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Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Silicon Valley Bank and Moral Hazard

 When Silicon Valley Bank imploded after a bank run, the FDIC stepped in. But the majority of SVB's deposits (over 80%) were above the $250k FDIC insurance limit, and would not be legally required to be covered.

The Biden administration quickly announced that these deposits would also be covered. This made sense. Without those funds, a lot of companies would not have been able to make payroll in the following weeks, which would have been hard on a lot of employees and local economies. There would have been more bank runs as companies scrambled to move their excess deposits out of any bank that didn't seem rock solid, or "too big to fail", which would have meant more smaller banks would fail.

But there is a risk of moral hazard, in which the government safety net encourages risky behavior. Put another way, capitalists get to keep all the gains, and socialize the losses.

The moral hazard doesn't really occur for the bank owners themselves, because their equity is wiped out.

The problem occurs with the depositors, who can search out the higher returns offered by banks which are desperate for deposits.  This is what happened during the S&L crisis some decades ago: banks such as Corus Bank (Chicago area) were offering much higher CD rates as they went into their slow death spiral. I was happy to take advantage of this for my IRA investments. I was reading a lot of reports that Corus was in trouble, but I didn't care.  My deposits, of course, were well below the FDIC maximum.

How to avoid this problem with large depositors? The FDIC should guarantee only the principal, not any interest (for example, any interest earned in the past two years). This would substantially lower the incentive for interest rate shopping by large depositors.

In order to try to control gaming the system (e.g. frequently moving funds from one bank to another, to restart the interest earned), the FDIC would not cover any interest earned in any FDIC institution during that same period. So, if  Bank1 fails, your principal at Bank1 would be covered, less any interest earned at Bank2, Bank3, etc. during that same lookback period, if the money in Bank1 had been deposited during that lookback period.  This, in fact, provides an incentive NOT to move money around.

This is simpler than it sounds. The main requirement is that financial institutions change their 1099 reporting to split out interest subject to FDIC coverage from interest not subject to FDIC coverage. This isn't complex. Fidelity, for example, already tells me how much interest is from US government bonds, how much is tax exempt, and how much is tax exempt by state, and so on. And when I check their fixed income information, I can see whether what I am about to buy is covered by FDIC insurance. 

A bit of personal history

No, I'm not old enough to remember the bank runs of the early 1930s!

But my parents and grandparents had CDs in the 1960s from Southern Savings and Loan in Louisville, KY. It looked like a regular savings and loan, but it paid rates that were a bit more attractive. It failed. Turned out it was not FDIC insured; it may have been insured by a state fund that didn't have enough money; I was a kid and don't remember all the details. My family had moved from Kentucky by that time, but still had some money left there, perhaps in longer term CDs, or CDs that had be left to automatically renew since the interest rates were more attractive.

Eventually, years later, they got most of their money back in a series of payments. Evidently the savings and loan had assets that covered most of the deposits (probably 20 year mortgages that were gradually paid off).  We were lucky enough not to need the money in a hurry.

Friday, May 06, 2022

LGBTQIA+ and Swedenborg: It doesn’t have to be this way

 

LGBTQIA+ and Swedenborg: It doesn’t have to be this way

This is a slightly updated version of an earlier post; no change in the basic argument but a bit more supporting evidence.

The purpose of this essay is to show that it is possible for Swedenborgians to be more inclusive of LGBTQIA+ (henceforward LGBT) people than in this February, 2022 statement by Bishop Peter Buss, Jr, the chief bishop of the New Church branch of Swedenborgianism:

Even with an emphasis on love and understanding, the Church cannot embrace same-sex marriage – on earth or in heaven. It cannot support a concept of gender fluidity. It cannot embrace variety of sexual expression implied in a bisexual identity. It should be a place where people can hear directly from the Word about the Lord’s vision of marriage and receive encouragement to reach for their experience of it.

Organizationally, the Church has a responsibility to make policies about what the priesthood can and cannot do around these matters, and what is expected of employees who have signed on to represent the beliefs of the New Church in their professional and private conduct. We must strive to align ourselves organizationally with what the Word teaches, and where we find ourselves out of alignment to work diligently to change. (page 23)

Buss, Peter M. Jr.  From the Bishop’s Office. Standing for Marriage in Today’s World, A Church Perspective. New Church Life, Vol. MMXXII #1, January/February 2022, 15-24.  NCL_JanFeb_2022-web.pdf (newchurch.org)

A Few Preliminaries

I want to outline a few of the ways that an argument can be made. 

