AnalPhilosopher

I did my first bike rally 16 years ago today, in Seagoville, Texas. See here. I had been riding for many years, but this was my first organized event. It was great fun. This past Saturday, I did my 366th bike rally (in Crowley). That's an average of 22.8 rallies per year. I expect to have 26 rallies before 2005 is over. My best year was 1990, when I did 31 rallies. Say what you will about Texas: There's no better place for bicycling.

Did you know that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were native Texans? See here.

I’m the biggest baseball fan in the world, so hear me out. The two most evil franchises in Major League Baseball are the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. I hate them equally. (The appropriate attitude to evil is hatred.) Thirty minutes from now, the Yankees and Red Sox begin a three-game series in Boston’s Fenway Park. The Eastern Division title is on the line. New York leads Boston by one game, so Boston has to win two of the three games to force a one-game playoff Monday. If Boston wins three games, it wins the division. If New York wins two or three games, it wins the division.

I’m rooting for New York. Follow my reasoning. First, I want to see the Boston fans suffer. If Boston wins, I won’t get to see this. If New York wins, I will. Second, there’s a chance that both teams from the Eastern Division will go to the playoffs: one as the division winner and one as the wild-card team. At this moment, Boston is tied with the Cleveland Indians for the wild-card lead. Since I would hate to see both New York and Boston in the playoffs (as in 2004), I want Cleveland to be the wild-card team. But it will be easier for Cleveland to beat Boston than it will be for Cleveland to beat New York. So New York’s beating Boston not only gives me the satisfaction of seeing Red Sox fans suffer on national television; it offers hope that the Red Sox will not make the playoffs. Enjoy the games. I know I will.

Here.

Paul Krugman* is out of his mind. His New York Times op-ed column of this date, entitled "The Way It Is," consists of a series of assertions. No analysis. No argumentation. No explanation. Is Krugman implying that all of the problems he identifies are the fault of President Bush? The reason I ask is that this is a common theme in Krugman's columns. President Bush and the Republicans bad; Democrats good. Here's an assertion that shows Krugman's dishonesty:

When Senator James Inhofe, who has called scientific research on global warming "a gigantic hoax," called a hearing to attack that research, his star witness was Michael Crichton, the novelist.

Michael Crichton is a medical doctor, not just a novelist. His medical degree is from Harvard Medical School. That may not make him an expert on climate change, but it gives him more authority than that of a novelist, wouldn't you say? Suppose Krugman were called to testify before Congress on some economic matter and I ridiculed the person who called him to testify by saying that his or her "star witness" was a newspaper columnist. What I said is true, but it's misleading. Just as a person can be both an economist and a newspaper columnist, a person can be both a medical doctor or a scientist and a novelist. By the way, you don't have to have a Ph.D. degree in X to be an expert in X. Crichton has made himself an expert on junk science, which is what much of the scholarly work on climate change amounts to. (See here for several speeches.) That alone qualifies him to testify before Congress. But you wouldn't learn that from reading Krugman, would you? He is the most intellectually dishonest person I've ever known.

Addendum: I'm not the only person who thinks Krugman is out of his mind. See here.

* "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).

To the Editor:

Re "Saudi Women Have Message for U.S. Envoy" (front page, Sept. 28):

I treasure the vote and the other rights and privileges that American women and the men supporting them have fought for and won. Yet I'm appalled that Karen P. Hughes, the American under secretary of state for public diplomacy, is telling Saudi women that they should want these same rights and privileges.

People wonder why some people in other countries "hate America." Isn't such arrogance an irritant? Why can't we let the women in other countries fight for their own democratic rights just as we did, rather than telling them what's good for them?

Has it ever occurred to the administration that unless we're invited to do so, we shouldn't be going around telling people what they should want?

Kathy Seal
Santa Monica, Calif., Sept. 28, 2005

Here.

Serial, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine. Frequently appended to each instalment is a "synopsis of preceding chapters" for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a synopsis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read them. A synopsis of the entire work would be still better.

The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to us. They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the instalment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world without end, they hoped. Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he found his work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him. His collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.

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

Judith Miller is out of jail. She has agreed to testify before the grand jury. See here. Now why couldn't she have done that before? Nobody, including reporters, is above the law. If you break the law, you deserve punishment. If you believe the law to be unjust, you work within the system to change it. What you don't do is break the law and expect to escape punishment because of your belief that the law is unjust. Miller needs to read up on Martin Luther King Jr.

You count calories.

The faculty of The University of Chicago Law School has a new blog. See here.

President Bush (real, not alleged) is expected to announce his nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor tomorrow. I said several months ago that my choice for the first opening was federal appellate judge (and former law professor) Michael W. McConnell. I still think he would be an excellent choice, and easily confirmed. The other day, I said that it would be politically advantageous to nominate federal appellate judge Janice Rogers Brown, since it would put leftists in the awkward position of attacking a black woman, thereby showing their true colors. But I would be delighted if President Bush nominated Viet Dinh to the Court. See here, here, and here.

Addendum: I didn't know until a minute ago that Professor Dinh was Justice O'Connor's law clerk. How fitting! New Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr replaced the justice for whom he clerked; Dinh would replace the justice for whom he clerked. And wouldn't this defuse critics? How can anyone say that Dinh is unqualified, when the justice he would replace thought he was eminently qualified to research and write Supreme Court opinions (for that's what clerks do)?

Addendum 2: Here is an interesting post by Marshall Manson about the Roberts confirmation.

Addendum 3: Federal appellate judge (and former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice) Diane S. Sykes, who is my age (48), is being mentioned as a Supreme Court nominee. I've been reading up on her. See here, here, and here.

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

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

Just for the heck of it, I typed "Keith Burgess-Jackson" into Google. I got 305,000 hits. I used quotation marks, so it pulled up only the exact phrase. Yes, some of the links are to sites whose authors attack me personally. I find them amusing. The degree to which I'm attacked is the degree to which I'm respected (or feared). By the way, I'd like to thank the hundreds of people who came to my blog from Philosophy of Biology. I intend to post something soon about the limits of philosophical competence to discuss the issue of teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. There is a disturbing tendency among philosophers to think that their technical training—we're nothing more than logicians—qualifies them to speak with authority on every issue. In fact, the contribution of philosophy to public affairs is quite small, which is why few laypeople can name even one living philosopher. For those who are interested in such things, I recommend Richard A. Posner's book The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999).

To the Editor:

Your hostility to the Bush administration continues to cloud your view, now with regard to disaster relief.

First, requiring a bidding process in order to hire disaster cleanup contractors would only worsen the delays that have plagued the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Instead, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired contractors who are well-respected catastrophe-disaster contractors in the insurance industry, including those you have identified.

It is also telling that you cite the Shaw Group's contacts with Joe Allbaugh, a former head of FEMA, while not mentioning that one of Shaw's founders was until recently the chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.

John J. Sullivan
Crestwood, N.Y., Sept. 27, 2005
The writer is a partner in Hill Rivkins & Hayden, which provides legal services to the insurance industry.

Here, for your evening reading pleasure, is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Abigail Thernstrom speaks truth to leftist idiocy. See here.

The Left can't elect a president, and therefore has no control over the federal judiciary. All it can do is bitch and moan. See here for an example. This post by Brian Leiter is so contentious—so riddled with unexamined and false assumptions—that one wonders about his sanity. And isn't there more than a whiff of racism in his personal attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas? In my experience, there is at least as much racism (and sexism) on the left as on the right. Leiter is a "law professor," but not a serious person. Would you want him arguing a case on your behalf before the United States Supreme Court? How could he look Chief Justice John Roberts in the eye, having said that the judge's moral and political views are "likely to be depraved and repellent"? Justice Roberts is a serious student of the law. Brian Leiter is a punk.

Addendum: Leiter refers to George W. Bush as "the alleged President." Isn't that precious? In Leiter's fantasy world, John Kerry is president. Or maybe he thinks Al Gore is in his second term. Would you want someone that detached from reality teaching you?

Addendum 2: Finally, notice the paranoid style. Leiter thinks we already live in a theocracy and that we're in imminent danger of becoming a fascist state. Whenever I need a good laugh, I go to Leiter's blog. It's a good thing there's such a thing as academia, because Leiter could never make it in the real world, where common sense and responsibility are required. Suppose you were a partner in a law firm. Would you hire this nut?

Not to gloat, but I just about nailed the vote for Judge John Roberts. See here for my prediction of 10 days ago. See here for the result. Congratulations to Judge Roberts, our new chief justice! I hope he has three decades in which to realign constitutional law with the Constitution.

Here.

Maybe it's me, but The New York Times seems intransigent about correcting errors. See here. Public editor Barney Calame is doing his best (bless his heart) to hold the Times to its own policy. Why would the Times be intransigent? It's a newspaper, for God's sake. It claims to get things right. If it publishes something false or misleading—in a news story, an analysis, an editorial opinion, or an op-ed column—it has a moral obligation to correct it. Is the Times so caught up in partisan politicking that it views correcting itself as capitulating to the enemy? That's the sense I get. A nonpartisan newspaper would have no hesitation whatsoever about correcting its errors.

Here.

Someone should explain to "law professor" Brian Leiter that an indictment is merely a charge, not a conviction. A ham sandwich can be indicted. But Leiter believes that law is just politics in disguise, so the end of "getting" Tom DeLay justifies the means. Thank goodness this man has no power. How someone who does not believe in the rule of law can teach in a law school, much less in a publicly funded law school, is beyond me. By the way, if indecency were a crime, Leiter would be in big trouble.

Here is a column by Manuel Miranda on the Left's hypocrisy. Hypocrites cannot be taken seriously.

Here.

Twenty-four years ago today—half my life—I bought a Rubik's Cube. It brought untold frustration into my life. The best I ever did was get one side the same color (orange, for the record). The damn thing is still sitting on the shelf, not eight feet away. It's taunting me, tormenting me, mocking me. I hate you, Rubik, you destroyer of lives.

Addendum: This sickens me. It takes me 24 years to get one side of the cube the same color, and this guy solves the whole thing in 19 seconds.

9-28-85 There are sixteen weeks in the [fall] semester, altogether, and five of them are now history. Time seems to be passing more quickly now that I’m occupied with both school and work. I have long days on Monday, time for reflection and writing on Tuesday, primarily legal work on Wednesday and Thursday, primarily school work on Friday, and “catching up” on Saturday and Sunday. I need time every now and then to collect myself, figuratively speaking. I scatter myself all over town and all over the intellectual map during the week, but regroup on weekends. The weekly bike ride, together with this journal, constitute the “glue” which holds my personality together. I’m always in danger of disintegrating.

The other day, in talking to Bobbi (I don’t know her surname) after the Philosophy of Law seminar, I expressed sadness at my inability to travel and experience other ways of life. Bobbi started it by saying that she wanted to go to Australia, and then I jumped in with some thoughts. Imagine: visiting Australia, seeing kangaroos and koala bears, travelling across the vast desert, swimming in the ocean in Perth. This is just one of the places on earth that I would like to visit. But there are others, and unfortunately there isn’t time (or resources) for visiting these places. I’ve set my priorities, and now I’ve got to abide by them. In a way, priorities are confining. But they are also liberating, for they insure [sic; should be “ensure”] that some goals will be achieved even if others aren’t. As I told Bobbi, I’d rather do one or a few things well than many things in a mediocre fashion. [Travel requires three things: money, time, and desire. There were times in my life when I had desire and money, but no time. There were times when I had desire and time, but no money. Now I have money and time, but no desire.]

It's 100.0 degrees in the shade at my Fort Worth house. Is this autumn? Ha! A cold front is supposed to move in tomorrow. I'll believe it when I feel it.

Update: It's 101.7 degrees.

Update 2: It's a day later. The official high temperature at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport yesterday was 104 degrees, which makes it the hottest day of the year. Today, by contrast, it is 74.1 degrees. As they say in Texas, if you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes.

Here is a review, by Jacob Stevens, of political philosopher G. A. Cohen's latest book, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? Cohen is a professor at Oxford University. Here is an interview with Cohen, conducted five years before the book was published. I recommend that you read the interview before you read the review, since Cohen's views have changed.

See here for my course handout on an important argumentative technique.

To the Editor:

As you report, the Dover case has been referred to as Scopes II, but this time it is the secularists who have assumed the doctrinal role.

In the original Scopes trial, religionists were trying to prevent the teaching of an evolutionary process to explain human life. In the Dover trial, it is the secularists who are trying to prevent any reference to an evolutionary process that does not admit an exclusively deterministic (thus, no Creator) explanation.

Now who's narrow-minded?

Thomas M. Doran
Plymouth, Mich., Sept. 26, 2005
The writer works for the Ave Maria Foundation. The foundation provides financing to the Thomas More Law Center, which represents the Dover school district.

K is a consonant that we get from the Greeks, but it can be traced away back beyond them to the Cerathians, a small commercial nation inhabiting the peninsula of Smero. In their tongue it was called Klatch, which means "destroyed." The form of the letter was originally precisely that of our H, but the erudite Dr. Snedeker explains that it was altered to its present shape to commemorate the destruction of the great temple of Jarute by an earthquake, circa 730 B.C. This building was famous for the two lofty columns of its portico, one of which was broken in half by the catastrophe, the other remaining intact. As the earlier form of the letter is supposed to have been suggested by these pillars, so, it is thought by the great antiquary, its later was adopted as a simple and natural—not to say touching—means of keeping the calamity ever in the national memory. It is not known if the name of the letter was altered as an additional mnemonic, or if the name was always Klatch and the destruction one of nature's puns. As each theory seems probable enough, I see no objection to believing both—and Dr. Snedeker arrayed himself on that side of the question.

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

Here.

Are you tired of the juvenile rantings of the likes of Brian Leiter? Are you ready for an adult discussion of the war in Iraq? See here for Ed Feser's notice of a new book on the topic. As many of you know, I have written repeatedly (both here and on The Ethics of War, as well as in my columns for Tech Central Station) about the distorted views of leftists. Their pathological hatred of President Bush prevents them from addressing the issue of the ethics of the intervention in Iraq. All they seem capable of saying is "Bush lied!" What does that have to do with the morality of the war? The Left used to be serious about international affairs. Indeed, it was once thought that intervention to punish tyrants and vindicate human rights was required by justice. The Left has gone soft, both morally and intellectually. I like to think that once President Bush leaves office, the Left will come to its senses and rejoin the important debates of the day. But I'm not sure it can do so. It is more interested in demonization and feeling sorry for itself than in solving problems or making the world a better place.

Here is information about my university, provided by the UTA Office of Public Affairs:

The University of Texas at Arlington is a nationally ranked Carnegie Doctoral Research-Extensive University and a comprehensive teaching, research and public service institution located in the heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Its state-of-the-art research facilities, strategic location and innovative student employment programs enhance its partnership with area businesses and industry. U. T. Arlington, a member of the University of Texas System, has more than 25,000 students from 150 countries and offers 91 baccalaureate, 76 master’s and 35 doctoral degrees within nine academic units and a graduate school, as well as the only Honors College in North Texas and one of only six in the state. For additional information about U. T. Arlington, please visit the university’s Web site at www.uta.edu.

Here is the press release from which I copied the information.

9-27-85 . . . Wow. I mentioned in passing the other day, to Lilia Espinosa, that raising and eating animals is wrong. She pestered me for reasons, and I explained some of the farming practices that are used to raise livestock. She told me a couple of days later that she had been unable to eat meat since. Yesterday, I brought Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation [1975] to work with me, and today Lilia returned it with a note saying that she had read and was deeply moved by it. Who knows, she could become a raving vegetarian, like me—or, better yet, an animal-rights advocate. [I was not a vegetarian, since I still ate chicken and fish. I was a demi-vegetarian.] Lilia said that she had never thought seriously about meat-eating, and that that’s why she never abandoned it. This, I suspect, is true of most people. If only people would examine their lives and their actions, there would be a good deal less suffering in the world. But it takes very little to keep people doing what gives them pleasure, and meat-eating, for many, is a pleasurable activity. I wonder if [sic; should be “whether”] Lilia will go “whole hog,” as I have, and cease eating red meat.

Who says that lawyers can’t empathize with their clients? Today there was a happy ending in one of my cases. Donn M., you’ll recall, was arrested near a post office for stealing stamps. His intention was to be placed in a federal detention facility so that he could get help with his alcohol problem. But it didn’t work out that way, and Judge [Ann] Bowen ordered him released on his own recognizance. Today, Donn came to my office to find out what was happening on his case, and when we went to the court to find out (our office file was misplaced), we learned that the theft charge had been dismissed. According to the dismissal form, Donn lacks sufficient “mental competence” to assist in his defense. This is baloney. Donn is one of my brighter clients. He’s also witty and personable. But we were happy with the dismissal. Donn is now free to continue with his life, and he appears to be on the right track. He works for a scrap-metal dealer, has a place to stay, and is fighting his alcohol problem. When the tourist season gets into full swing, he hopes to find a job as a cook in a restaurant.

Having done all that I could for Donn as his attorney, it was time to say goodbye. We stood outside the Transamerica Building in drizzling rain, talking. Donn told me that he had “done everything” in his life, which prompted me to ask “Have you been to Australia?” “Well, no,” he responded. “But I’ve been in and out of jobs, in and out of lots of towns, on and off alcohol, and in and out of love. It’s the same thing, all over again.” “But that’s true for almost everyone,” I interjected. “We all have our troubles; that’s what makes life interesting.” “I suppose so,” he said. At that, I asked Donn if [sic; should be “whether”] I could give him some money. He shrugged his shoulders as if to express indifference, so I gave him a five-dollar bill. “That’s nice of you,” he said. “One of these days I’ll stop by the office with a box of Kentucky-fried chicken to thank you.” “OK,” I said, “but first make sure that your own needs are taken care of.” We shook hands and parted. I’ll always remember Donn, even if he never drops by with the chicken.

I left the office at 3:30 P.M. to visit some clients in [Pima County] jail. I wondered, as I sat waiting for the clients to be brought down, which of the following is most depressing: a jail, a courthouse, or a hospital. In all three, people have serious problems, whether legal or medical. I have, unfortunately, spent time in all three facilities. In my opinion, a jail is the most depressing, with a hospital second and a courthouse third. Why? Because jails reek of authority. Uniformed guards patrol every corridor; thick doors keep people, even visitors, from where they want to be; and the inmate population must feel as though there is no hope. In contrast, courthouses contain at least a glimmer of hope—that charges will be dismissed or that a verdict of “not guilty” will be rendered. Hospitals, too, are less depressing than jails. In a hospital, people share a common goal: to improve the health and well-being of the patients. There is not an atmosphere of authority and oppression as there is in a jail. So there you have it: reflections on jail life vis-à-vis courthouse life and hospital life.

One of my clients, an Apache Indian woman, is incarcerated for drinking in public and trespassing on private property. At first, she would not utter a sound. I asked question after question, but she just stared at a wall and ignored me. This prompted me to circle the word “yes” on my in-custody form where it says “S.I.U. evaluation ordered?” (An S.I.U. evaluation is a mental-health evaluation, to determine the competence of individuals to stand trial.) No sooner had I done this than the woman asked me, “What does ‘S.I.U.’ stand for?” Aha! I had finally broken through to her. She could talk, after all. I explained that an S.I.U. evaluation is a mental-health evaluation. “You weren’t speaking to me,” I said, “so I concluded that you either didn’t understand me or didn’t speak English.” The remainder of our conversation went smoothly, although at times she would lapse into silence. In my opinion, this woman knows exactly what is going on, but uses feigned mental illness to get what she wants from the authorities. Still, I’m going to request an S.I.U. evaluation.

Another client, a young black woman, is charged with loitering for [purposes of] prostitution. She cried when I told her that she may have to spend ten days in jail, and later I saw her sucking her thumb as she waited for me to finish my interview with the Apache woman. I’m serious: She was sucking her thumb, like a baby. She could not have been more than seventeen years old, and she looked more like thirteen. (I later learned that she was twenty-one.) When I got home, I made a telephone call to the motel where she lives, explaining that she needs help in posting bond. I really empathize with these people. It’s easy to say that they had a choice as to whether or not to break the law, but this ignores at least two things: first, whether or not the law itself is justified (most people simply assume without argument that it is); and second, the extent to which people are molded by their environment. Free will is largely a myth when you’re raised in the ghetto, and if it is, to whatever extent, then to that extent a person can’t be responsible for his or her actions. This is a controversial view, but it’s what I believe.

Lawn, n. 1. An area of short, regularly mown grass in a yard, garden, or park. 2. A slave driver.

Here.

Everyone should read this.

Eddy Elfenbein sent a link to this. It's hilarious. Don't read it if you're easily offended.

Duel, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance; if awkwardly performed the most unexpected and deplorable consequences sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life in a duel.

That dueling's a gentlemanly vice
I hold; and wish that it had been my lot
To live my life out in some favored spot—
Some country where it is considered nice
To split a rival like a fish, or slice
A husband like a spud, or with a shot
Bring down a debtor doubled in a knot
And ready to be put upon the ice.
Some miscreants there are, whom I do long
To shoot, or stab, or some such way reclaim
The scurvy rogues to better lives and manners,
I seem to see them now—a mighty throng.
It looks as if to challenge me they came,
Jauntily marching with brass bands and banners!
Xamba Q. Dar.

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

To the Editor:

David Brooks's reminder that a college education significantly improves the quality of life of degree holders and his call to do more for poor students should be taken seriously by policy makers and college administrators.

But how is one to read the surprising statistic listed in Nina Munk's Money and Business article about the recently published list of Forbes's 400 richest people in America, which appeared on the same day as Mr. Brooks's column?

There, we learn that a whopping 129 richest people in the country have no college degree, surpassing the combined holders of M.B.A.'s, law degrees and those who have completed their education at Yale and Harvard. One rich man without a college education suggested that an M.B.A. doesn't help much in business—or at least in his line of work.

These are fascinating contradictions to ponder.

Anouar Majid
Portland, Me., Sept. 25, 2005

Here.

George F. Will is a national treasure. He has mastered the art of compressing a philosophical treatise into 750 words. It's not surprising that he can do this, since his father, Frederick, was a prominent philosopher, and philosophers—at least those in the analytic tradition—are concise as well as precise. (George himself has a Ph.D. degree—in politics—from Princeton.*) Here is Will's dismantling of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who wants a National Nanny rather than a Supreme Court justice. (Thanks to Kevin Stroup for the link.) The penultimate paragraph is precious.

Having praised Will, I must take exception to one thing. He says he doesn't understand what it could mean to have a "general" right to privacy. I think what Senator Feinstein was asking is whether Judge Roberts believes that there is a constitutional right to sexual autonomy, for that's what the so-called right to privacy amounts to. The right to abort is a specification of this right, but not its only specification. (Another would be the right to engage in homosexual conduct.) Senator Feinstein was trying to avoid the issue of abortion by asking Judge Roberts whether he accepts the more general right from which the right to abort derives. I'm not defending this question, or even implying that it's a legitimate question to be asked of a judicial nominee. I'm trying to make sense of it.

* Will, George Frederick. "Beyond the Reach of Majorities: Closed Questions in the Open Society." Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, Department of Politics, 1968.

I'm in a nostalgic mood this afternoon, inspired by listening to Time-Life's Ultimate Seventies: 1973 compact disc. Here is the song list:

01 "Loves Me Like A Rock," Paul Simon, 3:30
02 "Superfly," Curtis Mayfield, 3:56
03 "We're An American Band," Grand Funk Railroad, 3:29
04 "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," Elton John, 3:16
05 "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love," The Spinners, 4:13
06 "Love Train," The O'Jays, 3:01
07 "Brother Louie," Stories, 3:57
08 "Long Train Runnin'," The Doobie Brothers, 3:28
09 "Ain't No Woman (Like The One I Got)," The Four Tops, 3:11
10 "Midnight Train To Georgia," Gladys Knight and The Pips, 4:41
11 "Right Place, Wrong Time," Dr. John, 2:51
12 "The Cisco Kid," War, 3:53
13 "Hello It's Me," Todd Rundgren, 3:40
14 "Diamond Girl," Seals And Crofts, 3:56
15 "Stuck In The Middle With You," Stealers Wheel, 3:27
16 "Smoke On The Water," Deep Purple, 4:33
17 "Rambin' Man," The Allman Brothers Band, 4:57
18 "Let's Get It On," Marvin Gaye, 4:03
19 "Walk On The Wild Side," Lou Reed, 4:12

I was 15 and 16 years old in 1973. I lived in rural Michigan with my parents and three brothers. There was no cable television in those days, much less an Internet. My brothers and I listened to the radio every day. Some of these songs bring back vivid memories. Some are sad, some uplifting. Some are political, some silly. One thing has not changed. I can't sit still when "Love Train" comes on. The opening grooves are incredible. This song is being used to promote a beer. If you're too young to remember it, find it and listen to the whole thing—but only if you're prepared to dance!

