AnalPhilosopher

Here is a promising new blog.

I guess now we'll have to ban steak knives. See here.

5-31-85 . . . Well, I finally finished reading Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this afternoon, and now I know why it is considered to be a classic of American literature. Consider this passage, for example, in which Huck Finn analyzes the rightness, wrongness, and/or efficacy of lying:

I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. (Chap. 28, p. 180; emphasis in original)

Isn’t this hilarious? I laughed countless times while reading the book, and am now anxious to read other works by Twain. Not only is he a master at capturing various dialects, but he paints vivid pictures with words. I felt like I was actually on the raft with Huck and Jim, so descriptive was the narrative and so well were the personalities developed. I especially like the way Twain gives moral consciences to (some of) his characters, and the way he satirizes people and institutions. If I read nothing else this summer, I’ll have read at least one classic. [I’ve never read anything else by Twain.]

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I probably wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I read the book during the 100th anniversary of its publication in the United States: 1885. It was first published in England in 1884.

The French don't play well with others. See here. But then, we knew that, didn't we? Several months ago, I heard a military analyst say that going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion.

After all these years, we learn the identity of Deep Throat. See here.

Peg Kaplan over at what if? has complied with my directive to list her favorite movies. See here. The bad news is that I haven't seen any of her favorites. The good news is that they're still out there and I'm still alive, so maybe I'll get to see them.

I've had a high-definition television since 4 January. I bought a Dell 42-inch plasma. Shortly thereafter, I subscribed to all available high-definition channels through my cable service (Charter). Right now I'm watching two baseball games: the Texas Rangers versus the Detroit Tigers on a regular channel, and the Boston Red Sox versus the Baltimore Orioles on a high-definition channel (ESPN). I can toggle back and forth between the games. Let me just say that there is no comparison. The high-definition channel is much, much better. The picture is crystal clear. The colors are perfect. There is no distortion of any kind. It's hard to describe, but you get a sense of depth in high-definition that you don't get with a regular channel. It feels like you're sitting in a front-row seat at the ballpark. I say all this not to brag, but to convey to you, if you're thinking about buying a high-definition television, just how good it is. Back to the games.

Does anyone remember party lines? I refer to telephone lines (or loops) that were shared by two or more households. See here. We had a party line during much of my childhood in Vassar, Michigan. I remember picking up the telephone and hearing people having a conversation. I also remember hearing someone pick up the telephone while I was having a conversation. I might say, for example, "Excuse me, the line is busy." I'm pretty sure party lines went out long ago. Maybe I'm wrong. By the way, I can't recall how we distinguished calls to us from calls to other parties. Perhaps the ring was long for one party and short for another. I'll have to ask my mother and older brother about this.

I think Brendan Miniter is exactly right about John McCain not being a viable Republican candidate for president. See here. Conservatives want someone who will defend, not compromise, their values.

Here is Nicholas Kristof's op-ed column about the situation in Darfur, Sudan. I'm sorry, but I have no obligation to help these people, or even to prevent harm to them. (Preventing harm to X is a special case of benefiting X.) If I choose to help the Sudanese, it will be supererogatory (i.e., above and beyond the call of duty). My only obligation is to refrain from harming them. To date, I have not harmed any of them.

Most of my readers know that I was once a feminist. For better or for worse, most of my scholarly publications are in, on, or informed by feminism. What made me abandon feminism was its inability to accept—indeed, to respect—the findings of biology (particularly that branch of it known as evolutionary psychology). Many feminists have their heads in the sand. They are so committed to believing that there are no innate differences between men and women that they filter out anything that disconfirms the belief. This is dogmatism. You have to try very hard not to notice how different men and women are. Yes, they have a lot in common. But they also have many differences, and not all the differences can be explained in terms of socialization.

John Tierney is a brave man. He subjects himself to the wrath of feminists by bringing the findings of biology to his audience. See here for today's op-ed column. It's important to keep in mind that to say that there are innate differences between men and women is not to say that one sex is better than (or superior to) the other. Two things can be different but equal. Some of the aptitudes men have fit them for certain tasks. Other aptitudes make them unfit for certain tasks. The same is true of women. Men are more competitive than women. This isn't to say that the least-competitive man is more competitive than the most-competitive woman. It's to say that the average man is more competitive than the average woman. Men are taller than women. Same thing.

Saying that men are more competitive than women doesn't mean that men are better than (or superior to) women, but it does help us understand why men behave as they do. It's explanatory, not justificatory. Nor does knowing that men are more competitive than women imply that men are conscious of their competitiveness. We're hard-wired to be competitive, just as women are hard-wired to attend to their appearance and to take pleasure in male attention (the "adoring gaze"). Perhaps men should be less competitive, or should learn when to turn their competitiveness off. Perhaps women should devote fewer resources (including time) to adornment. Those are evaluative claims. Let's not confuse evaluations with descriptions. How we are by nature is one thing. How we ought to conduct ourselves in light of that knowledge is another.

Addendum: If you want to learn more about evolutionary psychology, acquire and read this book. It is one of the best books I've read. It changed my life.

To sustain funding for the work of philosophy in 20th-century universities dominated by science, it seemed necessary to make the subject look like the sciences. Analytic philosophy seemed just the right way to go for this purpose. It enabled Anglophone moral philosophy to present itself as a tough-minded discipline with an agenda of difficult and purely theoretical problems. But the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war protests, the women’s movement, and developments in biology and medicine have moved different questions to the front. Rawls’s moral and political thought and the rise of applied ethics have brought about remarkable changes in what can now count as serious work within the discipline.

(J. B. Schneewind, “Teaching the History of Moral Philosophy,” in Teaching New Histories of Philosophy, ed. J. B. Schneewind [Princeton: The University Center for Human Values, 2004], 177-96, at 193)

Steve Walsh sent a link to this Washington Post story about Hillary Clinton. I appreciate having items like this sent to me, since obviously I can't read every newspaper or blog.

To the Editor:

I'm struck by "People at Work: A Balancing Act" (letters, May 27). Yes, there's a way to balance work and home life—it's called "Europe." But America has been so busy laughing at Europe's "low productivity" and "lack of growth" that it has failed to notice (or care) that people here have a life.

The letters' mix of feminism and humanism to deal with the problem may as well be taken the full step: here, we call it socialism.

And yes, I'm leaving at 3 p.m. today for the weekend.

Bill Eldridge
Prague, May 27, 2005

Suppose you want to be a good tennis player. You would be well advised to play lots of tennis. But you must do more than that. You must reflect on what you are doing when you play tennis. You must study the physics of tennis to understand the properties of the objects and technologies you use; you must study the history of tennis to understand its development; you must study the rules of tennis to understand what is permitted, required, and prohibited (and why); and, perhaps most importantly, you must study physiology to understand how and why the human body responds as it does to various stimuli. Good tennis playing is both active and contemplative, both practical and theoretical. It incorporates and integrates two types of knowledge: knowledge-how and knowledge-that. The same is true of writing. To be a good writer, one must write. A lot. But, as Stanley Fish argues, one must also reflect on writing. See here.

I just did a brisk five-kilometer run in the muggy May air. Saturday's exertion on the bike enhanced my aerobic capacity, which allowed me to go faster and feel better. That's how training works. With each workout, you increase your lungs' ability to process oxygen and your heart's ability to pump blood. While running, I came upon a young man of about 16. He was wearing denim "shorts" that came to within six inches of his ankles. The crotch of the shorts was at his knees. I'm not kidding. This caused him to walk in tiny steps. He couldn't have run if he wanted to—or had to. What is it with young people? Why would you wear something so dysfunctional? If someone made this young man wear those clownish shorts, he would have screamed "slavery." As it is, he's enslaving himself.

Alien, n. An American sovereign in his probationary state.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

This week's link is to the website of Dr Hugh LaFollette, who makes many of his essays available to readers.

Dr Ed Feser has a new post at The Conservative Philosopher that directs readers to his column at Tech Central Station. See here.

One of my former students—a prospective lawyer—sent this:

Sad but true.

Does poverty cause terrorism? See here and here.

Here is something to read and think about this Memorial Day. I am grateful to all those who risked their lives to make mine so wonderful.

5-30-85 . . . In the news: The people of Bangladesh, near India, were recently hit by a severe cyclone and tidal wave. Estimates are that at least 10,000 people have been killed. Ten thousand people. The enormity [sic; should be “enormousness”] of the loss makes it seem almost unreal. In other news, there was a riot at a soccer match in Belgium in which forty-one people were crushed to death. Both events have been discussed and shown on television. Now, any death of a sentient being, in my opinion, is cause for grief, but there is something worse about the lot of the Bangladeshis than the lot of the soccer fans. The former were utterly innocent; the latter were participants in an activity which resulted in their deaths. Why must people take sporting events, religious beliefs, and nationalistic feelings so seriously? I’ll never understand this sentiment. For the moment, my heart goes out to the dead and their families, especially the Bangladeshis.

Here are some essays by Matthew Scully, who, like me, is both a conservative and a proponent of animal rights.

Addendum: Here is the PDF version of "Fear Factories." Please read it.

No, really. See here.

The New York Times rues the fact that not everyone advances, socially. See here. Two things. First, many do. Second, nobody is stopping those who don't.

I highly recommend this essay by Sam Schulman. (His name is misspelled on the essay.)

Not content to stay within his realm of expertise (economics), Paul Krugman* plays military analyst. See here. Of course, he doesn't say anything constructive. It's all about Bush-bashing. Bush and the Republicans bad. Democrats good.

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

See here for Dr Bill Vallicella's interesting post about money, power, and equality. I'm teaching Social and Political Philosophy this fall for the first time. Here is the book I'll be using.

To the Editor:

John Tierney's May 24 column, "What Women Want," serves to perpetuate the cultural norms that relegate women to jobs in which they are neither expected nor allowed to reach the status of men.

Mr. Tierney's proposition replicates that of Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, who put forward the idea that there were not as many women professors in the sciences because women don't have the innate skills to succeed in these fields. It's not their skills, writes Mr. Tierney, it's that women just don't want it as badly.

Instead of trying to figure out how to justify and normalize the endemic inequality between men and women, we should instead be interrogating the structures that preserve this inequality. Better health care, family leave and child care policies and staggered partnership or tenure tracks would go a long way toward this goal.

I hope no one writes a better letter than I do. Competition just isn't in my blood.

Diana R. H. Winters
New York, May 24, 2005

Twenty years ago, I wrote "It takes two to tangle" in my journal. This got me to wondering whether it's "tangle" or "tango." Both are plausible. It takes two people to fight (tangle), but it takes two people to dance (tango). Bryan Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1998) was no help. Nor was my Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999). But a minute ago, I fired up my Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., and found the expression "two to tango." There was nothing under "tangle." So that's it: The expression is "It takes two to tango." Here's the entry:

tango, v.

intr. a. To dance the tango.

1913 Punch 10 Dec. 486/1 ‘Do you tango?’ she asked me as soon as we were comfortably seated. 1925 C. Dodd Farthing Spinster iii. iii. 299 Young Jellis tangoed up to the two ladies. 1941 B. Schulberg What makes Sammy Run? xi. 206 Sammy didn't know how to tango. 1952 M. Laski Village ii. 42 She..watched her father tangoing..with Daisy Bruce. 1975 Times 4 Sept. 14/6 You have to count anxiously like one learning to tango. 1981 [see tango n.1 1b].

b. fig. Freq. in proverbial phr. it takes two to tango.

1952 Hoffman & Manning Takes Two to Tango (song) 2 There are lots of things you can do alone! But, takes two to tango. 1965 Listener 24 June 923/2 The President would like to know whom to negotiate with... On this score, the President has a firm, and melancholy, conviction: it takes two to tango. 1970 B. Conacher Hockey in Canada (1972) x. 116 Despite all the problems I had had with Imlach, and believe it or not I realize it takes two to tango, I wouldn't have missed playing in the best league in the world. 1973 Houston (Texas) Chron. (Texas Mag.) 14 Oct. 2/1 An upcoming film of such explicit sexuality it'll have to tango with the new pornography rulings. 1977 Time 31 Oct. 48/1 Ellis Rabb can tango with words and he is a sly devil at milking an audience dry of laughter. 1979 Guardian 4 Apr. 12/3 It takes two to tango... Mrs Thatcher has turned Mr Callaghan down.

Hence tangoing vbl. n.; tangoist, an exponent of the tango.

1913 G. B. Crozier Tango & How to dance It i. 8 The Parisian version of the Tango..has so much to recommend it that one may..predict for it a permanent place in our affections long after the present craze for ‘Tangoing’ is over. Ibid. ii. 28 Embryonic ‘Tangoists’ cannot do better than bear that graceful animal [sc. the tiger] in mind while attempting to follow their advice. 1928 Daily Express 6 July 3/3 This tango is so slow, so smooth, so syrupy. Caterpillars skating over egg-shells could not move more gracefully, more softly, than the contemporary tangoists. 1976 U. Holden String Horses vii. 81 They'd show the Camp what real tangoing was.

Saw, n. A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.

A penny saved is a penny to squander.
A man is known by the company that he organizes.
A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
Better late than before anybody has invited you.
Example is better than following it.
Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else.
Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
Least said is soonest disavowed.
He laughs best who laughs least.
Speak of the Devil and he will hear about it.
Of two evils choose to be the least.
Strike while your employer has a big contract.
Where there's a will there's a won't.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I must admit, I thought Danica Patrick's participation in the Indianapolis 500 was a gimmick designed to draw attention to the race. Of course, that doesn't explain how she qualified fourth in the 33-car field. She drove well, despite making several rookie mistakes. Near the end, when she had the lead, I had goose bumps. I thought about her family and how proud they must be of her. But it was not to be. She took a calculated risk in not refueling (which is how she took the lead), but that gave her less firepower when she needed it. Still, a fourth-place finish for a rookie is an impressive result. Congratulations, Danica. I hope to see you at Indy for many more years. See here for the story.

To the Editor:

Re "The College Dropout Boom" ("Class Matters" series, front page, May 24):

You comment that New York and some other states are linking higher education dollars to graduation rates rather than simply to admissions. This is yet another recipe for a collapse of standards because of pressures to pass students without requiring proof of learning.

Such policies affect the functioning within institutions where departments give high grades to entice enrollments and thus enhance their financing and faculty lines (students vote with their feet).

Departments where the average course grades approach 3.5 are dishonest and illustrate the failure of faculty to distinguish between those students who are capable and those who are not.

At CUNY senior colleges, we often see community college graduates and transfers with high averages, yet fundamental knowledge is lacking. These 3-plus cumulative averages are meaningless and do little but provide the student with a false sense of accomplishment.

Yes, the institutions may receive their financing, but at what cost?

Peter C. Chabora
Flushing, Queens, May 24, 2005
The writer is a biology professor at Queens College, CUNY.

As expected, the final stage of the Giro d'Italia into Milan was uneventful. Paolo Savoldelli arrived with the main pack and won his second Giro. His elapsed time during the three-week race was 91 hours, 25 minutes, 51 seconds. That computes to an average speed of 23.52 miles per hour. That's impressive, but when you remember that it includes many long, steep mountain passes, it beggars belief. Two-time winner Gilberto Simoni made a noble effort yesterday to wrest the title from Savoldelli, but he fell 28 seconds short. You may recall that Greg LeMond won the 1989 Tour de France by eight seconds. Every second counts, even in three-week stage races. Congratulations to Paolo Savoldelli. He rode with strength, courage, alacrity, and dignity. The next grand tour is the Tour de France, which begins on 2 July. Savoldelli will be riding for Lance Armstrong rather than for himself. See here for the Giro wrap-up.

One of the things I like about bicycling is that it can be done in all types of weather, including rain. Baseball games, auto races, and tennis matches get rained out, but not bike races. So far this year, my rides have been rain-free. This is Texas, however, so it was only a matter of time before I got wet. Yesterday I got wet. I was in Burleson—south of Fort Worth—for the seventh annual Honey Tour. The first two hours of the ride were fine. I stopped in Grandview at 31 miles to replenish my water supply, eat a PowerBar, and look at my map. The clouds were getting darker and more ominous as I stood there. Someone said rain was coming. No sooner had I mounted my bike for the return trip than the drops began to fall. It wasn’t long before I was soaked to the skin. Fortunately, it wasn’t cold—although it would have been if I had stopped. The rain never let up for over an hour. By the time I got back to the starting area, thunder was crashing down. I was glad to get into my car and head for home.

The rain did not dampen my spirits, although it slowed my pace and made riding dangerous. (Motor vehicles had their lights on because of the darkness.) I rode 19.20 miles the first hour and 17.86 the second, for an average speed of 18.53 miles per hour through two hours. Some of this was ridden in packs or pacelines. I covered only 16.42 miles the third hour—most of it in the rain—and averaged 15.97 miles per hour for the final 21:13. That gave me an overall average speed of 17.63 miles per hour for 59.13 miles. A few years ago, that would have seemed slow to me, but now I’m happy with it. It’s the fastest I’ve gone in any of the year’s eight rallies. I seem to be getting stronger by the week. Perhaps I’ll break the 18-mile-per-hour mark in June.

I had an interesting experience during the second hour. I found myself in close proximity to another rider. We were riding along at a good clip on a farm-to-market road. (That’s what Texans call country roads.) One of us took a pull while the other drafted. The drafter then eased ahead, keeping the same speed. This gave the draftee a breather. We kept this up for about fifteen minutes. Our speed stayed at about 22 miles per hour. I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long, since my heart rate was over 150, but I also knew that it would give me a good workout that would help me in future rallies. I made sure that I took the last pull before falling back. That way, the rider wouldn’t think I had used him. During the entire time we rode together, not a word was said. No words were necessary. Each of us knew the situation. Each of us benefited from sharing the work. Talking would only have slowed our pace. This is the sort of thing I love about bicycling. It’s a microcosm of society, with shifting alliances, subtle forms of cooperation, and unspoken agreements. Riders use each other as means to their ends, but never, as long as they’re sharing the work, as mere means. Perhaps I’ll see this rider in another rally. Perhaps I won’t.

Having done 352 rallies, I’ve seen and done about everything, but yesterday I saw something new: pineapple. The volunteers in Grandview had bananas, oranges, watermelon, and pineapple on the table. I usually eat a banana when I stop, but this time I opted for watermelon and pineapple. Another rally, in Italy, has ice-cold plums. Weatherford has peaches. Now I’ll associate Burleson with pineapple. It hit the spot.

I have no photographs to share with you this time. Suspecting that it might rain, I thought it best to leave my camera in the car. I did take my portable music player, however. I put a baggie around it to keep it dry. The best songs of the day were “People Gotta Move” (live), by Gino Vannelli; “What Kind of Man Reads Playboy,” by Andy Summers and Robert Fripp; and “Voices of Babylon,” by The Outfield. I hope all of you have a pleasant Memorial Day weekend.

Your column was marvelous. I'm sure you didn't do much for the digestion of Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd at their breakfast tables. My only complaint is that you have to wear a hair shirt over calling the paper "liberal."

My goodness, when its "conservative" columnist rails that the moderate wing of the Republican Party can't win the day on the most important issue of the year (judges), the only question is, Is the Times liberal or ultra-liberal? The latter is correct.

PAUL KNOPICK
Laguna Hills, Calif., May 22, 2005

A question: You stated that "Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."

On what basis do you make this charge? I'd like a couple of examples, please, with firm data to back up your charge—especially since Mr. Krugman regularly exposes the current administration's "shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers" rather convincingly, to my eyes.

STEPHEN ROBERT FRANKEL
New York, May 22, 2005

In Daniel Okrent's parting shot as public editor of The New York Times, he levied a harsh charge against me: he said that I have "a disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."

He offered no examples of my "disturbing habit," and maybe I should stop there: surely it's inappropriate for the public editor to attack the ethics of one of the paper's writers without providing any supporting evidence. He responded to my request for examples with criticisms of specific columns. Those criticisms were simply wrong: in each of those columns I played entirely fair with my readers, using the standard data in the standard way.

That should be the end of the story.

I want to go back to doing what I have been doing all along: using economic data to inform my readers.

PAUL KRUGMAN
Princeton, N.J., May 24, 2005

Addendum: See here for Donald Luskin's reply to Krugman.

Here is a New York Times column about the SAT.

Queen, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

5-28-85 Tuesday. What political career? Five years ago I wrote that I had done nothing at the Oakland County Republican Convention which would sacrifice my principles in order to “expedite” my political career. I can’t believe that as little as five years ago I was even thinking about entering politics. I have no desire, now, to run for elective office, and I don’t remember having such plans since early in my undergraduate days. That’s when I had the high-falutin’ dream of becoming President of the United States some day. These days, the only goals that I have are to become a professor of law and philosophy and perhaps a judge; I am not the least bit interested in becoming a member of a city council, a state legislator, or a governor. My values diverge too much from those of the common person to fit me for such a position. But things change, and perhaps some day I’ll desire to run for elective office. I’m not ruling anything out at this stage of the game.

