Matching Tracksuits

Month: November 2006

Justice and the Blind

Thursday 30 November 2006

Apparently, America can’t be about the only country in the world (industrialized or otherwise) with indistinguishable currency, James Robertson ruled Tuesday.

And conservative bloggers are upset. To wit:

Yes, that’s right. The bills our nation has been using for 230 years have been ruled illegal by an idiot judge, U.S. District Judge James Robertson. […]

Stock tip of the day. Buy stock in companies that produce money readers for vending machines. (It’s a Paul World)

Which is odd, because the same argument could have been made against any number of things we now consider the norm: integration, wheelchair accessibility, closed-captioning.

The Treasury Department has, fortunately, a less emotional reason for opposing the suggested changes.

The Treasury Department had argued that making bills identifiable by touch would create an undue financial burden for the government. It had estimated that the most expensive approach � printing different sizes for different denominations � would cost $178 million for new printing presses and as much as $50 million for new plates. (NYT)

Less emotive, but also far less convincing (as if that were possible). Arguing that $228 million is excessive, from a government that is willing to pay Halliburton thousands for a hammer?

I too am shaking my head, though for different reasons than conservative bloggers.

Thoughts after watching “The Boys of Baraka”

Tuesday 28 November 2006

BarakaWatching The Boys of Baraka, I realize: much of middle class America has no clue. They see no difference between their lives and the lives of inner city kids.

“You’ve just got to suck it up and work hard. I did it; you can do it.”

They don’t see that those trapped in the inner-cities of America are living in a war zone. Forget Iraq — we have got devastation right here in our own country. It’s called the inner city. And until we realize that the only real solutions cost money — and lots of it — we’re going to continue living in a country divided.

Birthing Classes

Thursday 23 November 2006

Last week, K and I (and L, indirectly) finished our last birthing class. I’d really recommend to anyone considering starting a family taking such a class. Not only did we learn quite a bit about the birthing process and what we can expect (in about six weeks now), but more importantly, that knowledge has put both K and me at ease (to a degree) about the whole process.

I always had visions of rushing to the hospital in almost-complete pandemonium, because who knows when that baby will make its way out. I knew it couldn’t be that simple, but having never really been close to the birthing process, the lack of experiential knowledge did nothing to dislodge fully my sit-com visions of the Big Day.

Skeptics and True Believers: A Review

Wednesday 22 November 2006

There are some books that, after you put them down, your only response is, “Huh?” Chet Raymo’s Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion is certainly one such book.

Is it an attempt at soft apologetics by an enlightened scientist? Is it an attempt to convince fundamentalist to stop insisting that the world was created in six days? Is it a cliche celebration of the human spirit? Is it an ode to a great over-soul that has fewer specific characteristics than Emerson’s? Is it a tribute to the wonder of nature? Is it an expose on the inefficacy of astrology and intercessory prayer? Is it a devotional book?

Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes! A bundle of yeses! Numberless quanta of yeses!

I’ve never read a book more muddled than this. It is, in short, the ramblings of a man who’s given up theism and yet desperately wants to genuflect to something. Anything!

Read this book too quickly and you’ll get mental whiplash.

What is Raymo, a science writer for the Boston Globe, trying to do here? Sell science to believers? Sell belief to skeptics? Sadly, Raymo himself doesn’t even know, for it’s not entirely clear where he stands on the issue himself.

Is he an outright skeptic, completely denying the validity of organized religion? Yes:

It became obvious to me [while taking academic degrees in science] that certain doctrines of the Judeo-Christian tradition, including such central tenets of faith as immortality and a personal God who answers prayers, were based on long-discredited views of the world that placed humans in a central position and ascribed human attributes to other creatures and even to inanimate objects. (8)

Is he a theist at heart, somewhat bewildered by what he finds in the Bible and what science tells him? Yes:

There’s a “God-shaped hole in many people’s lives,” says physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. He’s right, at least about there being a hole in our lives. To call the hole “God-shaped” begs the question, for the affliction of our times is that we have no satisfactory image of God that rests comfortably with what scientists have learned about creation. (1)

Or maybe. The problem with Skeptics and True Believers is that Raymo alternates between denying the existence of anything vaguely associated with mainstream religion read: Christianity to the point of denying the existence of the soul, of a personal God, of a spirit world, and yet talking of “worship” and “liturgy” as if any of that has meaning if there is no divine being.