[I]t is possible to accommodate the insights behind the disparate-impact theory within the framework of an approach that understands discrimination as rooted in prejudicial motivations. Such an accommodation would enable the law to recognize a subtle but important form of discrimination: an indifference to the harms suffered by minorities when there would have been a response had the same harms befallen whites. The conventional version of intent theory would let such discrimination pass by without legal condemnation. But a revised version would judge it for what it is: a form of racial discrimination that, no less than the intent to harm, can unfairly put minorities at a significant disadvantage.

(Andrew Altman, Arguing About Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy, 2d ed. [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2001], 264)

9-26-85 I got a letter from Mom this afternoon. She tries to keep up with my correspondence rate, but I worry that she feels obligated to write. Mom, more than other people, is aurally oriented. She loves to listen and talk, and expresses herself well in doing so. I happen to express myself better in print [i.e., in writing]. But that seems to be a matter of preference and upbringing. I always had good handwriting, and that made writing a pleasure for me. Besides worrying about the content of what I was writing, I always worried about the appearance of the writing itself. Now, with the [Kaypro II] computer, I can concentrate on what’s really important: the content. In any event, Mom’s letters are well-written and informative—and, most importantly, welcome.

Thursday is my day for working in the law office. Unlike last week, however, I did not conduct a trial. Instead, I worked on the stack of files in the library (my “office”) and read some cases on intoxilyzer-test foundational requirements. George Dunscomb says that I should appeal two issues that arose during my trial: first, whether the prosecutor laid a proper foundation for admission of the intoxilyzer-test results; and second, whether the state established beyond a reasonable doubt that my client had a blood-alcohol content of more than .10% at the time of driving. More than an hour passed between the time of driving and the time of the intoxilyzer test, but the prosecutor did not call an expert witness to relate the test results to the time of driving. These issues are related in that they both have to do with intoxilyzer-test foundational requirements, but they must be treated separately on appeal.

In reading several cases on the second issue this afternoon, I was struck by the following: Philosophy has already improved my ability to reason and argue in the legal arena. Some of the appellate opinions are poorly reasoned. They contain implicit assumptions that are either false or indefensible, and some of the conclusions just don’t follow from the stated premises. Had I not taken philosophy courses, I may never have caught these mistakes; I may never have learned how to undermine such weak opinions. But now I have lots of tools at my disposal. I can’t wait to sit down and draft the brief on appeal. I’ve got to distinguish an old Arizona case, show why several nonArizona cases are inapplicable, and then argue affirmatively that the prosecutor failed to lay a proper foundation for admission of the intoxilyzer-test results. It should be fun. I have finally found some practical use for my philosophical training.

Allen Buchanan’s Ethics seminar was postponed from Monday until Thursday, and I hadn’t yet completed one of the assignments when I left work, so I drove to the university and spent an hour or so reading an article on paternalism and writing two pages of comments. I’m now up to date in the seminar. By seven o’clock this evening I was sitting in class—tired, but prepared. The discussion today centered on paternalism and distributive justice, and then we discussed the concept of personhood. Craig Gabriel, one of the new graduate students, and a bright one at that, argued that only human beings are persons. This, of course, excludes nonhuman animals, and I am opposed to that. Not only is it false that all persons are human beings, but it’s false that all human beings are persons. Seminar participants seemed to think that rationality is the proper criterion of personhood, but that strikes me as wrongheaded. For moral purposes, what matters to an object is whether it can feel pleasure and/or pain—that is, whether it is capable of experiencing happiness and/or suffering. But I didn’t have time to argue this in class. Maybe next time I’ll defend the view which makes sentience the criterion for having interests and being a moral person. This is Peter Singer’s view. [Actually, it’s not. Singer says that all and only sentient beings have interests, but he never says that all beings with interests are persons. He does, however, say that some nonhuman animals, such as apes, are persons.]

Belgian Tom Boonen outsprinted his rivals to win the World Championship Road Race yesterday in Madrid, Spain. See here for the story and images. Boonen covered the 169.6 miles in 6:26:10, which is an average speed of 26.35 miles per hour. I can't even comprehend riding that fast for that long. Boonen has had a fabulous year. He won the most prestigious one-day Classic race, Paris-Roubaix, this past April. He also won the Tour of Flanders. I remember when Boonen rode for American George Hincapie at Paris-Roubaix. He was something like 21 years old. I knew then that he had a bright future. For those who don't follow professional bicycling, Boonen gets to wear the rainbow jersey for the next year. Congratulations, Tom!

Guess what percentage of grades given to Princeton University undergraduates are A's. See here for the disturbing answer. I rarely give more than 20% A's in my undergraduate courses at UTA. Sometimes the percentage is closer to 10. If you get an A from me, you've accomplished something.

To the Editor:

I recall how uncomfortable I felt when I was told as a young high school student in 1954 that we now had to say the words "under God" when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I was struggling to determine my own spiritual identity, and I could not understand why I and other children were being forced to say words that implied not only that God exists but that the United States was somehow protected and even controlled by ("under") this metaphysical being.

When Congress added the words "under God" to the pledge in 1954, it was giving special recognition to a religious belief. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said as much in his authorization speech: "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future."

Congressional endorsement of a religious belief is equivalent to "establishing" religion. This is clearly prohibited by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Laurence Houlgate
San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Sept. 19, 2005

As most of you know, The New York Times now charges for access to its op-ed columns. Unless you fork over $49.95 per year, you don’t get to read Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, et al. The other day, Krugman wrote to Bobby at The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive asking him not to post his columns. See here. Krugman sounds disappointed, as well he should be. His readership just suffered a precipitous decline. How is he going to influence public opinion if he has no public? How is he going to express his hatred for President Bush if he gets no uptake?

Krugman is on the outs with the Times. I have some advice for him: Quit the Times. Start a blog. That’s right. The word will quickly spread through the blogosphere, and pretty soon everyone—the loony Left, the cautious Center, and the righteous Right—will be checking Krugman’s blog for the latest Bush-hatin’ screeds. Suppose Krugman continued writing two columns a week. Instead of publishing them in the Times, he posts them on his blog. Ah, you say, but he won’t be paid for it. True enough. But he can put ads on his blog. I’m sure the income from the ads would far outstrip what he was paid by the Times. I’m serious about this. Krugman is bigger than the Times. He doesn’t need the Times to publish his columns. He can go directly to his readers. Give it some thought, Paul. Perhaps if you threaten to leave, the Times will reconsider its foolish policy of charging for your columns.

I watched the “debate” between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens last night on C-SPAN2. It wasn’t really a debate, because there were no rules (so far as I could tell). The topic was the war in Iraq, with Galloway arguing that it was both unjust and unnecessary and Hitchens arguing that it was both just and necessary. (Could it be unjust but necessary? Could it be just but unnecessary?) Each man did his share of mudslinging and character assassination. While this made for an entertaining program, it had no bearing on the substantive question of the morality of the war.

I learned something important in law school. It is that, to make a good case for a proposition, one doesn’t have to demolish the opposing case. All one has to do is make a better case. In fact, it shows intellectual honesty to concede the strength of the opposing case. In order for my case to prevail, I don’t have to show that my opponent’s case is worthless. I can concede that my opponent’s case has a value of, say, eight, as long as the value of my case is nine or more. Nine to eight is no less a victory than nine to zero. Unfortunately, I didn’t see either “debater” make any concessions. Galloway never conceded that Saddam Hussein was evil or that, had he remained in power, many people would have been murdered and tortured. Hitchens never conceded that innocent people have died in the war. Listening to Galloway, one would have to conclude that nothing good has come of the war. Listening to Hitchens, one would have to conclude that the war has done nothing but good. Perhaps I exaggerate, but not by much.

Like many people, I’m ambivalent about the war. I wish it could have been avoided, given the terrible cost in life and property. But I’m not convinced that it could have been. Saddam Hussein had to be punished for his crimes and prevented from committing further crimes. To me, that’s what this war is all about. What to do once he was removed from power is a difficult question. I have argued in this blog that the United States should have left Iraq long ago, but maybe I’m wrong about that. All I know is that we could not allow Hussein to remain in power, given his sordid past. If he wouldn’t step down, then he had to be removed by force. That the United States once sided with him is neither here nor there. We were wrong to side with him. Does the fact that we were wrong once mean that we must be wrong again? Suppose I help someone commit a crime today. Does that mean that 10 years from now, I must help the same person commit another crime?

It’s too bad that the war has had such a polarizing effect on us. One side acts like Galloway, conceding nothing; the other side acts like Hitchens, conceding nothing. Everyone should admit that both positions have costs. The question is which position costs least.

Spooker, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially the doings of spooks. One of the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells, who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet. To the terror that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another township.

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

Here.

Judge Richard A. Posner is going to catch hell for this blog post. Not because he gets things wrong about women, but because he gets things right. Feminists do not take kindly to truths that conflict with their joyous falsehoods, one of which is that men and women have the same tastes and aptitudes for rearing children and having high-powered careers. It used to be said that women go to college to get the MRS degree. That still seems to be the case. But what's wrong with that? If you want a comfortable life as a homemaker, what's wrong with going where the providers are? Didn't Hillary Rodham latch on to Bill Clinton because she knew he was "going places"? If it's acceptable for her to do this, why is it unacceptable for other women? Men and women want different things. These desires lead to different choices, which have different costs and benefits. That's not discrimination. It's rationality.

See here for Ed Feser's post on Ayn Rand (1905-1982).

The corrections policy of The New York Times is not being enforced against Paul Krugman*, according to the newspaper's public editor, Barney Calame. See here. I don't understand why the Times would have a policy but not enforce it. Is it protecting Krugman? Has he threatened to quit as an op-ed columnist if it's enforced against him? We know that Krugman is pathologically defensive. We also know that he has no particular interest in the truth, since he regularly misrepresents how things are in the economy. His hatred for President Bush is well documented. This is another blow to the credibility of the Times, which is beginning to look more and more like Pravda.

* "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).

9-25-85 . . . I should be putting this down in poetry rather than prose, but this morning I saw two different kinds of street creature. First, I saw a young man dressed in dirty, baggy clothes walking down University Boulevard. His hair was cut in a “punk” style (long in the front, middle, and back; short on the sides) and he had a look of despair about him. I was immediately drawn to him, and would have offered him some money had I not been down to two dollars myself. As I walked past, he turned and asked in the faintest voice, “Can you tell me what time it is?” I gave him the time and watched him cross the street, head still down and feet still dragging. What a sad sight. Later in the morning, after I parked my car on Main Avenue, I saw two small, black goats walking in single file down the street. They were scavenging for food, apparently, and appeared to belong to nobody in particular. I stopped in my tracks for a few moments to watch them go by. They were jet black, clean, and as cute as can be. They seemed so out of place in downtown Tucson that I had to hold back a laugh. Some day I’d like to put some goats on my farm and let them roam free. All in all, it was an unusual morning.

See here for a letter from a physicist who appears not to understand the nature of prediction. If theories had to be formulated before the events that confirmed them, then biology would not be a theoretical science, for biologists use past events (those that produced fossils, for example) to confirm their theories. (The same is true of astronomy, physics, geology, paleontology, and history.) "Predict" means say before, but "before" is ambiguous between time (the temporal sense) and knowledge (the logical sense). As Swinburne points out, science does not require that the formulation of a theory precede (in time) the events that confirm the theory. The events can occur either before the theory is formulated or after it is formulated.

To the Editor:

Spending $104 billion to send a human back to the Moon, as recently proposed by our country's leaders, will accomplish nothing except to illustrate further how out of touch our policy makers are with the people they govern.

Far from bolstering national pride and prestige, this wasteful spending generates resentment from most citizens and, I suspect, bemused shakes of the head from the international community. It's a very expensive publicity stunt with benefits far, far below the costs.

Tom O'Connor
Mission Viejo, Calif., Sept. 22, 2005

Here.

Excess, n. In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate penalties the law of moderation.

Hail, high Excess—especially in wine,
To thee in worship do I bend the knee
Who preach abstemiousness unto me—
My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.
Precept on precept, aye, and line on line,
Could ne'er persuade so sweetly to agree
With reason as thy touch, exact and free,
Upon my forehead and along my spine.
At thy command eschewing pleasure's cup,
With the hot grape I warm no more my wit;
When on thy stool of penitence I sit
I'm quite converted, for I can't get up.
Ungrateful he who afterward would falter
To make new sacrifices at thine altar!

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

Here.

Does anyone take seriously the Left’s criticisms of President Bush? He has been blamed for so many things for which he is not responsible—and not praised for so many things for which he is responsible—that his critics have lost their credibility. All they have done, from the moment President Bush took office in January 2001, is express anger, hatred, outrage, and resentment toward him. Look at the recent hurricanes. If President Bush doesn’t go to the scene, he is criticized for not caring. If he goes to the scene, he is criticized for grandstanding. Which is it? The man gets no slack. Can anyone blame him for not heeding leftist calls for apologies for this, that, and the other thing? He should ignore leftists. Indeed, he appears to have done just that. It’s part of what infuriates them. Their attacks on the president get no uptake.

Leftists think they’re smarter than conservatives. This is risible. If leftists had any brains, they’d realize that by reserving their criticisms for real faults, they’d be credible. Instead, they loose a barrage of criticisms for every action or inaction, real or imagined, big or small. They think that if they say something often enough (such as that President Bush lied about the war in Iraq), it becomes true. Americans are a fair people. They know that nobody is perfectly good or perfectly bad, and that if someone is said to be perfectly bad, the person making the accusation is prejudiced against him or her. They also know that as powerful and knowledgeable as a president is, he or she is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Keep it up, leftists. If you keep crying wolf, the American people will never believe you again, and if they don’t believe you, they will never entrust you with the power you crave.

President Bush's nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor will be controversial, whether he nominates a moderate or a conservative. See here. President Bush needs to remember who voted for him and why most of us did so. The Supreme Court has been moving the nation leftward for decades, making things up as it goes. Many of us voted for President Bush so he would change this. His job is to nominate superbly qualified strict constructionists to the Court. If the Democrats fight, fight back. If the Democrats and a few wayward Republicans defeat the first candidate, choose another one with similar views—and do what you can to punish the wayward Republicans. It's better to go down fighting than to surrender. Nothing less than the fate of this great nation is at stake.

A while back, I predicted that Lance Armstrong would become an action hero in Hollywood. Okay, that's a stretch, but he'll be the host of Saturday Night Live this fall. Here is the story:

NEW YORK (AP) — Steve Carell will host the season premiere of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" on Oct. 1 with Kanye West as the late-night show's musical guest.

Also scheduled as hosts during October: "Napoleon Dynamite" star Jon Heder, Oscar-winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones and seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, with his fiancee, Sheryl Crow, as musical guest, NBC announced Thursday.

"SNL" is returning for its 31st season.

I'll have to mute the television when the musical guest comes on.

Here.

Pastime, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.

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

To the Editor:

Thanks to Nathaniel Fick for suggesting that President Bush extend his apology mode to the war in Iraq ("An Honest Victory," Op-Ed, Sept. 20). May we ask him where such apology would end?

Is it at all possible for Mr. Bush to consider an honest assessment of his policies in Iraq without admitting that the war was a horrendous mistake from the beginning? Far from contradicting the usual diplomatic strategies, such an apology might go some distance in alleviating the grief and shame so many Americans are living with these days, and restoring at least a part of the respect we've lost internationally.

Who knows, it might even undercut the terrorist threat that the Bush administration has tragically worsened.

Lawrence Shainberg
New York, Sept. 20, 2005

Here is a satellite image of Hurricane Rita. All is well so far in Fort Worth. It's still hot and humid here, with no sign of changing weather. I hope the hurricane cools things off.

Here is a website devoted to the great Galveston hurricane of 1900.

Rick Santorum would make an excellent president. See here for an essay on conservatism that he coauthored with British Member of Parliament Iain Duncan Smith. How many of you would like to see a Rick Santorum/Hillary Clinton matchup in 2008? Who would win such a matchup?

To the Editor:

"Dangling Particles," by Lisa Randall (Op-Ed, Sept. 18), is insightful in describing the difficulties in communicating scientific news, which is often complex, to a public that prefers a simple story.

It bears repeating: the appeal of the simple story is based in human nature and in the universal longing for security, certainty and predictability.

It is regrettable that so few people have acquired the emotional discipline to override this longing and that only a minority has learned to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity as a normal part of life.

David C. Balderston
New York, Sept. 20, 2005

I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that my Dell 42-inch plasma high-definition television stopped working 11 days ago. The good news is that Dell replaced it today. Had I missed a single baseball playoff game, someone would have paid with his or her life. Thank goodness my one-year warranty was still in effect. You can be sure that I'll be extending this warranty for another year! Or two. Or three.

Helpmate, n. A wife, or bitter half.

"Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
Says the priest. "Since the time o' yer wooin'
She's niver assisted in what ye were at—
For it's naught ye are ever doin'."

"That's true of yer Riverence," Patrick replies,
And no sign of contrition evinces;
"But, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies,
For she helps to mate the expinses!"
Marley Wottel.

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

I wish I could comment on Paul Krugman's* op-ed column of this date, but The New York Times won't let me read it unless I pay, and I won't pay. Nor is it available at The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive (perhaps because the Times has threatened legal action against Bobby, its sycophantic owner). The Times has every right to charge for its products, obviously, just as I have every right not to subscribe. I wonder, however, what Paul Krugman thinks of the new policy. Surely he wants to reach people like me, even though I'm hard on him. And I doubt that I'm alone. His readership has just shrunk significantly. The other Times op-ed columnists are in the same position, except that I never read some of them (Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich) and rarely read the others (Nicholas Kristof, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, and John Tierney). Some observers think the Times experiment is failing already. See here. (Thanks to Donald Luskin for the link.)

Addendum: Some of you know that the Times maintains a list of "most e-mailed articles." Here is the list as of 30 seconds ago. Krugman's column is ranked 18th. Usually, he's first or second. In a way, this is good. Fewer people will be exposed to Krugman's hatefulness and intellectual dishonesty. This cannot but improve the quality of public discourse.

Addendum 2: It appears that I will be able to read Paul Krugman's semiweekly op-ed columns by using my library's Lexis/Nexis database. I just read his column of this date entitled "The Big Uneasy." I can summarize it in a few sentences:

The expensive and "unwinnable" war in Iraq, together with the "hapless" governmental response to Hurricane Katrina, have destroyed people's confidence in this country, creating a "crisis." The crisis creates an opportunity for political change, but that change must have a leader. President Bush is "damaged goods."

That's it. No analysis; no argument; lots of tendentious assertion and manipulative rhetoric. Krugman seems happy that things are going poorly for Americans, since that makes it more likely that they'll vote Democrat next time. And we're supposed to pay for this crap?

* "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).

Here.

Senator Hillary Clinton has announced that she will vote against Judge John Roberts when his nomination comes to the floor of the Senate. "My desire to maintain the already fragile Supreme Court majority for civil rights, voting rights and women's rights," Mrs. Clinton said, "outweighs the respect I have for Judge Roberts's intellect, character, and legal skills." This is a perfect example of consequentialist (as opposed to deontological) reasoning. To a deontologist, there are certain acts, such as voting against a highly qualified judicial nominee, that ought not to be done, however good the consequences of doing them. To a consequentialist, no type of act is ruled out. A good end justifies any means, even those that are disrespectful toward persons.

Okay, folks, it's make-fun-of-economics time. For the record, I had an informal minor in economics in college and dabble in the economic analysis of law. (I'm cited in Richard A. Posner's treatise Economic Analysis of Law.) Here are some zingers:

• If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. —George Bernard Shaw

• Economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. —said by Oscar Wilde of cynics

• Economics is the dismal science. —Thomas Carlyle

• Economics is politics masquerading as science. —Keith Burgess-Jackson

• But the age of chivalry is gone.—That of sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. —Edmund Burke

Please add your own zingers (including jokes) in the comments section.

9-22-85 I have had to make a concession to my busy work schedule. Ordinarily, I read my journal entries of one and five years ago before drafting a given journal entry. This gives me a sense of continuity over time and provides material for discussion in these pages. But I just don’t have time each day to pull out old journals and read what I had to say—especially when some of the entries go on for pages. I work from early in the morning until late at night each day, but still can’t get caught up on my reading and writing. It’s a good thing that I don’t have to take law-related work home with me. If I did, I’d have no time to eat or sleep. As it is, I barely have time to think. As soon as I can, I’ll go back to old habits—in particular, the habit of reading past journal entries.

It’s 8:28 P.M. I’ve just eaten a rather large meal of fried rice and margarine-covered bread, and now I’m sitting at the computer terminal sipping iced tea and listening to jazz music. I rose early this morning, the result of going to sleep early (9:15 P.M.) last night. After four hours of summarizing an article by Donald Regan on paternalism for Tuesday’s Philosophy of Law seminar, I walked to a nearby convenience store for the Sunday [news]paper [The Arizona Republic], ate a breakfast of six medium-sized pancakes with syrup, showered, drafted part of a letter to Danielle, and hit the road on my weekly bike ride. When I got back, fewer than three hours later, I stretched out in the swimming pool for twenty-five minutes to cool off. Then I showered, put things away, did my bike-trip calculations, finished the letter to Danielle, washed clothes, read six pages of logic for tomorrow’s lecture, and ate dinner. As you can see, even my weekends are busy. There’s no letup.

The riding, as usual, was superb—an escape from the tedium of work and study. I rode exactly forty miles, giving me 3620 miles since buying my first bike—892.8 of them in 1985. This means that I broke my 1984 mileage record. All that remains is to break the 1982 record, but that’s going to have to wait. I need to ride an average of 24.4 miles per week during the remaining fourteen weeks of 1985 in order to break the record. By my calculations, I should break the record on 24 November, if I maintain my current pace. Presently, I’m 72.2% of the way to the record. The temperature today was lower than normal: in the eighties [degrees Fahrenheit]. The sky, however, was clear, and I got my usual dosage of sunshine as I pedalled [sic; should be “pedaled”]. My gross average speed was 13.71 miles per hour, just under my all-time record of 13.79. But that’s OK; I’ll break the record more than once in the remaining weeks of 1985, which promises to be cool. So long as I’m in the “thirteens,” I know that I’m doing well. [This may seem terribly slow, but keep in mind that (1) I was riding an old, heavy bike; (2) I had been riding seriously for only four months; and (3) I had nobody on whom to draft.]

I’ve now ridden my bike on eighteen consecutive Sundays. Today marked my twentieth trip to Colossal Cave since I’ve lived in Tucson. As I rode, I contemplated something that appears to be a part of my personality. I am good at delaying satisfactions. For instance, I was able to spend four years in law school in order to be an attorney. I am now in the process of spending four or more additional years to earn a Ph.D. degree in philosophy. I’m also willing to wait for the “perfect” mate, unlike some of my friends and relatives. For many people, the pleasures of life must come now. They want new automobiles, fancy houses, vacations, a spouse and children, and even a good job immediately—not at some indefinite point in the future. But I’m different, and always have been. I guess I have a good conception of myself over time. I can see myself five, ten, even twenty years from now, and I’m willing to work hard now to be able to do what I want to then. [Thank you, Keith of 20 years ago.] As for biking, setting a yearlong goal for myself is an instance of delayed gratification. Each week, I cover only forty miles; but when the figures are added up, I’m going to set an all-time record. It feels good to know that I’m accomplishing something. [A 1,000-mile journey begins with a single step.]

