NY Times and Terror

OK, I thought I wouldn't have to weigh in on this, but...

Everyone is all over the NY Times for publishing information damaging to the efforts of our government to track finances of terrorist cells. But it isn't the Times at fault here.

The issue lies with the Bush administration source that leaked sensitive information to the Times. Once that data was in the files of the Times, I would rather they publish. Then at least we all know what the terrorists know.

Does anyone think the system security at the Times is anywhere near as tight as that at the DOT? Does anyone doubt that Al Queso has eyes and ears at the Times?

The fault is in loose cannon at the Dept of the Treasury. Prosecution and prison should start there.

Mountain of Evidence

There is another part of the whole DaVinci Code controversy that puzzles me. It is a new approach to documentary evidence. People examining the book often wonder how such theories can be taken so seriously. It is so far out of the main stream. Why is this story getting such play? Brown is sloppy, but he is a novelist, not an historian. There are other professional historians utilizing the same technique, however. On the premise that the victor writes the prevailing history, they weight alternate and contradictory evidence heavier in an attempt to ferret out the fuller truth. These alternate documents have previously been marginalized because they contradict the prevailing history.

The traditional approach to history is much like the prospector in Jack London’s short story “The All Gold Canyon.” The miner assays back and forth up a slope, panning out individual shovels of dirt, locating the pocket by the number of flakes of gold revealed in each pan. Moving up the slope he narrows the pattern and closes in on the pocket, which he then mines out. In historical studies we likewise collect sources, compare, evaluate, locate the center based on the weight of evidence, and marginalize conflicting documents to the periphery. We call the center “truth,” and we publish a book.

The new approach resembles more a tent. Competing views stake out their extreme positions, establishing a space between them where we can pitch a tent of truth. Think about the classic Arminian-Calvinist debate about free will versus predestination. Positions on each side are firm, but truth lies somewhere between, maybe everywhere between. In this model it is possible that no data is actually reported from within the tent. We locate the tent from the hard data at the staking points. This is a black hole model of history. Astrophysicists don’t have any data from black holes, but they infer their existence from surrounding peripheral phenomena.

It is like a high mountain covered in ice and shrouded in mist. We infer the character of the mountain based on reports from the foothill villages, but no one actually lives up there, or has ever returned from an expedition to go there. Like our tent, the mountain covers considerable territory. This method establishes a region of truth, not a point of truth. Let that sink in.

This method does not abolish truth. The tent has an inside and an outside. The mountain stands in the midst of plains and valleys that are not the mountain. But truth in this model is not pointillism; it is not reductionistic truth. It sets out space enough to have a civil conversation where all parties can lay claim to truth without denigrating the other conversants.

The traditional point-of-truth approach has always suffered from the illusion that once properly stated, truth was in fact established and static. The new region-of-truth model likewise suffers from some staking points that are in reality weaker than others, or set in thin air. The burden of the historian remains validation, evaluation and interpretation of the evidence available.

But Pliny said...

There is something bothering me about the DaVinci Code. The book claims two things. First, that Jesus was voted divine at Nicea, 300 years after his death. Prior to this no one, including Jesus, thought he was God. The second point is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child that founded a royal line of French kings. Here is my problem. If Jesus wasn’t God, then what made his kid so special? Why does anyone care about the offspring of a crazy itinerant preacher who was condemned a heretic?

I should have read the book instead of waiting for the movie. But it irked me to deal with Brown’s Nicene premise when history tells us the controversy dates back to the earliest decades of the church. Pliny, a ruler not sympathetic to the Christian movement, wrote the Roman Emperor Trajan in AD 110 how adherents of the “superstition” met before daybreak and recited “a hymn to Christ, as God.” One of these hymns is quoted in Paul’s Philippian letter and shows how very early on the church had a very high view of Jesus’ divine nature.

Even early heretics like the Docetists made divine claims for Christ. They believed the divinity of Christ was a settled point. Where they had difficulties was with his humanity, which they believed was a put on. Ignatius refuted these ideas about the same year.

I would mention biblical witnesses like Isaiah, the Four gospels, Paul’s letters, Jesus many claims, and the charges of blasphemy for his claims. But these sources are under suspicion for the very fact they made it into the Bible. What do we believe though, that the documents preserved by the early church were the ones they found to be true, or that the Church Fathers concocted them to squash the truth? I know conspiracies happen, but I also know they fall apart on closer examination.

So I guess I’m going to the movie, examining both, and keeping the one that stands up. Why do I think I already know which one that will be?

Los Illegales

Some people are blaming the migrants. If they would only use the proper channels to come to America then we wouldn't have an immigration problem. Ask anyone who's tried it. The system is broke. It can take years to get a legitimate work permit if you get it at all.Some people blame the farmers who hire the migrants. If they would only follow the labor laws and check people's documents. So, what, a guy named De La Cruz applies for a job and you call the FBI? That's harrassment. Chances are his family has been here longer than mine.Some blame the grocery chains that don't pay the farmers enough to hire legitimate labor to pick the food.Tell me something. Would you change grocery stores if you found out a head of lettuce was a nickel cheaper down the street? Sure. So would I. And as long as my nickel is more important than their justice, I'm the problem with immigration.

Life, Liberty, and Gratuitous Violence?

Let’s be clear about two things. Video games are not speech, and they are not free. Judge Steeh’s ruling strikes down Michigan law restricting sale of violent video games to minors. The US military is using video games to train our troops how to conduct urban battle; do we not see a disconnect when commercial video games aimed at 15-year-olds train on drifting, street racing and police evasion tactics?

The speech declared free by the Constitution is speech suppressed. It is the speech of the town hall meeting. It is the broadside sheet on the street corner. It is the blues lyric. It is the blog. It might face suppression by political authority, by socially correct authority, or by editorial authority. No one who has ever sent a conservative letter to the San Francisco Dailies believes the newspapers represent a “free press.” They are in business to sell a product to a market, just like the pornographers, the distillers, and the video game houses. If the shelves are full of your games and all kids have to do is have Mom buy it for them, guess what, it’s not suppressed. It’s controlled.

Here's a thought, if you really think your First Amendment rights to Free Speech are being impinged, reduce the price to zero and give your product away. That will get the word out. What? Not willing to go that far? Then you're not concerned about Free Speech, but about Commerce. That's another section of the law. Please don't wrap yourself in the Constitution, the seams are under enough strain as it is.

And if the game makers don’t think they can profit from games bought by parents for kids, what needs to change?

The New Democracy and HR4437

All this week protests against HR4437, a malformed immigration bill, sprouted across California with no visible means of support. Students emptied high school and junior high campuses to march in the streets. No one organized these protests in the traditional activist manner. They were spontaneous real time grass roots events driven by cell phones, instant messaging, and Internet blogs. Let the reader understand.

School administrators pleaded with students to remain on campus and set up stations in school libraries for writing letters to congressmen. Meanwhile the communication savvy students have bypassed these traditional channels and published mountains of data on the Internet in a publication cycle measured in minutes. Legacy media droned on about the students getting an ad hoc civics lesson. The media have not yet come to grips with the fact that democracy has undergone an evolutionary sea change while we were gawking at the marchers. It will be weeks before they get it.