A strange brew is this, and not all of it is pretty. Partially a record of a crackup and partially a tale of rising from that crackup back into a useful life; and part of that is how I decided writing was necessary to my life and recovery; and another part is just keeping a record of where I have been and what I have learned. You can see the topics I cover the sidebar. The hope is to help others; the purpose is figuring out where I am going. Thank you for dropping by. Feel free to comment.
A little late and from an unexpected source, I found support for my idea that the MPAA and the RIAA should be asking why porn survived into the digital age. That was something that I put out in 2010. The answer given in How porn shapes your phone habits, even if you don’t watch it(London Times) to my question is prosaic:
The content was just bait to keep us scrolling and watching, while the traces of our most private desires were harvested and commodified.
More troubling now is this:
...Among the earliest people to craft online personas and compete for algorithmic visibility were so-called cam models: sex workers who already in the mid-Nineties began to vie for attention by selling the kind of parasocial intimacy that would later become a cornerstone of the creator economy. Viewers paid for nudity and sex, yes, but also for a sense of human contact. Influencers play with the same dynamic, offering carefully constructed fantasies in exchange for attention and, increasingly, money....
My reaction was it was a freak show, not reality, another thing to traverse while sight-seeing. But then I was never interested in the subject matter. Guess I was lucky, it may have been another in my group sessions went back to it. Leaving me wondering why. There really is nothing spectacular about looking at/watching naked people. I am left to the conclusion that I am missing the point, that I am out of touch.
Home from church, trying to get through my open tabs. (I am supposed to be making submissions).
What I thought would be quick, quirky reads turned out a lot more.
Especially, Location tracking: ‘I can easily see where 80% of the people I know currently are’ (The Irish Times). I see parents tracking their kids; particularly since I have been dipping into missing person cases on YouTube. When I had stepkids, we gave them a cell phone when they were out trekking by themselves. On the other hand, the idea of tracking one's significant other leans heavily towards the creepy. It might also be the remnants of a bad conscience when, unlike Fats Waller, I was misbehaving.
When Orla Leahy, who is in her 70s, collects her husband from his appointments at the Beacon Hospital in Dublin she puts their dog’s collar, which has a location tracker, on to her wing mirror. “It’s a terrible place to park, so rather than have him waiting in the rain, he can see where I am [on his phone]. It’s a bit stalkerish but it’s a good use of the technology.”
A teenager I know was recently snared having a surreptitious party thanks to the family home’s doorbell camera. Sitting with his parents at the time, we watched all the youngsters coming to their door on his father’s phone before the event was shut down. I couldn’t help feeling it was a bit of a shame.
Someone else describes a friend whose girlfriend kept track of his every movement via location sharing – constantly ringing to ask questions about why he was where he was and who he was with.
We live in a world of surveillance. Our phones track us. Our apps track us. Security cameras on houses and businesses track us. Our data is circulated and shared and sold and hacked and leaked. Increasingly, assisting this process for the corporations who profit from it, we also voluntarily track each other.
Overprotection or rational lifeline? A surveillance state incubated by ourselves or a lack of self-consciousness about privacy? Not sure, but it sounds like an idea for a speculative fiction story.
But then my brain keeps thumping up against real safety concerns:
How I Became a Lock Picker is from The New Yorker and behind a paywall. Having watched too many crime shows, lockpicking always looked cool. That it is also a hobby surprised me.
One day, I tried to open an old mailbox on the first floor. There were six slots, but I had only five keys, each of them as small and toylike as the key to a child’s diary. In an effort to open the last slot, I watched a video about lock picking on YouTube and ordered a set of picks from Amazon. Then I spent an hour unsuccessfully poking my new tools into the keyhole. In the end, I called a locksmith, defeated. A shifty young man turned up and, without even giving me his name, broke the lock with a drill. Before he left, though, he told me that there were groups of people who got together to study locks. I looked into it and found the Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL), which originated in Amsterdam. Its members practice something called locksport.
***
TOOOL has a rigorous code of ethics. To form an official chapter, members must pledge that they will pick only those locks whose owners have given permission. Locksporters should not pick locks that are actively in use, because of the risk of breaking them. They should also be careful about whom they teach. Weyers turns people away when they seem suspiciously eager. Barry Wels, a co-founder of the Dutch chapter, has a security company that opens safes for clients, but he leaves the room when his work is done. “We are never interested in what is inside your safe,” he says on his website. “It is just not our business.”
Hobbyist lock pickers are not burglars, Weyers said, but people who want to master a practical and tactile skill. Once, a local television station profiled TOOOL and asked its members to dress in black turtlenecks and gloves. “That was not going to happen,” Weyers told me. If you truly wanted to get into a locked space, he pointed out, you would probably break a window or destroy the lock with a drill or a crowbar—unless, that is, you are dealing with certain American doorknobs, which Weyers considers inferior. “You will be able to open them after tonight,” he told me.
I did not mean to pair these two articles. Only the time I finished the first paragraph, I decided they belonged together.
Read Model Behavior, an interview with George Saunders, if you want to know why we should not be using AI for writing and why writing matters. Maybe you will not agree with me that George Saunders is a genius, but there is enough common sense for those think about Saunders differently than I do.
Drew Calvert's Literature Is Not About You (Commonweal Magazine)is here because how he takes down self-help books relates in my mind with this bit of Saunders:
When I read a novel or story, what do I want? I want the writer’s full experience, as expressed in the subterfuge of a made-up story. I want her life experience, her aesthetic feelings (and even biases); I want that subtle record, that is there in her prose, of every book she’s read and where and when she read it, and how it subtly altered that younger version of her—how it moved her and changed the voice in her head—I want all of that, and I want it from a person. That’s its whole value, that it comes from another person. She and I are in communication....
What Calvert wrote was:
In May, during an audience at the Vatican, Pope Leo connected the practice of serious reading to the “culture of encounter.” I find this phrase useful for explaining what I value about the transfer of consciousness between an author and a reader or the deep sense of compassion one can feel for a fictional character. The problem with self-help is that in offering solutions, diagnoses, boundaries, and methods, it protects suffering readers from a genuine encounter. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn calls that tendency in therapeutic culture “gnostic escapism.” In Ars Vitae, a book that attempts to wrest philosophy back from the corporate festival crowd and YouTube intellectuals, she makes a persuasive argument against that ancient heresy, which claims to offer access to a secret knowledge beyond the “hurly burly” of human experience. Gnosticism, or “knowingness” (the red pill, the life hack, the silver-bullet insight) “destroys revelation, and revelation is the necessary ingredient to transform the constitution of a self to a soul.” For Lasch-Quinn, the antidote is Neoplatonism. In particular, the work of Plotinus, who accused the Gnostics of arrogantly treating life as a puzzle they could solve instead of the mystery it is. The same accusation could be leveled against the authors of many popular psychology books.
Encounter. Experience. Communication. Life as a mystery.
