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Radical Incline

Supreme Law of the Land is the Constitution

When 70% of Americans do not know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, guess what! It isn't.

"When asked three separate times due to the astounding callousness as it relates to trampling the inherent natural rights of Americans, he emphatically indicated that he would use random house to house checks, adding he felt people will welcome random searches if it means capturing a criminal."
—Allison Bricker[*]

"'What is the supreme law of the land?' 70 percent of the 1,000 citizens polled by Newsweek couldn't answer correctly."
—Nat Hentoff[*]

When 70% of Americans do not know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, guess what! It isn't.

The Tea Party is the greatest revolutionary movement since the founding of the forgotten Libertarian Party (heh — sorry, LP), because of its steadily maintained focus on Constitutionality and the rule of law, and, relatedly, constrained government. I expect that the reason the movement is still relatively small and utterly misunderstood has much to do with the above statistic. So the grassroots push to educate the electorate on that one point would be slow going, even without the armed and dangerous opposition. But what else matters? Go door-to-door, person-to-person. Hand out literature for Palin (or your candidate). Encourage folks to vote — message: We want you to vote for [Sarah], but above all, we want you to get out and vote! Push the primaries! Push for November!

But reinforce first and foremost that the Supreme Law of the Land is the Constitution. Otherwise, all other efforts will be moot, for democracy without the Constitution is four jihadis and a libertarian voting on who gets to be the suicidal bomber.

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Best of Spirits

Discerning Compound Problems

Problems are sometimes simple. More often problems are compound and complex, and complicated.

Problems are sometimes simple. More often problems are compound and complex, and complicated.

Part 1 - Simple, compound, complex, and masking

Simple example

Trying to reconcile a bank statement. (If you don't know how to reconcile a bank statement, learn. Meanwhile, just go with it. It's about addition.) There's an error of $3.95. Go back through the records, and, aha! there's a check for $3.95 that wasn't entered, or hadn't been marked as returned. Voila! Simple problem, relatively easily resolved.

Compound example

Two checks were not recorded, one for $5.00 and another for $2.00. The bank reconciliation shows a $7.00 error. Searching for a $7.00 check is fruitless. Looking for multiple checks that add up to $7.00 works. Once one of the two errors is discovered, the compound problem becomes simple.

Complex example with partial masking

A check for $5.00 was not recorded. Another check for $2.00 was not marked as returned. The bank reconciliation shows a $3.00 error, but the error is really $7.00 in two different directions. Searching for a $3.00 check is fruitless. Looking for multiple checks that add up to $3.00 is fruitless. Finding the $2.00 check and marking it as returned seemingly increases the reconciliation imbalance from $3.00 to $5.00, but really the problem has been lowered from $7.00.

Complex example with total masking

A check for $5.00 was not recorded. Two other checks for $2.50 each were not marked as returned. The bank reconciliation does not reveal any error because the three errors combine to look like nothing. How would you even know there was a problem? You might not, until the next month when the unentered check clears.

Part 1 review

Errors can compound. The more errors compound, the harder to resolve each of them. Symptoms may partially mask each other, making it harder to know what the errors are. Symptoms may combine to utterly mask that there even is a problem. Until things get worse.

Part 2 - Compound, complex, and complicated considerations

Simple considerations

If the error is single, only two possiblities need be considered. Either the check was not entered, or the check was not marked as returned.

Compound considerations

With two errors, there are more possibilities to consider. Both might be un-entered. Both might be not marked returned. One might be not returned, one might be un-entered. The problems may mask each other, partially or completely.

Complex considerations with masking

A check for $5.00 and another for $3.00 were not recorded. A third check for $5.00 was not marked as entered. The reconciliation shows a $3.00 error. Recording the $3.00 check appears to make the account reconciled, but there are really two $5.00 errors remaining totally masking one another.

False resolutions

The foregoing examples suppose two possible ways to err, not entering a check, or not marking a check off as returned. In reality, there are so many ways to err! The check was written for $3.95 but was entered as $3.85. Searching the records and the bank statement diligently will never disclose why the reconciliation is off by a dime. Only going outside the registry to the original document will disclose the real error.