Did anyone besides me see today's stage of the Giro d'Italia on OLN? It was epic. Let me set the stage. Paolo Savoldelli, an Italian who rides on the same team (Discovery Channel) as Lance Armstrong, entered today's penultimate stage with a lead of 2:09 over two-time winner Gilberto Simoni (his compatriot). Simoni is the better climber, but Savoldelli is, by all accounts, the best descender in the sport. There were three brutal climbs on today's stage, the middle one (Colle delle Finestre) the most difficult, in part because much of it is unpaved. At the foot of the Finestre, Simoni attacked. Savoldelli couldn't follow. At one point, Simoni was the overall leader on the road, having taken more than 2:09 out of Savoldelli. But once he reached the summit, Savoldelli—Il Falco (The Falcon)—began to fly. He made up time on Simoni on the descent by taking risks and by doing a better job of negotiating the many turns. (He also weighs more, which gives him a gravitational advantage.) You guessed it: Savoldelli took back enough time to retain his overall lead. He's now 28 seconds ahead of Simoni with only tomorrow's ceremonial stage into Milan to come. Savoldelli won the Giro in 2002, so now he, like Simoni (winner in 2001 and 2003), is a two-time winner. It's been a fabulous race. See here for the story about today's stage. Be sure to look at the images, several of which depict the rough road.

To the Editor:

Re "Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims" (front page, May 21):

You write that in Europe, "there is a persistent and uneasy sense that the United States fundamentally changed after Sept. 11, and not for the better."

Not only in Europe.

I hear more and more people here in the United States, regardless of their purported blueness or redness, express cynicism about our country, its spitefulness over matters of religion and its lack of respect for anyone who is not one of the rich and the influential.

The abuses at Guantánamo parallel the downward drift of our highest ideals and our politics of betterment, which lifted so many out of poverty and second-class citizenship.

A fundamental change, all right, and one that I pray will be reversible in a few years' time.

Terence Hughes
New York, May 21, 2005

Novel, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes—some of which have a large sale.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Danica Patrick will be racing tomorrow in Indianapolis, weather permitting. She will try to be the first female winner of the race. But at least one of her male rivals, Robby Gordon, thinks she has an unfair advantage. See here.

Here is a new poem by Tom Graffagnino.

I appreciate the comments readers leave. I hope you understand why there's a delay between the time you compose them and the time they appear. It gives me control over the comments, which, in turn, gives me peace of mind. In case you're wondering, I've deleted fewer than a dozen comments since enabling this feature. There would probably be many more uncivil comments if readers didn't have to get my approval. This is how newspapers work, by the way. Imagine how nasty the letters page would be if there were no editorial filter!

Addendum: I hope nobody thinks that the comment policy is a way of insulating myself from criticism. I don't delete comments merely because they're critical. I delete comments because they're uncivil, i.e., personal, sarcastic, or disrespectful. What the comment policy does is keep malcontents from using my blog to reach my readers. Malcontents have always been able to write to me by e-mail. Of course, I have no obligation to read abusive e-mail. As I've said on many occasions, I read e-mail until it becomes uncivil. Then I hit "delete."

Here is the latest form of child abuse.

Ivan Basso won his second consecutive stage in the Giro d'Italia, this time in an individual time trial. Paolo Savoldelli, meanwhile, increased his overall lead. All I can say when I look at the profile of tomorrow's penultimate stage is "ouch." There will be plenty of attacks from Savoldelli's rivals, including former Giro winner Gilberto Simoni. Savoldelli will have to cover them, which will be difficult, because he doesn't have a strong team.

It appears as though Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz is trying to intimidate people. See here and here.

Chris Matthews is a bully. I used to like him, and I still try to like him, but he makes it impossible. A few minutes ago, one of his guests, documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of United States Representative Nancy Pelosi), said that Matthews contributed to the impression many people have that President Bush is dumb. Matthews was taken aback. He pestered Pelosi during two segments of the program to explain herself; and then he defended himself from the charge by saying (1) he likes President Bush, (2) he defended President Bush’s use of religion, and (3) he voted for President Bush at least once. His “defense” had nothing to do with the charge, however, which was specifically that he (Matthews) had portrayed President Bush as unintelligent.

I’m on Matthews’s side on this one. I don’t recall Matthews portraying President Bush as unintelligent. But I do recall him portraying President Bush as either malicious or ignorant. Night after night, during the presidential campaign, Matthews harped on the supposed absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. He accused neoconservatives—specifically, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Douglas Feith, and Scooter Libby—of commandeering the White House to implement their vision of the Middle East. He all but accused them of fabricating evidence of WMDs in order to dupe the public into supporting the war. Where is President Bush in all this? Either he knew about the nefarious plot to fool the public, in which case he’s as malicious as Cheney et al., or he didn’t know, in which case he was ignorant of what was going on in the White House. Malicious or ignorant. Neither is the same as dumb, obviously, but neither is favorable, either.

Believe it or not, Matthews is still on a crusade to “get” neoconservatives. Watch Hardball and see for yourself. He still devotes a great deal of air time to the war. He still invites guests who have axes to grind. (Among his guests during the presidential campaign—some of them several times—were Wesley Clark, Richard Clarke, Madeleine Albright, and Joseph Wilson, all of whom questioned the president’s integrity, honesty, and honor.) It’s as if he’s determined to expose the “plot” to take the country to war. There’s a word for this: obsession.

In sum, whether in Europe or America, liberals old and new never doubted at least until recently that there was progress easily to be discerned in the long struggle by man toward release from the torments of poverty, insecurity, and deprivation and, to make this release possible, toward a strongly interventionist, humanitarian, and policy-setting political state. In America both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson made the Presidency what the former called a “bully pulpit” for the gospel of progress through political intervention. Rarely were liberals down through the 1950s loath to set their faith in government planning and control of the economy in the rhetoric of progress. They may not often have had the panoramic outlook on progress that their forerunners Hobhouse, Ward, and Veblen had, but there is high significance in the fact that “progressive” became in rising degree the preferred adjective to describe their works and their recommended policies, with “reactionary” and “regressive” always at hand for use against opponents.

(Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress [New York: Basic Books, 1980], 304)

Addendum: See here for a biography of Nisbet.

To the Editor:

Re "On a Christian Mission to the Top: Evangelicals Set Their Sights on the Ivy League" ("Class Matters" series, front page, May 22):

As a Columbia student, I was amused to read this article. Although the Christian Union may intend to "reclaim the Ivy League for Christ," I and the overwhelming majority of my friends are increasingly skeptical of organized religion and its minions.

Considering the Bush administration's perverse manipulation of Christianity to invade Iraq, and the increasing blurring of church and state, I am ever wary of those who proselytize on my secular campus.

Deena Guzder
Sugar Land, Tex., May 22, 2005

To the Editor:

The Christian Union wants to reclaim the Ivy League for Christ, and evangelical Republicans are using the legislature and the judiciary to create a United States of Christ. It's infuriating that evangelicals are going to such lengths to assert their power.

College provides a forum for expression of different opinions and varying religious views. It is spiritually disrespectful and a violation of the premises of a liberal arts education to impose any one religion upon the rest of the student body.

As Brown University parents, we are appalled that these students and their mentors view the campus as a place to proselytize and recruit.

Colleges are meant to open people's minds, not close them. Students may attend programs such as Hillel, Newman and Christian Houses, but these are not a replacement for other fascinating and expansive opportunities to meet and learn from people very different from themselves.

Beryl Minkle
Haakon Chevalier
Cambridge, Mass., May 23, 2005

See here for a link to an essay about the decline of liberalism.

We're experiencing a housing boom. Good news, right? Not to Paul Krugman. Anything good in the economy redounds to the benefit of President Bush, and Krugman hates President Bush. So instead of glorying in the housing boom, Krugman (see here) speculates about what will happen if it ends. He says he hopes it doesn't end, but you know he does. He's a killjoy, a pessimist, a curmudgeon, and a loser.

Foreordination, n. This looks like an easy word to define, but when I consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long lives in explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations; when I remember that nations have been divided and bloody battles caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination, and that millions of treasure have been expended in the effort to prove and disprove its compatibility with freedom of the will and the efficacy of prayer, praise, and a religious life—recalling these awful facts in the history of the word, I stand appalled before the mighty problem of its signification, abase my spiritual eyes, fearing to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently uncover and humbly refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace Bishop Potter.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

See here.

Although I’ve been riding a bicycle since 9 August 1981, when I was 24 years old, and although I did long, grueling rides in 1982 (around Michigan) and 1984 (across Arizona), I date my life as a bicyclist—indeed, as an athlete—to 20 years ago today: 26 May 1985. On that day, I rode 40.1 miles to Colossal Cave and back (in Tucson) in order to take my mind off woman problems I was having. It worked. I went for another ride the following Sunday; and then again the Sunday after that. Before long, I had a riding regimen. I rode at least 50 miles every Sunday for years on end in the Tucson desert. When I moved to College Station, Texas, in August 1988, I continued riding, even though the change in humidity all but killed me. In August 1989, I moved to Grand Prairie, Texas, to take a tenure-track teaching position at UTA. A month later, I bought a new bike (a red Schwinn 564) and began doing bike rallies. The rest, as they say, is history. This past Saturday, I did my 351st bike rally.

I consider myself an athlete, but I didn’t before that fateful day 20 years ago. Thank you, Moira, for changing my life. I wish things had worked out between us, but you gave me the greatest gifts a person could give another: health and self-esteem. A few minutes ago, I hauled out my bicycling log to calculate the miles I’ve ridden in the past 20 years. It comes to 53,676. That’s an average of 2,683.8 miles per year, 51.4 miles per week, and 7.3 miles per day. I peaked in 1990 with 6,205.9 miles. Since 1996, I’ve been running marathons and other footraces as well as bicycling, so I haven’t put in the training miles I once did. That, in turn, reduced my speed. But I have just as much fun whether I’m flying along at 24 miles per hour in a pack or moseying along at 15 miles per hour while listening to my music and admiring the Texas countryside.

If you had told me that hot day 20 years ago how things would work out, I’d have laughed. But that’s life. You never know what it has in store for you. I won’t even hazard a guess about what I’ll be doing in 2025; but I’m sure it’ll be challenging. The unchallenged life, like the unexamined life, is not worth living.

I went to another Texas Rangers game last night. The Hawk (a.k.a. Wendell Hawkins, my UTA colleague) and I had a great time in our seats at the top of the ballpark, behind home plate. The weather was perfect. I can't think of any respect in which it could have been better. Here is the Little League park the Rangers built near the ballpark:

I would have killed to play in such a park when I was a kid. Here is the view from my seat before it got dark:

Here is the same view after it got dark:

Do you see why we sit up there? The view is spectacular! And our tickets cost two dollars apiece. By the way, my adopted Rangers defeated the Kansas City Royals, 7-3. Before the game started, I predicted that the Rangers would win, 8-3, and that Hank Blalock would hit two home runs. Hank hit one home run. Not bad, eh?

One of my babies—er, blogs—is celebrating its first birthday. See here.

Ivan Basso won today's stage of the Giro d'Italia. Paolo Savoldelli retained the overall lead.

My opinion of Peggy Noonan is changing for the worse. This column is sarcastic, cynical, and mean-spirited. Why not take the seven Republican deal-makers at their word? I'm as disappointed as anyone that the Republican majority didn't vote to end filibusters of judicial nominees, but I understand and respect the motivation for striking a deal. Senators McCain, Graham, Warner, Snowe, Collins, DeWine, and Chafee didn't do it out of self-interest, as Noonan says. They did it out of love for the institution of which they're members. They knew that if the so-called nuclear option were exercised, it would devastate the Senate. Important work would not get done. Civility and comity would disappear. I frankly admire those who put the institution ahead of politics. It betrays a conservative temper.

The blogosphere is like any neighborhood: It contains good, bad, and indifferent people. Here are some of the good ones (in no particular order):

Dr John J. Ray (Dissecting Leftism)
Steve Rugg (JusTalkin)
Peg Kaplan (what if?)
Jeff Percifield (Beautiful Atrocities)
Ally Eskin (Who Moved My Truth?)
Dr Bill Keezer (Bill's Comments)
Dr Bill Vallicella (Maverick Philosopher)
Michelle Malkin (Michelle Malkin)
Donald L. Luskin (The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid)
Norm Weatherby (Quantum Thought)
Kim du Toit (A Nation of Riflemen)
Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit)

If you patronize the good people, ignore the indifferent, and shun the bad, as I do, it will, in the long run, make the blogosphere a better place.

My choice for president in 2008, announced some time back, is Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. I'm pleased to report that he is coming around to the proper view of abortion. See here. (Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.)

See here.

If you have access to C-SPAN 2, go there now. In seven minutes (6:00 Eastern Time), there will be a vote on cloture (to end debate on the nomination of John Bolton to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations). It takes 60 votes to invoke cloture. If cloture is invoked, there will be an immediate vote on the nomination. If cloture is not invoked, debate will continue. I predict that the vote to invoke cloture will fail. There will be only 59 votes. But I hope it succeeds. Five minutes!

Addendum: There were only 56 votes to invoke cloture (and 42 against). Thus, the Democrat party is filibustering the Bolton nomination. Nuclear option, anyone?

Should Mark McGwire be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame when he becomes eligible? Here are his career statistics. I say no. McGwire hit 583 home runs during his 16-year career, but how many of them are tainted by his use of performance-enhancing drugs? Unfortunately, we'll never know, because Big Mac won't talk about when and why he used such drugs. Nothing else in McGwire's record stands out. He didn't hit for average; he struck out a lot; he was not a particularly good fielder; he was injured many times; and he couldn't run worth a damn. Nor did he do anything spectacular in postseason play. (Indeed, he was a dud.) If Pete Rose isn't in the Hall of Fame (see here for his gaudy numbers), McGwire shouldn't be. McGwire has sullied the game far more than Rose ever did, since what he did affected his on-the-field performance. And just as Pete hasn't come clean about the extent of his gambling, neither has Mark come clean about the extent of his drug usage.

I'm confused. The New York Times says that President Bush is imposing his morality on a pluralistic people by taking a stand against federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, the implication being that this is unacceptable. See here. But isn't this the case with all presidential proposals, including many that the Times holds dear? The Times wants to allow homosexual "marriage," but most Americans oppose it. Wouldn't allowing it be imposing someone's morality on a pluralistic people? The Times wants to abolish the death penalty, but most Americans support it. Wouldn't abolishing it be imposing someone's morality on a pluralistic people? The Times wants to redistribute wealth from the productive to the unproductive, but most Americans oppose this. Wouldn't redistributing wealth be imposing someone's morality on a pluralistic people? It seems to me that the Times needs an in-house philosopher to keep it from contradicting itself.

Has anyone else noticed the linguistic gamesmanship of the two main political parties? Some time back, Republicans began to threaten to change the Senate’s rules to prohibit filibusters of judicial nominees. Democrats took to calling this change “the nuclear option.” Not wanting their rivals to get an undeserved rhetorical advantage, Republicans began referring to it as “the constitutional option.” You could almost predict a person’s position on the issue by noticing which term he or she used. Those opposed to changing the rules used “nuclear option.” Those in favor of it used “constitutional option.”

Let’s think about this. What we have are two labels for the same thing. One label—“nuclear option”—is supposed to disparage that thing; the other—“constitutional option”—is supposed to laud it, or at least make it seem respectable. Why is “nuclear option” disparaging? Because nuclear bombs destroy valuable things. Actually, all bombs destroy. Nuclear bombs destroy on a massive scale and continue to cause harm well into the future (through radiation). Democrats wanted to convey the idea that changing the Senate’s rules would have far-reaching and devastating effects on public life. Calling something “constitutional” has the opposite effect. Every American reveres the United States Constitution, even if we disagree about what it means. Calling the rules change the “constitutional option” gives it a presumptive legitimacy. It also implies that what the other side is doing (or advocating) is unconstitutional, and surely that’s bad!

The whole thing is silly. Each side is trying to dupe those who don’t know what’s going on. Democrats are trying to transfer the unfavorable connotation of the word “nuclear” to the rules change, and thereby secure opposition to it. Republicans are trying to transfer the favorable connotation of the word “constitutional” to the rules change, and thereby secure support for it. Instead of playing rhetorical games, shouldn’t they try to persuade people to share their view? In other words, shouldn’t they focus on substance rather than style or form? Shouldn’t they appeal to reason rather than to emotion? Shouldn’t they be open and honest rather than deceptive? This, by the way, is one respect in which politics differs from philosophy. Philosophers would rather not persuade at all than persuade illegitimately, and it is always illegitimate (fallacious) to appeal to emotion.

Here, for no particular reason, is George Armstrong Custer's marching song.

To the Editor:

"Facing Up to the Tragedy of War" (editorial, May 24) speaks of "the running tragedies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Would that The New York Times also sometimes spoke of the other aspects of these wars: more than 50 million civilians liberated from tyranny; no repeat of a terrorist attack like 9/11, with its loss of some 3,000 innocents; and thousands of young Americans voluntarily serving overseas in enthusiastic support of these goals.

Kevin T. Carroll
Arlington, Va., May 24, 2005
The writer served with the United States Army in Afghanistan.

George Will has a doctoral degree in politics from Princeton University. (George Frederick Will, "Beyond the Reach of Majorities: Closed Questions in the Open Society" [Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, Department of Politics, 1968].) His father, Frederick, was a philosopher of some note. This doesn't mean Will is never wrong, or that everyone must agree with what he says, but it does give him a degree of respectability. The man is educated and intelligent. Here is Will's column about the filibuster deal. Among other things, he speculates about its political ramifications. I think he's right that it will hurt John McCain's presidential prospects. McCain stuck a thumb in the eye of social conservatives by signing on to the Memorandum of Understanding. Conservatives will not forget this when it comes to choosing a nominee in 2008.

Heart, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments—a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling—tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility—these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion—4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's famous treatise on Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

See here for Ed Feser's post about the nutritional value (vel non) of popular culture.

A cynic questions other people's motives. I say I did X for reason Y. You, the cynic, say I really did X for reason Z. Some amount of cynicism is healthy, but like anything else, it can be carried too far, even in politics. Here is an excessively cynical take on Hillary Clinton. I'm starting to feel for the senator. Nothing she says or does shakes the dogmatic faith of her critics that she's a leftist. Everything is interpreted as confirmation of her "leftism." She's not now and has never been a leftist. She's a moderate—and I believe she's moving to the right, like so many others. Give the woman some space to grow.

Addendum: I sent a link to this post to the author of the essay, Rachel Friedman. Here is her reply, which she gave me permission to post here:

Thanks.

Frankly, I don't see how you can claim that someone who knowingly supported the National Lawyers Guild (and the Center for Constitutional Studies, and the Institute for Policy Studies) has never been a leftist. If Clinton has genuinely changed her mind, as you suggest, you might expect her to come out and say so (it's not as though the differences are trivial). She hasn't. In the meantime, and as a result, why she's adopted the stance she has remains a mystery. I don't make any explicit guesses about it myself. But whatever her motive, she remains an excellent politician. Saying so isn't cynicism; it's an observation of reality.

Best,
Rachel Friedman

The New York Times continues to support the filibustering of judicial nominees. See here. Note the continued attack on California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Her sin? She believes the text of the Constitution means something. She also believes that if the Constitution was wrongly interpreted, it ought to be properly interpreted at the earliest opportunity, even if this means overruling precedents. Old mistakes are still mistakes.

Adherent, n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

One of my colleagues sent a link to this essay by Christopher Hitchens.

It's an exciting day for those of us who love law and politics. In eight minutes, the Senate votes up or down on Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, who has been nominated by President Bush to serve on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. It's about time Justice Owen got her due. I predict that she will receive 67 votes. She will get all 55 Republican votes, plus 12 Democrat votes. The Democrats who vote for her will be from so-called red states.

Addendum: The vote has been taken. Justice Owen has been confirmed by the Senate, 56 to 43. She will now take her rightful place on the federal appellate bench. As far as I can tell, only two Democrats voted for Owen: Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Both are signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding. One Republican—Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island—voted against Owen. Chafee was also a signatory. I'm surprised that so few Democrats crossed party lines. I hope they pay for it electorally.

United States Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey just said on the Senate floor that he's "disappointed that the nuclear option is still on the table." Gee. I wonder why it's on the table. Could it be that Democrats have obstructed President Bush's judicial nominations? Had Democrats acted honorably from the beginning, nobody would have thought about changing the Senate's rules, much less threatened it. (We can think of it as nuclear deterrence.) They have only themselves to blame. And before you accuse me of being unprincipled, let me say that I firmly believe that presidents should be able to stock the federal courts with jurists of their choosing. I argued as much almost 20 years ago, when I publicly defended Ronald Reagan's right to appoint Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. I detested Bork's (and Reagan's) politics. I'm sure I'll detest the politics of the next Democrat president's nominees. But I'll support that president's right to empanel jurists of his or her choosing. Presidential elections should mean something. Over time, the judiciary reflects the will of the people.

Dr Ernest Partridge, a credentialed philosopher, thinks Jesus is a liberal. See here.

Addendum: According to Dissertation Abstracts, Ernest Dealton Partridge Jr received his Ph.D. degree in philosophy in 1976 from The University of Utah. His dissertation was entitled "Rawls and the Duty to Posterity."

As I write this, Senator Hillary Clinton is speaking on C-SPAN. The topic is Israel. She said a moment ago—clearly and emphatically—that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable. She is a vigorous defender of Israel, as any right-thinking conservative is. My conservative friends will say that this speech is part of Hillary's plan to appear moderate, when in fact she's a leftist. I don't know how to respond to that. It strikes me as sheer dogmatism.

Addendum: I'm not alone. See here.

Having read reams of commentary on yesterday’s deal, not to mention the deal itself, I’ve come to the following conclusion. All the deal did is redraw the line between acceptable and unacceptable judicial nominees. Before the deal, people like Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, and William Pryor were not going to receive an up-or-down vote. After the deal, they are. The seven Democrat signatories can still filibuster a given nominee. The seven Republican signatories can still vote to change the Senate’s rules to end filibusters of judicial nominees. Nothing has changed in that regard. But the seven Democrats have agreed that Owen, Brown, and Pryor—and presumably those like them—are acceptable.