Raymo insists that he’s not trying to “turn science into a religion; science is too shallow a vessel to hold ultimate mysteries.” (8) Yet, there’s really no other way to interpret his feeble book as a whole. It’s the confession of a man who wants to reject his theology and write it too.

Raymo begins, though, by setting up a dichotomy of True Believers and Skeptics. At first it seems that “True Believers” is just a polite term for “fundamentalist”

True Believers have low tolerance for changeable knowledge. They prefer stable truths of faith, even if those truths run counter to a preponderance of physical evidence. For example, a 1993 Gallup poll indicates that nearly half of Americans believe in a geologically young Earth, despite the fact that not a shred of reproducible empirical evidence can be adduced in favor of the idea and a mountain of evidence is arrayed against it. (5)

True believers believe surprise religion, which everyone knows is an idiosyncratic belief system. Raymo then quotes what Anthony Storr says about idiosyncratic belief systems:

“Idiosyncratic belief systems which are shared by only a few adherents are likely to be regarded as delusional. Belief systems which may be just as irrational which are shared by millions are called world religions.” (66, 7)

Religion, then, is irrational. Fine. But unlike Gould in Rocks of Ages, he never really defines what religion is. Is it, like Gould suggests, primarily (or at least “primarily” in a proper understanding) an ethical system? Is it something akin to belief in UFOs? Is it somehow a logical result of evolution? Raymo suggests all of these things, and gives priority to none. Perhaps this is because Raymo himself doesn’t want be too specific. Yet, though he is using too broad strokes, he’s just making more work for himself, for he’s both painting and erasing as he goes along.

Primarily Raymo wants to be identified as a Skeptic, because they’re cool. They can live without the emotional fluff of weak religion. They look the cold, hard universe in the eye and say, “Well, I don’t care about you, either!”

The forces that nudge us toward True Belief are pervasive and well-nigh irresistible. Supernatural faith systems provide a degree of emotional security that skepticism cannot provide. Who among us would not prefer to believe that there exists a divine parent who has our best interest at heart? Who among us would notprefer to believe that we will live forever. Skepticism, on the other hand, offers only uncertainty and doubt. What keeps scientific skepticism on track, against the individual’s need for emotional security, is a highly evolved social structure, including professional associations and university departments, peer-reviewed literature, meetings and conferences, and a language that relies heavily on mathematics and specialized nomenclature. The point of this elaborate apparatus is to minimize individual backsliding into the false security of True Belief. (5, 6)

And yet, if we look closely enough, we realize that God (?!) has revealed himself through the marvel of his creation:

The God of my early religious training pulled off tricks that are not beyond the powers of any competent conjurer; Harry Houdini or David Copperfield could turn a stick into a serpent or water into wine without batting an eye. But no Houdini or Copperfield can turn microscopic cells into a flock of birds and then send them flying on their planet-spanning course. No Houdini or Copperfield cause consciousness to flare out and embrace the eons and the galaxies. The dubious miracles of the scriptures and of the saints are an uncertain basis upon which to base a faith; the greater miracle of creation is with us twenty-four hours a day, revealed by science on every side, deepening and consolidating our sense of awe. (133)

The real miracle is creation, not creation. I mean, the real miracle is the functioning of beings created by slow, tedious, testable evolution, not the way God created the world in six days. Wait did I say “miracle”? Of course, I really didn’t mean “miracle” like, you know, miracle. I’m speaking only metaphorically. But in a very real way.

Aggh! This book was infuriating!

If all this were not bad enough, Raymo actually suggests the following:

If the prodigious energy of the new scientific story of creation is to flow into religion, the story will need to be translated from the language of scientific discovery into the language of celebration. This is the work of theologians, philosophers, homilists, liturgists, poets, artists, and, yes, science writers. Only when we are emotionally at home in the universe of the galaxies and the DNA will the new story invigorate our spiritual lives and be cause for authentic celebration. Knowing and believing will come together again at last. Cautious and skeptical as knowers, we can then give ourselves unreservedly to spiritual union with creation and communal celebration of the mysteries. (234)

What does he want? “Take this, all of you, and eat: this is my DNA, encoded for you for the creation of a communal ceremony to produce warm and cozy feelings”?