First, there is deduction, where after stating some premises, the conclusion necessarily follows. For example:

                All men are mortal.

                Socrates is a man.

                Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The validity of a deductive argument depends on the validity of the premises, if there is no fallacious construction such as assuming the consequent.

Second, there is induction, in which we generalize from the observed facts. For example, if thousands of swans have been observed and every swan observed has been white, then we might conclude that all swans are white. Arguments by induction can be refuted by further evidence, e.g. finding a black swan, or by showing that other conclusions are also consistent with the evidence.

Third, there are apologia, a formal defense of a position or belief. In apologia, we start with the conclusion we want, and work backward to explain or justify it.

There is an easy slide into apologia. For example, in the investigation of a crime, evidence may be gathered objectively, leading to an inductive inference that a particular person is likely to be responsible. But, once we get into court, the prosecution starts with a belief in guilt, the defense starts with a belief in innocence, and both sides present evidence to justify their positions.

Apologia are particularly common in religious writings. The Wikipedia article on Christian apologetics cites writers such as Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Anselm of Canterbury, Blaise Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, G. E. M. Anscombe, and John Henry Newman (author of Apologia Pro Vita Sua).

Of course, much as the prosecution and defense at a trial see things differently, different apologists will defend different positions. This is captured in the popular idiom from Shakespeare that the devil can cite scripture for his purpose.

With these preliminaries laid out, I present the following apologia defending an inclusive position for LGBT individuals.

Apologia

We’ll start with the position that LGBT should be accepted on an equal basis in a church or religious community.

First, this should be the default – we should assume in Christian charity that others should be accepted. The basis of this starting point is Matthew 22:39, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Second, we can dispose of the Old Testament arguments by noting that there are many things prohibited in the Torah that are permitted to Christians (dietary restrictions and Jubilee years, for example) and also things that were allowed in the Torah that we would not accept today (slavery and polygamy, for example).  There is a lot of “pick and choose” in Christians’ attitude toward the laws of the Torah.

There is, of course, the story of Sodom. There is a much more extensive discussion of what Swedenborg says about homosexuality in general and Sodom in particular by Lee and Annette Woofenden here: What does Emanuel Swedenborg Say about Homosexuality? | Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life (leewoof.org)  Among many other particulars, it notes the parallelism between the story of Sodom (homosexual gang rape instead of hospitality toward travelers) and Judges 19 (heterosexual gang rape instead of hospitality toward travelers), both involving severe punishments (the destruction of Sodom, and the near genocide of the tribe of Benjamin).  When we consider these stories together, it is the gang rape aspect that sticks out, rather than the specific form of gang rape.

Third, we can dispose of the New Testament arguments (e.g. a passage in a Pauline epistle) by noting that Swedenborg himself rejected all the New Testament epistles from his biblical canon.

Conjugial Love

But we cannot so easily dismiss conjugial love. An important belief among Swedenborgians is in conjugial love – the importance of marriage on earth, marriage in heaven, and the symbolism of the church betrothing herself to her Lord as His bride and wife (Swedenborg’s Conjugial Love 293:6)

(1)    But while a Christian marriage on earth (and, for Swedenborgians, later in heaven) is an ideal state, it is not a required state. There is no requirement that Swedenborgians marry. Swedenborg himself never married. So, while the symbolism and correspondence is there, it need not be born out in every single individual in a church community by heterosexual marriage.

(2)    We might further note that dispensations of charity have been given in this regard. Swedenborg states that remarriage after divorce should not occur except in cases of adultery, but even among the male New Church clergy there are several examples of second marriages and it seems unlikely that all of these involve female adultery, although it is clear that the specifics of these cases are none of my business.

(3)    We do not require that all correspondences be taken literally, particularly in individual cases. Diseases, for example, are, in Swedenborg’s view, connected to sin.

a.       “Diseases correspond to the cupidities and passions of the disposition; these, too, are their origin; for, in general the origins of diseases are intemperances, luxury of various kinds, merely corporeal pleasures; and also envies, hatreds, revenges, lasciviousness and the like, which destroy the interiors of man … and draw the man into disease, and thus into death.” (5712; from Potts Concordance, volume 2, page 173)

b.       So, how does evil cause disease in an individual, in Swedenborg’s view?