Liberals are unhappy because they didn’t want the line redrawn. They think Owen, Brown, and Pryor are on the unacceptable side of it. Certain conservatives are unhappy because they didn’t want a line at all. They think anyone President Bush nominates is acceptable. I beg to differ with these conservatives. I can’t see the deal as anything but a conservative victory. If any of the seven Democrats filibuster a conservative Supreme Court nominee such as Miguel Estrada, who is no more radical than Owen, Brown, or Pryor, the seven Republicans will be free (like their colleagues) to exercise the nuclear option. Maybe I’m not an extreme enough conservative, but I’m perfectly happy with the likes of Miguel Estrada on the federal bench.

To the Editor:

John Tierney, in "Darth Vader's Family Values" (column, May 21), writes as if selfishness and altruism were opposites. Not so.

Every individual has personal, family, neighborhood, professional, national and world interests. All of these are simultaneously selfish and altruistic. Each of us belongs to many smaller and larger circles at the same time. Every group has different needs, all of which are valid. What is advantageous for someone's family, for example, may not be in the interests of the town.

One may experience conflict between one's roles of family member and citizen, which is not to say that one of these roles is somehow more moral than the other. Public-spiritedness and self-interest are aspects of the same phenomenon.

George Jochnowitz
New York, May 21, 2005

Read this. It's precisely why we need new Supreme Court justices.

We are now at a new and strange juncture in human experience. Never has there been such massive exploitation of animals—from the puppy mills to the canned hunting ranches to the laboratories to the billions of animals raised on factory farms. At the same time, never have there been so many people determined to stop this exploitation. One force or the other has to prevail, and it is the goal of the animal protection movement to see the forces of kindness and mercy triumph over custom, complaisance, and selfishness, and to usher in a new era of respect and concern for animals.

The means of effecting these sweeping changes take many forms. There is enlightenment and education, and the personal transformation that occurs when people of conscience become aware of abuse and misconduct. There is direct care and relief, and the humane movement has spent the bulk of its resources during the last century and a half providing shelter, sanctuary, food and water, and other animal care services to creatures in need.

In a market-oriented economy—in which many animals are treated only as commodities—the humane movement must influence corporate practices and policies. We vote for or against animal cruelty with our dollars in the marketplace, and our ability to spur corporate policy changes has enormous implications for animals. When major corporations halted animal testing, or when fast food giants stipulated that producers had to observe basic welfare standards, these decisions affected the lives of millions of creatures.

And then there is the matter of the law. When it comes to animals, the law must speak, and set a standard in society for personal, corporate, and government conduct. Matters dealing with the treatment of animals cannot be left entirely to personal choice or conscience, since many people would knowingly flout society’s voluntary proscriptions. As elsewhere in the law, people must be held to clear standards of conduct, and those standards must be enforceable.

(Wayne Pacelle, “Law and Public Policy: Future Directions for the Animal Protection Movement,” Animal Law 11 [2005]: 1-6, at 1-2)

Anyone not blinded by leftist ideology knows that there are innate differences between men and women. These differences manifest themselves in the choices men and women make, including occupational choices. Is there sexism in the workplace? Yes. Does it account for all the sex-based disparities? No. See here for John Tierney's op-ed column about this issue.

Here is Martha Nussbaum's review of a book about moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900).

Miracle, n. An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

This week's link is to Crispin Sartwell's site. Dr Sartwell studied under Richard Rorty. Click on "Philosophy Tilt-a-Whirl" to see his take on various philosophers, including Rorty.

I have gazed into my crystal ball. Here’s what I see. Chief Justice William Rehnquist resigns at the end of the current Supreme Court term. President Bush nominates his replacement: Miguel Estrada. (He also elevates Antonin Scalia to the chief justiceship.) At least one of the Democrats who signed today’s agreement filibusters the Estrada nomination (in response to intense interest-group pressure), claiming that it constitutes an extraordinary circumstance. This releases the seven Republicans from their obligation under the agreement. Republicans, also in response to intense interest-group pressure, change the Senate’s rules to prevent filibusters of judicial nominees. In other words, today’s deal only delays the inevitable.

Chip Reid is a reporter for NBC. A few minutes ago, he was on Hardball, with Chris Matthews, discussing the filibuster deal. At one point, Reid referred to "red-meat conservatives." Have you ever heard the expression "red-meat liberals," or any expression equivalent to it in its derogatoriness? If not, is this because there are no red-meat liberals; or is it because Reid is biased against conservatives?

Here are the seven Republican senators who agreed not to change the Senate's rules to forbid filibusters of judicial nominees:

John McCain
Lindsey Graham
John Warner
Olympia Snowe
Susan Collins
Mike DeWine
Lincoln Chafee

In effect, they have allowed Democrats to filibuster Supreme Court nominees. Let them know how you feel about their perfidy.

I stopped reading Brian Leiter's blog several months ago. I got tired of the ranting, the personal attacks, the intimidation, the manipulative rhetoric, and the mindless leftism. A minute ago, I thought I'd visit his site to see what he says about the filibuster battle. To my horror, I found this. Leiter is a disgrace to academia.

A deal has been struck between Republican and Democrat senators that (1) allows up-or-down votes on Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, and William Pryor, and (2) avoids a rules change that would prevent filibusters of future judicial nominees. In other words, filibusters will be allowed in "extraordinary circumstances." See here for the text of the agreement. I'm pleased that these excellent nominees will get a vote (I assume it will be favorable), but disappointed that Democrats can—and probably will—filibuster future nominees, including Supreme Court nominees. Republicans should not have compromised on this matter. Those who did so, including John McCain, will pay a political price for it.

Addendum: Here is the New York Times report on the deal. Please note that the deal involves 14 senators, seven from each party. The seven Republicans agreed not to vote for a rules change that would end filibustering of judicial nominees. The seven Democrats agreed not to filibuster Owen, Brown, and Pryor, but reserved the right to filibuster other nominees in "extraordinary circumstances." That's vague language, obviously. The deal has no legally binding force, so if the seven Republicans believe that future filibusters by any of the seven Democrats are not in "extraordinary circumstances," they will be released from their obligation under the agreement.

In case you missed it, here is the report issued by The New York Times. My reaction to reading it is that the Times has no idea how far left it is, and how this undermines its credibility. The Times thinks it needs a tuneup. It needs an overhaul.

Judge Richard A. Posner has some interesting observations about spam, blogging, and taxation of Internet transactions. See here. Note Judge Posner's claim that journalism attracts liberals. Can anyone explain why?

Here is a New York Times story about the blogosphere.

To the Editor:

Re "A Marriage of Unequals" ("Class Matters" series, front page, May 19):

I was raised in a working-class home and taught to treat all people with respect. Having gone to Yale and Stanford, I have "jumped class," so to speak.

My favorite class story happened in business school when small groups of three were asked to guess one another's least-known attribute. When we stymied each other, I confessed that my parents were factory workers. To my amazement, the second person burst into a smile and said, "My dad is a garbage man."

The two of us thought it was very amusing, but not our third member. She, obviously of higher class, looked at us strangely and said, "Aren't you ashamed?"

To this day I wish I had shot back that at least we knew that where we were was based on our own talents and not on our parents' money and social standing. Rich people, poor people, sometimes they forget they are all humans and not labels.

Nancy C. Langwiser
Wellesley, Mass., May 19, 2005

Read the second numbered item of this column by outgoing New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent. It was written not by one of Paul Krugman's enemies but by one of his colleagues. Think about it. Why anyone puts any credence in anything Krugman says is beyond me. I noticed his intellectual dishonesty the first time I read his column.

This says it all about human arrogance. (Thanks to Michael W. Gross for the link.)

Addendum: Two faithful readers have pointed out to me that The Onion is a satirical site. I know that. I've been reading it for years. This satirical story makes fun of human arrogance. It wouldn't be funny if we didn't see the awful truth in it.

Paul Krugman dreams of an even bigger and more intrusive federal government. See here. As I've said many times, thank goodness he lacks power—and thank goodness a majority of Americans reject his egalitarian vision in which the productive are penalized and the unproductive rewarded.

Senate Republicans should give no quarter to their Democrat colleagues on the matter of judicial nominees. No conservative can forget or forgive what was done to Judge Robert Bork, one of the most distinguished legal minds of the 20th century. He was treated disgracefully, as if he were a mere political hack rather than a brilliant jurist. Liberals tried to do the same to Clarence Thomas, but it failed. Democrats have made vile personal attacks on President Bush’s nominees. When I read what they say about the likes of Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, Miguel Estrada, and William Pryor, it makes my blood boil. Their sole aim is to turn people against these highly qualified nominees. Left-wing interest groups are pressuring Democrat senators to do everything they can to prevent President Bush’s nominees from being confirmed. The use of the filibuster against judicial nominees is unprecedented. The liberal attitude is that the end—retaining a liberal federal judiciary—justifies the means.

Liberals have lost the battle for minds in this country. Their message of weakness abroad and egalitarianism at home is repeatedly repudiated both in presidential and in congressional elections. Their only chance of influencing the course of events is to keep control of the federal judiciary. Conservatives must not let this happen. We have spoken. We want judges who respect the Constitution as written. We want constitutional abominations such as Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas overruled. We want the Supreme Court to stop sitting as a super legislature, dictating how we live our lives. We want the Court to stop bringing foreign precedents to bear in reaching its decisions—and to respect the prerogatives of the states. Republicans who fail to grasp the anger of conservatives will pay a political price.

Cunning, n. The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person from a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction and great material adversity. An Italian proverb says: "The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses."

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Is anyone besides me watching the Giro d'Italia on OLN? I watched two hours yesterday and two hours today. Both stages were won by Ivan Parra of Colombia, who is climbing like a madman. Today's brutal stage was in the Italian Alps. The climb to Stelvio was long and hard. The race organizers had no way of knowing when they laid out the route several months ago whether the roads would be clear of snow. Fortunately, they were. But it was cold. The temperature in the mountains was 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Imagine how cold it would be descending at more than 50 miles per hour. Brrr! Here is an image from today's stage.

I’ve lived in this house in east Fort Worth since December 1992. Most of my original neighbors have moved, but not Ed. He was an old man 12 years ago. He has to be at least 80, and might be closer to 90. But he still lives alone, cares for his house and yard, and drives. Yes, he still drives. In fact, he recently bought a new car. This morning, as I was reading the newspaper on my car’s hood while waiting for Sophie to pee, I saw Ed pulling out of his driveway. A moment later I heard a long horn. Ed had backed out in front of a vehicle. He appeared not to have seen or heard it. The vehicle squeezed past, and Ed went on his merry way in the other direction.

How many close calls does Ed have on a typical trip to the grocery store? How many lives is he endangering? I realize that Ed wants to be independent, and society should encourage its senior citizens to be independent. But independence isn’t the only value. The rest of us are at risk. At a certain point, we must deprive the elderly of their right to drive. Driving is a dangerous activity. It requires attention, perception, judgment, stamina, coordination, and reflexes. These faculties deteriorate with age. I don’t know what the proper age is. People’s faculties deteriorate at different times and at different rates. But we have a drinking age and a driving age for young people. There has to be a line, even if it creates injustices on either side of it. Surely, 75 years is not too young. What do you think?

To the Editor:

I am very grateful to David Brooks for the kind description of me as "intelligent 99 percent of the time." I certainly feel the same about him. But I do not think that my attribution of Newsweek's Koran error to its liberalism is an example of the 1 percent of the time I betrayed a lack of intelligence.

I have one question: If liberal politics in no way accounts for Newsweek's (or CBS's) error, why can I not think of any mainstream news media reports that erred by falsely depicting America or its military in too positive a light?

Dennis Prager
Glendale, Calif., May 20, 2005

It reached 99 degrees in these parts yesterday. Today it's supposed to be just as hot. A few minutes ago, the girls and I did our morning walk. It was already 90 degrees. I enjoyed it, but the girls got overheated. Here is Shelbie, my two-year-old:

I must have been preoccupied with my camera, because when I turned, I saw a large object in the sky. At first I thought it was a hawk, but it was a blimp, probably on its way to The Ballpark in Arlington for the game this afternoon. Here it is:

Here is 12-year-old Sophie:

The meadow through which we traipse is filled with flowers. Here is a pink one (notice the grasshopper):

Here are some wild berries:

Here is a yellow flower:

Here is Sophie, staying cool in the shade as she waits for me:

The girls were panting profusely by the time we got back to the air-conditioned house. I put ice cubes in their water to help cool them. I'll make it a point to ramble earlier from now on, before it gets hot.

Nose, n. The extreme outpost of the face. From the circumstance that great conquerors have great noses, Getius, whose writings antedate the age of humor, calls the nose the organ of quell. It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

There's a man with a Nose,
And wherever he goes
The people run from him and shout:
"No cotton have we
For our ears if so be
He blows that interminous snout!"

So the lawyers applied
For injunction. "Denied,"
Said the Judge: "the defendant prefixion,
Whate'er it portend,
Appears to transcend
The bounds of this court's jurisdiction."
Arpad Singiny.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here is a New York Times profile of United States Senator Rick Santorum (of Pennsylvania), who gives liberals fits.

No sport is more beautiful than professional bicycling. See here for a page of thumbnail (clickable) images from today's long, difficult stage, which was won by Colombian Ivan Parra in six and a half hours. Italian Paolo Savoldelli, who rides for Lance Armstrong's American team, The Discovery Channel, took the overall lead today. (He's a former winner of the Giro d'Italia.) If you look at the penultimate image, you'll see how Savoldelli treated the podium girls (that's what they're called) during the award ceremony. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be sprayed with sticky champagne.

To the Editor:

While "The Evolution of Creationism" (editorial, May 17) is basically sound, I beg that you please, please, please stop referring to "intelligent design" as a "theory."

It is not a theory. It is not even a hypothesis. It is not testable. It is not falsifiable. It is not science.

David E. James
Alexandria, Va., May 17, 2005
The writer is a senior staff geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

This New York Times editorial takes my breath away. The editors appear to be arguing that, since cloning of human embryos is possible, it ought to be done (or allowed to be done). That's a flagrant non sequitur. I'll leave it to you to come up with refutations by logical analogy. Nor should it matter to us, as Americans, that South Koreans are doing this or that. The French and Belgians eat horses. Should we? Please note that I'm not addressing the substantive issue of the moral or legal permissibility of therapeutic cloning. I'm criticizing bad arguments for it. That, to me, is the job of the philosopher: not to make arguments but to analyze and criticize them.

I did my longest, fastest, and hottest ride of the year this morning in Richardson, Texas. The turnout for the Wild Ride! was fantastic. If this rally continues—it’s in its second year—it’ll soon be among the largest in the state. The rally is part of a three-day festival. I saw on one of the brochures that several prominent musical groups will be performing this weekend. Among them is Cheap Trick, one of my favorite bands of all time. If I weren’t such a fuddy-duddy, I’d go back to see them.

The forecast for the day was for sunny skies and a high temperature of 96° Fahrenheit. It was already uncomfortably hot and humid at the 8:00 start. (Right now, at 7:39 P.M., it’s 90 degrees at my house in Fort Worth.) But I wasn’t complaining. Some of the rallies I’ve done this year were in chilly weather, requiring that I wear a long-sleeve shirt under my jersey. I was ready for sweat and suffering. The course took us northeasterly toward Lake Lavon, which is one of many lakes formed by damming rivers. Did you know that there’s only one natural lake in Texas? It’s Caddo Lake. But don’t be misled. The dammed lakes are huge. I grew up in Michigan, so I know lakes.

I rode in packs for much of the way today, which explains my increased speed. Pack riding is great fun, even if more dangerous than riding alone. It heightens your senses, since any untoward move by you or any other rider could cause a massive pileup. I saw no accidents today, thank goodness. Despite a slight headwind going out, I covered 19.94 miles the first hour. My pack riding—and thus my speed—decreased after this. I covered 16.89 miles the second hour and 16.34 the third. I averaged only 15.13 miles per hour for the final 44:58. My overall average speed was 17.20 miles per hour, for 64.51 miles. Counting warm-up and cool-down riding, I rode 66 miles. My maximum heart rate was 155.

I don’t train in the winter anymore (at least on the bike), so the first few rallies of the year are hard. I try to improve week by week, so that I can ride hard in the Hotter ’n Hell Hundred in late August. Each week, I try to extend the amount of time I feel strong. Today, I began to weaken after two and a half hours. Fortunately, there weren’t many hills, so I was able to keep my speed up. The heat gradually became more intense. As I said to a rider I passed, “I’m fried, baked, and scorched.” But it was a good frying, baking, and scorching, if you know what I mean. There’s no better feeling than having exerted. Even suffering feels good when it’s self-imposed and for a purpose. The best songs of the day were “Anything for My Baby,” by Kiss; “Farmer’s Trust” (live), by the Pat Metheny Group; and “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” by Guns ’n’ Roses. Some of the songs were so good that I danced in my seat. Try not to imagine it.

The rally was my seventh of the year and my 351st overall. I stopped a couple of times for pictures. Here is my friend Julius Bejsovec (“the bad Czech”) at the start:

Here is my friend Norm Weatherby:

Here is the outlet of Lake Lavon:

Here is the dam from which I took the previous picture (if you look through the guardrail, you’ll see a pack approaching):

Here is a rest stop on Lake Lavon:

Here is the same outlet as before, from a different angle:

This is the greenest time of year in North Texas. The trees, bushes, and grass are beautiful.

Harangue, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangue-outang.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

This is just too cool. Two of my idols, bound together for eternity.

There was an interesting exchange between Alan Colmes and Judge Robert Bork last night on FOX’s Hannity & Colmes. Colmes quoted a Republican senator to the following effect (I paraphrase from memory):

Filibustering judicial nominees for the first time in American history and then complaining when the Republicans end such filibusters is like Hitler taking Paris and then complaining when it’s taken from him by the Allies.

Colmes looked disgusted as he read this. Then he asked Judge Bork whether it was appropriate to be “comparing Democrats to Hitler.” Judge Bork disappointed me by saying no.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the analogy. Saying that two things are alike in one respect is not saying that they are alike in all or even many respects. Nobody is suggesting that Democrats are evil, as Hitler was—much less that they’re murderers. But if Hitler complained when Paris was taken from him by the Allies, he had the same hubristic attitude as Democrats have in complaining that the judicial filibuster is being taken from them. The analogy works precisely because we think that Hitler’s complaint is preposterous. Did the analogy have to use Hitler? No. But it serves the purpose. Is there another historical example that serves the purpose equally well? Probably not. Everyone knows who Hitler is and what he did—and everyone knows that he had no right to take (much less keep) Paris.

I’ve come to expect disingenuousness from Alan Colmes, who, while not as uncivil as other liberals, is just as partisan. It’s Judge Bork who disappointed me. He’s a brilliant man. He should have told Colmes what I just said: that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the analogy.

Addendum: Here is the transcript. You can check my memory against it.

After the long, cold winter of feminism, femininity is back. See here.

I got this from James Taranto's Best of the Web Today. Funny stuff. I hear there's a new Star Wars movie. I can't keep Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lost in Space straight. One of them has a guy with pointy ears. One has a hairy animal. One has a giant talking robot. Don't get me wrong. I'm not indifferent to all science fiction. I love Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. They don't make movies like those anymore.

Here are thumbnail (clickable) images from today's stage of the Giro d'Italia, which was won by—who else?—Alessandro Petacchi. What beautiful country (and fans)!

Addendum: Until now, the Giro has been civilized. Most of the stages have been won by sprinters such as Robbie McEwen and Alessandro Petacchi. The Giro gets downright barbaric starting tomorrow, with a 135.4-mile mountainous stage. The climbers, such as Gilberto Simoni, Ivan Basso, Paolo Savoldelli, Damiano Cunego, and Stefano Garzelli, will come to the fore. Just looking at the stage profile makes me whimper.

The other day, as you may have noticed, I mentioned my frugality. One reader thought this was incompatible with buying a plasma television. I don’t know why it would be. Frugality doesn’t mean never buying new things; it means using the things one has for as long as possible. As I explained in my reply to him, I watched a 13-inch black-and-white television from 1979 to about 1992. Since then, I’ve watched a standard 25-inch tube television. A few months ago, I splurged on a 42-inch high-definition plasma television. I expect to watch it for at least a decade. If I do, I will have had three televisions in 36 years. How is that not frugal?

Another gadget I used for a long time was my Pentax K1000 35-millimeter camera. My mother and stepfather gave it to me as a law-school graduation present in 1983. I used it for 20 years. Two years ago today, having paid close attention to the digital revolution in photography, I decided it was time to switch over. I bought a Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z3. I love it! It’s the size of a credit card, but thicker. It fits easily into my shirt pocket. I take it on bike rallies. The storage card I have installed in it holds 123 images. I chose a size that fills my computer screen. When the battery runs low, I put the camera in its base and plug it in for a recharge. After I’ve taken pictures, I put the camera in its base and plug it into the computer. Within seconds, the images are on my computer, ready for viewing or e-mailing.

I’ve always been camera-crazy. I have hundreds of photographs going back to the mid-1970s. One day, I hope to have all of them scanned into the computer. Then they won’t degrade any further.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was born 199 years ago today. Here is my essay from a decade ago, in which I argued that Mill was a radical feminist rather than—as is usually thought—a liberal feminist.

