The Sensible Knave

Don't Support Negative Campaigning

2006-11-07T09:48:00.000-05:00

U.N. Repudiates Multilateralism...

2006-10-11T19:36:00.000-05:00

...urges U.S. to act unilaterally.

What's next? Hot rain falls up?

Prematurity

2006-10-03T12:01:00.000-05:00

A year and a day ago, I tried to put some health care comparisons in perspective. I suspected that America's relatively high infant mortality rate had something to do with a higher premature birth rate.

Now comes a report validating much of what I said.

A reclassification of infant deaths by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that 34 percent of infant deaths in America in 2002 should be blamed on premature births...
A report released in July by the Institute of Medicine said premature births, which accounted for one-in-eight U.S. births last year and have increased 30 percent since 1981, cost society at least $26 billion a year.
Assisted fertility methods are used more often and there are a larger number of older mothers, both of which tend to produce multiple births and such babies are more likely to be born early.
The U.S. infant mortality rate declined sharply throughout most of the 20th century but has been relatively stable in recent years -- coincident with the rise in preterm births.
The earliest preterm births -- newborns weighing less than 750 grams (about 1.6 pounds) with a gestational age of less than 28 weeks, who face particular health risks -- contributed to a rise in the 2002 U.S. infant mortality rate, the CDC study said.

Of course, it bears repeating that many other nations have lower premature birth rates, and most other nations have higher late-term fetal death rates.

Wasting no time

2006-09-22T16:41:00.000-05:00

From the Lynchburg News & Advance:

It’s been just over a week since the school’s historic vote, and Randolph-Macon Woman’s College already is making plans to add four men’s sports teams next year.
The change is among several already in motion as the college prepares for its first class with men next fall.
R-MWC’s athletic department has decided to add basketball, cross country, soccer and tennis to its programs. Men also will be added to the riding team, which will be coed.

Is the opportunity to walk onto three or four varsity teams worth the poisonous atmosphere?

Incidentally, there's no need for the college to change its name, if this precedent means anything.

Toilet law?

2006-09-21T15:04:00.000-05:00

I thought this was a bad life, until I saw this.

There is some advice to be culled from this: don't go into deep debt for anything less than a top-tier legal education.

Baby cuisine

2006-09-19T09:44:00.000-05:00

Due to her rapid development, our daughter Aerin's palate has grown too sophisticated for the more conventional baby food varieties. We've had to scour the shelves for some more distinctive entrees.

The Streetcorner Mentality

2006-09-18T09:52:00.000-05:00

Suppose your community has a streetcorner where all of the local hooligans congregate. There, they loiter, cuss, smoke, and generally make nuisances of themselves. Just get rid of the streetcorner, and you'll do away with the hooligans, right?

Not many people think it's just that simple, of course. Won't the hooligans just go somewhere else? This point seems to get more obscured though when we deal with metaphorical hooligans, such as low-paying jobs. The single largest private American provider of low paying jobs, Walmart, has been much maligned and threatened, on this account. The mentality seems to be that if Walmart is no longer the largest provider of low paying jobs, then there will be that many fewer low paying jobs. To the extent that that's true, though, there are likely to be that many fewer jobs, period. You can get rid of the streetcorner, but you can't get rid of the hooligans.

I see a similar mindset among many far leftists. Capitalist societies, they'll say, are full of ambitious, greedy, and cruel people who think nothing of victimizing the less powerful. Maybe so, but will a socialist alternative solve this problem? Will abolishing capitalism do away with these people? Every society has positions of power, and they will attract the same bad elements. You can get rid of the streetcorner, but you can't get rid of the hooligans. You can only get rid of the corner shopkeeper who will shoo them away.

A bait and switch?

2006-09-17T08:39:00.000-05:00

I'd like to spotlight an interesting comment in this earlier post. When I wondered whether Randolph-Macon Woman's College's decision to accept male applications might have been expected by prospective students, I didn't think it could be this bad:

Current students were not warned of the change. I am ashamed to say that I recruited students in my sophomore year at the college; those students are now juniors at the college, and they will have men as their classmates in their senior year. At the time I worked for Admissions, I had no idea that the college was contemplating the coed change.
One student this week spoke at a college meeting; she is a first-year, and when she visited campus only two months ago to decide whether she wanted to attend, she was informed that there was no possibility that the college would go coed before she graduated. She now faces three years as a student at a coed school, or the hassle of transferring to another women's college.
Students are not only upset about the change; they are upset at the sneaky, underhanded way in which the decision was made. I think the only just thing to do is to let the current students graduate before admitting men, but the college has already admitting one male applicant, and is reviewing other applications from men.

So is that all there is to it? I have no reason to doubt it, but I'd invite anyone with a different story to tell their side of it.

In any case, if I were the head of admissions at Hollins, I'd rent a biplane and drop transfer applications over the R-MWC campus. I'd even waive the application fee.

WalManor

2006-09-16T09:43:00.000-05:00

This George Will editorial has gotten a lot of play on the internet. It's a scathing critique of the liberal case against America's most prominent institution.

Liberals should recognize a silver lining in one of Will's remarks. Evidently, only 325 of the 25,000 applicants for employment in the new Evergreen Park, IL Walmart were hired. Walmart managed to dupe only 1.3% of a vast applicant pool into prolonged serfdom.

Still going coed

2006-09-14T15:00:00.000-05:00

The decision at RMWC has triggered quite an uproar. Hollins, beware!

I have to agree that something stinks about the timing of the announcement ("Now that all of your tuition checks for the academic year have cleared, we've got big news for you girls!").

Transferring schools, while a necessity for some, is a great upheaval for many. Many current students are contemplating this, and I suppose that the male enrollment will offset this loss (in the long run, possibly; I, for one, wouldn't be brave enough to attend next year!).

How many of the current students would have selected this school, having foreseen such an abrupt change? Very few, I imagine. I wonder whether prospective students were warned of this change as a distinct possibility. If they weren't, then can't they make the case for "grandfathering" the current student body?

It seems only fair that the school put off the admission of men until 2010, after the first year class has its standard four years to graduate. Every current student would get what they came to the school for: a four year college education in a single-sex environment. That's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's what induced these women to choose this school. If the administration needn't do this for ethical reasons, then it should do so for pragmatic ones. How else could they ever expect prospective students to take the school at its word?

Now, is my assumption incorrect? Were prospective and incoming students in recent years warned that this change was looming? If so, then never mind.

David Hume, on why many academic philosophers are miserable

2006-09-13T08:17:00.000-05:00

From The Epicurean:

But of all the fruitless attempts of art, no one is so ridiculous, as that which the severe philosophers have undertaken, the producing of an artificial happiness, and making us be pleased by rules of reason, and by reflection...
You pretend to make me happy by reason, and by rules of art. You must, then, create me anew by rules of art. For on my original frame and structure does my happiness depend. But you want power to effect this; and skill too, I am afraid: Nor can I entertain a less opinion of nature's wisdom than of yours. And let her conduct the machine, which she has so wisely framed. I find, that I should only spoil it by my tampering.
To what purpose should I pretend to regulate, refine, or invigorate any of those springs or principles, which nature has implanted in me? Is this the road by which I must reach happiness? But happiness implies ease, contentment, repose, and pleasure; not watchfulness, care, and fatigue.

Am I reading too much into this?

Happy birthday, Aerin!

2006-09-12T11:22:00.000-05:00

She's my daughter, born one year ago today. She came a little earlier than expected. Actually, you can't be born much earlier than 14 weeks before your expected due date. She didn't just beat the odds, though; she trounced them.

Despite having spent the better part of her first three months in hospitals, she made it home for good before her original due date. How's that for determination?

Happy 1st birthday, big girl! Thanks for every single moment of the past year.

Going coed

2006-09-10T13:57:00.000-05:00

My heart skipped a beat when I saw this headline on the Yahoo! main page. I expected to learn that Hollins University, which employed me in the 2004-05 academic year, had finally done the unthinkable out of financial necessity. Instead, I was to read that Randolph-Macon Woman's College will soon be one big lie.

That is, unless they broader their "vision for the future" just a tad further and consider a new name. Of course, they can't just become Randolph-Macon College, since there already is one; I've taught there as well. I will forward all suggestions to the proper authorities.

A number of traditionally all-female colleges have made the tough decision to go co-ed, despite intense opposition. Rumor has it that one person became the ex-president of Hollins University by daring to float the proposition. I suspect that if Hollins ever bites the bullet, it will be one of the very last to do so. On the other hand, I would expect that things will get better for the holdouts, as more single-sex schools go coed. While the demand for single-sex schools might have hit a historic low, there will always be a few students that will seek out such institutions. Now, Hollins has one less competitor.

Never mind

2006-09-08T11:53:00.000-05:00

Just as I was planning to put together another rebuttal, I saw that this nonsense has been been shredded so thoroughly that there is a nary a scrap to pick apart further. I had been arguing that the figures in the map, even if they were accurate, did not support the grim conclusions being drawn. Now we see that even the premise of the argument is deeply flawed.

The credulity of supposedly trained critical thinkers we've seen here is astounding. You would think that if academic philosophy doesn't impart any practical knowledge, it would at least instill the practical virtue of skepticism.

Temps of the world unite!

2006-09-07T16:00:00.000-05:00

Tom the Temp has been raising awareness of the plight of legal temps. For those of you who may not know, many large corporate law firms use small armies of temps to carry out what is known as "document review", the tedious examination and indexing of millions of reams of documents produced by litigating companies in the run-up to trial. Temps learn something they don't teach you in law school: the winning side in a major case is the one with more photocopiers.

