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.

Paul Ryan to the Rescue?

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2013-10-11 Paul Ryan

According to the NYT, Paul Ryan is back at the forefront, riding over the horizon to (maybe?) rescue the GOP from the GOP:

Mr. Ryan, 43, has immense credibility with conservatives for his “Path to Prosperity” budget, which proposed politically risky Medicare changes and deep tax cuts. Moderates see Mr. Ryan, who has broken with some conservatives over immigration, as a lawmaker with some flexibility. In many respects, his standing exceeds that of the party’s titular leader, Speaker John A. Boehner. Perhaps most important, Democrats believe that when Mr. Ryan drafts a plan, he can actually deliver the votes. They hold no such confidence in Mr. Boehner.

Apparently his plan, which he originally outlined in the WSJ, has managed to become the plan of the GOP. Among other things, it completely abandons any attempt to defund Obamacare, which means it does have a snowball’s chance in Hell of actually getting somewhere.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a serious but sane conservative managed to come out on top after all these shenanigans from the rowdy freshman Tea Partiers?

Nate Silver: Political Ramification of the Gov’t Shutdown

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2013-10-11 shut down

Nate Silver is in the process of moving from the NYT to ESPN, but he’s got an interim website up and today he has weighed in on the political ramifications of the gov’t shutdown. It’s a fairly long, informative piece and does a really good job at providing an expert, level-headed assessment of what we know.

Which is: not that much. Nate’s main points seem to be first: that we don’t really know if there will be any long-term consequences of the shut down (and, as a corollary, that Democrats still face stiff headwinds in 2014) and second: that the uncertainty that does exist is primarily about the future of the GOP. Washington DC is, according to many sources, more polarized than at any other time in our nation’s history and a lot of the reason for that is the GOP shift to the right (not a corresponding move by Democrats to the left). This means we’re in fairly unprecedented times, and the future may largely depend on what shakes out internally within the Republican Party.

USPS Destroys “Dangerous” Stamps

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2013-10-11 Dangerous Stamps Markedup

As Reason magazine and a lot of other places have reported: the United States Postal Service has courageously saved our children from possible injury by destroying the entire run of stamps created to commemorate First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign.

The offending stamps are highlighted above: skateboarding (without kneepads!), headstands (without helmets!), and doing a cannonball (at all!). Oddly, they didn’t call out batting without a batting helmet, but thankfully all the stamps will be destroyed. That was a close one!

I think our society is reaching the point where we might become too stupid to survive…

Massive NYT Article on Women and Science

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2013-10-11 Women in Science

Eileen Pollack has a very long article in the New York Times that goes in-depth on the issue of why there are so few women in science. It’s a great, comprehensive overview of the subject with references to pretty much all the major studies that have recently come out about the issue. I won’t try to summarize it, but if you’re at all interested in the subject (I am), you should read this article.

Also: you should be interested in this subject.

Bejeweled Catholic Martyrs

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2013-10-10 Catholic Martyrs

I like this article for two reasons. First: the pictures (like the one above) are really arresting. Secondly: it plays a little bit of havoc with my preconception about Eastern vs. Western culture. The use of a metric ton of jewels for decoration is something I tend to ascribe to cultures like India rather than, say, Germany. But one of the things I’ve learned (although I’m no historian) is that our notions of “East” and “West” are pretty simplistic. This is just one tiny example.

The Oatmeal Takes On Columbus Day (and Wins)

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2013-10-10 Bartolome de las Casas

When I was in high school, some well-meaning liberal fellow students went around tearing down flyers for Columbus Day as a protest. (Why were there flyers in the first place? I can’t remember.) I viewed this effort with disdain. One of the more prominent of the students had tried to seriously argue that heroin (the drug) was sexist because it was hijacking the word heroine (a female hero). It was awkward to watch our English teacher explain that the words aren’t even spelled the same.

That pretty much set my overall approach to complaints about atrocities from the colonial era. It’s not that I disagree that they exist. Far from it. My annoyance is that the complaints come from a place of lazy complacence. In the first place, none of the people I’ve heard maligning Columbus and other explorers for exploiting the Americas has seriously suggested giving the land back or in any way inconveniencing themselves to make amends whatsoever. In the second place, the complainers demonstrate such a total lack of moral sophistication that I cannot believe their concern is in any sense earnest. For example, they can’t seem to tell the difference between unintended tragedy (most of the fatalities from the introduction of new diseases) and intentional evil (like the Trail of Tears). The numbers are bigger for disease deaths, so that gets a lot of play, when in reality that’s a pretty poor example of human evil. In other words: attacking Columbus (or other colonialists and explorers) comes across as nothing but cheap self-righteousness of people best described as “harmlessly impotent” rather than “ethical”. So, when I saw The Oatmeal was tackling Columbus Day, my suspicions were high.

I was wrong.

