddy and I take the short walk to the lake. The "big" view is to the north (with the trophy houses on the mountains) and a more limited view to the southeast. What are you going to do? By the time we unpack, grab our gear and walk to the lake, it's too late to get anywhere else for the sunset. I'll make the best of it and maybe it will work out for the sunrise. My friend fishes until the sunset and we both enjoy the view as the streetlights start coming on in the dusk. Nothing reveals the beauty of nature quite like a mercury-vapor lamp. (Or sodium vapor if you prefer.)

Sunrise was a little better than sunset. One thing you can say about a "little" view; there's less room for trophy houses.
The next day, we did a little scouting for better fishing/photography places. "Scouting" is an ugly process. You waste an awful lot of time and gas. I guess that keeps the guides (both fishing and photography) employed. (I'm pretty sure you could find a fishing guide for Carters Lake. Not so sure about a photography guide.) To make a long story short, neither Doll Mountain Recreation Area nor Harris Branch Recreation Area provided a place that was promising (that was also open.)
Once again, we were out of time so we just drove blindly down the road to whatever was next around the lake and run into this sign.

In case you were wondering, sunrise was at 7:18 (42 minutes before the park opens) and sunset was at 5:30 (30 minutes after it closes.) It was a nice sunset but there wasn't even a place to pull over off the road from which to photograph it. We drove home in the dusk dejected -- fishless and photoless.
I hope the need for a photography park is obvious from this little story. I also hope it's obvious that the needs of photographers can coexist with other park users. You can fish in a lake designed for photography. You can picnic in a park designed for photography. As a matter of fact, these things would only enhance a photography park. Sailboats are photogenic. People playing in a park are a favorite subject of some photographers. Kites look spectacular in photographs. People riding horses? Yes please.
But all parks are not conducive to photography. As a matter of fact, many seem designed to prevent decent photographs. Wether it's utility wires strung willy-nilly, trophy houses littering the view, blindingly-white boat buoys visible from two miles away on the lake, day-glow yellow trash cans, reflective trail markers or sickly-green street lights....there are hundreds of fixable things that would make a park more photogenic. But that wasn't the most important lesson I learned this weekend.
I didn't get a great photograph. My friend didn't catch a single fish. But the weekend was deemed a resounding success. Our wives found tons of junk to buy. If I have to make a photography park commercially viable, I'll have to work trophy houses and an outlet mall into the master plan.
Don Brown
November 26, 2013

Road To Creating Change 2014 Houston Diary-Emotional Rollercoaster

As you TransGriot readers know I'm co-chair of the Racial Diversity Committee, one of the subcommittees that's part of the organizing process for our upcoming Creating Change Conference that will be talking place in Houston January 29-February 2.

I've been documenting since May what it's like to have a ringside seat for and be part of the team of people doing the organizing work in the host city to put together a major national conference like Creating Change.

Well, in this edition of my Creating Change 2014 Diary me and my fellow Host Committee have been riding a rollercoaster ride of emotions. We see our convention date is rapidly approaching, we're excited about that, but realize that we still have a lot of work ahead of us before it happens.
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But first up was a night to have some fun. On October 19 we kicked up our heels, cowboy boots and other fashion forward footwear at the Creating Change Pre-Convention Celebration event that was held at Neon Boots, a large GLBT country western bar on the northwest side of town. It was a Creating Change 2014 local promotion event open to all volunteers, guests and people wanting to know more about this conference that is mere weeks away at this writing from happening.

When planning a major conference, there are some elements of it that are out of your local control. There are aspects of it that Creating Change National decides such as who our plenary keynote speakers are going to be and which seminar proposals get accepted. We have no idea or control over what the weather is going to be like for those days we have scheduled for the conference. But as an FYI for you Creating Change conference attendees, Houston's average temperature in January ranges from 43-64 degrees F.

Don't want to jinx us by mentioning what our average rainfall number is for January.

The other major thing we didn't have a whole lot of control over as a Host Committee besides us voting in it was our mayoral election. One reason Creating Change is here is because with 2.2 million people in it, Houston (the fourth largest city in the US) is the largest city in the United States and in the state of Texas run by a gay mayor.

But Mayor Annise Parker was going to have to run for her third and final term during the fall while we were planning this conference. Our worst nightmare as the Host Committee that nagged at us through the summer and fall was she not getting reelected and having someone in that chair taking the oath of office at the Wortham Center on January 1, 2014 that was hostile to our community.

It turned out our fears were well founded. Although we knew that Mayor Parker had done an excellent job leading our city, elections can be unpredictable at times. We had Ben Hall, one of Mayor Parker's major challengers deciding to pander to the anti-gay haters late in the campaign in a desperate bid to make up the double digit deficit he was facing. It also pissed us off because when he was trying to get the Houston GLBT Caucus mayoral endorsement, Hall said he supported adding sexual orientation and gender identity to our city's non-discrimination ordinance, then did a 180 on that.

Fortunately for us Hall did his Mitt Romney impression while early voting was still transpiring, so we had time to handle our electoral business as a community and punish him at the polls. But we still had to hold our breath until Election Day arrived on November 5.

We got to exhale and celebrate as Annise won with 57% of ours and our fellow Houstonian's votes to win without a runoff. It ensured that when you show up in H-town for Creating Change, our city will still be run by Mayor Parker, a former attendee of Creating Change. We're working on getting her to come by the Hilton Americas to say hello to y'all. I'm hoping she'll be doing so since she made it clear when we were bidding for the conference she wanted it here.

There was finite disappointment handed to the Houston trans community in this election cycle. Jenifer Rene Pool missed getting into the runoff for the at-large Position 3 City Council seat she was running for by an agonizing 1,125 votes.

That unfortunately ended her second bid to become the first out trans person ever elected to Houston City Council, but she's already let us know that she's going to make another run at it in 2015.

So when we gathered at the Montrose Center for our November 10 Host Committee meeting, we were relieved that one of our nagging planning headaches was off our checklist and gleefully celebrating the fact that Annise would be our mayor until January 1, 2016.

As we waited for the Host Committee meeting to start, a transformer in the area blew out, subsequently knocking out power in the neighborhood and the Montrose Center building that hosts our meetings for almost two hours. I joked when it happened that we probably wouldn't get power back until after the meeting was over and that's exactly what happened.

As the Montrose Center building staff scrambled into action to provide us and the other community organizations hosting meetings in the darkened building at the time mini lights to give us some semblance of illumination, we soldiered on with our Host Committee business, issued subcommittee reports and greeted CC National's Russell Roybal.

Overseeing Creating Change is one of his supervisory responsibilities and he was in H-town along with the IT director to not only convey to us what Sue Hyde told us last month in terms of H-town setting the CC organizing bar to unprecedented levels and congratulate us for our hard work, he also let us know who one of our keynote speakers would be and the folks who would be receiving awards at our event. The awards part I have to keep quiet about for now, but I can talk about who one of the keynote speakers will be.