Steve Sailer is not intimidated by the PC crowd. He's interested in the truth, not in making people feel good. See here for his site, which I will now add to the blogroll.

To the Editor:

In "Meet the Poor Republicans" (column, May 15), David Brooks tries to explain the puzzling alignment of many poor voters with the Republican camp: "The G.O.P. succeeds because it is seen as the party of optimistic individualism."

Perhaps. But this is not a praiseworthy character trait, as Mr. Brooks wants us to believe. It's an example of poor judgment, driven by misinformation and bad reasoning. Supporting policies that benefit the rich may allow poor people to remain hopeful that they, too, may someday become rich, but the outcome will probably be the opposite.

Similarly, lottery purveyors promote the idea that buying tickets provides a reasonable chance at becoming wealthy, but the result is almost always a disappointment.

Steven Landau
New York, May 16, 2005

I’m sorry, but the debate about which party is breaking the Senate’s rule(s) is silly. Democrats say that if Republicans exercise the “nuclear option” of preventing filibusters of judicial nominees, they will be breaking the Senate’s longstanding rule of allowing filibusters. Republicans say that Democrats have already broken the Senate’s rule of not filibustering judicial nominees. It’s the sort of debate children have: “You’re breaking the rule.” “No, you’re breaking the rule.” “You are.” “You are!”

Can we get beyond this silly debate? For one thing, it’s possible that both parties are breaking the rule(s). But more importantly, rules can be—and sometimes should be—broken. Often, breaking a rule is a precursor to modifying it. Suppose I adopt a rule of always telling the truth. I may find myself in a situation in which telling the truth will harm someone egregiously. This may cause me to carve an exception to the rule, i.e., to become a moderate rather than an absolute deontologist. Rules with exceptions are still rules. The hearsay rule in evidence law is riddled with exceptions, but that doesn’t change its status (or destroy its value) as a rule.

The substantive question involved in the filibuster debate is whether judicial nominees are entitled to a vote by the full Senate. Reasonable people can and do answer this question differently. Some say yes; some say no. But trying to answer this question by focusing on senatorial rules is pointless. Whatever the pertinent rule may be, we can ask whether it should be broken, or whether it should have an exception.

Applause, n. The echo of a platitude.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Paul Krugman's hatred of President Bush knows no bounds. Here is what he writes in today's New York Times op-ed column:

Here's what I think will happen if and when China changes its currency policy, and those cheap loans are no longer available. U.S. interest rates will rise; the housing bubble will probably burst; construction employment and consumer spending will both fall; falling home prices may lead to a wave of bankruptcies. And we'll suddenly wonder why anyone thought financing the budget deficit was easy.

Krugman despises tax cuts. He hates it that President Bush's tax cuts haven't destroyed the economy. He thinks they would if only China would change its currency policy. So naturally he wants China to change its currency policy. The worse the economy does, the more resentment there will be toward President Bush; and the more resentment there is toward President Bush, the better Krugman will feel, for his own hatred will then seem reasonable.

Professional bicycling is not for the claustrophobic. See here. The Giro d'Italia has entered the Dolomites. Ivan Basso of Italy finished second in today's difficult stage and captured the overall lead with 10 days to go. See here for a pretty picture.

Two words leapt to mind as I read this story: Bill Clinton.

To the Editor:

Re "Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide" ("Class Matters" series, front page, May 15):

I would hope that the reaction of my fellow Times readers to your series about the growing, hardening social class divisions in America would be not a fatalistic acceptance but a revived commitment to the ideal of a classless society.

If we are to remain a democracy, we must make a determined national effort to reach a consensus on what truly constitutes the good life. We must strive to assure that not just a few but all American citizens can participate in it.

Wealth, luxuries and possessions for their own sakes should not be the chief desiderata so much as adequate food, clothing and shelter; good medical care; a good education; a healthy, pleasant environment; our cherished constitutional freedoms; spiritually and intellectually rewarding work (as opposed to the soul-killing drudgery that is now the lot of many rich as well as poor Americans); and the capacity to recognize, enjoy and augment the best things that our civilization has to offer.

Philip Walker
Santa Barbara, Calif., May 16, 2005

Jean Robart directed my attention to this interesting site.

Normative judgments presuppose standards. If I say that such-and-such a painting is beautiful, I presuppose a standard of beauty. I may be unable to articulate it, but I presuppose it. Once you know my standard for beauty in paintings, you can hold me to it. If two paintings satisfy my standard equally, then I can’t consistently judge only one of them to be beautiful (or ugly). The same goes for moral judgments, which are a species of normative judgments. Different people have different standards of rightness in action, goodness in persons, motives, or character, and justice or fairness in dealings. Most moral disagreements come down to differences in standards. (Some are factual disagreements.) I say that an act is wrong, because it violates my deontological standard. You say that it’s not wrong, because it doesn’t violate your consequentialist standard.

I like movies, although I don’t watch very many. I’m curious about which movies my readers think are best. “Best,” like “beautiful,” is a normative word, so its use presupposes a standard. Please do two things: first, state your standard for goodness in movies; and second, list the five best movies according to that standard. If you did only the second of these, it wouldn’t provide others with useful information. They would see your list and wonder what your standard is. But if you say your standard is special effects, or acting, or historical accuracy, or humor, then you convey useful information to others, for they may share your standard and therefore be motivated to watch new movies. Eventually, I’ll supply my own list of five.

Not that anyone cares (or should), but it’s been 24 years to the day since I changed my name from “Keith Douglas Jackson” to “Keith Burgess-Jackson.” I mention this because I turned 48 years old a few weeks ago. Thus, I’ve lived half my life with one name and half with another. Do I have any regrets about changing my name? Nope. “Burgess” is my mother’s maiden name and “Jackson” is my father’s name. I love my two families equally. Having just one of their names seems unfair, imbalanced, or incomplete. Please spare me the queries about what I’ll do if I have children. I probably won’t; but if I do—if any woman is crazy enough to have me—we’ll figure something out. Perhaps we’ll put all of our surnames in a hat and draw one or two. Or perhaps we’ll name the child “X” and let X name him- or herself upon reaching adulthood.

By the way, notice the difference between my name and most other hyphenated names. Most are formed by adding the name of one’s spouse to one’s birth name. This is risky, since divorce is common. A person could go from “Jane Doe” to “Jane Doe-Williams” to “Jane Doe” during her lifetime. My parents will never change, so my name is safe.

Inadmissible, adj. Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such a person as Julius Cæsar, such an empire as Assyria.

But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Be careful with acronyms. “ATM” stands for automatic teller machine, so the expression “ATM machine” is redundant. It says automatic teller machine machine. The opposite mistake is sometimes made. In the sports section of yesterday’s Dallas Morning News, I found the following:

The right-hander [Francisco Rodriguez] underwent an MRI on Monday.

Chicago Cubs right-hander Carlos Zambrano had an MRI on his sore elbow Monday. . . .

RHP Livan Hernandez (6-2) had his right knee drained after an MRI confirmed it was swollen.

“MRI” stands for magnetic resonance imaging. Did Zambrano have a magnetic resonance imaging on his sore elbow? No. He had a magnetic-resonance-imaging scan (or test, or examination) performed.

I once thought “PDF” stood for portable document file. If it did, then “PDF file” would be redundant. But it stands for portable document format. Thus, “PDF file” is correct (i.e., nonredundant). Now go about your business.

Paul Krugman won't like this.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was born 133 years ago today. I have always loved his uncompromising atheism. I also like his metaethical views. Russell was once an ethical objectivist (he called it "absolutism"), but he gravitated to error theory—the view that, since there are no objective moral properties, all moral judgments are false. J. L. Mackie (1917-1981) is usually credited with developing this theory (in this book), but Russell beat him to it by more than half a century. See here for Russell's short essay "Is There an Absolute Good?"

It's understandable that Republicans and Democrats want different judges on federal courts. Federal judges occupy an important role in our government. But what these partisans are willing to do to get the judges they want reveals a great deal about their character. Take my word for it: Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen are well within the mainstream of legal thought. (I'm a lawyer and a philosopher of law. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on constitutional interpretation.) Both are experienced jurists. Both have served with distinction on the highest courts of their states. It is outrageous and indecent for Democrats to portray either of them as "unqualified" or "unfit." (See here.) The bottom line is this: Democrats have no principled reason to oppose these nominees, so they are attacking them personally. It will—and should—backfire. If Democrats want liberal judges, they should win a presidential election. It's really that simple.

Here is a bizarre column about Peter Singer and Whole Foods Market.

I have argued that there are reasons to think that patriotism, by virtue of its very nature, is undesirable. Patriotic loyalty is of a kind that requires certain beliefs about its object, without being premised upon an independent judgment that these beliefs are true. As a result, the patriot has a tendency to make judgments about the qualities of her own country in a way quite different from that in which she makes judgments about others, but she is unable within her patriotism to admit to this tendency. That is patriotic bad faith.

Sometimes the disposition to patriotic bad faith is not something that we need be too concerned about. In some cases, it will never be expressed. In others, the motivations underlying it will be very weak. Given, however, the moral seriousness of patriotism and the importance that patriotism tends to hold for those who have it, there is good reason to think that the disposition to patriotic bad faith will usually be more than just an interesting psychological quirk or harmless indulgence. Patriotic bad faith is likely to play a central role in the patriot’s construal of the world and of her own moral obligations, and it is likely to lead the patriot to make bad decisions of real consequence.

(Simon Keller, “Patriotism as Bad Faith,” Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy 115 [April 2005]: 563-92, at 592)

To the Editor:

Re "Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report" (front page, May 17):

I find it ironic that the White House is demanding more than a retraction from Newsweek over its report that American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had tried to unnerve detainees by desecrating the Koran.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said: "The report had real consequences. People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."

Mr. McClellan said Newsweek's retraction was a "good first step."

As a 9/11 widow who witnessed worldwide support of the United States after 9/11, now, I witness wide hatred of America.

Such hatred has little to do with the Newsweek article. It has everything to do with the Bush administration's pre-emptive war in Iraq. A war based on dead wrong intelligence that has cost thousands of lives. A war based on faulty reasons that have never been retracted, let alone fully explained to the American people or the world.

Mr. McClellan speaks of journalistic standards. How about executive-branch standards that should be met before taking a country into a false war, a war that has made the entire world less safe?

I am all for accountability and retractions. But such things need to start at the top.

Kristen Breitweiser
Shelter Island, N.Y., May 17, 2005

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This woman needs to get on with her life. President Bush had nothing to do with her husband's death.

Hers, pron. His.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Is hatred always bad? I don’t think so. In fact, it can be healthy—provided it has a proper object. Hating a person, such as President Bush, is always at least suspect, which is why Paul Krugman is such a vile character. Hating an institution, abstraction, action, motive, or state of affairs is not. I’m a baseball fan. I grew up in Michigan, so I was landed with the Detroit Tigers. Even though I’ve been away from Michigan for almost 22 years, I live and die with my Bengals. The greatest events of my life, without question, were World Series victories in 1968 (in seven games over the St Louis Cardinals) and 1984 (in five games over the San Diego Padres). As I’ve said many times, I can die happy. I have experienced the greatest feeling a baseball fan can experience. Twice. I wonder sometimes whether I’m worthy of such munificence. I fear that I am not.

In August 1989, having taught for a year at Texas A&M University in the middle of nowhere, I moved to Grand Prairie, Texas, to take a tenure-track teaching position at The University of Texas at Arlington. I feel fortunate to be able to live near a Major League Baseball team. I quickly adopted the local team—the Texas Rangers. I live and die with them just as I do with my Tigers. When the teams play each other, as they did the other day, I find it difficult to watch. Rooting for one team means rooting against the other. The cognitive and emotional dissonance I experience is palpable. I end up watching the game emotionlessly, trying to enjoy the play but without having any stake in the outcome.

There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball. I love two of them dearly and hate the other 28. That’s right. I hate all the rest. But hatred comes in degrees. I don’t hate all the other teams equally. I hate Atlanta very, very much, in part because its fans won’t admit that the team has underperformed for the past 13 years. They think winning the division title year after year is enough. It’s not enough. Even the Braves’ coaches and players will tell you it’s not enough. They’re paid to win the World Series, not to beat Florida, New York, Montreal (now Washington), and Philadelphia every year. There’s no doubt in my mind that Braves’ coaches and players feel like failures. So should their fans. That they don’t feel this way reflects poorly on them. It shows that they don’t have the proper attitude toward the game. They view it as entertainment or a diversion rather than as the life-and-death practice that it is.

When I watch a game—and I watch many of them on my 42-inch high-definition plasma television—I compare the amount of hatred I have for each team and form a rooting interest accordingly. If the St Louis Cardinals are playing Atlanta, for example, I root for St Louis. But if St Louis is playing San Diego, I root for the Padres. About the only time in my life I’ve rooted for the New York Yankees is when they played Atlanta in the World Series. It was a matter of destroying the most-hated team. You might say that I used the Yankees as a mere means to my (worthy) ends.

It will not surprise you that I have particular enmity toward American League teams, for they have been hardest on my Tigers over the years. I hate Boston, Minnesota, and Toronto with a passion. I despise Seattle and Oakland. Some of these grudges go back decades. The teams may have entirely different personnel, but many of the fans are the same, and that’s all that matters. I take a special delight in watching Red Sox fans suffer. Most of them are insufferable. As you can imagine, the 2004 World Series was painful for me to watch. I had hoped to die before Boston won it again. It still delights me that the Chicago Cubs haven’t won a World Series in eons. If they win one during my lifetime, I will be crushed. Their fans don’t deserve a title. They’re too happy-go-lucky about the game. At least Red Sox and Yankees fans take the game seriously.

I’ve lost friends over baseball. And why not? The emotions the game elicits in me are many and intense. It is about desert, responsibility, and justice: about giving each person his due. It’s not merely a game. It’s a deadly serious and important institution, like war, marriage, and childrearing. If you want to stay on the good side of me, you will pay baseball the respect it deserves and not inflame my passions. Say good things about—and only about—the Tigers and Rangers.

Postscript: The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., has two definitions for “hateful.” The first is “full of hate.” That’s the sense in which I use the word in my title. My life is (literally) full of hate (for 28 baseball teams). The second is “exciting hate.” I hope my life doesn’t excite or arouse hate—although, judging from some of the e-mail I receive, it does.

Can you say "synergy"?

See here for Dr Bill Vallicella's takedown of Dr Ernest Partridge. It's not spy versus spy. It's philosopher versus philosopher.

Jeff Percifield does us an inestimable service by keeping us up to date on catfights. See here.

The contrast between scholarly and public-intellectual publication is particularly striking. Scholarly publication involves three levels of filtering. The norms of the academy, norms enforced by tenure and salary review, impose a discipline on its members. The scholarly journals and academic presses use peer review, and in the case of the presses also faculty review boards and specialized acquisition editors, to ensure high standards in published work. And the audience for academic writing is an audience of experts. All three levels of control are missing from the public-intellectual market. Of course this is true whether or not the public intellectual is an academic. There are plenty of examples of bad work by nonacademic public intellectuals. That is only to be expected. Yet unusual life experiences or unusual literary skills may redeem at least a fraction of public-intellectual work, and these attributes are more likely to be found outside than within the academy.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 81-2 [footnote omitted])

The female orgasm, like the female, is a mystery. See here for the latest.

I've already announced my choice for president in 2008: Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts. See here for a story about him.

Why is it acceptable to treat nonhuman animals as mere means to human ends? Why are we deontologists with respect to humans but consequentialists with respect to animals? Why are humans morally special? Are whites morally special? Are men morally special? See here for disturbing video footage. (See here as well.) If it doesn't enrage you, then you aren't wired properly. (Thanks to Khursh Mian Acevedo, a tireless animal advocate, for the links.)

I take great pleasure (and pride) in living frugally. One aspect of this is using things until they cease functioning. Why replace something if it still works? I wore a pair of Birkenstock sandals for a decade. My car, which I bought new, is almost 16 years old. I wear the same coat that I wore in my 20s. (I’m 48.) When it’s chilly, I wear the jacket that I bought for a kayak trip in 1989. My electric shaver is almost 16 years old. I rode my Schwinn 564 for almost 12 years—until the teasing of my friends became unbearable. You get the idea. At one time, frugality was essential, given my limited income. Now, it’s by choice. All of this is by way of saying that my microwave oven, which I use every day, is 20 years old. My parents gave it to me as a graduation gift on 17 May 1985, when they visited me in Tucson (from their home in Michigan). Here is the pertinent paragraph from my journal of this date in 1985:

I neglected to mention my graduation present: a Sanyo microwave oven. Mom and Jerry stopped along the way and bought it for me, for $119. Now, I have long wanted a microwave oven. These devices permit a person to defrost or cook food in a matter of minutes, without the heat of a conventional oven. Mom and Jerry have had one for years, but I could never afford to buy one. And now I’ve got my own. I thanked them profusely and told them that I’d get a lot of good use out of it—and I will. I’m lazy when it comes to the preparation and cooking of food, and there’s nothing quicker or cleaner than a microwave oven. I’ll use it a lot for warming up sandwiches and soups.

Part of me wants to buy a new microwave oven, if only to get new features. The Sanyo takes five minutes to heat a cup of water for instant coffee. Another part of me wants to use the Sanyo until it stops working. But that might be another 20 years. Perhaps I’ll leave it to my blog readers to decide. What do you think?

This week's link is to philosophy. (Even Plato—old flat face—needed smooth, radiant skin.)

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof must have a different version of the Bible than I do. Mine calls for individual responsibility and action, not for a government to take money from people who produce and distribute it to others to make liberals feel good about themselves.

Mary McLemore
Pike Road, Ala., May 15, 2005

When Steven Pinker talks, I listen. See here. Unfortunately, he had to slip his opinion (about whether homosexual conduct should be criminalized) into this otherwise fine column. His opinion has nothing to do with his scientific training or expertise. In fact, it appears that he is trying to induce his readers to commit a fallacy, to wit:

1. Pinker is an expert on psychology.
Therefore,
2. Pinker is an expert on the morality of law.

Expertise doesn't transfer from one realm to another. It must be earned in each realm. And even if it did transfer, it wouldn't transfer to morality, for there are no moral experts.

Posterity, n. An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I posted spring-semester grades this morning. This completes my 16th year of teaching at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and my 22d year of teaching overall. I began graduate school in philosophy in August 1983. During my first semester at The University of Arizona, I was Jules Coleman’s teaching assistant in Introduction to Logic. After that, I taught courses of my own: Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Logic, Introduction to Moral and Social Philosophy, and Sex, Ethics, and the Law (a course of my own devising). By the time I became Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University in August 1988 (while ABD), I had five full years of teaching experience. Like anything else, teaching improves with practice.

Did I ever tell you the three best things about being a college professor? June, July, and August. I taught during the summer the first couple of years at UTA, mainly to supplement my meager salary, but since about 1993 I’ve had my summers off. I always thought I’d have a cabin in Montana or Idaho in which to spend my 15-week summers, but so far it hasn’t happened. The reading and writing I do during the summer can be done anywhere, especially with modern computer technology. I could use the UTA library just as easily sitting on a porch in Wolf Creek, Montana, as I can sitting in the study of my Fort Worth house. It’s amazing, when you think about it. How did I get through college and law school with only a typewriter? Back then, it was considered envelope-pushing to have an electric typewriter.

Sometimes I wonder where the time went. It seems like only yesterday—rather than 16 years ago—that I walked into my first class at UTA. Many of my students have gone on to graduate or professional school. At least a dozen are lawyers. Three or four are medical doctors. I tell my students that all I ask in return for writing a letter of recommendation for them is that they keep in touch with me over the years. It does my heart good to see them fulfill their dreams. In case you’re wondering, I have no regrets about forgoing a legal career. I would have made a lot more money as a practicing attorney, but it would not have fulfilled me. I need the autonomy that only academia can provide. I’m glad there are people willing to put in long hours practicing law. Society needs them. But it’s not for me. This doesn’t mean I regret becoming a lawyer. I’m a philosopher of law. I love law. My legal knowledge and skills have helped me understand the social world much better than I otherwise would have. To know the law is to know how (and why) things work.

To the Editor:

What I found most telling, as a former college and high school teacher, was the observation of the Indiana researcher that "students are getting A's and B's, but without studying much." They leave college for the working world without knowing much of what they need to know.

But students are already getting A's and B's in high school, without studying much, because they have already learned that they will get not what they earn but what they demand. Schools and colleges treat them as educational customers, and, as we all know, the customer is always right. And so we end up not productive of the most advanced technology, but merely consumptive of it.

B. C. Knowlton
Milford, Mass., May 13, 2005

It sounds to me as though Paul Krugman wants a draft. See here. By the way, did anybody see anything positive in his column? Has the war had no good effects? Oops! This is Bush-hatin' Paul. He's constitutionally incapable of seeing anything good in President Bush's character, policies, or actions. Harp on the bad; ignore the good.

Addendum: Shortly after posting this, I came across a critique of Krugman's column at The Chief Brief. Thanks to Donald Luskin for the link.

Congress, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

See here for my post about writing.

David Brooks says that Hillary Clinton is "surprisingly popular with poor Republicans." See here.

Here is a New York Times story about blogging.

I get e-mail from philosophy students at other universities. Many of these students ask me questions. I can usually tell when the student is trying to get assistance with an assignment. Here is an exchange I had this afternoon. An e-mail came in with the following subject line: "a question form [sic] a philosophy student at the university of masschusetts [sic]." Here's the message:

Dear prof i read something that you wrote about self defense and i had a question Can consequentialism explain why self defense is justified? I understand the idea of the doctrine of double effect but consequentialsm has illuded me i think. thanks alot Peter p.s. what is your opinion on the karla faye tucker case of 1984, i came across it looking through possible research topics and i would love to hear you opinion about the case and her execution

I wrote back as follows:

Why would you ask me these questions? Ask your instructor.