Several weeks ago, the instructor of my Friday class (my group “therapy”) mentioned he thought cars would be all self-driving in the near future. I have been chewing that since then. These two pieces seem supportive of my conclusion that we want lives without experience, without any need to learn skills, to be self-contained in our own fantasies, to have things done to us rather than us doing them. The world of Wall-E made flesh. That should be enough to make me queasy, but is not such a world the promise of AI? Could AI be meant to be our ultimate self-help literature?
Writing can be tedious. It can be tiresome to sit down with pen and paper. Your hand cramps. The pen bleeds ink. Or you start typing and notice your posture is truly and utterly poor. My grandmother would be horrified.
Orwell likened writing a book to a “long bout of some painful illness.” As Rose Horowitch put it in The Atlantic, writing “is not merely the act of transcribing fully formed thoughts—if it were, it wouldn’t be hard.” It instead “exposes flabby thoughts and shoddy reasoning. And the time and focus it takes to form thoughts into words, sentences, and paragraphs allow the author to make new connections and discover new insights.”
But the hard part of anything does something good for your brain. I saw it up close as a Spanish tutor. Someone was trying to recall the word for soldier, soldado. They couldn’t get it, and I wouldn’t give it to them. I asked them to think about what they were doing when they first learned the word. It probably took five minutes of this word being on the tip of their tongue, which is excruciating. There is a fine line between being a teacher and being an asshole.
***
Good writing forces logic. To write clearly for you, the reader, I have to be clear to myself first. Do I have a good thought process? Is there good logic? What counterarguments can people make against my points? Have I thought through my counters to those counters?
I often write about topics under the larger umbrella of wisdom, in the hopes of helping people live lives aligned with meaning and purpose. Well, what is wisdom? The psychologists Paul Baltes and Ursula Staudinger called it “an expert knowledge system concerning the fundamental pragmatics of life.” Monika Ardelt read that and said, essentially, no. Wisdom “should not be reduced to expertise.” It’s “an integration of cognitive, reflective, and affective personality characteristics.” One camp says wisdom is something you know. The other says it’s someone you are.
Oh, how I agree with wisdom is more than expertise. And I agree this is what we should be working on as human beings. This I came to by being unwise.
My own working definition, from scribblings back in August, argues that wisdom is the craft of living well — a skill and expertise in dealing with the fundamental, uncertain, value-laden (inevitable) problems of life — which, I realized while writing this, means that wisdom can be learned. Possibly true. Certainly a position to test. And ultimately a realization that I still don’t totally know how to define wisdom. Maybe those experts were on to something.
As I agree with this advice:
Write more often. Journal in some shape or form. Eat your word vegetables. You don’t need a perfect leather-bound book, the smell of rich mahogany, or the zen of Malte Marten handpan music to find five minutes to put words on a page.
This blog exists as my journal as well as a source of information for whoever deigns to read me. My writing projects in prison straightened out my thinking. What I write now maintains that streak.
People need to be creative, doing otherwise stunts us. Seek wisdom because that belongs to humans. For all the vaunted abilities of AI, no one speaks of wisdom.
Admit there is something tempting about having a lizard brain. Like you might tempt Eve with an apple. That you can slither around and stick your tongue out. That under the fat and the sagging muscles you are a secret T. Rex.
Neuroanatomically and behaviourally, if not yet in the popular consciousness, the idea that we all have a lizard brain has been thoroughly discredited. Yet despite the mounting evidence, and the success of more recent frameworks, the triune brain endures. Shockingly, it is still being widely taught in introductory psychology textbooks (as one journal article mischievously titled “Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside” showed). The study also highlighted some of the pitfalls of allowing the hypothesis to go unchallenged, which include giving students a false sense of how evolution unfolds, and promoting the idea that human beings have a monopoly on “rational” actions such as deferring gratification – sacrificing a short-term reward for a longer-term gain.
In the lengthy debate on foreign policy and global tensjons, the US commentator repeatedly goaded Rees-Mogg over the smallness of the UK armed forces and suggested Russia was more powerful. Rees-Mogg explained that the UK economy was bigger and made the case that Britain and western allies had to support Ukraine and deter Russian aggression.
***
The interview has raised eyebrows in the US as well as Britain, with Mike Huckabee, the Republican and US ambassador to Israel, posting on X: “When it seemed impossible for Toxic Tucker to descend deeper into the sewer here he goes opining that UK should have let Nazis take over. Forget that Hitler murdered 11 million people? I thought Tucker was against killing? He needs help. Serious help.”
That Tucker Carlson does need.
But between simplistic ideas about the brain and simpletons like Carlson, I want to bring up something that has been bothering me. That is that size matters always. Carlson seems to equate Russia's size with might. Ukraine has shown size is easily turned into the status of stumblebum.
It is all about how you use that size. Trump and Hegeseth are just as confused by that idea as was Stalin about the pope's divisions. If size were all that counts, the Spanish Armada would have beaten the English; the Persians defeated the Greeks; and the English would never have ruled India.
Two months after OpenAI disclosed the accidental hacking of Hugging Face, the ChatGPT maker is still working to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters.
The latest example came on Friday when OpenAI said its agents had leaked 53 images from ChatGPT users. OpenAI declined to say if the images were AI-generated or identified real people. It also declined to say when the images were posted.
The Saudi-led JFC’s broader transformation in C6ISR – the systems connecting command, communications, intelligence and combat capabilities – target development and faster sensor-to-shooter integration has changed the military equation since 2015. At the same time, sustained Houthi escalation has exhausted the restraint that governed Saudi policy for years. The major Saudi-led campaign now taking shape will therefore begin against an adversary whose external command support is already under sustained attack.
That is the decisive difference. The Russian-Iranian system sustaining and amplifying Houthi military power is being degraded before major Saudi-led air, land and naval operations are fully under way, while the tactical failures exposed at Mokha are being corrected within the Saudi-led JFC. The Houthis exploited a compromised command system once; they are now being forced to fight while the external system that magnified their own effectiveness is systematically dismantled.
That’s a comment worth pondering as the political class around the world tries to figure out what happened to moderation. Leaders who do not hide their disrespect for democratic institutions are in power from Turkey to India to Argentina, while parties towards the middle of the ideological spectrum seem mired in trouble almost everywhere. Two thirds of German voters support none of the three parties that have framed political debate in Germany for nearly 80 years, even as Israel is torn by a debate about whether its government is becoming authoritarian. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that elected officials don’t care what they think. As Daron Acemoglu asserts: ‘What we are witnessing isn’t a failure just of democracy but of liberal democracy.’
Acemoglu, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is well known for his work on political economy. His 2012 book Why Nations Fail, written with economist James A. Robinson, then at Harvard University, became a best-seller, and he shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics with Robinson and Simon Johnson, also of MIT, for their research on how social institutions affect prosperity. Acemoglu’s new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy?, goes further, laying out the shortcomings of modern liberalism and offering ideas about how to avoid a slide into authoritarian rule. ‘Liberalism is worth saving and remaking,’ he insists.
