Nathaniel

Nathaniel launched Difficult Run in November 2012 and ran the website alone until August 2013, when he invited the first Difficult Run Editors to join him in adding content to the site. Nathaniel has a background in math, systems engineering, and economics, and his day job is in business analytics. His real interests are science fiction, and theology, however. He is an avid runner, but not a very fast one. He is married to fellow DREditor Ro and they have two little children. In addition to Difficult Run, Nathaniel blogs regularly for Times And Seasons and writes a lot of reviews on Goodreads.

Racism: A Definition and a Critique

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A couple of weeks ago I came across an extremely articulate explanation of perhaps the dominant perspective of racism from the American political left. The explanation comes in the form of an online Powerpoint at the Tumblr of Women of Color, In Solidarity.

It’s a fairly short and straight-forward presentation, and I’m deeply appreciative of how starkly it lays out the case against white privilege, starting with this definition of the key terms:

2013-11-06 Racism Definition

So here we have a very precise definition of racism: it is the institutionalization of discrimination (which is itself the acting out of prejudice). This definition has one very important and straightforward consequence: reverse-racism (i.e. anti-white racism) cannot exist.

2013-11-06 No Reverse Racism

In simple terms: individuals may have anti-white prejudice and may even act on that prejudice (which is anti-white discrimination), but because this discrimination is not built into the structure of our society it’s not institutionalized and therefore doesn’t qualify as racism by definition. The author slammed this point home with one more emphatic slide:

2013-11-06 Tragedy of Victimization

Once again: this is a clear and unambiguous perspective on race and–within its assumptions and definitions–it is consistent and logical.

But it is still deeply, deeply flawed. The flaw will seem subtle at first, but as it ripples through the larger argument it will have profound implications. And the flaw is this: the assumption that the cause of discrimination is animosity. 

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Ender’s Game and Maneuver Warfare

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Biggest real-world use of maneuver warfare: Germans in WW2.
Biggest real-world use of maneuver warfare: Germans in WW2.

Medium’s War is Boring section has an interesting article on the strategic content of Ender’s Game. I’d known that the book was used as an example of leadership skills, but it turns out that it’s also a very good source for modern military theory:

By some strange, serendipitous coincidence, Ender’s Game is the best book on maneuver warfare ever written—and a contemporary of the theory’s renewed prominence. If you’ve ever read the novel, you’ve been exposed to some pretty smart ideas for waging war.

I’ve seen the movie, by the way, and the short-short review is “I liked it.” (Not “loved”.) I’ll write a longer review soon, but probably after I’ve seen it one more time and/or listened to the new Ender Alive audio version. In the meantime, read the rest of this article for an interesting new perspective on the work.

The End of Obama’s Credibility?

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2013-11-05 Obama

The last paragraph of this National Journal article pretty much sums up how I feel:

On history’s scale of deception, this one leaves a light footprint. Worse lies have been told by worse presidents, leading to more severe consequences, and you could argue that withholding a caveat is more a sin of omission. But this president is toying with a fragile commodity: his credibility. Once Americans stop believing in Obama, they will stop listening to him. They won’t trust government to manage health care. And they will wonder what happened to the reform-minded leader who promised never to lie to them.

At this point, I’m well past “I told you so” and just fairly sad about the whole thing. There was so much promise in the Obama campaigns, and so little has actually been delivered. We’re not a nation fundamentally transformed. We’re a nation accelerated down the same path we were already headed on under W. Bush.

Monday Morning Mormonism: Beware Instrumental Beliefs

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2013-11-03 Evolution

This morning I wrote about what we can learn from the mini-controversy around the results of a Pew research packet that appeared to show the different attitudes towards the scientific theory of evolution by religious denomination. Only, as I argue, that’s not what the results show us at all.

Benghazi Update: There Were Special Forces in Libya

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2013-10-31 Benghazi

I have mostly left the Benghazi issue alone. It’s become a bit of a joke, unfortunately. The combination of right wing partisanship and the Administration’s ability to withhold embarrassing information made me think we probably wouldn’t know the real story until someone writes an obscure book about it around 2070 or so, the way that we’re still learning facts about Cold War nastiness this day that most folks don’t seem to care about very much anymore. (Example: the Verona project.)