The student replied:

Wow, i was a previous fan of yours, but clearly your list of good works and knowledge doesnt count for any manors. thanks for nothing you jerk

I wrote back:

Does your professor know that you're writing to profes[s]ors at other universities?

If this student abuses me again, I will write to the chair of the Department of Philosophy at The University of Massachusetts and give the student's name (Peter Struzzo). This student is obviously trying to have me do his course work.

To the Editor:

I'm not aware of anyone, Republican, Democrat or Green, who holds that "today's Social Security structure is sacred," nor does Matt Miller name any names ("Wanted: Responsible Demagoguery," column, May 11). The objection to President Bush's proposed Social Security cuts is that they fall heavily on the middle- and upper-income beneficiaries.

While this may seem to be a strange objection coming from Democrats, it makes perfect sense when one considers Mr. Bush's obvious long-term goal. Once the middle class loses its stake in Social Security, it becomes a welfare program, ready for the cutting block, along with every other program that benefits the poor.

Republicans, dazzled by the chimera of unbounded wealth for the majority, will then eliminate Social Security altogether, and we'll all be experimenting with private (personal?) accounts.

Robert Moss
Bloomfield, N.J., May 11, 2005

Hog, n. A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and serving to illustrate that of ours. Among the Mahometans and Jews, the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for the delicacy of its habits, the beauty of its plumage and the melody of its voice. It is chiefly as a songster that the fowl is esteemed; a cage of him in full chorus has been known to draw tears from two persons at once. The scientific name of this dicky-bird is Porcus Rockefelleri. Mr. Rockefeller did not discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here is an image from today's 131.1-mile stage of the Giro d'Italia, won by Koldo Gil of Spain, who had broken away from the pack early on with several others. When the peloton forms a long, thin line like this, it means the pace is high. Each rider stays on the wheel of the rider in front of him so that he can conserve energy. When the rider at the front tires, he moves to the side to let the next rider come to the front. He then slips back in to recover from the effort. If a team has a good sprinter, it will chase down breakaways to give the sprinter a chance to win the stage. Breaking away is a crapshoot. Unless the peloton miscalculates, it will reel in all breakaway riders by the finish of the stage. But sometimes the peloton miscalculates. The peloton represents order and stability. Breakaway riders are rebels.

I did my 350th bike rally this morning in Saginaw, Texas, which is just 18 miles from my house in Fort Worth. It's the rally's first year, but it was well organized. Not long after we started, the clouds moved off and it became gloriously sunny (albeit windy). I stopped several times for pictures during the 60-mile ride, which circled Eagle Mountain Lake. Here is an old Texaco station (between Azle and Boyd):

Here is an old wagon that serves as a lawn ornament:

The route took us through a small airport, where I saw this beautiful airplane taking off:

Texas wouldn't be Texas without ranches. Here is a typical ranch (note the windmill in the yard):

Here is a herd of grazing longhorns:

Here is yours truly (on the right) with two riding buddies, Randy and Mark (the image was made by my longtime friend Phil Kevil):

A good time was had by all. The best songs of the day were "Cold Gin," by Kiss; "Back to Shalla-Bal," by Joe Satriani; and "Spiral Architect" (live), by Black Sabbath.

To the Editor:

John R. Bolton would perfectly represent the Bush administration at the United Nations, and that is precisely why his nomination should be defeated.

The heated controversy over Mr. Bolton's unsuitability as a diplomat is really a debate by proxy over President Bush's identical tactics on the world stage: arrogance, bullying and distortion of facts to get his way.

As the full Senate now exercises its duty to advise and consent, it's time to shift the focus from Mr. Bolton's personality to President Bush's policies. By declining to give consent, senators can advise the president that his imperialist stance toward other countries is not acceptable.

Ralph Roughton
Atlanta, May 13, 2005

Review, v.t.

To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it,
Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)
At work upon a book, and so read out of it
The qualities that you have first read into it.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

5-13-85 . . . It is not often in life that one can pinpoint the exact date of an ideological conversion. But in my case, I can say with confidence that I became a libertarian exactly five years ago today, on 13 May 1980. That’s the date on which I found some Libertarian party literature on a heat ventilator in the lobby of the law school at Wayne State University. I took it home, read it, and shook my head in amazement. I had been a libertarian at heart for at least a couple of years before that, but my thoughts weren’t structured. The literature drove home the idea that libertarianism was a coherent philosophy, and that attracted me. Finally, I thought, I have found my niche. But my infatuation with the Libertarian party, and with libertarianism, was short-lived. I read as much as I could about the subject [including Thomas Nagel, “Libertarianism Without Foundations,” review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick, The Yale Law Journal 85 (November 1975): 136-49] and then one day realized that the ideology was hopelessly inconsistent—not to mention unfair. I won’t go into detail here, for I have done so on several other occasions, but suffice it to say that in just five years I have been from one end of the political spectrum to the other, from libertarianism and anarchy to socialism. While I don’t rule out further changes, I find change highly unlikely. Only socialism is consistent with all of the values that I hold dear. [Now I’m a conservative.]

I read this New York Times editorial opinion slowly and carefully. The only ground of opposition to John Bolton I can discern is that he's too pro-American to serve as this country's United Nations ambassador. Is this what it has come to? Do liberals have any idea how silly they sound to normal, patriotic Americans? When you read such tripe, you know why Democrats keep losing the presidency.

Here is law professor Eugene Volokh's take on the case I discussed yesterday, involving a federal district-court judge in Nebraska. Volokh thinks the ruling will be reversed on appeal. I hope he's right. But even if it is reversed, we still need a constitutional amendment that restricts marriage to heterosexuals. It's the only way to keep activist federal judges from destroying our oldest and most basic institution.

Addendum: I just found this column by Stanley Kurtz. On the issue of homosexual "marriage," he and I are peas in a pod.

Military blogs (milblogs) are in the news. Here is one of the better ones. I will add it to the blogroll.

Paul Krugman is troubled by the fact that many workers lack security: job security, retirement security, income security, health security. See here. Whose fault is that? Is it my fault? Should I be made to pay for other people's bad decisions or lack of initiative? If you value security, you must pay for it. TANSTAAFL. I paid for job security (tenure) by accepting far less in salary than I would otherwise earn (as a lawyer, for example). How dare someone try to take this security away, or to suggest that I don't deserve it! I've paid for it! Each of us is responsible for the decisions he or she makes, whether it's the decision to have a child, the decision to take a high-paying but insecure job, or the decision to enter the workforce after high school rather than after college. Paul Krugman wants cradle-to-grave security for everyone, in every realm, with no questions asked. Then he and his fellow liberals should cough up the money for it. What is it with liberals and responsibility, anyway? The concept seems alien to them.

To the Editor:

That the United States government, and Thomas L. Friedman in his column, pick on North Korea and Iran and ignore India, Pakistan and Israel substantiates the notion that the whole fuss is not about world security but about consolidating United States hegemony.

To phrase it bluntly, the "legitimate" nuclear powers are telling the rest of the world:

"It just happened that we got the nukes. You have to trust that we will not misuse them, but we do not trust that you will not. Meanwhile, we will decide your issues our way, whether you like it or not.

"Furthermore, we are letting our trustworthy friends get the nukes. But if any one of you, somehow, gets them against our will, we will not give that any legitimacy, but we will not be able to do anything about it."

That said, it is surprising that so few countries are working on them.

Husayn Al-Husayni
Jackson Heights, Queens
May 11, 2005

The evidence for Hillary Clinton's moderation and pragmatism continues to mount. See here. I find it laughable that there are so many people hell-bent on portraying her as a fire-breathing leftist. To repeat: She has never been a leftist. She was a Goldwater Girl; she's married to one of the 20th century's great moderates; she's a hawk on defense, a proponent of capital punishment, and a defender of this country's borders. Conservatives need to take their heads out of the sand and look at her. Don't look just at what she says (although that's good evidence for what she believes); look at what she does. Look at her voting record. By the way, when I say that Hillary is a moderate, I'm not saying that she's smack dab in the middle of the political spectrum. I'm saying she's not at the left end of the spectrum. I place her closer to the center than to the left.

KBJ:

A thought occurred to me about the chessboard rearrangement I told you about in an earlier message, in which an 8x8 chessboard of 64 squares is cut up into pieces and rearranged into (what appears to be) a 5x13 rectangle of 5x13 = 65 squares. If you like, please forward to Will Nelson this note and my earlier note about how to cut up and rearrange the chessboard. If he has the time and inclination to play with his picture-drawing software, I would be curious to see how obvious the long, narrow 1-square-unit gap will be in the middle of an accurately drawn 5x13 rearrangement of an 8x8 chessboard.

Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

P.S. For your convenience, I quote my earlier note:

KBJ:

A math-minded acquaintance I mentioned your "extra square" triangle problem to told me that there is a chessboard variation of it.

Imagine an 8x8 chessboard of 64 squares. It can be cut up into pieces like two copies of the pieces in the upper "triangle" in Will Nelson's picture (which shows that the sag in the ramp leaves a half-square gap). One can then rearrange the pieces of the chessboard into two versions of the upper "triangle," and place them ramp-to-ramp to form what looks like a rectangle that is 5 squares high and 13 squares across. So the 64-square chessboard has been cut up and rearranged into a 5x13 rectangle. But the area of this rectangle is 5x13 = 65 squares, not the original 64 squares. Where did the extra square come from?

Well, what appear to be two 5x13 right triangles do not actually fit together; the sag in the hypotenuse (ramp) of each leaves a half-square gap, so when they are placed ramp-to-ramp to form a rectangle, they actually leave a long, narrow gap between them that has the area of one square. But the gap is so narrow that it goes unnoticed.

Should you actually want to cut up an 8x8 cardboad square to mystify people with this trick, you can probably figure out where to make the triangle cuts. It would make a more dazzling display to actually makes the cuts with a scissors before their eyes, rather than rearrange pre-cut pieces. But then you'll have to memorize where to make the cuts. (I've never tried this myself, but maybe now I will.)

Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

P.S. I just stopped to work out where the cuts should be, and what in Will Nelson's picture are shown as orange and light-green L-shapes can be combined into a 3x5 rectangle. So cut the bottom three rows of an 8x8 chessboard into two 3x8 right triangles. Cut the upper-right corner (2 squares across, 5 squares high) into two 2x5 right triangles. And cut the upper left 5x6 rectangle vertically into two 3x5 rectangles. Now one 3x5 triangle, one 3x5 rectangle, and one 2x5 triangle can be arranged into the top "triangle" in Will Nelson's picture, and the other three pieces can be arranged into a matching triangle that will (appear to) fit together with it, hypotenuse to hypotenuse. So now you have complete instructions for how to perform this "make 64 squares into 65 squares" trick.

Ever wonder about the origin of Friday the 13th? See here. Fortunately for all of us, there is only one Friday the 13th in 2005. Unfortunately for all of us, it is today. Be careful. Be aware of your surroundings.

Absolute, adj. Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign's power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here is an attack ad by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Be sure to make a contribution so that more of these ads can be produced.

Will Nelson sent a PDF file that shows where the missing square came from in the triangle puzzle. Thanks, Will! Well done. Once again, thanks to everyone who sent solutions. There are lots of smart people out there. No wonder John Kerry was defeated.

Here is an item from today's Dallas Morning News:

The [New York Yankees] recommended Felix Rodriguez have surgery—he tore cartilage in his left knee Tuesday while getting out of the shower—but he'll get a second opinion today in Vail, Colo.

Gee, I wonder what a knee specialist is doing in Vail.

I had a good laugh the other day. As you know, I post New York Times letters on a regular basis. I do it not only here, but on all of my blogs: Animal Ethics, The Ethics of War, The Conservative Philosopher, and Philosophy @ UTA. I choose letters that I think will be of interest to that blog’s readers. It’s a way of letting other people speak. A few days ago, a man whose letter I had posted on The Ethics of War wrote to me demanding to know why I posted his letter. “What’s your agenda?” he asked. I told him that I had no agenda—that I publish letters from every part of the political spectrum. (If you’ve read any of my blogs, you know that this is true.) He wrote back in disbelief, insisting that everyone has an agenda. His tone was disrespectful.

Think about it. I didn’t tinker with the man’s wording; I didn’t comment on his letter; and he didn’t seem concerned that I had posted his letter without his permission. He was afraid that I was making a political point by posting his letter. But what if I were? Why would he care? Any argument he made in his letter would stand or fall on its own merits, whatever I or my readers thought of it. Any factual claim he made would be true or false, whatever I or my readers thought of it. Any opinion he expressed would still be his opinion, even if I or my readers happened not to share it. I’m at a loss as to what bothered him. One would think he would be pleased to get a larger audience for his letter. Perhaps if people had posted comments on his letter belittling him, or if I had added a sarcastic or insulting comment, he would have had a basis for concern; but nobody had posted any comments. I don’t allow comments on The Ethics of War. When I post a letter, it is meant to broach an issue and stimulate thought: nothing more, nothing less.

As promised, here are some images from yesterday's excursion to The Ballpark in Arlington. (I refuse to use the corporate name.) Here is the ballpark, from where I parked my car:

Here is the ballpark as we approached:

Here is yours truly:

Here is Wendell "Hawk" Hawkins, my university colleague and fellow Wayback:

We sat in the highest seats, behind home plate. When we turned around, we could see outside the ballpark. Here is the Texas flag:

Here is the inside of the ballpark:

Beautiful, isn't it?

A federal district judge in Nebraska has ruled that Nebraska's constitutional provision limiting marriage to heterosexuals violates the United States Constitution. See here. As I've written in this blog many times, this is why there needs to be an amendment to the United States Constitution. State constitutional provisions are better than state statutes, but they do nothing to prevent activist federal judges from striking them down. The United States Supreme Court could easily rule that there is a constitutional right to marry that is broad enough to include homosexual "marriage." It could base such a ruling on the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, or one or another clause of the First Amendment (as in the Nebraska case, apparently). It could achieve the same result by interpreting the Full Faith and Credit Clause in such a way as to make all states recognize marriages entered into in any state. The only way to protect marriage, ultimately, is a constitutional amendment.

Addendum: I should point out that I haven't read the Nebraska opinion. The language quoted by the reporter—"expressive," "associational," and "petition"—strongly suggests that the basis is the First Amendment. What this shows is that a federal judge (or justice) who is determined to find a right to homosexual "marriage" in the Constitution can find it in any of several places.

Addendum 2: Here is the New York Times (Associated Press) story.

John Kerry is delusional. He thinks he can win the presidency if he runs again. See here. What a laugh! I don't think anyone voted for Kerry. Lots of people voted against President Bush. Kerry just happened to be the alternative. Ah, you say, but why was he the Democrat nominee, if nobody wanted him? Because he was electable; remember? Democrats took a long look at Howard Dean and concluded that he couldn't be elected. They thought Kerry's military service would stand him in good stead among patriots. As we now know, it didn't. Kerry's military service turned out to be a sham; and what he did when he returned to this country was disgraceful. To be honest, I can't think of a more unappealing candidate than John Kerry. (Okay, I can: Al Gore.) He had his chance. He needs to let others, such as Hillary Clinton, have their turn. But ego has a way of clouding one's judgment, and Kerry is the egotist's egotist.

5-12-85 Sunday. Over the years, I have come to hate exams. I’ve been taking exams nearly all of my life, so you might think that by now I handle them well. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have a final exam in John Pollock’s [Introduction to Nonstandard Logic] course tomorrow afternoon, and I’ve been pulling my hair out, so to speak, trying to understand and memorize the material. It’s hard! I find myself devising new and unique ways to avoid studying, so anxious am I about the exam. (Drafting this journal entry is an effort to avoid reviewing my notes, believe it or not.) I tried to take the pressure off by telling myself that I’ll settle for a “B,” but still I’m worried. What if I completely blow one of the three questions, and end up with a “C” on the final exam? Is that any way for a graduate teaching assistant to perform? I should think not. But in all honesty, I have a hard time understanding and stating the material for the course. For example, what the hell is a “surrogate relation,” a “model,” a “reasonableness condition for a formal semantics,” “strong adequacy”? Suffice it to say that I’ll be glad when the exam is over, however I do. And I vow never to take another course in advanced logic, so long as I live. Never. [I met my match in this course. It was insanely difficult. I don’t know whether it was because of the material or because John Pollock didn’t explain it well. It would have helped to have a study partner such as Jody Kraus. Studying with him helped me do well in Henry Byerly’s Mathematical Logic course.]

A year ago, the [Detroit] Tigers were 26-5, and on their way, as predicted, to a hundred-victory season. The Tigers ended up winning 104 of their 162 games. Right now, the 1985 Tigers are 16-10 and fighting for first place with Baltimore [the Orioles] and Toronto [the Blue Jays]. The 1985 Tigers are seven and a half games behind the pace of their predecessors. Yesterday morning, I watched the Tigers play (and lose to) the Chicago White Sox. What fun it is to wake up on a Saturday morning and see the hometown team play baseball! I enjoyed the game. Lou Whitaker is near the top in batting, Dan Petry is 5-2, Alan Trammell has yet to make an error in 1985, and Willie Hernandez is saving games right and left, as in 1984. It promises to be a close pennant race this year. [Yesterday I went to The Ballpark in Arlington with my friend Wendell Hawkins to watch the Tigers play the Texas Rangers. Detroit won, 6-5. Alan Trammell is the manager of the Tigers. He looks like he could still play.]

What a dumb thing I did this afternoon! Having drafted five pages of notes for tomorrow’s exam, I decided to take a long walk in order to memorize terms and organize my thinking. So far, so good. But I left the apartment without shoes on my feet, thinking that I would be able to “toughen up” my feet that way and “get back to nature.” What a laugh! The first couple of miles were not bad, but when I got to Tanque Verde Road I came upon a long stretch of gravel. Besides being hot, it was covered with sharp little stones and glass. I hobbled along, rarely looking up, and ironically had little time to concentrate on my notes. But it was too late to turn back, so I plodded on. And then, get this: I was “pulled over” by a police officer! While approaching Speedway Boulevard from Pantano Road, I passed a police car and an officer who was giving a ticket to another driver. The ticket given, the officer went to his car and began to pass me. I then heard the honk of a horn and saw that the officer wanted to talk to me. I hobbled over to his car and he said, “You look like you’re having some kind of trouble; what’s up?” Apparently, he had seen me struggling to avoid the pebbles, and perhaps thought that I was drunk, for I had only shorts on and must have looked destitute. But I explained that I was studying for an exam and had made an error of calculation in walking that far (five miles) without shoes. The officer asked how far I was going, and I explained that it was only to the wash. I probably could have gotten a ride in the squad car, but I said that I could make it home all right on my own. What a laugh! My lack of prudence very nearly turned into a “brush with the law”! I’ll have to tell Terry Mallory about this one.

Right now, at 8:51 P.M., my feet are still hurting. I have huge blisters on the heel of each foot and smaller blisters on the front. But it’s a good omen; I just know it. The day before I took the [Arizona] bar exam, in February, I walked several miles down Pantano Wash in my bare feet. In fact, I remember my feet hurting while answering questions the next day. Tomorrow, perhaps I’ll do better on John Pollock’s exam as a result of today’s foolishness. Given my utter lack of studying time, I’ll take any help that I can get. Wish me luck.

Here is a beautiful scene from today's stage of the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy). The 138.5-mile stage was won by Italian Danilo Di Luca, whose elapsed time of 6:01:18 gave him an average speed of 23.01 miles per hour. The fitness of these athletes is mind-boggling.

See here.

Democrats are going to lose their fight to keep John Bolton from becoming this country's ambassador to the United Nations. See here. A rational person would look at Bolton's complete record and decide whether he's fit for the office. Democrats have gone about it backward. First they decided that Bolton must be opposed; then they searched for information that would minimize his chances of being confirmed. This is not just irrational; it's unfair. Democrats are motivated by opposition to President Bush rather than by national interest. If President Bush wants something, he must not get it. If he does something, it must be misrepresented and belittled. His motives must be questioned, his character assailed, and his integrity impugned. Americans are watching the Democrats. They are deciding that this gang of thugs, hypocrites, and reactionaries can't be trusted to lead this great country. Me? I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

To the Editor:

The church's mission is to proclaim the Gospel and thereby help people save their souls. One way it does this is to promote the living of the virtues. Its role is not to reduce the spread of AIDS, which it sees as a tragedy and a source of great suffering but is not itself a moral evil.

Rather, the real evils are the vices—illicit sex, drug abuse and prostitution—that result in AIDS.

Thus, the church's duty is to promote virtues contrary to these vices—chastity, temperance and charity. Living these virtues will not only prevent AIDS but will also lead to stronger families and more peaceful societies.

Brian Scully, M.D.
Hackensack, N.J., May 8, 2005
The writer is an infectious diseases specialist at Columbia University.

Hag, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind of baleful lumination or nimbus—hag being the popular name of that peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a "beautiful hag, all smiles," much as Shakespeare said, "sweet wench." It would not now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag—that compliment is reserved for the use of her grandchildren.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

If you want fresh, organic, locally produced food, see here.

