at 6 p.m. last night, chicago police cornered and shot a wild cougar. the chicago tribune reports that it is the first to roam city streets since chicago's founding.

this is not entirely accurate, as i have it on good authority that many locals are well-practiced in the art of cougar hunting.


note: this is not the FH's first cougar post. she was almost eaten by the feline variety in 2004.
also, thanks for the tribune link, jdt!

Labels: personal

i have been paying particularly close attention to the jefferson 1 situation (see the press release). though response has generally been outrage, a not-insignificant portion of blog/youtube comments are in the "she was being irresponsible" camp.

to me, this is certainly not about the questionable dancing of some participants, or the questionable activities of thomas jefferson. to me this is not about misuse of public property, it is not about race. this is not about the interaction between the jefferson 1 and the officer, the group's motives, or what the law should be.

this is about the transparent enforcement of a clear rule of law, and the need for easy access to laws. officers could not cite any type of rule authorizing the arrest. this strongly suggests they either a) didn't know one or b) didn't think she needed to know. this is about detaining a human being without citing or, as it seems, having, just cause. it's moreover about the real possibility that countless individuals outside the jefferson 1's socioeconomic status are arrested without being shown the law in writing. and they may not have the resources to fight back. they mayn't feel that they even should fight back. that is what this is about.

the albeit flawed founders were generally in favor of a government with clear, set rules not subject to the whim of the ruler like their former king, or his extensions in the form of a state. this is about that perhaps-impossible ideal, as certainly there are unavoidable gray areas in enforcement. but this is about asking the law's representatives to move a little closer towards that ideal.

that's what i think, anyway.

Labels: personal, political

i just completed my recording for the subjection of women by john stuart mill on librivox. in this essay, mill provides a theory on the development of power-seeking personalities:

An active and energetic mind, if denied liberty, will seek for power: refused the command of itself, it will assert its personality by attempting to control others.

he (and likely, his wife) further argue:

To allow to any human beings no existence of their own but what depends on others, is giving far too high a premium on bending others to their purposes. Where liberty cannot be hoped for, and power can, power becomes the grand object of human desire; those to whom others will not leave the undisturbed management of their own affairs, will compensate themselves, if they can, by meddling for their own purposes with the affairs of others.

this puts to mind another theory on power-seeking, a rephrasing of adler's theory in j. burns' leadership:

human beings strive toward power to overcome and compensate for inevitable childhood feelings of inferiority, impotence, and dependence on adults

so, subjection creates the desire for subjecting in its victims. (n.b. the cycle of subjection bastiat attributes to other causes)

of course, mill's essay has many more gems than this. visit the librivox project page to be notified when the audiobook is complete. better yet, volunteer yourself!

update: the project is finished and ready to download!

Labels: misc. psych, political

in honor of thomas jefferson's birthday, last night twenty individuals gathered with ipods at the tj memorial in dc to hold a "silent" dance party. unfortunately i wasn't there, but i hear that quiet dancing ensued at midnight... and ten minutes later a participant was arrested.

find details here from:
the event's co-organizer
the agitator
megan at the atlantic
outside the beltway
below the beltway
julian sanchez
f & s .org

peaceful assembly is, at times, restricted. what about this case? certain elements seem suspicious, including that police refused to give badge numbers or cite cause for arrest. the memorial website states that it is open 24/7, but that "for planned events dependent upon the activity and number of participants a permit may be required." the number and nature criteria are oddly missing. the phone line is closed on weekends so we must wait for monday to find out.

but whatever the case, it reminds me of a certain movie about dancing...

update: eye-witness interview
update 2: great article in the american spectator on the incident. though the eye-witness interview is down, footage of the incident is online now.

Labels: personal, political

i just finished 1491, an attempt by author charles mann to piece together what indian culture was like before the arrival of columbus. despite spending a quarter of the book pointlessly debating the illness hypothesis (that most of native america was wiped out due to foreign disease long before 1491), mann's retelling is an excellent example of a trend in indian historical analysis to humanize native cultures.

one thesis mann repeatedly drove home was that indians weren't much different than europeans. for example, they had large, structured, complex societies including cities, such as aztec tenochtitlan, which was bigger than london or rome. indigenous societies had astronomy and mathematics, philosophy and war, oppression and freedom. some governments favored authoritarian socialism, yet others had limited representative government and equal rights for all people. mann's concluding argument is laid bare using the example of the haudenosaunee. he goes so far as to call them libertarian, despite their collective land use, and cites highly circumstantial evidence that they may have shifted colonial thought - and even the scottish enlightenment - towards individual liberty and equality.

of equal interest was his commentary on the preservationists movement. he notes that the "wilderness" seen by 1491 visitors was largely designed and full of domesticated plants. indians manipulated their environment to suit their needs, e.g. converting "perhaps one quarter" of what we now consider the south american rain forest into farms and gardens, domesticating many trees and vegetables, and controlling game populations. he argues that what we see as "nature" is really the result of entropy, as sickness wiped out the majority of the indian population who were then incapable of maintaining their large farms and gardens. there is no one "nature," rather sustainable and unsustainable environmental manipulations.

my main question while reading, though, was: if native societies were so similar in intelligence, culture, and government, why were they so "behind" europeans? they couldn't sail ships to colonize spain, after all. going off the book, an answer could come from a combination of factors, the principle one being the lack of beasts of burden which in turn made the meso-american invention of the wheel useless, preventing the flurry of development seen elsewhere. i'm sure that other, perhaps more prominent, factors (such as lack of disease immunity) are involved. ideas?

Labels: misc. science