Sadly, most of the new stuff is a good candidate for deletion.

This issue is not quality per say. As much as I like to beat my chest about how hard I am on myself, I put plenty of crap up. The real issue is about staying on track.

And this is also why standard advice of “write out, then polish” does not apply to me. When you are capable of writing twenty pages of that are totally off track, the proper advice is more like “when you are in a hole that you want to get out of, the first thing to do is to stop digging.”

The new stuff below is not quite that bad, but I do think it went a little off track.

Authorities are our “a priori”. They govern what arguments we are willing to accept but they will not be changed by our arguments. The power that our authorities have over us can be seen in the mentally ill. During brief moments of sanity, the mentally ill might be very rational and very smart. And during this time they might understand that that the voices they hear and the visions that they see are all lies. But when the voices and visions come back, they become true for the mentally ill all the same. The human mind cannot reject its authorities even when they are in conflict with other authorities.

Now it must be admitted that “authorities” are not as simple or as obvious as the previously discussed examples. Often, we do not fully understand what the real “authorities” in our life are. We often convince ourselves that we believe in things for reasons that are socially approved when really we believe in them for other reasons. And if it is difficult for us to be sure as to what governs our own beliefs, it is even harder for us to perceive what governs other people’s beliefs.

Yet in spite of the difficulty, the question of authority is only thing that really matters in any intellectual discourse. A structure is only as good as its foundation and authority is the foundation underneath all our conceptions of “facts” and “truth.” If we fail to understand the “real” authority behind all of our notions of what is “fact” and what is “true,” then all our discussions and thoughts are worthless. We can only begin to have a worthwhile conversation if we have an understanding of the governing authorities behind our beliefs.

Some might be inclined to argue that placing the things that govern our beliefs and the beliefs themselves into separate categories is a false distinction. After all, our beliefs flow from our “authorities.” This being so, our beliefs reveal what our authorities are. And if our beliefs reveal what our authorities are, what is the point of making a distinction between “beliefs” and “authorities”?

There are two problems with this line of argument. It fails to take into account how people deal with one another and it fails to take into account how people deal with themselves. But the root of both problems is the failure to recognize that the various “authorities” support overlapping beliefs. Thus, if you only focus on a limited sample of beliefs, you are likely to be misled into seeing a unity of authority where there is none.

For example, let us say you meet someone for the first time. You find out that he thinks that the sky is blue and you also think that the sky is blue. Because of this, you think that this fellow and yourself see the world in a similar manner. But you would be mistaken.

The fellow you have just met only believes what his mommy tells him. On the other hand, you only believe what you see with your eyes. His mommy and your eyes happen to agree about the color of the sky, but down the road you are going to find that you have almost nothing in common with this man. Anytime you see something that does not agree with what his mommy tells him, you are going to have a big argument. You will never be able to get him to agree with you because he has a different authority for determining the truth than you do.

In a similar manner, let us say that you meet someone who does not believe you when you tell him how deep the Grand Canyon is. It might seem that you will not get along very well with this fellow. But in truth, this fellow is just like you. He only believes what his eyes tell him and his eyes are just like yours. The only reason he does not believe you is that he has never seen anything like the Grand Canyon. Down the road, you are going to find out that this fellow and yourself get along just fine. After all, he sees the world just as you do. So all you need to do when you disagree is to show him what you have seen and the problem is resolved.

Granted, these are silly examples. But they illustrate the fact that whether people have some beliefs in common tells you nothing about whether those same people are governed by similar authorities. Acceptance of a common body of facts can be a result of a shared authority. But often times a shared set of beliefs is just a sign of people going out of their way to focus on the areas where they agree. In this manner they manage to convince themselves that they share a common authority when really they don’t.

This is one of the reasons why disputes between people can get so nasty. Having first convinced themselves they were “similar” to their opponents because they shared some beliefs, they now cannot see any reason for their disputes except extreme bad faith. So their arguments devolve into rage and personal attacks because they feel that the other party is/should be subject to the same authority that they themselves are subject to.