                                                               i.      “As death is from no other source than sin, and sin is all that which is contrary to Divine order, therefore evil closes the very smallest and most invisible vessels, of which are composed the next larger ones, also invisible; for the vessels which are smallest of all and wholly invisible are continued from man’s interiors. Hence comes the first and inmost obstruction, and hence the first and inmost vitiation into the blood. When this vitiation increases, it causes disease, and finally death. If, however, man had lived a life of good, his interiors would be open into heaven, and through heaven to the Lord; and so too would the very least and most invisible little vessels (the traces of the first threads may be called little vessels, on account of the correspondence). In consequence man would be without disease, and would merely decline to extreme old age, even until he became again a little child, but a wise one; and when the body could no longer minister to his internal man or spirit, he would pass without disease out of his earthly body into a body such as the angels have, thus out of the world directly into heaven.” (Arcana Coelestia, 5726. Arcana Coelestia volume 7 (swedenborg.com) )

c.       But even though “the first of charity is to …  shun evils because they are sins” (Charity, by Emanuel Swedenborg, [1766], tr. by John Whitehead [1914] at sacred-texts.com ), Swdenborgians do not shun those who are diseased, and are more likely to pray for them, and help them, as acts of charity.”th”

d.       While the disease in an individual person might not be due to their personal sin, an individual who is diseased cannot be reformed.

                                                               i.      The reason no one is reformed in a state of disease of the body, is that reason is not then in a free state; for the state of the mind depends on the state of the body. When the body is sick, the mind also is sick; if not otherwise, still by removal from the world . . . When, therefore, man is in a state of disease ... he is not in the world ... in which state alone no one can be reformed ; but he can be confirmed, if he was reformed before he fell into disease. . . Wherefore, if they are not reformed before the disease, after it, if they die, they become such as they were before the disease ; wherefore it is vain to think that anyone can do repentance or receive any faith in diseases.” (p. 142; op. cit. page 174) 

e.       The correspondence between sin and disease is different in the natural and spiritual world, and the laws that govern the spiritual world are different. Therefore, does the correspondence between male and female in the natural world have to be the same as it may be in the spiritual world? No.

                                                               i.      “While it is true that all disease arises from evil and falsity, and thus from sin; and while it is also true that man may bring disease upon himself through illicit lusts and pleasures of the body, through intemperance and many other things; it is by no means true that each man is responsible for bringing upon himself every disease he contracts. In the spiritual world, which is governed by different laws than is the natural world, man contracts those diseases which agree with his loves, for there [in the spiritual world] external things agree and make one with internal things.” (Frederick Schnarr, New Church Life, 1959 from SwedenborgStudy.com)

There is, of course, some truth to this view (e.g. you are more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke), but by and large charitable Swedenborgians are more likely to pray for a neighbor who has cancer, than to contend that it must be due to their own sins, shun their likely evil, and reject their full participation in the community.

We can understand that physical diseases may have a correspondence to spiritual diseases without requiring that this correspondence apply to specific individual cases. 

To summarize this argument: We do not reject the unmarried person from full membership in the community, despite the importance of the concept of conjugial love. We do not reject the cancer patient from full membership in the community, despite the correspondence of physical diseases to spiritual diseases. Neither should we reject LGBT individuals from full membership in the community.

 

Mike Kruger

Glenview, Illinois

February 2022 (updated May, 2022)

This article can also be found at

Truncated thoughts: LGBTQIA+ and Swedenborg: It doesn’t have to be this way

It is worth noting that although I have been a Swedenborgian for decades, I did not go through the New Church educational system or attend its theology school. I have no doubt that there are those who did absorb decades of New Church education would be able to provide point-by-point apologia in opposition to this one. Whether I would find them convincing is an empirical question.

Monday, April 04, 2022

A Modest Proposal: Term Limits for the Supreme Court

 In announcing her support for Jackson, Senator Murkowski (R-AK), said she was backing the nominee in part to reject “the corrosive politicization of the review process for Supreme Court nominees, which, on both sides of the aisle, is growing worse and more detached from reality by the year.”


Murkowski is completely right here. Did it start with Carswell? Bork? Thomas? Garland? Regardless of when this bipartisan shitshow started, it does get worse and worse.