And peeps, I get to see my homegirl Laverne Cox again. I met her during the National Black Justice Coalition's 2012 OUT on the Hill conference when I was part of the trans feminine panel discussion she moderated before she blew up in Orange Is The New Black So I'm looking forward to along with the rest of the Houston Host Committee in welcoming her to my hometown and hearing her keynote speech.

We're also trying to get another major Texas political speaker here for you besides our mayor.

Russell also advised us that Task Force ED Rea Carey's State of the Movement speech would be carried live on C-SPAN. He also let us know that people would begin to be notified about whether their panel discussions they submitted would be accepted or rejected, and I was part of two proposals. One was accepted, the other was rejected. I will be doing a panel discussion at CC14, and when they set the schedule I'll let y'all know which one and what time.

Our subcommittees were busy submitting our budgets proposals before the hard 6 PM CST November 15 submission deadline. We also discovered the subcommittees were only getting $500 to spend, so we had to revise our plans to do what we'd wanted to do in our suites to fit that budgetary hard number. I got to sit in on the Trans* and Gender Diversity subcommittee meeting November 14 and watch them go through the process, then had to get with my Racial Diversity subcommittee Chair Melissa Meadows the next morning and do the same thing for our committee.

We're still wanting to have barbecue in our Racial Diversity Suite, but because of the lower than expected hard budget number it'll be for one night instead of the two we'd originally planned.

We have just two Creating Change Houston Host Committee planning meetings left on December 3 and January 7 and we are now mere weeks away from rolling out the rainbow carpet and welcoming y'all to Creating Change Houston 2014.

And I and my fellow Host Committee members can't wait to see y'all at the Hilton Americas.

Now if we can get that Chamber of Commerce weather we're wanting, sunny, cool 50-60 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, we'll be happy.

Naturalizing Normativity A Reply to Scott Bakker

In Leaving it Implicit, Scott Bakker throws down the gauntlet: normativity, our idealistic judgments about
good and bad arent what we assume they are in our everyday social dealings,
because those judgments could apply only to mechanisms, there being no such
things as goodness or badness in the natural world. If you think otherwise,
Scott says, youve got a lot of explaining to do, given science-centered
ontology. Moreover, naturalism doesnt imply normativity just because
naturalists use terms that can be interpreted normatively, because those terms
can also be interpreted in mechanistic ways. Thus, the time of reckoning is nigh
and the apocalypse will come not at the hands of some angry parent in the sky
but through our advances in objectively understanding the world.Framing the Issue

Im going to try to break down Scotts argument and my
response to it with a minimum of jargon and I aim to chart new territory
instead of rehashing our previous discussion. So what I noticed when
I read “Leaving it Implicit” is that Scotts conclusions follow in part from his
way of framing the issue. He makes certain background assumptions and if you
accept them, youll be more favourably inclined to heeding his prediction that
all folk psychological categories will be eliminated as premodern bits of
magical thinking. Three of these assumptions are as follows.

First, he assumes that Western philosophy is a
protoscience, that philosophers are after theories that explain the facts,
that they employ a second-order, meta-language which is meant to support our
first-order, natural one. For example, Scott says, “From the mechanical perspective,
in other words, the normative philosopher has only the murkiest idea of whats
going on. They theorize takings as
and rules and commitments and entitlements and uses—they develop their theoretical vocabulary—absent any
mechanical information…” (my emphases). Notice how normative philosophy is here
assumed to be in the business of providing theories, but because philosophical
theories are worse than scientific ones, the former are at best murky ideas.
Scientists use their methods to test their theories of the external world,
whereas normative philosophers rely on intuition, which makes for less reliable
theories. Likewise, Scott speaks of philosophies of meaning and normativity as
“controversial sketches,” compared to what we know of the brain, the latter
being the “most complicated mechanism known.” Finally, Scott says, “My first
order use of use no more commits me to any second-order interpretation of the
meaning of use as something essentially normative than uttering the Lords
name in vain commits me to Christianity.” This distinction between first- and
second-order interpretations, which Scott makes in a number of writings, is
consistent with the science-centered construal of philosophy as a protoscience.
The assumption is that philosophers are trying to reductively explain the
phenomena that reveal themselves in ordinary language, such as our talk of what
symbols mean or of which actions are morally better than others.Second, he thinks of mental processes as heuristics and he interprets heuristics
not just as naturally selected procedures, but as solutions to what he calls “narrow problem ecologies” (my emphasis).
This means that a mental process is a naturally selected and thus flawed
shortcut to aid us in our endeavour to survive, because Mother Nature is a
blind designer and she had limited resources at her disposal. One flaw of our
thought processes is that theyre blind to their mechanical nature: we evolved
to be preoccupied with external threats, not with internal truths, which is why
our main senses point outward, leaving us with little information indicating
the minds nature. Scott further assumes that because heuristics are made more
efficient in so far as they leave out information, that deficiency limits their
optimal areas of application. Scott says, for example, that “They [normative
philosophers] have no inkling that theyre relying on any heuristics at all,
let alone a variety of them, let alone any clear sense of the narrow problem-ecologies they are
adapted to solve…We know that heuristics possess problem ecologies, that they
are only effective in parochial contexts”
(my emphases). By “parochial,” Scott means that those heuristics have a very
narrow scope of effectiveness. Again, he says, “On the mechanical perspective,
normative cognition involves the application of specialized heuristics in specialized problem-ecologies—ways weve
evolved (and learned) to muddle through
our own mad complexities” (my emphasis). Notice the connection here between the
fact that nature equips us only with ways of muddling through the problem of
figuring out our inner nature, and the specialized or narrow range of problems
our heuristics are adapted to solve.
Third, Scott employs a
mechanistic vocabulary. He speaks of mechanisms, heuristics, and gadgets in
the mind. On the surface, then, he assumes the mind is a kind of machine. All
of these terms have unfortunate connotations, from a naturalistic perspective,
and although Scott may not be committed to those extended meanings, they might
inadvertently do some of the work in his rhetorical case against folk
psychology. On the naturalistic view, there is no intelligent designer of organisms,
so biological systems cant literally be machines in the ordinary sense. The
mechanistic vocabulary must be metaphorical, so we should distinguish between
the literal, naturalistic meanings and the extended, commonsense ones that
Scotts explanations have to abandon. For example, Scott says, “Evolution has
given me all these great, normative gadgets—I would be an idiot not to use
them! But please, if you want to convince me that these gadgets arent gadgets
at all, that they are something radically different from anything in nature,
then youre going to have to tell me how and why.” Now, a gadget is a
mechanical contrivance and a contrivance is something thats planned with great
ingenuity. Nature plans nothing, so Scott must be using “gadget” as a metaphor.Do you see how these three ways of framing the debate
between the mechanist and the transcendentalist or normative philosopher all by
themselves cast doubt on normative discourse? If normativity is defended by
philosophers, not by scientists (in their professional capacities), and
philosophy is only a protoscience, we ought to favour the scientific view of
the normative, which means we should stop talking about it since scientists
dont do so. If we philosophically learn about ourselves through intuition and
other heuristic processes, and those processes arent designed to work well in
that context, since our minds are adapted to coping with the external world, we
have no reason to trust what we think we discover with those innate modes of
access. Finally, if we accept the mechanistic discourse, we lose the ability to
conceive of what normativity might be, since good and bad are clearly nowhere intrinsically to be found in something
as material and objective as a machine.Philosophy as the Search for a Wise Way of Life