Among the ranks of these small armies are paralegals, law school graduates, and even full-fledged members of the Bar. That so many seemingly qualified attorneys are doing the least desirable work of paralegals is an indication of how tight the legal job market has become, I suppose. Apparently, firms and temp agencies alike reap vast profits from these lawyers, since oblivious corporations are billed for their services are at exhorbitant rates.

I worked as a legal temp for a few brief stints years ago, on summer and winter breaks during grad school. The work was mind-numbingly tedious, but the pay was good, considering my qualifications (or lack thereof), and there was unlimited overtime, and free meals and car rides. Really, there aren't that many well-paying jobs you can grab quickly, work hard at, and then walk away from with no ramifications.

Anyway, it seems that I was very lucky, Tom is very unlucky, or conditions have generally just deteriorated since I last temped. Tom describes some pretty intolerable work conditions. What's more, Tom and his fellow travelers are not out earning extra cash during school breaks. This line of work is the only thing they can find in their field where they can earn enough to support themselves while they repay their burdensome law school debts. But for that debt, they could settle for something that is lower paying and a little less oppressive.

Well, now there's talk of action, mobilization, and so on. I expect to see the Crimson Permanent Assurance Building sailing up 6th Avenue any day now.

While seems to me that Tom is slowly transforming from a sympathetic, frustrated character to an unhinged radical, there's no denying that a lot of (present and future) law school graduates are looking at a problem. It's not necessarily that there aren't enough jobs for undistinguished graduates of undistinguished law schools; it's that there aren't enough well-paying, non-soul-crushing jobs for the debt-ridden.

Here's what I think could be done, aside from a counterproductive workers' revolution: someone should start offering law school loans that don't come due until a long time after graduation. Sure, the interest would have to be greater, but that would be an acceptable tradeoff for many law graduates. They need to be able to accept very low-paying positions. That would allow them to gain the experience they need to eventually land a decent job. Document review, on the other hand, seems to offer nothing that would enhance one's long-term professional prospects, other than a record of steady, insubordination-free employment. For now, it's just a catch-22 for those mired in permanent temping, until they can pay off those loans.

Median Incomes and Stay-at-Home Parents

2006-09-06T13:34:00.000-05:00

Here is another tidbit that bears on the declining median income phenomenon: the share of stay-at-home parents in married households with children increased every year from 1999 to 2004.

Here are the percentages:

1999 - 20.79%
2000 - 21.25%
2001 - 21.88%
2002 - 22.76%
2003 - 23.64%
2004 - 24.69%

Presumably, the median household in this category saw a decline in income. That's a tradeoff, of course, and not nearly as much of a hardship as it might seem, given that a family with young children and a stay-at-home parent saves day care or nanny costs. And let's not even get started discussing the costs of meals and transportation for a household with two employed parents. Between the savings wrought and the nonpecuniary income provided by a stay-at-home parent, it might be an economically advantageous arrangement for many.

Declining Median Incomes?

2006-09-05T18:11:00.000-05:00

Much is being made of figures indicating that median American household incomes have been declining in recent years.

KBJ points out that immigration could bring about such a decline, without making anyone worse off.

Let's also keep in mind that these supposed median income declines are based on household incomes. Every time a working couple divorces or separates, and one household becomes two, the median household income will drop.

When a college grad manages to land an entry-level job good enough to enable him to move out of his parent's house, the number of households increases, and the median household income (most likely) decreases.

It's possible that individual incomes in the lower income brackets have risen to a level such that a greater share of poor people can maintain their own residences, rather than living in cramped conditions with extended families. Is that a bad thing?

All sorts of factors bear on household demographics. No wonder, then, that hardly anyone who posts this map owns up to what it actually represents.

Insidious Threat #4,542,799

2006-03-08T08:28:00.000-05:00

Here is a column of interest to freelance writers. It explains the deal with those listings offering about $2 for 500-word pieces. They're a dime a dozen nowadays, but that's at least better than the pay per word they offer.

There is a new and insidious threat to the World Wide Web: a slowly rising tide of "original content" on Internet sites that is at best worthless, and at worst possibly even dangerously inaccurate.
I should know; I've been writing some of the stuff myself.
Understanding what's happening requires a lesson in modern Web economics. If there is a topic in the news, people will be searching on it. If you can get those searchers to land on a seemingly authoritative page you've set up, you can make money from their arrival. Via ads, for instance.
Then, to get your site ranked high in search engines, it's best to have "original content" about whatever the subject of your site happens to be. The content needs to include all the keywords that people might search for. But it can't be just an outright copy of what's on some other site; you get penalized for that by search engines.
Hence, there has been an explosion of demand for "original content"; Charles Ryder, of WCR Internet Marketing, a consulting firm, says Web masters everywhere want articles written for them and will supply the search engine-friendly keywords to include.
You'd think this would be a godsend for writers. Hah.
Curious to learn more about the process, I bid on some writing jobs on the Web sites where these transactions occur. (I described myself quite honestly: as a Journal reporter interested in freelance work who might also write a Journal story about writing for Web sites.)
I managed to get underbid on numerous jobs before snaring one from a Web entrepreneur I would come to know as "Whirlywinds." I would have to write 50 articles, each 500 words long. Topics to be assigned. Pay: $100. For everything.

Markets for freelance writers can wax and wane. Low-paying gigs can be tempting when business is slow, especially when they present an opportunity to branch out. When the market rate for a particular service is so ridiculously low, however, you can rest assured that it's a dead end. If you must take a low-paying gig, consider one in an area where success might pave the way to more lucrative work.

Having said that, I would point out that kooks and ignoramuses have always had a major presence on the web. As long as we have a stake in reliable search engines, the means will be devised to enable them to cut through the noise. If that's untrue, then why aren't at least some of these web-polluters willing to pay more than $0.004 per word for quality copy?

War Crimes?

2006-01-29T15:02:00.000-05:00

Someone is unfamiliar with the concept of being an accessory after the fact.

Killbot Factory Alert

2006-01-25T12:13:00.000-05:00

From Talkleft:

[Section 605 of the House version of the Patriot Act renewal legislation] calls for the creation of a Federal Police Force. Your imperial presidency at work.
"A permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division,'" empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence" ... "or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

Well, do they mean "warrant", or "a warrant"? I don't know how arresting someone who has committed or is committing a crime in the presence of an official could be unwarranted. So let's be charitable and presume that they mean "a warrant." It has never been required, or even advised, for law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant under such circumstances. Probable cause has long been a sufficient condition for making an arrest outside of a suspect's home.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether we should strengthen individual rights in this context, but this potential development hardly threatens a sea change in civil liberties. Civil libertarians who would like to be taken seriously in the event of an actual authoritarian crisis should take note of this.

The Canadian Elections

2006-01-24T22:41:00.000-05:00

I think the left's assessment of the outcome can be summarized as follows:

The conservative victory is a bad outcome.
It was not a victory.
They are not conservative.

One Sure Thing

2006-01-23T20:09:00.000-05:00

Evil will turn on itself.

Did You Know that Talk Shows are Exploitative?

2006-01-09T11:15:00.000-05:00

A leftist critique of daytime reality programming. You can make this stuff up:

The worst is probably Jerry Springer, who loves to pit cheating lower-class couples and their lovers against one another. On a typical Springer episode, audience members leap “Jerry, Jerry” while the freaks chase each other around the stage. Security personnel are carefully positioned to prevent excessive violence.

Then there’s the real-life judicial shows, wherein small-claims and divorce justices likes “Judge Judy” and “Judge Joe Brown” preside over dysfunctional poor people who can’t stop bitterly arguing with each other. These television judges lace their proceedings and judgments with lectures on proper behavior and values, accompanying their legal verdicts with cutting comments about the rabble’s insufficiently middle-class comportment and conduct and instructing them in the virtues of work, fidelity, family responsibility, and the respect for authority.
What’s going on here? Beyond their profitable (for broadcasters) appeal to the public’s most base and voyeuristic instincts, these and other “real—life” television shows play a neglected ideological role in the corporate-crafted “popular culture” of parasitic late capitalism. They are part of an elitist thought control project: the cultural engineering and enforcement of mass consent to social hierarchy.
Along with numerous other corporate television productions they propagate at least two central authoritarian ideas. The first such idea maintains that poor people –--- it is practically always working- and lower-class people who get held up for ridicule in the human cockfights staged by Maury, Jerry, and the rest –--- deserve their own poverty and related isolation and criminalization in America. A college student who has been mass culturally weaned on Jerry (Springer), Jenny (Jones), Sally (Jesse-Raphael), Judy (the judge), and Maury et al. is not a good candidate to follow his left-liberal sociology, history, or English professor’s discourse on the role that structural forces and elite agents of class, race, and/or gender oppression play in creating mass inequality and misery in the United States. The endless army of stupid, hateful, alienated, and hopeless poor people paraded across her television screen by Maury and his friends strike the student as being oppressed by nobody or nothing so much as themselves.
Of course, Maury and Jerry don’t do shows about the rampant social injustice that produces the people who show up on their stages. Judges Judy and Joe Brown and the authorities on Divorce Court don’t adjudicate on the political-economic abandonment of the inner city or the corporate globalization that destroys jobs, families, and communities.

I just can't believe that I've lived a lie for so long. I really thought that the Springer show was dignified. Now I see that it isn't, as the host and the writers fail to address the root causes of dysfunction.