But the problem of conflicting authorities is not limited to our interactions with other human beings. We humans are not governed by consistent authorities even on the individual level. Often we can ignore this conflict by only focusing on those beliefs that all of our authorities support. But by focusing on what we believe as individuals rather then why we believe, we often fool ourselves into thinking that we are more consistent than we really are. And this can lead to serious problems when we are forced to confront our inconsistencies.

One good example an individual with conflicting authorities would be the German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. On one hand, Rommel’s personal morality was opposed to everything that the Nazi’s stood for. Rommel personal sense of right and wrong led him to ignore orders to kill Jews and commit other war crimes. He even went so far as to write letters of protest over the treatment of Jews. On the other hand, Rommel was a supporter of German aggression. He fought aggressively both to insure German victory and to insure that he was always at the forefront of the fighting. Rommel even used his good professional relationship with Hitler (at least, early on in the war) to further his own advancement and to argue for strategies that he thought would result in German victory.

The conflict between these two positions seems obvious enough. But for clarity’s sake, let us break down Rommel’s contradictions in terms of authorities. Remember that we said that our eyes were an authority because they governed what we believed. In other words, we justify believing things because of what we see, but we don’t try to justify our belief in sight because it is an a prior that we take for granted.

In a similar manner, Rommel’s conscience served as an authority in his life. It is unlikely that Rommel would have wasted any more thought on justifying his belief that murder was wrong than he would have wasted on trying to justify believing what he saw with his own eyes. Both his conscience and his eyes served as things that governed his beliefs, not something that he would seriously consider debating.

But Rommel’s conception of what it meant to be a soldier seems to have also been an authority in his life. It seems to have been beyond question to Rommel that he would serve Germany’s army with all his might. This imperative seems to have had equal weight with his belief that killing children was wrong. And so Rommel found himself fighting for those who sent children to the gas chambers while at the same time believing that it was wrong to kill children.

Looking back in history, this seems like an obvious conflict. How can you recognize that Hitler’s treatment of Jews and others was morally wrong and still be so gung-ho about helping him take over the world? Yet Rommel seemed blinded to this obvious conflict. Eventually he had to confront the conflict between his authorities and it cost him his life. But even at the end of his life, he seemed to be trying to square a circle that could not be squared.

We would like to think we do not have the same kind of obvious disconnect that Rommel had. But most (all?) of us do. And this disconnect is not just a matter of moral hypocrisy. Our conception of what is “true” and what is “false” can suffer from the same kind of disconnect. That is to say, we can use one type of authority to determine “truth” in one context and another type of authority to determine “truth” in another context. And yet, taken as a whole, our authorities can be in direct conflict about the nature of truth.

Of course, we do not all have the same kinds of inconsistencies. But there are broad patterns that are common to us all. For example, one common source of conflicting authority amongst people is the tendency to use their peers (family, friends, and professional colleagues) as an authority. That is to say, most of us base our beliefs on what our peers believe as unthinkingly as we base our beliefs on what our eyes (or other sources of authority individual to us, such as our conscience) tell us. But since our peers and our eyes are not the same authority, we wind up with inconsistent beliefs.

Most of us would like to think that we would believe our eyes over our peers as a matter of course. Indeed, many of us would like to deny that our peers are an authority at all. Most people feel that a person whose peers are an authority is little better than a child. Thus, most of us would like to minimize the extent of authority that our peers have over our beliefs.

But in most cases we are just fooling ourselves. Most of us don’t make a conscious choice to base our beliefs off our peers anymore than we make a conscious choice to believe what our eyes tell us. And when the time comes when we are forced to confront the inconsistencies between our eyes and our peers, many people chose the authority of their peers over the authority of their eyes (or the authority their own conscience or any other authority that is distinct from their peers). Even those that in the end opt to stand by their own eyes/conscience/whatever over the authority of their peers often find that the choice is very hard to make.

This can be very frustrating for others who are trying talk to us about an issue. Imagine trying to convince Rommel that it was wrong to fight for the Nazis based on the same authority that governed his personal morality. In one sense, it ought to be fruitful grounds for discussion as he clearly acknowledges that authority in one part his life. At that same time, he seems to have had another authority that he held in equally high esteem (if not higher) to his conscience. Since it was as inconceivable for Rommel to question his role as solider as it was for his to question his morality, on what grounds would you convince Rommel that one authority was superior to the other?