I have problems with all three of those background assumptions
and Ill take them up in order. To be sure, much ancient and modern Western
philosophy is indeed concerned with acquiring empirical or transcendent
knowledge, and to this extent premodern philosophy might be looked at as an
inchoate attempt to do what scientists now excel at doing, while modern
philosophy is clearly influenced by scientific methods. But what Scotts
concept of philosophy leaves out is the old interest in wisdom as opposed to knowledge.
Wisdom is the ability to live well. Wisdom may require some knowledge, but
wisdom itself is more like the skill of living well than like any set of
statements. In fact, while the ancient Greek philosophers did seem to love
knowledge regardless of its uses, which is why they followed their often
counterintuitive hypotheses to the furthest logical reaches, they also saw the
search for knowledge as being in harmony with the searches for beauty and
goodness. And so what we might think of as empirical science wasnt taken to
overshadow aesthetics or ethics. In the modern period, though, that
overshadowing did take place, especially in academic philosophy and even more
specifically in analytic, science-centered circles. To the extent that
philosophers cleave to what scientists say, and scientists dont directly
address normative questions, philosophers too ignore the latter or else reduce
them to questions that might be answered by protoscientific methods, such as by
the use of thought experiments. So this is the reason why Scott construes philosophy as he
does, but the fact is that philosophy neednt be thought of as excluding
normativity at the outset. The fact
is that we shouldnt beg the question one way or the other. After all, the traditional
search for wisdom presupposes the reality of the normative, so if we define philosophy in those terms, we beg
the question against Scotts mechanistic conclusions. The best course, then, is
to be open-minded about the nature of philosophy. If our independent arguments
establish that theres no such thing as normativity, then to the extent that
philosophers are interested in wisdom (in what we ought to do in all situations),
philosophy is in danger of being a sham. But those arguments had indeed better
be independent of any framing of philosophy as being concerned merely with theoretical matters, meaning with highly
general questions of fact. Any argument for or against normative
philosophy which assumes either framing begs the question and carries no weight.

The same goes for an argument against normativity which
assumes that the first- and second-order language distinction exhausts
philosophys role, since if philosophy includes the search for wisdom (for a
way of living) and not just for
knowledge (for a set of statements of
fact), philosophy transcends that distinction. Philosophy might be more
like a kind of training to turn people into mental athletes, as it were, and to
the extent that philosophers speak when they train, that speaking might play
some causal role in shaping the philosophers skills, so that the content of
the statements is relatively unimportant. In a similar way (but with a much
different lesson), it doesnt matter so much what Muslim children in parts of
the Middle East are saying when theyre forced to repeat the Koran out loud, over
and over again. What matters is that they come to love the Koran, that theyre
turned into Muslims. Here, language is
part of a practice of personal transformation which a mechanist should be able
to appreciate. To take another example, philosophical texts might amount
not to theories in the protoscientific sense, but to myths, fictions, or
artworks which likewise are meant to affect us and change our way of life. To
this extent, philosophy would be closer to religion than to science. And just
as treating religious questions as empirical ones about scientifically
discoverable facts provides us with only a cheap and irrelevant refutation of
theistic religion, since religion is likewise about practice and not just
knowledge, so too we might doubt such a science-centered approach to
philosophy.To see the relevance of this, consider Scotts set-up of a
certain rhetorical question: “Normative cognition, in other words, is a
biomechanical way of getting around the absence of biomechanical information.
What else would it be?” Heres what else: a step in the process of turning one
sort of creature into another sort. Specifically, normativity might be needed to turn animals into people. The fact
that this remains a mechanistic
possibility leads me to puzzle over why Scott says, “Not only are we blind to
the astronomical complexities of what we are and what we do…” (my emphasis). Normally, Scott says only that
were blind to what we are on the inside, but here he adds that were blind to
what we do. Thats clearly not so, since our actions are observable along with
the rest of the external world. And the relevance of this, of course, is that
if philosophers are after a certain way of living, what we are on the inside
might not be as relevant as the differences between our apparent actions. Thus,
when Scott asks the rhetorical question, “But aside from intuition (or whatever
it is that disposes us to affirm certain inferences more than others), just
what does inform normative theoretical vocabularies?” the answer might be that
those vocabularies rest on experience of
human behaviour. We can learn about our behaviour in the same ways we learn
about that of the animals we hunt or about the weather or other environmental
factors with which we have to cope. We learn that some actions lead to failure while
others lead to success and some are heroic while others are destructive and
counterproductive. And no blind intuition need be instrumental in that
experience.

That experiential basis of normative discourse can be entirely
causal—and indeed protoscientific! We can ignore the content of words like
“good” or “evil,” and just appreciate the impact these concepts have on our
behaviour. We can even understand how these conceptions might have evolved: by
helping to civilize our prehistoric, animalistic ancestors, notions of meaning,
beauty, and goodness helped open up the niche in which weve dominated for some
millennia. We may survive partly because
of the utility of our fictions, including
our self-deceptions, and a mechanist need have no quarrel whatsoever with that
possibility. This is because that possibility is entirely consistent with
the mechanistic view that semantic and normative properties are unreal. I
havent appealed to the factual basis of any normative statement; instead, Ive
posited some process of enculturation in which normative conceptions are links
in a causal chain that neednt subtract from our evolutionary fitness. No
magic, no premodern superstition, no romantic, Luddite or otherwise
antiscientific prejudice, but a charitable
mechanistic interpretation of the
role of normative philosophy. In everyday interactions, we presuppose
normativity and part of the philosophers job, mechanistically or
instrumentally speaking, isnt to get at the facts, but to explore what were
doing in everyday experience, to chart the territory, to speculate on how the
territory might be expanded or altered, and so on. And the philosophical
creativity reinforces or reorients the everyday experience.Yet another science-centered way of looking at philosophy is
to emphasize the lack of consensus among
professional philosophers. In many of his writings, Scott bemoans the fact that
philosophers cant agree on how to naturalize meaning and normativity. In the
above-cited article, he does the same with regard to mathematics: “In fact, it
seems pretty clear that we have no consensus-compelling idea of what
mathematics is.” But any such lack of consensus should be of little concern.
First, consensus is ideal in science, but who says philosophy or mathematics should
be scientific? Who says philosophers or mathematicians are concerned just with
objectivity and the facts? Evidently, these are more creative, free-wheeling
disciplines. (Indeed, physicists are often surprised
by how useful mathematics has turned out to be in explanations of phenomena.) So
one of many reasons why philosophers may disagree on the nature of goodness,
for example, is that the point of philosophy may not be to get us to agree on
the facts; more neutrally, the point may be to relish our freedom to create
ideas, to test them, in effect, for exaptive value in terms of their potential
to transform us. Also, theres currently a lack of consensus in physics as to
the ultimate nature of matter at the quantum level, but surely Scott doesnt
think this undermines science. This would be because his naturalism is presumably
of the methodological rather than the ontological variety, which is to say hes
pragmatic about the benefits of science. Likewise, we might be pragmatic about
the benefits (and the weaknesses and drawbacks) of philosophy and math. Heuristics and the Freedom to Create Ourselves

