Science is reasoned analysis of — and theorizing about — empirical data. A scientific conclusion cannot be recognized as such unless one understands the science.

It might be imagined that one can recognize a conclusion as scientific without understanding the science, by recognizing the scientists as such. But the popular formula that science is what scientists do is vacuous when taken literally, and wrong in its usual interpretation. Someone can can have an institutional certification as having been trained to be a scientist, and have a paid position ostensibly as a scientist, and yet not be a scientist; for those who actually understand some scientific area, it is fairly easy to find historical examples or perhaps present cases.[1] To recognize a scientist as such one must recognize what he or she does as science, not the other way around.

Even if it is in some contexts reasonable to accept conclusions from such persons on the basis of their social standing, it is not scientific literacy to accept conclusions on that basis; it is simply trust in the social order.

The full understanding of a scientific expert isn't always necessary to have a scientific understanding of the reasoning behind some of the broad conclusions of a scientific discipline. But in some cases of present controversy with significant policy implications, the dispute over the relevant conclusions turns upon issues of applied mathematics, and perhaps other things such as thermodynamics. No one can be scientifically literate in the areas of controversy without understanding that mathematics and so forth.

In many of the disputations amongst lay-persons over these issues, I observe people in at least one group who assert themselves to be scientifically literate, when they are no such thing, and to accept science, when they are not positioned to know whether what they are accepting is science. These are actually people who simply trust some part of the social order — typically, those state-funded institutions that declare themselves to engage in scientific research.

[1] It is certainly easy to find what lay-persons will acknowledge as examples. However, some of these ostensible examples are actually spurious.

A few years ago, in the title of an entry discussing the implications for the world of the failing health of Hugo Chávez, I alluded to a motto that ends leave a beautiful corpse[1]. That entry considered an observed practice:

When a charismatic leader dies aburptly while still in power, his or her supporters quickly begin building a mythology of what would have been accomplished had he or she lived.

I drew attention to how this mythologizing bears upon social policy:

The mythological episode of such leadership is treated as having the same standing for purposes of comparison as does historical fact. When an opponent tries to construct an argument founded on logic and general fact against policies associated with that leader, supporters treat the mythology as if it is a disproof by counter-example. What’s really happening then is that Faith is being mistaken for empirical data.

While death significantly amplifies the power of the mythologizing of a leader who was not given full opportunity to effect the programmes that he or she chose, death isn't essential for there to be some mythologizing; I noted that there was a developing narrative of what President Obama would have done had his party retained a majority in both chambers of Congress for the whole of his terms.

As it happens, charisma is also inessential, though it very much helps. And an odd substitute for direct charisma has been demonstrated. Barack Obama inflamed so much inverted narcissism on the part of his followers that a great many of them chose to treat his successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as if she were magnificent though she is signally lacking in charisma.

At the same time, her health is failing her, and had she been elected to the Presidency, she would not likely have served through a full term. There would have been an odd sort of race between how rapidly she did things that repelled those who had been her supporters, and when she left office. Depending upon the outcome of that race, she might have left a beautiful corpse.

But Ms Clinton has lost the race for Presidential Electors. Although a few of her supporters cling to an implausible hope that the Electoral College will not merely turn its back on the detestable Donald John Trump but will elect Clinton (as opposed to some Republican other than Trump), she will not be President. And the mythologizing is already under-way, even to the level of having Ms Clinton imagined as rather prettier than she is.

One does not have to regard Mr Trump as even tolerable to resist the mythologizing and to see Ms Clinton for what she has been. She has repeatedly been one of the people causing the United States military to engage in the slaughter of innocent people, for stated goals that haven't been obtained because they haven't been obtainable. She has engaged in calculated support of domestic policies such as the War of Drugs and aggressive incarceration policies that have literally led to many thousands of deaths and to the ruin of many thousands of other lives. She and her husband have got rich exactly as brokers of political influence. She has privately spoken against some policies as corrosive while publicly supporting them — or vice versa — depending upon the expected flow of dollars and of votes. She has casually disregarded laws, in the expectation (thus far vindicated) that her connections will insulate her from being charged, let alone convicted.