I doubt that these shows really want to focus solely on the poor and lower middle class; domestic drama involving the well-to-do should be just as scintillating. I take it that the well-to-do just aren't as willing to air their dirty laundry on national television. Go figure.

As for the court shows, they clearly do address a root cause of conflict: personal irresponsibility. Watch Judge Judy and see. These judges promote individual responsibility through education and shame. A question for the academics: don't you wish you could read dishonest or manipulative students the riot act like Judge Judy does as she deals with an unscrupulous party? I suppose that some of you do that already. If so, shame on you for failing to address the root causes of their personal issues.

Wait, never mind. Shame has no place in a society where government can address every personal issue.

You Can't Prove a Negative if Nobody Listens to You

2006-01-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

Failing to realize that it undermines the "Bush lied" theory, a New York Times reporter is maintaining that the CIA ignored evidence of no WMDS. Evidently, if you don't believe what someone says, you are ignoring him. In any case, I'll be ignoring this author.

Marlowe!

2006-01-01T14:39:00.000-05:00

He has mad skills:

Yes, he put the bone upright himself, and he's holding it that way.

Bad Motive vs. No Motives

2005-12-25T11:44:00.000-05:00

As I've maintained before, motives are not relevant to the justification of an action. Rather, they are relevant to judgments about the character of the person performing it. Well, people seem to think that the judgment about motives entails something about justification, or the lack thereof. I suppose that "Bush invaded Iraq for the oil" could be construed as "There was no other reason (moral or otherwise) for invading Iraq." If the latter judgment is sound, however, then the invasion is unjustified, regardless of the motives of the invader. Positing bad motives impugns the character of the person, but not his actions.

Note how easy it is slip into a circular chain of argumention here (not that the arguments I've outlined are inherently circular). If you suggest that the bad motives make the action unjustified (like water drawn from the poisoned well, as it were), you must be careful not to draw any conclusions about motives based on the absence of any other justification for the action. It would seem that many evaluations of actions based on motives implicitly prejudge the action as a basis for assessing motives.

Unsolved Mysteries

2005-12-22T19:10:00.000-05:00

If you think this is bad, just think how bad it would be if they didn't have Monk.

Transit Strike

2005-12-20T10:30:00.000-05:00

As you may know, the NYC Transit Workers Union is striking. Support the union. Sure, millions of other workers face economic hardship on account of this, but this is a union we're talking about. Unions can't hurt workers, of course. Only management can do that. Support the union.

Human Rights for Enemy Combatants

2005-12-18T10:30:00.000-05:00

Do those who want expanded respect for the human rights for terrorists captured in combat actually want to see them killed in combat instead? Well, that's what they should expect. Captured terrorists are potentially valuable for the information they possess. Even if we shouldn't torture it out of them, we would impose privation or duress that tends to facilitate cooperation. If those options are taken off the table, then the value of captive terrorists declines precipitously.

In combat situations, the tactics soldiers must use to increase the number of captives they take increase the risks to themselves, and they increase the probability of escape. Those might be considered acceptable risks, given the potential benefits. If targetted terrorists are no longer considered potentially valuable assets, however, then the main consideration weighing against tactics designed to maximize the safety of our own troops, and to minimize the likelihood of enemy escape, loses its sway.

Good for the baby,...

2005-12-13T15:57:00.000-05:00

...bad for the gene pool.

How to Bait a Literary Predator

2005-12-07T11:02:00.000-05:00

As a freelance writer sniffing out new leads, I've become addicted to craigslist. I offer my opinion on this gem of an ad, as a free service to literary scam artists (you can read up on some major offenders here):

does anyone can write a book?
Reply to: gigs-116362160@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-12-06, 11:13PM EST
what do I have to do? most people I know said, I'll have no chance, because I'm not famous,with no special skills .
do you think anyone could be published? thanks

no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: thanks

Yes, a vanity press will tell you, anyone (with extra cash) can be published. I think the author of this ad wants to see how far some folks will go in soliticiting him to submit a novel. They will be effusive in assessing his literary potential. Of course, he'll have to pay hefty "reviewing" and "printing" fees. He'll have to promise to buy many copies of the book himself, and it will be on him to persuade Barnes & Noble to stock his book. Maybe it's a sting, or just the craigslist equivalent of a crank call.

How to Build a Spam Mailing List

2005-11-27T13:31:00.000-05:00

Post a job listing like this:

Reply to: job-113387829@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-11-25, 4:00PM ESTLooking foor in school or to be graduates for new positions, please email with resume poster for further contact. Please include school, major, year that you in and current major along with resume.
Compensation: discuss it later
no -- Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
no -- Please, no phone calls about this job!
no -- Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
no -- Reposting this message elsewhere is NOT OK.

Sorry for reposting this message, even though it was NOT OK to do so.

This is pretty clever way to collect the e-mail addresses of the naive. I suppose that many of those who would respond to this ad would also be receptive to the overtures that initiate the Nigerian 419 scam. I'd surely bet that the ad is tied to this or something similar. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

No Double Standards

2005-11-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

Some folks are chagrined by the Venezuelan leader's motives don't matter. If he actually goes through with it, that's great.

For those who may not have known, Citgo is the oil company owned by the Venezuelan "people." If you wish to support a worker's paradise, buy your gas from them. That's what I hear some folks saying, anyway. I would think that making Citgo's ties widely known would only hurt the cause in the long run. For every person that wants to throw money at an ideological train wreck in progress, there are probably several people that don't. As for me, I wouldn't begrudge the collectivists a little healthy competition.

2005-11-22T11:18:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting here recently, since our daughter is being discharged from the hospital today! We've had to scramble to prepare; they decided to send her home a good four weeks before her original due date.

Money Buys Elections

2005-11-16T21:35:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's true. But this truism is often misconstrued; don't confuse a sufficient condition with a necessary one. Money buys elections likes it buys handguns; you need the money, but you also need the credentials. All the money in the world is not sufficient to buy an office that's worth anything.

Now, if we're going to talk about limiting campaign contributions, we also need to talk about limiting self-funding. If we don't limit the latter, then we shouldn't limit the former. But should we limit the latter? I don't think so.

That someone has successful enough in business to the point where they can finance their own political campaign is in fact a selling point to voters. Many would rather have a captain of industry in office than a career politician.

Of course, none of us wants an aristocracy, where those with wealthy backgrounds can buy positons of power. On the other hand, that someone would finance a campaign with inherited money, without bringing any bona fides to the table, is more likely to be seen by voters as a liability.

Then there is the theory that wealthy industrialists will join government in order it "capture" it. A Ross Perot, for instance, could have pushed an agenda that would better allow his business interests to flourish once he returned to returned to them. Wouldn't the cost of campaigning, as well as the opportunity cost of years of service as an elected official offset this benefit? Wouldn't aggressive lobbying achieve a better ratio of costs to benefits?

Prematurity Awareness Day

2005-11-15T22:31:00.000-05:00

That day is today. So why not look at the blog dedicated to my beautiful daughter? She's nine weeks old now, and less than five away from her original due date.

Name That Fallacy

2005-11-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

X has been working to achieve A.
X has not achieved A.
Therefore, X has failed to achieve A.

Ph.D. Training?

2005-11-12T13:28:00.000-05:00

A while back, Brian Leiter and Dan Solove debated whether you need "Ph.D. training" to do cutting edge interdisciplinary work. If actually having a Ph.D. is a necessary condition, doing cutting edge interdisciplinary work in one's (first) dissertation would be out of the question. To be sure, no candidate for a (first) Ph.D. could be required to do cutting edge interdisciplinary work; that would be an awful Catch-22!

On the other hand, "Ph.D. training" might comprise the work that gets you to the ABD level, or it could be the collaboration with a mentor that is part of the dissertation process. However, a dedicated scholar can get to an "ABD level" of competence in another field on one's own, or with limited coursework, and you don't need to be a Ph.D. candidate to collaborate with a mentor who does cutting edge work. So, either you don't need Ph.D. training, or "Ph.D. training" needn't be someone that requires or leads to a Ph.D.

A Hypothetical

2005-11-11T08:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a scenario for those who oppose the teaching of "Intelligent Design" theory in public schools (for the record, I do):

A philanthropist offers a financially strapped school district a vast sum of money. Some of it would be earmarked for physical plant expenses such as pest control and essential repairs. Much of it would be earmarked for science education costs, including chemistry textbooks, laboratory equipment, and new computers. There is one stipulation: each year, the ninth grade biology class must set aside 2 hours to discuss the problems with Evolutionary Theory alleged by leading ID proponents, and to explain the central concepts of ID theory.

As a member of the school board, would you vote to accept this offer? I think I would. Sure, I'd rather not have this taught, but the cost of saying no is just too high.

This leads me to my real point. As you might know, the recent Election Day yielded victories and defeats for ID proponents. Clearly, considerable resources were spent opposing ID efforts. Given the state of many public schools in general, and the state of science education in particular, is this fight really the best use of our resources? Sure, now students won't be lectured on pseudoscience, but does that matter when they are not learning the fundamentals of physical and life science anyway?

That so many people make the fight against the teaching of ID theory a priority in education lobbying is telling. It says to me that people are more concerned with advancing secularism than with insuring that children get the best education possible. It's not that these goals are incompatible, of course. The fact of the matter is that the pursuit of one policy goal is going to carry opportunity costs.