This column by Peggy Noonan is fascinating. Please read it and come back. I sometimes think that liberals have won the war, even though they lose the electoral battles that take place every fourth year. Liberals want big, active, muscular government. They have it. Their only complaint is that they don't control it. If they did, they'd spend the money in different ways. But nobody can ever accuse President Bush of being in favor of small government. He's as big a spender as this country has seen. Perhaps it's too late for limited government to work in this country. Too many people—especially those in the middle class—depend on government in too many ways to give it up. Everyone's into the government for something, whether it's agricultural subsidies, arts funding, education, transportation, construction contracts, military provisioning, the space program, or welfare. Each bureaucracy becomes a perpetual-motion machine. A candidate who advocates small government is going to alienate too many people to be elected. Don't get me wrong. I'd rather have President Bush spending my money than, say, John Kerry. But dammit, the point is that nobody should be spending my money. It's theft. That we don't view it as theft shows the extent to which liberals have won the war.

You circle typographical, spelling, grammatical, and punctuational errors (as well as stylistic gaffes) in everything you read, whether it's a newspaper, a magazine article, a scholarly essay, or a novel.

Humans are not the only sentient beings harmed and displaced by hurricanes. See here for a worthy organization.

I want to pick up on something I said in a comment earlier today. In what ways are liberals childish? Think in terms of beliefs, values, attitudes, actions, motives, and character. When I reflect on my conversion from liberalism to conservatism (see here), it occurs to me that it was a matter of growing up, becoming wiser, gaining control over my emotions, and seeing connections between things that were previously obscure to me. One way to approach this question is to ask what distinguishes children from adults. Having answered that question, ask whether liberals share children's traits.

As many of you know, The New York Times now exacts a fee to read the likes of Paul Krugman. I, for one, have decided not to pay. I’ll still read and comment on Krugman’s columns, since they’re posted almost immediately on The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive. So the Times loses revenue on me. Before, I was exposed to ads when I read Krugman’s columns. Now I get the column without the ads. In a way, I’m better off.

Let’s analyze this. Some people didn’t read Krugman et al. even when it was free. They’re not likely to start paying to read these columnists. Some people who read Krugman et al. will now pay to continue doing so. The Times makes money on these people. But how much money is lost by cutting out people like me? The Times must think it gains more through the new revenue flow than it loses by cutting out those of us who used to be exposed to ads but no longer are. We’ll see. If the Times reverses course in a year or so, we’ll know that the experiment was a financial failure. And make no mistake about it: It’s an experiment.

By the way, I have to believe that the columnists themselves are upset by the change. Writers want to be read. Fewer people will read each column now than before. And who will be reading them? Probably only true believers. People (such as me) who think Paul Krugman is a partisan hack will almost certainly not pay for his columns. His obsequious readers, on the other hand, will gladly pay. I can’t believe this will make him happy. Although he doesn’t write in a style that persuades people, he obviously takes great pleasure in antagonizing those who don’t share his egalitarian values. This pleasure is now lost to him. He knows that he is preaching to the choir—and how satisfying can that be?

I predict that the Times will lose money on this venture and reverse course. It will also feel pressure from the columnists, who don’t want their readerships to decline.

To the Editor:

Bravo for highlighting the paradox of the highly educated stay-at-home mom.

Two decades ago at the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School, my female classmates and I believed that determination alone would enable us to balance work and family, and that any woman who could not manage this was deficient.

Motherhood by itself was not a valid aspiration.

Many of us have since discovered, after juggling high-powered careers and children, that just because it's possible does not mean that it's desirable.

I'm glad that young women today are being more realistic about the price of "having it all." I would only point out that once children are in school, their need for intense parental involvement actually increases rather than decreases.

Delegating diaper-changing and play group to a nanny was fine, but I am glad to be the one providing the daily moral, emotional and intellectual guidance that my pre-teen and teenage daughters require.

Perhaps my fancy degrees are even useful in these endeavors.

Erica Peresman
Birmingham, Mich., Sept. 20, 2005

Judge John G. Roberts Jr is one step closer to becoming chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, a position he could hold for three decades or more. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted today, 13-5, to approve his nomination. See here. What shocks me is that five senators (all Democrats) voted against him. If John Roberts is not fit to serve on the United States Supreme Court, then nobody is. And please understand: I don't know how he will rule in the cases that come before him. Nor does President Bush. Nor do the senators who voted against him. Those who voted against Judge Roberts did so on the basis of political calculations, not on the basis of the judge's qualifications. That is disgraceful. My prediction, for those who missed it, is that Judge Roberts will be confirmed by a vote of 77-23.

Great, adj.

"I'm great," the Lion said—"I reign
The monarch of the wood and plain!"

The Elephant replied: "I'm great—
No quadruped can match my weight!"

"I'm great—no animal has half
So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.

"I'm great," the Kangaroo said—"see
My femoral muscularity!"

The 'Possum said: "I'm great—behold,
My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"

An Oyster fried was understood
To say: "I'm great because I'm good!"

Each reckons greatness to consist
In that in which he heads the list,

And Vierick thinks he tops his class
Because he is the greatest ass.
Arion Spurl Doke.

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

Here.

I'd like to wish everyone a happy autumnal equinox. Hurricane Rita is bearing down on us here in North Texas. I wouldn't have thought that it would affect us up here, so far from the Gulf Coast, but apparently it will. The girls and I are battening down the hatches.

Andrew Sullivan won't like this.

This would be sad if it weren't so funny. Democrats have lost seven of the past 10 presidential elections. With this writer's approach, they are likely to be three for 20 by the time I die. The writer thinks the reason Democrats lose is that they're not angry enough! In fact, as anyone with any sense knows, their ideas are bankrupt. Election after election, they trot out the same failed ideas. Election after election, the American people reject them. What's that definition of "insanity"?

Addendum: The writer makes two hilarious but revealing mistakes. "Deign" means condescend, so the writer is saying that she will not condescend to speak for her fellow Democrats. How's that for elitism? Later, she says, "I am loathe to condense the feelings of millions of Democrats down to a bumper-sticker, . . . ." She means loath, obviously. Democrats can't win for loathing!

I’ve been ganged-up on many times, both on and off the Internet. It doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, in a perverse sort of way, I enjoy it. I was once a liberal, remember, so I know how liberals think and operate. They find strength in numbers. We might call them “liberal gangs.” I’ve been thinking about the liberal argumentative style. I call it “Abuse-Evade-Point.” The abuse part is self-explanatory. Those who dare question liberal dogmas are subjected to withering personal attacks, innuendos, and name-calling that would make a playground bully proud. Evasion is another liberal tactic. Liberals so dominate academia and other social institutions (such as journalism) that they’ve lost the ability to persuade. They mistake the intensity of their convictions, which is close to infinite, for persuasiveness. In the end, their emotional fervor causes them to evade (or lose sight of) the issue. The third part of the liberal style is the most amusing. I call it pointing. Here’s how it goes:

Liberal 1: Look! Keith is a conservative!

Liberal 2: Oh my god, are you kidding me?

Liberal 1: No, I’m serious. Look. Right here. That’s not something a liberal would say.

Liberal 2: You’re right. And look here! Jesus!

Liberal 3: And over here, he says this. The guy is really a conservative!

Liberal 2: I can’t believe it. He has a Ph.D. degree, doesn’t he?

Liberal 1: Wait! Look here. Without a doubt, this guy is conservative. What the hell is wrong with him? Doesn’t he have a brain? How did he get a Ph.D. degree?

It’s funny, isn’t it? Liberals think that merely classifying someone as a conservative constitutes an argument against his or her views. You might think this would get old fast, but liberals love it. It confirms their worth, builds solidarity among them, and allows them to express scorn, resentment, indignation, condescension, and other unhealthy but satisfying emotions. When I was a liberal, I loved the security of academia. I knew that I would never be challenged—or that, if I were, others would come to my assistance immediately. I now realize that this was a betrayal of academia. I’ve never met a liberal who could hold his or her own in a debate with a conservative.

See here.

See here. The credibility of the "Philosophy of Biology" blog is plummeting fast. Can you say "false advertising"?

Addendum: I had never heard of this Michael Sprague person, so I looked him up. As I expected, he has no philosophical credentials. He's a student at Florida State University. It'll be interesting to see whether he gets a job, much less a tenure-track job, having left such a thuggish Internet trail.

Addendum 2: Michael should read this. Better yet, he should read my logic textbook. For manners, such as respect for his elders, he might read this.

Addendum 3: Let’s ignore Michael’s tu quoque fallacy. Is there anything to the charge (which I take him to be leveling) that I’m contradicting myself by (1) saying that the Philosophy of Biology blog is engaged in false or misleading advertising while (2) posting nonphilosophical material on my own blog? I don’t think there is. Suppose my blog were entitled “Moral Philosophy” (the analogue of “Philosophy of Biology”) or simply “Philosophy” and that I didn’t have the disclaimer “(and other stuff)” prominently displayed in my sidebar. Suppose, too, that all the posts were the same. If this were the case, then I would be contradicting myself. But these are relevant differences, are they not? (All it takes is one relevant difference to avoid a charge of inconsistency.) Michael must read “AnalPhilosopher” as “Moral Philosophy,” or, more broadly, as “Philosophy.” But “AnalPhilosopher” is a play on words—a combination of “anal-retentive” (which describes my personality) and “analytic philosophy” (which describes the type of philosophy I do). And Michael must read “(and other stuff)” as “(and very occasionally something nonphilosophical).” But that seems a strained reading. “Other stuff” says nothing about how much other stuff there is. Maybe the ratio of other stuff to philosophical stuff is large. I think I give the reader fair warning. My blog is generic. It’s my literary outlet. I’m a philosopher, so philosophical material crops up frequently, and even when the material is not philosophical in some technical sense, it’s informed by my philosophical training. When I visit the Philosophy of Biology blog, by contrast, I see no indication anywhere on the site that it is anything other than a professional blog, devoted to the philosophy of biology. If the title were “Philosophy of Biology (and Other Stuff)” or “Philosophy of Biology (with a Little Bush-Bashing Thrown in Just for Fun)” or “Philosophy of Biology and Public Policy,” I would never have raised a complaint. That Michael responded so viciously to what is, by any reasonable standard, a mildly critical post speaks volumes about his character. I trust that he will hear from his more senior bloggers about his intemperate behavior. He is destroying the credibility of what could be a respectable—and useful—blog.

Addendum 4: Dr Millstein takes me to task for thinking that philosophers lack evaluative expertise. (Does she think we have factual expertise, too?) Let’s first dispel a fallacy. It does not follow from the fact that philosopher S makes evaluative claims that S has evaluative expertise. Anybody can make any kind of claim. I don’t deny that philosophers make evaluative claims (or factual claims, for that matter). What I deny is that their philosophical training gives their values any special weight, such that nonphilosophers should defer to them. For those of you who think philosophers have evaluative expertise, where do we get it? In a course? A seminar? But which course? Which seminar? I must have missed it. Did we absorb it from our mentors? Did we acquire it from the philosophical books we read? Which ones? Did we perchance acquire it at the precise moment that we successfully defended our dissertations, or received the diploma? But how does this happen? My values have nothing to do with my philosophical training—and believe me, I had the very best training. What my philosophical training equipped me to do is to clarify (and thereby to understand) values I already had, or came to acquire. Whenever my values changed (I used to be a feminist, for example), it had nothing to do with the fact that I’m a philosopher. I’m genuinely puzzled about this. I understand why philosophers want to believe that they have evaluative expertise, and I understand why they want to get others to believe that they have evaluative expertise. I just don’t understand where we got it. Philosophy, like economics and mathematics, is a technical discipline. It’s a set of analytical tools that can be put to any use—good, bad, or indifferent. Where do the values come in?

Addendum 5: Michael has discovered (to his apparent glee) that I make value judgments. Where, pray tell, did I ever say or imply that I don’t make value judgments? Of course I make value judgments. Everyone makes value judgments. Philosophers make value judgments. Philosophers also defecate. It does not follow that defecation is philosophical or that philosophers have defecational expertise. In general, from the facts that S is a philosopher and S does X, it does not follow that X is a philosophical activity.

Addendum 6: Enough fun with the kids. I have work to do.

Here is Julian Sanchez's interview with the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick (1938-2002).

Newspapers are dying. See here.

"I'm not too sure if his heart is as big as his head." —HARRY REID, the Senate Democratic leader, on Judge John G. Roberts Jr.

"I'm not too sure he has a brain." —KEITH BURGESS-JACKSON on Harry Reid.

Dr Roberta L. Millstein, a philosopher of biology at California State University, East Bay (formerly California State University, Hayward), has replied to my post about philosophy of biology. I rejoined. See here. Please keep your comments civil. I will not approve uncivil comments.

9-21-85 Saturday. Where is the [fall] semester going? All told, there are sixteen weeks in the semester. Four of them are now history. There are also forty-four class days, and eleven of them have passed. I spent most of the day grading logic exams. My policy is to return graded exams on the very next class day—in this case, Monday. When I was an undergraduate student, I always looked forward anxiously to getting exams back. Some professors would take a week or longer to do so, and I invariably cursed them under my breath for being so lazy. As an instructor, I plan to do things differently. So far, I have a perfect record of getting Friday exams back on Monday. This weekend will be no different. [I still return exams as soon as possible, but not always on the very next day.]

As for why I give exams on Friday, this, too, goes back to my own experience as an undergraduate. Although I appreciated having an entire weekend in which to study for an exam, I always ended up spending too much time studying and worrying, given the real importance of the exam. [“Work expands to fill time allotted.” This is Parkinson’s Law.] I want my students to relax on weekends, not pull their hair out trying to learn logic. I’m sure that some of the students would prefer to have the exams on either a Monday or a Wednesday, but I’m the instructor and I have reasons for giving them on Friday. One such reason is selfish. If exams were given on either Monday or Wednesday, I’d be unable to grade them and return them during the next class period. By having an entire weekend in which to grade exams, however, I insure [sic; should be “ensure”] that my policy will be carried out.

To the Editor:

"Under Din of Abortion, an Experience Shared Quietly" (front page, Sept. 18) should demonstrate to all of us one very clear thing: as long as there is confusion, debate, conflict and uncertainty in the lived experiences of women who undergo the procedure, the most logical and reasonable solution is to give them choices.

Reasonable people from all walks of life can come to very different conclusions about the necessity and morality of abortion, and thus it is in our best interest to leave the decision to a woman, her doctor, her family and her God.

If a common experience of women who seek abortions is "I don't believe in this, but my situation is different," the government should not punish them for interpreting their beliefs in the greater context of their lives and trying to make an informed decision.

If there is no universal understanding of the issue of abortion, there cannot be only one answer.

Laura Durso
Honolulu, Sept. 18, 2005

Inexpedient, adj. Not calculated to advance one's interests.

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

Here.

Perry Eidelbus takes Paul Krugman apart here. Good work, Perry!

The New York Times wants to raise taxes. See here. What shocks me about this editorial opinion is the absence of any mention, let alone discussion, of the cost of taxes, both in terms of principle and in terms of consequences. To the Times, the mere fact of need justifies coercion. Person A needs something; it can be provided by person B; therefore, it should be taken from B and given to A. But what if B is entitled to the thing, and what if A doesn't deserve it? What if A's plight is self-imposed? These are morally relevant questions for most people, and yet the Times doesn't deign to discuss them. This shows that liberal thinking is result-oriented. The end is specified; all means to bringing it about are viewed as acceptable, the choice between them being made on the basis of expediency. What's interesting is that liberals aren't always consequentialists. When it comes to rights such as free speech, freedom of the press, and sexual autonomy (including abortion), liberals are more than happy to think in terms of rights. When it comes to taxation, however, rights go out the window. It's about time we had a Supreme Court that respected—and protected—property rights. In many ways, as all great political philosophers have understood, these are the most important rights of all.

9-20-85 On Wednesday, I told my logic students that I would be trying a case on Thursday, and that it might “bleed over” into Friday. If that were the case, I said, then our first exam would have to be postponed until Monday. I told them that a secretary would put a note on the door of the classroom by Thursday afternoon if the exam were postponed. Lo and behold, several students called the Philosophy Department on Thursday to find out if [sic; should be “whether”] a note had been placed on the door. Lois [Day], the secretary, had to field all of the calls and try to figure out what was going on. This disturbed me to no end, not only because the students were told to look on the door itself, but because the secretaries are busy enough without having to field silly telephone calls from students. I did not tell the students to make telephone calls. When Lois told me what had happened, I apologized. My students are evidently a lazy bunch of people. At first I planned to chastize [sic; should be “chastise”] them, but I didn’t. The exam, however, went off without a hitch.

While at work this afternoon, Brian Lee (the receptionist) buzzed me and said that there was a call for me from “Oklahoma City.” “Not for me,” I said; “I don’t even know anyone in Oklahoma.” But it was for me. I picked up the receiver and a woman said that she had come across a copy of Arizona Bar Briefs and fallen in love with my column [“On Writing”]. “It’s the most delightful thing that I’ve ever read,” she said, “and its author is none other than Keith Burgess-Jackson. Will you please let us reprint it in our company newsletter?” Obviously, I was flattered to think that anyone would want to reprint my column, so I gave her permission. This was rash, as I later realized, because I don’t even know what kind of newsletter it is. For all I know, it could be a Christian newsletter, or a publication of the John Birch Society (an anti-communist, anti-semitic, racist organization). Oh well, I’ll find out soon enough. I asked the woman to send me a copy of any publication in which the column appears, and she promised to do so.

There was one other note of interest today. Judge Clifford Hofmann of Tucson City Court ruled on my suppression motion in the Joseph L. case. This is the case in which I argued (on 28 August) that my client had been taken into custody, and hence was entitled to Miranda warnings, at the time of the traffic stop, since he was arrested by a single officer on a lonely, dark stretch of Benson Highway. (The term “custody” is a term of art in constitutional law; it has lost its commonsense meaning.) I relied heavily upon a recent United States Supreme Court case (Berkemer v. McCarty) and some philosophical reasoning to make my case. Judge Hofmann, however, disagreed with my conclusion. Today I received a minute entry from the court showing that the motion had been denied. Oh well, it was worth a try. The client, who presently lives in Indiana, still doesn’t know that I filed the motion. His interests have been aggressively protected.

Clock, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.

A busy man complained one day:
"I get no time!" "What's that you say?"
Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;
"You have, sir, all the time there is.
There's plenty, too, and don't you doubt it—
We're never for an hour without it."
Purzil Crofe.

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

Feminism is dead, and not a moment too soon. It lied about women and thereby made a whole generation of women unhappy. It lied about men and thereby left a whole generation of men confused and embittered. It told women that they could be happy without children. It told women that a busy career with lots of money would compensate for the loss of family. It told women that men are unnecessary. It told women that they could "have it all." It told women that the only power worth having is economic power, when in fact the most awesome (and awe-inspiring) power on this earth is the power of producing and nurturing healthy, happy children. Young women today have heard the feminist message, seen what it did to their mothers and grandmothers, and rejected it. They know that nobody, male or female, can "have it all," for life is tragic. See here. Why can't we accept that men and women are different without viewing one sex as superior to the other? Two things can be different but equal. Men are more aggressive than women. That's a fact. This fact explains why men thrive in—and prefer—competitive occupations. Women are more nurturing than men. That's a fact. This fact explains why women thrive in—and prefer—nurturing occupations. Feminists have told women that they're being oppressed by men. This slanders men and turns women into victims. Feminism is dead. Good riddance.

Addendum: One of my readers insists that it's all learned behavior; that men can be taught to nurture children. If this means that men can change diapers, I agree. If it means that men and women are interchangeable, or equally good at nurturing, or equally happy while nurturing, I disagree. The best way into this topic is Robert Wright's book The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1995 [1994]). I also recommend John Marshall Townsend, What Women Want—What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Steven E. Rhoads, Taking Sex Differences Seriously (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004).

Addendum 2: Not all leftists are biologically ignorant. See Peter Singer, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000 [1999]), and Katharine K. Baker, "Biology for Feminists," Chicago-Kent Law Review 75 (2000): 805-35.

Addendum 3: Here is a list of frequently asked questions about evolutionary psychology.

James Taranto made a terrific suggestion in today’s Best of the Web Today column. President Bush should nominate Janice Rogers Brown to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the United States Supreme Court. Think about it. First, he would be replacing a woman with a woman. Many feminists have been demanding this. Second, he would be adding a second African-American to the Court. This would make it an historic choice. African-Americans would constitute 22.2% of the Court, a far greater percentage than in society as a whole. It could never again be said with any plausibility that President Bush is a racist (or a sexist, for that matter).

Ah, you say, she won’t be confirmed. Really? Who’s going to oppose her? Women? African-Americans? Actually, you’re right: She might not be confirmed. Clarence Thomas’s being black didn’t stop African-Americans from attacking him as an Uncle Tom, an Oreo, and Stepin Fetchit. But that’s the genius of the nomination. President Bush can force liberals to oppose a self-made black woman, a daughter of sharecroppers. Liberals are hateful to the point of apoplexy. Just think of the intemperate, racist, and sexist language you’re likely to see on sites such as Democratic Underground. Judge Brown will be called every name in the book. Her intelligence will be questioned by the likes of Brian Leiter, who calls those who don’t share his leftist values “mediocrities.” (Makes you wonder about his own intelligence, doesn’t it?) She will be said to be a dupe of President Bush and his Republican cronies, which implies that she lacks a mind of her own. We know how she’ll be treated; we’ve seen how liberals treat Condoleezza Rice.

The leftist assault on Brown would generate a backlash among women and African-Americans, who, by identifying with Brown, would take the attacks personally. This would redound to the long-term benefit of the Republican Party. Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not saying that President Bush should put an unqualified person on the Supreme Court for political reasons. Janice Rogers Brown is highly qualified to serve on the United States Supreme Court. She’s been a member of the California Supreme Court for many years. She’s now a federal appellate judge. The political benefit of nominating her is a bonus.

Please, President Bush, nominate Janice Rogers Brown.

Addendum: Here is a blog devoted to Supreme Court nominations. I will add it to the blogroll.

Hurricane, n. A storm with a wind so violent that it destroys all notions of desert, responsibility, and fiscal sanity.

I have an idea. Liberals are calling for increased governmental spending for hurricane-ravaged areas. Then let liberals put their money where their mouths are. The 2005 federal income-tax return should have a box on it that can be checked by those who wish to donate, say, $100 to hurricane relief. This will (1) raise the money liberals say is necessary, (2) not coerce anyone, and (3) allow liberals to feel morally superior, which is their real goal. It's perfect!

To the Editor:

By rejecting tax increases, President Bush is calling for sacrifice from every one of us except those who can most afford it.

Let's revive the estate tax to where it was 10 years ago. Let's overturn the tax cuts that greatly favor high-income taxpayers.

The gap between the upper and lower classes has sharply increased during President Bush's tenure.

We need more taxation, not less, and we need to draw those taxes from the upper end of the income scale.

Marcia Feingold
Ann Arbor, Mich., Sept. 17, 2005

Read this. Do you see any praise for President Bush? Nope. Whose administration accomplished the goal? Bill Clinton's? President Bush gets blamed for everything that's bad, even if he had nothing to do with it, but he gets no credit for things that are good, even when he had everything to do with it. Why are liberals so petty and vindictive? One can only hope that Americans notice these despicable traits and deny liberals the power they crave. A liberal without power is like a bulldozer without an engine.

Here.

KBJ:

I am struck by the following disconnect: Big Brother steps to the microphone to trumpet the fact that IT is allocating $60 billion+ to hurricane relief (a "beginning . . .") while at the same time encouraging us all to give and give and give and. . . . Seems to me that AS Big Brother gives (and gives and gives and gives . . .) there is a corresponding drop in voluntary giving thereby wiping out true charity as we know it. Hence Big Brother stands proud thinking it has a big heart . . . as ours withers. The STATE is good. Spending our money is GOOD (especially when JUST the right circumstance warrants . . . !). There is just so much "good" out there. When the Nanny State gets a chance, IT purports to be brimming with it . . . which eventuates in diminishing "private" good. Sorry. I know who'll end up PAYING the bill. Why in hell should I write out a check??? In my utopia, we'll have a president who will tell us HE has no authority to take from some and give to others—no matter HOW good the cause—and that he has sworn thusly. As a result, all giving must be voluntary. "So, folks, please give until it hurts." THEN my check gets written. And perhaps all of us will feel better about ourselves. Has religion done this to us? Or has the Nanny State become our church? Our deity? We are RESPONSIBLE for half-wits stranded on roofs, living in a city below sea level, after being told the jig is up: GET THE HELL OUT!!!??? A VOLUNTARY outpouring to these people is A.O.K. But when the Nanny State does it it sanctions it. It sets up expectations that half-wits DESERVE saving. That we are somehow RESPONSIBLE for them. Or, even, it is our FAULT!!! So in the end the odds are we'll LOSE compassion for "the less fortunate." In the end we'll doubt they DESERVE our compassion. All because it is now so EASY for Big Brother to show it has a big heart. Ain't spending other people's money fun??? And easy. Or is it theft? A politician spouting such stuff would get, say, 6 or 7 votes these days. Nationwide. Apparently most don't realize who will PAY for all the good stuff the Nanny State does. Or . . . the rich will get soaked. Oh well. Another Day At Ridgemont High.