You could argue until you were blue in the face that Rommel should have placed his conscience over his conception of himself as a soldier. But all arguments would have been fruitless as trying to convince a crazy man that the voices he hears are not real. As we have previously noted, authorities are our a priori. They govern what arguments we are willing to accept but they will not be changed by our arguments. This does not cease to be true just because one of our authorities might conflict with our other authorities.

This naturally leads to the question “how does someone change their authorities and can we help change the authorities of other people? If we cannot, why bother even talking with other people?” With these questions one is entering into an area that is beyond the scope of the current argument. But it should be noted that this question is in itself a question of authority.

For one thing, our conception of what authority ought to be supreme is itself a belief. And so we must ask, what authority is this belief based on? For another thing, the idea that either authorities can or cannot be change is also a belief. And so we must ask what authority is this belief based on? Most importantly of all, the value of talking about in issue is also a belief, and so dependent on whatever authority governs your beliefs.

In other words, at their heart, these questions are religious questions. And so you would think that Christianity would have something to say about them; you would be wrong. Organized religion in general and Christianity in particular is obsessed with belief. If you say you believe the right things, they don’t generally care about why you hold the beliefs that you hold.

I wanted to address Rundy’s comments on the last post, but that will have to wait until some other time.

But such calls for unity face an insurmountable Catch 22. If the beliefs expressed in the Nicene Creed are important, then what those beliefs mean is also important. You can’t say it does not matter whether baptism is a sacrament or a mere symbol of a spiritual event and at the same time say that it is important to believe “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Those two positions on baptism are the exact opposite of one another. To say that we can unify both groups under the banner of the Nicene Creed is to make the Nicene Creed meaningless.

In other words, if the beliefs expressed in the Nicene Creed are important, than their meaning is also important. And if their meaning is important, then all the disputes that currently divide Christianity are also important. And if the beliefs expressed in the Nicene Creed are not important, why bother being a Christian? The nature of the problem seems to indicate that the choices are either apathy or legalism.

But this apparent dualism only exists because humans prefer to focus on the superficial at the expense of the important. The things that people believe are not important. It is the cause of that belief that is important. In other words, when someone says that they believe the Nicene Creed, the first question we should ask is “Why?” Not “What do you think the Nicene Creed means?”

To understand why the cause of belief is more important than the belief itself, we need to think about why we believe things. Let us say that someone came up to you and asked, “Which way did Jimmy go?” And you responded by saying “Jimmy went that way.” In response you are asked “why do you say that?” and you respond by saying “I saw him go that way.” In this conversation you have expressed two things. You have expressed a belief (“Jimmy went that way”) and the reason for that belief (“I saw him go that way”).

Now your questioner could be a real philosophical smart-aleck and he could ask you why you believe that what you see is the truth (After all, the world could all be one great big illusion, right?). And if you were a philosophical type of a fool you could try to justify your belief in what you see (using Occam’s razor perhaps?). But a sensible person will not try to justify why they believe what their eyes tell them. After all, how can you really defend a choice you did not make?

Most of us do not make a conscious choice to believe based on what we see. We are born believing what we see. Or perhaps it is better to say that we are born believing things on the basis of what we see. So in a very real sense, we are subject to our eyes. We cannot make ourselves have the vision of an eagle. We cannot see all that we wish to see. Sometimes things that we fail to see blindside us. Sometimes things that we see do not exist. But in spite of all the limitations of sight, sight still governs what we will believe.

But our eyes are not the only things that govern what types of things we believe in. Many other things can govern what we will believe in. It could be some other person (my daddy told me so), it could be logic (if x is true, y has to be), or it can be any number of other things depending on the person. For simplicity’s sake, we will call that which governs what we will believe in “authorities”.

Now it must be admitted that “authorities” are not as simple or as obvious as the previously discussed examples. Often, we do not fully understand what the real “authorities” in our life are. We often convince ourselves that we believe in things for reasons that are socially approved when really we believe in them for other reasons. And if it is difficult for us to be sure as to what governs our own beliefs, it is even harder for us to perceive what governs other people’s beliefs.