Limiting Campaign Contributions

2005-11-08T10:32:00.000-05:00

In this week's post, Richard Posner opines on campaign finance reform, and makes this important remark:

Limiting campaign advertising, whether directly or indirectly, operates as a subsidy to newspapers and other news media, which report on political campaigns. The less political advertising there is, the more dependent the public is on the media.

What is more important is that this subsidy is, in a sense, passed along to the candidates preferred by media outlets. After all, how does a glowing op-ed piece serve a candidate less well than an advertisement or infomercial bought by a loyal campaign contributor? The fact of the matter is that many parties are in a position to make nonpecuniary campaign contributions. Unlimited monetary campaign contributions, on the other hand, serve to level the playing field for those who do not own or manage information capital.

First Amendment rights should not favor those with the gift of self-expression over those who need help with articulating their messages. As long as we have broad freedom of the press, as we should, campaign contribution limits would do just that,

South Park Conservatives?

2005-11-07T09:39:00.000-05:00

So much for that idea! Well, not entirely, but this week's episode certainly slammed the opposition to gay marriage. They nailed it. I thought that last season's Simpsons gay marriage episode was insightful as well, but only more generally on the issue of acceptance of gays.

Playing Devil's Advocate, I can't find a principled reason to oppose the proposition either. However, it is only human nature to rationalize opposition when it is backed by such strong cultural currents (in many regions, at least).

Let's be charitable and agree that not everyone who opposes gay marriage hates gays. What could be motivating their opposition? Here are a couple of factors that must get some play:

Traditionalism - "marriage is between members of the opposite sex, period." What if there was a push to Valentine's Day from February 14 to a Sunday in May? The original timing could be compounding the winter blues of lonely people, so why not move it to a nice spring day. Isn't terrible when V-Day falls on a "date night"? I would vote against the proposition, because February 14 is a tradition. In the case of gay marriage, however, I'd have to say the interest of a minority population in long-term happiness probably trumps a sense of tradition.

Fear - I suspect that many people who have nothing against gays would still not want their children or close friends to turn out to be gay, all other things being equal. Gay people are less likely to have children, of course (even adopted ones). Since the gay population is so much smaller than the straight population, it can be much harder to meet someone suitable for a long-term relationship. All considerations of long-term happiness aside, however, I think that many parents just don't want their kids to be gay, and this includes parents who would love their gay children just as much. For such people, I think the prospect of gay marriage is a specter of permanency. Sure, one's child might come out of the closet in high school or college, but one can always hope that this a "phase", "experimentation", or "confusion" that will run its course. Marriage would then be seen as more than a lifelong commitment to a partner; it would also represent a lifelong commitment to a sexual preference. Would many people see it as bad public policy to sanction a commitment to a preference they would rather see go away?

Riots are Bad

2005-11-04T13:16:00.000-05:00

The schadenfreude on the right side of the blogging world over the Parisian rioting is palpable. It's time for everyone to come to their senses.

Sure, I think that the French leadership is corrupt and dishonorable, but the same could be said of the mayors of many large American cities. The French have by no means cornered the market on social dysfunction spawned from misguided policy. Should we take pleasure when rioting breaks out here as well?

Addendum: One wonders why more leftists aren't calling out the right on this. I suppose it's because that would require them to acknowledge these events.

Irony

2005-11-02T07:59:00.000-05:00

What is the difference between sarcasm and irony? I grew up thinking irony referred to those unfortunate or incongruous coincidences found in life and literature. Wasn't there irony in the Twilight Zone episode where the bookworm, the sole survivor of nuclear armageddon, comes upon a vast library, only to then lose his glasses? Only in the nonstandard sense. Irony really pertains to speakers and their expressions. Something is ironic when its literally meaning is different (or actually contradicts) its intended meaning. I'm embarassed to say that I didn't grasp this before Ethan Hawke's character in Reality Bites explained it.

So irony is just like sarcasm, then?

Well, I've known plenty of sarcastic jerks, but I've yet to meet an ironic jerk. I suppose that's because sarcasm, the "lowest form of wit", is a tone that happens to often involve irony. You can be ironic without being sarcastic, though. You can also be sarcastic without being ironic. Just repeat someone's unsatisfactory suggestion in a sneering, deriding tone. If the suggestion, as a prescription, has no propositional content, then neither does the sarcastic utterance. An ironic statement has to be propositional for there to be an incongruity (or does it?).

Saddam's Trial

2005-10-31T08:15:00.000-05:00

Eric Posner (the son and faculty colleague of Richard) addresses the matter of how fair Saddam's trial ought to be. Two concerns, raised by other parties, are that there is "no requirement to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt", and that there are "inadequate protections for the accused to mount a defense on conditions equal to those enjoyed by the prosecution." Posner addresses them:

Saddam is not an ordinary criminal defendant, and so there is no reason to think that fairness requires that he enjoy ordinary criminal defense protections. Indeed, there is a respectable argument that he deserves none at all. If the function of criminal procedural protections is to prevent the wrongful conviction of innocent people, then there is no reason to apply them to Saddam, because we know that he is not innocent, and indeed that he deserves the harshest punishment that the criminal justice system metes out, whether that is death or life imprisonment.

Due process is not a set of rigid entitlements, but a function of several factors that must be balanced. The Supreme Court identified them in Matthews v. Eldridge (1976):

First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.

Posner argues for more due process for Saddam partly on the basis of the importance of credibility:

But “fairness” here is not about protecting Saddam from wrongful conviction. It is about ensuring that the message that the trial sends is credible. The reason for allowing Saddam or his lawyer to conduct cross-examination, for example, is that otherwise people might disbelieve testimony about his crimes that is in fact truthful. Note that the standard of proof, which is criticized by HRW, really doesn’t matter. The judges will and should convict Saddam, and if they do so under a weaker standard of proof, we nonetheless know that they could have done so using a higher standard of proof – no harm, no foul. It doesn’t matter whether judges or jurors convict Saddam as long as someone convicts him. What matters is that the Iraqi people believe that the conviction was justified by the evidence.

This factor could fall within the third one highligted in Matthews. There are countervailing government interests, of course. There is the need to assure the Iraq citizenry that justice can be meted out. There is the need to prevent Saddam from excessive grandstanding that might be seen as legitimizing surviving dictatorship. There is also the need to bring a conclusion to a trial that is likely to fuel tension and instability.

The Chicago Law Faculty Blog...

2005-10-30T14:20:00.000-05:00

...makes me want to take back what I said about group blogs.

Creeping Socialism

2005-10-29T09:12:00.000-05:00

Debating the relative merits of a socialist economic system is ultimately pointless. Capitalism is deeply entrenched. Were socialism to supplant it here in America, it would not be by way of rational persuasion. That would be like using gravity to levitate.

This doesn't mean that we can't debate the relative merits of a particular socialized public service. Would we be better served by socialized medicine or socialized higher education? Those are reasonable questions, and answering in the affirmative doesn't commit one to supporting comprehensive socialism.

Yet, I often find that arguments for socializing one sector must often appeal to "supporting measures." In order to maintain public health under a socialized care regime, the government would have to intensify the regulation of other industries (e.g., tobacco, junk food) in order to address moral hazards. It is hard to defend particular expansions of government without having to call for many more. That's why it always seems to come back to the big question: should we ditch the market economy altogether? And that's why leftists rarely gain any ground.

The Virtue of the Private Sector

2005-10-28T21:47:00.000-05:00

Pejman says:

[T]hose who regularly preach about the ability of the government to do good seem to forget that at times, government can do a great deal of evil as well. The private sector may strike some as cold and impersonal and perhaps it responds to common notions of morality simply in order to make money. But it does respond to common notions of morality at least for fear of driving away business and losing money. And the ability of the populace to affect the actions of the private sector is far more powerful and manifests itself far more quickly than the ability of the populace to affect the actions of government. Sure, you can throw out elected officials, but that is exceedingly difficult to do. And then there is the bureaucracy--the permanent civil service--to deal with. They aren't subject to elections, you know.
Short answer: You have significant amounts of leverage over the private sector. You have significantly less over government since a large portion of government is simply unresponsive to the electorate. I'm not for abolishing government. But in the end, which sector is going to be most responsive to your concerns? The Post Office won't blink if you take away your patronage--they still get their money from the appropriations process and don't care about pleasing you. But Federal Express and UPS will move Heaven and Earth to make you happy. Curiously, there is nothing in the federal budget providing for them.

Trivia Time

2005-10-28T12:35:00.000-05:00

What is the oldest baseball franchise to have never won the World Series?

A franchise survives relocation. So the (San Francisco) Giants, for instance, have won the World Series.

Update: What current major league baseball town has gone the longest (since it first had a team) without hosting a World Series winner?

Advice, Consent, and Shame

2005-10-27T13:01:00.000-05:00

Updated: Now that the Miers nomination has been withdrawn, perhaps we are seeing the principle discussed below in action after all...

Randy Barnett maintains that the prospect of the "Advice and Consent" process should prevent prospective Supreme Court Justices like Harriet Miers from ever being nominated. Quoting Alexander Hamilton from Federalist no. 76:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. . . . He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

What Barnett fails to see, I think, is that this is sufficient reason to give the President the benefit of the doubt. Since we have an "Advice and Consent" process, and the Senate would be in a position to shame the President, I would think that he sees a qualified candidate in Miers. If not, why would he lead the both of them to certain embarassment? I don't know whether she's a good nominee. But if the President vouches for her, that's a good reason for us to suspend judgment until she has the chance to make the case for herself.