As for Scotts talk of heuristics, I doubt his use of that
term is standard in cognitive science. We can define our terms as we like, as
long as were upfront about it, but I dont see why the fact that a heuristic
is an evolved quasi-algorithmic process that skips over various steps so as not
to use up precious mental energy, entails that a heuristic works best under
only limited circumstances. On the contrary, the notion of “specialized
heuristics” strikes me as oxymoronic (unless “heuristic” is taken more broadly
to mean any procedure that helps in learning, which would include the algorithm).
Its the algorithm thats limited because it can be over-specialized, not the
heuristic. A heuristic isnt like a giraffes neck, for example. The giraffe
has all its stock in one company, as it were, and its long neck makes certain
tasks very awkward for that animal. Likewise, the more steps you pile into an
algorithm to prevent any possibility of error due to the systems improvisation,
the more narrowly you define the conditions under which the program can
succeed. For example, take the recipe of baking a cake. If this recipe is an
algorithm, the recipe must list all of the steps to be followed, leaving
nothing to chance. This means you must have on hand all of the ingredients to
complete the steps. If you lack an ingredient, the recipe wont work! The
algorithm will grind to a halt and youll be spinning your wheels, unable to
complete the process. But suppose the recipe is a heuristic so that instead of
specifying exactly what you have to do, such that even a robot could follow the
procedure, the recipe says something like, “Add ingredients X, Y, or Z in
whatever measurements you like; its up to you, since this part is just a matter
of taste.” In this case, the recipe has more domains of application, since now
the recipe will work if you have Y but X or Z, or Z but not X or Y, and so on.

So as I understand the distinction between algorithms and
heuristics, its the algorithm thats in danger of being overspecialized, while
the heuristic is more flexible and has a greater range of potential
applications. The heuristic ignores
certain information as inessential, which means the heuristic is open to being
tried in different contexts. You try the simplified procedure and see if it
works with this or that ingredient, but unlike with an algorithm, theres no
guarantee of success. What you get
instead of that guarantee is precisely greater freedom of application. In
fact, “heuristic” is often synonymous with “rule of thumb” or with “trial and
error process,” meaning a process thats trotted out as a last resort in many
different situations because of its flexibility. So this whole business of
saying we shouldnt trust our intuitions, because theyre heuristics and
therefore they werent adapted to informing us about our inner nature has
little merit, as far as I can see. Its true that with any heuristic, if you
apply it here rather than there, theres no guarantee of success. Still, unlike
with an algorithm, you have at least a chance of success with the heuristic
even under strange or unforeseen circumstances, whereas an overspecialized
algorithm (thought process) would land you flat on your face when youre out of
your element. This is why computers, for example, look amazing when doing math,
but foolish when trying to understand emotions or the history that makes for
cultural meaning. Algorithms arent flexible enough to deal with such
subjective matters. For those, you might need intuitions and rules of thumb.The fact that we didnt evolve a reliable way of processing
inner information doesnt preclude the possibility of hitting upon some truths
with intuitions. True, theres little reason to think well learn about neural
mechanisms just through introspection, but this assumes were identical with
those mechanisms. As I suggested above, the point of normative discourse may be
not to inform us about any such mechanistic fact, but to transform us from an
animal, which is indeed identical with its bodily mechanisms, into a civilized
person who extends his or her body in the form of social and technological
systems. And those latter systems are observable by our reliable outer senses,
so they cant be so easily gainsaid. Whats the relevance of technological extensions of the
mind, for example? Well, as I write elsewhere, the
modern philosophical discussion of meaning and value takes for granted only the
relatively recent use of symbols, which assumes symbols are supposed to add up
to statements that correspond with facts. Our ancient ancestors apparently had
a rather alien mindset, the so-called mythopoeic mode of cognition, as
expressed by their bizarre myths and religious practices. What were symbols to
the ancient Egyptians or Babylonians, let alone to their ancestors, who
believed in magic and who had no thoroughgoing distinction between subject and
object? On the science-centered reading, the ancients were simply deluding
themselves with panpsychist fantasies of an enchanted world. On a more
charitable interpretation, the ancients were using normative conceptions in an
early phase of converting themselves from animals into people. It doesnt
matter so much what they were saying; what matters is the effect of that step
in the processes of personalizing ourselves and of creating civilization. For
example, the empirical falsehood of ancient myths is irrelevant if those myths arent
theories. What they are instead are phenomenological
journals, poetic records of what it felt like subjectively to be a newly
evolved person living in a particular time and practicing the linguistic powers
to express not just reason, but imagination, emotion, and willpower. If we look
at everything through science-tinted lenses, we miss that forest for the trees.
Of course mythical and normative discourses are likely not factual. Theres no
such thing as goodness. What there is
instead is a creative, natural process of evolution, which transformed certain
hairy primates into people who tell stories and who obsessively turn our more
threatening, natural environments into technological, functional ones that fulfill
our myths about our elevated status, by serving us as if we were gods. Ironically,
I speculate, the consolation of technology is that far from furthering
scientific disenchantment of nature, our machines re-enchant the world by
making something like the mythopoeic mindset viable once more.This is where exaptation comes together with heuristics.
Both are matters of flexibility, deriving from the fact that theres no mind
dictating what has to evolve. A mechanist has reason to be open-minded at this
point. Im not talking about the evolution of anything supernatural or magical.
What Im saying is that if a species has its survival taken care of by certain
reliable means, such as by its knowledge of natural mechanisms and thus its
mastery of weapons and other tools, that species is free to play, to develop
heuristics, tinker with its onboard faculties, and see what becomes of that
experimentation. Thats apparently what our ancestors did. They used language
to gain control of their thoughts, which gave them ways of organizing and
regimenting their mental states. That was how certain animals learned to personify
themselves. Lots of animals have weapons; where we differed was the magnitude
of our curiosity, creativity, and self-control, which exploded once our skills
at surviving together (by using fire and farming and building shelters, and so
on) gave us the luxury of free time. We told stories (myths and philosophical
speculations), which broadened the mind and tamed our behaviour. The truth status of those stories is
irrelevant from the mechanistic perspective, but that doesnt mean the mechanist
can afford to dismiss them, because those stories and delusions may be
instrumental in an evolutionary process with which we must contend. Refuting
our myths from a science-centered perspective will have zero effect if they
operate on a nonrational level. The Age of Reason hasnt come close to ending
superstitions, because its not enough to understand our cognitive biases; we need a practice, a nascent posthuman
lifestyle to develop the form of life that matches our postmodern ideals. Metaphors and the Mechanists Neutrality