***
Against that background, Acemoglu calls for a ‘working-class liberalism’ that pays less attention to ‘thought policing’ and more to building community, using narratives that bring people together rather than polarising them. ‘Shared moral principles are more likely to emerge when people see themselves as having agency in choosing such principles and when they feel that they are part of both local communities and a broader shared identity,’ he asserts.
Acemoglu is far from alone in his critique. Many trees have fallen victim to ruminations about the shortcomings of liberal democracy. As befits a book by an economist, What Happened to Liberal Democracy? draws more heavily on the economics literature than most books of this genre, but its conclusions are far from unique.
The survey went out to 290 superintendents throughout the state in August; 144 responded.
Other solutions raised in the report are creative: one superintendent said they planted prairie grass instead of mowing to save money on fuel, removed televisions to save on electricity and launched a student-run business to generate new income.
Nearly all of the respondents said they anticipate negative financial impacts from SEA 1, while a clear majority expressed similar concerns about universal school choice and the level of funding the General Assembly will allocate to public schools next year.
Schools would need anywhere from 1% to 25% in one-time funding increases to maintain the level of services expected by the community, plus an average of 6% in ongoing increases thereafter, the report found.
***
Others are considering delayed maintenance, reduced staff raises, cuts to transportation services, electives and field trips or consolidation. One raised the possibility their district won’t be able to sustain student internships, career pathways or dual-credit offerings.
In rural districts, superintendents say they worry lawmakers are pressuring them to consolidate or close schools.
“I feel like funding is bleeding the small schools dry,” one superintendent wrote. “I am skeptical that this is simply a push to consolidate.”
Something for me, us, to think about: How Weimar Germany’s Proportional Democracy Put Hitler in Power. I favor proportional representation. Frankly, I assume the proportions being divided between our same-old main parties. One silver lining from the essay:
As the divided Weimar government continued to prove itself incapable of dealing with the myriad economic problems facing the country, more Germans began to search for radical solutions. By 1923 the Nazi Party had attracted more than fifty thousand members, among them the widely admired World War I general Erich Ludendorff. Hitler and Ludendorff believed the party was powerful enough to stage a revolution.
“Divided.” Nationally, here, a multitude of parties seems unlikely. Maybe in the states, but even then not so many. Still, a reminder not to trust in one solution to a complicated problem.
So, allow me to point you toSTAR voting (Wikipedia). We cannot change the type of representation without changing how we vote. This seems a better choice than instant run-offs, which interested me for over a decade.
In the conventional narrative about decarbonisation, net zero is going to be achieved by building lots of wind farms and installing lots of solar; batteries are going to fix the intermittency problems when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow; and it is all going to be cheap and can be delivered at sufficient scale to keep to the 2015 Paris Agreement target of well below 2°C of global warming. There would need to be a bit of gas, little or no coal, and, more recently, a good dose of nuclear, now added even by the greenest environmentalists. It would all be win-win-win – cheaper, more secure – and it would deal with climate change.
In reality, it will be none of these things. Countries such as the UK and Germany, which have pushed hardest for wind and solar, have some of the highest electricity costs in the developed world. Security of supply cannot be sufficiently guaranteed with short-term batteries, and the results have been more about deindustrialisation and territorial carbon production than about what really matters: carbon consumption. Made in China (primarily with coal) replaces Made in the UK or Made in Germany. The renewables supply chain dependency is now all about China, too, which produces around 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels and 80 per cent of the batteries and has a stranglehold on the refined critical minerals.
***
It was not supposed to be like this. Energy efficiency was supposed to enable energy intensity per unit of output to fall. Energy efficiency was supposed to reduce the demand for energy and, as we approached the 2050 targets, new technologies would allow all those cheap renewables to overcome their intermittency.
This part of the narrative turns out to be wrong – and for two reasons, one theoretical and one about the changing economic composition of future economies. The theoretical reason is easy to state and devastating in puncturing the demand-side conventional narrative. If energy use is more efficient, it means less energy is needed per unit of output. This is equivalent to a fall in the price of energy. If price falls, demand goes up, not down. We can all consume more energy for the same budget. This is the Jevons paradox and it is rock solid. Energy efficiency improved massively in the 20th century and into this century, and it spurred a massive increase in the demand for energy.
To this is added a further blow: what we are now witnessing more generally across economies is a technology shift towards new energy-intensive industries not seen since the coming of steel in the late 19th century. These new technologies require lots of energy and they require it on a firm, not intermittent, basis. The energy they need is overwhelmingly electricity, and so electrification is rapidly advancing in those countries grasping the new economic opportunities and economic growth they may bring. That electricity is still generated overwhelmingly by fossil fuels (and fossil fuels still make up about 85 per cent of global energy supplies). Electric does not necessarily mean renewables, and intermittent generators like wind and solar do not meet the new AI industries’ demand for the five nines – electricity that is 99.999 per cent reliable.
***
Recognising the awesome nature of the challenge in front of us may be frightening. People may want to close their ears. But ignoring the facts does not make it go away. Climate realism is the first step in rebasing climate policies, and facing up to what is likely to be coming. It is much more helpful than chanting mantras about ‘1.5°C’, ‘2°C’ and ‘net zero 2050’. It also tells us that adaptation is a very urgent need. Perhaps if the global population starts to fall at the end of the century and new technologies come along, it may all turn out well – eventually. But in the meantime, we face a doubling of energy demand by 2050, and that is much more likely to happen than limiting climate change to 2°C by then.
Realism here feels too much like fatalism, and, with me, fatalism underlies my depression. I have been doing my best not to return to that kind of thinking so I am not inclined to follow here.
The first thing is to curtail AI data centers. That seems most likely considering current politics.
Second is an old idea of mine that we must not only get from fossil fuels but also from their monoculture of energy supply. The future cannot be only wind or solar or nuclear or any other alternative to fossil fuel, but a combination of them. And, yes, there may need to add some oil and natural gas. Promoting just one method of energy production seems more conducive to business than anything useful for the species. Utility regulators are long accustomed to dealing with companies that generate power from one source.
Third, expanding wind and solar may be held up by state legislatures acting on behalf of power companies. It is my understanding that Indiana gives excess power generated by the solar panels of private citizens to utility companies. I think that has to blunt the development of solar power in Indiana. Consider this: that every house in a city generated most of its own energy, that any excess was retained within the city. Would that not then lower the carbon useage of the city?
I keep thinking climate change needs to be fitted into “Chases Ashes”. The number of heat advisories this year brought it home to me.
The notion of Dresden as an “innocent” city, devoted strictly to culture
and the arts, whose factories manufactured mostly porcelain figurines
and dinnerware along with other luxury goods, such as cigarettes,
cameras, sewing machines, and bicycles, is a myth as well. Almost all of
these factories had been converted to support the war effort.