How to back off? Well, part of the problem is that the stakes are seen as so high. Judges can be on the Supreme Court for decades. So maybe that should change. Article III of the Constitution says judges "both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office." So, you are appointed as a federal judge so long as you want to stay -- a federal judge, not necessarily a Supreme Court judge. We could limit terms on the Supreme Court to maybe 8 or 10 years, after which the judge would rotate to another court (Appeals, for example).  

I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it would seem that Congress could legislate this. It wouldn't require a Constitutional amendment. And, it would be less politically controversial than changing the number of justices on SCOTUS (which Congress has done before, so it clearly has the power to do).

This would lower the perceived political stakes substantially, and perhaps provide a way to cool off the type of corrosive confirmation hearings we've seen in recent years.

Sunday, March 20, 2022

We Don't See America As It Is

 A possible contributor to not seeing the world as it is, is our tendency to (1) see minorities as larger than they are.


"This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).

"It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%)."

and (2) When we look at large groups, the proportion tends to be UNDERestimated.

"we find that people underestimate the proportion of American adults who are Christian (estimate: 58%, true: 70%) and the proportion who have at least a high school degree (estimate: 65%, true: 89%)."


Of course, since the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky 50 years ago, it's been clear that people don't handle probabilities very well at all. Kahneman even won the Nobel Prize for this work (Tversky having already died).

Part of this is contamination: a bunch of extremely bad estimates are being averaged in. But if we look at the median estimates (rather than the mean) we still see a distortion. For example:

Actual % transgender: 0.6%
Mean survey estimate: 21%
Median survey estimate: 12%

Actual % with HH income over $1 million: (less than 0.5%)
Mean survey estimate: 20%
Median survey estimate: 10%

Actual % are Muslim: 1%
Mean survey estimate: 27%
Median survey estimate: 20%

Actual % are Black: 12%
Mean survey estimate: 41`%
Median survey estimate: 40%

Some of this might be a failure to consider the definition. For example, are people parsing "transgender" to include the entire spectrum of LGBTQ+? Are people confusing an INCOME of $1,000,000 a year with a NET WORTH of $1,000,000? But it's harder to make this case for a category like "Muslim" or "Black".

Friday, February 25, 2022

LGBTQIA+ and Swedenborg: It doesn’t have to be this way

 

I have updated this essay slightly to add supporting evidence. The updated version is here: Truncated thoughts: LGBTQIA+ and Swedenborg: It doesn’t have to be this way


The purpose of this essay is to show that it is possible for Swedenborgians to be more inclusive of LGBTQIA+ (henceforward LGBT) people than in this February, 2022 statement by Bishop Peter Buss, Jr, the chief bishop of the New Church branch of Swedenborgianism:

Even with an emphasis on love and understanding, the Church cannot embrace same-sex marriage – on earth or in heaven. It cannot support a concept of gender fluidity. It cannot embrace variety of sexual expression implied in a bisexual identity. It should be a place where people can hear directly from the Word about the Lord’s vision of marriage and receive encouragement to reach for their experience of it.

Organizationally, the Church has a responsibility to make policies about what the priesthood can and cannot do around these matters, and what is expected of employees who have signed on to represent the beliefs of the New Church in their professional and private conduct. We must strive to align ourselves organizationally with what the Word teaches, and where we find ourselves out of alignment to work diligently to change. (page 23)

Buss, Peter M. Jr.  From the Bishop’s Office. Standing for Marriage in Today’s World, A Church Perspective. New Church Life, Vol. MMXXII #1, January/February 2022, 15-24.  NCL_JanFeb_2022-web.pdf (newchurch.org)

A Few Preliminaries

I want to outline a few of the ways that an argument can be made. 

First, there is deduction, where after stating some premises, the conclusion necessarily follows. For example:

                All men are mortal.

                Socrates is a man.

                Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The validity of a deductive argument depends on the validity of the premises, if there is no fallacious construction such as assuming the consequent.

Second, there is induction, in which we generalize from the observed facts. For example, if thousands of swans have been observed and every swan observed has been white, then we might conclude that all swans are white. Arguments by induction can be refuted by further evidence, e.g. finding a black swan, or by showing that other conclusions are also consistent with the evidence.