Finally, “mechanism,” “gadget,” and even “heuristic” all
derive from commonsense experience of our artifacts which presuppose normativity.
“Mechanism” became a popular description of a natural system during the
Enlightenment, when scientists struck a deistic compromise with the theistic
masses. Early modern scientists affirmed that there is a God, but maintained
that his creation runs more or less by itself—like the machines we create. This
was a metaphor, and if we leave behind deism for atheism, the metaphor loses
its rationale. Maybe, the word still has some use when applied to natural
systems like the brain. Words are free to change their meaning if we find the
new meaning useful. But this apparently vestigial use of “mechanism” is
suspicious. Naturalists should avoid
confusions by coining words that express the radical, one-sided philosophical implications
of naturalism: no meaning, purpose, goodness, God, and so on. Notice that “natural process” is likewise metaphorical (and
technically oxymoronic), since “process” is again a teleological notion, having
to do originally with a series of actions directed towards some end, as in the
process of building a fire. The notion that the brain or a cognitive capacity
is a “gadget” is obviously metaphorical, as Ive said. The point of this
metaphor, I take it, is that, to the extent that mental processes are like
gadgets, we shouldnt assume theyre equally useful in all contexts, to say the
least. You cant tell time with just a chair, for example. And indeed,
worldviews, or thoughts we deliberately put together, might be compared to
gadgets, but the metaphor is stretched when we speak of evolved gadgets, as
Scott does. He says, “Evolution has given me all these great, normative
gadgets.” Here, you dont have to go far to see whats implicit in this
metaphor, namely the connotation that the gadgets function derives from the
designers normative thought about which effects are good, as it does in the
case of a human-made gadget. But in evolution theres no such designer, so the
metaphor is misleading. Again, in the cognitive scientific context, “heuristic”
derives from computing. Computers implement algorithms or heuristics, because
we interpret their internal changes as steps that follow the rules we program
into them. Applying that anthropocentric discourse to products of natural
selection leaves us with connotations to which the “mechanist” or naturalist
isnt entitled. Nature doesnt program anything into us, our neurons dont
follow rules (unless were consciously programming ourselves), and theres no
intended end of our behaviour as far as natural selection is concerned. And
lets not even get into “progressive naturalism.” Whats the upshot of this point about metaphors? Well, once
we strip away the anthropocentric meanings of the naturalists terms, were
left with a more neutral viewpoint, I think, which should be open to the utility
of normative and semantic concepts. Where Scott and I should agree is that
there may be a big transformation afoot. Normative concepts were instrumental
in adapting our animalistic ancestors to the niche in which theyd have to
function as people, as creatures that transcended what they used to be. Myths,
delusions, and technology play roles in that transformation. Perhaps were
losing faith in that way of life, because of technoscientific progress, and so
were searching for a new way. Perhaps well have to give up the old ways of
thinking, to turn us into creatures that can survive in some new domain, such
as cyberspace or outer space. My point is that we should be charitable and
thoroughly “mechanistic” in our interpretation of philosophical and religious
speculations. Lets not dismiss them on empirical grounds, by presupposing an
ultrarationalistic worldview thats preoccupied with knowledge and with actual
facts, because we might then miss transformations that lead to future facts.
Normativity may have a causal role to play in such transformations, as may
philosophy as the search for a certain way of life. In fact, Scotts metaphor of normativity as an array of
“gadgets” or functional heuristics is consistent with what Ive said here about
the evolutionary role of fictions and delusions. We both suspect that the
manifest image, the ordinary conception of the self, corresponds to no reality,
that that self doesnt factually exist. But we seem to differ on the
implications of this naturalism and on what to make of philosophy. Scott thinks
philosophy is in big trouble to the extent that it takes the folk picture of
the self more seriously than it takes the scientific one. But this science-centered framing of the problem is insufficiently
mechanistic, since it credits scientific theories more than philosophical
“sketches,” whereas mechanistically, which is to say instrumentally speaking,
all symbols are equally meaningless, there being no such thing as meaning. If
Scotts point is that science is more efficacious or useful in evolutionary
terms, compared to philosophy or the folk conception of the self, his point is
far from obvious. You see, if we accept the radical implications of naturalism,
we must be more open-minded than before, not less so. A true pragmatist will
accept whatever works. With no ideology to take seriously anymore, with no
commitment to ideas as brainchildren, the inchoate posthuman has less reason to
judge or to exclude. We must be neutral in considering technoscience,
naturalism, theistic religion, and normative philosophy all as processes,
mechanisms, global developments, and the like. A radical naturalist has no
basis for saying that religion is bad or false, for example, if this naturalist thinks only
in terms of context-dependent transformations of systems. Now, I dont think
this necessarily lands us in postmodern relativism, because I think aesthetic standards remain. My question is whether the “mechanist” has some other
standards to license the devaluation of philosophy compared to science. If
philosophy isnt after the facts, we should watch what it does and see how it
fits into the bigger picture.Authentic philosophy, as distinct from science or religion, trains
us to be a type of person. As I say in a reply to another of Scott's articles, this is complicated by esoteric and exoteric, or elite and mass social
functions. Heres how the evolutionary transformation might work, in a
nutshell. The masses personify themselves by trusting in myths that function as
self-reinforcing delusions. That keeps civilization running; in particular, it
maintains our luxury and our freedom to create ways of life. The philosophical
elite stand apart from this process, not as godlike controllers, but as
marginalized observers who see the tragedy at work. Philosophers are trained to
be skeptics, to ask endless questions and to take nothing on faith. They know
there are no gods or moral properties, as matters of fact, but they also
suspect that these notions are part of some larger turn of events. Theyre
awestruck by natures audacity, as it were: our self-deceptions may be instrumental, in which case, to borrow the
inadequate and potentially misleading metaphor, were cogs in a machine.
Philosophers are specially equipped to know this, and wisdom is something like
the ability to live well in spite of those alienating doubts. What can it
be to live well if theres no such
thing as goodness and normativity isnt factual? Whatever it is, it must be
equal to a natural turn of events. Maybe the wise person sees how events are
largely going and realizes theres some role for skeptical outsiders, so that
even they can be part of the greater whole.

Kate is Sleek Sophistication in Jenny P for 100 Women in Hedge Funds Gala at KP

I am listening to Handel's "Zadok the Priest" (God Save the King) which is used at coronation ceremonies, while I write this blog post. Still on my high from the last post of the historic and beautiful christening photos released by the palace today. See post here if you missed it. My brother can't stand Handel, I say God bless the man.

But, you came here to read about Kate, and I am giddy with excitement to tell you that she stunned tonight at KP in an ink blue Jenny Packham. Isn't it funny that in the last 48 hours Kate has kind of proved yet again how ordered her fashion choices are? For formal events of historical significance she almost universally opts for McQueen. To sexily dazzle at formal evening events, it's our favorite girl, Jenny P who wins the night. (Not hard to understand, this dress is drool worthy.) We can bet on Emilia Wickstead, Max Mara, and Co. for Kate's coat dress needs.

