Wednesday Bible Study: Trigger Warning

Judges 19 is a bizarre, sick and disgusting story. I guarantee you, it is not taught in Sunday school nor is it the subject of any sermons. And yes the trigger warning is real. This is the kind of thing that people who have experienced sexual assault or other violent trauma might want to be careful about. But it's in the Bible, which if you believe is the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God, then God must want us to read it. You'll have to figure out why. I do have a few comments along the way.

19 In those days Israel had no king.

Now a Levite who lived in a remote area in the hill country of Ephraim took a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. ² But she was unfaithful to him. She left him and went back to her parents’ home in Bethlehem, Judah. After she had been there four months, ³ her husband went to her to persuade her to return. He had with him his servant and two donkeys. She took him into her parents’ home, and when her father saw him, he gladly welcomed him. ⁴ His father-in-law, the woman’s father, prevailed on him to stay; so he remained with him three days, eating and drinking, and sleeping there.

You will note the persistent confusion as to whether this woman is the Levite's concubine, or his wife. Her status seems to slip back and forth. In any case, nobody in this story has a name.

⁵ On the fourth day they got up early and he prepared to leave, but the woman’s father said to his son-in-law, “Refresh yourself with something to eat; then you can go.” ⁶ So the two of them sat down to eat and drink together. Afterward the woman’s father said, “Please stay tonight and enjoy yourself.” ⁷ And when the man got up to go, his father-in-law persuaded him, so he stayed there that night. ⁸ On the morning of the fifth day, when he rose to go, the woman’s father said, “Refresh yourself. Wait till afternoon!” So the two of them ate together.

⁹ Then when the man, with his concubine and his servant, got up to leave, his father-in-law, the woman’s father, said, “Now look, it’s almost evening. Spend the night here; the day is nearly over. Stay and enjoy yourself. Early tomorrow morning you can get up and be on your way home.” ¹⁰ But, unwilling to stay another night, the man left and went toward Jebus (that is, Jerusalem), with his two saddled donkeys and his concubine.

Why this long and tedious story about how long they stayed with the woman's father? It has no evident point.

¹¹ When they were near Jebus and the day was almost gone, the servant said to his master, “Come, let’s stop at this city of the Jebusites and spend the night.”

¹² His master replied, “No. We won’t go into any city whose people are not Israelites. We will go on to Gibeah.” ¹³ He added, “Come, let’s try to reach Gibeah or Ramah and spend the night in one of those places.” ¹⁴ So they went on, and the sun set as they neared Gibeah in Benjamin. ¹⁵ There they stopped to spend the night. They went and sat in the city square, but no one took them in for the night.

¹⁶ That evening an old man from the hill country of Ephraim, who was living in Gibeah (the inhabitants of the place were Benjamites), came in from his work in the fields. ¹⁷ When he looked and saw the traveler in the city square, the old man asked, “Where are you going? Where did you come from?”

¹⁸ He answered, “We are on our way from Bethlehem in Judah to a remote area in the hill country of Ephraim where I live. I have been to Bethlehem in Judah and now I am going to the house of the Lord.^[a] No one has taken me in for the night. ¹⁹ We have both straw and fodder for our donkeys and bread and wine for ourselves your servants—me, the woman and the young man with us. We don’t need anything.”

²⁰ “You are welcome at my house,” the old man said. “Let me supply whatever you need. Only don’t spend the night in the square.” ²¹ So he took him into his house and fed his donkeys. After they had washed their feet, they had something to eat and drink.

²² While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”

²³ The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. ²⁴ Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”

This is a retelling of the story of Lot in Sodom in Genesis 19. When the men of the city surround the house and demand to rape your male guest, the Biblically correct thing to do is to offer them young women instead.

²⁵ But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. ²⁶ At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.

²⁷ When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. ²⁸ He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.

The implication seems to be that she is dead but it isn't explicit.

²⁹ When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. ³⁰ Everyone who saw it was saying to one another, “Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Just imagine! We must do something! So speak up!”