Just yapping.

This week's link is to Philosophy of Biology. By the way, notice the Bush-bashing post entitled "Was Bush Intelligently Designed?" Do these philosophers realize the effect such politicization has on their credibility? I'm not saying they should have no political views, or even that they should refrain from criticizing or making fun of the president. But they shouldn't do it on a site ostensibly devoted to philosophy of biology! This blog (AnalPhilosopher), by comparison, has never been a purely philosophical site. From the very first day (5 November 2003), I advertised it as "Analytic philosophy (and other stuff) in the anal-retentive tradition." This puts the reader on notice that some (maybe much) of what I post is nonphilosophical. I don't see anything to this effect (i.e., a disclaimer) on the Philosophy of Biology site. Has academia become so politicized that academics can't distinguish between scholarship and politics? And don't they realize that they impeach their own credibility by bringing extraneous matters such as politics into a site devoted to philosophy of biology? Philosophy will never be respected if philosophers can't stay above the fray in their philosophical work.

Addendum: Just to prove that I'm being nonpartisan, I would say the same thing if there were a post entitled "Is Clinton Oversexed?"

Addendum 2: Please don't say that philosophers of biology are competent to comment on the debate about the teaching of intelligent design in public-school science courses. They're not. That's a matter of public policy, and ultimately of morality. It has nothing to do with philosophy of biology, which, like all branches of philosophy, is a technical discipline. Philosophers, as such, have no evaluative expertise. To put oneself forward as having such expertise is to engage in false and misleading advertising.

Apropos of nothing, is there anything more vain, pretentious, and ludicrous than speaking in the third person? Why would Bob Dole say, for example, "Bob Dole does not support tax increases"? (I'm not saying that Dole said precisely this, but he did have a propensity to speak in the third person, as do many athletes and actors.) What does the third person bespeak? A bifurcated personality? Dissociation? Disembodiment? Megalomania? I'm proud to say that Keith Burgess-Jackson has never—until this very moment, and only for purposes of illustration—used the third person.

Should the third year of law school be abolished? See here for a debate. Speaking of law school, I heard a good line the other day. During the first year of law school, they scare you to death. During the second year, they work you to death. During the third year, they bore you to death. I was definitely scared during my first year, and I was often bored during my third year, but I don't recall working any harder during the second year. I worked hard all the time.

Addendum: While we're on the subject of lawyers, please tell me (in the comments section) your best lawyer jokes. In my experience, lawyers enjoy lawyer jokes. I'll get it started. What's the difference between a dead snake in the middle of the road and a dead lawyer in the middle of the road? Answer: The snake has skid marks in front of it. Okay, one more. What's black and brown and looks good on a lawyer? Answer: A Doberman.

In our day, . . . religion is a spent force. If God is not dead, he is ebbing away, and has been since the early part of the century. We have, in Jonathan Swift’s coruscating words, “just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love one another”—or, enough to make us see the flaws and cankers of the society around us but not enough to generate hope for the future. Just as religion has seriously waned, so have most of the systems of thought which for a time served intellectuals as surrogates. There aren’t many today who find either Spencer’s First Cause or Marx’s Dialectic convincing. Already in the West Freudianism and Marxism have lost most of the status each enjoyed a century ago. The same acids which weakened the fabric of religious belief beginning in the late nineteenth century have remained on the scene long enough to weaken the fabrics of secular faiths.

The acids I refer to have taken a large toll in the twentieth century. Philosophy, the sovereign discipline in Western thought for two and a half millennia, scarcely exists today in any sense that would be recognizable by our ancestors. It remained strong for three or four decades in this century. Royce, James, Dewey, and Russell were household names. We have none such today. Who at this moment would have the slightest interest in what a living philosopher had to say on any subject, cosmological, moral, political, or social? Philosophers have been dislodged by other influences just as theologians at the beginning of our century were being dislodged by philosophers.

(Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress [New York: Basic Books, 1980], 353-4)

Here are the longest-serving chief justices of the United States:

John Marshall (1801-1835)
Roger B. Taney (1836-1864)
Melville W. Fuller (1888-1910)
William H. Rehnquist (1986-2005)
Warren E. Burger (1969-1986)
Earl Warren (1953-1969)
Morrison R. Waite (1874-1888)
Charles Evans Hughes (1930-1941)
Edward Douglass White (1910-1921)
William Howard Taft (1921-1930)
Salmon P. Chase (1864-1873)
Frederick Moore Vinson (1946-1953)

Source: The United States Supreme Court, 2005

I'm 48 years old. There have been only three chief justices in my lifetime: Earl Warren, Warren E. Burger, and William H. Rehnquist. John Roberts will be the fourth—and perhaps the last. I hope I see a fifth chief justice and I hope Justice Roberts serves for three decades, for that would get me to 78 years of age. I can do a lot of damage in three decades.

Twice a week, as many of you know, I put up a post entitled “Bush-Hatin’ Paul,” in which, not to be delicate about it, I skewer Paul Krugman. Perhaps it’s mean of me to do this, even if he deserves it. Perhaps if I can’t say anything nice about him, I shouldn’t say anything at all. But I’m a philosopher, and that entitles me to think and write philosophically about his columns. What exactly is he doing?

A cynic would say that he’s ranting. Some leftists, such as Brian Leiter, admit that their blogs are nothing but rants, devoid of intellectual content. Leiter says he has no intention of persuading anyone of anything, and I’m sure he hasn’t. While it’s refreshing to hear him admit this, it makes his blog pointless. Only those who already share his opinions and take comfort in having their prejudices confirmed bother to read it.

There are three respectable things Krugman could be doing in his columns. First, he could be conveying information. But this can’t be right, because his expertise lies in economics, and he rarely, if ever, expounds on economic matters. But suppose he did expound on economic matters. If all he is doing in his semiweekly columns is making factual assertions, then his column, with all due respect, is a waste of space. Most people have access to the facts about poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, inflation, interest rates, and so forth. They don’t need a professor of economics, much less an Ivy League professor, to provide this information to them, especially in the age of the Internet. I might add that when Krugman does make factual assertions, he gets things wrong more often than right. His errors (and his unwillingness to correct them) are well documented.

Second, he could be explaining things. Economics is a social science, after all (albeit a dismal one), and scientists are in the business of explanation. But explanation is comparative, not absolute. How often has Krugman set two or more explanations of some economic phenomenon side by side and showed that one of them is superior to the other according to the criteria that are accepted by economists? I frankly can’t recall him doing this even once. His “explanations” are dogmatic assertions, with no supporting evidence or argument. Surely his readers deserve better than this, if explanation is his game.

Third, he could be trying to persuade his readers. Persuasion involves drawing out the implications of what is already believed or accepted by one’s interlocutor(s). If I wish to persuade you to accept some evaluative proposition, such as that President Bush’s tax cuts should be repealed, I must show you that it follows from at least one evaluative proposition you already accept, together with certain factual propositions you accept. If you don’t accept my evaluative premise, then there is no chance that you will be induced thereby to accept my evaluative conclusion. I will be begging the question against you. Nor, in case you’re wondering, can an evaluative conclusion follow from a set, however large, of nonevaluative premises. (This is Hume’s Law: no “ought” from an “is.”)

For the life of me, I can’t remember a single instance in which Krugman tried to show his readers that, from some evaluative premise they already accept (a moral principle, for example), some further evaluative premise follows from it. But if this is so, then he’s not trying to persuade his readers. Or if he is trying to persuade them, he doesn’t understand the nature of persuasion.

So what is Krugman doing? I honestly don’t know. He has a lot of scurrilous things to say about President Bush, which leads me to believe that he hates the man (hence the title of my posts); and he has nothing but disdain for anyone associated with the Bush administration, the Republican party, religious organizations, and the business community. He appears to be rallying the leftist troops. Not persuading them, for, as I said, he never makes his evaluative assumptions explicit—just rallying them.

Krugman appeals to emotion rather than reason. He tries to move rather than persuade. In short, he’s a demagogue (“a political agitator appealing to the basest instincts of a mob”). This, to a philosopher, is anathema, and I would expect even leftist philosophers (although not Leiter, who has taken leave of reason) to condemn Krugman for appealing to emotion rather than to reason. That they don’t do so shows that they are leftists first and philosophers second—which is to say, not really philosophers.

Everyone, even meat eaters, should oppose factory farming. Here is a cause everyone can get behind.

It’s a virtual certainty that Judge John G. Roberts Jr will be confirmed as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. The only question is how many votes he will get. Some pundits believe that Democrats will vote as a bloc against his confirmation, the reasoning being that this will send a signal to President Bush that anyone more conservative than Roberts will be difficult to seat. I have a different view. I think Democrats would love nothing more than to thwart a Bush nomination. It will rally the leftist troops and help raise money for future battles. The best way to thwart a Bush nomination is for Democrats to vote for Judge Roberts. Suppose the final tally in the Senate as a whole is 77-23. This (the reasoning goes) will embolden President Bush to choose a conservative successor to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. But then, like panthers in the dark, Democrats will pounce. If even a handful of Republicans join them, they can defeat a nominee without having to resort to a filibuster. So here’s my prediction. Judge Roberts will be confirmed by a vote of 77-23. All 55 Republicans and 22 of the Democrats—almost half of them—will vote for him.

Here, courtesy of Democratic Underground, are The Top 10 Conservative Idiots. I keep hoping I make the list. To be called an idiot by leftist loons like these would be a high compliment.

9-19-85 Thursday. In terms of my career goals and training, today was a milestone. I conducted my first trial of any kind—a D.U.I. [Driving Under the Influence] trial before Judge Bram J. Goldman of Tucson City Court. The trial took all day and resulted in two “guilty” verdicts against my client, Thomas B. I’m disappointed, of course, because as the trial progressed I became increasingly optimistic about our chances, but it was not to be. The jury deliberated for about a half hour before rendering its verdict. Tom was pleased with my representation. Since sentencing was postponed for nearly a month, we don’t know whether Tom will be sentenced to do any jail time. He could have pleaded to a “D” sentence, which involves no jail time, so I suspect that Judge Goldman will be just as lenient. As we parted, under darkening skies near the City-Court Building, Tom shook my hand and said, “You did a great job.” That, as you may expect, made it all worthwhile.

George Dunscomb sat at the defense table with me during the entire trial. I was glad to have him along, in case something went awry, but it undoubtedly added to my nervousness. My opening statement was given in a broken and shaky voice. By the time closing argument came around, however, I was more at ease with the situation. I summarized the facts of the case, explained the structure of my argument to the jury, and urged them to return a verdict of “not guilty” against my client. Mike Anderson, the prosecutor, was congenial during the trial, and almost as nervous as I was. George helped me several times by passing notes across the table, and once, with the jury out of the courtroom, he and I made a joint presentation to the judge. The state failed to call an expert witness to the stand to relate the intoxilyzer results to the time of driving, and this, arguably, constitutes an insufficient foundation for admission of the results. George and I cited several nonArizona cases in support of our position.

Cross-examination of the state’s witnesses was fun. At first, I simply asked question after question about various aspects of the case, but after a while I became more probing, more incisive. I tried to bring out the fact that the police officers arrived on the scene well after my client and his friend had hung their car up on a driveway culvert. This time lag, I later argued to the jury, made the intoxilyzer results unreliable. Since the state did not call a criminalist (the person who maintains the intoxilyzer machine and describes it for the jury), I did not have to ask technical questions about breath-to-blood ratios or relative absorption/elimination rates. All in all, today’s trial was an informative and exciting experience. I honestly believe that with the first trial under my belt, the others will be much easier. I hope to be a trial veteran by this time next year.

Immediately after the jury rendered its verdict, I drove to the university to attend my Ethics seminar. Each week we are required to draft two pages of notes and comments on the week’s readings, but because of the trial I was unable to do so. I turned in a note, instead, explaining to Allen Buchanan that I had been in trial all day. He probably didn’t even know that I was a lawyer, let alone a practicing lawyer. What a difference it was, sitting in a seminar instead of a tense courtroom! I’ve remarked on the diversity of my life before, but today the contrast was striking. From trying to persuade a group of six common persons of my client’s innocence (Tom’s blood-alcohol content, by the way, was .18%, nearly twice the legal maximum [of .10%]), I went to trying to convince graduate students and a professor of my philosophical views. What a weird life I lead!

Read this. Then see here and here. There is nothing that Paul Krugman* won't say or do to try to make President Bush look bad. All he succeeds in doing is making himself look silly.

* "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).

Ann Althouse is a law professor. In this op-ed column, she shows that she doesn't understand constitutional interpretation. The norms that a judge brings to bear in resolving a constitutional case must come from the Constitution, not from the judge's personal morality and certainly not from foreign countries. There's nothing wrong with a judge quoting from a poem, so long as the poem doesn't provide the operative norms.

To the Editor:

"Still Eating Our Lunch," by Thomas L. Friedman (column, Sept. 16):

For years, we have heard how our children rank about dead last among industrialized countries when it comes to math and science skills.

As an engineer, I am aware that our colleges and universities graduate an ever-increasing number of foreign students, especially at the graduate level, where American students are a rare species indeed.

Innovation born of science and engineering is the key to our continued prosperity. It is a shame that at a time when we should be doing all we can to promote our students' interest in science and math, our government has instead engaged in a self-destructive war on science in favor of religious teachings.

Continue on this course of action and the rest of the world will indeed eat our lunch—worse yet, our lunch will have been earned by working for them!

Luis Perez
New York, Sept. 16, 2005

Here.

Success, n. The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows. In literature, and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are exceedingly simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines by the reverend Father Gassilasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious reason, "John A. Joyce."

The bard who would prosper must carry a book,
Do his thinking in prose and wear
A crimson cravat, a far-away look
And a head of hexameter hair.
Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;
If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.

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

There were two bike rallies yesterday, one in Greenville (east of Dallas) and one in Mansfield (south of Arlington). I’ve been to Greenville many times, and always enjoyed it, but this year I opted for the closer rally. I was able to sleep until 5:55 instead of rising at 5:05. At that hour, every minute counts. I also saved on gasoline, which is important in these days of three-dollar-a-gallon gas. Instead of driving 77.2 miles, I drove 17.8.

The Mansfield rally, called “Bike Your Brains Out,” is in its fourth year. The course was over familiar roads. I couldn’t believe when I looked at the map that the rally organizers were sending us up Cedar Hill. It’s a brutal climb, one I used to do every Thursday when I lived in Grand Prairie. The organizers then sent us down Dead Possum Hill (not its official name) and back up Lake Ridge Parkway. Take my word for it: That’s a lot of climbing. I pictured people walking their bikes up Cedar Hill. In fact, when the pack I was in reached the hill, it disintegrated. Some of the remnants rejoined at the top, but it was never the same. I got to the top ahead of most of the others, but not without a lot of huffing and puffing. I noticed that when I got to the top, I was able to go much faster than those who had beat me, which tells me that my powers of recovery are better than theirs. Not that it’s a competition or anything, but it made me feel good. (My resting heart rate this past Wednesday was 45, which is three beats lower than my age.)

As usual, my goals for the day were to have fun and stay safe. I accomplished both. The first hour was my best, in terms of speed. I covered 19.88 miles. After that, I rode alone, listening to music on my Rio Karma. I covered 16.82 miles the second hour (lots of climbing), 17.42 the third hour, and averaged 17.54 miles per hour for the final 34:20. All told, I averaged 17.96 miles per hour for 64.16 miles. (I ended up with 65.5 miles, counting warm-up and cool-down riding.) If you read my rally report of a week ago (see here), you know that I just missed 18 miles per hour. I ended up with 17.97. As incredible as it sounds, I fell just short again. I had 54.12 miles at the three-hour mark, and was determined to stay over 18 miles per hour for the day, but there were so many stops in the final 10 miles that I didn’t make it. Oh well, at least I rode almost five miles farther than a week ago at roughly the same speed. And it’s not as though this course was less hilly. It was much hillier.

The weather was gorgeous. It’s been hot this month, but it was quite mild at the start, with a sunny sky. By the time I finished, shortly before noon, it had gotten hot. (The official high for the day at DFW Airport was 96° Fahrenheit.) I was glad to be done. I keep telling myself that the heat can’t last, but it sure seems determined to hang around. Yesterday’s rally was my 21st of the year and my 365th overall. There are at least five to go. My top speed for the day was 45.7 miles per hour, reached on the descent of Cedar Hill. (We got to go down what we had earlier climbed.) I thought I had hit 50, but I guess there was enough of a headwind to keep me from it. Then again, maybe it’s because I weigh less. Some of you will recall that I’m on a diet. On 1 July, I weighed 177 pounds, the most I’ve ever seen. This morning, I weighed 160. I’ve lost 17 pounds in 11 weeks simply by monitoring my caloric intake. I began by limiting myself to 2,000 calories a day. About a month into the diet, when I saw that I was losing weight fast, I increased the limit to 2,100 calories. Now that I’ve reached my goal, I’ll increase my caloric intake gradually until I stabilize at 160 pounds. Please note that everything else in my life, including exercise, has been held constant. It’s all in the calories.

Spaniard Roberto Heras, who served as Lance Armstrong's lieutenant for several years, has won his fourth Tour of Spain. See here. Heras has dominated this event for the past seven years, finishing third once, second once, and first four times. His average speed this year was 25.31 miles per hour. His margin of victory over Russian Denis Menchov was 4:36. Congratulations, Roberto!

The philosopher does not discover new facts. His concern is our everyday view with its common landmarks, duty, obedience, law, desire. He does not set out, as the scientist does, grasping his compass, towards lands no man has trod, nor return thence bearing strange treasures and stranger tales. He is rather to be pictured ascending the tower of some great cathedral, such as St Stephen’s, Vienna. As he goes up the spiral stairway, the common and particular details of life, the men and tramcars, shrink to invisibility and the big landmarks shake themselves clear. Little windows open at his elbow with widening views. There is conscience; over there is duty; there is conscience again looking quite different from this new level; now he is high enough to see law and liberty from one window. And ever there haunts him the vision of the summit, where there is a little room with windows all round, where he may recover his breath and see the view as a whole, and the Schottenkirche and the Palace of Justice in their true relative proportions, and where that gargoyle (determinism, was it?) which loomed in on him so menacingly at one stage in his ascent shall have shrunk to the speck that it is.

We shall be told that no one reaches the top. A philosopher who ceases to climb does so only because he gets tired; and he remains crouched against some staircase window, commanding but a dusty and one-sided view at best, obstinately proclaiming to the crowds below, who do not listen, that he is at the summit and can see the whole city. That may be so. Yet the climb itself is not without merit for those whose heads can stand the height and the circling of the rising spiral; and, even at the lowest windows, one is above the smoke and can see proportions more clearly so that men and tramcars can never look quite the same again.

(J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2d ed. [London: Hutchinson University Library, 1967 (1st ed. 1948)], 11-2)

Here is a story about beautiful and historic Oxford University. I envy those who were able to study at Oxford.

9-18-85 Happy birthday, Mom! It’s hard to believe that Mom is fifty-one years old. To me, she is still young and vivacious. I can’t imagine her doing anything slowly. For example, when Mom walks, as to a grocery store, she walks fast. There are few wasted motions. She can whip up a full-course meal in a matter of minutes, organize a complex event—such as a fishing trip—without mishap, and brag a person up or tear a person down with a few well-placed sentences. I can’t imagine Mom being incapacitated or ill. She’s always been the strongest member of our family—if not physically, then mentally. I’ve learned a lot from her over the years. Thanks, Mom, for taking such good care of me. Some day, when you are in need, I’ll be there to take care of you, too.

By the time Wednesday morning rolls around each week, I’m ready to leave academia behind for a couple of days and focus exclusively on representing criminal defendants. On Monday I teach logic in the morning and attend a two-and-a-half hour seminar on ethics [taught by Allen Buchanan] in the evening. On Tuesday I work on my papers and readings in the morning and attend a seminar on philosophy of law [taught by Fred Berger] in the afternoon. On Wednesday morning I teach logic again, but after that I concentrate on law for two solid days—until Friday morning. Oddly enough, by then, I’m tired of the practicality of law and ready to go back to academia. I spend my weekends reading, writing, and thinking, as well as taking care of the necessities of life, such as buying groceries and paying bills. Today, for a change, the temperature was low: seventy degrees [Fahrenheit]. I enjoyed the respite from the heat.

Here, for your Sunday reading pleasure, is John Hospers's essay "Freedom and Democracy."

Speaking of political correctness (see the previous post), here is Dr John J. Ray's latest post at Political Correctness Watch. John has been keeping track of leftist lunacy for some time.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Jesse Jackson and other self-proclaimed "leaders" of African-Americans say that using "refugee" to describe those displaced by Hurricane Katrina is racist. (How could it be, when it's being applied to whites as well as blacks?) But now those who count as refugees in Jackson's lingo—those who have had to leave their homeland for fear of persecution—are offended. See here. There is no surer sign of the lunacy of political correctness (and of those who subscribe to it) than that, no matter what one says or does, one offends someone. How long will it be before muteness is mandatory? Or maybe it will be only white males (or white conservative males) who must remain silent. After all, we're the evil ones.

To the Editor:

Re "Vatican to Check U.S. Seminaries on Gay Presence" (front page, Sept. 15):

A faithful Catholic, I have worked for the Catholic Church for more than 20 years.

Yes, there is a disproportionately high number of gay priests compared with the general population. But the way to address this imbalance, and perhaps to reverse the downward spiral of vocations to the priesthood, is not to crack down on gay men in our seminaries.

Rather, it is for the church to re-examine its teachings about human sexuality.

As long as the church demands priestly celibacy in our hypersexualized culture, we will continue disproportionately to draw seminarians from the part of the population whose sexual relationships are not sanctioned.

Let's not have a modern-day witch hunt targeting gay men in our seminaries.

Margaret Caldwell
Mequon, Wis., Sept. 16, 2005
The writer is liturgy and music director of Lumen Christi Church.

This editorial opinion cracks me up. The editors of The New York Times, in their infinite wisdom, say that John Roberts should be rejected as a Supreme Court nominee. Why? Not because he's stupid (he's brilliant). Not because he lacks judicial temperament (he has perfect judicial temperament). Not because he's inexperienced (he has vast legal and political experience). Not because he lacks a facility with words (he's a superb writer). Not because he has personal peccadilloes (the left-wing slime machine has come up with nothing). Because he's not liberal. Roberts confronts a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose dilemma. If he provides specifics about his judicial philosophy or personal values, he gives his critics the rope they need to hang him. If he remains mum on these matters, he's too much of a risk to put on the Court. I have some advice for liberals: Elect a president; then you'll get Supreme Court justices of your choosing. Oops! I forgot. To elect a president, liberals have to have good ideas.

The right to privacy is a constitutional disgrace. See here for Robert P. George's op-ed column on the topic.

Trinity, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually their claims to adoration and propitiation. The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the latter.

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

Here.

Here.

Brian Leiter's vindictiveness knows no bounds. See here. If the future resembles the past, Leiter will (1) write to me to demand that I remove this post (with the vague threat of retaliation if I don't), (2) have one of his henchmen (before, it was Leslie Green) try to persuade me to remove it, (3) call me names in his blog for allowing my readers to post comments about him (he has done that to Eugene Volokh and others), and (4) contact the general counsel of the University of Texas system to complain about me. Leiter fancies himself the gatekeeper of the professions of law and philosophy. In fact, he is the laughingstock of both. I have never met anyone who thinks he is anything other than a buffoon. Of course, nobody dares to say this, for Leiter will try to destroy his or her career. Just look at what he is doing to the graduate student who had the audacity to criticize him.