Tonight was the 100 Women in Hedge Funds partay, benefiting Action on Addiction, which Kate and William attended the year before last, as well. Remember the red Beulah? William stayed home tonight with Georgie. Kate commented that the little prince was asleep when she left. Jenny Packham is the master (mistress?) at bringing these sleek and sophisticated looks together. Fitted and flattering, but with beautiful, soft, and feminine elements, like this almost off-the-shoulder top, and the delicate overlay of the skirt.

(Honestly, it is so dark blue and the lighting is not really great, I have run some of these photos through a little photo shop to change the shadowing and give us more dress detail. I am no expert, nor did I spend much time, but I think it helps.) In the picture above--with a little ham-handed photoshop from yours truly--we can see the layers a little better.Jenny P's fashion hits have usually been very light or colorful. The pale pink ARK dress, the deep teal Our Greatest Team Rises dress, the shimmering silver on-shoulder, and the sparkling Tusk Trust. Tonight was a first in terms of color for her, but obviously Jenny P retained many of her best trademarks.

This was not my favorite Jenny P that Kate has worn, but that is not to say I didn't love it; I did. It will be almost impossible to outdo that teal dress. Tonight's dress was simple and ridiculously elegant. A wonderful choice in color change, too, after yesterday's profusion of whites and creams. The Mirror has some great photos with better lighting. Check them out here. I wish we had a better view of the ring she is wearing on her right hand... This has been a packed and fantastic two days. Looking forward to seeing more of Kate very soon!

Fourth Quarter Allegro 2013, 29 Dec 2013

Fourth Quarter Allegro 2013, 29 Dec 2013

30th November 2013, Kuala Lumpur – The Chess Association of Selangor will be organizing the 14th CAS Fourth Quarter Allegro Championship 2013 on the 29th December 2013 at DAT Chess Connections, 4th Floor, Wilayah Complex, Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Kuala Lumpur. Two categories: National Rating >1400 and National Rating <1400. Prizes have been improved and conditions improved to retain loyal participants of the Allegro tournament series. 7 rapid rounds as usual. Closing date on 14th December 2013.

Official website link: http://selangorchess.blogspot.com/2013/11/14th-cas-fourth-quarter-allegro-on-29th.html Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/SelangorChess