But this story from the Washington Times seems to present some new facts. It turns out that the closest special forces troops were not stationed across the Mediterranean in Italy. There was a team of 8 (Delta and Seal Team 6) already inside Libya, but they were held back to defend the main embassy in the case of another attack instead of being sent to Benghazi. Two of the eight did actually volunteer to travel with the security team responding and got there in time to assist in the end of the battle, however.

What does this mean? The decision to hold back the forces to defend the main embassy is a tough call I’m not inclined to second-guess without more knowledge, and it’s doubtful they could have arrived in time to have saved Ambassador Stevens. So the right wing dream of proof that Obama let those men die remains unfounded. But this is further evidence that the Administration has lied from day one to save face. From the edited talking points to the false claims that no special ops were in-country, there seems to be clear and consistent evidence that the Obama Administration misled the American people, and probably did so for political gain.

It’s frustrating and disappointing, but I doubt much will come of it.

Mitt Romney Says “I Told You So”

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Mitt Romney

That’s the gist of his recent status update, which is short enough to quote in its entirety:

In the years since the Massachusetts health care law went into effect nothing has changed my view that a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country. Beyond that, had President Obama actually learned the lessons of Massachusetts health care, millions of Americans would not lose the insurance they were promised they could keep, millions more would not see their premiums skyrocket, and the installation of the program would not have been a frustrating embarrassment. Health reform is best crafted by states with bipartisan support and input from its employers, as we did, without raising taxes, and by carefully phasing it in to avoid the type of disruptions we are seeing nationally.

Oh, what could have been…

 

Let the Little Children Come to Me

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2013-10-29 Little Children

In case you needed another reason to love Pope Francis, Buzzfeed has a heartwarming article (complete with GIFs, of course) about what happened when this little guy managed to wander on stage during an official event.

More Americans Lost Coverage in 3 States Than Gained Coverage in 50 States

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2013-10-29 Obama Oops

Forbes has a very blunt piece describing the fact that (so far) many more Americans have lost their coverage thanks to Obamacare than have gained coverage from the program. That’s sort of the opposite of how this whole thing was supposed to work. Of course in time that trend may be reversed, but the folks who got the boot from the coverage they had picked sure aren’t getting it back. Meanwhile, NBC has a shockingly investigative bit of investigative journalism showing that, despite all the promises over the years, the Obama administration has known damn well that this would happen. They wrote the caveat to “grandfather” in existing plans, and they they immediately undermined it. “If you like your plan, you can keep it” has been a lie since day one.

Some observations:

1. It’s a good thing someone managed to shut the Tea Party Republicans up so that they could stop obscuring the train wreck that is the ACA roll out. (Although if that had been GOP strategy from the start, I wonder if we’d ever have seen coverage this honest.)

2. This isn’t a conclusive proof that Obamacare is doomed or even a bad idea. It goes well beyond website “glitches”, but there’s still time for the current shock and horror to be forgotten as a mere historical footnote if the plan works over all. Now isn’t time for anyone to be counting chickens.

3. It is a pretty good illustration of what the Tea Party has hated and feared all along, however. The policy intricacies of Obamacare are beyond casual analysis, but the overarching themes of government incompetence, dishonesty, and intrusion could not possibly be more clear.

The President lied to the American people so that his party could ram through a law that drastically increased the reach of the federal government into the lives of ordinary citizens, and then they promptly screwed the implementation up with truly epic levels of incompetence. All for the greater good, of course.

As a matter of theory: ACA continues to make a lot of sense and could certainly be salvaged. The Tea Party thesis has never been about theoretical policy, but rather about practical institutional behavior. In short: bigger is badder. Current events seem to be lending credibility to their claims, despite their own poor decisions.

These Anamorphic Illusions Blow Minds

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UelJZG_bF98

So you’ve probably seen pictures of incredible sidewalk art that create the illusion of depth if viewed from the right angle. That’s an anamorphic illusion. Well the folks who made this ad for Honda took that principle to a whole new level.

It looks like CGI, but it’s not, as this making-of video illustrates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejXgE480R1I

It’s amazing. Read more at PetaPixel.