Yet in spite of the difficulty, the question of authority is only thing that really matters in any intellectual discourse. A structure is only as good as its foundation and authority is the foundation underneath all our conceptions of “facts” and “truth.” If we fail to understand the “real” authority behind all of our notions of what is “fact” and what is “true,” then all our discussions and thoughts are worthless. We can only begin to have a worthwhile conversation if we have an understanding of the governing authorities behind our beliefs.

Some might be inclined to argue that placing the things that govern our beliefs and the beliefs themselves into separate categories is a false distinction. After all, our beliefs flow from our “authorities.” This being so, our beliefs reveal what our authorities are. And if our beliefs reveal what our authorities are, what is the point of making a distinction between “beliefs” and “authorities”?

There are two problems with this line of argument. It fails to take into account how people deal with one another and it fails to take into account how people deal with themselves. But the root of both problems is the failure to recognize that the various “authorities” support overlapping beliefs. Thus, if you only focus on a limited sample of beliefs, you are likely to be misled into seeing a unity of authority where there is none.

For example, let us say you meet someone for the first time. You find out that he thinks that the sky is blue and you also think that the sky is blue. Because of this, you think that this fellow and yourself see the world in a similar manner. But you would be mistaken.

The fellow you have just met only believes what his mommy tells him. On the other hand, you only believe what you see with your eyes. His mommy and your eyes happen to agree about the color of the sky, but down the road you are going to find that you have almost nothing in common with this man. Anytime you see something that does not agree with what his mommy tells him, you are going to have a big argument. You will never be able to get him to agree with you because he has a different authority for determining the truth than you do.

In a similar manner, let us say that you meet someone who does not believe you when you tell him how deep the Grand Canyon is. It might seem that you will not get along very well with this fellow. But in truth, this fellow is just like you. He only believes what his eyes tell him and his eyes are just like yours. The only reason he does not believe you is that he has never seen anything like the Grand Canyon. Down the road, you are going to find out that this fellow and yourself get along just fine. After all, he sees the world just as you do. So all you need to do when you disagree is to show him what you have seen and the problem is resolved.

Granted, these are silly examples. But they illustrate the fact that whether people have some beliefs in common tells you nothing about whether those same people are governed by similar authorities. Acceptance of a common body of facts can be a result of a shared authority. But often times a shared set of beliefs is just a sign of people going out of their way to focus on the areas where they agree. In this manner they manage to convince themselves that they share a common authority when really they don’t.

This is one of the reasons why disputes between people can get so nasty. Having first convinced themselves they were “similar” to their opponents because they shared some beliefs, they now cannot see any reason for their disputes except extreme bad faith. So their arguments devolve into rage and personal attacks because they feel that the other party is/should be subject to the same authority that they themselves are subject to.

But the problem of conflicting authorities is not limited to our interactions with other human beings. We humans are not governed by consistent authorities even on the individual level. Often we can ignore this conflict by only focusing on those beliefs that all of our authorities support. But by focusing on what we believe as individuals rather then why we believe, we often fool ourselves into thinking that we are more consistent than we really are. And this can lead to serious problems when we are forced to confront our inconsistencies.

And I have not been writing for my essay site lately.

So I thought I would try to spend more time trying to write for my essay site and not worry so much about this site (especially since most of the other members of the challenge have dropped off anyway).

But on past form, I will delete everything I write for my essay site before I put it up and this tends to disappoint some people. So I thought I would experiment with putting up sections that I am working on as I am working on them (or deleting them), with some commentary. That way my few loyal readers can maybe understand what I am trying to accomplish and why I keep failing. Also, I can prove that I am as hard on myself as I am on other people.

This is probably a dumb idea that won’t work, but I am in a rut that I would like to get out of. And I guess the only way to get out of a rut is to try different things.

Now, I won’t be posting stuff every day. Most days it will be all I can do to work on the essay a bit. But I hope to post sections of progress (or things that I have deleted) at least twice a week with at least some commentary.