Court to East Side Report It, Record It, and We Will Ignore It

Court to East Side Report It, Record It, and We Will Ignore It

SubpoenaedThe lights were off because we were watching a movie; otherwise,
I doubt I would have noticed the spotlight from the police van. I let the movie
run for my wife and went to the porch. A police officer was walking in front of
our house. He looked like he was not finding what he was looking for.“Good evening. Can I help you?” I like police officers. They
carry guns so that I do not have to.“I am looking for 2845 N. Farwell.”“This is it.”He had two subpoenas for me. I signed for them and bid him a
good and safe night.There was not much to the subpoenas. The head of one read:“City of Milwaukee, Plaintiff –vs – JESSE J. TODD W4000
Linden Dr Malone, WI 53049, Defendant.” Opposite this information was the Case Number: 13052759, Citation:
48910111189, Offense Date: 05/07/2013,
and Violation: Excessive Noise
Prohibited.”The head of the second read:“City of Milwaukee, Plaintiff –vs – CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL
GILSON, 2694 Lavender Ln, Green Bay, WI 54313, Defendant.”This subpoena had the Case
Number: 13052708 and Citation
Number: 48910111190, but the offense date and violation were the same.I do not practice law, but I suspect the subpoena proper is
what followed. What followed were my name, address, and this:“Pursuant to Section 885.01 of the Wisconsin Statutes, you
are hereby commanded to appear in person before the judge of the Milwaukee
Court, 951 N James Lovell St, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in Branch 3 on Monday, November 18, 2013 at 1:30 pm to give evidence
in an action between the City of Milwaukee, Plaintiff, and [ Jesse J. Todd or
Christopher Michael Gilson, depending on the subpoena], Defendant. Failure to
appear may result in punishment for contempt, which may include monetary
penalties, imprisonment, and other sanctions.”The subpoenas were dated September 19, 2013, and signed
(illegibly) by Philip Chavez, Municipal Judge, City of Milwaukee.This fairly represents the subpoenas in wording, punctuation,
and typeface without giving actual facsimiles.
First ReadingI am not often served subpoenas. When I am, I do not let it get
in the way of a fine movie. The subpoenas were put aside. My wife and I
finished watching Wim Wenders Paris,
Texas. We did not find it as interesting as Wings of Desire or the equally surprising Faraway, So Close! Nevertheless, it was delightfully challenging. All
of these movies and more are available from the Milwaukee Public Library. We
love living in Milwaukee.After the movie, I turned my attention to the command of Honorable
Judge Philip Chavez.What was this all about?The first thing I noticed was how little there was to
notice. Who is Christopher Michael Gilson? I have not been to Green Bay in over
a decade. As for Malone, Wisconsin, I have never heard of it. The name Jesse was
familiar, unfortunately.It seemed odd that while Mr. Todd and Mr. Gilson were the
defendants, I was the one threatened with “monetary penalties, imprisonment,
and other sanctions.” I am sure Judge Chavez meant no harm by these words.
There probably is a legal reason for this threat. It is no doubt nothing more
than legal boilerplate – words to suit all occasions of the court summoning a
citizen to testify. I doubt Judge Chavez considered the citizen he was
addressing with these words. He probably did not even read the words at all.
Still, since Mr. Gilson and Mr. Todd were the defendants it seemed odd.The violation of “excessive noise prohibited” was not much
of a clue. Excessive noise is the plague of the East Side. Nevertheless, with
Mr. Jesse Todd, the violation, and the violation date as clues I looked into my
records.Yes, there it was.May 7, 2013, was a pleasant day. The windows were strategically
opened for a nice breeze. No need for an air conditioner by day or the furnace
at night. The sun shone, the birds sang, the Bose in the dining room played
Bach as I read contentedly in my study. Then the occupants of 2851 N. Farwell
broadcasted obscene, misogynic rap into the neighborhood.It is “rap” not “rap music.” Rap is not music. Rap is
excrement. Rap is not experimental. It is not daring. There is nothing
commendable about rap. Of course, this is my opinion and I do not expect everyone
to accept the justice and wisdom of this opinion. When it comes to “obscene”
and “misogynic,” however, few would defend the vulgarities “rapped” in the hearing
of families with children, and the abuse of women is intolerable in fact or in “rap.”And so I remembered. And so I recorded of what I reported on
May 7, 2013. Report It, Record ItFrom the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association:
“The City of Milwaukee Code of Ordinances, Chapter 80-63, prohibits excessive
noise, or that which is disturbing at 50 feet outside the property line. The
Milwaukee East Side Neighborhood Associations have an excellent working
relationship with the 1st District of the Milwaukee Police Department and have
adopted a program to enhance police response and outcomes in our community.
This program is called Report It, Record
It.”And then there is this: “Record
It: Take detailed notes about the situation (date, time, addresses, etc.).
Your notes may be needed in the event that you are asked to testify in court or
to provide valuable information to the City and MPD when they seek to follow up
with landlords.”So Report It, Record
It, and tell the police that you will be a witness. They will issue the
ticket even if they have observed nothing. The police cannot be everywhere all
the time. The disturbance reported may have ended hours before an officer can
respond. There are other matters more important than “Excessive Noise
Prohibited” to which the police must attend. Every mature citizen not only
understands that “Excessive Noise Prohibited” is not a high priority for the
police, but he also does not want it to be a high priority. Still, there must
be a way to address even the broken window so that minor acts of incivility do
not fester and grow into gross criminality. Report It, Record It
is supposed be the answer. There is no reason to worry. On a citizens
willingness to be a witness, the police will issue a ticket for $ 230.00 per
occupant for “Excessive Noise Prohibited.” One must record it on the off chance
the reprobates will plead not guilty.Well, Mr. Todd and Mr. Gilson pleaded not guilty. This resulted
in Judge Chavez issuing subpoenas commanding my presence on Monday, 18 November,
at 1:30, complete with threats if I failed to appear. The threats were
unnecessary and even comical since I have a good understanding of my civic
responsibility.I understand, but the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association
does not understand. They do not understand that some neighbors do not want to
risk being compelled to attend court hearings. They do not understand that some
neighbors do not have the time for court appearances. They do not understand
that many neighbors do not want to expose themselves to the anger of immature
and unruly students. They do not understand that most people do not keep a
record of what happened on May 7, 2013, for presentation six months later on
November 18, 2013.I did keep a record of what I reported. It made no
difference.In CourtIt is best not to be simply “on time” for any important
event. One must be there before time. For the 1:30 p.m. court session, I
registered sometime around 1:00 p.m. I checked in and was given instructions. When
Mr. Todd and Mr. Gilson were called, I was to enter branch three. I asked the
clerk where branch three is. “Right around the corner,” she said pointing.“Oh. Where that large sign says Branch Three,” I responded
self-mockingly.She smiled and laughed maybe just a bit. I enjoyed the
moment. This was not a place where she, or many others, smiled or laughed very
much. This brief exchange was the only enjoyable moment of my visit to the
Milwaukee Municipal Court.My name was not going to be called. I was a witness for the
city of Milwaukee. Not a plaintiff, not a defendant. Mr. Todd and Mr. Gilson
were going to be called. However, they were not called immediately. Defendants
for branch one were called. Then branch two. I had been sitting in the waiting
area for at least a half hour and had not seen Mr. Gilson or Mr. Todd arrive. I
looked around. Perhaps they had arrived before me. They were not there.Finally, defendants for branch three were called “including
witnesses.”The courtroom was wood-paneled with pews. About ten police
officers sat on the left of the nave. I took a place behind eight of them, two
sat to my right. Most of the defendants would be sitting in the pews to the
left and behind me. The prosecutor was front left at a computer. The judge had
not entered. It was quiet as the defendants gathered. I began to think that Mr.
Gilson and Mr. Todd would not make an appearance. The thought entered my mind
that they might accrue court costs in addition to their fines. It would be
somewhat annoying to have made the trip for nothing. Then again, it would not
be a total waste. They would be fined, receiving due punishment for disturbing
the peace, and I would be home early.I glanced to the back. Mr. Todd was taking a place to the
left and rear of me. He saw me and I him. I would not be home early. The game
began.Enters the JudgeMr. Gilson and Mr. Todd were late, but present before Judge
Chavez entered to begin the business of the afternoon. Branch three of the
Municipal Court of Milwaukee had many cases to dispatch. Every single one of
them was more important than a case of “Excessive Noise Prohibited.” The
presence of ten police officers prepared to give testimony indicated as much.When Judge Philip Chavez entered, the command was given,
“all rise,” etcetera as we have all seen in the movies, ending with, “Your
silence is commanded.”From that point on, forget the movies. There was no
impaneled jury. The cases did not warrant it. There were defense attorneys.
They came and went quickly. The prosecutor interviewed defendants and a few
other witnesses at his perch to the left of the judges bench. Or he took them
out to the hall. Most of the courts business took place at the prosecutors
computer or in the hallway in hushed tones that few heard and fewer understood.
Only English was spoken, but the abbreviations were quickly spoken and learned
by the common citizen in attendance only by repetition. Disorderly conduct is
DC for those familiar with the court. The common citizen hears, “DC” and
wonders what the District of Columbia has to do with cases tried in Milwaukee.
He learns his mistake only by carefully listening. The rubrics of this temple
of justice are secret and the liturgy strange.The Honorable Judge Philip Chavez runs an efficient court.
Fines were paid, sentences rendered, cases rescheduled with aplomb. The judge
is a kind man. A young African American woman, without a lawyer, made her case
the best way she could, pleading that sending her to jail again made no sense.
The reply of the judge was strictly logical according to the law and baffling to
any citizen witnessing the exchange; in the end, the woman was not given jail
time. A young white man charged with DWI did not fare as well, but was dealt