I trust he sent a note of explanation along with the rotting body parts.

Footnotes

1. Judges 19:18 Hebrew, Vulgate, Syriac and Targum; Septuagint going home

Climate: The wolf is at the door

As I have noted a couple of times recently, a problem when scientists address the general public is their habitual reticence about making unequivocal statements. This has probably cost humanity and our fellow creatures unimaginably because previous reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been couched in equivocal terms: "substantial degree of certainty," "90% probability," that sort of thing. This has allowed wiggle room for deniers and helped get us into our present predicament.

Well, weasel words no more. 

A heat wave that killed hundreds this summer in the US Northwest and British Columbia would have been "virtually impossible" without the climate crisis, researchers found. It made Hurricane Harvey's devastating rainfall roughly three times more likely to occur and 15% more intense, scientists said. Harvey dumped more than 19 trillion gallons of water on Texas and Louisiana in 2017, triggering devastating floods in the Houston area. The IPCC says heavy rainfall that used to occur once every 10 years now occurs 30% more frequently.

 

Globally, droughts that may have occurred only once every 10 years or so now happen 70% more frequently, according to the report. The climate change connection is particularly strong in the Western United States, which is experiencing a historic, multiyear drought that has drained reservoirs and triggered water shortages.Amid unrelenting drought and record heat, wildfire seasons are now longer and result in more destructive fires. Six of the top 10 largest fires in California have occurred in 2020 or 2021, according to CalFire.

 

We have no time left. Zero.  Concerted action to eliminate fossil fuel use has to begin now. And there is substantial action in president Biden's infrastructure bill, which must pass. But that's not nearly enough. So let me take this occasion to bitterly and angrily condemn the Republican party, the only major party on the planet that denies the reality of anthropogenic climate change. They do this because people who profit from the fossil fuel industry, including the major oil companies and the Koch brothers, pay them to do it. 

That is the profoundest imaginable evil.

 

Sunday Sermonette: Holy crap

Judges 18 essentially presents a wholesale repudiation of the law given in the Torah. It also presents moral depravity, of which God approves, but that's nothing new. Israelites are fully entitled to commit genocide and steal the land of anyone they encounter. 

A technical point: the "household Gods" (Hebrew Teraphim) were encountered previously in Genesis 31, when Rachel stole her father's household Gods. Micah has also made a molten image and a graven idol, both of which are apparently just fine with Yahweh. 

18 In those days Israel had no king.

And in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking a place of their own where they might settle, because they had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. ² So the Danites sent five of their leading men from Zorah and Eshtaol to spy out the land and explore it. These men represented all the Danites. They told them, “Go, explore the land.”

So they entered the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah, where they spent the night. ³ When they were near Micah’s house, they recognized the voice of the young Levite; so they turned in there and asked him, “Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? Why are you here?”

⁴ He told them what Micah had done for him, and said, “He has hired me and I am his priest.”

⁵ Then they said to him, “Please inquire of God to learn whether our journey will be successful.”

⁶ The priest answered them, “Go in peace. Your journey has the Lord’s approval.”

⁷ So the five men left and came to Laish, where they saw that the people were living in safety, like the Sidonians, at peace and secure. And since their land lacked nothing, they were prosperous.^[a] Also, they lived a long way from the Sidonians and had no relationship with anyone else.^[b]

⁸ When they returned to Zorah and Eshtaol, their fellow Danites asked them, “How did you find things?”

⁹ They answered, “Come on, let’s attack them! We have seen the land, and it is very good. Aren’t you going to do something? Don’t hesitate to go there and take it over. ¹⁰ When you get there, you will find an unsuspecting people and a spacious land that God has put into your hands, a land that lacks nothing whatever.”

¹¹ Then six hundred men of the Danites, armed for battle, set out from Zorah and Eshtaol. ¹² On their way they set up camp near Kiriath Jearim in Judah. This is why the place west of Kiriath Jearim is called Mahaneh Dan^[c] to this day. ¹³ From there they went on to the hill country of Ephraim and came to Micah’s house.