Addendum: Elephants in Academia has linked to my post. See here. I've had some harsh things to say about anonymous blogging, but I'm starting to think that this principled position plays into the hands of thugs such as Leiter, who has a well-connected band of henchmen to intimidate those who dare challenge him. I hope other tenured professors of law and philosophy join me in exposing Leiter's underhanded techniques. Please send me your links. Perhaps if he knows that his bullying will be exposed on my blog (which is approaching 1,000 visits a day), he will begin to act like a professor instead of a thug.

Addendum 2: If I were the graduate student on whose blog Leiter left the threatening comment, I would contact the Austin Police Department. Leiter appears to be in violation of Texas Penal Code section 42.07(a)(2), which provides as follows:

§ 42.07. HARASSMENT. (a) A person commits an offense if, with intent to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, or embarrass another, he: . . . (2) threatens, by telephone, in writing, or by electronic communication, in a manner reasonably likely to alarm the person receiving the threat, to inflict bodily injury on the person or to commit a felony against the person, a member of his family or household, or his property; . . .

I would not tolerate threats from this man; nor should anyone else.

9-17-85 Tuesday. At one time, I was able to make decisions on the basis of whether or not I would feel guilty. For instance, in deciding whether to spend an additional two hours reading my law casebooks, I would ask whether, if I didn’t, I would feel guilty. If the answer was “yes,” then I would probably spend the time reading. If the answer was “no,” then I would do something else, such as play tennis, play guitar, or watch a sporting event or movie. Now, in contrast, the question that I ask myself is not whether I will feel guilty by doing A rather than B, but rather, how much guilt I will feel. I have reached the sad state in which, no matter what I do, I feel guilty for not doing something else. If I spend an evening reading philosophical articles, I feel guilty for not cleaning my apartment and not catching up on my journal entries and correspondence (among other things). If I spend an evening drafting journal entries or letters, I feel guilty for not reading. If I’m doing either one of these things, I feel guilty for not researching and writing scholarly manuscripts. The list could go on and on. It would seem that I can’t win.

I hasten to add that my guilt is not religious in nature, or moral. It is guilt at not fulfilling all of my expectations. As I’ve said on other occasions, I’m a goal-oriented person. I’m also a perfectionist. So when I want to do several things at once, I feel guilty at choosing one of them rather than the others. My main goal is to take a Ph.D. degree in philosophy. This entails that I take at least two courses at the university. But I also want to teach, so that requires that I cut down on my hours of work at the law firm. The law practice, finally, places great demands on my time and energy, with the result that I am pulled in several directions at once. If I were to let up for even a moment, I would fall behind in my work and eventually fail to achieve my goals. Guilt keeps me on the straight and narrow. It is as if a little person sits on my shoulder, whispering in my ear when I take too long to ride my bike on Sunday or spend more than an hour a day watching the news or reading the newspaper. But at least I’m aware of what drives me. So long as I reach my goals, I will not complain about feeling guilty. It works. [I had all the makings of becoming a utilitarian. Amazingly, I didn’t.]

To the Editor:

The president's speech on Thursday night was a transparent effort to redeem himself in the eyes of all caring Americans, who were shocked at his tardy and disorganized response to Katrina.

Yet what disturbs me most is the absence of fiscal responsibility.

Apparently, he plans to do what he does best: bequeath the cost to posterity. Enough is enough!

Congress has the power of the purse and should use it to repeal the Bush tax cuts and progressively raise taxes. Cutting taxes, as a tool to stimulate economic growth, is a deceitful notion unless such reductions in revenue are accompanied by cuts in spending.

The national outcry for government to help alleviate suffering and foster recovery makes a mockery of the premise that government itself is a problem and that we should "starve the beast."

This government is ours, and this disaster occurred in our time. It is our responsibility to shoulder the burdens that must now be borne.

Neal Monroe Adams
Brookfield, Conn., Sept. 16, 2005

Here.

Refusal, n. Denial of something desired; as an elderly maiden's hand in marriage, to a rich and handsome suitor; a valuable franchise to a rich corporation, by an alderman; absolution to an impenitent king, by a priest, and so forth. Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.

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

Here is Peg Kaplan's moving tribute to her teacher, John Dolan. The discipline of philosophy has lost a good man. Here is Dr Dolan's tribute to the great British philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe.

Addendum: It may not be inappropriate to link to this quotation from Aristotle. I suspect Peg will concur with its sentiments.

Here is Tom Graffagnino's latest poem.

Look at this example of the hypocrisy of environmentalists. Why is it so difficult to practice what you preach?

Today is Constitution Day. Here is UTA President James D. Spaniolo's column about the importance—and continuing relevance—of our founding document. President Spaniolo is an attorney.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition is crossing the Bitterroot Mountains, which form part of the boundary between Montana and Idaho. It's only mid-September, but winter has arrived with a vengeance in the mountains. The party is cold, wet, tired, and hungry. More than six inches of snow fell during the course of the day. The route is steep and treacherous. Yesterday, a horse carrying William Clark's trunk and writing desk slipped and rolled to the bottom of the hill, smashing the desk. The horse, miraculously, survived. Another horse was not so lucky. After the party camped for the evening, a colt was killed for food, since there was no game on the mountain. Here are the spine-tingling journal entries for this date. Here is a famous painting (by John Clymer) of the passage. Here is a painting of Old Toby, the Shoshone man who guided the Corps of Discovery through the mountains. Here is a photograph from a recent reenactment.

According to a report on the website of The New York Times, President Bush announced today that he would not seek a tax hike to fund the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. Good for him. Then I read this:

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., questioned whether Bush would pursue his tax-cutting agenda in the face of mounting hurricane costs. "Does the White House want to stick the reservists and soldiers coming home to a devastated Gulf Coast with the tab for reconstruction, or will he table his quest for special interest tax giveaways?"

Tax giveaways? The language is revealing. I can give something away only if it is mine. In the twisted thinking of leftists such as Kerry, not taking money from people is giving it to them. Thank god this cretin was defeated in his bid for the presidency. Either he's too stupid to realize where tax monies come from, in which case he isn't fit to be a senator, much less president, or he has no conception of private property, in which case he isn't fit to be a senator, much less president.

I'm sorry I missed this "debate." Did anyone see it? By the way, I admire Christopher Hitchens. I'm still puzzled and disturbed by his vicious attack on Ronald Reagan shortly after The Gipper's death a year ago. Given that Reagan and Hitchens share a worldview (even if Hitchens acquired it late), I can only conclude that Hitchens felt personally slighted by the president. In other words, there's something going on of which I'm unaware. It can't be the fact that President Reagan was religious, because George W. Bush is far more religious than President Reagan was and Hitchens has said favorable things about President Bush. Nor can it be that President Reagan was stupid, for he wasn't. His "stupidity" was a leftist myth designed to make leftists look intelligent by comparison. Can anybody shed light on this?

I love this woman. By the way, think twice before you conclude that the United States Supreme Court should look to foreign countries for constitutional guidance. The French and Belgians eat horses. Should we? Most European countries think capital punishment is barbaric. To the contrary, capital punishment demonstrates respect for innocent human life, without which civilization would be impossible. It's no accident that two of the greatest thinkers in history, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), supported capital punishment. Kant was a deontologist and Mill a consequentialist. Both were liberals. If I had had the misfortune to be born in Europe, I would have swum to the United States at the earliest opportunity. This is the greatest nation in the history of the world—morally, legally, and politically. Those Americans who disagree with me on the point are free to leave at any time. I'll be happy to subsidize your emigration.

Paul Krugman*, to my knowledge, has never said anything favorable about President Bush or the Bush administration, from which one must infer either (1) that he hates President Bush (which prevents him from seeing straight) or (2) that President Bush is rotten to the core. You'll have to decide which of those disjuncts is most likely. It's gotten to the point where Krugman can't wait for President Bush to act before criticizing him. He anticipates the president's actions and criticizes them. See here. Krugman is a walking joke. Twice a week, he proves that intelligence is compatible with moral retardation. By the way, I agree with an entire paragraph of Krugman's column, to wit:

President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism—that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can. (He still hopes to privatize Social Security, F.D.R.'s biggest legacy.) So even his policy failures don't bother his strongest supporters: many conservatives view the inept response to Katrina as a vindication of their lack of faith in government, rather than as a reason to reconsider their faith in Mr. Bush.

I couldn't have said it better.

* "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).

Here.

To the Editor:

This Democrat is predicting that John G. Roberts Jr. is going to be one of the best Supreme Court justices from the Republican ranks that we've ever had.

I predict that my fellow liberal partisans will eventually embrace him the way we embraced Earl Warren, and that he will come to be reviled by conservative Republicans.

Judge Roberts simply exudes a judicial temperament that is opposite to that of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas or, for that matter, Robert H. Bork.

The guy is certainly not a fire-breather; he seems to really understand what being a judge is. And, as much as I'd like to see some self-confident liberals emerge and finally push back against the radical right's political hegemony, I think that the wrong side is fighting this nomination.

Terrance M. Carroll
Oakland, Calif., Sept. 15, 2005

I know a lot about computers, but not as much as some people. Most of what I know was acquired through trial and error. A few minutes ago, I called my mother (who will be 71 years old Sunday). She told me she left her computer on all night because she didn't want to lose a special website. (She collects antiques.) I told her she should put a shortcut on her desktop. She had no idea what I was talking about. I explained it. (Actually, I explained it to her long ago and thought she knew how to do it.) Then she told me that she left her computer monitor on all night. She thought that if she turned it off, the website would disappear. I was aghast. Her computer knowledge is as nothing compared to mine, and mine is as nothing compared to that of many others. But here's what's interesting. My knowledge of cooking is as nothing compared to Mom's.

Digestion, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead—a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.

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

I learned the value of a cellphone yesterday. My friend Wendell Hawkins and I were to meet a former student of mine, Carlos, on campus, from which we would go to the Ballpark in Arlington to watch the Texas Rangers play the Seattle Mariners. Hawk and I knew where to meet, but I mistakenly told Carlos to meet us in the parking lot across from Pachl Hall. My bad. What I thought was Pachl Hall is Trinity Hall. Pachl Hall was demolished several years ago. Hawk and I waited in my car for 20 minutes, then drove around campus hoping to find Carlos. Finally, about 30 minutes after the designated meeting time, we gave up and headed for the ballpark. As it turns out, Carlos was waiting for us near Pickard Hall, a few blocks from where we waited. Had I had a cellphone, I could have contacted Carlos, found out where he was, and picked him up. While this makes me appreciate the value of a cellphone, I still have no desire to obtain one. From now on, I'll be more careful in giving directions. Sorry, Carlos. I'll make it up to you.

To the Editor:

Re "President Says He's Responsible in Storm Lapses" (front page, Sept. 14):

President Bush claims that he takes responsibility for any failures of the federal government in its response to Hurricane Katrina. But does the president really know what taking responsibility means?

It means fully financing government services like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers and putting responsible, qualified people in charge of them.

It means restoring financing for education, Medicaid and environmental protection. It means not cutting or privatizing Social Security.

It means taking drastic actions to help stop global warming. It means universal health insurance and health care. It means talking meaningfully about race in this country. It means rolling back tax breaks for rich people and corporations.

It means requiring everyone to shoulder the burden. It means keeping your promises to provide safety for the nation. It means getting out of the Iraq disaster. It means recognizing that government is here to help people, not hurt them.

So let's see if the president really takes responsibility. His history certainly doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Paula Berinstein
Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Sept. 14, 2005

Here.

You have every letter you ever received, and a copy of every letter you ever sent.

Halo, n. Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre, or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.

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

Ever wonder why I chose a career in academia over a career in law? See here. Note the long-term trends. (Thanks to Donald Luskin for the link.)

Addendum: Note the position of journalists. By trying to be players, they lose credibility, respectability, authoritativeness, and, ultimately, prestige. This is an instantiation of Keith's Law. The only way journalism will regain prestige is by ruthlessly policing its members. If I were a journalist, I would condemn those of my colleagues who abuse the profession by trying to change the world rather than describe it. Journalists ("media") are intermediaries. Their job is to go between the world and their readers/listeners/viewers, i.e., to bring the world to their audience. It is not to manipulate the audience. It is not to bring down governments. It is not to influence votes.

Liberal sexual morality which denies that marriage is inherently heterosexual necessarily supposes that the value of sex must be instrumental either to procreation or to pleasure, considered, in turn, as an end-in-itself or as a means of expressing affection, tender feelings, etc. Thus, proponents of the liberal view suppose that homosexual sex acts are indistinguishable from heterosexual acts whenever the motivation for such acts is something other than procreation. The sexual acts of homosexual partners, that is to say, are indistinguishable in motivation, meaning, value, and significance from the marital acts of spouses who know that at least one spouse is temporarily or permanently infertile. Thus, the liberal argument goes, traditional matrimonial law is guilty of unfairness in treating sterile heterosexuals as capable of marrying while treating homosexual partners as ineligible to marry.

Stephen Macedo has accused the traditional view and its defenders of precisely this alleged “double standard.” He asks:

What is the point of sex in an infertile marriage? Not procreation: the partners (let us assume) know that they are infertile. If they have sex, it is for pleasure and to express their love, or friendship, or some other shared good. It will be for precisely the same reason that committed, loving gay couples have sex.

But Macedo’s criticism fails to tell against the traditional view because it presupposes as true precisely what the traditional view denies, namely, that the value (and, thus, the point) of sex in marriage can only be instrumental. On the contrary, it is a central tenet of the traditional view that the value (and point) of sex is the intrinsic good of marriage itself which is actualized in sexual acts which unite spouses biologically and, thus, interpersonally. The traditional view rejects the instrumentalization of sex (and, thus, of the bodies of sexual partners) to any extrinsic end. This does not mean that procreation and pleasure are not rightly sought in marital acts; it means merely that they are rightly sought when they are integrated with the basic good and justifying point of marital sex, namely, the one-flesh union of marriage itself.

(Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001], 81-2 [italics in original; endnote omitted])

Bicycling is a beautiful sport. Look at these images from today's stage of the Tour of Spain. (The images are clickable.)

My friend Joe sent this (click to enlarge):

Why do people lie when they describe themselves on dating services? Do they think they'll get away with it?

Here.

I see that one of your readers has decided to prove my point. For example, "Mindy" posted this comment to my letter:

Maybe that guy (or girl, whatever) shouldn't publicize his vegeteranism so much to his coworkers if he can't take their potential comments.

Clearly "Mindy" lacks even basic reading comprehension—even when faced with a short, simple letter, Mindy can't keep from adding an assumption that's not even there. My letter made it clear that I don't push, i.e. "publicize," my views to anyone at work. Rather, they go out of their way to bait me and bother me about it when all I want is to do my job and shut up.

Millions of vegetarians report the same thing. It's always the doughy, meat-eating people at the table who start making cracks about your diet. "So why don't you eat cheese? Didn't God put animals on earth for our benefit? I could never eat that way. Where do you get your protein?" And so on, and so on, even though I've worked with these people for almost 5 years, have been a vegetarian the whole time, and have never initiated conversations about my diet or theirs, ever.

Mindy's response is exactly the kind of moronic bilge I was complaining about. The world is full of people like Mindy who can't even represent the most simple statement without contorting it into a straw person. These are the clear-thinking, "well-informed" people who vote in our system of "democracy" (for more on the failures of democracy, see Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe). How can you stand it? I guess I should be glad the "Comments" feature never worked on my blog and I never got around to fixing it.

I'm trying to follow Epictetus's advice of not worrying about things that you can't control, such as other people's stupidity and verbal abuse. Or, as Nathaniel Branden says to tell ourselves, "It's not what they think; it's what I know. What I know is more important than a mistaken belief in someone else's mind."

And yet it's quite a challenge not to get annoyed. For better or for worse, our human nature is such that it bothers us when other people misrepresent what we say or, like a peacock, proudly display their rainbow array of dimness, insecurity, and hypocrisy. Rational, self-interested people should be able to cast these things aside as irrelevant to their pursuit of happiness. But we're all too human, aren't we?

[Name withheld by request.]

To the Editor:

"Move Over, Doc, the Guests Can't See the Baby" (front page, Sept. 11) is deeply disturbing if this is a new trend.

I believe that the families you feature are an aberration, and I do not recommend that extended family be present at a delivery unless they have been prepared to understand the process of natural birth.

I had my parents and brother there (eating Chinese take-out food), and it felt as if they were watching my husband and me have sex. I wanted to have an unmediated natural birth and found it impossible to keep the environment tranquil and myself focused on relaxing and letting go to give birth with all of them eating, watching TV and worrying about my pain and chatting as if they were at a sports event.

Let's respect birth as a sacred event for women and not turn it into a spectator sport to be coached or gawked at during one of life's most intimate moments.

Ruth Callahan
New York, Sept. 11, 2005

Two people sent a link to this essay about the scientific study of moral thinking. I appreciate receiving links like this from readers of my blogs. Obviously, I can't find everything, so it helps to have "extra" eyes and ears.

By the way, here's how I explain things to my students. There are two types of reasoning: theoretical (that which issues in belief) and practical (that which issues in action). There are two types of study of reasoning: empirical (descriptive) and normative (prescriptive). This generates four categories:

1. The empirical study of theoretical reasoning.

2. The normative study of theoretical reasoning.

3. The empirical study of practical reasoning.

4. The normative study of practical reasoning.

Categories 1 and 3 (the empirical studies) are the province of cognitive science (which includes, but is not limited to, psychology). Categories 2 and 4 (the normative studies) are the province of philosophy, the core of which is logic. Moral philosophers are concerned with category 4. Epistemologists and philosophers of science are concerned with category 2. The essay to which I linked is concerned with category 3.

Here.

Fly-Speck, n. The prototype of punctuation. It is observed by Garvinus that the systems of punctuation in use by the various literary nations depended originally upon the social habits and general diet of the flies infesting the several countries. These creatures, which have always been distinguished for a neighborly and companionable familiarity with authors, liberally or niggardly embellish the manuscripts in process of growth under the pen, according to their bodily habit, bringing out the sense of the work by a species of interpretation superior to, and independent of, the writer's powers. The "old masters" of literature—that is to say, the early writers whose work is so esteemed by later scribes and critics in the same language—never punctuated at all, but worked right along free-handed, without that abruption of the thought which comes from the use of points. (We observe the same thing in children to-day, whose usage in this particular is a striking and beautiful instance of the law that the infancy of individuals reproduces the methods and stages of development characterizing the infancy of races.) In the work of these primitive scribes all the punctuation is found, by the modern investigator with his optical instrument and chemical tests, to have been inserted by the writers' ingenious and serviceable collaborator, the common house-fly—Musca maledicta. In transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose of either making the work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever marks they find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable enhancement of the lucidity of the thought and value of the work. Writers contemporary with the copyists naturally avail themselves of the obvious advantages of these marks in their own work, and with such assistance as the flies of their own household may be willing to grant, frequently rival and sometimes surpass the older compositions, in respect at least of punctuation, which is no small glory. Fully to understand the important services that flies perform to literature it is only necessary to lay a page of some popular novelist alongside a saucer of cream-and-molasses in a sunny room and observe "how the wit brightens and the style refines" in accurate proportion to the duration of exposure.

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

I’m not a natural-born athlete. Far from it. I have the body of, well, a professor. What I lack in physique I try to make up for in hard work, intelligence, and discipline. You might say that I’m an athletic overachiever. Nine years ago today, having run only sporadically for the previous three years (at short distances), I began marathon training. On 14 September 1996, I ran three miles. My friend Joe, who had run many marathons, told me to keep my heart rate under 150 on all training runs and to gradually extend the distance. I quickly became addicted to running. As soon as one run ended, I started thinking about the next one. I must have driven my friends crazy talking about my runs. Eight days after that first run, I ran 10.1 miles with Joe. What a great feeling! As the weather cooled, I got stronger and faster. I was nervous before the marathon, because it was farther than I had ever run, but it went well.

I just ran 4.3 miles in atrocious heat and humidity. As I ran, I reflected on the past nine years. I’ve learned much about my body and my self. I’ve learned to endure pain, loneliness, and boredom. I’ve learned how to moderate my desires, how to push myself, and, not unimportantly, how to win. (I’ve won dozens of trophies and medals.) I’ve learned the meaning and value of suffering. I’ve made many friends. When I tell people that I hate running, they look at me in disbelief. “Then why do you do it?” Why does anybody do anything hard? Because it’s a challenge. Because it’s rewarding. Because it’s good for one’s health. As I like to put it, I hate running, but I love having run. (The same is true of academic writing.) In nine years, I have run 6,078.9 miles. That’s an average of 675.4 miles per year and 1.84 miles per day (taking leap years into account). With any luck, I will have nine more years of glorious suffering. Thanks, Joe!

9-13-85 Friday. While at work this afternoon, I got a telephone call from Patty Gannon, the editor of Bar Briefs. She said that she had received my third “On Writing” manuscript (dealing with redundancies), but that there was a passage in it which she found inappropriate. I had written of Justice William Rehnquist [1925-2005], a conservative, that he “uttered nonsense.” This, to me, was just a way of saying that his statement was incoherent. But Patty thought that it was a bit harsh for a “publication of the State Bar,” so she asked that the sentence be deleted from the manuscript before publication. I reluctantly agreed, after explaining that I meant no animus by the sentence. “In fact,” I said, “when I first drafted the manuscript, I thought that Justice [Harry] Blackmun [1908-1999] (a liberal) had drafted the Supreme Court’s opinion. I would have said exactly the same thing about him.” We parted on good terms. I’m glad that Patty had the courtesy to call me instead of just deleting the sentence on her own. [I must have thought that she was worried about partisanship. It seems clear in retrospect that she was worried about disrespectfulness.]

Afterward, in thinking about the implications of the call, I realized that my writing had been subtly censored. Justice Rehnquist, like Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, receives Bar Briefs every month [since both were members of the State Bar of Arizona]. Perhaps Patty thought that he’d be personally offended by my remark, or that it would somehow harm the State Bar of Arizona. I find both possibilities remote. Justice Rehnquist has been subjected to more searching criticism than being called “nonsensical,” and I see no reason for thinking that the State Bar would be offended. I, not the State Bar, wrote the column, as any lawyer must realize. But on the whole I believe that the fair thing was done in this case. I agreed to withdraw the sentence, and Patty seemed to be happy with the manuscript in all other respects. Not all forms or cases of censorship, after all, even if Patty’s actions constituted censorship, are unjustified. Perhaps this is one of them [i.e., one of the justified cases].

Odds and ends: (1) I have 109,974.6 miles on my car, a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass. The gas mileage, figured this evening, is 10.07. I paid $1.139 per gallon for unleaded gasoline. [Within the past week, I paid $3.089 per gallon for the intermediate grade of gasoline at a Shell station.] (2) The semester is already three weeks old. I’ve taught eight logic classes so far. (3) This evening I bought a new [cassette] tape, Roger Hodgson’s In The Eye Of The Storm [1984]. Hodgson is a member of the British band Supertramp, although for the moment he’s pursuing a solo career. I love his song, “Had A Dream (Sleeping With The Enemy).”

Government, n. To a liberal, an unmitigated good. To a libertarian, a necessary evil. To an anarchist, an unnecessary evil. To a Marxist, a superfluity. To a conservative, the chief hindrance to evil.

Here is an interesting image from today's stage of the Tour of Spain. As you may know, the horse was brought to North America by Spaniards. See here. It became an important part of Indian life. This gives the lie to the idea that Indians had a thriving culture before the "taint" of Europeanization.

This week's link is to Evolutionary Psychology.

Pedigree, n. The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor with a swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.

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

The albums are listed by date of release.

