Weight and Cosmic Love

This ring does not weigh anything,
the needle does not move from zero
and I cannot make it show
even a milligram.
Your husband must be alive—
in which case neither of your rings, taken separately,
will weigh anything—only both together will register.

Karol Wojtyla, The Jeweler's Shop, act II

What if it were a cosmic law, and not only a law of love, but a physical law that the each member of a couple separately lacks the significance of the pair together?

We cannot know directly whether unpaired charged lack weight. The problem is that electromagnetic forces are so large that only the smallest particles are tolerated to remain unpaired for any significant time, and these are too small to have appreciable weight. Put another way, the systematic uncertainties of electromagnetic forces so far dominate gravity as to make the latter completely negligible.

But are there indirect ways to know whether unpaired charges lack weight? What would the universe look like were this true? Would it differ from our own? If so, how?

The Victim Rule: the Victim Rules

The inconsistencies of leftists leave sane people confused.

One rule that deciphers many of these: All victims are automatically innocent.

Thus women (who are definitionally victims of male oppression) cannot be guilty of a crime in aborting their unborn children, and blacks cannot be guilty of crimes against whites or any other race: that would be "blaming the victim"! On the contrary, victims are given free rein to do whatever they like with impunity.

This rule is a parody of Christianity, which is based on the self-sacrifice of the Innocent Victim, the Prince of Peace who now reigns forever. It's the secular world trying to make sense of, trying to incorporate on its own terms, the peace that passes all understanding. But while it succeeds in achieving a superficial sort of equality by "exalting those of low degree" (cf. Lk 1:52) often through the sophistry of "making the weaker argument the stronger," it cannot achieve an integral peace with roots reaching the core of reality.

René Girard, requiescat in pace.

The Long-overdue Death of Embryonic Stem Cell Hype

The Hype over Embryonic Stem Cell Research Dies Not with a Bang but a Whimper

Science and scientists are subject to hype just like everyone else.

Climate Science and Its Discontents

A few interesting links on the purportedly man-made climate change:

• France’s top weatherman says he was placed 'on leave' for stance on climate change
• When You Need Courts to Settle Science, Then Science Isn't on Your Side
• What I Learned about Climate Change: The Science is not Settled

The first two aren't about the "science" so much as the behavior of its proponents that might make you wonder how strong the case is. The last one looks to be a very thoughtful consideration of the science, told from the perspective of a proponent of environmental regulation.

The Courage of Caitlyn

Although Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's big coming out is buried under several layers of news-cycle by now, I don't think a post on his situation is out of place, seeing as he continues to keep himself in the public eye with a new "reality" television series.

The still quite-dominant liberal media persists in calling this very public "sex" change "courageous." But one has to wonder: on what basis? Is it because Jenner is going against public opinion? Surely that can't be it, when elite opinion is all lauding him! How can he be courageous for going against the dominant opinion when that dominant opinion is praising him for being courageous?

I say it is rather that Jenner is going against a higher authority: nature, his own created nature. Like the ancient gnostics: his is battling the wrath of the creator god to find the creation-transcending god: in the modern case, his own "sexual identity."

Hyposexuality

Really, Caitlyn Jenner is the victim of a much larger cultural problem: the misunderstanding of sex. The word sex has the same root as "section," the idea being that mankind is divided into two great sections, female and male. Only in the 20th century did the word take on the meaning of sexual intercourse, and from properly sexual intercourse, it was only a small leap to interactions in which only one of the organs involved was a sexual organ, that is to say, endowed with the proper procreative function. These days it's really a flattened sexuality that's people are celebrating: not a real sexuality at all, but only the firing of a bunch of treasured sensory neurons.

That's why I think a more accurate category for transexuals, homosexuals, and many other sexual deviants is hyposexual.