There was controversy in today's (fourth) stage of the Giro d'Italia. Italian Paolo Bettini rode Australian Baden Cooke into the barriers during a sprint finish. Bettini, who crossed the finish line first, was relegated to last in his group (fourth overall) for dangerous riding. Cooke is lucky he wasn't seriously injured, but he's mad as hell at Bettini. See here for details. Click the images to make them larger. See here for a series of images showing the crash.

Roger Kimball is a careful observer of academia. See here for his column about what ails the university.

The baseball announcer on ESPN just said that it's a "warm, muggy" evening in St Louis. But isn't "warm" built into "muggy," thus making his expression redundant? If it were cool (or cold) and humid, would we describe it as muggy? I wouldn't. The other day, I described cool, humid weather as clammy. The Oxford Dictionary and Language Guide (1999) confirms my intuition, defining "muggy" as "oppressively damp and warm." You might say that no harm was done by this sloppy announcer. I disagree. He is contributing to illiteracy, just as people who buy factory-farmed meat contribute to the amount of pain, suffering, and deprivation in the world. It's not how much illiteracy or suffering one brings about that matters, but the fact that one adds to these bad things.

I went to The Ballpark in Arlington this afternoon with my friend Wendell Hawkins. My beloved Detroit Tigers defeated my adopted Texas Rangers, 6-5. I'll post some images later. I told Hawk that my life can be divided into three stages:

1. When every Major League player was older than I was.
2. When some Major League players were older than I was and some Major League players were younger than I was.
3. When every Major League player is younger than I am.

The most traumatic events in my life were the movements from stage 1 to stage 2 and from stage 2 to stage 3. I hate being 48. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Ever wonder what distinguishes conservatism from other political moralities? See here for one man's answer.

KBJ:

The one day I decide not to check your analphilosopher.com site is the day you have a nice math problem. The answer that others have already given you is essentially correct.

In the first picture (at the top), the green triangle (at the upper right) is slightly steeper, and the red triangle (at the lower left) is slightly less steep, than the overall triangle. Specifically, the overall triangle has a "rise" of height 5 over a "run" of length 13, giving it a slope (angle) of Arctan(5/13) = 21 degrees, 02 minutes, 15 seconds. (The notation "Arctan(5/13)" means "that angle whose tangent (slope) is given by a rise of 5 over a run of 13".)

The green triangle has a rise of height 2 over a run of of length 5, giving it a slope of Arctan(2/5) = 21 degrees, 48 minutes, 05 seconds, which is slightly steeper than the overall triangle.

The red triangle has a rise of height 3 over a run of length 8, giving it a slope of Arctan(3/8) = 20 degrees, 33 minutes, 22 seconds, which is slightly shallower than the overall triangle.

The result is that the "ramp" (hypotenuse) of the big triangle is not a straight line, but consists of two line segments, making the ramp slightly concave (sagging in the middle).

But when the parts are rearranged, the lower, green part of the ramp is steeper (21 deg 48 min 05 sec) than its upper, red part (20 deg 33 min 22 sec), so that the ramp is slightly convex (bulging upward).

The difference in area between the sagging ramp and the bulging ramp is just enough to account for the "missing" square. If the ramp were truly straight, we would have a ramp of constant slope Arctan(5/13) = 21 deg 02 min 15 sec, which lies between the slopes of the red and green triangles.

What causes the puzzlement is the viewer's assumption that in both cases the ramp is a straight line, whereas it actually consists of (in the top diagram) a shallow bottom section and a steep top section, or (in the bottom diagram) a steep bottom section and a shallow top section.

Clear?

Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Thanks to all who submitted solutions. I published Mark's (with his permission) not because he's the only person to solve the puzzle, but because I understood his solution. Nicely done, Mark. By the way, although I have five college degrees, and although I took courses in algebra, geometry, botany, biology, and slide rule in high school or college, I have never had a course in calculus, trigonometry, physics, astronomy, or chemistry. Amazing, isn't it?

To the Editor:

As a former journalist who is now a public relations professional, I think that John Tierney's analysis deserves broader attention.

It seems that the media may be acting as the terrorists' unpaid, unwitting (and certainly unwilling) public relations firm.

When a suicide bomb goes off in, say, Baghdad or Tel Aviv, media coverage expands the effective blast radius exponentially. The terrorists have figured this out. Indeed, they can achieve their aims only through the mass broadcast of their relatively rare acts of violence.

I have nothing but respect for the men and women who often risk their lives to bring us news from terror sites. The American media have long been a pillar of our democracy. They need to consider closely their current role as flacks for terror.

John Beilenson
Wayne, Pa., May 10, 2005

Newtonian, adj. Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe, invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

One of my readers, Tom Graffagnino of Georgia, creates "natural Christian art." See here. A few minutes ago, he sent a link to this poem.

Have you ever wondered what it means to say that rain is possible, probable, or certain, or that there’s a 100% chance of rain? The following appeared the other day in The Dallas Morning News:

EXPLAINING RAIN FORECASTS

When the forecast calls for a 100 percent chance of rain, it means that rainfall is virtually guaranteed at some time during the forecast period—usually covering a span of twelve hours. But it doesn’t mean it will rain the entire twelve hours. Furthermore, the chance of rain doesn’t reflect the amount of precipitation expected. For the forecast to be accurate, only .01 of an inch of rain must fall. So a 100 percent chance of rain doesn’t necessarily mean it will rain all day nor does it imply that a lot of rain must occur.

SOURCE: Steve McCauley, WFAA-TV (Channel 8)

Notice that “100 percent” means “virtually guaranteed.” Obviously, there are no “guarantees” in weather forecasting. But why then call it “100 percent”? Why not 95%, to reflect the possibility that it won’t rain? And whoever thought that “rain” meant “continuous rain for several hours”? That’s absurd. Rain comes and goes, and everybody knows it.

Donald Luskin demolishes Paul Krugman here.

I think Anna Quindlen has Hillary Clinton exactly right: She's a pragmatist, not a leftist ideologue. Unless conservatives stop demonizing her, they will suffer the fate of the Bush-haters, which is to lose the presidency.

I don't understand liberal antipathy to Wal-Mart. See here for Thomas Sowell's column.

Here is an interesting story about Hillary Clinton. Note that she supports the death penalty. I'll bet that really endears her to the Left.

[T]here are three differences between punishing sodomy and confining the right to marry to heterosexuals. The first is that permitting homosexual marriage would be widely interpreted as placing a stamp of approval on homosexuality, while decriminalizing sodomy would not, at least not to anywhere near the same extent. To say that an act is not a crime is not to commend it; a great deal of behavior that is disgusting or immoral or both is nevertheless not criminal. But marriage, even though considered sacramental only by Catholics, is believed by most people in our society to be not merely a license to reproduce but also a desirable, even a noble, condition in which to live. To permit persons of the same sex to marry is to declare, or more precisely to be understood by many people to be declaring, that homosexual marriage is a desirable, even a noble, condition in which to live. This is not what most people in this society believe; and for reasons stated earlier it would be misleading to suggest that homosexual marriages are likely to be as stable or rewarding as heterosexual marriages, even granting as one must that a sizable fraction of heterosexual marriages in our society are not stable and are not rewarding. I do not suggest that government’s pronouncing homosexual marriage a beatific state would cause heterosexuals to rethink their sexual preference. My concern lies elsewhere. It is that permitting homosexual marriage would place government in the dishonest position of propagating a false picture of the reality of homosexuals’ lives.

(Richard A. Posner, Sex and Reason [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1992], 311-2)

Here is the peloton (main pack of riders) during today's third stage of the Giro d'Italia. By the way, there was a horrific accident during yesterday's stage. See here. Warning: It's pretty gruesome.

Here is an interesting essay about historian Lauren Winner, who recently converted to Christianity. I saw her on The O'Reilly Factor last night.

To the Editor:

Re "Vatican Is Said to Force Jesuit Off Magazine" (front page, May 7):

The forced resignation of the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, the editor of the Jesuit magazine America, seems to confirm widespread fears that adult conversation about issues important to many Catholics will not be tolerated in this papacy.

The resignation continues the oppressive, chilling practices used by the Vatican in dealing with highly respected Catholic theologians during the last papacy.

Under Father Reese, America was a beacon of intellectual honesty and journalistic integrity for educated Catholics, who are mature enough to deal with differences of opinion on controversial issues. I wonder what the future of the magazine will be now.

The continuous threat of punitive action from the highest levels of the church does not bode well for its service to an educated and committed laity and clergy, both of whom are essential to the future of the church.

Leo J. Rogers
Morristown, N.J., May 7, 2005

I'd like to thank all the people who submitted solutions to the puzzle I posted yesterday. Some solutions were posted as comments; others were sent by e-mail. Here is the solution submitted by Norm Weatherby, my bicycling buddy. I'm not sure whether Norm solved it himself or simply forwarded somebody else's solution. Nor, frankly, do I understand it.

This week's link is to The Online Gadfly.

Hillary Clinton has always been deeply religious. See here for a recent expression of her faith. Note that she is co-sponsor of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act. This has puzzled and angered leftists (such as the ACLU, the American Humanist Association, Planned Parenthood, and homosexual activists), who mistake her for a raging secularist.

See here for Ed Feser's post on Antony Flew.

Platonic, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Judge Richard A. Posner has a provocative post on privacy.

According to Rasmussen Reports, 43% of respondents view Hillary Clinton as a liberal, while 41% view her as either conservative or moderate. See here. I view her as moderate.

Somebody solve this puzzle for me:

It's driving me crazy!

I'm glad President Bush is taking a firm stand on judicial nominations. It's why we elected him.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts allows homosexuals to "marry," at least until a referendum is held later this year. (I predict that the people of Massachusetts will amend their state constitution to restrict marriage to heterosexuals.) According to this New York Times story, significantly more female couples than male couples have "married." Why would this be? Note the studied evasion by the reporter of the obvious answer: Homosexual males are sexually promiscuous. They don't want to be tied down by "marriage."

Here is Arianna Huffington's new blog.

Here is the latest research on the etiology of homosexuality. It'll be interesting to see what happens when it becomes possible to know the sexual orientation of a fetus. Will people abort homosexual fetuses? I believe they will. And if they do, how will liberals respond? Will they try to prohibit abortion of homosexual fetuses? We are about to see a spectacular collision between feminists, to whom the right to abort is sacrosanct, and those who celebrate homosexuality.

See here for John Fund's interesting column about Social Security reform. Compare Fund's column with any recent column by Paul Krugman. Krugman has no solutions to the Social Security problem. He's not for anything; he's just against whatever President Bush proposes. He's a naysayer—a nattering nabob of negativism. Imagine if Krugman devoted his semiweekly column to a fair comparison of various reform proposals, laying out the costs and benefits of each. Imagine if he kept his own values out of it and acted like an economist. Imagine.

So The New York Times wants to rebuild its credibility. See here. I don't rule it out, but it's going to take a lot of hard work over a long period of time. It will probably require a new staff of editors and reporters, for those on staff have proved their inability to stay out of the fray. The coverage of the 2004 presidential campaign was absurdly and disgustingly partisan. We will know that the Times has rebuilt its credibility when it endorses a Republican for president. Don't hold your breath.

Addendum: It occurs to me that the Times could rebuild its credibility in an instant by firing op-ed columnists Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, and Paul Krugman. None of them adds anything to public discourse. All are shrill, partisan, and mean-spirited. The Times should replace them with thoughtful liberals, of whom, thankfully, there are many.

I just discovered this site.

The new racism comes down to this: If you oppose liberal policies, on racial preferences or on anything else that affects blacks, you must be out to harm black Americans.

(Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias [Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2005], 21)

Why do leftists continue to warn of a coming draft? I think it’s because they want a draft. Nothing would energize young people more than conscription—forced recruitment into the military. Leftists remember what happened in the 1960s and early 1970s. There was great resistance to the draft. College campuses became war zones. Draft cards were burned. Raucous speeches were made. Sit-ins and demonstrations were held. Protesters went to jail. Legal battles about the scope of conscientious objection were fought. When leftists look around today, they see complacency among the young. This troubles them, because they know that the young are their only hope for bringing about the leftist millennium. But young people must be roused, and nothing rouses like the threat of lost liberty. Leftists think the Right has co-opted youth, inducing them to turn inward toward careers and family rather than outward toward political change. This frustrates and infuriates them. They would like nothing more than a Republican reinstitution of the draft. Conservatives must not only oppose conscription, but make it perfectly clear that as long as they are in power, it will not be reinstituted. Who says leftists have no sense of nostalgia? They pine for the days of campus unrest and social upheaval, when impressionable, self-interested students were whipped into a frenzy by their leftist, America-hating professors.

Addendum: It might be interesting to compile a list of leftists who warn of a coming draft. Please join in, using the comment function.

To the Editor:

I am one of the "educated people" (12 years post-high school) mentioned by Thomas L. Friedman who regularly get their news from Jon Stewart of Comedy Central. It is not only because I enjoy good comedy (Mr. Stewart is very good), but also because "The Daily Show" is one of the few places in the mass media where truth is spoken to power.

Jon Stewart is the thorn in the Bush administration's side, and that's no joke! Long may he serve.

Philip Caper, M.D.
Brooklin, Me., May 6, 2005

I can see why Paul Krugman is beloved by the Left. He is just as dogmatic, hateful, and biased as they are. In column after column, he attacks the enemy (President Bush in particular, Republicans in general), giving no quarter. He always puts the worst spin on opposing arguments. He always makes disagreement about policy personal. Those with whom he disagrees aren't just wrong; they're malicious. He never shows any modesty, humility, charity, or fairness. He's a true believer. Let's just thank our lucky stars that he and his followers lack political power. All he does, twice a week, is feed the fires of hatred on the Left. He persuades nobody. See here for today's rant.

Income, n. The natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial, arbitrary and fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in whatsoever it consisteth—coins or land, or houses, or merchant-stuff, or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own subservience) as also of honors, titles, preferments and place, and all favor and acquaintance of persons of quality or ableness, are but to get money. Hence it followeth that all things are truly to be rated as of worth in measure of their serviceableness to that end; and their possessors should take rank in agreement thereto, neither the lord of an unproducing manor, howsoever broad and ancient, nor he who bears an unremunerate dignity, nor yet the pauper favorite of a king, being esteemed of level excellency with him whose riches are of daily accretion; and hardly should they whose wealth is barren claim and rightly take more honor than the poor and unworthy."

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Peter Beinart is one of the smartest people in Washington, and not just because he agrees with me that Hillary Clinton is no leftist. See here. Conservatives are misrepresenting her. It will cost them in 2008.

5-8-85 Wednesday. Directly across the hallway from the teaching assistantship office in the basement of the Social Sciences Building is the T.A. office of the History Department. I know a couple of the history T.A.’s by name, and I always look in when I walk by—wondering, I guess, what it would be like to be studying history instead of philosophy here at the University of Arizona. It wouldn’t be a bad career. I could specialize in American history, intellectual history (including history of philosophy), or even legal history. The History Department, so far as I know, is pretty good, and getting better. But alas, I have made my choice and I’ll stick with it. I’m certain that a career in history would be less stimulating, on the whole, than a career in philosophy. As a philosopher, I’ll be able to apply my skills anywhere I want; but as a historian, I’d be limited to a particular subject matter. I hate being limited.

A funny thing happened this morning. While walking back to my office from the Economics Building (where I teach) with two students, one of them said jokingly that “It’s no fun to have a rational argument with you; you always win!” Coincidentally, Joel Feinberg was walking out of the Philosophy Department office as this was said, but I suspected that he didn’t hear it. I was wrong. Later in the day, while [I was] checking my mailbox, Joel sidled up to me with that gleam in his eye and said, “Did you hear what your student said this morning? He said that it’s no fun to have a rational argument with you because you always win. I got a kick out of that.” I just laughed and replied, “But that’s wrong! I don’t always win.” We smiled and parted. I get the impression that Joel had his fancy tickled this morning, and he has probably repeated the line to other professors. Oh well, so I’ve got funny students. I, like Joel, enjoy a good laugh.

Today is officially the last class day of the semester. I distributed evaluation forms to my [Introduction to Logic] students this morning, and then lectured on replacement rules for fifty minutes. As the class ended, I reminded the students that the final exam will be given on Monday and thanked them for an enjoyable class. “I learned a lot from you,” I said. Later, after final grades are in, I’ll make copies of the evaluation forms and see what I did wrong (and right). This is my first experience at teaching logic on my own, and I have already decided that certain things should be done differently if I teach it again. I may even use a different book. Irving Copi’s book [Introduction to Logic] (now in its sixth edition) is good, but I have found an alternative book [Patrick J. Hurley’s A Concise Introduction to Logic] that has better illustrations and may have more appeal to students. I want to keep the students interested in the subject.

Tonight I drafted the final exam for my logic course and worked on my property-rights paper, pausing only to eat and watch a half-hour comedy show about lawyers (“Sara” [starring Geena Davis]). It is that time of year again when I feel guilty if I’m not working. So I’ll work.

Mark Spahn sent a link to this nutty site.

To the Editor:

When looking at Americans' rejection of cricket, it's useful to look at why they also rejected soccer for their own brand of football. What baseball and American football have in common is the high level of skill required.

Granted, the cricket bowler and batsman must possess approximately the same level of skill as baseball's pitcher and batter. But there is nothing in cricket remotely like the breathtaking, split-second cohesion required for a double play.

In soccer, we marvel at what players can do with their feet, but these are still, alas, feet.

God gave us thumbs for a good reason.

Any run-of-the-mill adolescent football player can do more with his hands than the world's best soccer player can manage with his boots, no matter how nimble his toes.

For whatever reason, late 19th-century Americans of all classes chose the more difficult team games to play. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the United States was really beginning to feel its oats then, and we were looking for greater challenges. Or maybe we just had the good sense to like baseball and football better than the rest of the crowd.

Frank Deford
Westport, Conn., May 3, 2005

Here is a New York Times op-ed column about blogger ethics.

I'd like to wish all the mothers out there—including a very special one in Michigan—a happy Mother's Day.

Yesterday’s bike rally in Flower Mound—the Cross Timbers Classic—was my fifth of the year and 349th overall. I’ve done this rally 16 consecutive years (since 1990). It has had at least three starting points in Flower Mound. The course has also changed. We used to go far to the north, into rural areas; but now we remain in the suburbs. It’s not a pleasant course. There are so many turns that it feels like a criterium. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss an arrow (they’re painted on the roadway in different colors, corresponding to the various routes) and end up with more miles than you planned. Another bad feature of this rally is that there were no courses between 50 and 100 miles. I haven’t trained for 100 miles, but I wanted to ride more than 50. Usually, at bike rallies, there’s a 100-kilometer (62.14-mile) course, which is perfect for someone (like me) whose only riding is in rallies. (During the week, I run, walk, and play softball.)

I decided to let the weather dictate my course. If it were sunny and pleasant—and I thought it would be—I’d tack a loop onto the 50-mile course and make my own 100-kilometer course. I’ve done that in rallies before and it worked out well. But the weather yesterday was unpleasant. Instead of sunshine, we had clouds; and there was just enough wind to make it chilly, despite a temperature in the mid-60s (degrees Fahrenheit) during the ride. It was also humid. I call such weather “clammy.” I’d rather have hot weather than clammy weather. But at least it wasn’t raining, so I shouldn’t complain. I was also lethargic yesterday morning, probably from Friday’s 4.3-mile run. I hadn’t run more than 3.1 miles in several weeks. Perhaps I was dehydrated.

At one point during the rally, I came upon a train. As I waited, dozens of other riders came up. By the time the train cleared, there were over 100 riders lined up. It felt like the start of the rally all over again. For the next five miles or so, it was congested on the narrow roads. Every now and then, five or ten riders would come by me in a pack. I was listening to music, so I had no interest in joining; but I did have to pay attention so as not to cause a pileup. The best songs of the day were “Shoot to Thrill” (live), by AC/DC; “Faith Healer,” by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band; and “Love of My Life,” by Gino Vannelli. Vannelli has an unbelievable singing voice. Take a listen some time and you’ll agree. I have nine of his albums on compact disc.

I consider a rally successful if (1) I have no accidents and (2) I have no flat tires or other mechanical problems. Everything else, such as feeling good, going fast, and having fun, is a bonus. Yesterday’s rally was successful. Statistically, I averaged 16.00 miles per hour for 48.7 miles (riding time = 3:02:34) and reached a top speed of 36.2 miles per hour on a steep descent midway through. The course wasn’t overly hilly, so my maximum heart rate was only 154. Then again, I didn’t hammer. I was content to put the miles in and burn off some fat. I hope you had a nice Saturday.

Illustrious, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

5-7-85 It is easy to take a computerized word processor for granted. Before I had this [Kaypro II] computer, I had to draft term papers at the typewriter. That usually required several drafts, as well as the use of correcting fluid, insertions, and deletions. What a wasteful process! Now, I simply draft my term papers on the computer screen and store them on floppy disks. Whenever I want to, I can call up a document and edit it; sometimes I do this repeatedly, until the paper is polished and well-organized. I have read and corrected my property-rights paper, for instance, at least five times. And if I decide to submit a given paper for publication, I can comply with the stylistic requirements of the journal in question by simply going through the document and making appropriate changes. If a journal wants a manuscript to be triple-spaced, all I have to do is change the “2” to a “3” at the beginning of the document. Can you imagine how long it would take to retype a twenty- to thirty-page paper, if this were not possible? All I can say is that I’m glad to have a word processor. In all honesty, I can’t imagine drafting a term paper without it; I’m spoiled by modern technology.

