What’s next: Elvish or Klingon?
Alright, C-3PO, it’s time to break out those awesome translating skills you’re always humblebragging about — and while you’re at it, break out your wallet, too. Star Wars has just licensed its first-ever official computer keyboard replacement set, coded in Aurebesh, the written version of the official language spoken throughout the Galactic Empire.
— Read on www.syfy.com/syfywire/star-wars-keyboard-senses-a-great-disturbance-in-your-command-of-aurebesh
The Midwestern History Association and the Hauenstein Center at Grand Valley State University invite proposals for papers to be delivered at the Fifth Annual Midwestern History Conference, to be held May 30-31, 2019 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
This conference continues a discussion which has grown significantly over the last four years, at collaborative conferences designed to spark – and sustain – a revival of Midwestern studies in American historiography. Infused with varieties of original research pursued by scholars from many different career paths and stages, this annual gathering strives to cultivate rigorous historical understanding of a complex, dynamic, changing, and often misunderstood region.
— Read on mailchi.mp/c52375433445/call-for-proposals-fifth-annual-midwestern-history-conference-1262039
Sponsored and created by two great men: Gleaves Whitney and Jon Lauck.
Let’s briefly go over what we covered last time. When economists talk about ethical issues, they usually start with economic efficiency as a normative benchmark. Efficiency means you can’t make someone better off without making someone worse off. For any given distribution of income, if you reallocate resources from Al to Bob, you improve Bob’s welfare only by diminishing Al’s. In competitive markets, efficiency has the interesting property of maximizing the dollar value of society’s resources. If society’s resources did not command as high as a price as they could, it would mean there are unexploited gains from exchange. Those exchanges, once made, would make parties to the exchanges better off, and we could have additional winners without additional losers.
So far, so good. But there are many unexamined assumptions behind economic efficiency and its desirability. What are some of these assumptions? To start, it’s important to remember that efficiency is defined with respect to people’s preferences. Efficient situations entail people getting what they want. This is why many economists don’t think efficiency advocacy is controversial. After all, what could be wrong about people getting what they want? Actually, it turns out a great deal could be wrong with it! Imagine Al hates Bob and is willing to pay a million dollars to take out an assassination contract on him. Bob likes being alive but is only able to pay half a million to bribe the assassin not to kill him. While the assassination contract clearly fails the strict efficiency definition (nobody better off without somebody worse off), it fits the less stringent one (dollar maximization of goods/services). But I would hope that no economists would reason from this that we ought to make assassination contracts legal on efficiency grounds!
More generally, we should be cautious in approving the lofty place efficiency has in most economists’ public policy recommendations. Once we realize that there are plenty of situations where individuals ought not get what they want, efficiency becomes much less appealing as a policy goal. Furthermore, efficient situations often entail distributional changes in resource allocations that can further burden those who are already struggling. Economists tend to overlook this as long as the economic pie is getting bigger. But surely it is reasonable to worry not just about the size of the pie, but who gets how big a slice. This does not mean calls for distributive justice—many made by non-economists who do not have the training to recognize the disastrous probable consequences of their demands—ought to be acceded to unquestioningly. But it does mean that there are valid ethical concerns that economists tend to ignore, because of what their analytical window allows them to see.
There is an entire world of ethical discourse outside of economists’ relatively narrow brand of consequentialism. Economists are selling themselves short when they restrict themselves to the role of efficiency technocrats, rather than adapting their discipline’s invaluable tools towards the cultivation and preservation of a humane society.
From Lutheran Service Book’s Daily Lectionary for December 8:
For you [,O Lord,] have been a stronghold to the poor,
a stronghold to the needy in his distress,
a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. (Isaiah 25:4 ESV)
Which, as sung and reshaped in the African-American tradition of Christian spirituals, became:
And, as repurposed by Bob Dylan, also became:
— Rick Krueger
New book clarifies beliefs and corrects misunderstandings about the papacy – Catholic World Report
— Read on www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/12/04/new-book-clarifies-beliefs-and-corrects-misunderstandings-about-the-papacy/
Technology or Tradition? – Catholic World Report
— Read on www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/12/06/technology-or-tradition/
So far as the politics of our debased republic go, the mid-twentieth century quarrel of the leftist C. Wright Mills with his liberal critics comes to mind. Said Mills by way of response to their demand for what he acidly termed “A Balanced View”: “I feel no need for, and perhaps am incapable of arranging for you, a lyric upsurge, a cheerful little pat on the moral back.”2 In our pitiable circumstance, we all, whether we’re making policy or casting votes, face nothing more immediately hopeful than prudential choices for compromised parties, positions, and politicians—which is not to say that all such options are equal. We have real choices to make. To my mind, the most urgent political action today centers on our systemic needs: protecting and promoting (negatively) the separation of powers and (positively) citizen rule. Such a stance at least will keep us, whatever our take on globalism, from succumbing to nationalist fantasies of repristinated bliss.
— Read on www.frontporchrepublic.com/2018/12/when-in-gotham/
Washington Irving has been credited with inspiring the romantic revival of Christmas in America. But does romanticizing the holiday and its trappings carry with it a moral danger? (essay by Christine Norvell)
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/12/home-hearth-old-christmas-washington-irving-christine-norvell.html
From the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s calendar of commemorations:
Ambrose of Milan, Pastor and Hymnwriter
Born in Trier in A.D. 340, Ambrose was one of the four great Latin Doctors of the Church (with Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great). He was a prolific author of hymns, the most common of which is Veni, Redemptor gentium (“Savior of the Nations, Come”). His name is also associated with Ambrosian Chant, the style of chanting the ancient liturgy that took hold in the province of Milan. While serving as a civil governor, Ambrose sought to bring peace among Christians in Milan who were divided into quarreling factions. When a new bishop was to be elected in 374, Ambrose addressed the crowd, and someone cried out, “Ambrose, bishop!” The entire gathering gave their support. This acclaim of Ambrose, a 34-year-old catechumen, led to his baptism on December 7, after which he was consecrated bishop of Milan. A strong defender of the faith, Ambrose convinced the Roman emperor Gratian in 379 to forbid the Arian heresy in the West. At Ambrose’s urging, Gratian’s successor, Theodosius, also publicly opposed Arianism. Ambrose died on Good Friday, April 4, 397. As a courageous doctor and musician he upheld the truth of God’s Word.
The Collect of the Day:
O God, You gave Your servant Ambrose grace to proclaim the Gospel with eloquence and power. As bishop of the great congregation of Milan, he fearlessly bore reproach for the honor of Your name. Mercifully grant to all bishops and pastors such excellence in preaching and fidelity in ministering Your Word that Your people shall be partakers of the divine nature; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
And for an evening meditation to cap this very musical week of commemorations, St. Ambrose’s hymn O lux beata Trinitas (“O Trinity, Most Blessed Light,”) as set to the 16th-century German tune “O heilige Dreifaltigkeit” and translated into English by John Mason Neale:
— Rick Krueger
Greg West, at The Poached Egg, has a fascinating account of how a song from Pink Floyd’s classic Dark Side of the Moon album started him on a search for meaning that ultimately led to faith. Read the whole thing – it’s a nice example of how you can find evidence of God at work in the unlikeliest of places.
Spirit of Cecilia 
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