Understanding complexity

Einstein at blackboard
Attempting to reconcile an account statement discloses $3.00 in error. At the outset, there is no clue how many errors exist, of what amounts or in which directions. Consideration is given first to the simple error, then to the complex possibilities, then to compound and masking possibiliites.

First, there must be awareness of the problem even existing. Then, consideration must be given to all the possibilities of compound and complex. Masking may make it seem that resolving one error was sufficient, but others lurk undetected.

All these account-reconciliation examples result in one symptom, addition error. Most real-world problems have multiple causes and multiple symptoms.

First in a series on perception and awareness.
Second: Perceptual Pareidolia — In order to imagine an alternative to your perception, you must admit to the possibility of perceptual confusion.
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Radical Incline

Vengeance is not Justice

Human understanding of justice progresses. Ideals of justice constantly draw us forward.

A Mindful Webworker comments[*] upon a post by Bridget on HillBuzz praising an Iranian court that literally endorsed "eye for an eye" justice.[*]
Here is a copy of the original HillBuzz comment.

Breaking from self-imposed lurk to object strenuously.

Bridget! I appreciate your degree of outrage, but think! This is not "justice," this is disgusting! Barbaric! If you want to get Biblical about it, the Lord says "vengeance is mine." God's early attempt to inform us that vengeance is not ours to exact. (It's a bit of divine humor, really, talking down to the primitive human soul, for we find in heaven that God is never actually vengeful like animalistic mortals; God can only be just.) That crazy homeless man who beheaded a woman in a supermarket[*] this week, would you have the woman's relatives stab him to death and run down the street with his bloody head? Followed to its logical conclusion, why wait for the tedium of evidentiary hearings and all that delay of the courts? If thy neighbor offend thee, haul out the AK-47 and start blasting! That's the path you're praising! Mrs Webworker adds, the concept that this will be good for women, that she will be better off because she's done this to someone else is [I'll substitute the word, misguided].

It is precisely because such horrific offenses as this woman's mutilation blind us (no pun intended) with rage and affect our judgment that we have as a society moved beyond personal vendetta to (ideally) impartial judges and juries, standardized imprisonment or (in the case of the crazy homeless man) incarceration with whatever medical and chemical help he might need, if only to protect his jailers.

I'm not a Fundamentalist so I don't have to try to make God say "eye for an eye" out of one side of his mouth and "Turn the other cheek" out of the other. Without the scriptural literalists' strained exegesis, there's an obvious progression from "eye for an eye" to "turn the other cheek," representing, not a bipolar or capricious Deity, but rather the development — improvement — of human understanding of the justice and mercy the Spirit would reveal through us.

Once, justice was an individual matter. Later, courts — the will of the group — replaced personal revenge, a decided advance even if the forms of "justice" still involved vengeance. That's the level of society you're posting about & praising. Most of our "justice" system — and most of the population — has not progressed far beyond that desire for vengeance, but our rejection of "cruel and unusual" punishments represents a vast and Jesusonian advance over "eye for an eye." Fines, incarceration and not exacting eye for an eye have replaced bloody vengeance in modern justice.

Someday, our meager and in-name-only "rehabilitation" efforts may actually rehabilitate many who choose criminality but could be reformed. The criminally poor we will have with us always. Some few we might even really, in the balance of mercy and self-protection, remove as life forms from among us (merciful, painless state execution), but in no case should we step backward into the cesspools of this kind of mentality.

Want to walk that back a bit, darlin'?

I later posted a reply[*] to myself (always a bit weird):

(Speaking of walking back, I see some edits I might've made if I could've, but I can't, so, sorry if my own hastily-toasted comment offended anyone's beliefs or seemed scolding, Bridget.)

To expand upon that and other points, I add this, from discussing the above with a cousin.

"Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know."

Meher Baba must have taken that to heart, because he said, "Love one another" and never spoke again. What a way to emphasize the message! (He had a great smile.)[*]
Lao Tzu's statement is hardly without exception, but there's a lot of good advice in his remark. I post in haste, and regret at leisure.
Our humble human efforts can never catch up to our advancing idealism, so to be in the realm of ideas is to increasingly accept being one who "speaks but does not know." To act, to move, to engage, we usually more or less err, fall short of the perfection to which we are compelled. However right our purpose or deliberate our method, we are mortal, and we could almost always have done it better.
Your reply said some things I'd thought of but didn't include, and some things I wish I'd said.
Hey! I should run all my posts by you first! (Cousin's hair stands on end.) Mrs Webworker tries to be my editor, but often shares my passions or opinions of the moment so she can't tell any better than I do where I may be right in message but wrong in spirit.