¹⁴ Then the five men who had spied out the land of Laish said to their fellow Danites, “Do you know that one of these houses has an ephod, some household gods and an image overlaid with silver? Now you know what to do.” ¹⁵ So they turned in there and went to the house of the young Levite at Micah’s place and greeted him. ¹⁶ The six hundred Danites, armed for battle, stood at the entrance of the gate. ¹⁷ The five men who had spied out the land went inside and took the idol, the ephod and the household gods while the priest and the six hundred armed men stood at the entrance of the gate.

¹⁸ When the five men went into Micah’s house and took the idol, the ephod and the household gods, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?”

¹⁹ They answered him, “Be quiet! Don’t say a word. Come with us, and be our father and priest. Isn’t it better that you serve a tribe and clan in Israel as priest rather than just one man’s household?” ²⁰ The priest was very pleased. He took the ephod, the household gods and the idol and went along with the people. ²¹ Putting their little children, their livestock and their possessions in front of them, they turned away and left.

²² When they had gone some distance from Micah’s house, the men who lived near Micah were called together and overtook the Danites. ²³ As they shouted after them, the Danites turned and said to Micah, “What’s the matter with you that you called out your men to fight?”

²⁴ He replied, “You took the gods I made, and my priest, and went away. What else do I have? How can you ask, ‘What’s the matter with you?’”

²⁵ The Danites answered, “Don’t argue with us, or some of the men may get angry and attack you, and you and your family will lose your lives.” ²⁶ So the Danites went their way, and Micah, seeing that they were too strong for him, turned around and went back home.

²⁷ Then they took what Micah had made, and his priest, and went on to Laish, against a people at peace and secure. They attacked them with the sword and burned down their city. ²⁸ There was no one to rescue them because they lived a long way from Sidon and had no relationship with anyone else. The city was in a valley near Beth Rehob.

The Danites rebuilt the city and settled there. ²⁹ They named it Dan after their ancestor Dan, who was born to Israel—though the city used to be called Laish. ³⁰ There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses,^[d] and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land. ³¹ They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh.

Footnotes

1. Judges 18:7 The meaning of the Hebrew for this clause is uncertain.
2. Judges 18:7 Hebrew; some Septuagint manuscripts with the Arameans
3. Judges 18:12 Mahaneh Dan means Dan’s camp.
4. Judges 18:30 Many Hebrew manuscripts, some Septuagint manuscripts and Vulgate; many other Hebrew manuscripts and some other Septuagint manuscripts Manasseh

Immunization

 I don't publish totally off topic comments, and as a rule I don't take requests, but this is important.

It is true that if you are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, your risk of ending up in the hospital is very low, and far lower than if you are not vaccinated. However, it is possible for you to harbor virus in your upper respiratory tract and be infectious to others, although you are much less likely to infect others than an unvaccinated person; and it is also possible that you will get sick enough to be pretty miserable. 

 

Actually I did. I was fully vaccinated in March but 3 weeks ago I suddenly developed the most horrific, wracking bone dry cough I've ever experienced. My eyeballs hurt, my scalp felt like it was coming off, I could barely get off the couch to take a leak, and I didn't eat anything for 36 hours. That's about how long the specific symptoms lasted, but it took me a couple of weeks to get my full wind and stamina back.

So no, if you're vaccinated the pandemic is not over. You still need to take precautions to avoid transmitting the infection and reduce your own risk of having an unpleasant experience. That's why many authorities are recommending returning to universal masking in public indoor settings. I wish I had done it. 

Everybody getting vaccinated is definitely the way out of this, because if that happens we will have R<0 which means the epidemic will be extinguished. But we aren't there yet.  So get vaccinated but don't think that makes you bulletproof. It's not quite that simple.