In Praise of Duty

2005-10-27T07:06:00.000-05:00

Keith Burgess-Jackson reconsiders whether one should be praised for doing one's duty

Imagine praising someone for keeping a promise, repaying a debt, not cheating, telling the truth, not stealing, or, god forbid, not murdering. “Did you murder anyone today? No? Good for you! Keep it up!” I used to think one should never be praised for doing one’s duty, but now I wonder. I can think of two situations in which praise is appropriate.
The first is where the duty is onerous. Suppose I have made an extravagant promise, one that is costly for me to keep. Praising me for keeping the promise seems appropriate, since it would have been easy for me to fail. The praise reflects the degree of difficulty of doing my duty. Other things being equal, the harder it is to do one’s duty, the more praiseworthy it is.

Suppose A selflessly performs a difficult task for the good of others, having been under no obligation to do so. We ought to shower him with praise. Suppose B performed the same action, only he had promised to do so beforehand. Is that a reason not to praise him? One might argue that we are really praising him for having promised to perform the action, rather than for actually performing it. Yet, we rarely praise others just for making promises. A more plausible account is that we are praising the promise-keeper for the whole of his conduct: making and keeping the promise.

Making promises that you will go on to keep goes beyond what we call "minimally decently conduct." Minimal decency seems to be the baseline for praiseworthiness. We don't praise conduct that merely adheres to its standards. Rather, we recognize adherence by witholding condemnation. As long as there are duties to be more than minimally decent, we can find occasion to praise those who only do their duty.

George Galloway

2005-10-25T11:19:00.000-05:00

Guilty or not, the man is still a disgrace to the country that gave us David Hume and Adam Smith.

More On Price Gouging

2005-10-24T19:40:00.000-05:00

Or is it moron price gouging? An oil supplier would indeed be moronic to raise prices above market rates, for competitors could keep their prices lower in response. By undercutting the gougers, the competitors could reap enormous profits. Bill O'Reilly, among others, doesn't understand this.

O'Reilly is right, however, to take the New York Times to task for supporting a federal gasoline tax that would maintain prices at recent high levels. Such a tax, it is argued, would shore up revenues while allowing for equitable income tax reform (i.e., lower income taxes for the poor). Isn't it ironic that one would try to further tax equity by calling for one of the most regressive forms of taxation imaginable? If poor people and wealthy people spend comparable amounts on gas for traveling to work, picking up the kids, etc., then you would find poor people paying much higher percentages of income in taxes then wealthy people would. As a progressive tax, the Federal Income Tax does just the opposite.

It also bears mentioning that gasoline taxes are especially burdensome for the poor. They of course tend to own older and worse maintained vehicles that consume gas less efficiently.

Putting the matter of distributive justice to one side, we should also note that a gasoline tax is not likely to increase revenue in the long run. As Richard Posner discusses in Catastrophe: Risk and Response, such taxes might spur innovations in fuel economy that would reduce overall gas consumption rates. So gasoline taxes might be a good thing, but not for the reasons the Times offers.

Price Gouging

2005-10-24T09:48:00.000-05:00

Richard Posner, on government measures addressing price gouging:

What prompts such reactions besides sheer ignorance of basic economics (a failure of our educational system) and demagogic appeals by politicians to that ignorance is the fact that an unanticipated curtailment of supply is likely to produce abnormal profits... Such intervention is nevertheless a profound mistake, and not only from some narrow "economic" perspective that disregards human suffering and distributive justice. If "price gouging" laws or even merely public opinion deters refiners and dealers from charging the high prices necessary to equilibrate demand and (reduced) supply, there will be shortages. Consumers will still be paying a higher price than before the shortage, but they will be paying the higher "price" in the cost of time spent waiting on line at gasoline stations, or (if they drive less because of the shortage) in the form of restricted mobility. And those who need the gasoline the most, not being able to express their need by outbidding other consumers for the limited supply, will suffer the most from the shortages. The only beneficiaries will be people with low costs of time and nonurgent demand.

One visit to Costco yielded ample empirical evidence.

Name That Fallacy

2005-10-24T08:46:00.000-05:00

Doing x will bring about B.
One ought to bring about B.
Therefore, one ought to do x.

Health Care Costs

2005-10-23T10:07:00.000-05:00

A higher fertility rate is another factor that can account for higher per capita health care spending.

Here is some data on fertility rates for 2002, from the World Bank Database:
All High income Countries - 1.72
Canada - 1.52
France -1.88
Germany - 1.34
Japan - 1.33
Sweden - 1.64
United Kingdom - 1.63
United States - 2.01

Of course, if the amount spent per new person is a constant, then higher fertility rates would not raise per capita health expenditures. However, healthy infants and healthy pregnant moms require more costly services than does the average otherwise healthy person. So countries with higher infant population rates should have greater per capita health expenditures for the healthy. If all other disease and injury rates were constant across these countries, you would naturally expect health care expenses to greater in the countries with higher birth rates.

Moreover, higher fertility rates will lead to a disproportionately higher incidence of health issues requiring intensive prenatal or neonatal care.

Leftists Aren't Always Opposed to Markets

2005-10-21T17:17:00.000-05:00

Some would describe this as "complicated."

Joke Time

2005-10-20T09:18:00.000-05:00

Good philosophy jokes are few and far between. Here's a gem from Wicked Thoughts:

A philosophy professor gave a one question final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics. The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on his desk and wrote on the board: "Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist.
"Fingers flew, erasers erased, notebooks were filled in furious fashion. Some students wrote over 30 pages in one hour attempting to refute the existence of the chair. One member of the class however, was up and finished in less than a minute.
Weeks later when the grades were posted, the rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an A when he had barely written anything at all.
His answer consisted of two words: "What chair?"

More on Motives

2005-10-19T21:15:00.000-05:00

Keith Burgess-Jackson on motives:

Philosophers are taught to focus on reasons, not motives—and to supply the best reasons rather than the worst. This is why any self-respecting philosopher should have criticized the leftist argument that, since President Bush was improperly motivated in invading Iraq, the war was unjustified. That's a non sequitur. First, there is no evidence that President Bush was improperly motivated. But even if he were, it would have no bearing on the morality of the war. Bad people can do the right thing, just as good people can do the wrong thing. I think this is another case in which hatred of President Bush led leftists astray. Their obsession with a person—and that person's motives—prevents them from thinking clearly about actions and reasons.

The "leftist argument" is not just a non-sequitur; it changes the subject. When we ask whether the President should have taken one course of action, we are not asking whether he demonstrated morally worthy character. As for motives, they are indeed relevent to moral worth, as Kant maintained. However, as I argued before, raising the matter of motives brings nothing to light when they are only inferred from prior judgments of character.

Immigration

2005-10-17T08:09:00.000-05:00

Gary Becker makes a compelling case for increasing the number of permanent visas awarded to skilled foreigners:

To me it seems like a win-win situation for the US to admit annually a million or more skilled professionals with permanent green cards that allow them eventually to become American citizens. Permanent rather than temporary admissions of the H-1B type have many advantages to the US as well as to the foreign professionals. With permanent admission, these professionals would make a much greater commitment to becoming part of American culture rather than forming separate enclaves in the expectation they are here only temporarily. They would also be more concerned with advancing in the American economy rather than with the skills and knowledge they could bring back to India, China, or wherever else they came from. In particular, they would become less concerned with absconding with the intellectual property of American companies, property that could help them advance in their countries of origin, perhaps through starting their own companies.

Let's not fret over losing jobs to foreign competition. Skilled and productive workers create surpluses that pave the way for new opportunities and economic expansion. You'd be hard-pressed to argue otherwise without assuming that immigrants are being paid more than they're worth. That's hardly a cosmopolitan outlook.

Rocky!!!

2005-10-17T07:46:00.000-05:00

It looks like Rocky VI has the green light after all these long years. The report states that it will be called "Rocky Balboa", not "Rocky VI." However, "Rocky Balboa VI" can't be more than a couple of decades away.

Although an opponent has been lined up for the Italian Stallion, it's not too late for a substitution. Here is my wish list:

The robot from Rocky IV

That is all.

Who Should Rule The World?

2005-10-16T09:59:00.000-05:00

A summary of the poll results is here.

But isn't this like someone asking me, "when did you stop robbing liquor stores?"

Name That Fallacy

2005-10-15T06:39:00.000-05:00

J stands to gain X from action A.
Therefore, X is Js true motive for A.

How often do you hear arguments of this basic form? Would anyone disagree when I call it fallacious? If there's already a designation for this fallacy, I'd love to know it.

Culture v. Science

2005-10-14T06:36:00.000-05:00

It's not a good thing that Creationism, Intelligent Design theory, or what have you, is advanced as a plausible alternative to the Theory of Evolution. It's not just the religious right that locks horns with science, however. Virginia Postrel explains.

What is Left of Left2Right?

2005-10-13T06:52:00.000-05:00

Left2Right, a group blog featuring many prominent moral, political, and legal philosophers, appears to be sputtering. Although I'm not on the left, I'm very disappointed. Their statement is laudable:

We're a bunch of academics, mostly philosophers but also some lawyers, political scientists, historians, and economists. We're interested in liberal ideas, though we are probably far from unanimous about what "liberal" means, and our being interested in liberal ideas doesn't entail that each of us subscribes to all of them. We think that political debate in this country has deteriorated into a shouting match, a food fight, a flame war -- call it what you will. We'd like to consider whether liberal ideas should be somehow reconsidered -- in some respects revised, in others perhaps merely re-stated -- with the aim of increasing the overall ratio of dialog to diatribe in the American political forum. Some of us will be trying out various ways of re-thinking and re-formulating those ideas; others may end up arguing that such attempts are unnecessary, even counter-productive. And in the course of our discussion, there will be plenty of digressions and asides of the sort that naturally occur at the margins of a group discussion.