Cigarette-making machines were adapted to produce bullets. Companies
that made camera lenses focused on creating better, more accurate bomb
sights. Radio, bicycle, and sewing machine makers produced precision
machine tools key to war technology. Even a famous artist’s colony and
school in the northern part of the city had ceased making furniture and
crafts, instead building wooden tail assemblies for planes as metal
became scarce. The colony’s well-known Festival Hall had become an SS
barracks. By 1944, Dresden contained at least one hundred and
twenty-seven factories that manufactured war material, and most
Dresdeners were employed in war work or armaments factories.
My Own Life was published posthumously in 1777 along with his close friend Adam Smith’s Letter to Strahan, which,
with Hume’s blessing, completed the account of Hume’s final period of
illness, in a public letter addressed to Hume’s publisher, William
Strahan. Hume and Smith had been in close contact for over 25 years and,
because they lived in different cities, many of their letters have been
preserved. In January 1776, the famously rotund Hume informed Smith
that he had lost five stone, or 70 pounds. Hume’s doctor, Joseph Black,
told Smith that his patient suffered from night fevers, internal
bleeding and severe stomach problems. The evidence indicates, however,
that despite his failing health, Hume continued to host dinners and
visit friends. The Scottish playwright John Home commented that ‘[Hume]
talks of his illness, of his death, as matters of no moment… I never saw
him more cheerful, or in more perfect possession of all his faculties,
his memory, his understanding, his wit.’
In an interview with witnesses, officials claimed that Weaver was inside
a home, pointed a pink handgun at them and fired around six to 10 shots
inside the home. A video of the incident reportedly showed Weaver
holding the gun and firing multiple shots.
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 5 sch 8/15/2026]
The first woman I lived with was T2. We spent a year living together during which time the relationship became an engagement, soured, and came to an end. I went into a partnership of which she disapproved (and her disapproval was proven by 1997), and which became a major burden on us. I worked way too many hours computerizing the practice. Then she had the miscarriage.
We had announced our engagement and her pregnancy to my family at Thanksgiving. The miscarriage happened on Christmas Eve, My reaction rankled her. I thought it was a repeat of TJ's last miscarriage, that T2 did not come close to death I found a relief. She mourned the loss of the child. I thought it was another pain for me to endure. That I preferred her to the child was never well communicated by me.
As I wrote, the situation soured. We had a house we rented. We had a rather nasty fight one day. I moved upstairs as I did not trust her to pay the remainder of the lease. My paranoia reinforced my emotional barricades. We left the house on good terms, but not nearly as good as when we entered.
We would date for the remainder of her stay in Anderson. We did try for another pregnancy, but sex under pressure never promoted a good performance out of me. It was too much of what sex should never be - work. I dated Judy M for the first time during this period and the Rose of Spiceland, and I saw a bit of JH. She almost got a second marriage proposal from me during one night in Indianapolis. When she announced her leaving Anderson first, I kept my mouth shut.
I asked T2 for some help after my incarceration. She agreed and then stopped answering my calls. Here is one friend my legal troubles cost me.
I must mention Judy M. If for no other reason than a public apology. She has been in and out of my life since 1996. She was the other woman who proposed I marry her. She would get annoyed with me, then she would call me. I liked her company, but ti was another case where there was no approval of me by her children. Those two I never met until after I got married. I came close to calling her in 2009, I did not because I would have to admit my marriage was at an end. She sought happiness so desperately, sometimes inappropriately, that we did fit well together. I trusted her as much as I did JH. I hope she takes care of herself.
Did I mention the return of LAH? She haunted the fringes now. Sporadically a friend, but no longer a romantic interest.
Linda lasted the summer of 1995, but she cut deeply. Who would think such a short time would have such an impact? Older than I was, and with a broad, warm smile. I lost myself in that smile. How e met was unorthodox even by my standards.
I was working on Sunday evening at the office. Without any expectations of seeing another human being, I wore an old T-shirt and ratty jeans. I was in a foul mood when a friend called me. He was a bouncer at Elliott's (a nightclub/restaurant once located at the southwest corner of Main and 7th Streets in Anderson) and told me I needed to get down there to meet a woman. A drink sounded good, my curiosity was piqued. My mood did not improve when he introduced me to this short, very drunk brunette, wearing a blue dress. When she spoke she had an alto, not quite as husky as Marlene Dietrich's. She told me about her boyfriend dropping her and moving off to Illinois. She asked me if I liked sex, but using a more direct Anglo-Saxon word. The way she said it was too damn cute. My bad mood ended. I said I did and asked if she wanted to leave. No, she was with her cousin and could not leave. She kept on amusing me. Her question about sex was repeated a few more times. She used my full name, and I never thought Samuel sounded so good. I asked her to take a walk outside to get away from the club's noise. We went down to the Riverwalk, stopping at the pavillion below the jail. We kissed, we petted, and then I gave her a very good tongue lashing. My name came from her through gritted teeth asking me to stop. I did. We giggled a bit, she smoothed down her skirt, and as we walked back to Elliott's I put her blue thong in my pocket. I left her at the club with a kiss and a date for the following night. That began a beautiful summer.
Linda told me she wanted no seriousness. The boyfriend gone to Illinois had been all too serious a breakup. I had no problem with that. She was laughter and comfortablenmess after so much gloom and uncertainty. By the end of summer, I was head over heels with her. The way she called my name was musical and I wanted to keep hearing it. At the end of the summer, Linda told me she was moving to Illinois and marrying the former boyfriend.
Linda stuck me hard. It was a mystery I never solved why she went back to the old boyfriend. My bouncer friend told me it was about submission and cocaine. I had seen no sign of either.
Not since TJ had anyone's leaving left me with such a gaping hole. The
Rose of Spiceland and Judy M caught me on the rebound. T1 was still
around. More importantly, I had work and the need to make money.
[T1 is still around in a way. I saw her this Spring, not a word from her since then. I tried looking up Judy M when I was released from the halfway house. She had moved around and I have found no trace of her. The bouncer friend I found had died while I was gone, so Linda remains a mystery but her influence has faded to a wispy memory. Her most direct influence was that I no longer had any expectations of marriage, of settling down to a quiet normal life. That woman could be a hobby but that work was my real life. sch 8/15/2026.]
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 4 sch 8/14/2026]
Dawn disappeared on me almost 20 years ago because I foolishly said something about finally having sex with a girl from my high school. She got upset; saying something about competition. So much for saying a factual truth about how things had changed in my life. I thought she was funny, beautiful in a skinny brunette way, and eminently loveable. She was brightness to KA's dourness. Too bad my foot fits so well in my mouth. I learned later she married and had children and was quite happy with her life. Another exhibit of women doing better away from me. I applaud her success.
T2 came into my life in FEbruary of 1991. How did I first become aware of her? I cannto remember now. She was another lawyer in Anderson. I remember her telling me that she noticed me first. Our first date occurred at Anderson's Nile Restaurant. She wore a low-cut blouse with a red bra. When she leaned forward it was difficult to avoid noticing that particular combination.