Distinctions

This is the latest in my occasional series on critical thinking. In order to have a coherent and meaningful dialogue, and also just to think inside your own head, it is necessary to sort entities into categories. That is to say, we have to agree on the meaning of words. That is not always straightforward. I haven't taken a systematic inventory but it may be that it's seldom straightforward. 

 

Indeed, it can be quite arbitrary. The Supreme Court says you can't execute a person with a measured IQ of 70 or less. Presumably you can execute a person with an IQ of 71, but scores on IQ tests can vary by several points from one test to another. Psychologists generally consider this degree of variation not to be clinically significant but it obviously is significant when somebody, for some purpose, is sorting people into hard categories in which 70 is qualitatively different from 71.

 

The conclusion is that categories often have fuzzy boundaries. We may have no doubt that something is properly inside the category, but there may be other entities that we aren't so sure about. Nevertheless, we must do the best we can to come up with meaningful and reliable definitions, and acknowledge when we're on a fuzzy boundary.

 

So here's a definition of public health from the CDC Foundation:

 

Public health is the science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities. This work is achieved by promoting healthy lifestyles, researching disease and injury prevention, and detecting, preventing and responding to infectious diseases. Overall, public health is concerned with protecting the health of entire populations. These populations can be as small as a local neighborhood, or as big as an entire country or region of the world.

Public health is often distinguished from clinical medicine, which is concerned with the health of specific individuals. However, access to clinical medicine, and effective practice of clinical medicine, are one factor that protects the health of populations, so it is properly a subset of public health. 

 

Note that disease and injury prevention are very largely functions of public policy. While clinical medicine does matter for health, it contributes only a  minority fraction to the health of populations. Clean air and water, good nutrition, physical safety -- including avoiding intentional as well as unintentional injury -- social support, access to open space, all sorts of so-called "social determinants of health" are more important. So homicide is just as much a concern of public health as is air pollution.

These determinants are very strongly affected by public policy, and that means all sorts of policies, not just those that are explicitly labeled as being about public health. We are concerned about everything from food deserts to mass transit to economic opportunity and inequality to automobile safety and gun safety when we study and advocate for the health of populations. 

But public policy is not synonymous with politics. Politics obviously affects public policy because it matters who gets elected and what policies voters support. However, elections are determined by a whole lot of silly factors that aren't related to public policy. In fact most voters have little understanding of policy or how government actions affect their lives. They are swayed by rhetoric and distracted by pseudo-scandals and ridiculous issues like flag lapel pins and proper or improper saluting, and a lot of voter behavior is based simply on tribal identification.

Yes, there are some fuzzy boundaries. I am interested here in policy, not so much in politics, but to the extent they can't be separated some politics will find its way in. But politics for its own sake -- horse race coverage, whether a particular politician is a nice person or somebody I'd like to have a beer with -- that's not so much of interest, nor is simple corruption or malfeasance in office except to the extent it affects public health. (E.g. fossil fuel interests bribing politicians is within scope here.) 

For the record, like the vast majority of Democrats, I would prefer that Andrew Cuomo resign rather than force the NY legislature to remove him, which they will do if necessary. Republicans, for some reason, don't feel the same way about their own politicians who sexually assault women. But there is no particular reason why that should be a main topic here. 

Department of give me a fucking break: The Environmental Protection Agency is generally considered by everybody with one neuron to rub against another to be a public health agency. It's mission is the protection of public health. As for violence, it is a public health problem, and to the extent that law enforcement is capable of reducing violence that is a public health function. Duhhh.

 

 

 

Following up on we're number last . . .

.

The U.S. not only has the lowest life expectancy among the wealthy countries, it also has lower life expectancy than many low and middle income countries. In fact life expectancy in Cuba is higher than life expectancy in the U.S. Here's a snapshot of part of the list. (I expect that given its recent catastrophic problems, Lebanon has slipped. The country with the longest life expectancy at birth is Japan. I didn't know either -- Mayotte is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, an overseas department of France.)