Just eleven pages later, he writes,

The Copernican and Darwinian revolutions [“] have brushed away the last cobwebs of animism, anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism. The human gods are swept from their thrones. Angels, devils, spirits, and shades are sent packing. We are contingent, ephemeral animated stardust caught up on a random shore, a brief incandescence. (245)

What is this man trying to do?! And the madness doesn’t stop there, for the very next page includes this:

If we can surrender the ancient dream of immortality, then we can begin building a new theology, ecumenical, ecological, non-idolatrous. It will emphasis our relatedness and our interrelatedness, our stewardship rather than our dominion. It will define our value by our participation in a cosmic unfolding; we are flickers of a universal flame galaxies, stars, planets, life, mind a seething cauldron of creation. Natural and supernatural, immanent and transcendent, body and spirit will fuse in one God, revealed in his creation. We have discovered the story on our own. On this speck of cosmic dust, planet Earth, the universe has become conscious of itself. The creation acknowledges the Creator. Our lives are sacramental. We experience the creation in its most fully known dimension. We celebrate. We worship. (246)

There is no God, but we worship!? Pardon the crudeness of this, but what the hell are we supposed to be worshiping?

Answer: the uber-soul:

Deep and inviting, beautiful and mysterious, the starry night draws us into communion with a soul and a life force greater than ourselves that animates the spiraling galaxies and untangles the knots of DNA. (43)

Such religious imagery. Communion and sacrament and worship and celebration and life force and soul! Just never mind that he says earlier that science proves souls don’t exist. They do. Metaphorically. Except in the case of the uber-soul. I think.

Double arrggh!

What an awful waste of time. I only continued because I wanted to see how bad it could get.

Perhaps I should conclude in a manner befitting the book itself and declare it to be the

confessions of a wise religious humanist who also loves, practices, understands, and lives by the ideals and findings of science show us how to heal the false and unnecessary rifts in our intellectual cultures, and to bridge the gap between knowledge and morality.

But too late Stephen Jay Gould already did, on the back cover. And that’s the ultimate irony, for Skeptics is a prime example of what Gould said in Rocks of Ages was an absolutely dreadfully inappropriate use of science: to bolster religious faith.

Marriage Rights

Tuesday 21 November 2006

In the Washington Post today I read that many polygamists are fighting for the legalization of bigamy:

Valerie and others among the estimated 40,000 men, women and children in polygamous communities are part of a new movement to decriminalize bigamy. Consciously taking tactics from the gay-rights movement, polygamists have reframed their struggle, choosing in interviews to de-emphasize their religious beliefs and focus on their desire to live “in freedom,” according to Anne Wilde, director of community relations for Principle Voices, a pro-polygamy group based in Salt Lake. (Post)

What an interesting move. Align yourselves strategically with a group you consider immoral sinners in order to further your “redefinition” of marriage while refusing your strategical mentors the same rights you’re fighting for.

The reaction of the famed Religious Right to such a move would be equally interesting. As I recall, nowhere in the New Testament is declared immoral, and we all know that the Old Testament is peppered with bigamists: the first bigamist mentioned is “Lamech” (Genesis 4.19). Don’t know who that is, but some of the heavy hitters of Judeo-Christian tradition were polygamists: Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon all had multiple wives.

One apologetics site explains that

First, there has always been more women in the world than men. […] Second, warfare in ancient times was especially brutal, with an incredibly high rate of fatality. This would have resulted in an even greater percentage of women to men. Third, due to the patriarchal societies, it was nearly impossible for a woman to provide for herself. Women were often uneducated and untrained. Women relied on their fathers, brothers, and husbands for provision and protection. Unmarried women were often subjected to prostitution and slavery. Fourth, the significant difference between the number of women and men would have left many, many women in an undesirable situation (to say the least). (Source)

So because humanity is brutal, God allowed polygamy. Of course, the underlying social evils that, according to this argument, made polygamy necessary are not addressed. Women continued to be oppressed, and wars and genocide continued. But polygamy was a temporary fix.

What about now?