If Ms Clinton is to be made into a beautiful corpse, it is rather fitting that this transformation be effected while she is undead.

[1] In full, the motto is Live fast; die young; leave a beautiful corpse. It is an elaboration of an earlier motto of live fast and die young. A popular variant is Live fast; die young; leave a good-looking corpse.

The original definition of racism, and the one still found in standard dictionaries, is a theory or an adherence to a theory that merit is in part intrinsically a function of race

However, a few decades ago, some social theorists began insisting upon a new definition of racism, under which one could not be called a racist unless one not only were prejudiced against some racial group, but had social power. Devotees of this new definition variously baldly restate it, as if the restatement makes it so, or cite the theorists, as if such citation makes it so.

Those who make a special study of a subject sometimes take a term in popular use, and give it a peculiar, somewhat new definition. (For examp!e, we see that in physics, with the uses of energy, force, and work; and we see that in economics, with the definition of unemployment.) But what usually characterizes these redefinitions is that somewhat loose notions are replaced with more explicit, more precise, and otherwise more workable definitions. (For example, when an economist uses unemployment, she usually excludes people who have quit one job for another, but have not yet started that next job, because joblessness of this transitory sort is not typically considered to be a social ill.)

Alarms really ought to go-off about the redefinition of racism. The original concept was quite coherent and useful; if it were not coherent, then the redefinition (which essentially adds a condition) would inherit the incoherence. Racism on the part of people with little social power still has significant social consequences; any legitimate use of the new concept is far more sharply limited than that of the original concept.

Let's imagine that someone prejudiced against those outside his own major racial group makes a solo walking tour of Los Angeles. As he travels from one neighborhood to another, he gains or loses social power as the ethnic compositions of those neighborhoods vary. His beliefs about the relation between race and merit needn't change (and should not be expected to do so much if at all). Yet by the mere act of travel through a large city in which ethnic groups are not uniformly distributed, under the redefinition he would repeatedly go from being a racist, to not being a racist, to again being a racist. It would be extraordinary and dangerous to make a solo walking tour of all of Los Angeles, but a great many people regularly move across communities of different ethnic composition. Application of the proposed redefinition of racism would routinely become unworkable, under circumstance in which the standard definition remains quite workable.

There are certainly legitimate applications of the concept of socially empowered racism, but in those applications we can call it socially empowered racism or something similar.

When a concept loses its associated symbol, it becomes harder to discuss or even to think about that concept. Further, the response to symbols is largely emotive. Whether people learn by reason that something is good or that it is bad, or they are simply led to accept some valuation by imitation of those in their society, people come to associate positive or negative feelings with the words used for those things. Old concepts given new words don't provoke the same response; old symbols given new meanings carry with them some or all of the old feelings. Those who have adopted a new redefinition of racism can thus escape the recognition of racism, and the felt need to condemn some instances of racism, by allowing themselves to believe that some people simply cannot be racists, by virtue of their social standing.

We are simply dealing with an attempted hijacking of language, for purposes of subverting clear thought and discussion. That is most plain when the word racism has been introduced into some discourse with its standard definition, and in response it is insisted that something conforming to that original definition is not racism because it does not conform to the proposed redefinition. But any non-standard use that is not flagged as such is still a subversion of rationality. Those who have participated in the attempted hijacking are knaves or fools or both.

Most or all of us have heard or read of the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. This question was introduced to satirize and to dismiss a problem that challenged scholastic philosophers, namely Given that there are things that do not have body but do have location, can two or more of these things occupy the same location at the same time? Now, we might labor the idea of body; but suffice it to say that it were presumed that things with body could not simultaneously occupy the exact same location, but that there were things of another class that could occupy the exact same location as could a thing with body. The question then was whether they could occupy the same location as other things of their own class.