 

 

Cuba, despite being obviously a poor country and despite its governments many failings, has universal health care, operated by the government, which the WHO ranks 33d in the world. In any case the U.S. is obviously doing very poorly compared to some not so formidable competition. It's worth asking why this is.

We're number last

That's 11th out of 11 wealthy countries. It isn't exactly news -- the Commonwealth Fund does this study every year and the U.S. always wins the booby prize for the worst health care in the OECD. To wit:

• Key Findings: The top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes, but second on measures of care process.
• Conclusion: Four features distinguish top performing countries from the United States: 1) they provide for universal coverage and remove cost barriers; 2) they invest in primary care systems to ensure that high-value services are equitably available in all communities to all people; 3) they reduce administrative burdens that divert time, efforts, and spending from health improvement efforts; and 4) they invest in social services, especially for children and working-age adults.

And BTW, who cares about being second in measures of "care process." Process only matters if it leads to outcomes and in the case of the U.S., the outcomes are the worst. Oh, and by a lot:

Exhibit 2 shows the extent to which the U.S. is an outlier: its performance falls well below the average of the other countries and far below the two countries ranked directly above it, Switzerland and Canada. In fact, the U.S. is such an outlier that we have calculated the average performance based on the other 10 countries, excluding the U.S.

And we sure as hell aren't getting what we pay for:

 

Exhibit 3 shows that while spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) has increased in all countries, spending growth in the U.S. — by far the worst performer overall — has greatly exceeded growth in the other 10 nations. In 1980, high-income countries spent between 5 percent and 8 percent of GDP on health care. But as U.S. spending accelerated over the decades, the U.S. was spending a substantially larger share of its GDP on health care by 2019 than every other high-income country.

 

But what's the difference between the U.S., with its shitty health care that wastes vast sums of money, and all those other countries that get better results and pay a whole lot less? Socialism. Read it an weep.

 

 

Wednesday Bible Study: Torah Shmorah

I noted previously that the tabernacle and the altar as the center of religious and communal life have disappeared. You no longer have to go there with your sacrifices for the Kohanite priests to carry out. Now it's official: you can rent your own priest and have your own personal altar and sacrifices. (To be fully explicated in the following chapter, but the story starts here in Judges 17.) Not only that, but remember the whole thing about idols and graven images? E.g.:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath. Exodus 20:4, Deuteronomy 5:8

Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the simultude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth. Deuteronomy 4:16-18

Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget ... and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. Deuteronomy 4:23

Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman. Deuteronomy 27:15

Fuggedaboudit! Idols are just fine, encouraged in fact.  I would also say the back story about the guy stealing from his mother and giving it back is weirdly elided, but whatever. BTW, this story will get a whole lot weirder, so be prepared.

17 Now a man named Micah from the hill country of Ephraim ² said to his mother, “The eleven hundred shekels^[a] of silver that were taken from you and about which I heard you utter a curse—I have that silver with me; I took it.”

Then his mother said, “The Lord bless you, my son!”

³ When he returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, she said, “I solemnly consecrate my silver to the Lord for my son to make an image overlaid with silver. I will give it back to you.”

⁴ So after he returned the silver to his mother, she took two hundred shekels^[b] of silver and gave them to a silversmith, who used them to make the idol. And it was put in Micah’s house.

⁵ Now this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some household gods and installed one of his sons as his priest. ⁶ In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.

⁷ A young Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, who had been living within the clan of Judah, ⁸ left that town in search of some other place to stay. On his way^[c] he came to Micah’s house in the hill country of Ephraim.

⁹ Micah asked him, “Where are you from?”

“I’m a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah,” he said, “and I’m looking for a place to stay.”

¹⁰ Then Micah said to him, “Live with me and be my father and priest, and I’ll give you ten shekels^[d] of silver a year, your clothes and your food.” ¹¹ So the Levite agreed to live with him, and the young man became like one of his sons to him. ¹² Then Micah installed the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in his house. ¹³ And Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest.”