Contrary to what some people might think, I am susceptible to rational persuasion. When I'm not convinced, I feel better at least for having gained some insight into other points of view. That must sound trite, and it must be asking for too much. There has been one new post in the last five weeks. There were a grand total of three in September, all prompted by the Katrina disaster. You would think that these philosophers would choose to further the objective of the blog during a "cooler hour." I would have been embarassed by this post.

I've noticed that group blogs starting out many members tend to implode. Perhaps many members weren't very interested to begin with. Or maybe we're witnessing some variant of the bystander effect.

Insuring High Risk Pregnancies

2005-10-12T08:56:00.000-05:00

Given the steep costs of prenatal care and the intensive neonatal care that is likely to follow pregnancies with complications, should health insurers encourage moms with histories of complication to adopt? The cost of subsidizing a foreign adoption is just a drop in the bucket compared to long-term hospitalizaton, which is what many second and third time moms are willingly walking into. Wouldn't it make sense for insurers to help these parties to adopt?

You probably couldn't get moms to sign "no future pregnancy" contracts. They would likely be unenforceable. Yet, I would think that having adopted a child makes it somewhat less likely that a parent would then want to have another one, naturally or otherwise. Sure, many still would, but there are limits on what parents can manage. The prospect of easier adoption would probably make another difficult pregnancy a far less attractive alternative.

Of course, many moms with qualifying medical histories who never intended to conceive more children might avail themselves of this program. That would be money down the drain for insurers, but the program might still be a winning proposition in the long run.

Fertility and Infant Health

2005-10-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

In response to my post on prenatal and neonatal care, meep raises an interesting point:

Already, there have been noted effects of multiple births as a result of fertility treatments and older mothers (who naturally are more liable to multiple births, even without artificial help). Multiple births are connected to lower birth weights, and other troubles. This undoubtably has effects on infant mortality rates.

I would love to learn more about this. Given the lower birthrates found in many European nations, it's unlikely that fertility treatment is nearly as common over there.

Thanks to Bryan Caplan for bringing some attention to the question I raised.

Intelligent Design Will Win?

2005-10-10T08:15:00.000-05:00

A Tech Central Station column advances five reasons why. Victory can be declared, I suppose, if his predictions come to pass:

Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime.

The approach is precisely the sort of haruspicy-based reasoning I deplore: advancing predictions instead of policy argument, so as to persuade that one might as well accept the inevitable. Anyway, here are his reasons. My comments follow each one.

1) ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.

I really don't get the sense that red states are much more or much less red than they have been in the past. It feels like these states are getting redder because the blue alternatives are getting worse all the time. Why, if ID is expected to "win", hasn't it won already?

2) ID will win because the pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers.

I guess you'll just have to finish reading this post and decide for yourself.

3) ID will win because it can be reconciled with any advance that takes place in biology, whereas Darwinism cannot yield even an inch of ground to ID.

That it can reconciled with any biological discovery is indeed a weakness. Given some set of underlying assumptions, we should then be able to formulate falsifiable predictions. This is hardly news. And so what if Darwinism cannot yield an inch of ground to ID? What matters is whether it must yield to new biological discoveries. When it must, it might be supplanted by more sophisticated evolutionary theory. Who says that the choice comes down to ID and Darwinism?

4) ID will win because it can piggyback on the growth of information theory, which will attract the best minds in the world over the next fifty years.

Only if ID is correct after all. If not, perhaps information theory will help to reveal ID's flaws.

5) ID will win because ID assumes that man will find design in life -- and, as the mind of man is hard-wired to detect design, man will likely find what he seeks.

Once we know better, we can check our instincts to some degree. But this whole point is a little misleading, and maybe more than a little. Are we hard-wired to detect design where there is none? Are we hard-wired to detect any "design"? We do tend to detect patterns in nature, even when careful analysis reveals only disorder. People often infer design from perceived patterns. But we frequently chalk up patterns to other phenomena, such as spontaneous order. I see many patterns in our market economy, but I don't infer any grand conspiracies from them.

Why Do So Many Lawyers Blog?

2005-10-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

"The short answer, I suppose, is that we suffer from the delusion that we have something to say."

- John Hinderaker

Skill and specialization

2005-10-07T13:27:00.000-05:00

Addressing the matter of "output equality" , Jon Henke writes:

It's almost axiomatic that, as US society becomes wealthier, we become more specialized. And as we become more specialized, we require greater skill, knowledge, etc in order to produce that wealth.

A virtuous cycle: specialization increases output, thereby increasing wealth. That stimulates demand, thereby spurring greater specialization. But does this actually raise the level of skill needed of the average individual? That demand for skilled labor increases doesn't entail a decrease for unskilled labor. Moreover, the individual with skills doesn't necessarily have to acquire new ones. New skills will be needed as economic development continues, but as society becomes more specialized, your typical member needs fewer of them to eke out a livelihood.

Human Rights

2005-10-06T07:08:00.000-05:00

Isn't it great when people exploit the factor of poverty to gain advantage for the rich? Here are some other recent human rights abuses of note:

Heating oil for 5000+ square feet homes is not being discounted.
Local broadcast stations are not transmitted digitally on some cable networks.
DVD players are not standard in some 2006 SUV models.

Since these depredations of human dignity are going on primarily in the United States, Amnesty International is taking them very seriously

Population Growth

2005-10-05T07:09:00.000-05:00

Posner comments on his blog:

A neglected negative effect of population growth is on political governance. There seem to be strong diseconomies of scale in government. Increases in population, and concomitant increases in economic activity, crime, demand for medical services, and so forth make the job of government more difficult. What seems to be an incipient crisis of competence in the U.S. government may be at least distantly related to the doubling of the U.S. population since 1948.

Then again, medicine has a negative effect on disease.

Prenatal and Neonatal Care

2005-10-02T19:53:00.000-05:00

Visiting my daughter every day in the NICU for nearly three weeks has allowed me a good look into an area of medicine I knew nothing about. You wouldn't have to spend much time there to understand why intensive neonatal care is a very costly service.

Health care spending per capita is much higher in the United States than in all other industrialized nations. See this table. Yet, average life expectancy , a key indicator of health care quality, is lower in the United States than in many of those countries. See this table. Lifestyle factors might account for some of this disparity, but the numbers are sufficient to give one pause.

I am now wondering whether prenatal and neonatal care accounts for some of the disparity. In a tragic sort of way, inferior prenatal care could actually boost average life expectancy while lowering health care costs. Adequedate prenatal care may reduce the incidence of miscarriage, especially in the second half of pregnancy. Had my wife's perinatologist not detected her dilating cervix in the 22nd week of pregnancy, we would probably have lost our daughter. And she would have been a miscarriage statistic, not an infant mortality statistic. Our insurer and Medicaid (would covers premature infants as disabled persons) would be saving many, many thousands of dollars.

That's anecdotal evidence. This is a little more comprehensive. Late fetal death rates are lower in the United States than in many industrialized countries. Here are some 2001 rates for selected countries, taken from the table:

United States - 3.2
Canada - 3.3
Germany - 3.9
Sweden - 3.8
United Kingdom - 5.3 (2000, latest available data)
France - 4.6 (1999, latest available data)

I need to find information on prenatal health expenditures in these and other countries. The web pages I've highligted don't provide data that specific. My guess is that they are lower.

I am also speculating that lower fetal rates translate into more premature babies requiring very costly care. I could be wrong about this. The ratio of early live births to miscarriages might be higher in countries with worse prenatal care. But the rate of live births in the late second/early third trimester, when intensive, expensive long-term care is required, is probably higher in the United States.

The question, then, is whether health care spending is higher in the United States in part because we spend tremendous amounts of money treating children who, had they been conceived in certain other countries, would not have been born.

Addressing Risks

2005-09-30T07:24:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I read an editor's introductory column in a scientific journal. He argued that America's response to terrorism was disproportionate, not to the magnitude of (then) recent terrorist attacks, but to the attention we given to graver threats. Environmental damage and species loss, he argued, pose more serious harm than terrorist acts on the order of the 9/11 attacks. This argument commits the "dominant risk" fallacy:

To reason that if risk A is greater than risk B one should pay no attention to B, whatever its absolute size, is like telling a person who has cancer not to seek treatment for a broken arm.
- Richard Posner, Catastrophe: Risk and Response, pp. 116-7

In many cases, one would be able to address both risks. It is only when one cannot attend both that one should ignore risk B. But suppose that one chooses to ignore risk A. Is there now a compelling to ignore B?

Oops

2005-09-29T09:49:00.000-05:00

See the correction at the bottom of this.

Where are they?

2005-09-29T07:14:00.000-05:00

The physicist Enrico Fermi pointed out that an advanced spacefaring extraterrestial civilization could colonize the entire galaxy in only a few million years. On a galactic timescale, this is a blink of an eye. That no civilization has apparently done so already is the Fermi Paradox.

The Drake Equation is used to calculate the likely number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy on the basis of a number of astronomical assumptions. If the assumptions are reasonable, the result is not a crowded galaxy. However, the assumptions don't take the factor of colonization into account.

