In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 My analysis of Iran's drone strike was that one should not overreact.  It was small, calibrated, and intended to fail, based on Iran's strategic need to maintain credibility given Israel's strike on Damascus.  I indicated that Israel's response would be similarly small, and calibrated, in those exact words.  Yet neither side wants an escalation.  Each side merely needs to maintain credibility.  The basic problem with any military engagement, regardless of its initiation, is that the mechanics of brinksmanship are the same.  Brinksmanship is one of the canonical games from Intro Game Theory.  Player 1 moves, and either escalates, or quits.  Then, Player 2 moves, and either escalates, or quits.  Then, "Nature" moves.  Either nothing happens, or based on the number of escalations, there is an increasing probability of a disaster.  Someone's finger slips, some random person down the chain of command does something reckless, whatever.  The more escalations, th

 Dickey Betts has passed away.  Dickey Betts mattered.  Dickey Betts contributed something positive to the world.  He had the fortune to be a part of one of the greatest bands in all of history, and yet the other side of the coin is that by standing next to Duane Allman, and playing guitar alongside Duane Allman, he was the other guy.  In any other rock band, as lead guitarist, he would have been feted as a god.  "Clapton is god?"  Dickey was beyond Clapton, in my opinion, as a writer, and as a player.  Clapton became a star as the lead player first for the Yardbirds and Mayall, then Cream, and only then did he have to stand next to Duane , after establishing himself.  Dickey?  Dickey was there, all along.  I do like Clapton.  Cream, Derek & The Dominoes, and some of that early material?  Good stuff.  Dickey?  Do not overlook how amazing a player Dickey Betts was.  Once Duane passed away, Dickey took the lead, and wrote songs like Ramblin' Man.  Then, eventually, the

 Congress has been interesting for the last few days.  Let us consider. The Senate took up the impeachment of Mayorkas, and quickly dismissed it as the baseless, partisan move that it was.  The House of Representatives impeached Mayorkas because they cannot impeach Biden, so it was a gesture for the hardliners.  The Senate spared everyone.  The GOP did not really need a silly show trial, which would not have turned out well for them, in addition to wasting time, and the Democrats have better things to do, except that they cannot manage to do any of them, but it was interesting to see the positive-sum action. Yet let us turn to the more interesting news.  Speaker Johnson appears to be moving forward on foreign aid packages for both Ukraine and Israel, thereby showing once again that I am wrong and an idiot.  Would this have happened without Iran's strike on Israel?  Probably not, so I could pull the Tetlock maneuver of saying that I would have been right, but for Iran's unpredic

 After October 7, I observed that Israel lived or died by deterrence.  Its strategic imperative was to respond with sufficient force to deter further attacks, including by regional powers.  Israel responded, instead, with so little force that it barely touched Hamas, keeping in mind again that the casualty figures from Gaza are lies .  Israel has abandoned the fight.  Yet, Israel also killed several Iranian military officers in Damascus.  Iran has been fighting Israel through proxies.  They have been providing assistance to Hamas, and while there was initial speculation about their involvement in October 7, subsequent intelligence suggested that Iran was not involved.  Yet both Hezbollah and the Houthis are essentially Iranian proxies, and Hezbollah has been shooting missiles into Israel throughout this conflict, and attacking Israel for a long time.  Israel has been engaged in a proxy war with Iran for years.  Yet the Damascus strike escalated, and Iran responded. There are several wa

 For all practical purposes, the Israel-Gaza War is over.  Israel chose to lose.  They were not defeated.  Hamas has almost no capacity to fight a conventional war because it is a terrorist organization, not a military.  Hamas has barely fought.  Israel simply lost the will to fight, and they have given up.  They are pulling forces out of Gaza, they will not attack Rafah, where Hamas has gathered, and that means Israel has not accomplished its military objectives.  Hamas has achieved its objectives.  Hamas has killed Jews, which is its primary objective.  Hamas has gotten Palestinians killed-- remembering that Hamas celebrates all death, including Palestinians' deaths, and they have used those deaths to unify the world in anti-Semitism, while winning the bet that Israel would be too humane to fight back, as the intrinsic anti-Semitism of humanity would mean that the world would believe any lie to the contrary.  Israel could have won.  They had the firepower to win, but not the will