How does God view polygamy today? The Bible says that God’s original intention was for one man to be married to only one woman, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife (not wives); and they shall become one flesh (not multiple fleshes)”� (Genesis 2:24). We see in Deuteronomy 17:14-20, that the kings were not supposed to multiply wives. This most definitely puts Solomon in direct disobedience against the Lord.

Okay, so that’s what God originally intended. But where did he say, “No — on second thought, I think this polygamy thing is not working out”?

In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6 give “the husband of one wife”� in a list of qualifications for spiritual leadership. While these qualifications are only specifically for positions of spiritual leadership, they apply equally to all Christians. Should not all Christians be “above reproach…temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money”� (1 Timothy 3:2-4)?

It’s by implication. The New Testament always uses “wife” in the singular, setting an example.

Whether or not the New Testament forbids bigamy is not my point. What I’m curious about is how, if this movement grows, will the Evangelical Christian community react? Will they go as crazy about this as they have about gay marriage? Will there be moves to go back and revise all the referenda to say specifically that marriage is between “one man and one woman”?

No Grunting

Saturday 18 November 2006

Choose your fitness club carefully:

At Planet Fitness gyms, grunters and other rule-breakers are treated to an ear-rattling siren with flashing blue lights and a public scolding. The “lunk alarm,” as the club calls it, is so jarring it can bring the entire floor to a standstill. (A lunk is defined, on a poster, as “one who grunts, drops weights, or judges.”)
New York Times

A “lunk” is someone who judges, yet some are getting harassed at Planet Fitness because their “physiques are too chiseled” and they “take their workouts too seriously.” The gym chain tries to cater to “amateurs” – those inexperienced in the gym.

I don’t get it. Is this a place where the inexperienced come until they can bench press their body weight, and then they’re expected to find a new gym?

To Expand or Not To Expand

Friday 17 November 2006

McCain wants more troops in Iraq; the generals don’t:

Military officials and defense experts, however, said yesterday that significantly escalating the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq is largely implausible because it would severely strain the military, would be unsustainable for more than a few months and would offer no discernable long-term benefit. (Post)

I’m no military expert — I’ve never even been in the military — but it seems to me that

  1. if things in Iraq are deteriorating;
  2. if our military is already so thinly spread that it would “severely strain the military” to add more troops;
  3. if the military says that adding more troops “would offer no discernable long-term benefit” to the operation…

If all these things are the case, then it’s hard to see how anyone in America could look at the situation, with that knowledge, and not see Iraq as the hopeless quagmire that it is.

“America’s new Vietnam!” was the cry from opponents in the States and enemies abroad, but this is so much more disastrous. Vietnam didn’t produce an army of individuals seeking revenge coupled with a culture in which individual “military” actions are the norm. Vietnam didn’t produce terrorists, in other words, and it’s difficult to foresee anything other than that coming out of Iraq.

If we stay, it’s an ever-present propaganda tool, not to mention a gigantic terrorist training camp. If we run, we “embolden” the enemy — not that they need any help with that. Still, it will prove to be a powerful recruiting device. “Look at our success with the Infidels! Imagine if we more aggressively take Jihad to their soil!”

In other words, “stay the course” and we make things worse; “cut and run” (or rather, “redeploy” or “withdraw” or any number of euphemisms) and we make things worse.

The problem is that we aren’t just fighting insurgents who want us out of Iraq. We’re also fighting insurgents whose primary goal seems to be civil war. If that’s true, we’re not trying to prevent civil war from breaking out as an unintended consequence; we’re trying to stop people from inciting civil war. It introductions a consciousness to the actions, not to mention, in this case, a perverted religious conscientiousness.

Number Two Man

Wednesday 15 November 2006

The Washington Post has an editorial about Murtha’s bid to be the majority leader, and Pelosi’s aid in the matter. In it, Ruth Marcus succinctly explains why this is such a dumb move:

If she gets her way and helps Murtha win a come-from-behind victory against Maryland’s Steny Hoyer in tomorrow’s leadership election, she’s buying herself — and the Democratic caucus — endless news stories about Murtha’s ethics. If, as he says, Hoyer has the votes, Pelosi has made herself look weak within the caucus — not a smart move for any new leader, and certainly not for the first woman in the job. Perhaps the late timing and measured phrasing of Pelosi’s endorsement were meant to ensure that it would have little impact. If so, Pelosi failed to recognize that once she weighed in, the vote for majority leader would inevitably be seen as a gauge of her clout. (Source)

Really, not the best start for the new Speaker. “The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history,” cooed Pelosi, and it seems to have lasted an entire week…

It brings to mind a famous closing line:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I had such hope for the new Congress, but Pelosi is making me think it’s just business as usual…

Who’s Watching?