Third, there are apologia, a formal defense of a position or belief. In apologia, we start with the conclusion we want, and work backward to explain or justify it.

There is an easy slide into apologia. For example, in the investigation of a crime, evidence may be gathered objectively, leading to an inductive inference that a particular person is likely to be responsible. But, once we get into court, the prosecution starts with a belief in guilt, the defense starts with a belief in innocence, and both sides present evidence to justify their positions.

Apologia are particularly common in religious writings. The Wikipedia article on Christian apologetics cites writers such as Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Anselm of Canterbury, Blaise Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, G. E. M. Anscombe, and John Henry Newman (author of Apologia Pro Vita Sua).

Of course, much as the prosecution and defense at a trial see things differently, different apologists will defend different positions. This is captured in the popular idiom from Shakespeare that the devil can cite scripture for his purpose.

With these preliminaries laid out, I present the following apologia defending an inclusive position for LGBT individuals.

Apologia

We’ll start with the position that LGBT should be accepted on an equal basis in a church or religious community.

First, this should be the default – we should assume in Christian charity that others should be accepted. The basis of this starting point is Matthew 22:39, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Second, we can dispose of the Old Testament arguments by noting that there are many things prohibited in the Torah that are permitted to Christians (dietary restrictions, and carrying debts beyond Jubilee years for example) and also things that were allowed in the Torah that we would not accept today (slavery, and polygamy, for example).  There is a lot of “pick and choose” in Christians’ attitude toward the laws of the Torah.

There is, of course, the story of Sodom. There is a much more extensive discussion of what Swedenborg says about homosexuality in general and Sodom in particular by Lee and Annette Woofenden here: What does Emanuel Swedenborg Say about Homosexuality? | Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life (leewoof.org)  Among many other particulars, it notes the parallelism between the story of Sodom (homosexual gang rape instead of hospitality toward travelers) and Judges 19 (heterosexual gang rape instead of hospitality toward travelers), both involving severe punishments (the destruction of Sodom, and the near genocide of the tribe of Benjamin).  When we consider these stories together, it is the gang rape aspect that sticks out, rather than the specific form of gang rape.

Third, we can dispose of the New Testament arguments (e.g. a passage in a Pauline epistle) by noting that Swedenborg himself rejected all the New Testament epistles from his biblical canon.

Conjugial Love

But we cannot so easily dismiss conjugial love. An important belief among Swedenborgians is in conjugial love – the importance of marriage on earth, marriage in heaven, and the symbolism of the church betrothing herself to her Lord as His bride and wife (Swedenborg’s Conjugial Love 293:6)

(1)    But while a Christian marriage on earth (and, for Swedenborgians, later in heaven) is an ideal state, it is not a required state. There is no requirement that Swedenborgians marry. Swedenborg himself never married. So, while the symbolism and correspondence is there, it need not be born out in every single individual in a church community by heterosexual marriage.

(2)    We might further note that dispensations of charity have been given in this regard. Swedenborg states that remarriage after divorce should not occur except in cases of adultery, but even among the male New Church clergy there are several examples of second marriages and it seems unlikely that all of these involve female adultery, although it is clear that the specifics of these cases are none of my business.

(3)    We do not require that all correspondences be taken literally, particularly in individual cases. Diseases, for example, are, in Swedenborg’s view, connected to sin.

a.       “Diseases correspond to the cupidities and passions of the disposition; these, too, are their origin; for, in general the origins of diseases are intemperances, luxury of various kinds, merely corporeal pleasures; and also envies, hatreds, revenges, lasciviousness and the like, which destroy the interiors of man … and draw the man into disease, and thus into death.” (5712; from Potts Concordance, volume 2, page 173)

b.       “Hence it is that evil closes the smallest and quite invisible vessels, of which the next greater ones, which are also invisible, are composed; for the smallest and quite invisible vessels are continued from man's interiors: hence the first and inmost obstruction, and hence the first and inmost vitiation in the blood : this vitiation, when it increases, causes disease, and at last death. But if man had lived the life of good, his interiors would be open into Heaven, and through Heaven to the Lord, thus also the smallest and invisible little vessels-vascula . . . Hence man would be without disease, and would only decrease to the last of old age” (5726; op. cit. page 173)

c.       “The reason no one is reformed in a state of disease of the body, is that reason is not then in a free state; for the state of the mind depends on the state of the body. When the body is sick, the mind also is sick; if not otherwise, still by removal from the world . . . When, therefore, man is in a state of disease ... he is not in the world ... in which state alone no one can be reformed ; but he can be confirmed, if he was reformed before he fell into disease. . . Wherefore, if they are not reformed before the disease, after it, if they die, they become such as they were before the disease ; wherefore it is vain to think that anyone can do repentance or receive any faith in diseases.” (p. 142; op. cit. page 174)

