Memorial Day Wonders

Missy at 17+ weeks!

Paradise Springs. Here is the pool formed at the source of the spring.

The springs are cold and clear. Red sided rainbows cruise the millefoile sipping midge larvae. Very fine tippets and patience are required. I went 0/0.

Die Quelle Der Ursprung

Even the suckers must spawn. I caught schools of spawning suckers on the redds in late April. A couple of days later they were all gone, back in their holes cleaning the bottom with their butthole mouths.

Bluff Creek: a cold creek emanating from springs in the Kettle Moraine, rather shallow with some stream improvements. Holding water for minnows. We went 0/0 in perfect imitation of the baetis and the small pale sulfurs skittering off the evening miniscus.

A Blue Winged Olive

European Leaders Tell Wolfowitz He Must Go Packing

Wolfowitz is, of course, downpeddling having his girlfriend on the payroll and, in absolute terms, this is a very trivial issue. But didn't Wolfowitz ever spend any time in the wood shed with the boys? Out of molehills they will make mountains when they want to get rid of you. Wolfie should be able to hear that with those big Dumbo ears of his, shouldn't he? There's even a latin phrase for it: persona non grata. Here's where Dumbo's dreams of being the Philosopher King run up against the demos. Without their consent, he can do nothing.

On Iraq Carnage: First Lady tells us "noone suffers more than the President and I do"

wrong wrong wrong

I was presenting Rawls's theory of justice in my ethics class the other day and gave the students an assignment to examine some CEO pay charts relative to worker wages and evaluate the justice of the scenario from Rawls's perspective and from the moral perspective of another philosopher, such as Mill or Aristotle. Rawls's two principles are:
1) Principle of Equal Liberty: Each person has an equal right to the most extensive liberties compatible with similar liberties for all. (Egalitarian.)
2) Difference Principle: Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.

Now, clearly the rising ceo pay relative to worker pay violates the difference principle. But what surprised me was when I collected the homework and received a few very peculiar answers. Here is one of them:

"Aristotle believes that as long as someone is fulfilling their duties they deserve the reward. Particular justice means the CEO would take more that his particular share of duties which gives him the right to be paid more than the average worker. So acts of earning what you deserve in most cases CEO's do, would cause Aristotle to believe the graphs would just and morally right. It is hard to judge by looking at graphs what is unjust and what is not because there are many factors left unknown in this data. CEO's typically have high education and lots of experience. It also takes a lot of work to become one so typically they deserve what they get paid. "

First,She is really overmassaging Aristotle's conception of "particular justice" with its conception of distributive justice according to geometrical proportion for it is true that some inequality is acceptable to Aristotle, relative to the virtue and contribution of the person, I believe he would think this kind of gross inequality erodes the stability of a democratic society and begins to shape the society around the interests of the few. Provided those interests are in accordance with Man's proper end, of course, there is no problem, but this is the least of my concerns here. My concern is the implicit rejection of DATA that is RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER FACE and the fact that she cannot even bring herself to digest and assimilate the meaning of this. This kind of "false consciousness" (to use Marx's phrase) is exactly what the rich are banking on. Literally.