Good news! Joel Feinberg has been named my “personal advisor” within the Philosophy Department. Apparently, many of the graduate students complained about the lack of contact with faculty members, so a decision was made to assign to each graduate student a personal advisor. We were asked, a few weeks ago, to provide an ordered list of preferences. First on my list was Joel Feinberg. I placed Jules Coleman second and Holly Smith third. What does it mean to me? Not much, really. I rarely visit my professors, and I appreciate the fact that Joel is extremely busy with his books and articles. But the fact that I was assigned to him means at least this much: that our interests coincide and that he “accepted” me, either by commission or default, as a protégé. I am looking forward to working with Joel on my Ph.D. dissertation. Who knows? Some day I may get a chance to thank him in the preface of a book. [I did just that, in the preface of Rape: A Philosophical Investigation (Aldershot, England: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1996).]

Recently retired Italian sprinter Mario Cipollini was honored today by the organizers of the Giro d'Italia. The three-week race began today with a nighttime prologue of just under one mile. The course was flat and straight. After all the riders had finished, Mario Cipollini appeared in a pink bodysuit. See here and here. He rode the course without a helmet, waving to his adoring fans. We will miss this great champion, who brought so much (good) attention to the sport. By the way, OLN (the Outdoor Life Network) will broadcast the Giro every Saturday and Sunday for the next three weeks. Coverage begins at 5:00 Eastern time.

North Korea is getting closer to incineration. See here. As I said some time back, President Bush should make it perfectly clear to North Korea that if it attacks the United States, it will be wiped from the face of the earth.

To the Editor:

I disagree with "A Gut Punch to the Middle," by Paul Krugman (column, May 2).

But in a 1996 Op-Ed article in this paper, Mr. Krugman had this to say about the budget: "It is heading inexorably toward fiscal disaster, as the baby boomers in the tens of millions march steadily toward the age at which they can claim Social Security and Medicare. True, the crisis is still about 15 years away."

He then said: "Unfortunately, everything that a responsible government should be doing now—raising taxes, raising the retirement age, scaling back benefits for those who can manage without them (that means for the affluent, not the poor)—is political poison."

President Bush has now proposed slowing benefit growth for the affluent, not the poor, the idea Mr. Krugman complimented in 1996 while suggesting that no leader would be courageous enough to pursue it.

But in his May 2 column, he called the president's proposal "a plan to slash middle-class benefits" and "a gut punch to the middle class."

Robert C. Pozen, a Democrat, has a plan that the president believes could be a model for reform. Benefits for the very highest earning workers—fewer than 1 percent—would grow no faster than inflation. Lower-income workers would receive the fastest benefit growth of all. And everyone would receive greater benefits than today's retirees.

Don't forget proposed voluntary personal accounts. With them, most low-wage workers could expect to receive higher benefits than even the promises the current system makes, and significantly more than what it can actually pay.

Al Hubbard
Washington, May 5, 2005
The writer is director of the president's National Economic Council.

Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

The only horse race I watch—the only horse race I care about—is The Kentucky Derby. Like the Indianapolis 500, it is Americana. Today's race, which I got to see in high definition, was close and exciting. Why must they whip the horses? If whips were banned, the horses would still run, although perhaps not as fast.

It's not like we did something wrong
We just burned down the church
While the choir within
Sang religious songs
And it's not like we thought we was right
We just played with the wheels
Of the passenger train
That cracked on the tracks one night

It's not like we ain't on the ball
We just talk to our shrinks
They talk to their shrinks
No wonder we're up the wall
And we're not stupid or dumb
We're the lunatic fringe
Who rusted the hinge
On Uncle Sam's daughters and sons

Good old boys and girls
Congregating, waiting in another world
With roller coaster brains
Imagine playing with trains
Good old boys and girls
Congregating, waiting in some other world
We're all crazy, we're all crazy
(We're all crazy)

Lizzy Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks

And don't think we're trying to be bad
(No!)
An innocent crime
Seemed all right at the time
Not necessarily mad
(Not necessarily mad)
We watch every day for the bus
And the driver would say
"That's where lunatics stay"
I wonder if he's talkin' 'bout us

It's not like we're vicious or gone
(No!)
We just dug up the graves
Where your relatives lay
In old Forest Lawn
And it's not like we don't know the score
We're the fragile elite
They drained off the street
I guess they just
Couldn't take us no more

Good old boys and girls
Congregating, waiting in another world
With roller coaster brains
Imagine digging up graves
Good old boys and girls
Congregating, waiting in some other world
We're all crazy, we're all crazy
(We're all crazy)
We're all crazy, we're all crazy
(We're all crazy)
We're all crazy, we're all crazy
(We're all crazy)

We're all crazy (Repeat)

M. C. Kucharson, “Please Report to the Principal’s Office, Urine Trouble: The Effect of Board of Education v. Earls on America’s Schoolchildren,” Akron Law Review 37 (2004): 131-70.

R. P. Kennedy, “Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition: Can We Roast the Pig Without Burning Down the House in Regulating ‘Virtual’ Child Pornography?” Akron Law Review 37 (2004): 379-415.

Richard Brian Davis, “‘Partially Clad’ Bare Particulars Exposed,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2003): 534–48.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This weekly feature will now come to an end. I collected 24 pages of humorous scholarly titles over the years. All of the titles have now been posted. I hope you enjoyed the feature.

See here for a powerful image and commentary. The difference between us and them is that we aim to kill combatants. They aim to kill noncombatants.

Paul Krugman has reached a milestone: 500 consecutive partisan columns. Incredible. Democrats good, Republicans bad. Ad nauseam.

Jeff has posted some reviews of the new movie Kingdom of Heaven. See here.

Paul Krugman won't like this.

I'm a federalist, so I support the right of states to experiment with social policy. Vermont is about to socialize medicine. See here. That's fine, as long as nobody is prevented from leaving the state. Expect an exodus.

There is no excuse for obesity. Get out and run. Or walk. Or ride a bike. And stop eating so damn much. Last I knew, nobody forced anyone to eat.

Don't wander off the liberal plantation. You'll be called "stupid," among other things. See here.

Congratulations to Peg Kaplan for reaching the 40,000-visit plateau on her blog. It seems like only yesterday that she got started. See here for Peg's post about advocacy science. What I don't understand is why, if someone wants to change the world, he or she goes into science. Go into politics, the ministry, or sales. Science is about understanding the world, not changing it. It is supposed to be value free.

The 88th Giro d'Italia starts tomorrow. It will end 22 days later. Here is a race map.

Something has been bugging me for 10 years. On 6 May 1995, I showed up at the Fort Worth Stockyards for the Cowtown Classic Bike Rally. There had been a hailstorm the night before. When I reached the registration area, someone said the rally had been canceled because of debris—tree limbs and so forth—on the roads. I was disappointed, naturally, so I decided to get a refund of the $15 I had paid (by mail) and go home. Perhaps I would ride with friends elsewhere. To my surprise, I was told that my money would not be refunded. The volunteer referred me to a provision on the brochure. It said, “Rally will be held rain or shine. No refunds.” I pointed out that there was no rally. He still refused to refund my money. By this time I was getting indignant. I explained that the language on the brochure was designed to inform people that if they decided not to attend the rally, they would not get their money back. It did not say (or imply) that if no rally were held, there would be no refunds. I stood there arguing for some time. Finally, tired of arguing, a volunteer opened his wallet and gave me $15 of his own money. I took it and left in a huff. I’m still angry about this, 10 years later. How dare these people take my money and give me nothing in return. If I hadn’t gotten my money back, I would have filed a class-action lawsuit. By the way, this is the only rally I know of that’s been canceled, and I’ve done 348 of them.

I just finished reading Brian C. Anderson’s new book, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2005). It is excellent. Not the least of its virtues is that it’s well written. Here are the chapter titles, which will give you an idea of the book’s content:

1. The Old Media Regime
2. Illiberal Liberalism
3. Fighting Back: Conservative Talk Radio
4. The FOX Effect
5. South Park Anti-Liberals
6. The Blogosphere
7. The Conservative Publishing Revolution
8. Campus Conservatives Rising

Everyone should read this book, for it chronicles a sea change in American politics. It will be of particular interest to high-school and college students, many of whom lack historical perspective. Anderson shows the many ways in which liberalism monopolized network television, big-city newspapers, and academia—and then carefully explores the effect this monopoly had on liberals’ ability and willingness to articulate and defend their views. I don’t see how conservatism can ever again be ignored or suppressed, given the new technologies and given the heightened consciousness about liberal bias. Anyone who believes in a marketplace of ideas—and that should include liberals—will be pleased with this development. Thank you, Brian, for this wonderful snapshot of American society.

Addendum: While locating the Amazon link, I noticed that the book is ranked 342d in sales. Get it while it’s hot!

Ever heard of Route 66? It's one of the most storied thoroughfares in American history. It ran (runs) through the Texas Panhandle. See here.

I was surprised just now to see how much the readership of my war blog has increased. I rarely post anything. Perhaps people (including students) are making use of it as a resource. That would please me. If you haven't been to the site, click here. Notice the bibliography on the sidebar. I still add items to it when they come to my attention.

To the Editor:

In making a case for a one-size-fits-all health care system, Paul Krugman ("A Private Obsession," column, April 29) ignores the private sector's progress in adding value to our health care system and stretching consumers' health care dollars.

During the 1990's, Americans decisively rejected a single-payer system. They were concerned about the rationing of care, endless delays and lack of access to state-of-the-art procedures experienced in countries with government-run systems. That's why residents of these nations go to great lengths to gain access to American health care, and why their leaders are reaching out for disease management, care coordination and other private-sector initiatives.

Mr. Krugman's government-versus-private juxtaposition minimizes the complexities of reforming health care and overlooks the vibrant public-private partnerships that millions of Americans count on. For example, Medicare and Medicaid patients who opt for private-sector plans are getting better care at lower costs than their counterparts in the government-only side of the program.

Americans deserve a real health care debate and real solutions, starting with evidence-based medicine, medical liability reform and the information they need to make better decisions. That's a more complex but ultimately more productive path to reform.

Karen Ignagni
President and Chief Executive
America's Health Insurance Plans
Washington, April 29, 2005

Paul Krugman doesn't realize it, perhaps because he's such a dogmatic statist, but he makes a powerful case in today's New York Times op-ed column for a withdrawal of government from health care. As long as government is involved in health care, there will be corruption of the sort Krugman identifies. See here. By the way, does anybody know what happened to the New York Times Link Generator? I can't get to the site anymore. I thought this was something supplied (or at least endorsed) by the Times. Perhaps I was wrong about that.

Yesterday, while waiting outside the classroom for my students to complete course evaluations, I picked up a copy of the student newspaper. It contained this vacuous column. Somebody tell me what it says. I don't think people should be allowed to write for public consumption until (1) they have a college degree and (2) they've reached the age of 30. Until then, they should keep a journal.

6 May 1995, 8:11 P.M. Juli: This is the sort of thing I write in my journal, but I thought I’d share it with you. This evening, during our walk through the woods, the girls and I saw something moving in the ruins of the burned-out house. At first I thought it was a calf, because there are cows and calves in the vicinity, but when I approached I saw that it was a large, light-colored dog. A hound of some kind; short hair; brown ears; spots. It moved very slowly, which I quickly inferred was from weakness. There were flies clustered on his head and ears; his ribs showed; his stomach was taut; and he had a nasty gash on his left rear hindquarter. It was hard not to conclude that he was dying. Urine dripped out, probably from fear, and rolled down the piece of wood he was standing on. Sophie and Ginger sniffed him. He took a few steps toward me as I stood there. Sad, sensitive eyes. Sophie jumped up and said to me, plain as day, “Can he come home with us?”.

What to do? My first inclination was to take him home with us and nurse him back to health. I’m sure he’s just weak with hunger. He needs rest, food, water, shelter, and something to cure his wound—not to mention lots of love. I did notice a collar, but there was no tag on it. Does he live nearby? Is he lost? Did someone drop him off on the road a couple of hundred yards away? Much as I was tempted to do so, I couldn’t take him in. I’ve thought many times about getting another canine companion, but it would only detract from the love and attention Sophie and Ginger get and complicate my life (in terms of travel, walks, veterinary appointments, and yes, money). But what else could I do? I couldn’t allow him to die. And if I called the Humane Society, they’d probably pick him up and “euthanize” him. Nobody would adopt him in his present condition. When I got home I decided, after consulting with a friend, to take food and water to him, the hope being that he would regain strength and find his way home, or at least become adoptable. He’s a nice-looking, friendly dog.

I found two large dishes and took food and water to where I saw him. When I got to the house, however, he was gone! It couldn’t have been more than forty-five minutes between visits. I searched high and low, whistled, and even trekked to the road to see if he was wandering alongside. Nothing. It was getting dark. On the off-chance that he’ll return, I left the food and water in a shed nearby where it won’t get wet. I’ll look for him each night and keep my eye on the food to see if anyone’s eating it. Sad story, eh? It breaks my heart to see a dog without a loving human companion. The gap between what a dog needs and what the typical dog gets is tragically large. Dogs, despite their sentience and intelligence, are treated little better than plants. Thanks for listening. I’ll let you know if I see the hound again. kbj

Addendum: See here for Huckleberry’s story.

Manicheism, n. The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

See here.

A man needs a haven from the hustle and bustle of life—a place to be alone with his thoughts. Women are much more inclined to be with others, for they find their identity in connection. It is no surprise to me that women have taken to cellphones, which keep them connected. When I read that Thomas Jefferson loved nothing more than being at home in Monticello, I understand. I, too, am a homebody. My life is filled with congenial routines. By the way, Jefferson would never have owned a cellphone. It would have destroyed his reverie.

5-5-85 I am still on a “natural high,” of sorts, as a result of passing the [Arizona] bar exam. Someone else might celebrate the event by dressing up and taking friends and family members to dinner, but I celebrated in my own modest way. I rode my bike to Sabino Canyon. How good it feels to be an Arizona attorney! I wrote several months ago that this would be a significant semester. In it, I would make a qualifying attempt for the Ph.D. program, study for and take the February bar exam, and await word from the Philosophy Department faculty regarding 1985-1986 teaching assistantships. I succeeded on all counts. The qualifying attempt went well, I was awarded a third teaching assistantship, and I passed the bar exam. What more could I ask? I refuse to set any more goals for myself this summer, except possibly to publish several articles. I’m going to rest on my laurels for a while.

The ride to Sabino Canyon was fun. I rode first down Kolb Road, which intersects Speedway Boulevard near my apartment complex, and then took Tanque Verde Road to Sabino Canyon Road. From there, the road winds down into the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains—a veritable rollercoaster of a ride. I especially enjoy looking at the houses along the way. There is a bike path on the side of the road, and I had my [Sony Walkman] cassette player on my side to enjoy music as I pedalled [sic; should be “pedaled”]. The sun was shining, the sky was clear [isn’t that the same thing?], and the temperature was in the high eighties [degrees Fahrenheit]. I arrived at the entrance to Sabino Canyon at about three o’clock, and proceeded immediately up the path. People were out en masse to enjoy the scenery.

On the way up the path, I paused to rest and struck up a conversation with a man who was walking down. It turns out that he attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, so we had something to chat about. He is employed at the IBM [International Business Machines] company here in Tucson. I told him that I had been to the Michigan State University campus once (to take the [Michigan] bar exam, though I didn’t tell him that), and that I thought it was beautiful. Once at the top of the canyon, I stopped to drink some water and take a salt tablet, and finally headed back down. As I did so, I listened to a tape by the band Gamma (Gamma II), of which Ronnie Montrose is the guitarist and founding member. It made me feel good, as if I were a “voyager” on an important journey. Music has a way of transporting me, mentally, from the here and now to faraway places and distant times. Riding would be a much less enjoyable experience without music. Music keeps me company. [This will sound crazy, but I distinctly remember listening to “Voyager” that day. I have thought about the experience many times in the past 20 years, usually while listening to the song. I now have this 1980 album—Gamma 2—on compact disc. Speaking of music, I have my entire music collection (nearly 7,000 songs) on a pocket-sized device called a Rio Karma. I carry it in my jersey pocket while riding my bike.]

From Sabino Canyon I rode westward toward town, eventually turning south at Campbell Avenue. For the second time this spring I stopped at Mike Spille’s house during a bike ride—only to find nobody home. Undaunted, I rode once around the mall of the university and headed for home. I was tired by the time I got to my apartment, but once inside I realized that I was more fatigued than usual. I could barely stand up while taking a shower, perhaps because I hadn’t eaten during the thirty-six mile ride. This prompted me to lie down for an hour and a half and sleep. Afterward, I ate and watched television. It has been a long day, as well as a productive and rewarding weekend. I am an Arizona attorney, at long last.

This is a great time to be a Yankee hater. See here. I personally think the Yankee misfortunes are attributable to Alex Rodriguez, the highest-paid player in Major League Baseball. His selfishness is legendary. He cares more about his own numbers than about his team's fortunes. Yankees fans haven't warmed to him, probably because they realize he's a mercenary. He would have been just as happy—perhaps happier—playing for the hated Red Sox. In case you're wondering, yes, I've sung Alex's praises in the past. He played for my adopted Texas Rangers for three years, so I saw him up close and personal. I came to see a side of him that I didn't know about when he played for the Seattle Mariners. To Alex, it's all about Alex.

I'm an atheist and a thoroughgoing Darwinist. For God's sake, let intelligent design be taught alongside natural selection in public schools. Why are Darwinists so insecure? They act as though, when it is made to compete, Darwinism can't win. See here. Gee, that shows a lot of faith in the theory.

Ten years ago today (is it possible?), North Texas was devastated by a hailstorm. I remember it vividly. It was Friday evening. Several friends and I were at Olive Garden in Fort Worth, carbo-loading for the following day’s bike rally. We were seated by a window, so we saw the sky darken. Soon it began to rain. Then bits of ice started landing on the grass. The chunks of ice got bigger and bigger, like our eyes. I saw some the size of large marbles. By this time, everyone in the restaurant was aware of what was happening. People crowded around the windows and doors. The pounding of hail on the restaurant’s roof created a dull roar. As I stood at the door, I felt helpless. My car, a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am, was being battered by the hail. Nobody dared run out, because the hail was by then large enough to crack open a skull. And what would you do, anyway? There was no place to shield a vehicle from the bombardment.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the hail stopped. People went to their cars to examine the damage. My windshield was cracked. A rear taillight was broken. Worst of all, the entire car was pockmarked. It looked like someone had taken a ball-peen hammer to it. Although my car was almost six years old at the time, I felt sick, for it still seemed new to me. (It’s still the only new car I’ve owned.) My friend Kevin had an expensive new car. It, too, was pockmarked. So was every other vehicle in the lot. I eventually received a nice insurance check to cover the damage, but instead of using the money to repair the car, I spent it. I’m still driving the Grand Am. It may be the only survivor of the Great Hailstorm of 1995 in the Metroplex. By the way, many homes were damaged in the storm as well. Every house in my neighborhood, including mine, had to have its roof replaced.

It's hard to believe, but I've been blogging for 18 months. Here is my first entry. I wish I had gotten off on a better foot. Why was I welcoming others to the blogosphere, when I was the one entering it? And what's this "comrades" business? Readers must have thought I was a communist. That said, it's been a blast. I believe I've posted something every day in that 18-month span. On most days I posted many items. Not everything I post is philosophical, of course, but from the very first day I said that the blog is "Analytic philosophy (and other stuff) in the anal-retentive tradition" (emphasis added). I think of it not as a philosophy blog but as a blog written by a philosopher. That I am a philosopher comes through in most of what I write. Philosophy is more of a mood or a style—a temper perhaps—than a substantive discipline. That's why you find philosophers of everything from law to art to religion to medicine to science to morality. Analytic philosophy is sustained, systematic reflection on concepts—either those of everyday life or those of some specialized field, discipline, profession, or occupation. Philosophy is not about how things are or should be, but about how they can and cannot be. It is conceptual cartography: the mapping of logical space. It's been a great ride. Thanks for joining me.

Addendum: For the record, there have been 238,255 visits to the blog in its first 18 months (my own visits aren't counted). That's an average of 434.8 visits per day. Lately, I've been averaging about 700. Each month, I do better than the same month a year earlier. If that continues, I'll be happy.

To the Editor:

As a conservative who is a sometime reader of The New York Times and a sometime listener-viewer of PBS, I must say the idea that PBS is a fair and balanced network is as ludicrous as Fox TV's explicit claim in that regard.

PBS has every right to its opinions, but no right to have them subsidized by taxpayers. Taxpayers should not be asked to subsidize either liberal or conservative propaganda.

John McCarthy
Weston, Mass., May 2, 2005

To the Editor:

Yes, PBS is biased! It is biased in favor of intelligence, honesty, a healthy curiosity about the world and an even healthier skepticism of dubious assertions and posturing.

The day PBS loses its biases, it will be just another propaganda machine. We already have more than enough rant and cant. Keep your biases, PBS!

Nancy Summers
Richmond, Va., May 2, 2005

David Brooks devotes today's New York Times op-ed column to Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). See here. It's interesting that Brooks mentions Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968), because in my opinion Lincoln and King are the two greatest orators this nation has produced. I get chills when I read their words. Read Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, for example, or the Gettysburg Address, or King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.

The New York Times is to journalism what Lysenko was to science. See here for a wonderful site devoted to exposing the biases, distortions, and misrepresentations of the Times.

Adder, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here is the latest from the inimitable, irascible, and irrepressible Christopher Hitchens.