There is, of course, some truth to this view (e.g. you are more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke), but by and large charitable Swedenborgians are more likely to pray for a neighbor who has cancer, than to contend that it must be due to their own sins and reject their full participation in the community.

We can understand that physical diseases may have a correspondence to spiritual diseases without requiring that this correspondence apply to specific individual cases. 

To summarize this argument: We do not reject the unmarried person from full membership in the community, despite the importance of the concept of conjugial love. We do not reject the cancer patient from full membership in the community, despite the correspondence of physical diseases to spiritual diseases. Neither should we reject LGBT individuals from full membership in the community.

 

Mike Kruger

Glenview, Illinois

February 2022

It is worth noting that although I have been a Swedenborgian for decades, I did not go through the New Church educational system or attend its theology school. I have no doubt that there are those who did absorb decades of New Church education would be able to provide point-by-point apologia in opposition to this one. Whether I would find them convincing is an empirical question.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Do higher taxes on the rich raise rents for the poor? No.

 I was intrigued by this meme which is circulating on social media:


This seemed pretty doubtful, but worth a look.

First, of course, we need to have operational definitions of the concepts, and operational definitions that will allow us to get data.

To measure "tax the rich" I'm using the highest marginal federal tax rate for the year. That has a pretty wide variation over time, so any pattern should be apparent.

To measure "rent on the poor" we'd need to determine what "poor" is, which is hard enough, but also get a measure of rent paid by poor people. So, instead, I'm using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Rent of Primary Residence in U.S., City Average.   Because inflation makes this price index go up over time, we are comparing it to the CPI for Food at Home, so we're actually measuring the cost of rent relative to the cost of food. My argument here is that the cost of food will not be much affected by the relative tax rate. 

Using data pulled from FRED (the wonderful data store maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) I have annual data from 1953 through 2018. 

As you can see in this scatterplot, there's no pattern. There's a lot of variability in the marginal tax rate over these years, and a lot of variability in the cost of rent relative to the cost of food, but they aren't related to each other (R-square = .036)


So, I think we can put this meme to rest. I am not surprised.

Now, clearly, some taxes will increase rents. Property taxes (which, as the name suggests, and taxes on property, not people) will raise rents when they are increased, because they raise the cost structure of the rental unit. But that's a different issue than taxing the rich.

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Luke Kruger-Howard's Book Takes on the Forces of Capitalism [or, who says there's no such thing as free comics?]

 

Luke Kruger-Howard has a new book. 110 pages.

Free, although donation encouraged. This is an experiment.

Luke Kruger-Howard (He/Him) is an Ignatz nominated cartoonist living in New Hampshire where he takes care of a toddler full-time. A graduate and former teacher at The Center for Cartoon Studies, Luke's work has popped up in numerous places - stuff like The New Yorker, The Nib, Slate, Best American Comics, the AV Club, Buzzfeed, Google and the like. Some of his comics include Talk Dirty To Me (AdHouse Books), Our Mother (Retrofit/Big Planet Comics), Trevor (self-published and Ignatz nominated), The Big Mystery Case (Self published), and a handful more. He has been spending a lot of time recently dreaming about ways artists might be able to better separate their art practices from capitalism. GOES BOOKS is an experiment in that vein.
For more info about this project AND TO GET YOUR COPY: Home (google.com)

For more information about other works by Luke: And So Then




Saturday, April 03, 2021

We Shift from Religious Polarization to Big Tech Polarization

Fewer than half of U.S. adults belong to a religious congregation, a new Gallup study shows. This is down from 70% in 1999.  That figure fluctuated only a few percentage points over a period of 6 decades beginning in 1937 (the first time this question was surveyed) when 73% of U.S. adults said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque.