One of the ways in which this puzzle had bearing was on attempts to understand the nature of devils (fallen angels) and how they might interact with ordinary people. The question thus actually had bearing on the witchcraft mania.

But another way in which this question had bearing was in consideration of how we distinguish one thing from another, perceptually and conceptually. In theory, two things might be identical except for location, but the distinct locations perhaps permit us to discern that there are two things, rather than one. And, if the location of an object at any one time is unique to that object, one can combine a description that might fit many other things with that location to identify a singular object, and thus to have an intrinsically singular corresponding concept, as opposed to a concept that might fit more than one thing.

That perhaps seems perfectly sound, but I don't understand space as other than a structure of relationships. For example, when a physicist asserts that objects of mass warp space increasingly with that mass, I take this to be no more or less than a claim that objects of larger or smaller mass have different spatial relationships with things, and cause other things to have different spatial relationships each with others. (The latter implies that a spatial relationship involving the object of mass underlies the spatial relationships amongst the things other than that object.) When we attempt to distinguish objects based upon location, which is a matter of relationships amongst objects, remarkable considerations arise.

First imagine a very small universe, having just one body in it. A universe is not small by virtue of one hitting a wall after travelling some distance; it is small by virtue of having a non-Euclidean geometry, such that after a relatively short amount of travel one finds oneself back where one started. As light travelled from the object, it would eventually find its way back to the object. If one could somehow see, as if within this universe, and looked in various directions, with sufficiently strong vision, one might see the object, seemingly off in the distance, even if the view began as if one were standing right at or on the object. Seemingly beyond the object, one might see the object yet again, and so forth. That's the experience in one sort of universe. Now imagine an infinitely large universe, as if built by tiling duplicate sectors, in which there were infinitely many objects, positioned to given the same experience as in the first universe.

I declared that a universe had just one object; I declared that a universe had infinitely many objects. I don't actually believe that the apparently second universe is intrinsically distinct from the first. I think that we may conceptualize the first universe as the second, and vice versa, and that the count of objects is an artefact of our conceptualization. Of course, if there were no more than indiscernible differences amongst what seemed to be infinitely many objects, then I might claim that there were no practical differences from a universe of one object; but I here make the stronger claim that, if there are no differences beyond perhaps whatever is captured by the two given descriptions of location, then these descriptions are each of the same universe. It would simply beg the question to insist that one universe is different from the other in that one were finite but configured so that it seemed infinitely repeating, while the other truly were infinite and repeating. Granted that viewing as if within the universe seems to locate a means of viewing close to one object. (One might even imagine oneself invisibly located as an additional object in the universe.) But how is the location of that means near one object distinct from its location near all of them? (How is oneself's being located in the universe near one object distinct from the location of a perfect duplicate of oneself being near each of them?)

In a universe more like our own, if we had what seemed to be two otherwise indistinguishable objects at different locations, there would be other discernible objects that seemed to support a distinction. What we might regard as one object would be near to various other objects, and far from still others. Likewise for what we might regard as a different object, with a distinct set of things.

Let's mentally step away from that scenario for a bit, and return to the scholastic problem of things that do not have body but do have location. If two of these things are otherwise indistinguishable, and if they can occupy the same location at the same time, then ex hypothesi there is no way to distinguish one from another when they do occupy the same location. (The space occupied might be different when both moved into it — for example, it might become less translucent — but that doesn't mean that we can distinguish one of two things from another. And if the properties of these things are not in some sense additive or subtractive, but combine according to inclusive disjunction — that is to say that the attribute is either there or not, but has no further possible ordering to it — then we cannot tell how just many of these things are there by discernment of these properties.)

But, when they occupy the same location, I ask whether there are in fact two things. What would be the difference of two such things coming to occupy one location from two otherwise identical things coming to be one thing at one location? Perhaps what seemed one thing might again become two, but that wouldn't prove that they had remained distinct at the one location. Perhaps one thing might have become three, each just like the two from which the one had been formed. My experience (and, as I believe, yours) is that this has never happened. But I know of no logic that prevents it from happening; it merely violates my present best guess of the physical laws (which entail principles of conservation). If what seemd to be two things came together and seemed to be one, and then that one thing seemed to become three, some person might guess that what had earlier seemed to be two things were atually three things, two already in combination. But if all the attributes combined in conformance with inclusive disjunction, then in what sense would that be different from just what had seemed to happen?