The star nearest to Earth is about four light years away. A spacecraft traveling at 10% of the speed of light (well within the realm of plausibility, unlike warp drive, hyperspace, etc.) could reach it in a few decades. Would you expect this to be beyond the reach of a civilization 10,000 years more advanced than our own? Suppose this society could colonize a new star system every 10,000 years (allowing time for ship construction, travel, and the adaptation of suitable planets), and every colonized world could colonize another every 10,000 years. They would run out of space relatively quickly.

It seems that nearly every conceivable approach to the paradox, plausible and otherwise, has already been advanced. A list of them is here. But for some reasonable explanation, it should be rather easy to detect an extraterrestrial civilization. Whatever the reason we have not detected this extraterrestrial civilization may be, this does not bode well for the SETI program. Either there's nothing to find, or no one wants to be found.

Foreign Precedents

2005-09-28T08:11:00.000-05:00

During his confirmation hearing, John Roberts made a strong case against their use in Constitutional cases:

If we're relying on a decision from a German judge about what our Constitution means, no president accountable to the people appointed that judge and no Senate accountable to the people confirmed that judge. And yet he's playing a role in shaping the law that binds the people in this country. I think that's a concern that has to be addressed. The other part of it that would concern me is that, relying on foreign precedent doesn't confine judges. It doesn't limit their discretion the way relying on domestic precedent does. Domestic precedent can confine and shape the discretion of the judges. Foreign law, you can find anything you want. If you don't find it in the decisions of France or Italy, it's in the decisions of Somalia or Japan or Indonesia or wherever. As somebody said in another context, looking at foreign law for support is like looking out over a crowd and picking out your friends. You can find them. They're there. And that actually expands the discretion of the judge. It allows the judge to incorporate his or her own personal preferences, cloak them with the authority of precedent -- because they're finding precedent in foreign law -- and use that to determine the meaning of the Constitution. And I think that's a misuse of precedent, not a correct use of precedent.

Ann Althouse addresses this:

I think the defense of using foreign law is that you cite it for its persuasive power, not because you regard it as binding authority. So it's not different from quoting a passage from Shakespeare or a philosopher. Thus, the fact that you're "picking out your friends" isn't a problem... It's not as if judges rigidly follow a method of eliminating all extraneous material from their opinions. As long as they don't slip into the problem of imagining the opinions of foreign courts to be authoritative, why is it wrong?

And it is not unlike a state court drawing on precedents laid down in another part of the country, despite Roberts' suggestion to the contrary. There are many independent jurisdictions in this country, and judges could often cherry-pick precedents favorable to their opinions. One of the benefits of a legal system with independent jurisdictions, free to some extent to develop their own precedents, is the freedom of states to experiment with new rules. Until such rules prove themselves successful, their effects are contained.

Of course, many unsuccessful laws will be adopted elsewhere by misguided judges. Yet, those misguided judges could very well have created the same laws out of thin air. That's really what this is all about. To the extent that you are hostile to "legislation from the bench", you're likely to be hostile to any judicial approach that does not draw solely upon authoritative sources of law.

Bar eligibility

2005-09-25T08:15:00.000-05:00

Apropos of my concern about 1L and 3L (the jury is still out on 2L), the Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements lives up to its name. The table on pages 10 and 11 indicates where the J.D. is not a requirement for Bar admission.

Political blogging

2005-09-24T08:01:00.000-05:00

I have to admit that I'm addicted to political blogs. Not just the ones in my blogroll, and their ilk, but blogs of all political stripes. I truly thought I'd learn a great deal about opposing viewpoints. Instead, I've come to recognize pitfalls of political blogging:

It gets very repetitive. With the exception of posts discussing breaking news, I'd often be hard-pressed to tell whether what I'm reading is current, a month old, or a year old, but for entry dates.
It's hard to remain civil. Everything is provocative to someone. Don't be provocative unless you're ready for escalation (assuming that anyone is reading what you write).
Because political discourse is so emotionally charged, it's hard to avoid becoming entrenched in positions that might be unreasonable after all.
It's hard to say anything original. The sad fact is that too many people spend too time mulling over these issues. Rare is the insight that hasn't been gained independently by many others.

Then again, this isn't all that different from political discourse in any other medium.

The Humean Predicament

2005-09-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

What is the predicament referred to in the heading of this blog? One of Hume's overarching theses is that many of our basic entrenched beliefs lack rational grounds. We can, however, better understand their nature by investigating their causes. These causes are often rooted in custom, habit, or sentiment, and have little or nothing to do with logical derivation.

This is indeed a kind of skepticism, but it is not the most far-sweeping kind. Some hardcore philosophical skeptics would argue that one ought to purge all belief lacking rational grounds, as though this were even possible. Hume recognized that purging fundamental beliefs about the external world and morality, to name a few examples, is easier said than done. We just might as well recognize them for what they are. I guess there are worse predicaments to be in.

Welcome new visitors

2005-09-22T06:57:00.000-05:00

Many of you have come here via my wife's beautiful blog, which documents our daughter's progress in the NICU (for now). I'd like to welcome you to this blog, which is very impersonal by comparison. I enjoy writing here about social, legal, and ethical issues. My posting can be sporadic, as I don't usually post just for the sake of keeping current. Also, I have a daughter in the NICU.

Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for being supportive of my wife and daughter. You know who you are.

Abolish the first year of law school?

2005-09-21T13:03:00.000-05:00

There's another path, after all.

It's our fault...

2005-09-21T07:03:00.000-05:00

Let's agree for the sake of argument that America has helped to bring about or sustain a great deal of evil in the world. We were once an ally of Saddam's Iraq, aiding it in its war against Iran. We armed Islamic guerillas in parts of Asia. We supported despots in Africa. Let's just agree that we did these things, which had terrible consequences, and we were wrong in doing them.

What follows from this? Critics of American foreign policy can be inconsistent on this matter. Sometimes, it follows from the fact that we had a hand in the rise of a particular evil that we have no right to oppose it. I've heard this kind of reasoning many times in connection with Saddam Hussein. Sometimes, it follows from claims about our dirty hands that we ought to rectify what we helped to bring about. I've heard this reasoning many times in connection with African genocide and other matters. Again, I'm not disputing any factual claim here. I just can't see how judgments about responsibility for bad things can have such wildly varying implications. Does it depend on who is the target of our action?

Many parties appear to be very selective in how they apply these lines of reasoning. It only seems to come down to this: when you support a certain course of action, our responsibility for the status quo only counts as a reason in favor of action; when you oppose a certain course of action, our responsibility for the status quo only counts as a reason against action.

Abolish the third year of law school?

2005-09-20T07:12:00.000-05:00

Laura I. Appleman and Daniel Solove are debating this issue at Legal Affairs. I already weighed in a while back, and I haven't budged. Honestly, Prof. Solove's case for a third year seems pretty thin. Sure, a third year would give students a little more breadth, and a little more time to reflect on their career options. Many students all but commit themselves to a certain kind of practice early on, however. Imposing an extra year of tuition, coursework, and opportunity costs just to counter this smacks of paternalism.

If we're so concerned that aspiring lawyers make careful decisions within a longer timeframe, why not stop admitting recent college graduates? Let them work for a few years. They can decide whether legal careers are really what they want. I'm sure they would choose law school after all, and enrollment wouldn't drop. Or maybe only tuition-payers should be forced to sit and reflect.

Aerin Amelia

2005-09-19T21:40:00.000-05:00

My daughter, Aerin Amelia Marx, was born a week ago, 14 weeks early, weighing in at a whopping 1.75 lbs. Her progress has already astounded her doctors. Her mom has created a blog for her, with frequent updates on her development.

You may have to risk a catastrophe to prevent one

2005-09-17T15:42:00.000-05:00

In Richard Posner's 2004 book, Catastrophe: Risk and Response (which must be 6 or 7 books ago for him by now), he discusses a number of far-fetched if not completely implausible catastrophic scenarios. Among them is the spread of "Grey Goo", i.e., the uncontrollable spread of a culture of self-replicating matter-consuming nanomachines.

Posner also discusses the prospect of catastrophic meteor impacts. In the long run, there is a high probability of a potential impact that would kill many millions, were it to happen today. I say "potential" because we might develop the means to avert such a disaster.

We've seen nuclear bombs used in Armageddon and Deep Impact (comet, same difference). We might instead attach rockets to a meteor in order to alter its velocity, as Posner mentions. What Posner fails to consider in this context is a potential application of grey goo. A capsule full of mineral-consuming nanomachines could be launched to intercept the meteor. By the time it reached Earth, the approaching body could be consumed, its elements now comprising a larger clump of grey goo. Being a more diffusive substance, it would, perhaps, completely incinerate in our atmosphere before crashing into the planet and eating it.

Optimism

2005-09-15T09:07:00.000-05:00

In spite of what I wrote earlier, I find this blog to be interesting. Futurism often seems to be comically misguided. Just visit Epcot Center and see for yourself. A little bit of optimism never hurts, though. Futurists do seem to have a dismal prediction record, but it is especially bad when the predictions are dismal. Things tend not to turn out as bad as many expect. Consider this. In the interest of fairness and balance, look at this.

My first rant

2005-09-10T12:42:00.000-05:00

Costco sells gasoline to its members at a rate typically about 20 cents below the local retail average. Today, they were completely out of regular grade. I'm so glad to see someone who isn't price gouging. I paid nothing for Costco gas today.

It's like the 1970s all over again. I'm not old enough to remember the fuel shortages, but I was young enough to suffer the indignity of being unable to drive.