We belonged to the same profession, she had ended a bad relationship, and I was becoming disillusioned with KA. At this time, I was seeing KA and two other women. One ended quickly, while the other continued a while longer. That relationship ended the night we pulled up at my apartment with this girlfriend's face in my lap and KA in my apartment. KA was supposed to be home with her children. (We only went out on the weekends when her ex-husband had visitation.) I displeased the date by taking her home instead of us confronting KA. No way I wanted my date put in that position. When I came to my apartment, KA and I had an argument over a letter from T2. I patched things rather than deal with her anger. Now, only T2 and KA remained. Then it was only T2. She stayed somewhere in my life until my incareration.
T2 equaled T1 in height. They met once at JH's house, specifically her kitchen. T1 and T2 squared off across from each other. There was a singular look on T1's face as she took in T2; a combination of amusement and curiosity and speculation. What we men generally describe as catty. T2 stood next to me which left me unable to see her face, but I felt her bristle a bit. JH stood between and away from them with her back to the sink, a bit drunk, and trying to be nonchalant with her amusement at my discomfort. I waited for all hell to break loose. Then the smell of marijuana wafted into the kitchen from JH's sister and friends in the living room. T2 suggested we depart. We said our goodbyes, Once in the car, she noted she had never been to any place where her boyfriend had slept with three of the four women there. I did not mention I once flirted with JH's sister. T2 never said anything specific about T1.
sch
[Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 6. sch 8/14.]
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 3 sch 8/14/2026]
JH and I were involved sexually before I went off to law school, before TJ broke up with me, during my time in law school, and after her divorce. No details are needed by you. She even proposed to me. I sometimes wonder what have happened if I had taken her proposal seriously. Nowadays, she and another friend of mine have been deeply attached for over a decade. When she took up with him, we started talking; a a bit of pique and shard words. Neither speak to me any longer.
Cindy F. and Connie W. came into my life about the same time. I cannot remember who came first. I like to think it was Connie, who nicely sent me on my way as she went back to her ex-boyfriend. Both were blondes; Connie was kind with a broad smile as she orgasmed. Cindy was none of that.
Filled with divrocee's resentment, Cindy came riding hard and furious and left quickly, too. JH warned me against her; Cindy being a first cousin. She was the first anti-TJ.
I lost track of Connie until her murder. She came home from work to have her soon to be ex-husband shoot her as she walked to her house. There had been a protective order - so much for them. Then he killed himself. The deaths of many people might improve the world. Hers did not.
The friend now so attached to JH introduced me to KA. It was a wild time with threesomes and oral sex in cars being turn ons for her. On our first date, she told me she had had a husband and did not need another, nor did her children need another husband. I took this seriously, even if she quietly changed her mind about the husband bit. She is one of two women toward whom I have some resentment. Because I relied on her statement of what she wanted. She changed her mind by the end of our relationship. By then, she was telling friends of mine of her intent to marry me within the next six months. Too bad she had played the tight-mouthed, too jealous, humorless girlfriend for too long by this time. If she had come and made an outright offer, things could have been different for her. KA made another mistake by not involving her children in the marriage question. My mother did not marry again until all three of us children approved. I would not marry a woman who with children unless they approved of me. So, we did not marry. Not liking the feeling of chains, at one point I was dating three other women at the same time. Our ending was not pretty. She began acting more irrational than usual. She informed me that the wild sex was just to please me. If so, she had been a great actress, the enthusiasm in her eyes did not seem easily faked. This angered me as I had never asked anyone to do anything they did not want to do. We broke up.
Several years ago, KA turned up and asked me to get her divorced from her second husband. I did. She never finished paying her bill. Go figure that out. KA was the second anti-TJ in many ways. She has been one of three who might have actually helped my career.
sch
[Since writing this KA is one of two of my ex-girlfriends I would like to speak with. As time went by, questions grew and I would liek answers, but not enough to hunt her down.
JH died in 2015. I omitted one conversation with had in 2008 or 2009 and the one time I saw her about the same time. I failed to follow up with the phone conversation just as I failed to speak with her when I saw her. She died from cirrhosis of the liver. Her boyfriend did not tell me she was ill. I wish he had it would have motivated me to change the course of my life. Since her death, I have given up any thoughts of new romantic attachments. I am not convinced that anyone's attachment to me did them any good. More importantly, that I am not that good of a friend. JH was a far better friend to me than I was to her. The boyfriend has become a former friend of mine. I suppose he wants to avoid any possible taking up with my ex-wife. He once turned down T1's advances because she was an ex-girlfriend of mine. When he told me this, I emphasized ex-girlfriend, so perhaps ex-wives do not count or he is too ashamed to speak with me. What he does not understand is that his letting JH drink herself to death angers me.
Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 5. sch 8/14.]
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 2 sch 8/14/2026]
I spent most of 1988 licking my wounds over T1. There was an encounter with Cindy—a wonderfully erotic and tender pair of encounters - but she would not go out with me again. There was a bit of shared history from college that she could not get over. She never knew that she had just to snap her fingers. Delicate, sweet Cindy married in 2008 or 2009. I wish her well.
And there was an encounter with Shelly about then. Questions raised since high school got an answer of sorts. Having dated what seemed like all my friends. I was curious about her charms. She proved TJ's theory that great sex requires love, passion. I would go so far as to say that good sex requires affection for one another. Never go to bed with a woman who does not laugh.
Then I spent a considerable time mooning over LAH again. She would invate and then push away when I got too close.
And then I met Paula of Bloomington while working for a bill collector. Her wit led me to ask her for a date. She possessed all the energy and loveliness of TJ. Sandy-haired and buxom. Wonderfully energetic in bed with a habit of scratching one's back. Her two children were her life. If I had the nerve then to become a stepfather; it would have been an interesting marriage. I lost track of Paula after 1998. She shared another quality with TJ: the world was with her in it. Perhaps my affection for Bloomington has a lot to do with Paula.
I think time has come Regina. Another on/off relationship with her for a few years. I lost track of her between 1993 and 2008. I saw her at the Madison County Government Center. She was even livelier than when we dated. Like T1, she was about 5'10”. Of women I should have married, she was number 3. Regina had the temper to keep me in line, the brains to keep me from getting bored, and a sex drive to keep us both busy. Unlike any other, the end of our relationship was not primarily because of my emotional disabilities. No, Regina felt her being African-American would cause me problems. Not that she ever asked me how I felt. She would tell my friend JH that I was the only white guy she would go out with. Regina never knew how much I loved her.
sch
[When I returned from prison, I found out Paula died in 2010. She had health problems when I knew her. Regina was the onlyex-girlfriend to write me in prison. Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 4 sch 8/14/2026]
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 1 sch 8/14/2026]
KH threw a New Year's party in Anderson to which he invited me and T1. Not as a couple, not as a matchmaking venture. I have not mentioned T1 was 5'10”, had light-brown hair; that night she wore slacks, an Oxford shirt, a pink sweater, and a thin black leather tie. We drank, chatted, and flirted. I could not resist reminding her about her seeing me on her back porch and ruining her fun at a party in the summer. She blushed as pink as her seater. We were both intoxicated when midnight passed and she suggested I follow her back to her Muncie aprtment.