If we accept that two otherwise indistinguishable things become one thing when they occupy one location, does that thing continue to exist should it become two things? Is it one of the two things? both of the two things? each of the two things? Is the proper answer different when the two things are indistinguishable except for location from what was one thing?

(If we are transporting some very great criminal by paddy wagon and, upon arrival, find three persons, each indistiguishable from the person whom we tossed into the wagon, and each insisting that he is just that person, do we treat each of them as that person, or charge each with no more than abetting an escape, on the theory that it is most likely of any given one of them that he is not that person? This problem might be primarily epistemological — so that one of the three suspects is our original perpetrator even if we shall never know whom — but that's bad enough; and we can make it still more fundamental if we allow for teleportation and for matter duplication.)

Let's mentally step back to the scenario of two otherwise indistinguishable objects at different locations in a universe rather like our own. Are these actually two objects, or one object that is bi-located, or one object in one location that appears as two locations because of a strangeness of space? Do these three descriptions actually distinguish different realities? If we mark one of these apparently two objects and see an identical mark appear on the other, do we regard it as the same object, or as two objects such that one is some sort of sympathy with the other? If we mark what seems one object and a mark does not appear on the other, do we regard this as proof that there were never one bilocated object nor a weirdness of space, or do we interpret this case as of one object becoming two distinct objects (with an end to the bilocation or with an adjustment of space), perhaps exactly as a a result of our action? (The classic formulation of Ockham's Razor is entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem. If we posit that there were always two objects, are we conforming to that prescription?)

Because space need not be as Euclid had insightfully assumed and as Platon and Kant had thoughtlessly presumed, we can interpret any case where we have what otherwise must be a single thing simulatenously occupying multiple locations as in fact that single thing in one location. The practical cost, however, is that we are compelled to identify locations by the things occupying them (and not merely by the things about them); but we had set-out to identify things by the locations that they occupied!

Let's say that we have an object in a strange space, so that it is effectively bilocated, and we point to it and say this. Assuming that we don't also say not that, pointing to the other apparent location, is there any problem? It is one thing to incorporate mistaking of one thing for two into an assertion; another simply not to recognize some of the characteristics of that one thing. (There is a problem if Selina Kyle cries I am in love with Bruce Wayne, not with the Batman! but there would have been no such problem had she simply declared I am in love with Bruce Wayne!)

But if the case of two otherwise identical but differently located objects (perhaps each in perfect sympathy with the other) and the case of one apparently bilocated object are really just different descriptions of the same situation, then the applicability of not that — and number more generally — seems in some cases to be an artefact of the descriptive framework. Especially in the context of such implications, some people will insist that one of these descriptions must surely be mistaken, even if as a practical matter we cannot tell which. (Some people will further insist that the description that conforms to simpler spatial relations (that of two objects in perfect sympathy) is the one that is more likely correct; other people will insist that the description that requires fewer objects (that of a bilocated object) is more likely correct.) However, the apparent contradiction isn't internal to either description, and each description may be translated into the other. That one of them is right doesn't make the other wrong.

If I cannot point to something and say this and thereby distinguish it not merely from everything not there but from everything not it, then how can I have an intrinsically singular concept? To baldly incorporate singularity into a concept is just question-begging. (One ought not to say that two spheres are exactly alike except just in-so-far as one is unique, or is uniquely unique.)