Under Half Of U.S. Adults Belong To A Religious Congregation, Survey Says : NPR 

Another Pew study (Feb 2019) showed 69% of US adults use Facebook (74% visit at least once per day), 73% use YouTube. 10 facts about Americans and Facebook | Pew Research Center


One way to look at this is that we've shifted a locu s of polarization. Religious membership has long been a source of polarization and intolerance. Remember those lyrics from the insightful Tom Lehrer in National Brotherhood Week:

"Oh the protestants hate the catholics
And the catholics hate the protestants
And the hindus hate the muslims
And everybody hates the jews ..."

But we've replaced it with the individualized narrowcasting of social media where we get our information curated for us, and find it easy to demonize those on the other side and become righteously convinced that we are correct.

This polarization is different. Religious (and patriotic) convictions that you are right and they are evil resides in a shared orthodoxy -- and many of the adherents are sincere in their beliefs. Big Tech has no orthodoxy beyond the dollar.

Religious orthodoxy, particularly when combined with the power of the state, has brought us a variety of evils, despite the "moral compass" of religion (or because?): Roman martyrs, the Crusades, endless religious wars, the partition of India (etc. etc.).

Will we do better as that "moral compass" of organized religion declines in importance, particularly as Big Tech provides its own form of customized-for-use newsfeed orthodoxy? An empirical question.

Sunday, November 01, 2020

Support page for FANS of Fr. Hugo's Family Food Challenge - tour of Haiti

This is the support page for FANS who are following the food challenge, but not directly participating by logging their exercise miles.  The PARTICIPANT page is here: https://www.truncatedthoughts.com/2020/11/support-page-for-participants-in-fr.html 

FAQ

Q. What's this all about again?

A. Fr. Hugo, C.P.’s Family Food Challenge fulfills the most basic of food needs to single-parent families in Haiti to build their strength for job seeking, education for their children, and all the most basic needs of survival. And those needs include genuine hope to counter the harsh challenges of Haitian life. We help by becoming more aware of our own personal wellness while providing literal nutrition to the most needy people in our hemisphere. To participate, you will walk, run, or perform some other physical activity that contributes to your team’s “virtual” tour Haiti. The tour has plenty to teach and entertain. Watching your progress on the tour is 100% fun. All members receive email postcards as milestones are reached. You can also sign up as a fan, receiving the same postcards, and donate in support. With our help, Fr. Hugo can deliver literal sustenance to Haitian people who a short time ago saw no way out of shattered dreams and brutal barriers to security, health, housing, employment, and education.

Fr. Hugo, a Passionist priest, is a "friend of a friend" of those organizing this fundraiser, who attended a Passionist seminary for several years, but did not become priests.

Fr. Rick Frechette, C.P., D.O. is a priest and physician who founded St. Damien's Hospital in Haiti. You'll find out about him, too.

Q. How do you become a fan?

1. Make a donation to this effort.
Go to https://passionist.org/make-a-donation/  
In the dropdown box, should choose Haiti – Fr Hugo’s Food Ministry as a choice. 

2. Email mike.kruger@outlook.com, with "Haiti" as the subject. This will make sure you are updated with the milestone "postcards".

Q. What does a fan get?

A.  As teams pass various milestones along their tour of Haiti, email postcards are generated with information about the area they are doing through, and about the work that's being done there.

For participants, these are automatically generated as their team passes the milestone. For fans, we will send this same material out every few days -- so the email may include several postcards.

Q. Can I join as a participant later?

A. Yes. See instructions found here.

Q. Can I donate more than once?

A. Of course!
Go to https://passionist.org/make-a-donation/   again.
In the dropdown box, should choose Haiti – Fr Hugo’s Food Ministry as a choice. 






Support page for PARTICIPANTS in Fr. Hugo's Family Food Challenge - tour of Haiti

 

This page has information for PARTICIPANTS (i.e. people who have enrolled in the My Virtual Mission and are entering their exercise).  The information for FANS (who are just watching) is https://www.truncatedthoughts.com/2020/11/support-page-for-fans-of-fr-hugos.html

How to get started

All the information you will probably need is in this document: 

This has sections on:

1.      Information about your mission

2.      How to join the mission

3.      How to participate in the mission

4.      How to make a donation

5.      How to invite others

6.      Information about the map

7.      Information about the leaderboard

8.      How to access help and support

9.      Activity conversion chart (also below)

What's on this page:

Help! How to get (more) Help!
Activity Conversion Chart: How many miles is gardening worth?
Link to Fr. Rick Frechette's videos
FAQ

Help! How to get Help!