On haruspicy

2005-09-08T20:55:00.000-05:00

Divining the future is a cheap rhetorical trick used to ram forward nontrivial moral conclusions. Consider a few examples:

Marxists often foretell of a sweeping workers' revolution.
A neo-nazi idiot I heard on NPR a couple of years ago prophesized a full-blown race war.
Leftists often give assurances of an impending widespread progressive awakening.

The speakers in question all seem to want the outcomes they predict. Yet, these sorts of divinations seem to be employed in place of arguments justifying these outcomes. I suppose the normative conclusion they would derive is that you ought to accept the inevitable. Who could argue that you shouldn't accept the inevitable? And why bother to justify a particular state of affairs that must come to pass?

Divination also paves the way for strong criticism. Take the impending military draft. A renewed military draft would be an awful thing. Since it is inevitable, we can blame the parties who would be responsible for something that hasn't even happened yet.

I forgot to mention that...

2005-09-06T18:15:00.000-05:00

I deplore political haruspicy.

Why you shouldn’t expect a new military draft

2005-09-06T18:01:00.000-05:00

There are many dire predictions to be found in some areas of the blogging world. Some already claim to see the writing on the wall: it is only a matter of time before our quaint experiment with an all-volunteer military comes to a close. Frequent recruitment shortfalls, heavy war casualties, declining morale, and the prospect of additional prolonged conflicts would all seem to indicate that a new military draft is necessary. Fortunately, dire predictions don’t always come to pass. Let’s consider why this one won’t.

If it really got to a point where only a draft could sustain military ranks at the levels we need under current conditions, the military would be more likely to reconsider its strategies. In Iraq and Afghanistan, our strategies and tactics are geared toward minimizing civilian casualties. That sort of approach has its costs. When you try harder to avoid hurting the good guys, you are less likely to hurt the bad guys. When you bomb a house, rather than an entire city block, your target is more likely to escape. Now, keeping collateral damage to a minimum makes using more ground troops necessary. The same thing goes for strategies that involve preserving and rebuilding infrastructure, and peacekeeping operations.

The military could change its strategies, reverting to something more like what we saw in the first Gulf War and the Kosovo operations. More heavy-handed strategies could decimate militant operations. Fortunately, our military leaders are unwilling to exact that price on innocents. But would you put that past anyone who would also be willing to revive the draft?

Is suicide bombing cowardly?

2005-09-04T07:49:00.000-05:00

Here is the case for answering in the negative:

Most terrorists fearlessly make huge sacrifices for beliefs they hold dear. Suicide bombers aren't cowards; they are evil. If they were cowards, they wouldn't be so much trouble. Why do people call terrorists cowards? Is it because it is fun to take cheap shots at evil people? Or is it because being evil has less stigma than being a coward? Perhaps, this abuse of language is optimal deterence, because fearless people are particularly loathe to being labeled a coward.

Whether these evil people experience any fear at all is unknown to us. If they do, however, then it would seem that they act in spite of it, and not because of it. People often seem to strain to interpret terrorist bombings as cowardly. This is unnecessary, for there are so many apt derogatory terms for terrorists and their actions. In fact, I think that many people mean something more like 'dishonorable' when they use the term 'cowardly.' Under the account I gave recently, we might say that one acts cowardly by acting dishonorably from fear. However, dishonorable conduct is not cowardice per se.

Saturday night special

2005-09-03T20:16:00.000-05:00

Miss Emily Anne has exhorted all bloggers to list five blogs they like. Since she has recently heaped tons of praise upon me, I shall indulge her.

There are many wonderful blogs out there, especially those to which I've been linking. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to recognize some heretofore unacknowledged gems.

And speaking of comments

2005-09-03T08:40:00.000-05:00

Miss Emily Anne suggests that I use an 0ld-fashioned Jack card as a profile image. I hope to sometime develop enough technical acumen to do so. She really knows her court cards, and their storied history! So Jacks used to be known as Knaves, eh? Well, they represented knaves in the sense of being commoners, or servants. The knave, in Hume's sense, is potentially a "tricky, deceitful fellow."

New comment settings

2005-09-03T08:22:00.000-05:00

Greetings to my reader(s)! I changed the settings for comments, in light of a new option. Blogger now allows for image-based word verification. Hopefully, this will make it safe to open comments to unregistered users while keeping spammers at bay.

Robot vigil

2005-09-02T07:55:00.000-05:00

Miss Emily Anne is keeping a close eye on a household robot. This service is much appreciated. After all, we humans are a key source of household dust. It's only a matter of time before the Roombas reprogram themselves to address the root cause of the dust problem.

Is anonymity cowardly?

2005-08-30T09:14:00.000-05:00

Many bloggers look down on their anonymous brethren, those who blog under aliases, pseudonyms, pen-names, monikers, call signs, nicknames, or serial numbers. Those who take cheap shots from behind a screen of secrecy are especially likely to incur much wrath (see here and here). The basis of the criticism is that it is cowardly to avoid the risk of repercussions of personal expression. If what you have to say is worth saying, the argument goes, you should own your words, and that means you should accept the consequences of their expression.

Many people think that there is much to fear in putting one's good name behind half-baked ideas as they are uploaded for all the world to see. They may be right, some of the time. It's not all that hard for an aspiring academic to hurt one's chances by leaving a digital paper trail. Outside of academia, bloggers might be afraid of losing their jobs, alienating friends, and so on.

In these cases, the decision to blog anonymously is made from fear, but is it cowardice? I'm afraid of fire, but I'm not a coward for choosing to run away from an empty burning building. I would think myself a coward for choosing to run instead of rushing in to save my dogs. To be cowardly is to act from fear when some other consideration dictates otherwise. Sure, this is vague, but it's clear enough to help illustrate why the mere anonymous presentation of ideas is not cowardly.

Some people wish to present their clever insights and ideas to the world. Blogging can be a great mode of presentation. Readers are free to evaluate these ideas and respond. If personal identification contributes nothing to the force of these ideas, then why is it cowardly to withhold it?

Sure, one can be brave by standing behind one's views in the light of day, but it is not always cowardly to fail to act bravely. Many acts of bravery involve overcoming fear in going beyond the call of duty (i.e., the circumstances don't call for one to overcome fear). Taking a public stand on a controversial issue involves this sort of bravery, if any.

There may yet be ways of using one's anonymity to act cowardly, however. Insulting a fellow blogger anonymously could be cowardly. It's almost like bad-mouthing someone, and honor generally requires us to say means things to another's face, if at all. While I think that many bloggers could stand to become more civil, the anonymous ones have a special obligation to do so.

Forecasting much?

2005-08-30T08:22:00.000-05:00

I like the banner atop this blog.

If Krugman can't accurately predict the future of his own column, what chance does he have with the national economy?

The examined life

2005-08-27T06:55:00.000-05:00

On the one hand:

"[T]he life which is unexamined is not worth living" - Plato, Apology

On the other hand:

"Nor need we fear that this philosophy, while it endeavours to limit our enquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever." - David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section V, Part I

For Hume, examining one's life might be worthwhile. But at the end of the day, the examined life is lived just as the unexamined one is lived, for the most part.

Intelligent redesign

2005-08-24T20:16:00.000-05:00

"American corporations should stop playing God with nature."
- Lisa Simpson, Weekend at Burnsie's

Lisa was bemoaning our use of genetically modified produce (this prompted Marge to grow her own organic produce, which in turn led to Homer becoming an alpha-crow and, eventually, a medicinal marijuana user).

What strikes me as interesting is that Lisa's ilk are staunch supporters of evolutionary theory, and by implication, staunch opponents of creationism (remember Lisa the Skeptic?). So why should they object to anyone "playing God" with nature? For Lisa, it can't be that we are supplanting God's role in nature, for he has none (or at least not any kind of direct one).

Sure, genetic engineering might pose risks. Those risks could outweigh the potential benefits. That would make the course of action wrong, but the fact that we are "playing God" doesn't compound the wrong. There's ample reason, moreover, to believe that the benefits of GM crops outweigh the risks. You might expect one who has so much confidence in some areas of biological science to give other areas the benefit of the doubt.

So why are some folks so friendly to (evolutionary) science, on the one hand, and so hostile to applied (genetic) science? Is there a principle that unifies these positions? I would ask Lisa whether she simply views nature as a fully autonomous entity: not a product of design, and not to be a product of redesign.

Redistribution and status

2005-08-23T19:59:00.000-05:00

Miss Emily Anne had this to say about academics:

I think academics are inclined to attack the privileges of wealth, because the existence of wealth lowers the relative status attributed to intellectual achievements. If the very pursuit of wealth can be reduced to a zero-sum struggle for status, then wealth loses some of its status. Academics gain status at the expense of businessmen and other high income professions.

Surely, at least some must have this in mind. Yes, many folks are not very concerned with those they claim to want to help. It's about gunning for the people at the top. But I hate to speculate about motives. I want to give the rest of them the benefit of the doubt on this score. I think that many of them mean to advance the well being of the less fortunate. But would they want this if it entailed real sacrifices on their part? Many academics gain more reward from their jobs than many other professionals who earn more money. How can this be? The nonpecuniary rewards of academia are hard to match, and they are not really subject to redistribution under any scheme on the table. Do lawyers and bankers enjoy any of these?

Summers off (subject to optional research)
30-45 days extra paid vacation
Flexible scheduling
Extensive travel
Virtually guaranteed lifetime job security

How much additional compensation would the typical tenured professor ask for to give up these things? If they took the money, and tenured professorship became more like normal (lucrative) jobs, would they still support aggressive redistributive measures?