Where, then, is singularity to be found? I think that it is to be found in experience, literally. The raw stuff of experience is sensation and sense-perception, not conception. (We may have concepts of sensations, but sensations are not themselves concepts; we may have concepts of sense-perceptions, but sense-perceptions are not themselves concepts.) Percepts and concepts are constructed to explain sensation and sense-perception. Those percepts and concepts may be perfectly accurate, but they are not intrinsically singular except to the extent that we associate them with sensation or with sense-perception. That is to say, for example, that we have a cluster of sensation or of sense-perception, and we have or build a concept of something by which to explain it, which concept is not singular except in-so-far as we implicitly or explicitly add to it the attribute of causing that particular cluster. And, if we do that, then we must in such case commit to a concept that does not allow co-location of otherwise identical things. That is not to say that we forbid co-location in general; but that singular concepts cannot be fitted to such co-located things. (It is probably a very bad idea to construct an explanatory model that employs co-location of otherwise identical things all of whose attributes combine in accordance with inclusive disjunction.)

In any case, the alternatives to exploring such considerations are dogmatism and nihilism. There is nothing intrinsically practical about dogmatism nor about nihilism, which stand in the way of our understanding the universe as deeply as we might and of our helping those who lose (or never find) their ways in their own attempts to understand the world. The scholastics who worried about the relationship of location to identity during what have come to be dismissed as the Dark Ages were concerned with foundational questions of what we ought to practice. It is fine to jest about their efforts only if the joke does not hide the truth.

I'm not a great fan of Star Trek, for reasons that I won't labor here; but at times it provides useful cultural references.

Various people have drawn a comparison between the Clinton campaign and the Borg, prompting me to put together this logo And then to make stickers and magnets with it available at CafePress. Presumably anyone voluntarily displaying one of these magnets or stickers would be doing so ironically.

(For what little it's worth, I endorse no candidate, and still will not be voting for the least of the n evils.)

Up-Date (2016:07/29): Resistance is difficult. Yester-day after-noon, I received notice from CafePress that my graphic was being investigated as a possible violation of intellectual property. This charge is absurd, in that the Clinton logo and slogan are too simple to be copyrighted and no trademark protection has been attempted; likewise for the Borg reference. And, even if the Clinton logo and slogan were intellectual property, none-the-less my use of these elements would constitute fair use. (Though it must be admitted that, since I am not satirizing the Borg, if there were intellectual property there then my use would be more questionable.)

While the image is under investigation, the items on which it was to be placed are unavailable. A decision is supposed to come within 48 hours of the announcement. Of course, someone at CafePress may make a partisan call; such actions have become commonplace. In that case, I will look for a different service through which to get things produced.

Up-Date (2016:07/29): Resistance continues. CafePress simply chose to misrepresent the design as in violation of their stated content policy. So, as I said that I would, I've begun migrating to alternative vendors. I will also be billing CafePress for my labor.

Most of the time, the inability or unwillingness of people to understand the difference between sex and gender is simply a low-level annoyance for me.[1] But, over the past few days, I have been increasingly irritated by the bigotry that this confusion is facilitating.

Unfortunately, many cultures, including our own, put pressure on people of a particular sex to adopt a particular gender; this is bigotry of one sort. Unfortunately, people of a sex who don't want to be of the socially prescribed gender often develop an active hostility towards those of that sex-gender combination; that is bigotry of another sort.

People who want to be of a given gender but who are not do not represent a toxic expression of that gender, because they are not of that gender. Claiming that a non-masculine person were toxically masculine or that a non-feminine person were toxically feminine entails a logical contradiction, regardless of whether the person were a male wanting to be masculine or a female wanting to be feminine.[2] And when toxicity results exactly from the fact that a person is not of a gender that the person feels that he or she ought to be, the illogic is especially acute.

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen was certainly toxic, but he lacked at least one of the core attributes of masculinity. His desire as a non-masculine male to be masculine contributed greatly to his toxicity.

Whether intentionally or merely thoughtlessly, to use toxic masculinity in describing Mateen is a slur against masculinity.[3] And that slur will come most naturally to those who are implicitly or explicitly hostile to masculinity.

He simply wasn't of my gender; no one should speak or write as if he were.

