Just got to the campus today. The Davitz family drove me in...a few frustrating "Oh, yeah, now I'm in Israel"s later and I'm still surviving. There's no wireless. They said that I could probably 'pick it up' in the walkway...of course I pointed out that this sounded like there were encouraging us to steal. erm...
Found the computer room. There are jacks so at least I could plug in and work on my own computer.
Oh, and there's no AC. Yaaaay.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Gush Etzion
Spent Shabbat with Karen, Dov, and Adiel in Gush Etzion. Hot and dry here. Very, very dry...I guess that's what you get in a desert! Hoping to head to the seminary tomorrow and get a bit unpacked and settled in. Still refusing to believe that I'm in Israel. I feel like I'm in a little bubble and people here just happen to speak Hebrew. Pretty sure that grocery shopping will be the thing that pops the bubble, but for right now, I'm happy and enjoying my bubble. I haven't slept well at all recently, so I can't tell if I'm jetlagged or just generally exhausted.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Hello Sunday
With the help of Philip and Agi, I'm now officially moved out of the Mason Mill house. I have temporarily relocated my stuff to Xmas, where I'm sorting, re-packing, and then schlepping things to Adelia, where they will live happily for the year while I am abroad. My plan for today really is to get through all that stuff, then comments from the dissertation committee. My to-do list taking shape for the next 12 days, when I head out.
Suggestions on how to pack your life into 2 suitcases and a backpack for the next year will be appreciated.
Currently reading: The Happiness Project and The Girl who Played with Fire.
Suggestions on how to pack your life into 2 suitcases and a backpack for the next year will be appreciated.
Currently reading: The Happiness Project and The Girl who Played with Fire.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Costly moral actions
Two and a half years later, and I finally have a thought that is blog-worthy.
Working on my dissertation, I happen upon an article about the Atlantic slave-trade. Kaufmann and Pape (1999) Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade. IO 53 (4) 631--668
The British lost 5k lives and 2% of their national income for 60 years in an effort to squash slavery.
Their claims for the abolitionist movement working:
-Corrupt British society. Getting rid of slave trade was more or less a way to fix the country. Basically, some religious leaders (non Anglican Protestants) thought that God would punish Britain if they didn't end slavery, and that slavery was a manifestation of all the bad moral problems in the country. It really had nothing to do with the morality of slavery, but with a desire to save themselves.
-They did it completely on their own.
-Domestically grown idea.
-Moral obligation to 'fix the problem'
Here's their conclusion (page 664):
"Since our theory is developed from a single case, evidence from the same case cannot
be used to estimate its generalizability to other past cases or future opportunities.
The next step is to identify any comparable or nearly comparable costly moral actions.
Although all but the first of the following were almost certainly less costly than
Britain’s anti-slavery effort, reasonable candidates include American and French decisions
to end slavery, British and Dutch efforts to end suttee, certain instances of
decolonization, and the development aid policies of the world’s most generous donor,
Norway. We should also study cases where costly moral action was considered
but not pursued, such as the Allies’ failure to bomb Auschwitz.
If our theory stands up, it implies that some future costly moral actions may be
pursued unilaterally by a single powerful state, rather than by multilateral agreement,
and may be driven primarily internally rather than reflecting the spread of an international
moral consensus. They may also be more likely to emerge from a state that is
undergoing domestic upheaval of which the international moral project is partly a
side effect. These possibilities should caution us that some future international moral
actions may not be ones that cosmopolitan sensibilities or Western societies will
welcome."
Read the last paragraph again. It's ok, I'll wait...
Which countries are still all messed up? Not really the Western ones. The scary part = what ideas are they going to spread? No one's really going to argue that slavery is moral. But, say you have some small (and the abolitionists were a minority group) group of people that think, I don't know, women being allowed to work outside the home is immoral... If they have enough time and money, they might be able to spread it. Or Hitler. Small group of people, domestically grown "moral" issue, lots of time and money...we like to think otherwise, but that could have worked. Morality is culturally manufactured.
thoughts?
Working on my dissertation, I happen upon an article about the Atlantic slave-trade. Kaufmann and Pape (1999) Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade. IO 53 (4) 631--668
The British lost 5k lives and 2% of their national income for 60 years in an effort to squash slavery.
Their claims for the abolitionist movement working:
-Corrupt British society. Getting rid of slave trade was more or less a way to fix the country. Basically, some religious leaders (non Anglican Protestants) thought that God would punish Britain if they didn't end slavery, and that slavery was a manifestation of all the bad moral problems in the country. It really had nothing to do with the morality of slavery, but with a desire to save themselves.
-They did it completely on their own.
-Domestically grown idea.