She was 21, and I learned a lot from her. T1's favorite movie was9 1/2 Weeks. She had the novel as well. I got a hint of what was to come that first night when she told me to tie her up. Clueless, I wrapped the tie around her thigh. She taught me different in the following months.
The relationship stopped at the end of the school year with a couple of eruptions after that. I have not heard much from her since I married. Although T1 married a fellow who did not like me and has been married the second-longest of my friends, there were vibes given off that she disapproved of my marriage. I think like most of my ex-girlfriends, she did better without me than with me. I find solace in that.
However, she has a more current reason for being angry at me. T1 is the mother of my only son. He contacted me through Facebook; I expected a phone call and never contacted him before my arrest. She had opted for an open adoption, so he knew who I was. His birth ended my sexual relationship with T1 and the start of our friendship.
What followed was a bit more muddled.
sch
[I looked up T1 this year. It was a bit surreal. Yes, it had been over, or about, 20 years since I saw her. She did not recognize me. She had no interest in speaking with me, but was not outright rude. About our son, she made it clear that they had not spoken in years. Our son knows how to reach me; he has not. I do not think it would be good for him to be associated with me, so I stay silent. Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 3. sch 8/14/2026]
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars.sch 8/14/2026]
Gunshy as I was from breaking up with TJ, I did not hurry into another romantic relationship with any woman. I blamed myself for all that had gone wrong.
I got attached to LAH during my second semester of law school. She was Bones back then. Like me she came from Central Indiana. Unlike any of our other classmates. Blonde hair, firm breasts, thin, who was always being hailed home on weekends by her mother. Scared and lonely as I was at law school. We had one date while in law school. She transferred to the IU Indianapolis Law School for her second year. I took her out a few times during the summer of 1985. It was difficult to ignore her. I dropped by one time, she wore jeans with the seat ripped out and a white cotton T-shirt that only accentuated her breats. I came close to those breasts during that summer. I lay on the floor of her parents' basement looking at the first naked breasts I had seen since the previous year. Only I made the mistake of smiling. (What else could one do when confronted by such a beautiful, wondrous sight?) She stood up, got dressed, and had me leave soon after. She thought I was laughing at her.
That began a relationship that lasted on and off with me dealing with her mental health issue and getting repaid with scorn until 2005. It ended when I told her I was to marry. She said I would end up in the gutter. Why did it go on for so long? It was not sex. We made it to bed only twice, then it was platonic. It was me who suggested she take up women. No, LAH had no other friends, and I thought I could help her. I must admit that her prophecy came true. She played with my head like it was a revolver. My friends made it clear that if I ever let her back in my life they would drop me. I hope her mental health is now better than mine.
The one who saved me was E. She came after me. I can say it is a very pleasant surprise to find a naked woman in one's walk-in closet. We remained friends but drifted apart as I went south and she remained in northern Indiana. I wish I ha felt financially comfortable enough to have taken up an offer she made me in 2009. She wanted me to take time off and stay on her farm. Sorry, I did not do so E. The failure belongs solely to me.
T1 came into my life almost accidentally. Friends thinking I needed a feminine distraction invited me to a party in Muncie to meet a sure thing. (Which brings to mind Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing, and why is it seldom seen nowadays?) That was T1's roommate. Only she was too blonde, too thin, and too vacuous to interest me. Nor did I pay much attention to T1, she was attached to someone else and my mind was on TJ. This party was the longest time I spent in Muncie since breaking up with TJ. I stood on the back porch of T1's second floor apartment, looking over the neighborhood. I was only a few blocks from where I had disasterously impregnated TJ. I left soon after. I drove around the places in Muncie TJ and I had frequented in the old days (something I would do even after I finally married.)
I did catch T1's eye. Seems she and her boyfriend were below me engaging in sex when she looked up and saw me standing there. I became a coitus interruptus without becoming aware of it. My mind, my eyes were on 1984. I did not know what I had done until months later, after a call from KH telling what had transpired below me. It gave me a good laugh and a little guilt at spoiling T1's fun. The next time we met things went differently.
sch
[Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 2. sch 8/14/2026]
I got out and about yesterday. I fixed the problems with Xfinity, had brunch at Jersey Mike's and shopped at Aldi's.
I had to schlep my groceries from University to Riverside, a walk about 4 short blocks, and that did me in for most of the day.
It was a gloomy day and humid. It was one of those Indiana's days when it's like living in a warm, damp sponge.
I slept most of the afternoon and into the evening. Then I could not sleep. I watched a bit more of Penny Dreadful. I had seen most of it years ago and am finishing it up. I like its variations on the idea of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It also made an interesting comment on Frankenstein, that he could create but had no interest in nurture. There is something to think about in that; especially in light of Mary Shelley being Frankenstein's creator.
I went down to the convenience store when I finally felt the energy to move about. A blue, clear sky above, a coolness in the wind, and a pleasant deficit of humidity.
The time since has been spent on reading online articles and answering emails. I do not feel like I have the energy to work on a short story that I have in the works. Perhaps the article.
Thank you for sending "After Making Landfall" to CRAFT for consideration. We appreciate the opportunity to review your work. At this time, however, we must say no to this piece. Best of luck placing this one elsewhere soon.
There was some debate during the group session last week about what was meant by a hundred year flood, and I learned with were all wrong. U.S. Geological Survey's The 100-Year Flood explains:
"100-year floods can happen 2 years in a row"
Statistical
techniques, through a process called frequency analysis, are used to
estimate the probability of the occurrence of a given precipitation
event. The recurrence interval is based on the probability that the
given event will be equaled or exceeded in any given year. For example,
assume there is a 1 in 50 chance that 6.60 inches of rain will fall in a
certain area in a 24-hour period during any given year. Thus, a
rainfall total of 6.60 inches in a consecutive 24-hour period is said to
have a 50-year recurrence interval. Likewise, using a frequency
analysis (Interagency Advisory Committee on Water Data, 1982) there is a
1 in 100 chance that a streamflow of 15,000 cubic feet per second (ft3/s) will occur during any year at a certain streamflow-measurement site. Thus, a peak flow of 15,000 ft3/s
at the site is said to have a 100-year recurrence interval. Rainfall
recurrence intervals are based on both the magnitude and the duration of
a rainfall event, whereas streamflow recurrence intervals are based solely on the magnitude of the annual peak flow.
Ten
or more years of data are required to perform a frequency analysis for
the determination of recurrence intervals. Of course, the more years of
historical data the better—a hydrologist will have more confidence on an
analysis of a river with 30 years of record than one based on 10 years
of record.