[1] Sex is a condition of the structures of the body, and associated with reproductive function. The term gender is sometimes used as a foolish mincing term for sex, but I mean here to refer to the set of behavioral characteristics (including rôles) that are associated with sex by expectations at the social, familial, and personal level. The term gender is taken by analogy from grammar, as are the terms masculine and feminine.

[2] There are sexes other than male and female and genders other than masculine and feminine, but traditional social expectations have included correspondences amongst such sexes and such genders. Instead, people who do not fit neatly as male or as female have been expected either to seek some sort of treatment to become one of those two sexes (with a masculine gender for males and a feminine gender for females) or to withdraw from society.

[3] It would be accurate, but misleading, to instead describe his condition as one of toxic non-masculinity.

I have lots of keys. Most of those that are not on the key-ring that I routinely carry with me are tagged, so that I know to what they go. But, as I was going through the drawer in which those keys are kept, I found one that was labelled HARD KEY. I confess that this label was not and is not now very helpful.

There is such a thing as is called a soft key; it's a passcode of some sort. What would one call a hard key? A key that is not a soft key? That would make every key in that drawer a hard key; there'd be no use in labelling a key of that sort simply as a key of that sort.

My best guess is that this key were a key that were badly cut or worn, so that it were hard to use. But to use where?

Well, I couldn't and cannot remember; but that's okay, because I found that it matches another key that I have on a ring labelled Orphans, and nothing goes on that ring unless I know that it's no longer possible or no longer permissible for me to use the key in its lock. (There is separate ring for keys that are merely probable orphans.) Some of the orphans also have further tags; some, as in the case of the brother of the HARD KEY do not; but when that brother was put on the ring, I knew to what it went, and knew that I couldn't or shouldn't access that lock.

I didn't save the orphans thinking that I might someday match one with an unidentified key. A few of them I saved for their sentimental values. Most I saved simply to have keys with which to do other things; for example, they could be filed into bump keys or given to children or used as props; the intention in identifying them as orphans was that most of these keys be distinguished as expendible. Of course now, in the case of a key with no twin on that ring, I will be a bit more reluctant to alter or part with it, as it might someday be matched with another mysterious key. I am enslaved by my keys.

I have long and often encountered discussion that implicitly or explicitly involves notions of property or of ownership, which discussion is rendered incoherent from a failure to consider what it means for something to be property, what it means to own something.

Some confusion arises because we have come often to use the word property casually to mean an object (physical or more abstract) to which ownership of some sort may apply, without our considering whether the object is well conceptualized for purposes of considering property rights,[1] and without considering that actual ownership associated with that object might be distributed in some complicated ways amongst multiple parties.

One might, for some reason, associate a plot of land with an object imagined as beginning at the center of the Earth and extending into the atmosphere (or beyond); from such an association, and then from a presumption that the whole object were property, farmers were once known to shoot at airplanes as trespassing vehicles. Yet other folk would assert that owning a plot of land as such only entitled one to control things to lesser depths and heights, in which case the rights could be associated with a smaller object, representing a sub-object as it were. One person might be thought to have the right to farm the aforementioned land, and another to extract its mineral resources so long as he didn't thereby interfere with the farming. Possibly others would claim peculiar easements, allowing them to travel through some or all of the object without thereby trespassing. There might be purported rights entitling still others to flows of resources such water, air, and electromagnetic radiation travelling through the object. In the case of sunlight (an electromagnetic radiation), the rights would typically be presumed to involve only some space above the soil, and the farmer might both have claims against her neighbors doing things that reduced her sunlight and be constrained by similar claims for her neighbors.

If we are thinking in terms of one object, and then change to thinking of an object within it, previously relevant rights of ownership may become irrelevant. If we instead think in terms of an object of which our original object is but a part, then new claims may become relevant. Two objects, neither of which is completely contained in the other, may share some third object as a part; so that any thorough consideration of ownership involving these two objects containing the third may involve rights that are literally identical and rights that are different. The minimal object relevant to describe some asserted set of property rights might not be sufficient to describe other rights none-the-less associated with that object. The minimal object in each of the previously mentioned cases (of farming, of easement, of mineral extraction, and of unobstructed resource flow) is somewhat different from the minimal object in the other cases.

