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CONDITION: Welcome Rain!


Lancaster

Santa Barbara

Los Angeles

San Diego           Yuma

Here in Berkeley we are at 125% of average seasonal rainfall to date. We are two-fifths of the way 
through the rainy season, and have so far received half of annual average rainfall.
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FOCUS: Creeping Academic Idiocya€’’Academic Freedom Edition:

*   •

Rajiv Sethi: From Hamline University to the Buddhas of Bamiyan: a€~During an online art history 
class on October 6, a lecturer at Hamline University displayed an image of a paintinga€! the 
Prophet Muhammad receiving his first Quranic revelation from the Angel Gabriela€! 14th century a€ I 
commissioned by a Sunni kinga€! considered a
masterpiece of Islamic arta€!. Cognizanta€! that some students might find any depiction of Muhammad 
to be contrary to religious precepts against idolatry, the instructor provided written and verbal 
content warningsa€!. What followed is both disturbing and depressingly familiar. A complaint was 
filed, the presentation was characterized by
senior administrators as a€ceundeniablya€D Islamophobic, and the lecturer (who did not have the 
protections of tenure) was fired. A letter by the chair of the religion department defending the 
instructor and providing context for the classroom exercise was published by the student newspaper, 
but then scrubbed from the papera€™ s website
after two daysa€!


This painting is one of the images at rhe center of the discussion in the Hamline classroom. It is 
included
in a historical text written by Rashid al-Din, a famous 14th-century7 Muslim vizier and historian.
(Edinburgh University Library, Or. Ms. 20)

As I have understand it, the prohibition (for those who follow it) against making an image of the 
Prophet Mohammed arises out of the context of the interaction of the Islamic A “kumene with the 
Byzantine Empire and subsequent Eastern Orthodox communities. The fear was that some believers 
would then take such images, and treat them like iconsa€”as holy and
sacred things to be venerated. This would be bad: veneration and worship should be solely of the 
Almighty, the Merciful, the Compassionate. For, as Abu Bakr said upon announcing the death of the 
Prophet:

Whoever among you worships Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him): Muhammad has died. Whoever 
worships God: God is alive, and cannot diea€!

It seems to me that these days very very few indeed are in any danger of falling into error by 
turning a picture of Muhammed into an icon to be venerated.

The danger seems to lie on the other sidea€”to fall into error by ascribing a God-like 
transcendental holiness to Muhammeda€™ s face, in the sense that we see in Exodus 33:

And [the Lord] said, aCceThou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.a€D 
And the Lord said, a€oeBehold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it 
shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and 
will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will
take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seenaCO...

Rajiv Sethi recommends:

•  Christiane Gruber: An Academic Is Fired Over a Medieval Painting of the Prophet Muhammad: a€~The 
dismissal of an instructor at Hamline University on baseless charges of 'Islamophobia' raises 
concerns about freedom on campusa€!

•  Amna Khalid: Most of All, I Am Offended as a Muslim: a€~On Hamline Universitya€™ s shocking 
imposition of narrow religious orthodoxy in the classrooma€!

• Mark Berkson: Letter to the a€ceOraclea€Da€!

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MUST-READ: Les Mis Daily:

A nice way to use SubStack:

Victor Hugo (1862): Les Mis Daily - Preface: a€~So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and 
custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the 
civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three 
great problems of the centurya€”the degradation of man

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rrFi    /vF 11             • c/v    QC CAPIQ! oonhwi o ic           m      /vF FK/a 
xxr/vylrlXT7/W/4C              Y171FK O ctill \T7i/^/*i*           c/v 1/vtArr oc iannranr'a onJ 
r>/v\7/^Wx7 ovict nn             IA/V/VV'C /VF natnrA /vF T         c A      pannnt Foil


to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. Rachel: a€ceOne chapter of Les MisA©rables for each day of 
2023a€!

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BRIEFLY NOTED:

ONE IMAGE: The Mountains of the Continental United States:

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ONE AUDIO: Josiah Ober: The Greeks & the Rational:

Josiah Ober, The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason (U California Press, 
2022)

Josiah Ober & Javier Meija: a€~Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and 
contemporary permutations, the Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of 
strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough that remains 
both a feature of and a bug in our modern world. Countering arguments that
rational choice-making is a contingent product of modernity, The Greeks and the Rational: The 
Discovery of Practical Reason (U California Press, 2022) traces the long history of theorizing 
rationality back to ancient Greece.

In this book, Josiah Ober explores how ancient Greek sophists, historians, and philosophers 
developed sophisticated and systematic ideas about practical reason. At the same time, they 
recognized its limitsa€”that not every decision can be reduced to mechanistic calculations of 
optimal outcomes. Ober finds contemporary echoes of this tradition in the application of
game theory to political science, economics, and business management. The Greeks and the Rational 
offers a striking revisionist history with widespread implications for the study of ancient Greek 
civilization, the history of thought, and human rationality itselfa€!

<https://overcast.fm/+s3EsH61Dk>
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Very Briefly Noted:


• Noah Smith: The third magic: A meditation on history, science, and AIa€!