So after the commentary below you will find beginnings of the first real chapter of “A Critique of Christianity”. The part that is currently up on my essay site is only a prologue. A necessary prologue to be sure, as I will need to refer to it. But it is not directly related to flow of my argument.

I had written out past this first chapter long before I even put up the prologue. But I never really fleshed out the arguments in this first chapter for a variety reasons that mostly boil down to the fact that I did not want to.

To make a long story short, as soon as I realized that I had to write this chapter before I could finish anything else (which was a long time ago now), I knew what it was going to be called and the arguments that I wanted to make in the chapter. But I had various problems and I kept deleting everything I wrote.

My biggest problem was that I want to write this essay to express a bunch of things that I have long wanted to say to those Christians who wonder why I don’t go to Church. I know it will not accomplish anything (too long for anyone to read, for one thing). But for therapeutic reasons, I would like write out what I want to say in the manner that I wish I could say it. At least then I will have the satisfaction of having expressed myself, even if it is only to the void.

The reason I kept deleting all my stuff every time I tried to write this chapter previously is that I kept trying to (A) tie this chapter in with the prologue or (B) express the private agonies that lead me to want to write this dang thing. Often I would try to do both at once.

The end result was pages and pages of really stupid writing that was always just a couple of paragraphs away from starting to address what I really needed to addresses when I deleted it all.

And so here I am, trying again for the umpteenth time to spell out things that I know like the back of my hand.

Currently, I have the following structure in mind for “The Problem of Authority.”

(a) Define Christianity (kind of necessary if your over all title is “A Critique of Christianity”)

(b) Define the problem of Authority (particularly as it relates to Christianity)

(c) Explain in biblical terms why the Bible itself is not the solution to the problem of authority.

(d) Explain the conception of authority that will govern the rest of the Critique.

(e) Maybe foreshadow a bit what the next chapter will be about?

As I flesh out this structure, I am trying to keep two things in mind.

(1) Try to error on the side of underexplaining/defending/defining.

(2) Use utilitarian words to create logical flows. (i.e don’t worry about making it an interesting read, worry about making the argument flow).

Below is how I started trying to flesh out the above outline. Tune in next week for an explanation of why I deleted it all (that’s a joke, I hope. Have not slept on it long enough to really hate it yet).

The Problem Of Authority.

This is Christianity….

“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

Amen.”

That is the Nicene Creed. It is believed by Catholics and Protestants. It is believed by Greek Orthodox Monks in the mountains of Aetolia and Amish farmers working in the fields of Lancaster. It is the one thing that unites the orthodox Christian believers of all denominations. It is the bare bones definition of Christianity.

But the fact that all Christians profess the beliefs in the Nicene Creed demonstrates the essential absurdity of the word “Christianity”. Christians all claim to believe what the Nicene Creed expresses, but they cannot agree on what those words mean. Arguments over the meaning of the line “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” would be enough to fracture Christianity into a half dozen competing groups. And that would just be a warm up for the discussion of what “Almighty” means or the nature of “salvation.”

The irony of all this division is that the Nicene Creed was formulated as a means of creating and enforcing unity in the Christian Churches. But the Nicene Creed is too simple a thing to unify a group of human beings. To have any hope creating a semblance of unity you have to write out more than a couple of paragraphs.

To understand the scope of the problem, you only need to compare a creed to a contract. They are similar in that they both attempt to lay out a common understanding of the facts and the meaning of those facts so that the agreement will be enforceable (in a creed’s case, enforceability centers on creating a common understanding of who to kick out). A quick look at even a simple contract shows that they need more words than the Nicene Creed to create a common understanding. If the same care was put into creating creeds that is put into creating contracts we would create a creed that was extremely long and complex. Only such a creed would have any hope of creating unity in matters of the faith.

And this is in fact what we find in the Catholic Church. The body of authoritative Catholic doctrine is complex enough that it can make a reasonable claim to covering any eventuality. Since adherence to this doctrine is expected by every member of the Church, they have in effect turned their doctrine into one giant creed. And to insure that everyone has the same understanding of what this complex creed means, Catholics have invested in the Pope the ability to make binding interpretations of what the doctrine/creed means.