A farmer who somehow forfeits her right not to have sunlight artificially obstructed may still be imagined to own the plot of land on which she grew her crops, yet she doesn't own what once she owned. Likewise, a house-holder who somehow surrenders his right to come and go from the plot on which the house sits doesn't own what once he owned. And, though it would perhaps seem very unsual, one might imagine these rights not transformed into claims for those who have prior rights to surrounding spaces, but instead coming into possession of third parties. For example, perhaps I speculate that I can buy whatever rights I need to build a skyscraper, on the assumption that I can buy a right to block the sunlight to a neighboring farm; I could purchase that latter right first, then discover that I am thwarted as to other purchases. This might work nicely for the farmer, but she no longer has a right that she once had; she no longer owns something that she once owned.

We can still express what things are owned as if they are objects, but we must then select our objects to match our rights of use. And our discourse can become strained and unnatural if we insist on always treating the thing owned as a distinct object rather than as a right of use. For example, if Timo is exclusively entitled to inhabit a cabin in the Winter and James is likewise entitled to inhabit it in the Summer, and we must express them as owning distinct objects, then we must treat the cabin in Winter as one object and the cabin in Summer as another. Indeed, we will surely have to be far more contrived in our construction of objects to account for what the two jointly do not own of the cabin! On the other hand, we can say that each has a right to use the cabin in some way without necessarily specifying how other rights of use are distributed; the concept of the cabin is available without first settling questions of ownership.

I don't propose that we generally stop using the word property as in the ordinary sense of a piece of property, merely that we understand that this everyday use may be misleading. Nor would I suggest that we should somehow stop thinking in terms of objects when we carefully consider ownership. But we must be alert to the fact that our choice of objects with which to think is largely taxonomic and to some degree arbitrary, and we should not take results that are no more than artefacts of that taxonomy as anything more profound.

In fact, the right of use may be recognized as itself an object of an abstract sort, but the right to use a right of use is not distinct from simply that right of use, and thus cannot be dissociated from it.[1.5]

My laboring of the relationship of ownership to objects and their uses isn't quibbling nor pirouetting. People who imagine an object as such to be owned tend all too often to imagine it somehow being owned beyond any of its various possible uses. They thus imagine that it can remain the property of one person or group even as another party — most often those in control of the state — appropriate its use, and even as this second party seizes every right of use. It then also becomes absurdly thinkable that one person might retain every right of use that she had, associated with an object, yet transfer ownership to some other party. Ownership would be reduced to absolutely nothing more than something such as a formal title.

When the state regulates property, it is taking rights of use and hence ownership. This transfer is relevant to questions of compensation (as in the case of the guarantees of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution[2]), and of whether state regulation of the means of production is a form of socialism.

[1] The word object comes from the Latin ob-iacere, meaning throw-before, and referred originally to that thrown before the mind. What we now call objects are, however, mental organizations of what is thrown before us. Thus, to use a classic example, we can talk about my hand as an object, and my fist as an object; they seem to be the same object, yet only sometimes. (We may still, in good conscience, use the word objective for perceptible external reality. And extending it to include unperceived and imperceptible external reality shouldn't cause more than mild discomfort; the rightful demands of etymology are not unlimited.)

[1.5] This paragraph was added on 24 May.

[2] That Amendment (with an underscore by me) reads

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

During the 2000 Presidential race, I was told by some Democrats that not voting for Al[bert Arnold] Gore [jr] were the same thing as voting for George W[alker] Bush. And I was told by some Republicans that not voting for Bush were the same thing as voting for Gore. Somehow it seemed that, by not voting for either man, I were casting a vote for each.