Footnotes

1. Judges 17:2 That is, about 28 pounds or about 13 kilograms
2. Judges 17:4 That is, about 5 pounds or about 2.3 kilograms
3. Judges 17:8 Or To carry on his profession
4. Judges 17:10 That is, about 4 ounces or about 115 grams

Actually, it wasn't Samson after all

The stupidest person who ever lived, that is. Hunter has a thorough discussion of the efforts of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to kill as many of his voters as possible. I would like to focus on the fundamental illogic of this conceptualization of "freedom." 

I have often said that libertarianism, like the concept of God, is both internally inconsistent and inconsistent with observable reality. The absurd conservative response to Covid-19 illustrates this perfectly. In the name of Freedom™, DeSantis:

• Forbids businesses -- from small family owned enterprises to giant publicly traded corporations -- from making policies of their own choice for the protection of their customers and employees. Note that he is perfectly happy to let them make all sorts of rules, for workplace safety, dress codes, customer comportment, you name it. They just can't require masks or vaccinations. 
• Prevents all citizens from safely shopping, going to work, going to entertainment venues, or any other public activity. 
  
• Makes it impossible for children to safely attend school, regardless of the wishes of parents, school boards, or principals.
  
• Fills up hospitals and makes it impossible for people to get elective procedures or even urgent treatment.

It is always the case that liberty is a trade off, a balancing problem. You are not at liberty to exceed the speed limit because if you do so, it impinges on my liberty to safely use the public roads. You are not at liberty to send your child to school without required vaccinations because it impinges on the liberty of other children to attend school safely, not to mention the liberty of your own children not to get measles or mumps. You are not at liberty to dump your toxic waste into the river because it impinges on other people's liberty to use the river for all sorts of other purposes. And so on. 

 

This is obvious. Conservative=Idiot.

Sunday Sermonette: The stupidest person who ever lived

Yep, that would be Samson. Whoever wrote this story wasn't thinking very deeply about the plot because it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I will also note that bizarrely, some people name their daughters Delilah. I suppose they like the sound of it but have they read the story? The story is actually somewhat iconic -- it's the subject of paintings and engravings -- but it's completely ridiculous. But that doesn't matter to Bible believing people.

6 One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. ² 

Note to Bible thumpers: the Bible has no problem whatsoever with prostitution, either for the sex worker or the customer. Remember that Rahab is a heroine.  The Bible has no problem with abortion either. Just a little reminder.

The people of Gaza were told, “Samson is here!” So they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They made no move during the night, saying, “At dawn we’ll kill him.”

³ But Samson lay there only until the middle of the night. Then he got up and took hold of the doors of the city gate, together with the two posts, and tore them loose, bar and all. He lifted them to his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.

 

First of all, we have a major geographical problem here. Hebron is nowhere near Gaza. It's almost 100 miles away, in what is today called the West Bank, whereas Gaza is on  the Mediterranean coast. That said, why carrying the city gate to the top of the hill prevents the people from killing Samson is not explained.

 

 

⁴ Some time later, he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. ⁵ The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, “See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels^[a] of silver.”

⁶ So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.”

⁷ Samson answered her, “If anyone ties me with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, I’ll become as weak as any other man.”

⁸ Then the rulers of the Philistines brought her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she tied him with them. ⁹ With men hidden in the room, she called to him, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” But he snapped the bowstrings as easily as a piece of string snaps when it comes close to a flame. So the secret of his strength was not discovered.

¹⁰ Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have made a fool of me; you lied to me. Come now, tell me how you can be tied.”

¹¹ He said, “If anyone ties me securely with new ropes that have never been used, I’ll become as weak as any other man.”

¹² So Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them. Then, with men hidden in the room, she called to him, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” But he snapped the ropes off his arms as if they were threads.

¹³ Delilah then said to Samson, “All this time you have been making a fool of me and lying to me. Tell me how you can be tied.”

He replied, “If you weave the seven braids of my head into the fabric on the loom and tighten it with the pin, I’ll become as weak as any other man.” So while he was sleeping, Delilah took the seven braids of his head, wove them into the fabric ¹⁴ and^[b] tightened it with the pin.