Alice Cooper, Killer (1971)

Deep Purple, Machine Head (1972)

Iggy and the Stooges, Raw Power (1973)
Montrose, Montrose (1973)
Queen, Queen (1973)
The Who, Quadrophenia (1973)

Aerosmith, Get Your Wings (1974)
Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Not Fragile (1974)
Kiss, Hotter Than Hell (1974)
Nazareth, Rampant (1974)
Robin Trower, Bridge of Sighs (1974)

Black Sabbath, Sabotage (1975)
Foghat, Fool for the City (1975)
Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti (1975)
Sweet, Desolation Boulevard (1975)

Boston, Boston (1976)
Starz, Starz (1976)

AC/DC, Let There Be Rock (1977)
Cheap Trick, In Color (1977)
UFO, Lights Out (1977)

Judas Priest, Hell Bent for Leather (1978)
The Babys, Head First (1978)
Van Halen, Van Halen (1978)

Ozzy Osbourne, Blizzard of Ozz (1981)

Def Leppard, Pyromania (1983)
Zebra, Zebra (1983)

Autograph, Sign in Please (1984)
Dokken, Tooth and Nail (1984)
Ratt, Out of the Cellar (1984)

ZZ Top, Afterburner (1985)

Living Colour, Vivid (1988)

Joe Satriani, Flying in a Blue Dream (1989)

No good rock-and-roll music was made after 1989.

Here.

To the Editor:

David Brooks poses this challenge: "Liberals who think this disaster is going to set off a progressive revival need to explain how a comprehensive governmental failure is going to restore America's faith in big government."

Restore faith in big government? Mr. Brooks, it is only in the years since George W. Bush assumed the presidency that faith in our government has plummeted. Americans do not trust him. Americans do not trust his merry band. Americans do not trust their motives or their strategies, at home or abroad.

And now this administration has failed Americans yet again. Our federal government is only as effective and competent as its governors. Cause and effect. The big question is whether there will be anything salvageable by 2008.

Barbara J. Miller
Eagan, Minn., Sept. 11, 2005

Should those who lost property in the hurricane have it replaced at public expense? See here.

Here.

As some of you know, The New York Times will begin charging for access to its op-ed columnists' columns on 19 September—a week from today. See here. I knew this was coming, and I've given it a lot of thought. I'm not going to subscribe. Apparently, access to the editorial opinions, news reports, and letters to the editor will remain free. I like to link to these (or, in the case of letters, reproduce them). Paul Krugman's columns should be available free via The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive, although I wouldn't be surprised if the Times tried to shut the site owner down, for he'll now be cutting into its profits. I don't read Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, or Frank Rich, so that's no loss. I rarely read Nicholas Kristof or Thomas Friedman. I'll miss John Tierney and David Brooks, but they're not worth $10 a year, much less $39.95. The Times will make no money off me.

Addendum: In case you're wondering, I read the Times not because I think it's a good newspaper (it's a very bad newspaper), but because I want to see how leftists think and act. The editorialists are viciously partisan. (One expects them to be partisan, but not viciously so.) Even the reporters, whose job is to describe the world rather than attempt to change it, are partisan. The coverage of the 2004 presidential election was rife with bias, as anyone but rabid leftists could see. Here is one of many examples of the newspaper's indifference to the truth. The editors of the Times strike me as thugs rather than as journalists. They would be perfectly at home in a totalitarian society, spewing propaganda for the government. To them, the end justifies the means.

9-12-85 . . . Pete Rose has done it. He set the all-time hit record yesterday in Cincinnati, shattering Ty Cobb’s ancient mark. Cobb finished his career with 4,191 hits, while Rose now has 4,193 hits. Rose’s nearest active rival is Rod Carew, with slightly over 3,000 hits. Isn’t that something? Rose is truly amazing. He goes to the ballpark early each day, takes batting practice with all of the other players, runs to first base when he receives a base on balls, and even dives for ground balls at first base. In yesterday’s game, in fact, Rose made a diving stop on a ground ball late in the game to secure the [Cincinnati] Reds’ 2-0 victory. Besides his record-breaking hit, a slicing drive to left-center field, Rose hit a triple down the left-field line. His Reds may not go to the World Series this year (they’re in second place, roughly ten games behind the division-leading [Los Angeles] Dodgers), but Rose has done a heck of a job as a manager this season. Who would have thought that the Reds would play even .500 baseball?

One of the great attractions of baseball, to me, is its history—the fact that it has been played for so long. In many respects, the game that is played today is unlike the game that was played in Cobb’s era. But in all important respects, it is the same. Some pitchers are still overpowering, the bases are still ninety feet apart, and it still takes a keen eye and a powerful physique to drive a ball out of the infield for a hit. Thus, it makes perfectly good sense to compare an old-time player like Cobb to a modern player like Rose. Cobb had things easier because of the lack of good relief pitchers and the fact that most games were played in the daytime, while Rose has things easier because of jet travel and modern health resources. On the whole, I suspect, things balance out. But notice: Neither I nor Rose would claim that he is the best hitter in baseball history (although a good case could be made that he is); it is now indisputable, however, that Rose has more hits than anyone else. Congratulations, Charley Hustle! [It’s a disgrace that Pete is not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Until he’s inducted, the Hall has no credibility. I will never step foot in the place until Rose is a member.]

I went to the [Pima County] jail this evening. One of my clients, a man of about thirty years [of age] who is incarcerated for theft (he walked out of a restaurant without paying for his meal), appeared to have mental problems. He forgot my questions almost as soon as I asked them, and when he did remember what I had asked, he looked at me quizzically and asked why I wanted to know. For example, I asked him if [sic; should be “whether”] he wanted to plead “no contest” to the charges; if so, I said, “we can get you out of jail tomorrow morning.” “Why do you think I want to get out of jail?” he asked, as if I were trying to corner him or something. After a while I struck up a rapport with him, and I’m still not convinced that he wasn’t faking mental illness (perhaps to remain in jail), but we did resolve a few things. The client understands that he is being held on a theft charge, he knows that theft is illegal and wrong, and he does want to leave the jail. I promised to do my best for him in negotiating a plea agreement with the prosecutor.

Hi Keith,

You once told me that, like me, you're a misanthrope. I think your exact words were, "I hate people." So do I. In fact, these days I'm finding it impossible to get through my workday because my coworkers are a bunch of stupid, ignorant, un-philosophical, amoral nincompoops. For example, they don't just "respectfully disagree" with my ethical vegetarianism, they try to bait me about it and proudly express their love of meat, cheese, and dairy and their indifference to animal suffering. And that's only the beginning. Don't get me started on their politics. Their views on government range from arrogant ultra-leftism to proud a-political ignorance and pseudo-hip relativism.

My question is this: If you really hate people as much as I do, how in blazes are you able to get through life and enjoy yourself in a world FULL of people, a world in which you HAVE to deal with those stupid, loathsome people day in and day out? Your advice would be most welcome, since my depression has hit the point where not only do I now regard ethical debate and analytic philosophy as pointless—no one is prepared to change their views anyway unless they want to—and have taken to reading Schopenhauer's works, e.g. Essays in Pessimism, in an attempt to find the comfort of a kindred outlook. If I can't have relief, then at least my misery can enjoy company. (Needless to say, I've given up my blog as a pointless waste of energy at this point.)

[Name withheld by request.]

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I'll reply to this letter soon. Stay tuned.

It doesn't pain me in the least to say that I agree with much of what Paul Krugman* says in today's New York Times column. See here. I despise nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, and every other type of preference—including racial and sexual preference—in positions of public authority. I also abhor incompetence and ineffectiveness, as everyone should. Bureaucratic agencies should be staffed by highly qualified, impartial people. Where Krugman errs is in thinking that the Bush administration invented cronyism. Ha! It's as old as the republic. But this is typical of Krugman. He sees no good in Republicans and no bad in Democrats. Imagine if he had written a different column—one without the partisanship. Instead of singling out the Bush adminstration for condemnation, he could have written a generic condemnation of cronyism, giving examples from both the Clinton years and, say, the Reagan years. But no. Krugman's partisanship is relentless, boundless, and mindless. And that's precisely why he has no effect on those who don't already share his values. Twice a week, he wastes a wonderful opportunity to engage those whose minds are open to rational persuasion.

* "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 Bill Vallicella's post about voting. See here for Ed Feser's post about sexual morality.

To the Editor:

John Tierney no doubt has nice partisan reasons for minimizing federal responsibility for the botched response to the calamity in New Orleans. But does he believe that Washington has no obligation to identify the gap between the capacities of local emergency response agencies and what will be required in case of a catastrophe affecting the entire nation? And would he apply his doctrine of strong local autonomy to the threat of terrorism as well?

Stephen Holmes
New York, Sept. 6, 2005
The writer is a professor at N.Y.U. School of Law.

I had my first departmental meeting of the semester this afternoon. Afterward, I had our work-study student, Thomas, snap a few pictures. Here are the seven members of our department, plus our wonderful secretary Billie Hughes (click to enlarge):

Miriam Byrd, who has just joined the department, is in the center. Behind her, from the left, are yours truly, Billie Hughes, Denny Bradshaw (our chair), Lewis Baker, Harry Reeder, Charlie Chiasson, and Charles Nussbaum.

James Taranto is coeditor of a book on presidential leadership. Here is his essay about President Bush.

Pigmy, n. One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only. The Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians—who are Hogmies.

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

Here.

There is a sense in which the problem of evil is a problem only for theists. The problem, so understood, consists in explaining how the god in whom the theist believes can co-exist with evil. But there’s another sense in which the problem of evil is a problem for everyone, theist and atheist alike. Let me state that version of the problem. The following propositions are inconsistent, meaning that they cannot all be true:

1. If (a) God exists and (b) God is omniscient and (c) God is omnipotent and (d) God is omnibenevolent, then there is no evil.

2. God exists.

3. God is omniscient.

4. God is omnipotent.

5. God is omnibenevolent.

6. There is evil.

Any five of these propositions entail the falsity of the sixth. Take a few seconds to satisfy yourself that this is the case.

If you want to avoid having a false belief—and I assume you do—then you must reject at least one of the six propositions. Atheists reject 2. They’re perfectly happy to admit that if God exists, then God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. But they deny God’s existence. As for theists, there are different strategies. Some reject 6. They say evil is an illusion. No theist will reject 2, as the atheist does. If push came to shove, a theist would reject 1, 3, 4, or 5, but not 2. Theists want to accept 2, 3, 4, and 5, as well as 6. So most theists reject 1. They try to show that evil is compatible (after all) with an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being, i.e., that the mere fact of evil, such as we saw in the case of Hurricane Katrina, does not preclude God’s existence.

Note: There’s nothing philosophically original in this post. But not everyone who reads this blog has had philosophical training, so I thought I’d set out the problem of evil formally in order to structure discussion. Which proposition do you reject? Remember: Everybody who wishes to avoid having a false belief has to reject at least one. I reject 1 and 2, and since 2 is false, propositions 3, 4, and 5 are either false (if they imply God’s existence) or trivially true (if they don’t imply God’s existence).

9-11-85 . . . Five years ago I wrote that Ronald Reagan [1911-2004] “scares the hell out of me.” I’m not sure what I meant by that, but I suppose that I feared the following: that Reagan would appoint only conservatives to the federal judiciary, that he would be at the forefront of efforts to enact legislation permitting voluntary school prayer and banning abortion, and that he would increase the risk of war. As I write this, none of my fears has been realized. Reagan has appointed only conservatives to the federal judiciary, and many of them at that, but this is a natural practice in our republic. Although he has pressed for voluntary school prayer and a ban on abortions, Reagan has (to date) been unsuccessful in changing the law. And finally, while the risk of war may have increased under the Reagan administration, our nation is not currently at war anywhere in the world (excluding covert CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] activities in, say, Nicaragua). On the whole, it appears that my fears of Reagan were unfounded. Less than three and a half years from now, we’ll have a new president.

Three-time winner Roberto Heras of Spain snatched the lead from Russian Denis Menchov in today's difficult 15th stage of the Tour of Spain. Heras now leads Menchov by 4:30. It's an insurmountable lead. Here is an image from today's stage.

Every moral philosopher, whether consequentialist or deontological, accepts the proposition that ought implies can. The idea is simple: To say that somebody ought to do something presupposes that he or she can do it—logically, physically, and psychologically. If I can’t do X, either because it’s impossible (logically or physically), because I’m not strong enough, or because I can’t bring myself to do it, psychologically, I have no obligation to do X. We might quibble about whether I can or cannot do X, for that’s a factual matter; but once we agree (if we do) that I can’t, then there’s no question of my being obligated. I’m not.

I get the sense in reading about the recent hurricane that the dictum is being turned on its head. People seem to think that because the federal government can replace people’s property, it ought to. But this throws every principle of limited government and personal responsibility out the window. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Life itself is not guaranteed. Each of us is responsible for insuring against various calamities, catastrophes, and contingencies. If I fail to insure my life and belongings, I have nobody to blame but myself if they are lost. The unspoken assumption seems to be that when bad things happen to people, others are responsible. No. I’m not responsible for your misfortune. If I help you, I go beyond the call of duty. You have no claim on me. I do not act wrongly if I ignore you. Please don’t say that it’s the government and not individuals who are providing the assistance. Where does the government get its money? It takes it from people against their will. (Did you have a choice about whether to pay income tax this year?) If you don’t see the moral difference between taking from A to provide for B and A’s giving to B out of concern for B, then this post won’t make any sense to you.

The bike-rally season lasts for more than six months here in North Texas. I did my first rally on 2 April, in Aledo. I’ll do my 26th and final rally on 19 November, in Denton. I was telling my friend Joe the other day that the rally season has three parts: spring, summer, and fall. The spring season is hard, since I haven’t been riding very much (if at all) during the winter. Also, the spring weather can be cold, wet, and windy, which makes for unpleasant riding. The summer season is hard because of the heat and humidity. The fall season is the best, as far as I’m concerned, since I’m in shape by that time and the weather has grown mild. I’ve always loved autumn, whether in Michigan, Arizona, or Texas. Riding a bicycle on a cool, crisp day, with leaves falling all around, is about as pleasant as it gets.

The summer rally season ends with the Hotter ’n Hell Hundred in late August. Yesterday, in Forney, the fall season began. I had a blast. Although the high temperature has been in the mid-90s all month, the mornings and evenings aren’t as hot as they were in July or August, and the air is not as moist. Forney is a town east of Dallas, about 47 miles from my Fort Worth house. (I drive through Dallas to get to it.) I’ve done the Forney rally seven times in the past nine years and always enjoyed it. Yesterday’s rally—the Jackrabbit Stampede—was my 20th of the year and 364th overall. I expect to have six more rallies before hanging up the bike for the winter (by which time serious running has begun).

My goals for the day were the usual: have fun and stay safe. Naturally, I try to go fast, if only to increase my fitness for the next rally; but I would never sacrifice fun or safety for speed. I love riding in packs. I’ve ridden tens of thousands of miles on my own, much of it in the Sonoran Desert, but there’s nothing like sharing work with others in a paceline. It heightens one’s senses. When you’re alone, you focus on yourself. When you’re riding with others, especially at high speed, you focus on the whole. Concepts that have no application when you’re riding alone come into play: cooperation, loyalty, concern, free riding, fairness. Pack riding is social. If I didn’t want a social experience, I sure as hell wouldn’t rise at five o’clock, drive many miles in the dark, and pay up to $30 to ride. I’d go out on my own near my house.

Luckily for me, I fell in with a pack of riders from the outset. We weren’t the lead pack, but we were moving along pretty quickly. About 30 minutes into the ride we made a left turn. A pack of riders was coming from the right. Once we turned, the pack flew past us. I could tell from their armbands that they were doing the rally. I inferred that it was the lead pack and that it had gotten off course. The riders did not seem to be in a good mood when they went by. How they missed the turn escapes me. The course was well marked throughout, and there were officers or volunteers directing traffic at almost every intersection.

I got dropped just before the first hour elapsed. The dozen or so riders in my pack increased the speed as we reached a frontage road. I could have stayed on the back, but I would have gotten dropped eventually anyway, so I eased up and put my headphones in. A few minutes later I reached the hour mark. I had covered 19.78 miles, most of it into the wind. That’s the best time to be in a pack. By sharing the work, the wind doesn’t take as much of a toll on one’s energy. Although I would have enjoyed riding in another pack, none reached me the rest of the way. I rode alone for over two hours. I rode 17.47 miles during the second hour, 16.75 during the third hour, and averaged 17.74 miles per hour for the final 1:18:52. Overall, I averaged 17.97 miles per hour for 59.58 miles. After the first hour, I averaged 17.19 miles per hour. Given the heavy roads and the fact that I had no help fighting the wind, I’m happy with it. This was my second-fastest rally of the 20 I’ve done this year. With warm-up and cool-down riding, I put in 60.7 miles. I hope the rest of the fall rallies are as pleasant as this one.

Anal retentive that I am, I hated falling just short of 18 miles per hour. I knew as I approached the finish that I was close. I had a crosswind for a couple of miles, then a tailwind for a couple of miles, and then another crosswind for a mile or so. My goal was to keep my speed up to the turn, ride hard with the tailwind to get up to 18 miles per hour, and then sustain it during the final mile. Unbeknownst to me, however, the course had been changed since 2003. Instead of turning, I went straight, and before I knew it, I was back at the high school where we started. I expected 61.3 miles, but the course was only 59.58 miles. Damn! There went my 18 miles per hour. At least next year I’ll know.

You’re probably wondering what I mean by “heavy roads.” Some roads are smooth, almost glasslike. When you’re riding on roads like this, you have the sensation of gliding, even if you have a headwind. But when the roads are made of chip-seal material, the friction is enormous. Every pedal stroke is hard and your hands and arms vibrate. It feels like someone has a rope tied to your waist. When the road surface changes, as it did several times yesterday, you notice it immediately. Even professional riders complain about heavy roads. It makes them work harder to go the same speed. But hey, who’s complaining? I’m just pointing out that, had the roads been less heavy, I may have averaged 18.5 miles per hour for the day. (Speaking of roads, we Americans are spoiled. Many years ago, a junior racer from my bike club went to Belgium. He told us when he got back that the worst roads in Texas are better than the best roads in Belgium. When I heard that, I decided I would never complain about bad roads again.)

I made only one stop yesterday, at about the two-hour mark. I needed water and wanted to look at the map I had carried in my jersey pocket. One of my friends was there. He’s 59 years old and riding superbly. He said he was waiting for his wife. He and I were in the pack together early on. I love teasing people. At one point, I rode up to him and said, “How are you able to ride so well at such an advanced age?” He laughed. I told him that I would be delighted to be riding at his level in 11 years, and I would. The nice thing about bicycling is that it’s a lifelong activity. Running is hard on the bones and joints. Bicycling, by contrast, is easy on the body. It’s a great way to keep the heart and lungs strong. If you’re not a bicyclist, think about giving it a try. Start out with five miles. Gradually extend the distance. Record your distances and speeds, for that will motivate you to go farther and faster. If you have questions, ask away. I’ve experienced just about everything there is to experience on a bicycle, even crashes.

To the Editor:

Re "Back to School, Thinking Globally" (editorial, Sept. 6):

You say that American educators "respond with yawns" when hearing that our students compare unfavorably with those overseas. You seem to have an inflated sense of an educator's power.

I blame myself only for what I have control over. I don't control an American culture that won't let teachers hold children accountable, that values athletic prowess over intellectual ability and pays accordingly, and that spends more money on cable, movies and video games than on books.

I don't control an anti-scientific culture that debates evolution and intelligent design with arguments based on personal belief, not scientific evidence. I don't control a society that elects politicians who want no child left behind but won't finance the costs. I don't control a business community that complains about the products of our schools but fights tax proposals that might raise its taxes.

If you want to point fingers, find more fingers.

Martha Nelson
Houston, Sept. 6, 2005
The writer is a high school teacher.

Here.

Refuge, n. Anything assuring protection to one in peril. Moses and Joshua provided six cities of refuge—Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh, Schekem and Hebron—to which one who had taken life inadvertently could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased. This admirable expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to enjoy the pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was appropriately honored by observances akin to the funeral games of early Greece.

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

Here.

9-10-85 One of the great things about being a college student (or instructor, for that matter) is the opportunity that it affords for meeting and engaging in discussions with people from widely varying backgrounds. I recall with fondness the many afternoons and evenings that I spent on campus at The University of Michigan-Flint [1975-1979], Wayne State University [1979-1983], and The University of Arizona [1983 to date]. Sometimes I would sit by myself reading or thinking, while at other times I would chat with a friend or acquaintance. Already I can tell that Joel Feinberg’s Philosophy of Law seminar [during the fall of 1984] will live on in my memory. I spent hours both before and after that seminar each week just talking about the issues and formulating my thoughts. The atmosphere was relaxed, the people were intelligent and articulate, and the resulting knowledge will last me for a lifetime. I would recommend that every person spend some time on campus, if only to get a feel for what it involves.

On the way to work this morning I stopped at a doughnut shop to buy a dozen doughnuts for the people at work. The secretaries and I are trying to get a pattern established whereby someone buys doughnuts every morning. I volunteered to be the first buyer. As soon as I bought the doughnuts, however, I began to wonder about certain potential problems, like whether there would be enough for everyone to eat and whether some person would eat more than one. Then it occurred to me how silly I was being and I forced myself to think other, more pleasant, thoughts. Isn’t it typically “me” to analyze the most mundane situation instead of leaving it as it is? As things turned out, everyone was happy and I ended up getting the last of the twelve doughnuts. Perhaps tomorrow someone else will follow my lead.

I was right, a year ago, about the Kansas City Royals winning the Western Division title. This year, the Royals and [California] Angels are fighting it out again. In the Eastern Division of the American League, Toronto [the Blue Jays] has a one and a half game lead over the [New York] Yankees. Detroit [the Tigers] has fallen into fourth place after losing its sixth consecutive game. In the National League, the [Los Angeles] Dodgers have all but clinched the Western Division title, while the [New York] Mets and [St Louis] Cardinals are battling for the Eastern Division title. Pete Rose went zero for four this evening and is still tied with Ty Cobb for the all-time hit record (4,191 hits). Pete should get the record in the next couple of days. Willie McGee and Wade Boggs appear to be headed for batting crowns in their respective leagues. Dwight Gooden and Joaquin Andujar have each won twenty games. The baseball season is rapidly drawing to a close.

In my logic course this morning, I discussed the difference between inductive and deductive arguments. As usual, I found fault with the textbook [A Concise Introduction to Logic]. The author, Patrick Hurley, defines a deductive argument as an argument in which the conclusion is presumed to follow necessarily from the premise(s). I prefer to use the word “claimed” rather than the word “presumed” in this definition, as does Irving Copi [1917-2002]. By using “claimed” rather than “presumed,” I’m able to focus on the intent of the person making the argument, which is one way of distinguishing inductive from deductive arguments. Of course, I explained my reasoning to the students so that they would understand why I wasn’t using the textbook definition, and I also defended my use of the textbook. On the whole, it’s very good.

Believe it or not, I’m bored with Professor Fred Berger’s Philosophy of Law seminar. I never thought that it would happen, but things don’t seem to fit well together, and I’m not exactly enthusiastic about the subject matter: happiness, autonomy, and freedom. I would prefer to study contemporary problems rather than conceptual issues, although the latter are interesting in their own way. Things will be changing soon, however, as we get further into the readings. Today we continued our examination of John Stuart Mill’s [1806-1873] philosophy and got started on paternalism. Professor Berger has given me permission to write a seminar paper on liability for sexual misrepresentations. Good. I like to get focused on a topic early in the semester.

After the seminar, I engaged Dave Schmidtz in a fascinating discussion. Dave “accused” me of making arguments on different occasions which are inconsistent, so I defended myself by claiming that the arguments stand or fall on their own. “You should think of these arguments as if they were made by different persons, not by the same person at different times. In fact,” I said, “it’s fallacious to argue that because I’m inconsistent, my arguments are somehow adversely affected.” Dave did his best to defend against this charge of ad hominen [sic; should be “hominem”], and that led immediately to a discussion of the nature of argument, the point of philosophical discussion, and how we conceive ourselves, respectively, as persons. I told Dave that I have a tendency to overintellectualize everything, and that I think of myself, and him (as well as others), as nothing more than “repositories for arguments.” Once we make a particular argument, I said, “it goes up into the air and can be utilized by anyone else.” This is a metaphor for the impersonal nature of arguments.