Paul clearly teaches that it is right and proper for government officials to "bear the sword." ...
"government officials... are under no obligation to turn the other cheek."

Indeed, although that "proper response" of turning to law, was followed in the Iranian case.

Seeing "justice" that's a notch above personal revenge but still below the mercy-based prohibitions on "cruel and unusual" punishment is like seeing fists fly in Congress. Old joke: I'll believe we evolved from apes when we finally do.
I know you (and Paul!) mean that they rightly use force (vs mercy) because they're employed to do so on society's behalf, but judges, jailers, police, soldiers, all those given power and engaged in confrontation on behalf of social justice are actually under all the greater burden to turn the other cheek -- in their case meaning keeping supreme self-control, doing things by the book, by the rules of engagement, even when under fire. Talk about tricky, yowch, and nigh-impossible! Thus, well worth every prayer for the job they do!

I am forbidden to hate him.

Yes! Revenge is hate in action. That's the core problem of Bridget's message. My reply addressed social justice, but not so much the personal and divine forgiveness upon which rests the "blind justice" aspect of our system. Maybe it's best; I already felt I laid into Bridget too personally.

My wiseacre remarks on Biblical literalists concerned me because the road to severe misunderstandings is paved with attempts at humor gone horribly wrong, many of those stones of my hewing. Not all Bible believers of my experience see the progression of social understanding that I see in scripture. What the anthropologist calls social evolution this believer understands as the unfolding revelation of God to and through us. But I sure don't want to get into open debate on the web about it! I'm out of practice on public speaking.

Back when I could better withstand the heat in the kitchen, I frequently engaged in extended "discussions" :) of approach to scripture. With inerrancy evangelists, I always concur, all scripture is good and valuable for study, but if the scriptures are all perfect the way some folks interpret them, it just hasn't sunk in that way for me. ;) (Therefore if I've got it wrong, I pray to be forgiven my benighted understanding!)

Frequently, such evangelists being ardent students of scripture, enthusiastically living and preaching the Gospel, and strong in faith, my relative position is (or ought to be) as listener, student -- one who does not know.

I have to keep re-learning restraint. All commenters replying so far support returning cruelty for cruelty, and against my better judgment, and I have left another reply. I'm swearing off after that, though. Really!
If you skip the sidebars, it's not such a long message. :-/

Why do I get into these things? Emotionally driven thinking I suppose. Well, my comment generated unexpected responses. One correspondent[*] picks up on the nit of "a difference in a premeditated crime vs a crazy homeless guy going off..." and still says that "the punishment should fit the crime." Another agrees, "this is one way to teach those men a much needed lesson."[*] The same commenter actually says, "I think that you are taking the Bible out of context in order to justify your position." Okay. I replied once more.[*]

[For my prior abusive invocation of scripture, I am rightly admonished and regretful.]

Dear friends, I have no heart for this debate, but consider how badly thinking can be unprincipled when emotionally driven. Hasn't similar ends-justifying-means emotionalism been remarked upon as the error of liberalism?

Shall we cut off the hand of the thief, too, or would that be two eyes for an eye? How about just a fingertip for petty theft? (Where's Kevin? Was Bridget just baiting us? What is going on here?) Look, friends, when we say that the punishment should fit the crime, do we rape the rapist, eat the cannibal, murder the family of the person who murders a family? Of course not! "That'll teach 'em" doesn't and revenge is lust that will never bring spiritual satisfaction.

Society must behave like a sober, loving, patient, but firm parent, even like the divine parent. Exacting judgment, yes, and when we're dealing with returning stolen value and paying fines, recompense (not revenge) can sometimes be achieved. In violent crime, there really cannot be recompense. One cannot bring back the murdered, repay for wounding, undo terror and pain.

Exacting justice never involves cruelty for cruelty. We forbid cruel punishment in the heart of our Law. We forbid vigilantism and vendetta, the means of revenge when barbaric people are unsatisfied with civil judgments. We leave whatever "vengeance" there may need to be to the Higher Judge.