Again she called to him, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” He awoke from his sleep and pulled up the pin and the loom, with the fabric.

¹⁵ Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.” ¹⁶ With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.

¹⁷ So he told her everything. “No razor has ever been used on my head,” he said, “because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”

Okay. Now Samson knows that every time he tells Delilah a story about the secret of his strength, she tells the Philistines, and they try it. Ergo, he knows that if he tells her the truth, they'll try it and he'll be royally screwed. He knows this.  But he tells her anyway. The guy is a fucking moron. (Actually I would have been inclined to end the relationship by now but that's just me.)

¹⁸ When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. ¹⁹ After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him.^[c] And his strength left him.

²⁰ Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”

He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

I.e. "the Lord"=his superhuman strength.

²¹ Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison. ²² But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

Yep, the Philistines are also abysmally fucking stupid.

²³ Now the rulers of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, saying, “Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands.”

²⁴ When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying,

“Our god has delivered our enemy
    into our hands,
the one who laid waste our land
    and multiplied our slain.”

²⁵ While they were in high spirits, they shouted, “Bring out Samson to entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them.

When they stood him among the pillars, ²⁶ Samson said to the servant who held his hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.” ²⁷ Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. ²⁸ Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” ²⁹ Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, ³⁰ Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.

Was the the first act of suicide terrorism?

³¹ Then his brothers and his father’s whole family went down to get him. They brought him back and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He had led^[d] Israel twenty years.

Footnotes

1. Judges 16:5 That is, about 28 pounds or about 13 kilograms
2. Judges 16:14 Some Septuagint manuscripts; Hebrew replied, “I can if you weave the seven braids of my head into the fabric on the loom.” ¹⁴ So she
3. Judges 16:19 Hebrew; some Septuagint manuscripts and he began to weaken
4. Judges 16:31 Traditionally judged

Soshulism: A Golden Oldie

Remember back in 2009 when the astroturf Tea Partiers were showing up at politicians' town halls to yell and scream about the impending government takeover of Medicare? Yeah, that happened. 

President Obama at a town hall meeting last week described a letter he received from a Medicare recipient:

“I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, ‘I don’t want government-run health care. I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare.’”

At a town hall meeting held by Rep. Robert Inglis (R-SC):

Someone reportedly told Inglis, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

“I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,’” Inglis told the Post. “But he wasn’t having any of it.”

“If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.”

 

If I need to explain what's wrong with this concept, you need a glass navel to see. Anyway, comes now Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a formerly non-crazy person, who tweeted the following:

Today’s Anniversary of Medicare & Medicaid reminds us to reflect on the critical role these programs have played to protect the healthcare of millions of families. To safeguard our future, we must reject Socialist healthcare schemes. https://t.co/mOdUuX7THT

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) July 30, 2021

 

Conservative=Idiot.

Economics 101

I am committing extensive wonkery while pointing out the limitations of the ways in which much science is done. But I want to emphasize, as I have before, that despite its problems the scientific enterprise does manage to muddle though over time to more and more accurate understanding of reality.  When a community of experts has a high degree of consensus about an issue, you need a really strong reason to doubt them -- and some random nutjob on the Internet is not an example. The Covid-19 vaccines do not alter your DNA, they do not cause you to produce or shed virus, they do not make you magnetic, they do not contain microchips that allow Bill Gates to track your whereabouts . . .  .  They do protect you against serious illness, long term disability and death, they make you less likely to be infectious, and any adverse effects are either brief and mild, or extremely rare. And you should believe all that despite the criticisms I make about how clinical trials are often done. These particular trials were all done in the open, transparently, they are very large scale and very rigorously conducted. So believe it. Get vaccinated.

However, science has sometimes gone down weird and even very dangerous blind alleys. Phrenology, for example, and scientific racism. Most unfortunately for our present world, another pseudo-science continues to enjoy enormous prestige and is unquestioningly accepted by journalists and policy makers. That is the pseudo-science of economics.