Now, Dave had lots of problems with this. There is a presumption, he said, of sincerity—that people believe what they say. But I systematically violate this presumption, for I am always making statements the truth of which I assume but do not accept. I also ignore the “fact” that other people treat me as a person—as someone who has a consistent set of beliefs. In return, I treat them as something less than persons—as mere argument-making machines. This reminded me immediately of the criticism lodged against me by Tom Wade during the summer of 1984. Tom and his friend, Marcie, accused me of overrationalizing everything and not treating them as persons. A person is more than a rational agent, they insisted. Of course, they are right, and so is Dave. But I have a hard time thinking of people as anything other than arguers. That’s what interests me the most about people, so that’s the aspect of personality or character on which I focus. I’m now intrigued by the whole subject of personhood and rationality. As my thoughts develop, I’ll set them down in the pages of this journal. [I was doing what any graduate philosophy student should do: exploring the conceptual landscape. Dave, by contrast, was trying to find a place to live.]

To the Editor:

I take issue with Nicholas D. Kristof's lauding the "excellent suggestion" in Rich Lowry's National Review article that what's needed to deal with poverty in America is a "grand right-left bargain that includes greater attention to out-of-wedlock births from the Left in exchange for the Right's support for more urban spending."

In fact, the left, particularly feminists, have been struggling for decades to ensure that young, poor women of color have everything they need to manage their sexuality without judgment, including family planning services, birth control, over-the-counter emergency contraception, early pregnancy termination and accurate sex education, as well as the schooling and job training they need to find hope, value and respect in ways besides childbearing.

It is the right—the Republicans and this administration—that has been blocking these efforts at every turn, hiding behind a sanctimonious pro-life banner, refusing to deal with its own culpability in those "out of wedlock" births.

Angela Bonavoglia
Mount Vernon, N.Y., Sept. 8, 2005

Notoriety, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

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

Here.

See here or here for my post about animal rights and stupidity.

One of the most common confusions in moral, social, and political thought involves the concepts of desert and entitlement. They are not the same. I can deserve a prize or a grade without being entitled to it, and I can be entitled to a prize or a grade without deserving it. Here is a perfect illustration of the distinction. In today's stage of the Tour of Spain, Mauricio Ardila attacked his breakaway companions near the finish—or what he thought was the finish. In fact, he was 100 meters from the line. Samuel Sanchez flew past him to take the stage. Ardila deserved to win, since he put forth the necessary effort, but he is not entitled to the prize, since he didn't cross the finish line first. Sanchez is entitled to the prize, since he crossed the finish line first, but he doesn't deserve it (as he seems to admit), since he didn't put forth the necessary effort (as against Ardila). Entitlement is a function of compliance with rules. It presupposes an institution, such as grading or property. Desert is preinstitutional. It has to do with initiative and effort. The main defect of John Rawls's unjustly celebrated theory of justice is that he conflates the two concepts. He says that what one deserves depends on what just institutions confer. He should have said that what one is entitled to depends on what just institutions confer. Desert is another matter altogether. Entitlement without an institution is nonsense. Desert without an institution is perfectly comprehensible.

The title of this post says it all. See here.

* "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).

This image depicts a bicyclist's worst nightmare. (Okay, a bad one.) See the group of bicyclists in front? They're in an echelon formation. The wind is striking them from the left. The lead rider is breaking the wind at the far left. The rider behind him is at an angle so as to be shielded from the wind. And so on across the road. The rider on the far right is shielded, but if someone got directly behind him, he would be fighting the wind on his own. He would quickly tire and fall back. When the rider on the front tires, he will drop back and slide across the road to the right, where he will work his way back to the front. The riders in the second group have been cut off and are in danger of losing contact with the front group. Unless they form an echelon immediately and work just as hard as the front group, the gap will grow. I've seen the U.S. Postal Service team go to the front in a crosswind and drop everyone else. It's an awesome tactic.

The International Cycling Union is not happy with the "investigation" into Lance Armstrong. See here for its scathing letter. From where I sit, the scurrilous charges being leveled against Armstrong by a French bicycling periodical appear to be a case of French resentment toward an American. Plato said that virtue is its own reward. Being French is its own punishment. I hereby disown, disavow, and forget my four years of French.

Here is what Texas A&M University is doing to provide relief for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. I assume other universities are doing similar things.

Addendum: Here is a message from my university's president, James D. Spaniolo.

To the Editor:

The statement in your editorial, "but the focus must be finally on reducing oil consumption," ignores the most important and missing part of our energy policy: increasing our oil production.

Our nation's economy largely depends on this. To avoid the next sticker shock at the gas pump, we must make increased oil production the cornerstone of our policy, while carrying out reasonable conservation practices.

We must garner the political will to do what we should have done a decade ago: extract oil from places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and off the coast of California.

Ignoring production at the expense of conservation is inviting the next energy crisis.

Jay Elliott
Wilton, Conn., Sept. 7, 2005

As a federalist, I would have had no objection if Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had signed the homosexual-"marriage" bill into law. Instead, he vetoed it. See here for The New York Times's snarky editorial. This is how the issue should play out in each state. If Californians don't like the votes cast by their elected representatives, they can throw them out of office. If Californians don't like Governor Schwarzenegger's veto, they can de-elect him. (Neologism alert!) Things will settle down eventually, probably via a constitutional amendment. I predict that eventually California's constitution will restrict marriage to heterosexuals. Until then, we'll see political battles such as those that have just taken place. Federalists believe that the issue should be resolved at the state level, not by Congress and certainly not by federal judges.

Addendum: Did you notice how the Times dismissed opponents of homosexual "marriage" as bigots? How convenient. If opposition is necessarily bigoted, then argument is unnecessary. Liberals aren't used to arguing for their positions. They find it much easier to attack the motives of those with whom they disagree. In case you haven't figured it out, this is one important reason why liberals are powerless. They mistake certitude for persuasiveness.

Addendum 2: Here is the definition of "snarky," from the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed.:

snarky, a.

Irritable, short-tempered, ‘narky’.

1906 E. Nesbit Railway Children ii. 49 Don't be snarky, Peter. It isn't our fault. 1913 J. Vaizey College Girl xxiv. 326 ‘Why should you think I am “snarky”?’ ‘Because—you are! You're not a bit sociable and friendly.’ 1953 E. Coxhead Midlanders x. 247 I've known you were the soul of kindness, under that snarky way. a1974 R. Crossman Diaries (1976) II. 627 We also have to overcome something else—the stream of anti-government propaganda, smearing, snarky, derisive, which comes out of Fleet Street.

You're welcome.

9-9-85 Monday. It was a typically varied day. In the morning I taught my logic class; by 9:25 A.M. I was in court representing a client; and by 3:30 P.M. I was sitting in my ethics seminar listening to Allen Buchanan discuss the concept of competence. It might seem that I would be disoriented by this breakup of my day, but I actually draw strength and vigor from it. Teaching provides an intellectual “rush” to start the day, while court work helps me to apply my legal knowledge. In the seminar, I can sit back and “wax philosophical” for a couple of hours. By the time I get home, I’m tired out; but it’s a “satisfied” kind of tired, for I know that I accomplished a lot during the day. I’m happy with the way my life is currently organized.

There was a tense moment in court this morning. When I got to the office, I received a note from Robb Holmes asking me to do the video review hearings in [Pima County] Superior Court. I had done this only once before, but was eager to accept the challenge, so I hurried out the door and across the street to Superior Court. In court, over which the chief [Tucson] City-Court judge, Ann Bowen, presided, I took my place at the defense table when my client appeared on the video screen. The judge asked me if [sic; should be “whether”] I would like to speak to my client, so I asked him if [sic] he had contacted the alcoholism-treatment center that we had discussed at the jail the other day. He said that he hadn’t. Now, this was the client who had stolen a roll of stamps in order to be incarcerated. His goal, as I mentioned before, is to stay in jail until he is admitted to an alcoholism-treatment center. I asked the client if [sic] he still wanted to pursue his goal; he said “yes”; so I told him that we would just leave things as they were.

Just then Judge Bowen interjected. “Counsel,” she stammered, as if in disbelief, “what do [you] think the jail is? A social-services agency? You can’t just let your client sit in jail at taxpayer expense.” I then began to defend my actions, but the judge interrupted to ask me about the mental evaluation that had been ordered for my client. I didn’t know whether such an evaluation had been made, let alone its results, so I apologized for not following through on the matter after visiting the client in jail. I sat there for a few minutes while the bailiff called the mental-health officer, then resumed a defense of my actions. “Your honor,” I said, “I met with Mr. M. at the jail the other day and he explained to me that he needs help with his alcoholism problem. He’ll die in the gutter if he’s released without getting help—or so he says. I’m representing him zealously within the bounds of the law, however odd it may appear to be.” The judge’s mood then changed. She seemed to understand my position better, but proceeded to release the client on his own recognizance anyway. I explained the judge’s order to my client over the microphone and asked permission to leave the courtroom. Luckily, I had no other matters before the court this morning. I was cursing the judge under my breath as I left. [Judge Bowen wanted to keep my client incarcerated—until she learned that that’s what he wanted; then, as if to thwart his aims, she released him.]

A couple of hours later I received a telephone call from Mike Anderson, the prosecutor who had been in court with me this morning. He told me that he had received a similar “dressing down” from Judge Bowen just last [sic; should be “this past”] week, that I had represented my client well, and that Judge Bowen is “just impossible to please.” That was nice. Robb Holmes and Bob Bushkin told me the same thing a bit later. Of course, all of this improves my mood. I admit that I was negligent (though nonculpably so [how can someone be nonculpably negligent?]) in not getting the results of the mental evaluation, but I feel no qualms whatsoever about “permitting Mr. M. to sit in jail.” He is as lucid and rational as anyone else I met today, including the graduate students at school; his goals simply include staying in jail until he can get help with his alcoholism problem. As his attorney, I did the best that I could for him. Judge Bowen seems to be more concerned with saving the taxpayers a few dollars than with helping jail inmates. That, to me, is a perversion of justice.

Before noon Mr. M. arrived at my office to see me. He needed to use the telephone to call some alcoholism-treatment centers, so I sat in the library with him as he did so. Just before leaving for lunch, I asked Mr. M. if [sic] he had any money. “Seventeen cents,” he said. Although I had only twenty-five dollars in my wallet, and a week over which to spread it, I gave him two dollars. Tomorrow, he says, he’ll show up at the unemployment office for a part-time job. I hope that he finds one—and that he can resist the temptation to drink. Looking back, I did the best that I could for Mr. M., at least as his attorney; but obviously I can’t be responsible for his day-to-day welfare. He’s now on his own. Good luck, Donn.

The Ethics seminar went well this afternoon. First Allen Buchanan and the students divided up the coursework, with me taking on the subject of “pricing life,” and then Allen led a discussion of competence and incompetence. I made a point about end-state versus historical conceptions of competence that was repeated later by Allen, and then made several comments about Allen’s conception of risk. I had given the subject a good deal of thought yesterday, and even written my first set of comments on it, so I knew what was going on. At one point Allen said that I had “really put my finger on something.” Good. I hope that my comments help him to refine and improve his theory of competence. The seminar as a whole was enlightening. Who would think that a subject such as competence would be interesting? But it is. It raises all kinds of theoretical and practical problems.

Here.

Craft, n. A fool's substitute for brains.

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

My university, like many others in the United States, is in the process of "rebranding" itself. I guess that means it's a business, and that I, a humble scholar and pedagogue, am now a service provider. Here is UTA's new web page. See here for my protest against the commercialization of academia.

Follow along with me. Any human who could have prevented the disaster in Louisiana would have been obligated to do so, and would have been blameworthy if he or she did not. God, being omnipotent and omniscient, could have prevented the disaster. So why isn't God blameworthy for not doing so? But God is perfectly good, and hence not blameworthy for anything, so isn't the disaster evidence against the existence of God? See here.

High up in the norm hierarchy of the scientific community are accuracy, open-mindedness, disinterest, and logicality, norms that [Noam] Chomsky and [Stephen Jay] Gould regularly (and Paul Krugman, a distinguished scientific economist, occasionally) flout in their public-intellectual work. This supports my claim that academics tend to think of themselves as being on holiday when they are writing for the general public.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 105)

Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

"The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison. He's
A Christian philosopher. I'm
A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
Addicted too much to the crime
Of religious discussion in rhyme.

Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
On a modus vivendi—not they!—
Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
And I haven't been reared in a way
To joy in the thick of the fray.

For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
And the truth of it I aver:
Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
And 'ite, an 'ic, or an 'er—
And I'm down upon him or her!

Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
Toleration—that's all very well,
But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
And he's running—I know by the smell—
A secret and personal Hell!
Bissell Gip.

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

You write the official high temperature on your calendar each day, calculate the average at the end of each month, and log the result in a computer file.

Fred Barnes takes stock of the situation in Washington. See here.

To the Editor:

David Brooks, in "The Bursting Point" (column, Sept. 4), shed further light on the most awe-inspiring blind spot of the American right. Looking for bright spots in a dark time, he writes that the "moral culture" is strong.

Our current moral culture, as I understand the term, includes the elevation of wealth and commerce over all other considerations; the open neglect of the disadvantaged; the redefinition of American power away from moral authority and toward military might; the worship of American exceptionalism; and the threat of evangelical totalitarianism as social policy.

Our moral culture has never been weaker, nor have our leaders ever had less right to claim the moral high ground. The levees have broken in more ways than one.

Phil Wagar
Bellbrook, Ohio, Sept. 4, 2005

Here.

Something strange is happening. I just fired up the computer for the day. Yesterday, I had 1,863 site visits, which is more than twice the usual number. Already today, I've had 1,864 visits. But when I check the Web-Stat data, I don't see any links to popular blogs. What I see are lots of visits from people using Google to find images. But why would this be the case all of a sudden? I haven't posted or linked to images in a while. The only thing I can think of is that I linked to some images of tennis player Elena Dementieva almost a year ago. See here. She has made it to the semifinals of the U.S. Open. Could all these visitors be coming to my blog looking for images of Dementieva? Oh well, I guess it's better than coming to my blog looking for images of anal sex. Be honest; that's how you got here the first time, isn't it?

For God's sake, Lance, stay retired. (See here.)

I’m sorry my blogging has been light. I learned recently that one of the committees on which I serve (the Liberal Arts Curriculum Committee) will be sending out documents in Microsoft Excel format. I was surprised that I didn’t have Excel on my computer, since the computer came from Dell loaded with software. Yesterday, to remedy the deficiency, I purchased Microsoft Office Professional 2003, which contains Excel. Installing it took several hours, which, when combined with the teaching I did in the morning, consumed most of the day. There were two other software programs in Office that interested me: Word 2003 and Outlook 2003. I’ve been using Word 2002 for several years. The upgrade to Word 2003 went smoothly. All of my documents have opened when I clicked them. So far, I haven’t noticed any functional differences, just a different color around the edges of the documents.

Outlook 2003 looks quite different from Outlook Express. I spent several hours yesterday and today tweaking it: trying to get my contact list transferred; trying to set up e-mail accounts; configuring the signature on outgoing mail; and just snooping around to see what’s new. The only problem I had was getting the UTA e-mail account working. (My Charter account worked like a charm.) Every time Outlook checked for mail on the UTA server, an error message displayed on the toolbar. I called a technician at UTA for help, but it didn’t help. Then strange things started happening. My screen locked up a few times; I got error messages; I had to restart the computer; and in general performance was slow. I decided to cut my losses. Outlook Express never gave me any trouble, and it did everything I needed and wanted, so I deleted the icons for Outlook 2003 and went back to my old e-mail utility. Some things just aren’t worth the trouble.

All in all, I’m happy with Office. I have the latest version of Word (which I assume is better in certain respects) and I now have Excel. I don’t know how to use Excel, but at least I have it. (You can’t have your Excel and use it, too.)

Here.

To the Editor:

David Brooks is right to see that the "bursting point" has come (column, Sept. 4), but it does not include "the elemental violence of human nature."

There is no such thing as human nature without culture and its institutions. The message of Katrina was not from Hobbes; it was from a neoconservative leadership: "Starve the beast," feed the rich, abandon the poor, disgrace the nation. That's not a natural disaster; it's an American tragedy.

Linnda R. Caporael
Troy, N.Y., Sept. 4, 2005

Here.

Molecule, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether—whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation. The present trend of scientific thought is toward the theory of ions. The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion. A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others.

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

I can't believe Californians are so stupid as to allow homosexuals to "marry." See here. Allowing homosexuals to participate in the institution of marriage is like allowing dogs to vote. In neither case is bigotry involved. I love dogs, but they're not competent to vote. One way or another, the people of the Golden Bear State will decide the issue. If Governor Schwarzenegger signs the bill into law, the people will amend the state constitution to limit marriage to those for whom it was designed. Mark my words.

Cellphone, n. Leash.

Agitator, n. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors—to dislodge the worms.

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

To the Editor:

Regarding President Bush's decision to nominate Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to succeed the late William H. Rehnquist as chief justice:

Just as we knew Hurricane Katrina would strike along the Gulf Coast and perhaps cause a catastrophe (which it did), we knew that a second Supreme Court vacancy would probably occur in the near future.

I cannot help but compare the administration's readiness to immediately name a successor to Chief Justice Rehnquist with its complete lack of readiness to provide disaster recovery aid. I know that the comparison isn't entirely fair, but the symbolism is apt.

This administration is much more interested in politics than governance.

John Soehle
Newton, Mass., Sept. 5, 2005

To the Editor:

One cannot help but be struck by the stark contrast in how President Bush acted so swiftly in naming Judge John G. Roberts Jr. as his nominee for chief justice, in comparison with his at best complacent, if not callous, response to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The president appears intent on focusing his energy on pushing his political and religious agenda through by having the Roberts hearings progress as scheduled.

Meanwhile, thousands still suffer from the aftermath of the greatest natural disaster this country has ever seen. It is good to know where our leadership's priorities lie.

Paul A. Doupe
Wayne, Pa., Sept. 5, 2005

This week's link is to Philosophy of Science Resources.

Here.

See here for my post about minimalist conservatism.

This just in: President Bush has chosen Judge John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. See here. Politically, this is astute. By all indications, Roberts was a shoo-in for confirmation. I doubt that anyone who was going to vote for him as an associate justice is going to vote against him as chief justice. What would be the basis? (Obviously, anyone who was going to vote against him will continue to do so.) Another reason this is astute is that Judge Roberts has an engaging personality. A chief justice must not only get along with the other justices, but be persuasive. Let's see. Judge Roberts is 50 years old. (I'm 48.) I think I'll be saying "Chief Justice Roberts" for the next three decades. It sounds wonderful. Let's keep our fingers crossed that he's the federalist I think he is!

Addendum: Did you catch the part about Judge Roberts being "deeply conservative"? I roared. Have you ever seen a liberal described as "deeply liberal"? But if John Roberts is deeply conservative, then Ruth Bader Ginsburg is deeply liberal. How much do you want to bet that The New York Times never called her that? The bias of Times reporters is palpable and offensive.

Different people want different things. I want a flexible schedule with autonomy and job security. I have it. I'm a tenured university professor. But I gave up a lot for it. My law-school buddy in Atlanta probably earns three or four times what I earn, but he pays for it with long hours and incessant travel. (He's a labor lawyer.) Women and men make different choices. Why, then, should we expect them to earn the same wages and salaries? This should be required reading for every feminist. Maybe if enough of them read it, they'd stop saying (and implying) that the wage and salary differentials between men and women are the products of sex discrimination. No; they're the products of differential choices. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. To get A, you must give up B and C. To get B, you must give up A and C. Make your choice and stop whining.

Spaniard Francisco Mancebo won today's 10th stage of the Tour of Spain. See here for an aerial view of one of the grueling climbs. Russian Denis Menchov is the overall leader by 47 seconds (over three-time winner and two-time defending champion Roberto Heras). The three-week Tour ends on 18 September.

Paul Krugman* admits that the federal government is inept. See here. Why, then, would he want to create even more and bigger governmental programs, such as single-payer health insurance? Perhaps he thinks the ineptness is not intrinsic to the federal government but merely an attribute of the Bush administration. But that's implausible. Did the Clinton administration do anything about the flood danger in New Orleans or the looming threat of Al Qaeda? Did the Carter administration solve our economic problems or get the American hostages out of Iran? (I wish I could give more examples, but, well, there haven't been many Democrat presidents lately.) I half expect Krugman to blame President Bush for the hurricane! But if he did that, his bias against the president would be transparent rather than opaque. Krugman really does seem to think that President Bush is omnimalevolent. What's more likely: that President Bush is omnimalevolent or that Krugman couldn't see good in the president if it smacked him in the face?

By the way, why is relief of flood victims a public responsibility? Has Krugman heard of insurance? That's how rational, responsible people guard against calamity. Has he heard of charity? That's how good people—this country is filled with good people—take care of each other. Government has two functions: protection against external aggressors and punishment of lawbreakers. The hurricane is just another excuse for leftists such as Krugman, who have never done an honest day's work in their lives, to gore the hard-working people of this country.

Addendum: Donald Luskin is holding Krugman's feet to the fire. See here. Don has more integrity in his little finger than Krugman has in his entire body. Krugman disgraces everything he touches, from his university (Princeton) to The New York Times. One wonders how long the Times will put up with him. Because of tenure, Princeton is stuck with him.

* "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).

What accounts for the remarkable success of conservative talk radio—and the failure of liberals on the airwaves? Why isn’t there a liberal Rush Limbaugh? Some on the Left say that it’s because liberals are, well . . . smarter. The complexity of their thinking, liberals assert, makes for less thrilling, if truer, listening. Former New York governor Mario Cuomo—whose failed radio show had about a dozen regular listeners—gave canonical expression to this arrogant, self-serving view. Conservatives “write their messages with crayons,” he told Phil Donahue. “We use fine-point quills.” Unlike the Right, former Colorado senator and Democratic presidential aspirant Gary Hart similarly argued, “the reformer, the progressive, the liberal, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t see the world in blacks and whites, but in plaids and grays. There never is a single simple answer.” Getting that sophistication across on talk radio in a way that connected with the audience wasn’t easy, believed Hart, whose own talk-radio show flopped.

(Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias [Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2005], 44 [endnotes omitted])

Darby Shaw sent a link to this interesting post by Bill Whittle.

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman asks three basic questions about Hurricane Katrina: "Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive?" "Why wasn't more preventive action taken?" "Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness?"

I'd like to add three other questions: Why are we spending billions each month in Iraq instead of repairing levees in New Orleans?

Why are so many of our national guardsmen in Iraq instead of in New Orleans?

Why do we have a state-of-the-art war communications system in Iraq but not an equivalent system in New Orleans?

Our leaders have failed to protect us by their wrongheaded militaristic priorities.

Sidney Moss
Elkins Park, Pa., Sept. 2, 2005

Have you ever wondered about the origin of Labor Day? Who thought of it? When, why, and how did it become a federal holiday? What's it about? See here.

Addendum: It appears that the holiday was meant to honor and celebrate a narrow class of individuals: those who (1) performed manual labor and (2) belonged to unions. But these seem arbitrary restrictions. Why should nonunion laborers (such as those who work at Wal-Mart) not be recognized and applauded? Why should white-collar workers (such as managers, professors, and accountants) not be recognized and applauded? Work is work, whether it involves manipulating and applying ideas or manipulating and combining raw materials. To the objection that this is too broad, since everyone works, I reply, "Not so." Some people are parasites, living off the labor of others. Others are born into luxury and never know the travails and rewards of working for a living. To all the workers of the world, I salute you!

When I began blogging almost two years ago, I knew almost nothing about it. I felt like I was wandering in the dark. But all of a sudden a light came on. Dr John J. Ray wrote to me from Brisbane, Australia, to offer assistance. I have no idea how he found my blog (unless it was through Tech Central Station). I needed help with my template, so, with little to lose, I trusted him with my username and password. He did not betray me. Before long, I was blogging away—no longer in the dark, but not in daylight, either. I had many other questions for John during the next few months, and he always answered them promptly and fully. Many people have helped me during the past two years, but nobody more than John, and nobody at more crucial junctures than John.

It turns out that John and I have a great many things in common, although I’m convinced that he would have helped me even if we disagreed on the big issues. Both of us are conservatives. Both of us are atheists. Both of us have doctoral degrees (mine in philosophy, John’s in psychology). We don’t agree on everything, of course. No two people do. If two people agreed on everything, one of them would be superfluous. But seriously, I want to thank John (again) for all of his help. He continues to link to my blogs on a regular basis, which increases my readership. Many of my readers, perhaps most of them, came to me from John’s excellent blog Dissecting Leftism. Thanks, John. I have tried to help other bloggers as you helped me.

Addendum: Here is my first mention of John.