 I have found K.J. Parker to be a reliable author, but this novel was somewhat disappointing.  Nevertheless, let's see what we can wring from the second book in the Scavenger Trilogy.  The world-building is a little inconsistent, the plotting slow, and the whole thing seems like a detour, but Parker does manage to build to something intriguing by the end, with the continuing story of the amnesiac-probably-god of the apocalypse, Poldarn. The first book followed "Poldarn" as he awakened in a ditch, with no memory.  He got caught up in a series of misadventures in the northern provinces of an empire which is regularly raided by mysterious people from parts unknown, who burn villages to the ground after taking whatever they want.  The main character acquires the name, "Poldarn," which is the name of a god, based on a scam run by the first person he meets, wherein they roll into a village, he pretends to be the god, Poldarn, and they fleece the town for whatever they

 I have been thinking about betrayal lately.  To be sure, many Jews around the world, and in America in particular, have been thinking about betrayal.  To place the topic in a broader context, most Jews consider themselves liberal in both the classical and modern, American sense, "progressive" in the 21st Century rather than 19th/early 20th Century sense, and most have never voted Republican in their lives.  They have supported every civil rights cause and every minority group in their political lives, thinking of themselves as part of a "coalition of the other ," Jews being the quintessential other .  What many 21st Century Jews are only starting to understand is just what it means to be the quintessential other.  It means being so other  that the other others don't consider us other.  To be a true outsider is to be such an outsider as to be excluded from the group of outsiders who sneer at the in-group together.  Under the new and dominant paradigm of politic

 Once upon a time, McCarthyist paranoiacs told horror stories about communist infiltration of every institution of American life.  While there were a few Soviet agents, and a few communists scattered around the country, the paranoiacs were by definition paranoid.  And not in the cool, riffy, Black Sabbath way.  (Watch those industrial machines, because your guitar style will not become as iconic.)  A bit ago, I posted something about Ami Horowitz's rather distressing Sacha Baron Cohen-esque trip to SFSU , showing students' enthusiasm for contributing to the cause of murdering Jews.  Civilians around the world, mind you.  Not even Israelis, just Jews, 'cuz.  The haphazard nature of the stunt, of course, limits the social scientific value, but the fact that he so easily found students enthusiastic about murdering Jews tells you something, and the fact that it is easy, in particular, on leftist campuses (like SFSU), tells you something about ideology, anti-Semitism, and colleg

 Every pompous, self-involved high school student with a science fiction fascination reads Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged .  Maybe not every high school student.  Maybe just boys.  It's a little like Rush.  In fact, given the band's objectivist leanings, it's a lot like Rush.  Self-indulgent, overwhelmingly male, and mostly if you get into it in adolescence, you get out of it by early adulthood because wow is it overwrought.  Actually, I still like Rush, and you can stick your judgment up your 4/4 because I do not care what anyone thinks of my taste, so take that 7 and shove it up your 8. Ayn Rand was not a skilled writer, in the sense of artistic prose, and as a philosopher, I found her to be a long-winded writer.  Philosophically, I subscribe to no particular school of thought, finding value in many thinkers, from Socrates to the Stoics to Kant, and objectivists detest Kant, Stoicism (the actual philosophy, not the colloquial term) and all such philosophies for the sin of

 Joe Lieberman died this week, and as I think through his place in modern American politics, I struggle through my assessment of him.  I never had a high opinion of him, but generally speaking, I judge most politicians harshly.  Time, though, changes how we view people and events.  I still cannot say that I find Lieberman virtuous, but I can at least seek a more sympathetic reading.  Don't look for condemnation.  You may find it anyway, but you don't seek it, and 2024 puts someone like Lieberman in a different perspective. Why?  Because everyone else in American politics is now bonkers. Blah-blah, polarization, blah-blah extremism, OMG, hair-on-fire, yadda-yadda, look at my virtue, look at my virtue, tap tap, dance the dance of the self-righteous, sanctimonious centrist. Get over yourself.  (Myself?)  Also, maybe I should work out a tune to go with that.  It's kind of catchy, no? Anyway, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives started drifting leftward in the