But it is not only the Catholics who create such complex creeds. There are individual protestant churches that enforce a system of doctrine that is almost equally complex as Catholic doctrine. And as a general rule, these churches have one man who serves as a kind of de facto pope whose interpretations are final. Disagree with his interpretations and you will be driven out to preserve unity.

Many Christians find this situation abhorrent. They find that complex creeds masquerading as doctrines fail to reflect the essential simplicity of their faith. After all, does not the Roman’s say that “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”? If this is true, why then is the body of Christ divided up on the basis of complex legalistic creeds? The logic of this question drives many to call for Christians to put aside their petty differences and unite around a simple common creed (such as the Nicene Creed).

But such calls for unity face an insurmountable Catch 22. If the beliefs expressed in the Nicene Creed are important, then what those beliefs mean is also important. You can’t say it does not matter whether baptism is a sacrament or a mere symbol of a spiritual event and at the same time say that it is important to believe “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Those two positions on baptism are the exact opposite of one another. To say that we can unify both groups under the banner of the Nicene Creed is to make the Nicene Creed meaningless.

In other words, if the beliefs expressed in the Nicene Creed are important, than their meaning is also important. And if there meaning is important, than all the disputes that currently divide Christianity are also important. And if the beliefs expressed in the Nicene Creed are not important, why bother being a Christian? The nature of the problem seems to indicate that the choices are either apathy or legalism.

Maybe he did not look that bad. But I had to wonder what caused him to be late and show up looking tired.

This guy was not ever late.

“I had a power outage and so my alarm did not wake me.”

“I thought you had a back up generator.”

“I will tell you about later.”

Long story short, his marriage of roughly 30 years was in the process of ending. Apparently his wife had decided that she did not love him some years prior. So she decided to clean him out of every red cent he had. His house was in process of being foreclosed on. Every bill you could think of was past due and there where plenty of other bills that he found that he knew nothing about. And he found out that he had no savings.

This was incredibly depressing news for me.

This guy has always struck me as being a decent family man. Unlike so many other men, he does not talk trash about his wife or chase after other woman. He is not profane. He does not party. He did not work ungodly hours. He gave every paycheck he got to his wife so that she could pay the bills and he would ask her for whatever money he needed (That is why she could clean him out so badly without him knowing).

Granted, there is always two sides to every story. In this case though, I think the other side of the story has to do with an addiction that spun out of control and a marriage that never should have happened in the first place. But I don’t know for sure and it is not my place to judge.

It still depresses me though.

Lets face it. No matter how personally repugnant the idea is to our ideological sensibilities, America can afford national health care. The reason America can’t afford this health care bill is because America wants everything.

We want to be a super power. We want to subsidize agriculture. We want to drive the biggest cars and eat the biggest burgers. We want everyone to be able to buy their own home (and we spend more government money subsidizing mortgages than any socialist European country). And so on and so on.

A “progressive” sort of person might reasonably argue that it is unfair to blame the health care bill itself for the fact that American can not afford it. To me, that still means that we should wait until the country is not on the verge of bankruptcy before we even begin to debate the issue.

But whatever. I am a charitable sort of dude. So lets forget the fact that the bill is going to help bankrupt this country. This bill is still one of the most insane things that this nation has ever done.

The simple fact of matter is that the same people who talked about the evil nature of insurance companies are going to give the insurance companies an extra 200 billion dollars a year. On top of that, they are going to force lot of people to pay their own money for insurance who have previously spent their money on other things.

To help pay for this bill, they are going to cut payments to health care providers. This will make providing health care less profitable.

If your goal is to make it easier for people to see a doctor, this is an insane way of going about it. At very least, it is not very cost effective. At the worst, you will have insurance, but you will not be able to get an appointment because everyone will be able to afford to go to the doctor but very few people will want to be doctors for the pay offered.

And don’t worry your pretty little head about the fiscal impact of this bill. A lot of work was put into the bill to make it fiscally responsible. But you don’t need to dig into the details. Just rest assured that every angle has been covered to ensure that this bill is as good for the fiscal health of America as it is for its physical health. The only thing that could go wrong is if some of the more backwards states fail to pay their share.