There are honorable exceptions among people who hold faculty positions in economics, but the majority of such people are quacks. Economics is taught to college freshmen as follows:

• Promulgate a list of assumptions. None of these is actually true, and in fact a vast body of empirical evidence decisively shows that they are false.
• Play out elaborate fantasies of how the world would work if they were true, using mathematics to describe non-existent relationships among entities that do not exist.
• Forget that the assumptions are false and go on to explore every more elaborate mathematical fantasies as you progress in your "education."

Economics professors are paid much higher salaries than professors in other departments. They often have endowed chairs and sit on high level government advisory councils, get appointed to powerful offices, and  are talking heads on TV. The reason for this, despite that they spout utter nonsense, is that their ideology is very comforting to wealthy people and justifies the kinds of policies that let them get richer and richer while screwing over everybody else. That's economics 101! (As George W. Bush loved to say.) 

 

I have systematically deconstructed this pseudo-science in the past, as more and more people who do hold the title of professor of economics are also doing nowadays. That's good news, but it hasn't made much of a dent yet in the cultural authority of this quackery. I interject this cautionary note because it seems to fit with what I am doing now, but I won't explore it in more depth unless by popular demand.

 

Shorter version: Or, as I remarked to a fellow student as we were waiting to take our qualifying exam in economics, "It's a vast edifice of bullshit erected on a foundation of sand." He agreed.

On the bias of science: more on methods

Actually I could probably spend the next six months writing a book about this, but this will be my last post on methods, at least for a while, because I want to move on to the remaining sections of the generic research paper. I'm going to focus specifically on research involving psychiatric diagnoses, but much of what I will say applies more broadly to any sort of question in which people's subjective experiences are variables. That's a whole lot of published research in psychology, social science, and medicine.

The culture of science strongly favors quantification, which means counting, and in order to count phenomena, you first need to classify them. So if I'm doing research that concerns, say, depression or anxiety disorder, I need to be able to label people as having those disorders and maybe measure their severity. A big problem in psychiatry -- it's dirty not so secret -- is that nobody knows what causes psychiatric disorders and even whether two people who get the same diagnostic label actually have the same "disease," if that's the word for it. 

 

Most medical diagnoses correspond to some specific physical findings that can be established, if not with absolute certainty, at least with a known degree of accuracy. We can culture the pathogenic infectious organism, count the leukocytes, see the abnormal cells under the microscope. Psychiatric diagnoses aren't like that. Diagnosticians have to interview people, and they make the diagnosis based on picking from a laundry list of symptoms derived from what the people tell them. Often this has a Chinese menu quality: if you have at least three from column A and two from column B, you get the label. That means, first of all, that two people who are diagnosed with depression may have exactly zero symptoms in common. In fact, they may have exactly opposite symptoms in some cases, such as excessive sleep and inability to sleep. It also means that people who are evaluated by two or more clinicians may get different diagnoses, and that a person's diagnosis may change over time.

 

For purposes of research, however, proposal and paper reviewers demand that research subjects get a definite classification. This is done by administering relatively short standard questionnaires. For depression, commonly used examples are called the Beck Depression Inventory, the Hamilton Depression Scale, and the CES-D. Some of these are copyrighted and you have to pay a fee to use them. This is called the PHQ-9:

 

In a research study, the score on this or whatever instrument is being used becomes the definition of depression and depression severity. As you can see, people who get the same high score may have absolutely nothing in common. Three of the items consist of completely opposite experiences, in fact. Poor appetite or overeating, trouble falling asleep or sleeping too much, and lethargy or hyperactivity. But everyone with the same score is treated as having the exact same baseline or outcome. There is no reason to believe this is associated with any actually existing, describable, explicable phenomenon. It's just tautological: I say this is what depression is, so that's what depression is. Ergo, treatments for depression are effective if they are associated with a statistically significant reduction in this score. QED. I will leave you to ponder this.