with fairly and raised no objections.The Municipal Court is not a pleasant place. It is a place
where many citizens find themselves in the maw of the law because they have fallen
on hard times. Most people wisely try to avoid being in court for any reason.
This day three elected to be there. One had a lawyer and thought he had a case.
He was mistaken, but it was his right. The other two who elected to be at court
were Mr. Gilson and Mr. Todd. They too had the right to contest their fine.
They were not mistaken, however. They had no lawyer, the law was not on their
side, but this court would bless them.Copping the PleaI am not a lawyer, but this was not the first time I had
been in a courtroom. I am familiar with its strangeness. I know its peculiar
rules serve a kind of fairness and objectivity even if at times justice suffers.
I do not know its rubrics. I have not mastered its liturgy.I knew the court would not be interested in the fact that
Mr. Todd and his companions woke me early one winter morning because he was so
drunk he did not know the difference between his clapboard blue-painted abode
and my brown brick home. I knew the court would not be interested in an
altercation on 30 April, when the tenants of 2851 were told that broadcasting
music from an SUV was not acceptable and replied in vulgar terms that I was the
rude one. They turned off the “music” only when I returned to take down the
license number of the SUV.I knew that the court would not be interested in the fact
that Mr. Todd, on May 7, having received his citation, came to my door to tell
me that I should be more tolerant since I was living “on university property.”
The court would not be interested that he then became so angry, abusive, and
incoherent I order him off the porch, fearing he would get violent. The court
would not be interested in the fact that Mr. Todd once shouted that I was “so
damn Jewish.” The court would regard it as irrelevant hearsay that the
occupants of 2851 refer to me as “the Rabbi.” The court would not be amused by
the idea that I was accused of being intolerant by a nest of anti-Semite UWM
students.For the record, I am not Jewish nor do I live on university
property.In addition, I could offer no proof to the court that the
vandalism that occurred after Mr. Gilson and Mr. Todd were cited came from
them. Without proof, it did not matter that I could think of no one else who
would delight in committing vandalism except the occupants of 2851 N. Farwell.All of these are “quality of life” issues that the Murray
Hill Association assures us that Report
It, Record It is supposed to address. The court was not going to be interested.
I knew this.The court was concerned with this narrow point of law.Ordinance 80-63: It shall be unlawful for any person
occupying or having charge or control of any building or premises, or any part
thereof, to cause, suffer or allow any loud, excessive or unusual noise in the
operation of any radio, stereo or other mechanical or electrical device,
instrument or machine, which loud, excessive or unusual noise tends to
unreasonably disturb the comfort, quiet or repose of persons therein or in the
vicinity.The “vicinity” is
defined elsewhere as “50 feet outside the property line.” Outside of that
vicinity a neighbor must not “unreasonably disturb the comfort, quiet or repose
of” their neighbors.The prosecutor conducted one short interview with me at his
place to the left of the bench. He stated his name in hushed tones. I do not
know it. He was not interested in the vulgarity and the misogyny of the rap
broadcast. He did not care that it was rap. All this is fair and legal. He only
cared that it could be heard “50 feet outside the property line.” I assured him
that it was so and that would be my testimony. There was no defense for Mr.
Gilson or Mr. Todd. They had done the deed.All the other things these students had done, all the other
incidents where they negatively affected the “quality of life” in our East Side
neighborhood before, during, and after 7 May 2013 would not be brought before
the court. On this narrow point of law, however, they were guilty.The afternoon dragged on. Cases were brought, testimony
given, judgments made. I had one interview with the prosecutor. Time was
running out. The prosecutor called Mr. Gilson and Mr. Todd out into the hallway
several times. A middle-age couple that I took to be Mr. Todds parents was
also present. Mr. Todd and Mr. Gilson were pressing for a hearing to defend themselves.
Time was running out because Mr. Gilson and Mr. Todd registered late for their
court appearance. The prospect of a rescheduled hearing presented itself. Mr.
Gilson alerted the prosecutor that he might not be available for a later
hearing. All of this was discussed behind my back, and then between the
prosecutor and Judge Chavez. The prosecutor interviewed me once and ignored me
otherwise.The prosecutor had a solution. The defendants would change
their pleas from “not guilty” to “no contest.” The fine of $230 would be set
aside for one year. If after one year neither defendant received another ticket
(aside from a parking ticket) all would be forgiven. If they were ticketed
again, then they would have to return to Judge Chavezs court. There was no
indication what would happen if they were forced to return by another
infraction. Perhaps a serious tongue lashing.Bottom line: Mr. Todd and Mr. Gilson committed the crime and
did not pay the fine.I asked to address the court. I should not have asked to
address the court. Hours of sitting and waiting and seeing it all go down wrong
made me angry. When I am angry, like most of humanity, I lose all claim to
eloquence. I told Judge Chavez that he let these two off. He denied it. I
recovered some degree of calm and said something to the effect that this was
wrong for the East Side. Whatever I said to Judge Chavez was pathetic and
stupid and I regret opening my mouth. I was angry.I made my way to the door. The prosecutor stopped me and
waved me to the side door. In the hallway, he took pity on me and attempted to
correct my impression of events by restating the terms of the plea that I had
already heard and understood. He added this one bit. If either defendant was
ticketed again within the next year, they would be compelled to appear before
Judge Chavez but I would not be so compelled. So if there was another
infraction, I would not know about it. If the defendants did appear in court
again, I would not know the outcome of the hearing.It made no sense. The defendants broke the law and walked
with no fine imposed. The prosecutor was more solicitous of the defendants than
of the resident who came forward to testify on behalf of the City. He did not
care in the least about the “quality of life” issues of the East Side. What the Court
Teaches UWM StudentsI have lived on the East Side for over fifteen years. For
fifteen years, I have heard that UWM owns this neighborhood and the students of
UWM are entitled to violate city ordinaries with impunity. There are many tales
I could tell, but I will focus on the lessons learned in the court of Judge
Philip Chavez.First: It does not matter what the law says; if you contest
it, you have a good chance of walking away without a fine. Just show up for the
hearing. You do not even need a lawyer. You just need the time. Since you are a
student, you have plenty of time. Residents do not have the flexibility with
their schedules that you have. (Every resident knows that students have plenty
of time. Weekend parties begin on Wednesday night on the East Side.)Second: Show up late. The court is busy. There are really
serious cases to address. The concerns of those uppity East Side residents pale
by comparison. The prosecutor in the Gilson and Todd cases worked the plea
agreement because they were late in the queue because of their late arrival. To
reschedule the hearing is too much bother.Third: This is not where you live. Any delay works in your
favor. The court understands that to reschedule will not work for you. By the
time the court has a convenient date, you will be in Green Bay or Malone. You
probably will not receive another ticket in Milwaukee, and thus trigger a
return to Judge Chavezs courtroom. You do not live here.The Failure of East Side
Neighborhood AssociationsThere are parts of the East Side that are at a tipping point
now. In the 2800 block of Farwell there is one house in foreclosure, a second
that has been empty for more than a year, a third that is now listed for sale.
Three additional properties on this block could be for sale in 2014. This block
was once predominantly owner occupied. This once stable block is now
susceptible to being dominated by irresponsible absentee landlords who will
greedily rent space to transient students.We have been told that Report
It, Record It is the answer to preserving the quality of life on the East
Side. This simply is not true.First, the program asks too much of citizens. In many
instances, the business of recording it requires citizens to get up out of bed,
dress, walk to the place causing the disturbance, record the address without
being seen and call it in. It does not take much imagination to understand the
hazard a citizen exposes himself to in attempting to make an accurate record.Second, who keeps a record of anything for six or more
months? I witnessed a police officer having difficulty giving accurate
testimony in court. He was a trained professional and admirable in his decorum.
The widow living across the street would not be so accurate, nor would anyone
expect her to be.Third, students are transients. Students invest nothing in
the East Side community. We count ourselves fortunate if they rouse themselves
from their late night carousing to shovel the snow any time during the day.
Right now 2851 N. Farwell has an upholstered sofa rotting in the back yard, a
nice nest for nocturnal vermin. The front yard is decorated with the de rigueur
discarded beer cans. Transients take no pride in their temporary abode.Fourth, I reported it. I recorded it. And Mr. Gilson and Mr.
Todd walked without paying the fine. They will no doubt share their experience
with friends. In addition, according to one reliable source, where the judge
does not completely set aside the small $230 fine, he will often reduce it.Finally, the cases of Mr. Gilson and Mr. Todd are my second
and third before the court. The first was years ago, and the court was presided
over by Judge Valarie Hill (no relation). In that case, the police officer who
issued the ticket did not comply with the subpoena issued to him. The case
melted away. The scoundrels, who also occupied 2851 N. Farwell, danced off
without paying a fine.It Comes to ThisReport It, Record It
is only a partial answer to the lawlessness that UWM students bring to the East
Side. The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee needs to be a full partner in
preserving the quality of life for both residents and students on the East
Side. That means capping enrollment. That means suspending and expelling
students who will not behave as responsible citizens.The proud posturing of Murray Hill Neighborhood Association aside,
it is the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee that needs to reform and become a
good neighbor.