The comic starts out predictably enough (the same frustrating conflation of genuine atrocity and inevitable epidemiology), but towards the end takes an incredibly surprising turn that completely won me over. As Matthew Inman writes, “History is full of terrible people and terrible things, so instead of casting a shadow where there is already darkness, I’d much prefer to cast a light.”

And then he does. And it’s incredible. Read the whole thing to find out more about that light.

Michael Yon Photos and Article on Modern Artillery

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2013-10-10 Spitting Cobra

As you can tell, this article has some incredible photographs. It’s an older article–from back in 2010–but I hadn’t seen it until now. It’s worth reading not only for the excellent images (there are a ton), but also because it’s such an informative piece of writing about modern artillery. Yon opens with “Artillery is called “The King of Battle.”  When it comes to the delivery of force, probably nothing outside of nuclear weapons can outmatch the sustained delivery of extreme brutality,” and then it just gets better from there.

Upworthy Stories are Not So Great

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2013-10-09 Upworthy

The left-wing slant of the web’s fastest-growing media company is definitely not hard to detect, but I’m a little surprised that Upworthy’s Wikipedia entry leads off with: “Upworthy is a left-wing website.” That first paragraph ends with: “It is dedicated to publicizing progressive narratives.” Well, OK. I don’t have to bother trying to prove that point, I guess.

Here’s what bothers me about Upworthy: they are tackling a lot of issues that should be universal with a specific partisan slant. Most of the Upworthy stories I’ve seen have been about responses to bullying. I have disagreed with them (as I’ve described), but I’ve also really appreciated that it’s a site dedicated to raising important issues and also that it goes for a positive approach rather than tearing down the opposition.

But there’s something deeply and profoundly wrong about trying to politicize everything. The story that prompted this response is about a young 11-year old kids response to bullying. The headline: This Kid Was Bullied A LOT. He Could Have Told His Teacher Or His Principal. He Had Bigger Plans.

2013-10-09 Cain Smith

So what were his “bigger plans”? What did it look like when he “he stood up and did something about it.” He gave a speech to local politicians and asked them to do something about it. 

Read more

Chris Brown, Porn, Rape, and Feminism

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2013-10-09 Chris Brown

This is a fascinating perspective on the infamous Chris Brown. It turns out that Chris, at age 8, had already watched enough porn that he was “hot to trot” and (according to his own account) had sex for the first time. The girl in question was 14 or 15 which, as Olivia Cole (the author) points out, makes the encounter a rape. Cole then says she knows other men who have recounted similar stories, and then drops this pretty profound question:

We know some of the behavioral signals that occur when girls have been raped. Depression, promiscuity, unexplained anger, anxiety. These are words we use when we describe the ways victims behave. It’s interesting that I have seen these same symptoms in young boys—alongside me in class when I was a child, in boyfriends as I got older, in men beside me on the bus in Chicago—yet no one looks at male anger and male promiscuity as symptoms of anything. These are just classic male behaviors. “Boys will be boys,” and boys sleep around. Boys have bad tempers. Right?

Wrong.

What if we have been normalizing male rape victims’ symptoms for centuries?

What if, indeed. The one thing Cole doesn’t mention, that I think is important, is the role of pornography in this story. Would a young, 8-year old boy have been looking for sex without already having imbibed a dangerous amount of porn? Probably not. So I don’t think this is a problem that has been going on “for centuries.” It could be a new problem, however, and one that will only get worse as more and more young men have their minds and souls warped by early exposure to readily accessible porn.

Fiona and Terryl Givens Discuss Uchtdorf in NYT

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2013-10-09 Gen Conf

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has two General Conferences every year (one in spring and one in fall) where the leadership of the Church address the members in a series of 2-hours sessions that are broadcast live around most of the world. In the most recent conference (just last week) Dieter F. Uchtdorf spoke with compassion and honesty about the struggles many Mormons have with doubts about their faith. Uchtdorf is the Second Counselor in the Church’s governing Presidency (sort of like a vice-vice-president), and his conciliatory tone has created a big reaction among the membership of the Church.

This NYT article discusses the impact of Uchtdorf’s words and quotes several Mormon scholars, including my parents Terryl and Fiona. The text of the speech, called “Come, Join Us” is available as here (or watch or listen to it here.)

My own impression: I like Uchtdorf’s comments quite a lot. I think they lend significant credibility (though no official support, of course) to my parents’ efforts at The Temple and Observatory Group, which is a non-profit focused on addressing the doubts and concerns of Mormons. I think it’s a mistake to see any grand change in policy, however. (Dallin H. Oaks’ rather hard-hitting No Other Gods, which was given the next day, makes that pretty clear.)

The tone reflects a response to the expectations and concerns of members, but there wasn’t a single word that was new doctrine. Many people have told me in the past that the Mormonism described by me or by my parents is one they would love, but not one they recognize from their own upbringing or congregation. Uchtdorf’s “talk” (that’s Mormon for “sermon”, basically) makes it much more prominent, but it’s always been there.