The appropriate combination of punishment and rehabilitation is set by a wise and impartial arbitrator. Not always possible, but the ideal, the principle, to which we aspire. While society must protect itself, we can only stop the crime, and if we're not going to execute then hold the prisoner until "rehabilitated," if ever. (As if.) Our justice system is poor, fails to exact justice perfectly and those who operate in it are too often more concerned with dollars than principles, but it's the best we've got to separate us from anarchy. We strive for true justice and do not sink to the level of the criminal to do so.

Late-breaking news. Along comes Pam,[*] succinctly saying in six sentences of less than sixty words what takes me sixty thousand.

The success of Western jurisprudence is that is is based on taming man's lowest nature. As satisfying as it would be to have acid poured into that man's eyes as punishment, it would not be justice. It would be revenge. There's a difference. And it does not lift mankind to seek revenge instead of justice. It keeps us low.

Think I'll go back to doing abstract wallpapers.

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The Art of

The Word Balloon in Comics

The long history of

A Mindful Webworker comments at Arlo and Janis blog. Jimmy Johnson had said, "I have been through brief periods when I experimented with dialog not within a “balloon,” as in today’s classic strip. Garry Trudeau pioneered this technique with Doonesbury, and many cartoonists followed suit, most noticeably Berkeley Breathed with Bloom County...."

JJ, pretty funny to have you say Doonesboy "pioneered" words without balloons. Doones was retro. At least, that's what I remember thinking when Doonesbury started. (I remember thinking something like that while reading the first strips; was also amused that Doones himself arrived at college from my ol' home state just as I was about to head out-of-state to college.)

Cartoons, e.g. early editorial toons, moved from just illustrations with captions below (generally) to having the words inside the cartoons, and words in balloons was actually a quick but still later development, as I recall my toon history. (Yellow kid wore his words! Krazy Kat! Little Nemo! Now, them was comic strips. Okay, I'm not THAT old!) The balloon became the standard, especially in strips as opposed to editorials. In the early days the bubble or even just an underline with just a single line indicating the speaker battled the upstart modern comic-book standard balloon with open stem. Dashed lines for whispers became standard early-on, cloud-like thought balloons standardized a little later. Or I could just be making all that up. I hate the web. Ruins all my stories.

I found numerous links to "The Evolution of Speech Balloons" at http://bugpowder.com/andy/e.speechballoons.evolution.html, but unfortunately that's now a 404.

Meanwhile, I found a link to an article about obscenicons, including a panel from a 1909 Katzenjammer Kids with a mix of bubbled and unbubbled words.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2483

Speech balloon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_balloon
One of the earliest antecedents to the modern speech bubble were the “speech scrolls”, wispy lines that connected first person speech to the mouths of the speakers in Mesoamerican art.

Discussion about the origins of usage
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-82556.html
I've seen copies of cartoons from around the time of the American Revolution (and, I think, earlier) that depict speakers with "speech balloons."

http://www.ccgb.org.uk/lobby/index.php?/archives/11-Comics-A-Brief-Histo...
Early examples of comics include late 15th-century German woodcuts

Okay, never mind what I wrote at first.
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Radical Incline

Everyone Knows It's Romney

Who's gonna be the GOP loser?

"Herman Cain trails only Chris Christie as the top choice among Republican primary voters in the race for the 2012 Presidential nomination. Mitt Romney ranks fourth, but voters see him as the most likely nominee by a wide margin over the rest of a 13-person field. " —Zogby Poll[*]

Herman Cain trails only Chris Christie, but voters see Romney as the most likely nominee?? What does that say about Republicans!

Who's gonna top the GOP ticket?
Who's gonna be the next John McCain?
Who's gonna be the GOP loser?
Everyone says it's Romney.

Who's gonna be the one to go under?
Who's gonna blow this critical chance?
Who's gonna give Obama a free ride?
Everyone says it's Romney.

And RomneyCare never worked
And Romney's a pack of lies
And Romney's the nominee
Who will not fly
Who will not win
(Who will not fly)
Who will not win

[Repeat ad nauseum]

Related Mindful Radical Incline Webwork:
Oh, Well! Guess It's Romney! bumper stickers
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