Jester, n. An officer formerly attached to a king's household, whose business it was to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances, the absurdity being attested by his motley costume. The king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise and witty person. In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank of royal tears.

The widow-queen of Portugal
Had an audacious jester
Who entered the confessional
Disguised, and there confessed her.

"Father," she said, "thine ear bend down—
My sins are more than scarlet:
I love my fool—blaspheming clown,
And common, base-born varlet."

"Daughter," the mimic priest replied,
"That sin, indeed, is awful:
The church's pardon is denied
To love that is unlawful.

"But since thy stubborn heart will be
For him forever pleading,
Thou'dst better make him, by decree,
A man of birth and breeding."

She made the fool a duke, in hope
With Heaven's taboo to palter;
Then told a priest, who told the Pope,
Who damned her from the altar!
Barel Dort.

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

Here.

Should New Orleans be abandoned? See here.

9-4-85 . . . While sitting in [Tucson City] court this morning, I struck up an interesting conversation with Judge Mary Okoye, her bailiff, and the prosecutor (M. J. Raciti). Judge Okoye, a young and attractive black woman, mentioned that she had attended a conference at which the guest speaker was Sandra Day O’Connor, one of our nine Supreme Court justices. Judge Okoye expressed amazement that Justice O’Connor is so “conservative.” She said that although the conference dealt with women and the law, Justice O’Connor spoke only of pioneer Arizonans and other “boring stuff.” M. J. joined in with laughter and commentary, so I got into the act as well. It was an informal moment. I learned that Judge Okoye is quite liberal, politically, and that she has a good sense of humor. Even M. J. confessed to being “a liberal,” although she quickly added that it doesn’t interfere with her work as a prosecutor. I got a kick out of that one.

Thanks to Donald Luskin for bringing this to my attention.

Michelle Malkin is a national treasure. If you're not reading her blog every day, you're out of the loop. See here for a typically incisive post.

Did you know that validity is the key to the good life? See here.

One of my readers claimed (in so many words) that Republicans favor states’ rights when state laws impede individual liberty but oppose states’ rights when state laws facilitate individual liberty. In other words, Republicans despise individual liberty and do whatever they can to thwart it. Suppose, for the sake of analysis, that this is true. (I don’t for a moment believe that it is.) All that follows is that being a Republican isn’t the same as being a federalist. Republicans who do what the reader says they do are using federalism to rationalize positions taken on other grounds.

Federalism is a principled position. A federalist acknowledges limits to both state and federal authority. Each level of government has its proper sphere. On matters within the province of the state, the federal government should stay its hand. On matters within the province of the federal government, the states should stay their hands. A principled federalist may find him- or herself in disagreement with what a particular state has done, but if the matter is within the province of the state, that’s the end of it. For example, I may not like Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, but as a federalist, I must respect the right of the citizens of Oregon to legislate on the matter, since the United States Constitution is silent. Conversely, a principled federalist may find him- or herself in agreement with what Congress has done, but if the matter is not within the province of the federal government, that’s the end of it. For example, I may like a particular federal statute, such as the Violence Against Women Act, but as a federalist, I must advocate that it be struck down, since it’s not within the province of Congress to legislate on such matters (there being no interstate commerce involved).

A principled person knows that the results of applying the principle may not always be to his or her liking. The opposite of a principled person is a pragmatist—someone who decides on a case-by-case basis, taking all relevant considerations into account. Principled people are predictable. Pragmatists are unpredictable. Being predictable is not necessarily a bad thing. Being unpredictable is not necessarily a good thing.

William Rehnquist was a federalist. In Roe v. Wade (1973), for instance, he saw no constitutional warrant for striking down state abortion laws. (See here for his dissenting opinion.) States had long legislated in this area. No constitutional provision precluded it. By voting to uphold the state laws, he expressed no opinion as to their wisdom. For all we know, he thought they were unwise. All he said is that, if states want such laws, they’re entitled, constitutionally, to have them. Nothing prevented citizens of the various states from repealing or amending their laws through the democratic process. Texas criminalized abortion. If enough Texans thought this statute unwise or unjust, they could have sent people to Austin to repeal it—or amended the state constitution to confer a right to abort. I’m not saying that Justice Rehnquist was a perfect federalist. I haven’t read all of his decisions. But he was as good a federalist as I’ve seen in my many years as a practitioner and philosopher of law. I wish there were nine of him on the Supreme Court.

Law professor Orin Kerr expects President Bush to nominate John Roberts to be chief justice. See here. Interesting. But also risky, since we don't know much about Roberts's judicial philosophy. I myself prefer either Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas as chief justice. Both are known quantities. The Hateful Left will scream bloody murder if either Scalia or Thomas is chosen, but it won't matter. President Bush has the votes.

The phrase [“living Constitution”] is really a shorthand expression that is susceptible of at least two quite different meanings.

The first meaning was expressed over a half-century ago by Mr. Justice Holmes in Missouri v. Holland with his customary felicity when he said:

. . . When we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and has cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation.

I shall refer to this interpretation of the phrase “living Constitution,” with which scarcely anyone would disagree, as the Holmes version.

The framers of the Constitution wisely spoke in general language and left to succeeding generations the task of applying that language to the unceasingly changing environment in which they would live. Those who framed, adopted, and ratified the Civil War amendments to the Constitution likewise used what have been aptly described as “majestic generalities” in composing the fourteenth amendment. Merely because a particular activity may not have existed when the Constitution was adopted, or because the framers could not have conceived of a particular method of transacting affairs, cannot mean that general language in the Constitution may not be applied to such a course of conduct. Where the framers of the Constitution have used general language, they have given latitude to those who would later interpret the instrument to make that language applicable to cases that the framers might not have foreseen.

In my reading and travels I have sensed a second connotation of the phrase “living Constitution,” however, one quite different from what I have described as the Holmes version, but which certainly has gained acceptance among some parts of the legal profession. Embodied in its most naked form, it recently came to my attention in some language from a brief that had been filed in a United States District Court on behalf of state prisoners asserting that the conditions of their confinement offended the United States Constitution. The brief urged:

We are asking a great deal of the Court because other branches of government have abdicated their responsibility. . . . Prisoners are like other ‘discrete and insular’ minorities for whom the Court must spread its protective umbrella because no other branch of government will do so. . . . This Court, as the voice and conscience of contemporary society, as the measure of the modern conception of human dignity, must declare that the [named prison] and all it represents offends the Constitution of the United States and will not be tolerated.

Here we have a living Constitution with a vengeance. Although the substitution of some other set of values for those which may be derived from the language and intent of the framers is not urged in so many words, that is surely the thrust of the message. Under this brief writer’s version of the living Constitution, nonelected members of the federal judiciary may address themselves to a social problem simply because other branches of government have failed or refused to do so. These same judges, responsible to no constituency whatever, are nonetheless acclaimed as “the voice and conscience of contemporary society.”

(William H. Rehnquist, “The Notion of a Living Constitution,” Texas Law Review 54 [May 1976]: 693-706, at 694-5 [footnotes omitted; second set of brackets and all ellipses in original])

I always enjoy reading James Fallows. In this column, he discusses the effect the Internet has had on mail service. I used to write long letters to my family, friends, and acquaintances. It made me feel connected to them in spite of the distance between us. Electronic mail changed all that. It's faster, easier, and more reliable. The downside, as Fallows points out, is that electronic letters leave no physical trace. I do save e-mail, both incoming and outgoing, so I'm not worried about the loss. I have almost 11 years of correspondence stored on my hard drive.

To the Editor:

The historical and theoretical problem raised by science is this: What explanation can we find for the order and purpose we perceive in the universe, and especially in biological life, other than an organizing force or forces?

Darwinism provides one highly convincing, partial alternative to pre-existing design. But to teach it without intelligent design as a common-sense starting point is to teach an answer without a problem, a conclusion without an argument, a set of asserted solutions without the puzzles they seem to solve.

Debating intelligent design, instead of just presenting the scientific method and facts to memorize, takes students on a grand philosophical adventure.

Richard Stith
Valparaiso, Ind., Aug. 28, 2005
The writer is a professor at Valparaiso University School of Law.

Sandlotter, n. A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of Denis Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences gathered in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town. True to the traditions of his species, this leader of the proletariat was finally bought off by his law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent and dying impenitently rich. But before his treason he imposed upon California a constitution that was a confection of sin in a diction of solecisms. The similarity between the words "sandlotter" and "sansculotte" is problematically significant, but indubitably suggestive.

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

Here.

Here.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is dead at 80. See here. He was a good federalist. Unfortunately, he stayed on the Supreme Court too long. He should have stepped down years ago, or at least after a Republican assumed the presidency in January 2001. See here for my criticism of his stubbornness.

Addendum: Liberals love to talk about "balance" on the Supreme Court. It's a stupid idea, frankly, but let's take it seriously for a moment. Liberals will have a hard time making a case that President Bush should nominate someone to the left of Justice Rehnquist. If being elected president means anything, President Bush should be able to replace any justice with someone to his or her right. Otherwise, what's the point of having elections? Since Justice Rehnquist was on the right (liberals would say "far right"), President Bush should get any nominee he wants. Of course, liberals will fight anyone he nominates, so their talk about "balance," like most of their talk, is disingenuous.

Addendum 2: My first choice for the Supreme Court was Michael W. McConnell. I hope he gets nominated this time. My main concern is getting federalists on the Court. This is why I'm delighted with John Roberts. He has a healthy sense of the limits of federal power. Liberals seem not to realize that ours is a limited government. Not every problem is within the province of Congress. The job of the Supreme Court is to strike down those laws that exceed congressional authority.

Addendum 3: It's been less than an hour since Justice Rehnquist's death was reported. I was talking to my mother on the telephone when she saw something on her television about it. A few seconds ago, I found the Wikipedia entry on Justice Rehnquist. Someone had updated it already. Amazing.

Addendum 4: Here, for those of you who haven't read it, is Justice Rehnquist's dissenting opinion in Roe v. Wade.

Addendum 5: Carol Platt Liebau has a long post about Justice Rehnquist. See here.

[E]ven though they may not have the capacity for happiness and suffering that whales have, nevertheless I would suppose that chickens can suffer quite a lot, even though their consciousness should be very much a sort of daze, and this should be taken into account in our dealings with them. Perhaps in order to qualify for a moral elite one should become a heroic vegetarian like Peter Singer. I am myself not so heroic. I eat eggs though they may come from battery hens. Moreover at present I see no moral objection to eating the flesh of free range cattle, which seem to me to have a happy life which they would not have at all if they were not destined to be eaten.

(J. J. C. Smart, Ethics, Persuasion and Truth, International Library of Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984], 134 [italics in original])

James Taranto prepares the Best of the Web Today page for The Wall Street Journal. While I appreciate his work, and look forward to it each weekday, I must take exception to one of his pet phrases, “the Angry Left.” The Left isn’t angry; it’s hateful. Anger can be righteous, as when one is wronged by another. If you throw an egg at my house, I’ll be angry at you, and rightly so, since you had no right to deface my property. There’s even a word for righteous anger: indignation. There is nothing wrong with anger per se. Whether it is wrong depends on its object and the circumstances. Anger at those who wrong one is appropriate; anger at those who are innocent is inappropriate. Anger can be either wild, uncontrollable, and irrational or focused, controllable, and rational. What’s pathological is not anger itself but the inability to get angry at those who do you down.

Hatred is different. Hatred is personal. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., hatred is “The condition or state of relations in which one person hates another; the emotion or feeling of hate; active dislike, detestation; enmity, ill-will, malevolence.” There is no such thing as righteous hatred; nor is there a word for it, as there is for righteous anger. Hatred is necessarily wild, uncontrollable, and irrational. Whereas anger can be the impetus to justice, hatred is almost always the impetus to injustice. Anger is responsive to apology; hatred is not. People who are angry often forgive those who wrong them; people who are hateful seldom, if ever, forgive those they hate. When I am angry at you, it is for something you did, which implies that you can make amends for it. When I hate you, it is because of who you are (or what you represent).

Calling the Left “the Angry Left,” as Taranto does, invites a question: Is the anger appropriate? The Left can admit to being angry but insist that it has reason to be. Leftists will say that President Bush “stole” the 2000 election, and hence is not entitled to the presidency. They will say that his policies harm the vulnerable, reward the privileged, and wreak havoc on the environment. They will say that he is divisive, callous, and aloof, when a president should be the opposite of these things. In short, they will insist that their anger is righteous. They will say that they’re indignant, not merely angry.

Taranto should change his label to “the Hateful Left,” for that, to me, is more accurate. The Left hates President Bush. If you doubt me, read the New York Times columns of Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, and Frank Rich. Read the postings at—and the letters to—Democratic Underground. Read Daily Kos. Read Jonathan Chait’s essay “Mad About You: The Case for Bush Hatred.” I’m not making a rhetorical point. I’m not trying to get Taranto to be manipulative. I’m trying to get him to be accurate. Anger is sometimes defensible. Hatred is never defensible. Nothing less than hatred can explain the Left’s bizarre, outrageous, and despicable behavior.

I hate redundancy. It’s a waste of space and an affront to the sensibilities of the reader. I read in The Dallas Morning News today that “the Utes beat Arizona on Friday and extended their winning streak to 17 straight games.” A streak, in this context, means an unbroken series of victories or defeats. But that’s exactly what “straight” means. So the author said the same thing twice. The author should have said either

• The Utes beat Arizona on Friday and extended their winning streak to 17 games

or

• The Utes beat Arizona on Friday for their 17th straight victory,

but not both.

To the Editor:

Adam Cohen ("Is John Roberts Too Much of a Judicial Activist?," Editorial Observer, Aug. 27) is quite right to lament the abuse of the term "judicial activism" and properly points out that conservatives as well as liberals have many times been guilty of it. Unfortunately, his analysis perpetuates misconceptions of what constitutes such activism.

By equating the number of times a justice votes to overturn a law with pernicious "activism," he implies that the proper role of justices is passive acquiescence to whatever Congress serves up. In fact, it is not judicial action per se that constitutes inappropriate "legislating from the bench": it is action based on anything other than the rights and powers expressed in our Constitution.

Tara Smith
Austin, Tex., Aug. 27, 2005

Here.

I'm not the joining type, but I decided to join the National Association of Scholars to help cleanse higher education of political correctness and other idiocies, irrelevancies, and inanities. See here and here for information. I encourage other scholars to join me in this worthy endeavor.

Wrath, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God," "the day of wrath," etc. Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest. The Greeks before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the frying-pan of the wrath of Chryses into the fire of the wrath of Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor roasted. A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom paid the penalty with their lives. God is now Love, and a director of the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.

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

Here is a scene from today's seventh stage of the Tour of Spain. Spaniard Roberto Heras, who once played a supporting role for Lance Armstrong, leads the race.

Here is information about the University of Houston system, which has six components. I've never been to Houston, although I got close to it many years ago when I did the Katy Flatland Century bike rally. You might think that a flat course would be easy. Ha! You can't stop pedaling. If you do, you come to a halt. With hills, you get to freewheel (i.e., coast) every now and then.

To the Editor:

In the Book Review, readers expect books to be reviewed. So it was with heightened expectation that I settled down to read Richard A. Posner's long review ("Bad News," July 31) of eight books on the news media—print and electronic. Instead, I was given a lengthy Chicago school of economics treatment of the news business with only the most passing reference to the listed books. Judge Posner in effect reviewed himself—an essay that should have been published elsewhere in The Times. In the Book Review section, it seemed like a bait and switch—unbecoming for a federal judge of Posner's prowess.

RALPH NADER
Washington

If you have any doubts whatsoever about Paul Krugman's* dishonesty—intellectual or otherwise—read this. The man is so driven by hatred of President Bush (I can think of no other motive to explain his bizarre behavior) that he can't get simple facts right. To Krugman, facts that undermine his beliefs aren't really facts; they're inconveniences to be waved off. Unfortunately for him, the newspaper for which he writes has a powerful interest in correcting errors that appear in its pages. A newspaper that reports falsehoods cannot seriously call itself "the newspaper of record." We shall see how committed The New York Times is to the truth. It must, at a minimum, append Krugman's admission of error to each column in which the error appeared. (The columns are online.) If I may make a personal comment, Donald Luskin deserves a great deal of credit for exposing Krugman's misrepresentations about the 2000 election and its aftermath. Good work, Don!

Addendum: Is it just me, or does Krugman seem childish and intransigent? He appears to think that if he admits error, even on trivial things, it will give aid and comfort to his enemies. But why does he have enemies? Seriously. Could it be that he has enemies because he's dishonest? Does David Broder have enemies? Does William Raspberry have enemies? Does Richard Cohen have enemies? Does George Will have enemies?

* "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).

Here is a column about the breakdown of law and order in New Orleans. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote in Leviathan (1651) that life in a state of nature would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." To the objection that there never was a state of nature, he replied (correctly) that there had been and was. He gave three examples: the savagery of native Americans (and presumably other primitive peoples around the world); times of civil war and insurrection (we might add natural catastrophe); and nation-states in their interactions with one another. The only way to escape the state of nature, Hobbes thought, is to institute political authority. The sovereign—who he thought had to be absolute—maintains order through coercion. "If you do X, I will apprehend and punish you." But once law and order break down, the fear of punishment dissipates and human beings revert to their natural state of selfishness (of which the instinct for self-preservation is one aspect). Hobbes postulated three causes of "quarrel": love of gain (avarice); desire for security (diffidence); and reputation. We are seeing all three in New Orleans, but mostly avarice. If Hobbes is right, and I believe he is, then the looting will stop when—and only when—fear of death replaces love of gain as the dominant motive.

According to Paul Krugman*, everything bad that has happened and is happening in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama is President Bush's fault. See here. An honest person would point out that President Clinton didn't do anything to prevent the catastrophe, either. But then, Paul Krugman isn't honest. Have you ever seen him say a good thing about the Bush administration? Have you ever seen him say a bad thing about the Clinton administration? It's logically possible that the Bush administration is omnimalevolent and that the Clinton administration was omnibenevolent. But it's not likely, is it? So Krugman has a double standard. This is but one of many reasons why he can't be taken seriously as a political commentator. He is a laughingstock, a joke, a cartoon, a buffoon.

* "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).

Paul Krugman* won't like this.

* "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).

Most of you know that I’m a marathoner. I began training for my first marathon nine years ago this month. I ran the Dallas White Rock Marathon eight consecutive years (1996-2003, inclusive) and the Fort Worth Cowtown Marathon three consecutive years (1997-1999, inclusive). That’s 11 marathons in eight years. I skipped the 2004 White Rock marathon. I had hip and back pain that made running long distances painful. I was also burned out, which is a hard thing to admit. The constant training (and racing) took a toll on me. But this year I feel much better. I intend to train for and run the White Rock Marathon again in December. My hip and back pain are all but gone. (I think I was protein deficient, having stopped eating chicken about two years ago.) Training starts Monday, with a 15K race in Fort Worth.

Today I ran 6.6 miles in brutal heat and humidity. (It was 93.2° Fahrenheit when I finished.) I’ve run this course hundreds of times, but not since 2003 (before my latest marathon). My longest run in 21 months has been 4.3 miles. Most of my runs have been two or 3.1 miles. As I ran, I realized that there’s an analogy been exploring physical space and exploring the mind. When Lewis and Clark traversed the continent in 1804 and 1805, much of it had already been explored by whites. It was not until the Corps of Discovery reached the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers that it reached unfamiliar territory. Native Americans were familiar with what lay beyond, but whites weren’t. Science wasn’t. From that point to the Pacific, the members of the expedition didn’t know what they would find. It was thought that there might be woolly mammoths and Welsh Indians in the West! Imagine how exciting (and, in the case of the mammoths, frightening) this must have been.

Since I hadn’t run more than 4.3 miles in many months, I didn’t know what to expect on today’s run. My body is not used to going 6.6 miles. How would I feel at five miles? At six? At the finish? Would I have to slow my pace? Would I succumb to the temptation to walk? The heat only complicated things. Most of my marathon training takes place in cool or cold weather. Would my core body temperature get so high that I couldn’t continue? Would I explode? I was running into the unknown. I would get answers to my questions as I ran, just as Lewis and Clark got answers to their questions as they moved slowly upriver.

Luckily, I was able to gut out the run. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t pretty, but I completed the course without slowing, walking, or stopping. That was my goal. I feel confident that I’ll do the same Monday, over a longer course (9.3 miles). I run again tomorrow, but this time only 4.3 miles. I hope all of you have a safe, relaxing, and pleasant Labor Day holiday. If anyone reading this wants to train for a December marathon, let me know. I can send my training regimen to you. You’re going to need to get started very soon, and once you get started, you can’t let up. It’s an intense and difficult—but, as you can imagine, highly rewarding—experience. You will learn more about yourself while training for a marathon than while doing just about anything else.

To the Editor:

Given the billions that it will take to rebuild after the unfathomable destruction of Hurricane Katrina, there is an urgent need for Congress to rescind the tax cuts and increase taxes on the rich. That way, sufficient funds will be available, and the poor and middle class will not have to carry an unfair share of the burden.

Winnie Boal
Ann Arbor, Mich., Sept. 1, 2005

Quixotic, adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.

When ignorance from out our lives can banish
Philology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.
Juan Smith.

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

Here.

If you love American history, as I do, you will love this site.

Here.

9-1-85 Sunday. I feel pressed for time already, even though the [fall] semester has just begun. But I refuse to let my busy schedule interfere with my weekly bike ride. Today I rode my bike for the fifteenth straight week, averaging a record 13.79 miles per hour (gross). When I left the apartment, I decided to push myself hard at every step. I pedalled a bit harder on the flat stretches, kept the bike in a higher gear than usual while pedalling uphill, and took advantage of my momentum while travelling downhill. It paid off. I arrived back at my apartment exactly two hours, fifty-four minutes after I left [having ridden 40 miles]. Had I taken only four minutes longer, I would not have set a speed record. My bike now has 3500 miles on the odometer.

The high temperature in Tucson today was ninety-seven degrees [Fahrenheit]. Even so, I made only three stops to refill my water bottle during my ride. I did not pause to rest at the cave, as has been my custom, and I did not stop for a water refill at Saguaro National Monument [East]. As I pedal, I squirt water onto my face, chest, and legs. When the water evaporates, as it does quickly under the desert sun, it cools my skin. This has a “recharging” effect on my energy supply. Having ridden a large number of miles in the desert, I now know how to take care of myself. The trick is to eat large quantities of carbohydrates (for example, pancakes) beforehand, drink water or some other fluid continually, and rest at regular intervals. I am now 62.5% of the way to my 1982 mileage record. By averaging 27.2 miles per week for the remaining seventeen weeks of 1985, I’ll break the record.

To the Editor:

Regarding the state of education in the United States, Bob Herbert writes, "I respectfully suggest that we may be looking at a crisis here" ("Left Behind, Way Behind," column, Aug. 29). As a highly qualified teacher of English at the high school level, I agree.

But this crisis we see in our schools has its roots in American homes increasingly devoid of books and printed material, where children turn exclusively to television, computers and electronic games for entertainment—and see the adults around them doing the same. Instant-gratification technology has, for many students, replaced the task—and the thrill—of reading.

One cannot develop solid writing skills without first being a decent reader; underdevelopment of these skills translates to low scores in standardized testing across racial and economic lines, and in all subject areas.

Education begins in a home where reading is intrinsically valuable and necessary; where recognition of the hard work associated with education and doing well in school are top priorities; and where parents join schools in having high expectations for their children's success.

Without this initial foundation and continued support at home, a teacher's hands are tied at school.

Jo Ann Price
Freehold, N.J., Aug. 29, 2005

Lickspittle, n. A useful functionary, not infrequently found editing a newspaper. In his character of editor he is closely allied to the blackmailer by the tie of occasional identity; for in truth the lickspittle is only the blackmailer under another aspect, although the latter is frequently found as an independent species. Lickspittling is more detestable than blackmailing, precisely as the business of a confidence man is more detestable than that of a highway robber; and the parallel maintains itself throughout, for whereas few robbers will cheat, every sneak will plunder if he dare.

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

You keep track of the gas mileage of your automobile.

Here.

Here is Peggy Noonan's column about the hurricane. By the way, I feel sorry for all the girls and women named Katrina. Thank goodness this wasn't Hurricane Keith.