Wednesday 15 November 2006

Though Asheville drivers are experts at testing it, my temper usually remains on a fairly even keel. I’ve become more aware of it lately, though, as L’s birthday approaches.

The thought that a child is going to be watching every move I make just as I watched every move my father made is enough to soothe tempers when idiots individuals don’t know how to make a left turn at a traffic light, a common occurrence in this small city.

I can picture the individual I want to be, the father I want to be, and mold myself to it, stripping away the one or two bad habits I might have (really — no more than that), in order to produce an ideal of fatherhood. In all seriousness, there’s nothing like the thought of having your own child strapped into a car seat in the back to keep check temper in check.

Kononowicz the Great

Tuesday 14 November 2006

At first I thought Krzysztof Kononowicz was a joke. “Some clever Polish YouTuber has done some video editing and acting and created an idiot,” I thought. Apparently I’m not the only one. In comments posted about the video on YouTube, someone wrote,

ENGLISH: this is a hilarious electoral TV ad of a guy running for mayor of a town in Poland. The ad, which, incredibly, is NOT a joke, contains a huge amount of unintended humor. The cheesy jingle, the studio’s awful colors, the candidate’s look, and, last but not least, his horribly mangled and heavily accented Polish plus his dumbass ideas have made this video an instant classic of political humor. I’ll be posting my translation on my profile soon.

I even said as much here, in a post that I removed as I thought about it and realized Kononowicz is not a joke, not even unintentionally.Kononowicz was a candidate for the mayor of Białystok. Elections were held Sunday, November 12. He didn’t win. Watch the video, and even non-Polish speakers would have thought there was little chance he could win. But he did garner 3.5% of the votes.

What makes Kononowicz’s candidacy seem like a joke is his naivety. His platform is simple, Catholic, and slightly nationalistic: stop underage drinking and underage smoking; get rid of crime; protect Poland’s Ukrainian border against smuggling; improve the transportation infrastructure. They are all very practical political goals, from an obviously practical man.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kononowicz is not an eloquent speaker. He mumbles as if his mouth is filled with marbles and cotton. He begins by discussing his family, touching briefly on his mother, then speaking of his father (who fought bravely in the war but no longer lives with the Kononowicz family because “he relocated. He’s in heaven now.”), he refers to him as “Daddy.”

He concludes that it’s very much worth it to vote for him because “I am person truly honest, truly fair.” He is not all talk, he assures voters:

“Other parties talk. They talk, and they do nothing. They did nothing for the city of Białystok. And what I said, I will accomplish everything. Because I am a faithful person and a practicing [Catholic]. And I know how to do it. How to fix the roads. How to do everything. How to get rid of cigarettes. How to get rid of everything!”

A simple man. With simple ideas. But necessary ideas.

There is indeed a lot of underage drinking in Poland, as everywhere. Indeed, there’s just a lot of drinking, period, in Poland. Frigid winters and a 19% unemployment rate will do that to a country.

While I’ve only passed through Białystok’s train station on my way to the northeastern corner of Poland, I’m sure the roads there are just as bad as everywhere else in Poland. Poles like to joke that their roads are so bad that even the holes in the road have holes.

I can’t comment on the smuggling on the eastern border more than to say it makes the news regularly. Having lived on the southern border, I know there was a significant amount of smuggling things to the west — cheap alcohol mainly.

These are important concerns, but I never really heard politicians talk about them as directly as Mr. Kononowicz did. And that’s why I’ve come to admire the man. Simple though he is, he decided to try to do something about the problems he sees his fellow Białystokites face. I can almost see him sitting at a table with his friends, probably over a bottle of vodka, saying, “Damn it, I’m going to do something about this! I’m going to stop sitting at this table complaining and go out and do something.”