Granted, to understand how this bill is fiscally responsible, you need to have a good working knowledge of higher math. But such sophistication should not alarm you. Rather you should feel relived that such people are working on your behalf.

Another indication of their brilliance is the parliamentary brilliance behind the sophisticated parliamentary tactics being used to both pass and not pass some of the more unpopular bits of the bill.

Have a good night’s sleep everyone.

You never know what you are going to find when you wander over to Andrew Cusack’s web site. But then, that is the beauty of the internet as a whole. You can find out all sorts of things that you would have never expected.

For example, today I was reading in Spiegel about places that Germans are loved because of Hitler. In part, this strange love for Germans goes hand in hand with hatred for the Jews. But I think it also a reflection of how much racial identity is the backbone of nationalism in most of the world.

But even though it is a bit unsettling to think of how many people in the world think Hitler was cool, I found this even more unsettling.

I don’t know if I could do a good job of explaining why. You would think regrowing lost limbs would be a good thing. But for some reason, the thought strikes me as being very creepy.

This story was not creepy in and off itself, but it made me wonder if some of those creepy internet drug sellers were getting their product via this means.

Having said that, I hope he makes it even so. It would be kind of cool to know that the human body can break the sound barrier. I am just not sure it is worth risking your life to find out this bit of information. Especially since there is no practical use for that information at the moment.

But no body seems to be paying attention to the information for which we do have practical use for, so maybe my criteria is out dated.

Personally, I am waiting for the next panic to start. A lot of bad news has been accumulating on the sovereign debt front and I am not just talking about the US. The Economist made a pretty good case that Japan was close to running out of rope and there are a lot of other nations that are in a similar boat.

Yet all of this seems to be ignored by the markets and the investors at large. It reminds me of when the run up to when the housing bauble finally caused some serious pain. Back then, the bad news just kept piling up and the markets just kept shrugging it off.

Until suddenly they stopped shrugging it off.

I wonder how long it is going to take them to stop shrugging of the bad news on the sovereign debt front.

The irony is just so sweet. Or sicking. I can’t decided which.

To think that Krugman was one of those who thought George Bush was stupid for invading Iraq. At least George Bush was not stupid enough to pick of fight with the very people who were financing his wars. On the the other hand, Krugman is at the fore front of those arguing that Obama should borrow a lot more money than George Bush ever did. And yet, Krugman is arguing that Obama should pick a fight with America’s biggest lender.

I could expound all day on why this is a bad idea. But I would just be wasting my breath. Most economists are shaking their heads at the shear stupidity of Krugman’s purposed course of action (a good take down here using Krugman’s own prior arguments). Yet their arguments are all futile. The dangerous thing about Krugman’s post is that it does not need to make sense because it is what people want to believe.

It sits well with most of the American public to see China as the evil one responsible for all of our economic ills. Your average red stater and your average blue stater can not agree on much. But they can both pile on the hate for China.

Therefore, it is in Obama’s political interests to pick a fight when China The only real question is if he is going to fake a trade fight with China or really go for it with gusto.

Since most of the things that Obama’s has done have been half-hearted at best, one is tempted bet on the fake a trade fight.

But the problem is, these things can take on a life of their own.

At least that is what I feel like.

I have no good reason for feeling like this. I have a list of problems a mile long and no sign that the list is going to get shorter. There is plenty of disasters just waiting for me. And there are lots of political problems to deal with as well.

But today somebody who ought to know looked over my work and pronounced it good. I think he is full of crap for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I don’t think he is as smart as me.

Still, he manged to prove to me that I did not have at least one problem that I was afraid I did. And despite my disbelief, his seal of approval did give me an emotional boost over all.

The project is still is not done. In fact, the parts that are not done might take longer than the parts that have been done. Yet emotionally, I feel like most of the work is done and I have passed most of the major hurdles.

You could make a good argument on empirical grounds to support this emotional view point, but that would be ignoring the fact that the last 10% takes 90% of the time.

But the bottom line is that I felt better today than I have in a long time. And try as I might, I can’t argue myself out of that feeling.

I guess that is what naturally occurring events are for.