-Moral obligation to 'fix the problem'
Here's their conclusion (page 664):
"Since our theory is developed from a single case, evidence from the same case cannot
be used to estimate its generalizability to other past cases or future opportunities.
The next step is to identify any comparable or nearly comparable costly moral actions.
Although all but the first of the following were almost certainly less costly than
Britain’s anti-slavery effort, reasonable candidates include American and French decisions
to end slavery, British and Dutch efforts to end suttee, certain instances of
decolonization, and the development aid policies of the world’s most generous donor,
Norway. We should also study cases where costly moral action was considered
but not pursued, such as the Allies’ failure to bomb Auschwitz.
If our theory stands up, it implies that some future costly moral actions may be
pursued unilaterally by a single powerful state, rather than by multilateral agreement,
and may be driven primarily internally rather than reflecting the spread of an international
moral consensus. They may also be more likely to emerge from a state that is
undergoing domestic upheaval of which the international moral project is partly a
side effect. These possibilities should caution us that some future international moral
actions may not be ones that cosmopolitan sensibilities or Western societies will
welcome."
Read the last paragraph again. It's ok, I'll wait...
Which countries are still all messed up? Not really the Western ones. The scary part = what ideas are they going to spread? No one's really going to argue that slavery is moral. But, say you have some small (and the abolitionists were a minority group) group of people that think, I don't know, women being allowed to work outside the home is immoral... If they have enough time and money, they might be able to spread it. Or Hitler. Small group of people, domestically grown "moral" issue, lots of time and money...we like to think otherwise, but that could have worked. Morality is culturally manufactured.
thoughts?
Saturday, February 9, 2008
I should lose weight
It seems that all the news stories these days (except the primaries stuff) is about losing weight. So here's my plan. I gain like 350+ pounds then lose it. I can write a book, show up on TV, and say inspirational things like "I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles" like Huckabee. Then I'd be famous and maybe slightly rich.
At this point, it's a significant improvement over: "study for comps, pass comps, write dissertation, publish dissertation as book", which is the book plan for now.
Or I can write a cheesy book. Or a book about cheese.
It's good to have options.
At this point, it's a significant improvement over: "study for comps, pass comps, write dissertation, publish dissertation as book", which is the book plan for now.
Or I can write a cheesy book. Or a book about cheese.
It's good to have options.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Books
Every year I think: I should keep a list of all the books I read. Every year I fail, but not this year!
Books I've read in 2008, including the last one I read in 2007:
1. Dawn, Elie Wiesel: The night before an execution, through the eyes of the executioner.
2. The Rabbi's Daughter, Reva Mann: Memoirs of a, ahem, less than pious daughter of a former Israeli Chief Rabbi.
3. Living a Jewish Life, Anita Diamant.
4. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant. A novel about Dinah, daughter of Jacob, whose rape brings on the slaughter of Shechem in Genesis. It made me angry but also made me cry. I do wonder if she did any historical research about the lives of women in those days, or just made it all up, and if she looked at any Jewish sources besides the Bible when she wrote this. I think she just made it all up with no sources. Bleh.
5. Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris. This is the Agnes Scott book club book for this time. I read it before, but I didn't remember it so well. He's got funny things happen to him, so the non-fiction is funny, occasionally bordering on hilarious...but the fiction...he's pretty not right in the head, so it tends towards disturbing.