The Process of Education?

Monday 13 November 2006

Via Autism Vox, I found this post: “The Process of Education.” In part, it reads,

shouldn’t the people who fail school be kicked out? I mean, if someone fails a class and makes no effort to regain good grades, that person is assuredly not going to contribute to society. It really would save a lot of money and time if those people were just simply expelled; they obviously do not care about their well-being and education. it’s a waste of money for us all, and morons like that tend to annoy me, anyways. And the same goes for mentally challenged children. Just let them die. We, in this world, cannot waste any more money educating these worthless brats. And I’m not talking about ADD or ADHD. Those things can be channeled by a person and used for their advantage. What I’m talking about are the more serious illness. Autism, for one. People with autism shouldn’t even be educated, and if I was a parent of an autistic child, I would really be ashamed. We don’t need to waste any more precious money educating people who won’t learn (Process of Education)

Dr. Chew deals with the uneducated absurdity of this comment here, but I wanted to touch on something a commenter said in reply:

It’s high school, it’s more a social experience than anything. High school builds character and knowledge where you manage to grasp it.

A lot of fluff was in my high school days and I’d like to think (I say like because someone has to pay for that shit to keep going) that whatever class you’re going into has a small impact on your overall character and in some way you’ll expand yourself. I was in all sorts of fine arts classes from art itself to woodworking, computers, ceramics, to auto body, and from my standpoint right now I’m glad I went through those classes so I at least have some knowledge in a different area of life. I understand that I may never again have the need to wedge an aerated piece of clay air tight again but at least I know what it is. (Source)

High school is a social experience? Sadly, I agree. And this individual (one “shaharazhad”) even touches on part of the problem: a completely fracture curriculum. In the name of diversity, we’ve spread our education so broadly that it’s almost paper thin.

Now, thanks to No Child Left Behind (NCLB in all in-school communications), we’re reaching over to the opposite extreme, at least in primary school. We’re focusing so much on math and reading that we’re neglecting a lot of other subjects that might be called “fundamental.” NCLB tries to solve the problem of low achievement through testing and conditional funding. What about lengthening the school day and increasing the number of days children spend in school?

Self-talk

Saturday 11 November 2006

We got a new camera recently. It has a bulb exposure setting. This means that as long as you press the shutter release button, the shutter remains open. With a remote, it’s a little different: press the shutter release button once and the shutter opens; press it again, and it closes.

And with an off-camera flash, you can do really silly things…

Self-talk

What You Get for a Mere (8k)k

Friday 10 November 2006

Reading through the New York Times, a link to a real estate article caught my eye: “What You Get For … $8 million“. While we are in the market for a house (sort of), this is a little out of our price range. Still, I was wondering, “What can you get for that kind of cash?”

Big houses, to be sure.

But what really made my jaw drop were the property taxes. A nice little place in Sun Valley, Idaho gets hit up for $26,870 annually, and there’s a quarterly home owners’ association fee of $625. That comes out to $30k a year, just to pay for the privilege of owning that property. (I initially had a typo in that sentence that seemed a bit more appropriate: “the privilege of owing that property.”)

The listing from Greenwich, Connecticut has property taxes of $39,636 annually.

When in 1979 my parents bought the home I grew up in, they paid right at $40,000 for it. Granted, it was not in Greenwich , Connecticut; granted, it was on the small-ish side; granted, it was not in an upscale neighborhood; but still — $40,000. My parents got a thirty-year mortgage and their monthly payments, by today’s standards, were a joke

And there’s the key, the point of all this: the saddening realization I’ve been having as I grow older about the reality of inflation. As I was growing up, the thought of paying over $120k for a house seemed incredible. “Who can afford such a place?” I’d ask myself as we drove by homes with the flimsy sign in the yard, sometimes listing the price as well as the real estate agency. Looking for a house in Asheville these days, we’re desperate to find something other than a “fixer-upper” under $200k. Strange as it may seem, it took me, a man in his mid-30s, some time to shake out of my head the prices fixed there twenty years ago.

As far as paying $8 million for a home in Connecticut, I’d rather pay $4 million for a 27-bedroom “Hall” in Britain…