Integrity has been so diminished of late but I was shocked byCapitalism, as Told by Its Enemies - Phillip W. Magness, Caleb Petitt (The Dispatch). No one is perfect, no human being sees all; therefore, intellectual integrity requires us to admit as much. Mr. Magness and Mr. Pettit provide what such integrity should look like:
A more balanced entry on capitalism for the SEP could have offered a constructive assessment of this subject, its history, and the contemporary state of scholarship around it. Such an entry could still have room for critics in the Marxist and many other socialist traditions, but they would not have the disproportionate dominance found in Cordelli’s piece. Instead, a better entry might include serious engagement with the Scottish Enlightenment precursors to the emergence of market capitalism in the late 18th century, with references to David Hume’s work on trade and currency, as well as something more than superficial references to Adam Smith.
It might also discuss how the ideas we call “capitalism” came to supplant an older mercantilist economic order that used government policies to steer an economy for nationalistic objectives. It might also discuss the period of both political and philosophical contestation between the “capitalist” and “Marxian communist” worlds following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and culminating in the collapse of the latter in 1991. It could discuss in greater depth the theoretical contributions of institutionalist economists like Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Douglass North in the mid-20th century around the theory of a market economy. It might mention Deirdre McCloskey’s work on the Great Enrichment as a positive argument for what we colloquially refer to as capitalism. And it might explore the tensions between these and other theorists of market capitalism. As it stands, this rich and complex academic literature receives nary a mention beyond a few passing citations.
Since capitalism is fundamentally an economic concept, one could reasonably expect to see mainstream economic voices discussed, and competently so, by someone versed in economic theory. There would be a clear description of how profits work both as signals of demand and incentives for entrepreneurship, how competition between firms disciplines market actors, how market prices make economic calculation possible by signaling the relative scarcity of goods in a common denominator, and how government policies contribute to the creation of monopolies. Marxist and socialist critiques of capitalism from the far left would also be balanced with mainstream economic critiques of socialism. Early in the 20th century, there was famously a debate among economists over whether socialist central planners were capable of engaging in economic calculation. The economists who argued against the possibility of socialist calculation ultimately won the debate—though one would not know this from reading Cordelli’s entry.
Welfarist arguments for capitalism would not be confined to a single paragraph, and would describe in detail how free-market capitalism has been responsible for lifting the world out of poverty. The way that capitalism incentivizes entrepreneurship, and the role entrepreneurs play in arbitrage and the creation of new goods and services, would play a more important role than the entry’s single paragraph on Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to make entrepreneurship central to the understanding of economic development and change.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s unwillingness to select an author for the entry on capitalism who could provide a charitable or even neutral assessment of the concept is ultimately unscholarly. In the 20th century, socialism resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people, and capitalism and free markets were the critical factors for lifting billions out of poverty, and yet it is socialism that received the positive encyclopedia entry and capitalism that garnered the hate. Such imbalances could only emerge from an academic environment in which an ideological echo chamber supplants rigorous peer review, and the fashionable socialist perspectives of the professoriate lead it to mistake bad caricatures of a market economy for descriptive fact.
[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars.sch 8/14/2026]
Those looking for prurient information should skip this section. I dated only two women while in law school.
I started Valparaiso University School of Law in August of 1984.
My first semester was rocky. I had been out of school for two years. I was neither certain if I retained any academic abilities nor that I belonged there socially.
Second semester became a disaster. I came back knowing my mother's lung cancer had returned to kill her and that TJ no longer wanted me. I teetered on the brink of flunking out. That I might not survive scholastically was a first for me.
Dad offered to mortgage his house. I turned him down. I spent the summer working for him so I could be close to Mom. I got myself onto law review by way of the law review's case comment writing competition. (By the way, I consider my contest entry better written than my law review note which is stilted, pedantic, and boring.) I reverted to a pre-TJ mentality for survival: the professors, the school, became the enemy, my opponents.
I survived the summer of 1985 and watching the effects of chemo on Mom. With my attitude towards school, I survived. Even with Mom dying in March 1986 and learning in April that my Great-Aunt Elsie had liver cancer, I made it through.
I stayed with and worked for my father the summer of 1986 so I could spend time with Aunt Elsie. She died a month after I started my Fall semester class. I made it to graduation.
Survive may be a bit of an understatement, as I increased my grade point average and class ranking every semester. This occurred even though in my last year I was on law review, had a part-time job at the undergraduate library, delivered pizzas for about a month, and was a professor research assistant. I always knew how to work.
I thought law school was a serious place for serious people. They were not the educated morons I met at college. To the disappointment of at least one professor, we were not interested in the abstract, scholarly aspects of the law but in careers that could put food on the table. Thankfully, I was at Valparaiso instead of Indiana University-Indianapolis. Valparaiso offered none of the distractions of people and places in Indianapolis.
I think I would have done better for myself had offered the clinical class that it now offers. Anyone actually wanting to practice law needs to take clinicals. They will do themselves great harm by avoiding practical experience.
I will also say that a law school education is one of the best educations anyone can have and more should be exposed to its rigors. However, not everyone should practice law and no one should feel any shame about graduating law school and then foregoing the practice of law. I could not imagine not practicing law. I think now that I was utterly unprepared for the business side of law.
(How to know if you should go into private practice? If you cannot schmooze, if you cannot network with those your business depends upon, then a solo practice is not for you. Also read Jay Foonberg's How To Start and Build A Law Practice.)
Since becoming a felon, I seriously doubt ever being asked back to my law school (or to any other), but for the last twenty years I have wanted to tell law students two words they need for success. Those two words are: cash flow.
I admit creating a serious problem for myself by financing my law school career with student loans. I lost all control over my student loan payments in 1999. I took this path on the advice of my Aunt Mary Ellen's youngest son. Tax policy then allowed deducting student loans. Tax law changed, but being committed to finishing what I started, I took out more loans. Never base any long-term plans on the federal tax law. Doing so truly is building one's foundation on sand.
(Another interruption: with the Great Recession, the firms shed lawyers and student loan debt requires a steady income for younger lawyers. I predict we will be seeing younger lawyers leaving the profession and fewer wanting to go into the profession; law schools will soon find the environment as competitive as we did in private practice. I worry about the smaller cities in Indiana. I have already seen fewer younger lawyers coming into Anderson as solo practitioners. Operating costs have increased. I expect the Anderson paradigm of solo attorneys sharing office space as being extinct by the time I finish my sentence. Which then raises the question of how many people will go without what variety of legal services.)
I left law school for private practice. I had had no plans for myself past graduation. All the reasons I had for law school and going into the legal profession had departed from my life by May of 1987. I was never good at doing things for myself, such selfishness never felt right to me. I had no idea what to do now that I was on my own. No real goals other than to make money. Inertia saved me a lot of thinking, and I was heading back to Anderson.