6. Wise Men and Their Tales, Elie Wiesel. He wrote this book for himself. Only the last chapter is actually interesting.
7. Electoral Authoritarianism: the Dynamics of Unfree Competition by Andreas Schedler. I still don't know how to pronounce his name...but I have extensive notes on his book. It's for my PolDev comp, but it still counts. (Feb 13)
8. The Areas of my Expertise, by John Hodgman. Fake almanac with "facts". A massive, massive waste of time to read, but it kept me occupied on the train for a while. (Feb 15)
9. Democracy and Democratization by Georg Sorensen, about the same comments as #7 (Feb 22)
10. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Story of a poor suburb of Munich, narrated by Death, but the main character is a 11-14 year old girl whose parents were taken by the Nazis for being Commies. Quirky and really good. I only almost bawled once...there was a tear or two. (Feb 24)
11. Shabbat by Abraham Heschel. I read this too fast to get the full effect...if you want to give it to me as a present, that'd be ok by me. (May 22)
12. A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner. Pretty much the most important book ever written. Author goes around the world seeing slavery in person. Agrees to buy a girl in Haiti for $45, agrees to trade a used car for a woman in sex slavery in Eastern Europe. She has Down syndrome. He also talks about John Miller, who was the abolitionist in the Bush II administration until he resigned. Read this one. (May 26)
13. A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni. A family's attempts to live a year without buying anything made in China. They don't quite succeed, but they are close. Start looking at all of your tags...you'll realize how hard it is to not buy things from China. My Tevas are from China-that made me sad. (June 6)
14. Suddenly Jewish: Jews raised as Gentiles discover their Jewish Roots by Barbara Kessel. Title is pretty self-explanatory, includes conversos, children hidden during Shoah and raised entirely Catholic if/until their parents returned, children whose parents suffered in Shoah and never told the children they were Jewish, Adoptees, and assorted others. Interestingly enough, 45 or so of the 160 she interviewed converted to Judaism before they found out they were Jewish. There's also a discussion of the ever-present "what is a Jew?" question, and two interesting ideas of: collective consciousness of Jews (like revelation at Sinai is burned into the collective consciousness of all Jews, you'll always return to Judaism) or scent recognition (that Jews who didn't know they were Jewish are attracted to other Jews because of their smell - the idea here isn't that Jews smell funny but that people are attracted to their own ethnicity because of genetic predisposition to smells). Both are interesting ideas. I haven't gone around sniffing (many) Jewish men, but maybe I should start? (June 11)
Books I've read in 2008, including the last one I read in 2007:
1. Dawn, Elie Wiesel: The night before an execution, through the eyes of the executioner.
2. The Rabbi's Daughter, Reva Mann: Memoirs of a, ahem, less than pious daughter of a former Israeli Chief Rabbi.
3. Living a Jewish Life, Anita Diamant.
4. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant. A novel about Dinah, daughter of Jacob, whose rape brings on the slaughter of Shechem in Genesis. It made me angry but also made me cry. I do wonder if she did any historical research about the lives of women in those days, or just made it all up, and if she looked at any Jewish sources besides the Bible when she wrote this. I think she just made it all up with no sources. Bleh.
5. Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris. This is the Agnes Scott book club book for this time. I read it before, but I didn't remember it so well. He's got funny things happen to him, so the non-fiction is funny, occasionally bordering on hilarious...but the fiction...he's pretty not right in the head, so it tends towards disturbing.
6. Wise Men and Their Tales, Elie Wiesel. He wrote this book for himself. Only the last chapter is actually interesting.
7. Electoral Authoritarianism: the Dynamics of Unfree Competition by Andreas Schedler. I still don't know how to pronounce his name...but I have extensive notes on his book. It's for my PolDev comp, but it still counts. (Feb 13)
8. The Areas of my Expertise, by John Hodgman. Fake almanac with "facts". A massive, massive waste of time to read, but it kept me occupied on the train for a while. (Feb 15)
9. Democracy and Democratization by Georg Sorensen, about the same comments as #7 (Feb 22)
10. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Story of a poor suburb of Munich, narrated by Death, but the main character is a 11-14 year old girl whose parents were taken by the Nazis for being Commies. Quirky and really good. I only almost bawled once...there was a tear or two. (Feb 24)
11. Shabbat by Abraham Heschel. I read this too fast to get the full effect...if you want to give it to me as a present, that'd be ok by me. (May 22)
12. A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner. Pretty much the most important book ever written. Author goes around the world seeing slavery in person. Agrees to buy a girl in Haiti for $45, agrees to trade a used car for a woman in sex slavery in Eastern Europe. She has Down syndrome. He also talks about John Miller, who was the abolitionist in the Bush II administration until he resigned. Read this one. (May 26)
13. A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni. A family's attempts to live a year without buying anything made in China. They don't quite succeed, but they are close. Start looking at all of your tags...you'll realize how hard it is to not buy things from China. My Tevas are from China-that made me sad. (June 6)
14. Suddenly Jewish: Jews raised as Gentiles discover their Jewish Roots by Barbara Kessel. Title is pretty self-explanatory, includes conversos, children hidden during Shoah and raised entirely Catholic if/until their parents returned, children whose parents suffered in Shoah and never told the children they were Jewish, Adoptees, and assorted others. Interestingly enough, 45 or so of the 160 she interviewed converted to Judaism before they found out they were Jewish. There's also a discussion of the ever-present "what is a Jew?" question, and two interesting ideas of: collective consciousness of Jews (like revelation at Sinai is burned into the collective consciousness of all Jews, you'll always return to Judaism) or scent recognition (that Jews who didn't know they were Jewish are attracted to other Jews because of their smell - the idea here isn't that Jews smell funny but that people are attracted to their own ethnicity because of genetic predisposition to smells). Both are interesting ideas. I haven't gone around sniffing (many) Jewish men, but maybe I should start? (June 11)
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