• Olivier Blanchard: Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesa€\

• Paul Krugman: a€~In the end, it all comes down to individual motives and decisions. A business 
that raises its prices doesn't do so because the Fed has increased the money supply. The chain of 
events that leads to that price rise may have started with the Fed, but the firm is responding to 
its own market conditionsa€!. It's precisely because inflation isn't
immaculate that we worry about things like supply shocks and wage-price spirals a€” and why 
estimating the cost of disinflation is so harda€!

•  David Roberts: a€~Great to see Florida officially becoming a haven for pathetic failed dictator 
wannabesa€!. a€oeBolsonaro has been reduced to aimlessly walking around a gated community in 
Orlando after fleeing Brasil due to fears of several criminal investigations now that he no longer 
has presidential immunitya€!

•  Hilzoy: a€~Peace in Europe isa€! an astonishing human creation, requiring a lot of ingenuity, 
diplomatic skill, and willingness to compromise. It does not maintain itself. We should never 
forget how deeply unnatural it is, and never stop protecting ita€!

•  Mark Bellemere: a€~After wasting a lot ofa€! time on Twitter this past decade, I seea€! a chance 
to reseta€! read more booksa€!. The Bookly appa€! allows you to keep tracka€!

•  Perry Bacon Jr.: a€~The level of detail and willingness to describe Stefanik's actions without 
pulling punches make this Nick Confessore story uniquea€!

• Get Bookly: <https://getbookly.com/>

• Steve M: Today I Learned What Right-Wingers Mean When They Say a€oeBig Mikea€Da€!

• Aure: How to Remove Amazon Kindle Ebook DRM in 2022a€!
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AJs:

David Singh Grewal: A World-Historical Gamble: The Failure of Neoliberal Globalization: a€~In the 
midst of all this obvious geopolitical conflict, the doux commerce thesis would seem once again 
thoroughly repudiated. NeverAtheless, confronted with the apparent failure of the world without 
walls, some defenders of neoliberalism still argue that the integration of
our geopolitical rivals into a Western-led economic order has at least contained their sphere of 
action, even if it has failed to transform them. The argument is that we now have more leverage 
over them because they are part of the global economy than we would have if they were outside it. 
This argument focuses on global economic interdependence, which it
imagines as at least limiting, if not eliminating, interstate violence...

Michael Ignatieff: The Politics of Enemies: a€~Illiberal, populist visions have long defined 
democracy as majority rule backing up a strong leader, while liberal definitions have long insisted 
that majority rule must be balanced by minority rights and countermajoritarian institutionsa€L 
Liberals, like conservatives, know what there is to fear: the fatal cycle that begins
with revolutionary enthusiasm and expectation, slipping into violence justified in the name of a 
better world, followed by civil war, dissolution of the state, and the authoritarian reassertion of 
controla€!. In any competitive democratic system, the temptation to treat an adversary as an enemy 
is unavoidablea€!. Democracya€™ s informal rules of engagement might
best be described as a code of hypocritical civilitya€!. Smart adversaries keep the contest clean 
to keep it under controla€!. Once elections are concluded, competitive passions are usually spent, 
and tried and tested forms of decorum resume their pacifying rolea€!. Democratic assemblies and 
elections have regulatory codes that restrain extremist speech, but such
codes will always be vulnerable to being gamed and manipulated by scheming opportunistsa€!

Minxin Pei: China: Totalitarianisma€™ s Long Shadow: a€~The Leninist party-state has in recent 
years reverted to a form of neo-Stalinist rulea€!. Post-totalitarian regimesa€! possess far greater 
capacity and resources to resist and neutralize the liberalizing effects of modernization. However, 
the medium-term success of these regimes may only ensure their eventual
demise through revolution. The socioeconomic transformation of societies under post-totalitarian 
rule empowers social forces and greatly increase the odds of revolutionary change...

Cory Doctorow: a€oeMetaversea€D means a€oepivot to videoa€D: a€~Google didna€™t need to build a 
successful video service. It could simply buy one.  In 2015, Facebook staged a raid on YouTubea€! 
sought to leverage this competitive advantage to force publishers to subsidize its video service 
rollout. Facebook defrauded these publishers, falsely claiming

that the unpopular, obscure videos that appeared on its site were actually runaway successes, 
drawing more views than the print articles the publishers specialized in producing. Facebook made 
grandiose claims about a profound shift in human behaviora€!. Publishers were taken in.  Publishers 
experienced a mass-extinction eventa€!. In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg

announced thata€! the interneta€™ s billions were clamoring to interact with each other as legless, 
sexless, low-polygon cartoon characters in a high-surveillance walled garden he called a€oethe met 
aver se.a€D... [Its]] users are every bit as imaginary as the content hungry viewers of the 
pivot-to-video. Even Metaa€™ s own employees are totally indifferent to it....
Mark Zuckerberg wants to build another walled garden.... If it fails, at least the majority of the 
pain will be felt by the suckers who bought Zuckerberga€™ s latest lie. The words are different, 
but this is the same tune Zuckerberg started warbling in 2003: a€oeZuck: Yeah so if you ever need 
info about anyone at Harvard. Just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures,

addresses, SNS. [Redacted Frienda€™ s Name]: What? Howa€™ d you manage that one? Zuck: People just 
submitted it. I dona€™ t know why. They a€~trust mea€™ Dumb fucksa€D...

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