[It looks like I was not far off the mark in 2010 about new law school students: Law School Enrollment Trends, 1963-2025 (LawHub ). And I was not wrong about law schools, but did not expect it to get worse:
Part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of
America’s “AI Red Lines in Orthodox Theology” project, supported by a
grant from the Future of Life Institute, the panel identified five
Orthodox “red lines” for AI: that it must never replace human
responsibility, never replace human presence, never be confused with the
nous, never reduce the human person to data, and never allow capability
to outpace wisdom.
Fr. John opened his remarks by tracing the
anxieties surrounding AI to older stories about the limits of human
freedom, pointing to the myth of Prometheus and the Book of Genesis.
“The principal lesson gleaned from such texts is that we are not God,” Fr. John said. “Yet, most of us live as if we are God.”
He described a spiritual dimension to
modern technology, calling algorithmic innovation a form of idolatry and
cautioning that the companies developing AI are driven by profit rather
than the wellbeing of those who use their products.
Fr. John connected this reality to a broader anthropocentrism.
“In contrast to the divine mandate in
Genesis for us “to serve and preserve” creation,” he said, “we are
developing AI with the assumption that its sole objective is to serve
and preserve us.” “We need to re-learn what it means to be a
part—unique and indispensable, but one part—of creation. Otherwise, we
will treat the world—both other human beings and the rest of
creation—purely as raw material for consumption and exploitation,” Fr.
John continued.
Fr. John also warned that AI may usher in newer, faster methods of injustice and discrimination.
“Algorithms—especially those that
determine employment, housing, and healthcare—tend to replicate or
reinforce already existing and deeply embedded societal biases,” he
said. “AI is unlike previous technological revolutions—like the printing
press or the television—because it can actually decide whom to help or
heal, whom to overlook or hurt.”
Turning to the distinction between intelligence and nous, Fr. John invoked the patristic separation of “intelligence” (dianoia or mathematical thinking) from “intuition” (noesis
or spiritual understanding). Artificial intelligence, he said, does not
have a complex inner worlds, inner motivations, or an emotional
landscape, and thus questions about meaning or hope will never be
resolved through it.
Fr. John also offered a measured critique of the recent papal encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas.
He observed that its title refers to human greatness rather than the
glory of God, and noted that the piece opens with the story of the Tower
of Babel rather than with the story of God’s covenant with Noah to
preserve creation.
On approaching our creation “in the image
of God,” Fr. John argued for balance. Genesis states that humanity is
formed in God’s image, he said, but the same text also describes
humanity as fashioned “from the dust of the earth,” sharing its day of
creation with every other living creature.
Forgetting we are “inseparably
interconnected with nature,” Fr. John said, leads to a distorted sense
of human exceptionalism that is, at best, a “half-truth.”
The recognition of those churches and communities’ ecclesial nature
outside of the Orthodox Church’s canonical boundaries compels the Church
to be in an unceasing dialogue and collaboration with them, allowing
the Holy Spirit to move all into complete unity with Christ. However,
recognizing the ecclesial nature of other nonorthodox Christian churches
and communions does not sanction, at least for the Orthodox Church, the
practice of intercommunion. The Church’s reluctance to be in
sacramental communion with other Christian churches—despite the
affirmation that they are imperfectly and incompletely members of the
One Church of God—should not be perceived as a sign of arrogance, and
neither should it be a source of Orthodox triumphalism or
self-sufficiency. It does not allow the churches to become complacent
with present relative unity and collaboration. It is a painful reminder
to all that the unity of God’s Church requires the fullness of the
Apostolic faith, life, and witness. Toward this realization, the
churches are called to intensify their prayers so “that all Christians
may work together so that the day may soon come when the Lord will
fulfill the hope of the Orthodox churches, and there will be ‘one flock
and one shepherd’ (Jn. 10:16).
It is in this spirit that we call the faithful of the Orthodox Church
in America—and, through their witness, this nation—to repentance:
repentance for injustices past and present; for the idols of wealth,
comfort, and power that seduce every generation; for the divisions and
enmities that tear at the fabric of common life; and for the ways in
which we have failed to love our neighbors as ourselves. A true
commemoration of a nation’s founding is not mere self-congratulation; it
is a moment of sober examination, of honest confession, and of renewed
dependence upon God.
The Church does not speak this word from a posture of superiority. We
acknowledge our own failures—in charity, in unity, and in the fullness
of our witness to the Gospel. We, too, stand in need of God’s mercy. But
it is precisely because the Church has known the healing power of
repentance that she cannot withhold this word from the world she is
called to serve.
I think therein is an answer to those who can see only America's wrongs and those who pride themselves on being anti-woke. Acknowledging failures must be followed by the repair of damage done. Ignoring our failures is hubris.
There is a Byzantine word that guards this mystery from being turned into propaganda: charmolýpē
“joyful sorrow.” The word sounds paradoxical because it is a paradox,
not of logic but of spiritual truth. It does not describe alternating
moods, as if joy and sorrow take turns. Rather, it names a single,
integrated experience: joy that has not forgotten the Cross, and sorrow
that has not lost the rose scent of the Kingdom. Charmolýpē is
not a decorative nuance of Orthodox piety; it is a discipline of the
heart. It teaches us how to celebrate without arrogance, how to hope
without cruelty, how to speak of victory without becoming triumphalist.
Triumphalism
is a subtle temptation precisely because it borrows the vocabulary of
faith. It speaks easily of “victory,” “chosen people,” “truth,”
“enemies,” “purity,” “greatness.” It appears in religion, ethnicity,
politics, even in the Church’s own self-understanding. Its danger lies
in replacing the Gospel’s disarming power with a familiar one: the power
to dominate, to humiliate, to rank human beings. It imagines that God’s
truth must appear as our superiority, that blessing must look like
strength. In such a climate, the Cross becomes embarrassing—a means to
something more “successful.” Resurrection is reduced to a trophy, and
Christ becomes to a tool.
Our time
offers many examples of this drift, especially in heated political
cultures where leaders are clothed in messianic language: savior,
healer, anointed, the one who alone can fix what is broken. In the
United States, this temptation has become particularly visible in the
way the President has been portrayed by some supporters in
quasi-messianic terms, and at times has spoken in ways that reinforce
such a narrative. The point is not to score partisan arguments, but to
name a theological distortion: the substitution of Christ with a
political image of redemption, where salvation is reduced to the triumph
of power and healing to the defeat of enemies. When Christian language
is recruited to sanctify domination, the Church is no longer teaching
the nations; she is being taught by them.
***
Charmolýpē lives precisely here. Even in resurrection, Christ
is humble. Even in glory, He remains the One who poured Himself out. The
wounds do not disappear as if they were mistakes. They remain, not as
raw pain, but as radiant memory, a witness that love has a cost, and
that the cost was freely embraced. This is why Christian joy cannot
become arrogant. If the Risen Christ carries wounds into eternity, then
the Church has no permission to preach victory as the humiliation of
others, or to present God’s Kingdom as a celebration of our strength. To
proclaim Pascha truthfully is to proclaim a victory that looks, at
first glance, like weakness: a candle flame flickering in the dark.