On Election Day or on the day after, one of those Republicans who'd claimed that I voted for Gore by not voting for Bush learned that I'd also refused to vote for Harry [Edson] Browne (the Libertarian candidate) and that Republican then declared That's even worse! For it to be worse would mean that I'd effectively done even more voting for Gore, though perhaps not a whole further vote. I didn't interact on that day with any Democrats, so I don't know whether they would have creditted me with still further support of Bush in my refusal to vote for Browne. But it seemed as if, by not voting for anyone, I had voted more than twice.

Well, enough of that nonsense. People who make such claims don't know much about the mathematics of voting, and either just lack mathematical sense in general, or allow their emotions to overwhelm their intellects.

My refusal to vote in Presidential elections, which predated that race and has continued since, doesn't stem from resignation, from laziness, from apathy, nor from ignorance.

It comes in part from my extreme reluctance to support one evil in an attempt to stop another. I won't vote for a candidate unless I think him or her truly fit to be President, and I've not seen such a candidate in decades. Browne, for example, represented a watering-down of classical liberalism, when a pure expression was needed (as remains the case).

Further, when it comes to the two major parties, I am acutely aware that, in most of these elections, one candidate doesn't win so much as the other loses; the winners aren't loved by the typical voter; rather, the principal opponent of each is detested. Yet the victor usually claims a mandate; even when he barely squeaks past the other creep and even when voters give the other party a Congressional majority.

We get these detestable candidates because the institutional structure is corrupt at a deep, infrastructural level. But those who vote, even for the loser, are demonstrating some hope, however faint, in the process, and from that demonstration legitimacy is persuasively claimed for that structure.

It is, of course, difficult to sort-out who fails to register to vote from dissatisfaction and who from lack of concern; likewise for those who register but do not go to the polls. But I am registered, and I do go to the polls. I take and submit a ballot. But I do not vote for a Presidential candidate. I vote on the issues that I feel that I properly understand, and I occasionally vote for a local candidate. It would be absurd to dismiss people like me as uninterested. Our numbers are presently tiny, but our message is far more clear than would be votes for whomever we thought the least objectionable candidate.

In the up-coming Presidential election, the major parties are going to offer the very worst candidates that they have in my lifetime. We didn't get here by virtue of people who didn't vote for nominees, but by virtue of those who did.

People who've known me for a while know that I don't eat mammal tissue. I used to say red meat instead of mammal tissue but I got tired of repeatedly dealing with my mother's thinking that, because the pork industry was calling pork the other white meat, it somehow was no longer red meat.

In fact, I especially don't want to eat pork, because my more general rule is Never eat anything that could have loved you. and I'm quite sure that a pig could have loved me. Indeed, I think that various non-mammals, such as crows and parrots, are capable of things such as love.

An Internet friend recently mistook my standard for a reciprocity rule, as if I would reward various creatures on the chance that they might love me. But it's really a capacity rule; I don't want to eat an animal who has enough psychological sophistication for love.

I am willing to eat other animals. I'm even willing to eat animals whose ancestors could have loved me, but who, as a result of how they have been bred over many generations, now seem to lack such capacities. (However, I am put uncomfortably in mind of Lovecraft's story, The Rats in the Walls, in which human beings had been bred by cannibals to a much diminished intellectual state.)

As a result of my desire to avoid consuming creatures that are somewhat conscious, and of my special concern for pigs, I find myself thwarted when it comes to foods that contain gelatin, including marshmallows. It is possible to derive gelatin from fish, or to substitute for gelatin various non-animal products (such as agar-agar) in the making of things such as marshmallows. But, for the most part, gelatin is derived from the skin of pigs and substitutes for gelatin are not used.

Kosher gelatin proves to be a trickier matter than one might imagine. Partly that's because gelatin can be made from bits of cow (still not on my diet). But, also, there's a Rabbi Dovid Cohen who argues, perhaps with sincerity, that bones and skin are considered inedible under Judaïc Law, and that therefore a manufacturer has a sort of clean slate when beginning with them. OU kosher certification doesn't entail a promise that pig tissue did not go into any gelatin that might be present.