5-4-85 . . . Odds and ends: (1) George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, fired his manager (Yogi Berra) the other day. Guess who replaced Yogi? None other than Billy Martin [1928-1989], former manager of the Detroit Tigers and three-time Yankee manager. Billy has been successful wherever he has managed (Minnesota, Detroit, Oakland, New York, Texas), but he has a hot temper and does not get along well with players, coaches, owners, and members of the media. I wish him well, but I feel sorry for Yogi, who, if anyone, exemplifies and symbolizes the Yankees. Yogi was treated poorly by Steinbrenner. (2) There are only two weeks remaining before graduation [with a Master's degree in philosophy].

Here is the new home of Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary. Please check in occasionally to see what's happening. I'm sure financial support would be welcome, if you're so inclined.

Thank goodness Montana remains (comparatively) uninhabited. I may get there yet. See here (click to enlarge):

The most beautiful place I've ever seen is Wolf Creek, Montana.

To the Editor:

We have heard the "schools are broken" mantra from big business for most of the last century. Industry titans like Bill Gates have reliably importuned us with claims that the schools of the day can no longer feed the starving maw of the new business model.

Thus starved, we are warned that corporate Goliaths like Microsoft will be compelled to resort to workers from abroad, stirring the fear that Americans will be robbed of their livelihoods.

Closer examination reveals that what industry really seeks is not bright and imaginative students, infusing industry and science with new ideas, but automatons, who will dependably bend to the corporate creed du jour and fill the ranks of the cubicled masses obediently and without dissent.

What makes America great has not been a national effort to graduate legions of technical engineers, but to educate children who can think for themselves and supply us with the sparks of originality that have driven this country from its birth.

Michael A. Bukosky
New York, April 29, 2005

The United States of America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. It would do us well to remember that, especially after listening to pessimistic liberals such as Paul Krugman, who would have us believe that the United States is evil. I am lucky and proud to be an American. See here.

I have baseball on my mind today. My Rangers are crushing the Athletics in the rain in Oakland. As I watched Richard Hidalgo's long drive clear the left-field fence, the phrase "into the gloamin'" came to mind. This is part of baseball lore, but I wasn't sure of the details. See here for the story.

A baseball player hits for the cycle if and only if, in a single game, he (1) hits a home run, (2) hits a triple, (3) hits a double, and (4) hits a single. I wonder whether anyone has struck out for the cycle. That would mean striking out with nobody on base, striking out with one runner on base, striking out with two runners on base, and striking out with the bases loaded—all in the same game. I suspect it's happened, probably a dozen times. I should ask someone at the Society for American Baseball Research.

During every televised Texas Rangers baseball game, there is a Sonic Slam Inning. People register for it at Sonic restaurants. Before the inning begins, a name is drawn. If a Rangers player hits a home run during that inning, the lucky person wins $500. If a Rangers player hits a grand slam (i.e., a home run with the bases loaded), the person wins $25,000. I don’t recall anyone winning the grand prize, although many have won the lesser amount. Last night, the bases were loaded during the Grand Slam Inning. Gary Matthews Jr of the Rangers hit a long drive. Back went Athletics outfielder Bobby Kielty. Back, back, back. It might be, it could be, it’s . . . caught. Kielty reached over the fence and caught the ball. Had he not caught it, it would have been a grand slam. It was so sad. I hope the poor woman wasn’t watching, because she would have had a heart attack.

Predicament, n. The wage of consistency.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

I may have linked to this already. Think about it before you bite into that hamburger or steak. Ask yourself whether you want to support this industry.

Sophie, Shelbie, and I take two walks every day, without fail. On weekdays, we walk around the neighborhood in the morning and around the school grounds in the evening. On weekends, we walk around the school grounds both morning and night. Dogs love to run, which my girls get to do on the school grounds. At a minimum, they need to be able to move around. For several weeks now, I’ve noticed a reddish Chow chained to a dog house in my neighborhood. The poor dog has only two or three feet of chain. It’s heartbreaking. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, this dog remains in the same small area. What are the dog’s owners thinking? How would they like to be confined to an area that size, with the only choice whether to stand up or lie down? The area must be covered with excrement. A few minutes ago, I called The Humane Society of North Texas, which will investigate. State law requires at least six feet of chain. I asked that the investigator request that the dog be allowed to roam freely in the back yard, which is fenced. It should be illegal to chain a dog, even with a long chain.

One of my favorite movies—er, films—of all time is Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). I've seen it many times, all on television. According to Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities (see here), a remake is in the works. I don't mind. The original will always exist, and nobody is forced to watch the remake. I'm reminded of a friend from my college days who hated the live version of "Stairway to Heaven" (from The Song Remains the Same [1976]). I explained to him that the studio version would always exist and that he could avoid listening to the live version if he wanted. I like both versions.

Addendum: My original post had "Albert" Hitchcock. This is funny, because I once wrote "Alfred Einstein" in my journal.

Addendum 2: While I'm on the subject of old movies, has anybody out there seen Them (1954)? Scary stuff.

Addendum 3: While I'm on the subject of old scary stuff, does anybody remember the episode of The Twilight Zone (or maybe it was The Outer Limits) in which soldiers conducting training exercises in their tanks in the American West are attacked by Indians? I've always wanted to watch that episode again.

Addendum 4: I love the Internet! In five minutes, I found this. I think it's the episode I had in mind. It appears to be on this DVD, which I shall order forthwith.

Addendum 5: It's also on this DVD.

Addendum 6: It just keeps getting better, folks. Here is a list of all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone, which aired over a five-year period from 1959 to 1964. I'm methodical. I plan to acquire all 156 episodes and watch them in the original order. If I watch one episode every Sunday night, it'll take exactly three years. Perhaps I'll review the episodes in this blog, bringing out their philosophical dimensions.

My friend Jeff Percifield over at Beautiful Atrocities is dying a slow death. His beloved A's, with whom he lives and dies, are being destroyed by my adopted Texas Rangers. You know things are bad when you can't hit Rangers pitching.

I keep hearing it said that Mozilla's Firefox browser is superior to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Ha! Firefox doesn't do the simplest thing, viz., allow me to create a shortcut on my desktop. When I'm at a site, I can right click while in IE and select "Create Shortcut." That puts an icon on my desktop, which I can then click to get to the site. In Firefox, when I right click, I get one choice: "Bookmark This Page." I don't want a bookmark. I want an icon on my desktop. Whoever designed Firefox is an idiot.

It takes a while to get my photographs processed. I'm a month behind. Here is the barbecue at the Aledo bike rally (click to enlarge):

Here is another part of the barbecue:

Everything is bigger in Texas—and usually better. It would be better if these were veggie burgers.

5-3-85 . . . The other day I read something interesting. Larry Preston, author of an article on market capitalism [Larry M. Preston, “Freedom, Markets, and Voluntary Exchange,” The American Political Science Review 78 (December 1984): 959-70], wrote that some people value autonomy to such an extent that they are willing to trade off part of their salary in order to obtain it. College professors, he said, are among these people. He is exactly right. College professors, more than many other workers, are able to determine what they will do at any given moment of their day. They can research and write on almost any subject, take an early or late lunch, work at home or in their offices, and remain oblivious to the university administration—provided, of course, that they teach their assigned courses and make themselves available for advising and meeting with students. That’s precisely what I like about college teaching: the freedom and autonomy that it permits. And, as Preston suggests, I am quite willing to “trade off” part of my salary in order to obtain it. In other words, instead of earning lots of money in a job that is more structured and demanding, such as the practice of law, I prefer to earn less money in order to retain my autonomy. I hate having “bosses” looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do. College teaching will mean that I won’t have to submit to that kind of interference.

To the Editor:

"A Gut Punch to the Middle," by Paul Krugman (column, May 2), is excellent.

The Democrats, who supported "welfare reform," had better fight to keep Social Security from becoming a needs-based program. Once it is needs-based, it will be demonized by Republican and Democratic politicians alike.

And the elderly receiving benefits will also be demonized as having been wanton in their financial matters during their working years and thus "unworthy" of receiving assistance in old age.

Is this what people want?

President Bush and the Republicans are doing all they can to return most Americans to the bad old days of Herbert Hoover.

Remember that Social Security is not all that much of an income and that one can put only so much money away while one is working, because of other obligations.

Mary Jo Maroney
St. Louis, May 2, 2005

For once, I agree with The New York Times. See here. Let's take it a step further: The United States, which is a force for good in the world, should get out of the United Nations, which is a band of wimps and thugs.

This week's link is to Dallas Philosopher's Forum.

Is anyone else out there a fan of La Femme Nikita? I recently purchased the complete first season (1997) on DVD. I was about to buy the complete second season, and today I learned that the complete third season has been released. So far, I've watched the first five episodes (of 22), a couple of which I saw originally on television. The series is well written, with just the right combination (to my mind) of action and romance. The acting is quite good. And what can you say about Peta Wilson, one of the most beautiful women in the world?

Yankee, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMYANK.)

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I’m a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm
I’m a runaway son of the nuclear a-bomb
I am a world’s forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys

Honey gotta help me please
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby detonate for me

Look out honey, ’cause I’m using technology
Ain’t got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a fire fight

Honey gotta strike me blind
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby penetrate my mind

And I’m the world’s forgotten boy
The one who’s searchin’, searchin’ to destroy
And honey I’m the world’s forgotten boy
The one who’s searchin’, searchin’ to destroy

Forgotten boy, forgotten boy
Forgotten boy said hey forgotten boy

A colleague sent a link to this story about David Horowitz, who, like so many others (including yours truly), left liberalism for conservatism. I have a name for this process: growing up.

When teaching the hunting issue, I find it useful to distinguish among three types of hunting in terms of the purposes hunting is taken to serve. By therapeutic hunting I mean hunting motivated by and designed to secure the aggregate welfare of the target species and/or the integrity of its ecosystem. . . . By subsistence hunting I mean hunting aimed at securing food for human beings. By sport hunting I mean hunting aimed at maintaining religious or cultural traditions, reenacting national or evolutionary history, honing certain skills, or just securing a trophy. Many would prefer to recognize a distinction within this third category between hunting for sport and hunting as a ritual. Although there may be some important differences, I class them together because both activities serve human needs (which is what distinguishes both sport and subsistence hunting from therapeutic hunting), but needs which are less fundamental (in the sense of universal) than nutrition (which is what distinguishes subsistence hunting from both ritual and sport hunting).

(Gary E. Varner, “Can Animal Rights Activists Be Environmentalists?” in People, Penguins, and Plastic Trees: Basic Issues in Environmental Ethics, 2d ed., ed. Christine Pierce and Donald VanDeVeer [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995], 254-73, at 257-8 [italics in original])

It occurred to me that I haven't seen Lawrence O'Donnell on television in many months—since he went berserk while talking to swift-boat veteran John O'Neill on Scarborough Country. Blacklisting couldn't happen to a nicer nastier man.

If you like satire, you'll love this. By the way, am I the only person who thinks Greta Van Susteren is a blood-sucking leech? She never saw a wife-murder or child-abduction she didn't like.

To the Editor:

Re "House Overturns New Ethics Rule as G.O.P. Relents" (front page, April 28):

Now that Republicans in the House have decided to reverse the new ethics rule changes, I hope that they will take note: sometimes it is O.K. to flip-flop, even commendable.

Chase Webb
Branscomb, Calif., April 28, 2005

I suspect Navajos are not happy with their president. See here. By the way, note the loose usage of "discrimination." To discriminate, in the morally objectionable sense, is not just to make a distinction (for purposes of distributing benefits or burdens). It is to make a distinction based on a morally irrelevant trait. Suppose a pedophile said he had a right to have sex with anyone he chooses, including children. Would it be "discrimination" to say no to him? Of course not. There's a morally relevant difference between children and adults when it comes to sexual intercourse. So the question is whether there is a morally relevant difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals with respect to marriage. If there is, then it's not discrimination in the morally objectionable sense to restrict marriage to heterosexuals. Don't let people get away with this word trickery. They're trying to hide the fact that they're making a controversial moral judgment. In other words, they're trying to fool you.

The title of this post might just as well be "Rich-Hatin' Paul," for that's what really motivates Paul Krugman. He hates President Bush for two reasons: first, the president is rich; and second, the president's policies don't punish the rich for being rich. If Paul Krugman were as concerned about the poor as he professes to be (maybe that's why they call him "professor"), he would have gone into business instead of into academia. Then he could have piled up wealth and donated it to the poor. I wonder how much of his income he donates, anyway. I suspect he lives the high life, like so many other egalitarians. They're hypocrites. See here for Krugman's latest hate-filled screed.

Addendum: Donald Luskin says Krugman quoted an economist out of context. See here. Gee, I wonder why. Could it be that it supports Krugman's preconceived notion of what President Bush's Social Security reforms would do? How anyone can take Krugman seriously, much less trust him to get the facts right or conduct a disinterested economic analysis, is beyond me.

5-2-85 . . . I was thinking this afternoon about words—the stuff of language. When I was little, I was fascinated by words. I knew that they had certain meanings, but until I knew what the meanings were, I was uneasy. So I read, thought, talked, and listened—all in an attempt to understand what was going on around me. For instance, take the word “trappings.” I used it the other day in a poem that I sent to [eight-year-old] Danielle, and it is unlikely that she’s seen or heard the word before. But she has undoubtedly heard the word “trap” before, so she’ll probably be set to wondering about the relation between the two. That’s exactly what I used to do, and continue to do, although now my vocabulary is quite large. Words are amazing. They are bearers of meaning, and yet they can also be the subject of humor, the conveyers of emotion, and the object of study in their own right (etymology). I am still in love with language, and I probably always will be. I hope that my nieces, nephews, and children find language as exciting as I have.

The month of May has brought heat and low humidity with it, which tells me that summer is imminent. For much of March and April, the days were overcast and/or cool, with smatterings of rain. But now it feels like mid-summer. The temperature reaches into the nineties [degrees Fahrenheit] every day, and the relative humidity is in the low twenties or teens. In retrospect, I have adjusted quite well to the Arizona climate. Rarely do I feel tired or oppressed by the heat, and I almost never dwell on it. The low humidity permits people to perspire more easily, but it quickly evaporates, thus cooling their bodies. I thoroughly enjoy the Arizona climate and lifestyle.

Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner take up the question whether there should be more nuclear-power plants. Here is Professor Becker's post. Here is Judge Posner's comment.

Here is a column by Thomas Sowell, in case you missed it. Unlike liberals, Sowell (who is black) has high expectations for blacks.

Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

5-1-85 . . . A few years ago there was a powerful movie, Apocalypse Now [1979], showing at the theatre. It was about the war in Vietnam. I remember seeing the movie with my friend, Steve Munger, and being quite moved by the experience. The horror of war had always been far removed from my daily life, but here I was, in the middle (so to speak) of violence, destruction, and hatred. I thought about the movie for days. Two days ago, the movie was shown on television, and I once again experienced the emotions of fear and outrage. I kept thinking: “Why must people fight? Why must they become so attached to ideologies that they are willing to kill others, and die, for them?” The movie, so far as I know, was realistic, and the acting was very good. I’m just glad that I live in an age where fighting is unnecessary. Although I admire those individuals . . . who were willing to risk their lives to fight, I despise those who instigate war. There is, in my opinion, very little in this world that is worth fighting and dying for. I would not rather be dead than “red” (communist).

One of the things that always confused me was the relationship between law and morality. I wasn’t sure which came first, or rather, which had logical priority. Was morality the foundation of law, or was law justifiable in its own right? Until I came to grips with this question, I was unable to understand much of history and current affairs. But now I see things more clearly. Morality, in my view, is more fundamental than law. Morality is the basic stuff of human relationships; law is a less-inclusive institution which in turn is susceptible to moral criticism. Joel Feinberg’s [Philosophy of Law] seminar this past fall helped solidify this view, for he thinks that morality sets certain “limits” to the criminal law. And so I am becoming more interested in the theory of morality than the theory of law. Until one can develop and defend a theory of morality, one has no basis upon which to criticize anything else. In my view, law is not independent of morality, as some legal positivists would hold; it is, rather, a creature of morality, and should, ideally, be informed by morality. I’ll have more to say about this topic later, as my thoughts develop.

It's almost eight months old, but this story about James Taranto should be of interest to all who read his daily column Best of the Web Today. I look forward each weekday to receiving the column in my e-mail box.

Here, from a year ago, is Hillary Clinton's New York Times op-ed column on health care.

Here is David Gratzer's essay "What Ails Health Care."

I have never understood why people talk to journalists. I get asked all the time to comment on this or that current event. I hang up (if it's a telephone call) or delete the message (if it's voice- or e-mail). I didn't respond when I was asked to appear on Hannity & Colmes, John Kasich's Heartland, and a Houston radio station. Perhaps when this story gets around, athletes and coaches will stop talking to journalists. To journalists, people are mere means to their sensationalistic ends. They are more than happy to destroy a career for a "story." (Thanks to Mindy Hutchison for the link.)

My former student Carlos Serda sent a link to this interesting story. Thanks, Carlos! I hope your Bugeaters—er, Cornhuskers—return to prominence soon. College football needs a strong Nebraska team, if only to give the hated Oklahoma Sooners a run for their money in the Big 12 Conference.

Journalists tend to be absolutists about freedom of expression. In their view, it trumps all other values. But most people aren't absolutists. They believe that freedom of expression, which is admittedly valuable, should sometimes be curbed in order to vindicate other values. See here.

To the Editor:

Re "The Disappearing Wall" (editorial, April 26):

What the Republicans are doing threatens to destroy one of our most precious freedoms—freedom of religion.

I am a Christian and my husband is Jewish. We are not affiliated with any organized church. Yet I read the Bible daily and pray many times throughout the day. I do not count myself any less a Christian than others who refer to themselves as such.

That said, I do not want any religious dictator (Christian or otherwise) telling me how to worship, what to believe or what prayers to say.

My relationship with God is private, just as my relationships with the members of my family are.

If we had children, I would not want the Republicans or any of their agents telling my children what church to belong to or what beliefs to hold. The last time I looked, we were not in Iran.

Men and women who want to center their lives on religion should seek jobs as ministers in the churches of their choice. They should not be serving as judges, where they will be called upon to judge those who do not hold their religious beliefs, unless they can swear to give a totally fair and impartial judgment, outside the confines of faith.

I would think that those Republicans who aren't bullies would be happy that only 10 of President Bush's appellate court nominees have been blocked by filibusters. It certainly doesn't smack of any kind of prejudice. Are we to lose our precious religious freedom just because of these 10?

Mary Anne Gruen
Forest Hills, Queens, April 26, 2005

For nearly 20 years, I have defended the right of the president to appoint justices or judges of his or her choosing. I defended—publicly—Ronald Reagan's right to appoint Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, although I disagreed very much with Bork's judicial philosophy. (I've since come around to Bork's view.) I understand that the Senate must advise and consent, but that should be done with a simple majority vote. Filibustering judicial nominees is obstructionism and sore-loserism. If you want to shape the federal judiciary, elect a president! David Brooks thinks the filibustering of judicial nominees is acceptable, perhaps even desirable. See here. I respectfully and emphatically disagree. Conservatives should not compromise on this issue. President Bush should nominate whom he pleases and the Senate should vote on each nominee. The next Democrat president should do the same. This is a matter of principle.

Nicholas Kristof says baby boomers are greedy. (Disclosure: I'm a baby boomer.) He worries that they will lavish resources on themselves and ignore children. Notice that he speaks only of the burdens succeeding generations will bear. What about the benefits they will enjoy—benefits they did nothing to earn? Why should someone be born with benefits but no burdens?

Indigestion, n. A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the western wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: "Plenty well, no pray; big bellyache, heap God."

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Liberals think they’re smarter than conservatives, but in some ways they’re dumber. For example, instead of engaging George W. Bush on the issues, which requires respectfulness and charitableness, they vilified him personally, calling him names, ascribing malicious motives to him (“He went into Iraq for oil!”), and disparaging his intelligence. This backfired. The American people looked at the man, saw that he was decent if sometimes misguided, and wondered why liberals treated him so unfairly. They began to wonder whether liberals had the character to govern. Many concluded that they did not.

I fear that my fellow conservatives are making the same mistake with regard to Hillary Clinton. I’ve been claiming for some time in this blog that she is no leftist—that, in many areas, such as health care, national defense, and immigration, she is quite moderate. (Why was she assailed by the Left for not endorsing a single-payer health-care system?) The reaction to this claim has been dogmatic. When I point out that she talks like a moderate, I’m told that this is mere talk—that it’s calculated to fool people. When I point out that she votes like a moderate, I’m told that this is part of a plan to capture the White House. I’m sure that if she’s elected president and I point out that she makes decisions like a moderate, I’ll be told that it’s part of a plan to be reelected. And so on.

Nothing is allowed to count against the proposition that Hillary is a leftist. I’m puzzled by this dogmatism. Could it be rooted in hatred, the way so much criticism of President Bush is rooted in hatred? I believe it is. Conservatives need someone to vilify. They need an exemplar—a personification—of the leftism they so despise. But this is both unfair to Hillary Clinton, since it misrepresents her views, and counterproductive to the conservative movement. Engage the woman on the merits of the issues. Stop attacking her. Stop thinking that if you vilify her and portray her as a wild-eyed radical, you destroy her electoral prospects. As in the case of President Bush, it will only help her get elected, for the American people will compare her voting record to what is said about her and conclude that she’s being treated unfairly. This will bring her sympathy and, most importantly, votes. Just as liberals deserved to lose the election for thinking that hatred (or intensity of opposition) constitutes argumentation, conservatives will lose if they substitute character assassination and misrepresentation for rational debate.