TM Lutas

Pussy Riot Dog Whistle

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Orthodoxy is not a religion that is widely understood in the West. So it’s actually the rare pundit that catches how offensive what this punk riot group was doing actually was. There’s a subtitled version of the video that helps. The video misses the positional problems. The picture screen, called an iconostasis is something like the old altar rails of Catholicism but with fairly elaborate rituals surrounding the structure. There are three doors, the center one is called the holy doors. As a lay person you’re not even supposed to walk in front of that door. It’s viewed as disrespectful, even sacrilegious. So the people in charge of order and discipline were a bit stuck because these girls were dancing in the sanctuary, in front of the iconostasis and extracting them actually meant that they had to break the rules too. Several times a Pussy Riot girl bowed and did a full prostration. One does these things towards the altar in Orthodoxy. Reversing this as the protesters did is viewed as idolatry. Who, exactly, are they bowing to? That’s the genesis of the “devil dancing” talk in their trial.

Putin may have been a target but he certainly wasn’t the target. Their attack had a much wider range of victims. This was an attack on Orthodoxy, an attack on symphonia, the concept of church and state in complementary roles and mutual respect, and also an attack on Putin.

The maximum sentence was seven years for the crime of hooliganism. The prosecutors asked for three. The judge set sentence at two.

In the US, the results might not have been very different except for the name of the crime on the charge sheet. Simple criminal trespass in Indiana where I live is punishable between 6 months and 3 years with a fine up to $10,000. As this wasn’t Pussy Riot’s first case of trespass and outrageous behavior, this is exactly the sort of case that would tilt towards the heavier end of the penalty range.

Pumice Island

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The recent discovery of a huge pumice island that is larger than the state of Israel has led to scientific excitement, but not just scientific excitement. The questions arise who owns these rocks, and can one live on one of these pumice islands?

Patri Friedman, call your office!

TSA fail: the end of the road is now visible

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There was an attack in Saudi Arabia using internally placed explosives up the lower GI tract. These explosives cannot be detected by pat downs, metal detectors, or millimeter wave machines. Much more powerful scanning machines would be required or a cavity search. But no follow up bombs have happened using this method. I’d always wondered why. Now things are becoming clear. Apparently there’s been something of a theological problem. It appears that butt bombs are not permitted due to Islam’s prohibition of sodomy. But that prohibition seems to be loosening.

It will take years for the theologians to digest this new complication but once it has been let loose, it is clearly foreseeable that some portion of islamic scholars will hold this position. The consequences for our travel security regime are rather scary. We’re going to have reached the end of the line because routine x-rays at each flight segment are just not going to happen. The accumulated radiation would cause too many cancers. And cavity searches are simply unreasonable. So where does that leave TSA’s current security strategy?

Like most of their terror innovations, I expect that this will take some time for them to organize. It looks like they’ve already put 4 years into it. It may take them another 4 before they’ve worked the theological problems out sufficient to recruit bombers. But then what?

Aurora shooting: the other #narrativefail

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Glenn Reynolds is rightly mocking the failure of the left wing narrative that shootings should result in new restrictions on guns. But there’s another narrative out there, one that should be calmly insisted on, that the Aurora shootings should be analyzed as a failure of Colorado’s commitment to its own state constitution whose Article 17 insists that the ordinary guy between 18 and 45 constitute a militia. All of us, the gun control side, the gun rights side, are not acting as if we take that seriously. And the gun rights side *should* be taking that seriously.

The next day after the 1983 Beirut truck bomb, US sentries in Beirut were no longer walking around with no round in the chamber and no magazines inserted as they had been when the truck zoomed through the sentry post on its way to mass murder. The rules of engagement for US forces in Beirut changed quickly.

The day after the Aurora Colorado killings, that movie chain was still barring CCL carriers from entering their premises with their legal firearms. Nobody seems to find it strange that we acted that way. Nobody seems to find it strange that we don’t have a legal framework that we can use to change the rules of engagement for the unorganized militia. We have to go through the legislature and make a new law every time. It is as if the narrative of the general population being a militia is something we only pay lip service to. This too is a failure in narrative, and a worrying one.

Did the government really build that?

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Recently, President Obama opined that businesses depend on infrastructure built by the government. Roads, bridges, “you didn’t build that”. So the businessman writing the big check for taxes? His money sent to government doesn’t mean that he built it. Fair enough, but why is President Obama’s check privileged over the businessman’s check? The guy with the backhoe, the flagger, the asphalt plant, chances are that all of them are private industry. In all justice what makes it the government’s road?