If all else fails, contact Mike.Kruger@outlook.com with your questions. 
Please try to ask questions he knows the answer to. 

Activity Conversion Chart

"What if I did something other than walk, run or cycle"?
Use this activity conversion chart!

Example: If you worked in the garden for an hour, give yourself credit for 2.40 miles.
Activity miles in 1 hour
Aerobics, low intensity 3.84 
Aerobics, high intensity 5.46 
Aerobics, step 4.62 
Badminton 3.96 
Ballet dancing 3.60 
Baseball 3.90 
Basketball 3.90 
Bowling 2.16 
Boxing 6.66 
Calisthenics 3.18 
Canoeing 2.76 
Cheerleading 3.00 
Circuit training (squats, lunges, pushups, burpees, situps, etc.) 6.00 
Climbing, indoor/outdoor 8.10 
Croquet 2.28 
CrossFit 7.50 
Dancing 3.30 
Elliptical trainer 6.12 
Fencing 5.46 
Fishing 2.76 
Football/soccer 6.00 
Gardening or yard work 2.40 
Golf (carrying clubs) 3.30 
Grocery shopping 2.04 
Gymnastics 3.66 
Handball 10.44 
HIIT 7.50 
Hiking / orienteering 6.96 
Hockey, Field and Ice 7.20 
Horseback riding 2.70 
Housework 2.16 
Ice skating 2.52 
In-line skating/Rollerblading 5.70 
Jumping to conclusions 0.01 
Jumping rope (skipping), fast 9.00 
Jumping rope (skipping), moderate 7.50 
Kayaking 4.56 
Kickboxing / MMA 8.70 
Lacrosse 7.26 
Martial Arts 7.08 
Mowing lawn 3.60 
Pickleball 4.20 
Pilates 2.76 
Punching bag 5.40 
Raking lawn/leaves 3.66 
Racquetball 5.46 
Refrigerator door opening 0.001 
Rowing 4.44 
Rowing machine 6.36 
Rugby 9.12 
Sailing, boat and board 2.76 
Shoveling snow 4.38 
Skateboarding 3.06 
Skiing, light/moderate 3.30 
Skiing, cross-country 3.42 
Sledding 4.74 
Snowboarding/snowshoeing 5.46 
Snowmobiling 3.18 
Softball 4.56 
Spinning 6.00 
Squash 10.44 
Stair climbing, machine 6.00 
Stair climbing down stairs 2.16 
Stair climbing up stairs 5.46 
Steps: about 2000 in 1 mile
Surfing 2.76 
Swimming, Butterfly 8.16 
Swimming, freestyle/breaststroke 5.46 
Swimming, treading/leisure 3.48 
Table tennis 3.60 
Tae Bo 7.50 
Tai Chi 1.20 
Tennis 6.00 
Trampoline 2.70 
Volleyball 2.76 
Washing a car 2.16 
Water aerobics 3.48 
Water polo 9.12 
Water skiing 4.38 
Weight lifting, light 2.04 
Weight lifting, heavy 5.22 
Wrestling 4.38 
Yoga 1.38 

Links to Fr. Rick Frechette's Videos

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rick+frechette 

FAQ

Q. Why do I sometimes get more than one milestone postcard emails in a day, and other days get none?

A. It depends on when your team reaches the place on the route where the postcard email is generated. This depends on how fast your team makes progress.  In addition, the milestones are closer together in Port-au-Prince than they are out in the countryside.

Q. Can I forward the postcards to others?

A. Yes! Please do! In this way, we might get more people to contribute.

Q. My smart device seems to miss my exercises, or it doublecounts my exercises.

A. I've had this problem with Google Fit. Sometimes it will post entries a day late. If it misses an exercise, you can add it manually on your smartphone or laptop at myvirtualmission.com.  If there are duplicate entries and you want to get rid of one, there's an X in the upper right you can use to delete an entry (circled in red below).



Saturday, October 10, 2020

Questions for Dr. Laura Schlesinger

I didn't write this. The top part is by Michael Luscombe and the set of questions is from James M. Kauffman.

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In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.

The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations.
A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24.
The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord - Lev.1:9.
The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death.
Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your adoring fan.
James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia
(It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian)