AnalPhilosopher

Here is Stanley Renshon's latest post.

Here.

Here is an exchange about Design Theory. For those of you who haven't been around, I use "Design Theory" instead of "Intelligent Design," since the latter is redundant. Whoever came up with it wasn't thinking clearly.

I owe Roger Clemens an apology. The other day, I said that he was all about winning. Today he signed with the Houston Astros, who are anything but assured of going to the playoffs. As of this morning, the Astros were 27-26 and in third place in the National League Central Division. It'll be hard for the Astros to catch the St Louis Cardinals, and the wild card is a crapshoot. Had Clemens signed with either the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, he'd almost certainly have gone to the playoffs. I wonder why The Rocket didn't sign with my adopted Texas Rangers, who are in first place. If it was good enough for Nolan Ryan, it's good enough for Roger Clemens.

Coincidentally, I read this essay by Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon this morning in First Things, to which I subscribe. What I don't understand is why anyone who is in this country illegally should remain here. Throw the criminals out; then we'll talk about how many immigrants to allow in (and which ones).

Here.

Here.

To the Editor:

The controversy over television for preschoolers and infants (news article, May 25) is just the latest in the series of pronouncements of experts clashing with the reality of parents.

Yes, there are better things to do with very young children than plop them in front of a television. But the problem isn't that parents do that to grab some space for themselves; it's that the activity is marketed as educational. It isn't.

It could be, if parents sat down and commented about the television show the way they do when they read a book with their youngster. But that doesn't happen because parents are just pleased to have a safe activity for their youngster that doesn't involve them.

So, let's get real. Parents, it's O.K. for your little ones to watch some gentle television. Not too much, not to take away from important play-together time. But don't be fooled into thinking that your infant will learn much, if anything.

Experts need to understand the reality of day-to-day parenting, and the need to take a break from being on call 24/7.

Neala S. Schwartzberg
Roslyn Heights, N.Y., May 25, 2006
The writer is the editor of a newsletter about parents and preschoolers.

Malthusian, adj. Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines. Malthus believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. One of the most practical exponents of the Malthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiers have been of the same way of thinking.

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

Hi Keith,

Regarding your post "Let Him Eat Cake!," I was just wondering if your cakes were vegan. I'm not nitpicking; just curious.

As for me, I am a carrot cake fan and I regard a good carrot cake in much the same way that a heroin addict regards a heroin rush. My favorite vegan restaurant in San Francisco, Herbivore, has a carrot cake that is indistinguishable from non-vegan cake. This is not surprising if you consider that eggs, the main animal product in cake, adds nothing to the flavor; it's merely a binding agent, and there are plenty of substitutes that do just as well. What gives cake its flavor is the same thing that gives all desserts and candies their flavor—sugar and/or fat—and vegan versions of fat are plentiful. This becomes obvious if you think of what egg tastes like by itself—think of scrambled eggs, a hardboiled egg, or a raw egg if you've ever tried it—and then think of the taste of cake. There's no connection!

Dave

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I'm not a vegan. I'm not even a vegetarian. I'm a demi-vegetarian.

Only statements that risk being falsified can fix upon the features that make our world what it is rather than what it might possibly otherwise be.

(David Braybrooke, Philosophy of Social Science [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987], 11)

To this.

To the Editor:

Gregg Easterbrook's sudden climate-science conversion and call for greenhouse-gas rationing represents a small step forward and a huge step back.

Accepting the science of climate change has never been the real debate: there are, and always have been, reputable scientists, economists and policy analysts who accept mainstream climate science while arguing for affordable adaptive policies and additional research as the most rational policy response to the threat of climate change.

Kyoto boosters have tried to hide this "inconvenient truth" by labeling anyone who disagrees with them a shill or a crackpot, and insisting that science "demands" that we control greenhouse gas emissions. But science only tells us how things are, not what to do.

Greenhouse gas controls of the sort Mr. Easterbrook favors have been expensive failures wherever tried. It would be a giant step backward for the United States to enact such failed, expensive approaches to climate change.

Kenneth Green
Washington, May 24, 2006
The writer is a visiting fellow, American Enterprise Institute.

See here for Bill Vallicella's post on illegal aliens.

See here.

Darby Shaw has posted some photographs of his latest bike rally. See here.

Exile, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.

An English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of Erin," replied: "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it." Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!

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

Not to brag, but I'm the most disciplined person I've ever known. When I set my mind to something, it's done. This past July, for example, I decided I did not want to weigh 177 pounds. (I'm five feet, eleven inches tall.) I immediately went on a 2,000-calorie a day diet. The pounds came off. I weighed 157.5 pounds this morning. I eventually went up to 2,100 calories a day, and for several months now I've been consuming 2,200 calories a day. People laugh at me for counting calories, but it works. It's a matter of wanting something and knowing how to get it. Why is it silly to choose effective means to one's ends? Isn't that the essence of rationality?

One of my favorite foods—probably my favorite food of all time—is cake. I used to be able to eat cake with impunity. My mother can make any cake, from German sweet chocolate to carrot to white to fudge. I haven't seen her in nearly 13 years, so I've been unable to savor her confections. The problem with cake is that it's high in calories. A month or so ago, not having had cake in several years, I ate two pieces at a retirement party for my secretary Billie Hughes. It was delicious. I remember talking to others as I ate it, but I wasn't listening. I was savoring the cake: especially the sinful frosting. It had to have been a special occasion for me to throw my diet out the window.

Today I bought a cake in Kroger. That's right. I bought a big, fat, sinful chocolate cake. I can't remember having cake in my house. This afternoon, I ate a piece. I was in heaven. Of course, it means I won't be able to eat anything else today, but who cares!

Peg Kaplan answers my question about how much of bridge success comes down to luck. Thanks, Peg. Next question: Why do you like bridge?

Huh huh huh hu-uh huh

So true funny how it seems
always in time, but never in line for dreams.
Head over heels when toe to toe.
This is the sound of my soul,
this is the sound.
I bought a ticket to the world,
but now I've come back again.
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh I want the truth to be said.

Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true.
Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true.

With a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue
dissolve the nerves that have just begun.
Listening to Marvin (all night long)
This is the sound of my soul,
this is the sound.
Always slipping from my hands,
sand's a time of its own.
Take your seaside arms and write the next line.
Oh I want the truth to be known.

Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true.
Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true.

I bought a ticket to the world,
but now I've come back again.
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh I want the truth to be said.

Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true.
Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true.

This much is true.

I know, I know, I know this much is true.

After the horrors of Nazism were defeated and exposed, eugenics became a dirty word, but it is important to remember that for a long time it was a favored "progressive" cause of those enlightened by the best science of the time.

(Richard John Neuhaus, "The Public Square," First Things [May 2006]: 59-76, at 74)

Here.

As some of you know, I'm watching the 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone in the order in which they originally appeared on television. Yesterday I watched the ninth episode, entitled "Perchance to Dream." First aired on 27 November 1959, when I was two and a half years old, it stars Richard Conte as a man who's afraid to sleep. He's been diagnosed with a bad heart and has been having nightmares involving a carnival dancer named Maya. He fears that if he falls asleep, he'll be so frightened by Maya that he'll have a heart attack. Does anyone remember this episode? I must say, it's not one of my favorites; but a bad episode of The Twilight Zone is still better than a good episode of many other television series. By the way, this was the first episode that wasn't written by Rod Serling. Coincidence? You be the judge.

I've heard it said that Barry Bonds (and perhaps others, such as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa) should have an asterisk next to his name in the Major League Baseball record book. Roger Maris has an asterisk next to his name because he hit his 61 home runs in a 162-game season, whereas Babe Ruth hit his 60 home runs in a 154-game season.

This is a bad idea, for at least two reasons. First, there was no rule against using steroids when McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds played. Barry Bonds has not, to date, violated any rule. If he had, he wouldn't be playing. Second, nobody will ever know how much steroids helped these players, even if the players in question admit to using them. In the case of Maris and Ruth, we're dealing with something objective: the number of games played. Major League Baseball would be engaged in speculation if it concluded that, without steroids, these players would have hit fewer home runs.

It may be unfortunate, but the record book must say nothing about steroids. Baseball fans will have to make their own judgments about whether these players used performance-enhancing substances and, if so, how much it enhanced their performance. You know what? This isn't a bad thing. There have always been arguments about which person is the best hitter, the best pitcher, or the best manager. The best hitter is not necessarily the person who hits for the highest average. The best pitcher is not necessarily the pitcher who strikes out the most batters. The best manager is not necessarily the manager who wins the most games. To make an argument that X is the best hitter/pitcher/manager, you must (1) state your criterion, (2) apply the criterion to all individuals, and (3) conclude that X fares better on that criterion than anyone else. The reason these sorts of arguments aren't conclusive is that different people have different criteria. There are people who believe that Babe Ruth was the best player of all time, despite the fact that most of his records have been broken.

Here.

Albert Pujols hit another home run today. He has 25 home runs and 64 runs batted in through 51 games. At that pace, he'll finish with 79.4 home runs and 203.2 runs batted in. Both would be records. While I'm talking baseball, does anyone else find it unseemly for Roger Clemens to be team-shopping? He wants to win a World Series title, so he's trying to figure out which team that's interested in his services has the best chance to win it all. To Clemens, it's all about winning. Isn't the idea to carry a team to the title, rather than being carried? I admire people like Tony Gwynn, who could have gone to a team like the New York Yankees early in his career. He decided to stay in San Diego and help the Padres win. How satisfying can it be to jump on the bandwagon of a winning team?

Here is a blog for your consideration.

I had a problem recently that others may find interesting. I use Microsoft Office Word 2003 as my word-processing application. I also use Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard. I love being able to make PDF files of my Word documents, websites, and anything else that appears on my computer screen. A few months ago, I noticed that Word was taking longer and longer to open and close documents. I figured it had to do with Norton’s virus-scanning software. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an error message while opening (or closing) a Word document. It said it was having a problem with Acrobat. I clicked through the error message and got rid of it. Lo and behold, the Acrobat icons disappeared from my Word documents. I was able to make PDF files of websites, but not Word documents.

I had no idea what was going on, so I decided to start over. I spent a couple of hours uninstalling and reinstalling Microsoft Office 2003. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat. Surely that would solve the problem, I thought. It didn’t. Now I was completely at a loss. It said on the Adobe website that a service call would cost $39.99, but I decided it was worth it. Before calling, however, I snooped around on the Adobe website. I found a page devoted to my problem, and did what it said to solve it, but it didn’t work. It was time to call. To my surprise, I got through with no trouble. I talked to two people, the first of whom transferred me to the second. The second person, who was very friendly, walked me through a procedure. He had me click “start” and “Run…” In the run box, he had me type “%appdata%” and click “OK.” Then, in order, he had me click “Microsoft” and “Templates.” This opened a folder containing one file, named “Normal.” It was a Microsoft Word Template file, whatever that is. He told me to delete it. I crossed my fingers, gulped, and did so. Poof!

I was told to open a Word document and enable Acrobat. It worked! There, for the first time in days, were the familiar icons that allow me to make PDF files. I was so happy I could have kissed the man. I asked what we had done. He said the file we deleted stores Word data. It can get corrupted. Evidently, something I did corrupted it. By deleting the file, we started over. As if getting my Acrobat icons back wasn’t enough, my Word documents open and close much faster than before. Can you say “unintended good consequence”? I made sure I wrote everything down, so I can perform this procedure again from time to time. (I assume I can do it as often as I want.) Has anyone else had this problem? If you try it, don’t blame me if you have problems. I doubt that you will, but I want you to know that if you do, it’s not my responsibility.

Oh, I almost forgot. There was no charge. Does it get any better? Thank you, Adobe.

As many have had occasion to observe, the one thing not allowed on today's diversity-obsessed campus is diversity on the questions that matter to those in charge.

(Richard John Neuhaus, "The Public Square," First Things [May 2006]: 59-76, at 72)

To the Editor:

It seems as if the debate on immigration (front page, May 25) excludes some middle ground on which compromise might be reached.

For example, a guest-worker program could include a savings program that would begin payments only upon the worker's return to Mexico.

Such a program might be sufficient to encourage many if not most guest workers ultimately to return to the country and culture of their birth. At a time when increasing numbers of United States citizens are retiring to Mexico, this could prove to be an attractive option.

Merrick Spiers
Cambridge, Mass., May 25, 2006

Lodger, n. A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder and the Mealer.

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

I'd like to express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to everyone who fought—and is fighting—for my country. Although I didn't serve myself, I come from a military family. My father was in the Air Force and my stepfather in the Army. My stepfather saw combat in Vietnam. Without warriors such as them, the world would be in a shambles.

I'm glad Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth on the all-time home-run list, if only to get it out of the news. I was tired of seeing "Chasing Ruth" on ESPN and "Chasing Babe" in my daily newspaper. Do you think Bonds will catch Hank Aaron? Aaron has 755 home runs. Bonds has 715. Forty home runs isn't a lot, but Bonds has gimpy knees. If he stays healthy, he could break the record a year from now. If he continues to have knee problems or other ailments, he may fall short. Having made your prediction, tell me how you feel about Bonds passing Aaron. In other words, do two things: (1) make a prediction and (2) tell me what you'd like to see happen.

Here.

The NBA's logo is right out of the 1950s. Why do you suppose the league hasn't changed it?

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Congratulations to Ivan Basso, who rode magnificently. This year's Giro was difficult (as Giros go), which bodes well for Basso's chances to win one or more Tours de France. (The Tour is harder than the Giro.) If Basso wins this year's Tour—and I wouldn't bet against him—he'll be the first person to pull off the double since Marco Pantani in 1998. My pick to win the Giro, Damiano Cunego, finished fourth. I hope you enjoyed these daily posts.

As if the expression "sooner rather than later" weren't bad enough, today I heard "later rather than sooner." Sometimes I think human beings are monkeys.

To the Editor:

Those with money will always believe that you can't solve social problems by throwing money at them.

Look at the logic of David Brooks, for example: Wealth redistribution doesn't work, because "income inequality is driven by human capital inequality"—it's about the love, not the money.

But poverty is not linear; it's cyclical. High school dropouts, broken homes and low-skill workers are caused by poverty, and are the cause of more poverty in turn.

It can certainly be argued, as conservatives have, that simply giving money to poor people doesn't solve the problem. But it cannot be argued that there is a solution that doesn't cost money.

So we can talk about what mix of preschool, Head Start, low-income tax credit and so on may be the best solution, but one thing we know for sure—passing tax cuts for the rich and then preaching about "the primitive realm of love" ain't it.

David Berman
New York, May 25, 2006

Here.

Ubiquity, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only. This important distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the mediæval Church and there was much bloodshed about it. Certain Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ's body were known as Ubiquitarians. For this error they were doubtless damned, for Christ's body is present only in the eucharist, though that sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously. In recent times ubiquity has not always been understood—not even by Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two places at once unless he is a bird.

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

I've been watching television most of the day, having done a hard bike ride yesterday. First came the Indianapolis 500, then the softball game between Tennessee and Michigan, then the Big 12 baseball tournament final between Kansas and Nebraska, then the second softball game between Tennessee and Michigan, then the conclusion of the baseball game between the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs, and then the final stage of the Giro d'Italia. I was flipping channels like crazy, trying to stay on top of everything. The second softball game was the rubber game of a three-game series, with the winner advancing to the Women's College World Series. Tennessee had a 1-0 lead with an inning to play. Then, out of nowhere, ESPN switched to a baseball game to show Barry Bonds, who hit his 715th career home run. Okay, I thought, now go back. But ESPN stayed with the Bonds story for half an hour! I was outraged. How dare they cut away from a game I had been watching, just when it was reaching its climax! If Bonds had broken a record, that would have been different; but what has he done? He moved into second place on the all-time list. Jesus. Luckily for ESPN, it taped the softball game and showed it afterward. Had it not done so, it would have had hell to pay.

Here.

To the Editor:

"Verdict on an Era" (news analysis, May 26) says that the Enron trial was in fact an indictment of the era of corporate madness that swept over certain American businesses in the late 1990's.

In a wider sense, however, it is a broader indictment of the doctrine of American economic laissez-faire, which gained currency with the ascendancy of the Reagan administration in the 1980's and spawned an entire generation of neoconservatism.

The premise was that the free market was by its very structure infallible, that the kind of corruption and thievery demonstrated in the Enron case would be impossible because competitive forces would organically root out inefficient companies. Enron is the prime example of the failure of this doctrine.

It is time to recognize that allowing the free market to "self-regulate" industries is indeed madness. The free market does not work when it is overrun by crooks.

Vigorous government regulation is needed to avoid more Enrons and to keep the playing field level for the vast majority of private businesses that conduct their affairs honestly.

Kent K. Gordis
Brooklyn, May 26, 2006

I'm giddy about the Detroit Tigers, who won again today (their eighth straight victory) and are now 35-14. As good as that is, it pales in comparison to the start of the 1984 Detroit Tigers. Remember? The 1984 Tigers started the season 35-5. It's hard to win seven of eight games, at any time in a season. The 1984 Tigers did it five times in a row. That's just nutty. As for the 2006 Tigers, if they win half their remaining games, they'll finish with 91.5 victories. If they win 55% of their remaining games, they'll finish with 97.1 victories. If they remain on their current pace, which is highly unlikely, they'll win 115.7 games. Go Tigers!

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's final stage (86.9 miles). Italian Ivan Basso, the winner of today's stage, averaged 19.12 miles per hour. I told you this stage was almost as hard as yesterday's!

Impenitence, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.

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

Here.

I'm puzzled by something I see at bike rallies. The most common fruit you see at rest stops is the banana, and usually they are cut in half. Why is this? Most people know how to peel a banana and are pretty good at it. I know I am. If you cut a banana, you make it attractive to flies and other insects. Also, if there are any cut bananas left over after the rally, they are going to have to be thrown away. The only thing I can think of is that the rally organizers are trying to minimize waste. They may think that most riders don't want to eat a whole banana, and that if such a rider takes a whole banana, he or she will throw part of it away. But I never see parts of bananas on the pavement. I see banana peels, which is a sign that the entire banana was eaten. Can anyone think of a reason for this practice? I suppose I could ask someone at a rest stop, but that's too easy.

Here is Kenneth Lloyd Anderson's new blog. The subtitle is "Poems and Essays on Evolutionary Conservatism." I will add a link to the sidebar.

There are now three addenda to my post on evil and religion. See here.

I'm behind in my bike-rally narratives, so I'll combine the latest two. Thirteen days ago, I did my fifth rally of the year and 376th overall in Saginaw, a suburb of Fort Worth. We rode around Eagle Mountain Lake, which was interesting. I rode the entire way with friends: mainly George Chapman (who was taking it easy because he had a race the next day) and Karen Edwards, but also Phil Kevil and Randy Kirby. It was sunny, warm, and windy. I averaged 16.96 miles per hour for 58.20 miles. Why do I always fall short of whole numbers? Why can't I end up with 17.04 miles per hour rather than 16.96? This happened to me several times in 2005.

I went slower six days ago in Richardson, which was my sixth rally of the year and 377th overall. I rode the entire way with Kevin, an acquaintance from way back, but we rode side by side rather than in single file, so it didn't help our speed. I ended up with 15.77 miles per hour for 65.21 miles. It was hot and windy. The official high temperature for the day, several hours after we finished, was 96º Fahrenheit. Kevin and I made two stops for refreshments. This rally is becoming quite large, in terms of number of participants. The course was scenic and the roads were good. I'm on track for at least 25 rallies this year. I have an outside chance to match my 2005 total of 27.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (131.1 miles). The winner of today's stage, Spaniard Juan Manuel Garate, averaged 19.00 miles per hour. He was in the saddle for seven hours, 13 minutes, 36 seconds. The last rider to come in (in 153d place) finished in eight hours, 51 seconds. That these superbly conditioned riders averaged no more than 19 miles per hour speaks to the difficulty of the stage. And guess what? Tomorrow's stage is almost as bad!

Addendum: There was a touching display of sportsmanship during today's stage. On the final climb, Garate and German Jens Voigt rode together. See here. Voigt let Garate do all the work. Near the finish, Voigt told Garate that he (Voigt) would not sprint. He shook Garate's hand and patted him on the back. When Garate crossed the finish line, four seconds ahead of Voigt, he turned and pointed to Voigt as a way of saluting the German's sportsmanship. Here is Garate:

Voigt worked a lot in the break today, and he certainly would have been very happy to win, but he showed there are other values and there is respect [between riders] in the race. He made a very nice gesture, and I think it is good for cycling . . . I will not forget what he did—he is a great champion and a great personality.

Here is Voigt:

I was always sitting on the back of the attack, but I couldn't win today because I didn't work at all. You can only win if you are the strongest and it wouldn't have been right if I did.

Now do you understand why I love professional cycling? It's not just about glory. It's about honor.

To the Editor:

Re "Talk-Show Joe" (column, May 22):

Paul Krugman says Joe Lieberman has sought the political center. This assertion is largely contradicted by his voting record.

Senator Lieberman has consistently received 90 to 100 percent ratings for his Senate votes over the years by national liberal groups like the Americans for Democratic Action, the League of Conservation Voters, Naral and many others.

Mr. Krugman criticizes Senator Lieberman's sincere position that the Iraq war was justified because he genuinely believed that replacing Saddam Hussein with a democratic government would have beneficial effects in the Middle East and in the war against terrorism.

Senator Lieberman may have been wrong about this judgment. But Mr. Krugman doesn't cite the senator's repeated public criticism of the Bush administration's inept and ill-planned occupation.

Finally, Mr. Krugman criticizes Senator Lieberman for his speech criticizing President Bill Clinton's personal conduct in the Lewinsky matter. But Mr. Krugman doesn't acknowledge that many Democratic senators credited Senator Lieberman's criticism of President Clinton's private behavior while also opposing his impeachment as a key factor in rallying the opposition to impeachment.

Lanny J. Davis
Washington, May 24, 2006
The writer served as President Clinton's special counsel, 1996-98.

My Ethics of War blog is celebrating its second anniversary. See here.

Read this. Please comment on the following paragraph:

Gasoline today represents a mere 3.1 per cent of household expenditures, lower than ever before and well below the cost of other essentials including vehicles, food, housing, clothing and medical expenses. Gasoline is cheaper per gallon than milk, spring water, coffee and other common consumables. Mouthwash weighs in at around $18 per gallon.

I'm particularly interested in the second and third sentences.

Here.

Behavior, n. Conduct, as determined, not by principle, but by breeding. The word seems to be somewhat loosely used in Dr. Jamrach Holobom's translation of the following lines in the Dies Iræ:

Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuæ viæ.
Ne me perdas illa die.

Pray remember, sacred Savior,
Whose the thoughtless hand that gave your
Death-blow. Pardon such behavior.

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

Here.

It's already oppressively hot and humid in North Texas, but one must stay in shape. I ride my bike at least 60 miles every Saturday and do three runs during the week. I run 3.1 miles (five kilometers) through the neighborhood every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Four aerobic exercises in seven days keeps me fit and helps keep the weight off. (I weighed 156.5 pounds this morning, naked.) I also do 75 sit-ups every day and either bench presses or butterflies on my Soloflex machine. Oh yes, Shelbie and I take two long walks a day. Exercise is integrated into my life. Without it, I would disintegrate as a person. Today, in 83º heat, with terrible humidity, I did my 3.1-mile run. It was a milestone. I've now run 1,400 times (since 14 February 1993, when I began keeping a log), from .72 mile to the marathon. It was also my 440th five-kilometer run. That's by far the most common distance. I'm interested in what my readers are doing to stay fit. Do tell all.

Addendum: I've run 6,719.05 miles on those 1,400 runs, for an average of 4.79 miles per run.

I know it's not fair that I have two Major League Baseball teams, but I do. I grew up in Michigan, so I've always been and will always be a fan of the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers won again today (their sixth straight victory) and have the best record in baseball at 33-14. (The 1984 Tigers, who led their division from start to finish and won the World Series, began the season 35-5.) I'm as shocked as anyone, but also delighted. I've lived in Texas for nearly 18 years, the past 17 of them in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. I adopted the local team, the Texas Rangers, early on. Times have been hard, but this year's team shows a lot of spunk. Take tonight's game. The Rangers fell behind their division rivals, the Oakland Athletics, 7-0. Then the fireworks began. Rod Barajas hit a grand slam. Mark Texeira hit a home run. Ian Kinsler, in his first game back from the disabled list, hit two solo home runs, the second of which tied the score at 7-7 in the eighth inning. In the bottom of the ninth inning, with Oakland's best relief pitcher (Huston Street) on the mound, Phil Nevin drove a home run over the centerfield fence. Rangers win, 8-7! They now lead the division by two games over the Athletics. What a game. Sorry, Jeff.

If you’re not interested in popular music, stop reading. Yesterday evening, while channel surfing on my Dell 42-inch high-definition plasma television, I came across a VH1 special on heavy-metal music. Many of my heroes were depicted—e.g., Ratt, Dokken, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, and Mötley Crüe. (If you can listen to Mötley Crüe’s “Looks That Kill” without dancing, or at least squirming, you’re comatose.) The focus was on the Los Angeles music scene, so British groups such as Black Sabbath, Queen, and Led Zeppelin and Australian groups such as AC/DC were not mentioned. It was interesting to hear people comment on the meaning of heavy metal in the 1980s. I have my own views, of course, but you never know whether they’re idiosyncratic until you listen to what others have to say.

The thing I’ve always liked about rock and roll in general, and heavy metal in particular, is its rebelliousness. I’m a rebel at heart. Does that shock you? It shouldn’t. Everyone is a rebel in some ways and nobody is a rebel in all ways. A person can be staid and conservative in one respect but rebellious in another. When I was playing guitar with my friends in high school and college, we dreamed of forming a kick-ass rock band. I knew what we had to do. We had to be even more shocking than the currently most shocking band. My idea was to wear pink ballerina tutus on stage—with army boots. I’m serious! Kiss had pancake makeup and six-inch heels; Alice Cooper wore eye shadow; David Bowie wore spandex. My friends and I were going to take it to the next level. Wouldn’t our parents be shocked! Society would hate us. We would mock all that the establishment valued.

Ah, what might have been. Things didn’t work out, as you may have surmised, and probably for the best. My guitar-playing time was limited by my undergraduate studies and all but killed by my legal studies; and besides, I had no natural musical talent. But that didn’t make the dreaming pointless. It served its purpose of inspiring me and giving my friends and me something to talk about during our nighttime prowls through rural Michigan. To live is to dream; to dream is to live.

Anyway, to return to the point, it was interesting to hear what some of the heavy-metal stars had to say about their experiences. Many of them said the same thing: that heavy metal destroyed itself with excess. Each band tried to outdo the others. It was all about being the loudest, the most outrageous, and the most obnoxious. Many musicians succumbed to drugs. Sexual promiscuity was rampant. Fortunes were blown. After a while, heavy metal became a parody of itself. When This Is Spinal Tap came out in 1984, headbangers realized that their time was limited, if it hadn’t already passed.

I don’t regret the passing of the golden age of heavy metal. I have the music; I can listen to it whenever I want, and often do. All things must pass. Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe was one of the discussants on VH1. He talked about the coming of grunge music from the Pacific Northwest, which many people believe helped seal heavy metal’s fate. Neil said that he didn’t like grunge music then and doesn’t like it now. He added that he never understood it. Rock and roll, he said, was about escaping from reality and having fun. Many of its lyrics were silly, but who cared? Grunge music, Neil said, was about angst and depression—about how much one hates one’s parents. It was music for introverts. I know exactly what he’s talking about. To this day, grunge music (by the likes of Nirvana) does nothing for me. I don’t care for it as music and I certainly don’t care for its lyrics. You might say that when grunge music came on the scene, it was a signal that my time had passed. Thank goodness I can leap over grunge music and everything that has come since and get back to the good times of heavy metal. Rock and roll all nite, and party every day!

This will not endear Jeff to the legions of Randians, but somehow I don't think he cares.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (139.1 miles). Ouch.

When I posted this, two years ago today, I thought it was cute. I now think it’s stupid. I agree with the first part, about the irrelevance of religion to good people behaving well and bad people doing evil. But the second part is puzzling. Weinberg seems to be saying that the only reason good people do evil is because they’re religious. Is that true? It depends on what one means by “religion.”

There are two possibilities. The first is that it means “theism”—i.e., belief in a personal deity (and presumably an afterlife in which people are rewarded or punished by the deity in accordance with their earthly comportment). If this is what Weinberg means, then what he says is false. The atrocities of the 20th century were committed by atheists (in either the broad or the narrow sense): Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot, to name just the worst of the lot. Does Weinberg think these are not atrocities? Does he think those who committed them were theists? (Whether Hitler was a theist is controverted.)

The second possibility is that “religion” means “ideology.” This includes, but is not limited to, theism. It’s plausible that it takes ideology to do evil, or at least evil on a large scale, but “religion” now includes leftist ideologues as well as theists. Weinberg is saying, in effect, that the doing of evil (on a large scale?) requires an ideology, either one that postulates an afterlife or one that postulates a worldly utopia such as that envisioned by Marx. The totalitarians of the 20th century believed that the end—bringing about socialist utopia—justified the means, which included destroying hundreds of thousands of innocent human lives. All of the totalitarians of the 20th century were consequentialists. Most theists, and certainly all Christians, are deontologists.

In philosophical terms, Weinberg is equivocating. If “religion” means theism, then what he says is patently false, as any historian would tell him. (He ought to read Jonathan Glover’s book Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century.) If it means ideology, then he is condemning communism, socialism, and other leftist ideologies as well as theism. Since these are the only two possibilities (one is a proper subset of the other), Weinberg is either saying something false or condemning leftism. For a leftist like Weinberg, who professes to value truth, that’s a dilemma.

Addendum: Philosophers are trained to anticipate and reply to objections to their arguments or analyses. When I posted this item, I knew that someone would write to say that Hitler was a theist. Sure enough, this morning’s mail brought the expected letter. The writer, who wrote anonymously, says that Hitler was a Catholic, and therefore a theist.

That doesn’t contradict anything I said. I said—having expressed my opinion that he was an atheist—that whether Hitler was a theist is controverted. What does that mean? It means this:

Some people believe that Hitler was a theist and some people believe that Hitler was not a theist.

The writer affirms the first conjunct of this conjunction, and therefore provides support for the conjunction itself. Far from contradicting me, the writer supports me!

To contradict what I said, one must affirm the following:

Either nobody believes that Hitler was a theist or nobody believes that Hitler was not a theist.

The writer may think that the second disjunct of this disjunction is true, thus making the entire disjunction true, but he provides no evidence for it. There are, in fact, many people (such as me) who believe that Hitler was not a theist, although he was perfectly willing to use religious rhetoric to achieve his ends. (Compare Jefferson.) As I said, the matter is controverted.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that everybody believes that Hitler was a theist. Indeed, suppose that Hitler was a theist. That would not undermine the point of my post, which is that many atrocities have been committed by atheists. I have never said that all atrocities have been committed by atheists. It’s Weinberg who’s making the extreme claim when he suggests that the only good people who do evil are theists. My point is that some good people who do evil are atheists. I will address the word “good” in a subsequent addendum. Stay tuned.

Addendum 2: Here is a web page devoted to Hitler’s theism (or lack thereof). Make of it what you will. To my mind, whether Hitler was a theist, in the sense of believing in the existence of a personal deity, is controverted.

Addendum 3: Let me reply to the charge that I misstated or misunderstood Weinberg’s claim. Here is what he wrote:

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.

Weinberg appears to be saying at least the following: that all of the good people who do evil are religious. In other words, none of the good people who do evil are nonreligious. Draw a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles. Let one circle be the class of good people. Let the second circle be the class of evildoers. Let the third circle be the class of religious people. Weinberg is saying that the area of the diagram that is included in the first and second circles but excluded by the third circle is empty.

If this is correct, then, to refute Weinberg, all one has to show is that the area he thinks is empty has a member. But that requires clarifying the concept of a good person. Unfortunately, Weinberg doesn’t do this. One thing he can’t say is that the doing of evil suffices to make one a nongood person. For if evildoing suffices to make one a nongood person, then there cannot, logically, be a good person who does evil. And if that’s the case, then Weinberg’s claim is vacuous, for he wants to make a distinction within that class.

To avoid vacuity, Weinberg has to define “good person” independently of evildoing. It must be logically possible for a good person to do evil. But why does he think that none of the good people who do evil are nonreligious? That’s puzzling. Suppose goodness in persons is a matter of being benevolent and respectful of autonomy (to combine elements of both utilitarianism and Kantianism). Why can’t there be an atheist who is good in that sense but still, on occasion, does evil, even great evil? It seems neither logically nor psychologically impossible for this to be the case. If an otherwise upstanding theist can murder for God, why can’t an otherwise upstanding atheist murder to bring about socialist utopia?

Perhaps I’m taking Weinberg’s claim too strictly. Perhaps all he’s saying is that religion makes it easier, psychologically, for people to do evil. But that’s an empirical claim for which evidence is needed. It seems implausible to me on its face. If anything, religion throws up barriers to the doing of evil. As I said in my original post, Christians (at least) are deontologists. They hold that each human life is precious. To kill an innocent human being is to usurp God’s authority. There are atheistic deontologists, to be sure, but my sense is that the percentage of consequentialists is significantly higher among atheists than it is among theists. To a consequentialist, the end justifies the means. If there’s a rule against killing innocent human beings, it’s a rule of thumb only. For this reason, it would seem that religion makes it harder, not easier, for people to do evil.

But all this is speculation. Weinberg has made a bold, implausible claim and provided no evidence for it. One would think that a Nobel-prize winning physicist could do better than that.

See here for John Gray's review of three new books.

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Here.

One of my readers sent a link to this. It's hilarious. Politics is serious business, but we should never lose sight of its light side.

On this, I'm with the French.

To the Editor:

Re "Pressed by U.S., European Banks Limit Iran Deals" (front page, May 22):

Unfounded fears and calculated disinformation about Iran's peaceful nuclear program have been used by the United States government to coerce some European banks to curb business with Iran.

The United States government has conveniently used its domestic antiterrorism laws to impose informal sanctions on Iran in the absence of United Nations endorsement of such measures.

But domestic United States laws cannot trump international regimes, and the world community should not allow itself to be bullied by the United States.

M. A. Mohammadi
Press Secretary, Mission of Iran to the United Nations
New York, May 22, 2006

Here.

Pre-Adamite, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race that ante-dated Creation and lived under conditions not easily conceived. Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to have been something intermediate between fishes and birds. Little is known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.

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

Good luck, Peg! Speaking of which, how much of bridge success comes down to luck (as opposed to knowledge and skill)? I'll ask the same question of Bill Vallicella: How much of chess success comes down to luck?

Stanley Renshon weighs in on the immigration debate.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Note the miserable weather, which led race officials to shorten the stage. Here is tomorrow's stage (130.4 miles).

Former attorney general Ed Meese puts his finger on it. The immigration debate is about the rule of law. If we believe in the rule of law, as we profess, we must not allow lawbreakers to benefit from their wrongdoing. This doesn't mean they should be punished, but it does mean they should not be allowed to cut in line ahead of law-abiding immigrants. See here.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.

(Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays [New York: Dover Publications, 1969], 55 [first published in 1910; third revised edition published in 1917])

Here is a column about higher education.

To the Editor:

It is our position that unlike the Holocaust, the Armenian allegations of genocide have never been historically or legally substantiated (editorial, May 16). Genocide is a crime defined by international law. As such, it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, not by, as you suggest, a "preponderance of serious scholarship."

To expect Turkey to acquiesce to such a severe accusation with regard to its own history while its allies keep regurgitating this sensitive issue for political ends is simply not rational, nor is it fair.

History should be left to historians, and with that understanding, Turkey proposed the establishment of a joint historical commission with Armenia to research this issue last year, to no avail so far. If the evidence is really there, why not accept this offer?

It is only through such a common dialogue that a process of reconciliation can begin. This may ultimately lead to closure for Armenians and Turks alike.

Nabi Sensoy
Ambassador of Turkey
Washington, May 17, 2006

On the first day of class, in each of my courses, I advise the students to make flash cards. I have done this for years. On one side of the card will be a word or phrase. On the other will be its definition. For example, in Logic, a student would prepare cards with “argument,” “premise,” “conclusion,” “valid,” “sound,” “true,” and “false” on them. The idea is to stay abreast of the material as one goes, rather than putting it off until just before the exam. Each evening, after class, the student should prepare cards for the terms that were introduced in the book or lecture that day. Once the cards are made, the student should put a rubber band around them and carry them around. When you have a free moment, look at the term on the top card. State the definition. When you think you have it, turn the card over and see. If you got it right, put the card on the bottom of the stack and go to the next one. If you got it wrong, try again. Keep cycling through the cards until you never get one wrong. I can’t think of a better way to learn the terminology of a field. Every field, from Logic to Ethics to Philosophy of Religion to Philosophy of Law, has its jargon. This is how one learns it.

A few days ago, on the final day of class for the spring semester, I asked the students in one of my Ethics courses whether they had prepared flash cards. Only two students raised their hands, out of more than 20. Two! I was aghast. I’m the instructor. I was a student for 26 years—from kindergarten through law school and graduate school. I’ve been a professor for 18 years. You would think that the students would trust my judgment about how they should prepare for the exams. What am I to make of this? Do the students not trust me? But why? What would my motive be for misleading them? Are they lazy? (I’m afraid that’s a rhetorical question.) Do they think it’s childish to make flash cards in a college course? I always explain on the first day of class that it’s far from childish. I made flash cards in law school. I made flash cards for the bar exam. I made flash cards in my Mathematical Logic course in graduate school. Is that childish? It’s just the opposite; it’s dead serious. When everything is on the line, make flash cards.

I try different things each year. I’ve evaluated students on the basis of term papers, take-home exams, in-class exams, homework, classroom participation, and so on. This semester, I required that 500-word summaries of the reading material be turned in at the start of every class. There were 28 lecture days in the semester, but I used 26 as my baseline. This gave each student two free days. I explained that I would not read the summaries for content. I would skim them at the end of the semester. If a summary looked as though it had been conscientiously prepared, a student would get credit for it. I considered this free points. Twenty percent of each student’s grade came down to being diligent. Just do the reading before coming to class (instead of afterward or not at all) and sit down at a computer for a few minutes to summarize it. Get to class on time and turn it in. Free points, right?

Not for many students. At least half a dozen students in each of my three courses lost a letter grade solely because of the daily summaries. It was easy to determine this, because the other scores were from midterm and final exams, each of which constituted 40% of the final grade. If a student’s two exams averaged, say, 82, and the student ended up with a C in the course, then the daily summaries cost him or her a grade. Incredible, isn’t it? Free points, and many students failed to take advantage of it.

I explained on the handout distributed on the first day of class that I would not accept late summaries. I told the students to synchronize their watches to mine, which is set to atomic time. I explained that at 8:00 sharp (for my 8:00 course), I would pick up the summaries from the table and put them into my briefcase. If a student came in after I picked up the summaries, I would not accept his or her summary. The rationale for this rule is to get the students to be in class on time. Tardiness is disruptive not only to me, but to the other students.

You guessed it. Many students expected me to accept their late summaries. I got royally tired of saying no and explaining why. Once I rejected a summary, moreover, it would have been unfair to accept any others for the remainder of the semester. Students don’t understand this. They think rules apply to other people, but not to them. Several times, I had students explain that the reason they were late to class is that they were sick, or caught in traffic, or had a difficult time finding a parking spot. I explained that that’s why each student got to miss two summaries. One student complained that she had trouble finding a parking spot each day and couldn’t help but be five minutes late. I told her to leave her house five minutes earlier. Isn’t that common sense? I wasn’t late once this semester. I got to the classroom at least 10 minutes early on all 30 days. “But you’re the professor!” a student might exclaim. “You’re paid to be here.” To which I would reply: “And you’re a student; you’ve paid to be here.” Why can’t students be just as disciplined as their instructors? I don’t get it.

Sorry for the rant. I needed to unload so I can enjoy my summer. By late August, I will have forgotten how annoying students can be. I hope.

Should the government seek to equalize the incomes of men and women? See here for economist Jennifer Roback's answer.

Here.

To this.

Forma Pauperis (Latin). In the character of a poor person—a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.

When Adam long ago in Cupid's awful court
(For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)
Sued for Eve's favor, says an ancient law report,
He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.

"You sue in forma pauperis, I see," Eve cried;
"Actions can't here be that way prosecuted."
So all poor Adam's motions coldly were denied:
He went away—as he had come—nonsuited.
G.J.

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

Here.

Here are some of my favorite bloggers (in no particular order):

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

If you think I'm missing a good blogger, let me know.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (82.6 miles). Italian Ivan Basso has a commanding lead of 5:24 over former winner Gilberto Simoni, but the Giro isn't over. Basso cracked a year ago, losing five minutes on Stage 13 and another 42 minutes on Stage 14. He was sick, but then, he can get sick again. Simoni, a wily veteran, will be looking for signs of weakness.

See here.

Here is a New York Times op-ed column about cellphones in the classroom. I'll never forget an incident in a courtroom when I was an attorney. One of the jurors had a digital watch. During testimony, the watch beeped. The judge stared at the juror for the longest time, then said, in a stern voice: "Don't bring that watch into this courtroom again." I should be so stern with my students.

To the Editor:

Re "In the Garden, Graduates Boo McCain. Kerrey, Too" (news article, May 20):

As one who holds a degree from the New School (Ph.D. in political science, 1975), I am embarrassed by the reception given the graduation speaker, Senator John McCain, and Bob Kerrey, the university's president.

I have been an opponent of President Bush's invasion of Iraq, but I have no tolerance for people on either side who try to disrupt the expression of views they don't like.

It does the New School's long-held reputation for open-mindedness and receptivity to dialogue no good. I also fear that it could reflect negatively on employment opportunities for the school's graduates.

I am sure that the founders of the New School, themselves the victims of intolerance, would strongly disapprove of these tactics.

James Shelland
Bellmore, N.Y., May 21, 2006

The Left has demonstrated repeatedly that it cannot be relied upon to get things right, much less to draw appropriate inferences therefrom. It has a hard time distinguishing between things as they are and things as the Left would like them to be. Reality-based community indeed! Peter Wehner debunks several leftist myths about Iraq here.

One can undergo a conversion from one set of rationally held beliefs to another set, or from irrationality to faith in reason. Moreover, the most dramatically compelling conversions are those that enable individuals to understand, if only retrospectively, what they could not before.

(Thomas S. Hibbs, "The Beginning of the Journey," review of Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922, by Alasdair MacIntyre, First Things [May 2006]: 48-50, at 50)

Here.

Phrenology, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.

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

Here is Darby Shaw's account of his latest bike rally. I love reading about other people's adventures. Vicarious travel is the best kind, since I can do it from the comfort of my home. (I got traveling out of my system long ago. If I never leave North Texas again, I can die happy.)

Here.

Universities used to be sites of learning, which requires careful listening, sympathetic understanding, respect for divergent viewpoints, civil discussion, critical analysis, and rational argumentation. These days, one is as likely to experience censorship or silencing as open discussion of issues. See here for Brian Leiter's astonishing claim that there is no obligation to listen to what one rejects. Query: How is one to determine whether one rejects something unless one listens to it? This man—a tenured professor at a large state university—is becoming increasingly demented. It may sound cruel to say this, but I enjoy watching him disintegrate. His university, his department, and his colleagues must be very proud of his anti-intellectualism. Remember: This is a man who has said that he has no interest in persuading anyone. What in the world is he doing in academia?

The Corps of Discovery is encamped near present-day Kamiah, Idaho, in a place called Camp Chopunnish. Lewis and Clark are eager to return to St Louis, but they can't cross the Bitterroot Mountains until the snow melts. Meanwhile, they are bartering for horses with the Nez Perce, providing medical treatment to diseased or injured Indians, maintaining discipline among the enlisted men, and struggling to feed the party each day. (Game is scarce.) Lewis and Clark enjoyed their time among the Nez Perce, remarking several times in their journals that they found this tribe honest, hospitable, and honorable. Here are the journal entries for this date 200 years ago. Note that Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Sacagawea's 15-month-old son, is ill. I picture Lewis and Clark up all night with him, pacing. Pompy (as Clark referred to him) recovered and lived 60 more years.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (107.5 miles). The mountaintop finish will separate the contenders from the pretenders.

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman, in "D for Debacle" (column, May 15), quotes John DiIulio, the former head of President Bush's faith-based initiative, as saying, "What you've got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm."

The entire American population (and perhaps conservatives most of all) have been spun by this administration from the beginning with bait-and-switch offers, puffery, scare tactics and hype.

We rightly bemoan the incompetence, the arrogance and the indifference of this administration. But what Americans need to focus on, if they value their democracy, is that this is not a purposeless government.

From the beginning, it has achieved, with ruthless efficiency, its most cherished goal—to make businesses more profitable and less accountable, and to make the rich fabulously richer.

It is sickening to see how this crowd has—intentionally—transferred American tax dollars directly out of the pockets of the middle class and into the coffers of greedy businesses and selfish millionaires. On that score, the Bush administration has been frighteningly competent.

Leif Clark
San Antonio, May 15, 2006

Just as a modern European economist would not consider it a great economic achievement if all European art treasures were sold to America at attractive prices, so the Buddhist economist would insist that a population basing its economic life on non-renewable fuels is living parasitically, on capital instead of income. Such a way of life could have no permanence and could therefore be justified only as a purely temporary expedient. As the world’s resources of non-renewable fuels—coal, oil and natural gas—are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to violence between men.

(Ernst Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful, reading 73 in Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide, ed. Matthew Festenstein and Michael Kenny [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 335-7, at 337)

I love it. The Left is so discombobulated by the war in Iraq, so full of hate for American values, and so determined to punish any Democrat who deviates to the slightest degree from the Bush-hating, America-bashing, anti-war message, that it will insist on an anti-war presidential candidate in 2008. Can you say "George McGovern"? The Left would rather be "right" (i.e., pure) than potent. It would rather vent from the stands than participate in the play on the field. See here for John McCain's recent commencement address at The New School. See here for a column about his atrocious treatment by leftists. Keep it up, leftists, and you may never govern again. Americans are watching. Then again, I'm not sure the Left wants to govern again. It's much more fun to play the part of the irresponsible child. Governing is hard, serious, adult work.

See here.

Here.

Sacerdotalist, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardiest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.

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

Stanley Renshon thinks Dick Morris's advice to President Bush is "idiotic." See here.

Here.

To the Editor:

It has been clearly established that Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. Sedentary lifestyle and poor nutritional choices, grounded in an excess intake of saturated fats, refined carbohydrates and fast foods, are clearly the major contributing factors.

The major culprits in the spread of this affliction are the corporate entities hawking their sugar, corn syrup and high-fat products through appealing television advertising.

The early seeds of disease are planted through the schools, which in many cases have given an economic incentive to the worst offenders to supply addictive sports drinks, colas and candy.

While research is important, a big education campaign teaching the elements of good nutrition, beginning in the schools and spreading to the general public, would go far in reducing the horrible statistic that one in three children born in 2000 will fall prey to this preventable scourge.

Thomas Flower
San Antonio, May 16, 2006

This amuses me. Why are people trying to do so much? We had a saying in our family: "Jack of all trades, master of none." Focus on one thing (or a few things) and get good at it (them). If you focus on many things, you'll end up not being good at any of them. The columnist says that, according to studies, "people may pack the equivalent of 31 hours of activities into a 24-hour day by doing several things at once." That's impossible. People are doing 24 hours worth of shoddy activities in 24 hours. By "shoddy" I mean haphazard, inadequate, inattentive, and cursory. When I see people yakking away on their cellphones—in their cars, at the ballpark, in stores, on campus—I wonder what they would be thinking about if they weren't preoccupied. Goodness knows there is much to be contemplated, cogitated, ratiocinated, imagined, and analyzed. You can't do these things if you're yakking. Hang up and think!

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (117.4 miles).

Here.

Heat, n.

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
Of motion, but I know not how he's proving
His point; but this I know—hot words bestowed
With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
Crede expertum—I have seen them, child.
Gorton Swope.

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

To the Editor:

As a liberal woman who was a big fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I say no, she cannot win. Formerly a strong, independent woman, Mrs. Clinton has become mired in the game of politics, working so hard to be both dove and hawk, playing all the party strategies, that we don't know what she stands for or believes.

Bob Herbert is correct; we want real leadership. Where are Mrs. Clinton's impassioned speeches on health care for everyone, her concern for the widening divide between rich and poor? Where is her outrage against the countless abuses of the current administration?

I will no longer vote for her, and that is the opinion of most of my liberal friends and colleagues.

Shara Lamont
Albuquerque, May 18, 2006

Here.

Monarchical Government, n. Government.

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

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (138.5 miles).

John Stuart Mill was born 200 years ago today, in London. If you haven't read Mill's autobiography, you should. It's a record of a most unusual education and a busy life. I have always enjoyed Mill's description of the importance of logic to his intellectual development:

From about the age of twelve, I entered into another and more advanced stage in my course of instruction; in which the main object was no longer the aids and appliances of thought, but the thoughts themselves. This commenced with Logic, in which I began at once with the Organon, and read it to the Analytics inclusive, but profited little by the Posterior Analytics, which belong to a branch of speculation I was not yet ripe for. Contemporaneously with the Organon, my father made me read the whole or parts of several of the Latin treatises on the scholastic logic; giving each day to him, in our walks, a minute account of what I had read, and answering his numerous and searching questions. After this, I went in a similar manner, through the "Computatio sive Logica" of Hobbes, a work of a much higher order of thought than the books of the school logicians, and which he estimated very highly; in my own opinion beyond its merits, great as these are. It was his invariable practice, whatever studies he exacted from me, to make me as far as possible understand and feel the utility of them: and this he deemed peculiarly fitting in the case of the syllogistic logic, the usefulness of which had been impugned by so many writers of authority. I well remember how, and in what particular walk, in the neighbourhood of Bagshot Heath (where we were on a visit to his old friend Mr Wallace, then one of the Mathematical Professors at Sandhurst) he first attempted by questions to make me think on the subject, and frame some conception of what constituted the utility of the syllogistic logic, and when I had failed in this, to make me understand it by explanations. The explanations did not make the matter at all clear to me at the time; but they were not therefore useless; they remained as a nucleus for my observations and reflections to crystallize upon; the import of his general remarks being interpreted to me, by the particular instances which came under my notice afterwards. My own consciousness and experience ultimately led me to appreciate quite as highly as he did, the value of an early practical familiarity with the school logic. I know nothing, in my education, to which I think myself more indebted for whatever capacity of thinking I have attained. The first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay: and though whatever capacity of this sort I attained was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments of this drilling. I am persuaded that nothing, in modern education, tends so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing to it; for in mathematical processes, none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur. It is also a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philosophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their own. They may become capable of disentangling the intricacies of confused and self-contradictory thought, before their own thinking faculties are much advanced; a power which, for want of some such discipline, many otherwise able men altogether lack; and when they have to answer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as they can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on argument, a balanced one. (John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, The Library of Liberal Arts, ed. Oskar Piest, no. 91 [New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1957], 13-5)

Mill is one of my favorite authors. I have learned as much from him as I have from anyone, in or out of philosophy.

Addendum: If you want to read Mill's autobiography, here is an Internet version. I cannot vouch for its accuracy. In fact, I can vouch for its inaccuracy. To save time, I copied and pasted the paragraph from the Internet site (instead of typing it up from my book). When checking the text against my book, I found several minor errors, all of which have been corrected.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "Saying No to Bush's Yes Men" (column, May 17):

Thomas L. Friedman is correct: many Americans "have simply lost confidence in this administration's competence and honesty."

Even before significant questions of integrity arose, as early as 2000, many of us feared the consequences of putting someone in the presidency with so little experience and with few apparent skills. Others contended that George W. Bush was not that bad, and that regardless of his limited abilities, he would surround himself with only the best.

Six years later we find many government agencies wrecked, our treasury gutted, our country's moral stature in the world diminished, our national security threatened, more than 2,400 American service members' lives needlessly lost in Iraq and many thousands more disabled for a lifetime by that foolish war.

Indeed, he was that bad, and he did not surround himself with the best.

The lesson? Somehow, we must foster a national consciousness of the need to elect competent leaders.

John E. Colbert
Chicago, May 17, 2006

It wouldn't be accurate to call me a fan of horse racing, but (1) I've been to race tracks a few times (and always enjoyed it, even when I lost money) and (2) I always watch the three races that compose the Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. Only 11 horses have won the Triple Crown, the most recent of them Affirmed (in 1978). There have been three Triple Crown winners in my lifetime (I was born in 1957): Secretariat in 1973, Seattle Slew in 1977, and Affirmed in 1978. That's three Triple Crown winners in six years. One would have been excused in 1978 for thinking that it happened quite often. But it's been 28 years since we had a Triple Crown winner.

I tuned in to NBC this afternoon to see whether Barbaro, who won the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago, could take the second step. Unfortunately, he injured himself early in the race and didn't finish. It appears that he broke his right rear ankle, for it was dangling in an unnatural position. I'm squeamish, so I had a hard time watching. The poor horse tried to compensate for the injury by running on three legs. I watched the ambulance come onto the track to remove Barbaro. He kept flicking his leg as his handlers tried to calm him. It must have hurt terribly. I hope the ankle can be repaired so that he can live out his life. It's unlikely that he will race again. A sad day for horse racing.

Addendum: As soon as I posted this item, I checked the New York Times website. As I guessed, Barbaro fractured his ankle. See here. I also noticed, while I was at the website, that someone named Barry Bonds hit his 714th home run. Is that news? The record is 755. The person who breaks Hank Aaron's record will be named Alex, not Barry.

5-19-86 Monday. It was a satisfying day on several counts. First, I argued in [Pima County] Superior Court on behalf of Tony D. Judge [Harry] Gin took the matter under advisement, as expected. I wasn’t nervous once I started talking. Second, I learned that I’ll be teaching Introduction to Logic in the fall. This was my second choice, but really I was indifferent between this and another class. The main thing that I want is an early class—eight or nine o’clock—and this one meets at nine o’clock. Come August, it’ll be back to Hurley [Patrick J. Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic]. Third, I got an “A” on both my legal relevance [term] paper and in my epistemology seminar. Frankly, I’m surprised. I’m also surprised at the lack of criticism on the paper itself. Alvin Goldman was either in a hurry or genuinely pleased with my work. Several times he says things like “Right” or “I agree.”

Fourth, I received the chart that will be published along with my farm article. It’s large and complex, and I spotted a few errors, but on the whole it came out well. I’ll send it back to the editors tomorrow. Fifth, my pulse rate is fifty-four beats per minute, according to a count that I took on my own today. That’s amazing. I’ve heard that the average pulse rate of an adult is seventy-two beats per second [sic; should be “minute”]. Bjorn Borg, the [Swedish] tennis great, reputedly had a pulse rate of thirty-eight beats per minute. What does it mean? It means that my cardiovascular system is in good shape. My heart needs to work less in order to do the same amount of work. The more riding I do, the lower will go my pulse rate. [I’ve been recording my resting heart rate every other week for 20 years. The average of 516 readings, as of 10 May 2006, is 51.76 beats per minute. The lowest I’ve recorded is 42, on 9 August 2000. I recorded 43 as late as 12 April 2006—just 37 days ago.] Sixth, the high temperature reached 100 degrees [Fahrenheit] for the first time in 1986. It was 101 degrees at the airport in Tucson.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (135.4 miles). If looking at the profile doesn't make you wince, you haven't ridden a bicycle.

I know better than to say this, because it's likely to be a jinx, but my Detroit Tigers have the best record in baseball at 27-13. They've won seven games in a row for the first time since 1993. Unbelievable. As delighted as I am with the team's success, I must temper my enthusiasm, for (1) there is much baseball (122 games) yet to be played and (2) these are, after all, the Tigers.

Addendum: The first round of interleague play begins today. Major League Baseball has set it up so that teams play their natural rivals. The New York Mets play the New York Yankees; the Chicago Cubs play the Chicago White Sox; the Texas Rangers play the Houston Astros; and so forth. Betcha didn't know that the Toronto Blue Jays and Colorado Rockies are natural rivals.

Anoint, v.t. To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood,
So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.
Judibras.

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

If you're an American, the title of this post will make you clench. But listen to this. I prepared my tax return too quickly this past April, not noticing the blurb on the left of the form (1040) to the effect that a person in my position should take the larger of $5,000 (the standard deduction) or the amount of itemized deductions. I used the amount of itemized deductions, which was lower. The other day, the IRS deposited more money than I expected in my checking account. I had no idea why; and frankly, I was worried that the IRS had made a mistake and would take the money back. Today I found out why. The IRS sent a letter explaining, in effect, that I had shorted myself by not taking the standard deduction. Is this a great country, or what?

Here is a BBC radio talk about John Stuart Mill, who was born 200 years ago tomorrow. Here is a column about Mill by Roger Scruton. Here is my 1995 essay "John Stuart Mill, Radical Feminist" (which has been reprinted as Chapter 5 of this book). Here is my 2004 essay "Our Millian Constitution." You might say that we're all Millian heirs.

Here.

Here.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (106.2 miles). German Jan Ullrich won today's time trial with an average speed of 31.70 miles per hour. He is far back in the general classification, but his goal was to use the Giro as preparation for the Tour de France, not to win it. Serguei Gonchar, my pick to win the time trial, finished fourth, which moved him up to third overall. My pick to win the Giro, Damiano Cunego, didn't do well in the time trial. He is almost seven minutes behind the leader, Ivan Basso. Will Basso crack? Stay tuned.

The Soviet Union was the world's first experiment in totalitarianism, the twentieth century's contribution to the political experience of humankind. That particular system, with its numerous offshoots and satellites, lasted more than seventy years and wreaked havoc on a third of the human race.

Its best analysts—such as Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Conquest, and Alain Besançon—agreed in calling it an "ideocracy" because of its inhuman effort to govern according to utopian ideological criteria almost wholly disconnected from the lived experience of humankind. The forcible imposition of ideological categories on humanity inevitably gave rise to a perverted social order based on violence and lies. This project drew powerful impetus from the radical Enlightenment's dream of a fully "rational" society purged of tradition, human spontaneity, and "monkish superstition." Not surprisingly, then, Communist regimes were treated indulgently by progressive intellectuals, who saw them as the true completion of democracy and the fulfillment of the noblest aspirations of modern rationalism.

The totalitarianism of the Communist sought to realize this philosophical promise through an unprecedented assault on the traditional contents of life. Lenin, the father of the Soviet state, provided a bone-chilling defense of revolutionary despotism: The task confronting the new order was to "purge Russia of all sorts of harmful insects."

These insects included religious believers, the bourgeoisie, all the aristocracy, any property-owning peasants or "kulaks," and the independent-minded socialists who refused to sever socialism's remaining connections with Western humanism and the liberal and democratic cause.

The Bolshevik regime thus tried to build a caricature of modernity through forced industrialization and a frontal assault on the traditional foundations of the Russian way of life: the peasantry, an independent intelligentsia, and the Orthodox Church. Anywhere between twenty and thirty-five million human beings perished between 1917 and 1956 as this project unfolded.

(Daniel J. Mahoney, "Tsars & Commissars," review of Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture, by Richard Pipes, First Things [May 2006]: 38-44, at 38-9)

5-18-86 What a sore body I had today! But that didn’t stop me from going on my weekly bike ride. In fact, I had a successful day, despite my knee pains. I averaged 14.86 miles per hour and broke my all-time speed record. Several times I had reached a top speed of forty-two miles per hour [on the descent from Colossal Cave], but I couldn’t seem to break it. Today I got the bike going forty-five miles per hour. Imagine: The speed limit for cars is fifty-five miles per hour, and I went forty-five on a bike. It didn’t last long, of course, but then, who could keep up such a pace? Not even Jonathan Boyer [a Tour de France participant and Race Across America winner] is that strong.

Here are some facts and figures concerning today’s ride. (1) I’ve now ridden in forty-eight of the past fifty-two weeks. That means that I missed only four weeks in the past year, in December when I went to Michigan. (2) I’ve ridden 3036.2 miles in the past two years and 2172.0 in the past year. (3) I achieved my eighth-best gross-average speed despite a vicious wind. (4) I felt great. Oddly enough, biking and hiking are physically compatible. Muscles that were sore and painful yesterday were unaffected by today’s ride. My stamina is at an all-time high. (5) My gross-average speed during the first 20.1 miles of today’s ride was 12.14 miles per hour. The figure for the second 20.1 miles was an incredible 19.14 miles per hour. Was I cookin’ or what?

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Here.

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert ends "America the Fearful" with this line: "If the United States could look at itself in a mirror, it would be both alarmed and ashamed at what it saw."

The fundamental problem is that Americans can't look at what our country has done without rose-colored glasses.

There are far too many Americans who need to believe that America always does what's right even when we're doing wrong.

We will begin to see people standing up for what's right only when our citizens gain the courage to lift the veil of deception they have been looking through.

I don't know what will cause that to happen or if it ever will, because it's so much easier to believe a lie than to accept a painful truth.

Lucia Zeffirelli
Tucson, May 15, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I don't know of anyone who thinks (much less "needs to believe") that "America always does what's right." I know quite a few people—all leftists—who need to believe that America never does what's right.

As you read this, remember the feminist mantra: "There are no innate differences between men and women."

It's one thing to be called racist for opposing affirmative action. It's quite another to be called racist for not liking (or listening to) certain musicians or musical genres. See here. For the record, I like Living Colour. Not because its members are black, but because they kick ass.

Militant atheists such as Brian Leiter will not like this.

There are two ways to symbolize the English word "unless" for purposes of propositional (symbolic) logic. I've always taught my students to replace "unless" with "or." Wesley Salmon recommends replacing "unless" with "if not." A few minutes ago, the Texas Rangers defeated the New York Yankees, 6-2, to close a four-game series. Josh Lewin, the Rangers' television announcer, said, "These teams don't meet again this season unless they meet in the playoffs."

If we replace "unless" with "or," we get this:

Either the teams don't meet again this season or the teams meet in the playoffs.

That's equivalent (by material implication) to:

If the teams meet again this season, then the teams meet in the playoffs.

Or, in better English:

The teams meet again this season only if they meet in the playoffs.

If we replace "unless" with "if not," as Salmon recommends, we get this:

If the teams don't meet in the playoffs, then the teams don't meet again this season.

That's equivalent (by transposition) to:

If the teams meet again this season, then the teams meet in the playoffs.

Same result. Don't say I never taught you anything.

Improbability, n.

His tale he told with a solemn face
And a tender, melancholy grace.
Improbable 'twas, no doubt,
When you came to think it out,
But the fascinated crowd
Their deep surprise avowed
And all with a single voice averred
'Twas the most amazing thing they'd heard—
All save one who spake never a word,
But sat as mum
As if deaf and dumb,
Serene, indifferent and unstirred.

Then all the others turned to him
And scrutinized him limb from limb—
Scanned him alive;
But he seemed to thrive
And tranquiler grow each minute,
As if there were nothing in it.

"What! what!" cried one, "are you not amazed
At what our friend has told?" He raised
Soberly then his eyes and gazed
In a natural way
And proceeded to say,
As he crossed his feet on the mantel-shelf:
"O no—not at all; I'm a liar myself."

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

Sultan:

Have we not reached the stage where life begins when the mother SAYS it does? Conception? 3 months? At birth?

Take two women 8 months pregnant. One is a big "choice" advocate while the other is "pro-life." Meaning, one BELIEVES life begins at birth while the other at conception. Both are attacked and lose their baby/fetus. Should not one attacker be charged with murder while the other be charged with simple battery? Should not mothers, when pregnancy is confirmed, sign affidavits stipulating just when SHE thinks life begins so society knows how to treat any offenders that might appear in the upcoming 9 months? Should not liability be declared? I hit a car driven by a pregnant woman and she loses her child (fetus . . .). Shouldn't culpability hinge on the woman's view of what, exactly, is in her womb?

I hit my pregnant girlfriend. Am I a murderer or a batterer? HER call???

Are there examples of such legal fudging? Or, perhaps we can presume a fetus to be an illegal alien with ephemeral citizenship. A few documented months in the womb and we declare it a person! And what of those precious few mommas who might proclaim that life does not begin until the kid is 2-3 months old? Or 16 years??? So . . . how DOES society come to grips with the issue OTHER than asking pregnant mothers just how much liability THEY wish to declare on whatever is growing in their nether regions???

We curious need to know.

WAN

I was tempted to write "Summer Reading," but it's not summer yet, astronomically speaking. It's my summer break, though. One of the joys of summer is being able to read what I want, when I want, where I want. I expect to read many books and articles this summer: in philosophy, law, history, and science (both natural and social). Here are the books I'm reading:

• Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2003).

• Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, ed. Elliott Coues (New York: Dover Publications, n.d.), vol. 3.

• Michael Peterson et al., eds., Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 3d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

• David Braybrooke, Philosophy of Social Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987).

• James Griffin, Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

• R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).

I'm reading Freedom and Reason for the third time. I read it in 1992 and again in 1999. I guess I'm on the seven-year plan. What are you reading?

Addendum: You're probably wondering how I can read six books at once. Easily. Each day, I read the entry of Lewis and Clark from 200 years ago that day. It takes only minutes. Why two books? Because the Coues (pronounced COWS) edition is an edition of a narration by Nicholas Biddle that was first published in 1814. The Moulton edition is an abridged edition of the journals. (I've read Moulton's unabridged edition twice. It takes more than three years for a real-time reading.) The Peterson book is for my fall Philosophy of Religion course. The third edition just came out (note the 2007 publication date). I'm reading it at the rate of six pages per day in order to have it read by the time the fall semester begins in late August. This will help me select readings for the course. I'm reading Braybrooke at the rate of 10 pages per day. It'll take only 12 days to finish it. It's my meadow reading. As I sit cross-legged in the meadow each morning, reading, Shelbie rambles. Griffin and Hare are my optional readings. If I need a break from the computer, for example, I read a chapter of one of them.

Ed Feser, one of my co-bloggers at The Conservative Philosopher, continues his fine work in exposing movements toward totalitarianism. See here.

Here.

5-17-86 Saturday. I rose early, before daybreak, and gathered up my belongings. I was on the trail within minutes of awaking—cold, but eager to get home. Within minutes, however, I had lost the trail. Damn! Hobbling around like a crippled person, I made a strategic decision. Rather than wasting time looking for the trail, I would follow a nearby creek bed (Box Canyon, I later learned) to its outlet and then find my car. I thought that I might run across the trail somewhere along the line. But I didn’t, and the creek bed turned out to be a veritable house of horrors. Every few feet, I had to negotiate my way down steep walls of polished rock. This would have been difficult enough if I had been physically sound, but with my knees aching and my body weak, every step was a battle. Several times I had to throw my backback [sic; should be “backpack”] and water jug fifteen feet to the ground and then scamper down the rocks. A couple of times I had to jump ten feet into sand. But I always made it in good shape. [I’m lucky I didn’t stumble across a rattlesnake.]

After what seemed like hours of grueling climbing, I made it out of the mountains. It was still before noon. My legs were covered with cactus needles and my shoulders were bloodied by the straps of the backpack. I was obviously some distance from the picnic area and my car, so I walked up to a nearby house and asked for directions. It turns out that I was several miles due south of the picnic area, along my Colossal Cave bike route. So I walked out to the road and began walking. Fortunately, a man in a pickup truck gave me a ride. What a great feeling it was to see my car again! I vowed never to do anything so foolish as long as I live. I got home, put things away, showered, and watched part of a Detroit Tiger baseball game on television. All told, I walked thirty-six miles in about fifteen hours. Twenty-seven of the miles came yesterday, while the last and most brutal nine came today. Why did I do this to myself? [Because I could.]

Although I felt like a zombie, I decided to call Julianna [Wilson] to see if she wanted to attend a movie. . . . I picked her up in the afternoon and drove to the Showcase Cinema on Speedway Boulevard, where we saw the Japanese rendition of [William] Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ran. I loved it. The color was great, the action was virtually nonstop, and some of the lines were funny and philosophical.

Here is a summary of stages five through 10. Here is tomorrow's stage (an individual time trial of 31.0 miles).

Addendum: My prediction for tomorrow is Ukrainian Serguei Gonchar, who is lying sixth in the general classification.

To the Editor:

I'm about as anti-Bush as a person can be, but I thought that the president's speech on immigration was a good one. He seemed to recognize and give voice to the complexity of a difficult issue, as opposed to offering a mix of simplistic sound bites, happy talk and divisive, either-or rhetoric.

Perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that, apparently, Karl Rove and crew have decided that "nuance" is now permitted and no longer the sign of a character flaw.

Dan Carsen
Brookline, Mass., May 16, 2006

Rice-water, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience. It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine, and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat witch of the Dismal Swamp.

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

Here.

I've been following the immigration debate pretty closely. I watched President Bush's address the other evening, for example. I also read The New York Times and Michelle Malkin's blog, both of which provide good coverage. Philosophically, the most interesting aspect of the debate is the concept of amnesty. Here is the definition provided by the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed.:

amnesty, n.

1. Forgetfulness, oblivion; an intentional overlooking.

2. a. An act of oblivion, a general overlooking or pardon of past offences, by the ruling authority.

b. spec. Amnesty International, an international organization, founded in 1961, whose principal purpose is to uphold and campaign for the human rights of prisoners of conscience; freq. abbrev., as Amnesty; formerly the (Appeal for) Amnesty Campaign.

President Bush denies that his immigration policy (which he calls "Comprehensive Immigration Reform") constitutes amnesty. See here. His critics insist just as vociferously that it does. See here. What sort of disagreement are they having? Is it a factual disagreement? (In other words, do the parties have contrary or contradictory beliefs about how things are?) Is it an evaluative disagreement? (In other words, do the parties have different values?) Are they using the term "amnesty" in different ways?

I don't think there's any factual disagreement. By now, the details of President Bush's policy are clear. The parties also agree that amnesty is unacceptable, so there doesn't appear to be an evaluative disagreement. President Bush's critics reason as follows: Amnesty is unacceptable; President Bush's policy confers amnesty on illegal immigrants; therefore, President Bush's policy is unacceptable. President Bush accepts the first premise of this argument but rejects the second.

If I'm right, then there is agreement on both facts and values. What's left? What's left is the concept. The concept of amnesty is vague in the sense that the criteria for its application are imprecise. Critics of President Bush's policy think that anything short of prosecution or deportation for illegal entry into this country constitutes amnesty, and since President Bush isn't calling for either prosecution or deportation, his policy constitutes amnesty. President Bush thinks that amnesty means conferring citizenship on all illegal immigrants (i.e., pardoning them), and since he isn't calling for that, his policy doesn't constitute amnesty.

In terms of the OED definition, President Bush thinks he is neither overlooking nor pardoning those who broke the law. His critics think he is at least overlooking, and perhaps also pardoning, those who broke the law. Is it a bad thing that the term "amnesty" is vague? I don't think so. Most terms are vague to some extent. (Vagueness is a matter of degree.) This allows for discussion, debate, and linguistic refinement. Just look at the vague terms in the United States Constitution, such as "unreasonable," "due process," and "cruel and unusual." Many of them appear to have been put there on purpose. We might call it strategic vagueness.

To this.

Let's hope she stays in Canada.

As an athlete, I pay attention to two heart rates: my resting heart rate and my maximum heart rate. My resting heart rate this morning was 44. The lowest I've ever seen it is 42. The average for 20 years of biweekly readings is 51.8. My maximum heart rate, according to the formula of 220 minus one's age, is 171. This past Saturday, during the Saginaw bike rally, I reached 162 (on a climb). A few minutes ago, while running, I reached 163. That shows that I wasn't giving it my all. Many years ago, I reached 190 beats a minute during bike rallies.

I love to tell the following story about five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain, who was a magnificent physical specimen. On the final climb of a race, the young Indurain reached a heart rate of 200. As soon as he crossed the finish line, he rolled to a stop. His coach ran up to him. The coach said that Indurain's heart rate was already down to 50. That's when the coach knew he had a prodigy on his hands. Imagine: Indurain's heart rate went from 200 to 50 in a matter of seconds. That shows that he had freakish recovery powers, and that's precisely what great bicyclists need. They must drive their bodies to the limit, then recover for the next effort—and do this repeatedly. You might say that the point of training is to decrease recovery time.

For purposes of comparison, my heart rate was 163 at the finish of today's run (3.1 miles). I walked to the corner and back, a distance of a quarter of a mile, by which time my heart rate was 80. When I got in the house and stopped walking, it went down to 76. It's probably in the 50s by now.

Don't look now, but the Detroit Tigers—my Detroit Tigers—have the best record in baseball (25-13). Okay, so they're tied with the Chicago White Sox, who happen to be in the same division. Go Tigers!

Addendum: Won't I be insufferable if the Tigers win the World Series?

Here.

My adopted Texas Rangers blew a 10-1 lead this evening against the New York Yankees. Jorge Posada hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Yankees a 14-13 victory. I'm sick to my stomach.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Tomorrow is a rest day. Here is Thursday's stage (an individual time trial of 31.0 miles).

There are no more Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, even Englishmen, nowadays, regardless of what people may say; there are only Europeans. All have the same tastes, the same passions, the same morals, because none has been given a national form by a distinctive institution. All will do the same things under the same circumstances; all will declare themselves disinterested and be cheats; all will speak of the public good and think only of themselves; all will praise moderation and wish to be Croesuses; they have no other ambition than for luxury, no other passion than for gold. Confident that with it they will have whatever tempts them, all will sell themselves to the first man willing to pay them. What do they care what master they obey, the laws of what State they follow? Provided they find money to steal and women to corrupt, they are at home in any country.

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considerations on the Government of Poland, in Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide, ed. Matthew Festenstein and Michael Kenny [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 262-5, at 263)

I posted my last batch of grades yesterday, so the 2005-2006 academic year has drawn to a close. I taught Logic and Social and Political Philosophy in the fall, then Ethics and Philosophy of Law in the spring. Next year, I teach Logic and Philosophy of Religion in the fall, then Ethics and Seminar in Research Methods and Philosophical Writing in the spring. I get to teach exactly what I want, when I want. How many professors can say that?

I've been a professor for 18 years. I taught for one year at Texas A&M University while ABD (all but dissertation). I've been at The University of Texas at Arlington ever since. I find it hard to believe that I've been at UTA for 17 years. Tempus fugit. Do you know the three best things about being a professor? June, July, and August. I have 14 weeks off, starting today. There is no place that I have to be and nothing that must be done. No meetings; no students; no office hours; no lectures; no nothing. I use the time to read, write, run, and ride. Each day is filled with congenial routines, from making coffee to reading the newspaper to hanging clothes on the line to rambling with Shelbie. (Sophie is retired from rambling.) I can't believe anyone would want to be anything but a college professor. Do I earn as much income as people in other professions? No. But I earn more than I need. Money isn't everything.

5-16-86 (I’m writing this after the fact, on 7 July 1986; but even if I were up to date on my journal entries, this would have been a belated entry. For I spent the night in the Rincon Mountains in a sleeping bag. What follows is a reconstruction of some of the events of that day.)

I left the apartment early, at about 8:30 A.M. On the way to the Saguaro National Monument [East] to park my car I stopped to mail a poem to Julianna [Wilson]. . . . After parking my car in the picnic area, I set out on my overnight hike. The first several miles were grueling. Not only was the sun shining brightly, but the terrain was steep and I had not yet gotten my second wind. But eventually the terrain levelled off and I got in a physical and mental groove. My pack was heavy, although not as heavy as on the hike with David [Cortner] to Rincon Peak, and I carried a half-gallon jug of water in my hand. Several times I paused to take a sip, and once, after passing the 5000-foot marker, I stopped to eat a sandwich and some potato skins.

The scenery all around was beautiful. I saw two white-tailed deer, an area of burned foliage (caused by lightning, no doubt), and several spectacular views of Tucson and the Santa Catalina Mountains. My [Pentax K1000] camera dangled in front of me, and I snapped lots of pictures. By noon, I had reached Tanque Verde Peak, which, according to my map, is 7040 feet above sea level. Mica Mountain isn’t much higher (8666 feet), so I congratulated myself for making such good progress. But very quickly I realized that there was a substantial drop between Tanque Verde Peak and Mica Mountain. In fact, I later calculated that the drop is 920 feet. So back down the mountain I went, and then up. The vegetation gradually changed from cacti and shrubs to trees, and eventually to huge pine trees. This was the best part of the hike.

I reached Mica Mountain early in the afternoon. Now, my plan was to camp nearby, at Manning Camp, but I was already getting homesick. I could think of nothing better to do than get home, call Julianna, and go to a movie. The more I walked, the more attractive this seemed. So I made a decision: I would go back not tomorrow but today! After detouring to Manning Camp to refill my water bottles (a crucial decision, it turns out), I set out for home. But almost immediately my knees refused to cooperate. With each step, I felt little jabs of pain in my knees. The terrain was steep, and I noticed that the pain occurred only on downhill slopes. Still, I was determined to make it. By the time I got to Tanque Verde Peak, however, it was obvious that I wouldn’t. The sun was setting rapidly, I was growing more and more exhausted by the minute, and my knees hurt so badly [sic; should be “bad”] that I let out little yelps with each step. I decided to compromise: I’d make it to Juniper Basin, where I had seen picnic tables, and spend the night.

I got to Juniper Basin just as darkness was setting in. Every bone in my body was sore and I was drenched with sweat. I feebly ate my other sandwich and some potato skins and took a deep drink of water, then got into the sleeping bag. Already it was getting cold out. Then I heard something that sent a chill down my spine. Behind me, no more than a hundred feet away, I heard a “thump, thump” followed by a forlorn wailing sound. I tensed up and listened closely. Two scenarios crossed my mind. First, it could be an owl bursting down to capture a rabbit or squirrel. The thumping sound would be the owl’s wings. Second, it could be a mountain lion bounding to capture some small beast. Obviously, I much preferred the first scenario to the second; otherwise, I could be the mountain lion’s second morsel of food for the evening. But the sounds stopped and I eventually got to sleep. It wasn’t a good night’s sleep, mainly because of the cold and my soreness, but it was a night’s sleep nonetheless.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "The Model Students," by Nicholas D. Kristof (column, May 14):

To add to Mr. Kristof's ideas about why Asian-Americans do well in school, I would argue that any child needs parents who read, and read to their children; speak, or try to speak, standard English, or at least think it is important; refrain from using profane language; provide a quiet, TV-free place to study; have books in the house, or use a library regularly.

Children with these rather basic things in the home will, I feel, have a greater chance to succeed in school.

Donald Scott
Jersey City, May 15, 2006

Mammon, n. The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is in the holy city of New York.

He swore that all other religions were gammon,
And wore out his knees in the worship of Mammon.
Jared Oopf.

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

Here.

The Left is not enamored of John Kerry, but that won't stop him from running for president again. See here.

See here.

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (116.2 miles).

Religion, after all (as everyone knows), is a realm of purely personal conviction sustained by faith, which is (as everyone also knows) an entirely irrational movement of the will, an indistinct impulse of saccharine sentiment, pathetic longing, childish credulity, and vague intuition. And theology, being the special language of religion, is by definition a collection of vacuous assertions, zealous exhortations, and beguiling fables; it is the peculiar patois of a private fixation or tribal allegiance, of interest perhaps to the psychopathologist or anthropologist, but of no greater scientific value than that; surely it has no proper field of study of its own, no real object to investigate, and whatever rules it obeys must be essentially arbitrary.

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. Even if one entirely avoids considering what metaphysical content one should attach to the word "God," one can still plausibly argue that theology is no more lacking in a substantial field of inquiry than are history, philosophy, the study of literature, or any of the other genuinely respectable university disciplines.

(James R. Stoner, Jr., et al., "Theology as Knowledge: A Symposium," First Things [May 2006]: 21-7, at 26 [italics in original])

Here.

Bob Hessen sent a link to this interesting essay.

To the Editor:

The problem isn't the Democrats' inability to find a message. It's the American public's inability to face up to the truth.

For a long time, truth tellers risked being framed and narrated out of the picture, with maybe a little ridicule and scorn thrown in for good effect.

Jimmy Carter tried to tell us that the energy crisis was a situation akin to war. Al Gore tried to tell us that we had to take care of the earth before it turns on us. Look what happened to them.

The Bush propaganda machine won because it knew how to manipulate a public that hears what it wants to hear. Look what's happened to us.

When Americans are ready to hear the truth, they'll get a leader who tells it to them. Let's hope it's not too late to matter.

Jeanne Wilkinson
Brooklyn, May 12, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: The condescension expressed in this letter is precisely why Democrats are powerless. That makes Democrats the stupid ones, doesn't it?

Ransom, n. The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller, nor can belong to the buyer. The most unprofitable of investments.

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

See here for Richard Posner's answer.

Robert Wright is the author of one of the best books I've read: The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. He is also the author of one of the worst books I've read: Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Strange, no? Here is Wright's review of two new books on anti-Americanism.

Here.

Conservatism enjoys a paradoxical status as a political ideology. Many of its leading exponents regard it as a tradition, rather than a rationally developed system of belief, and they therefore stress its non- or anti-ideological character. Considered in this way, conservatism represents the antithesis of rationalist or utopian ideologies like liberalism and socialism, and is regarded as a distinctive mixture of historical wisdom, customary knowledge, and political pragmatism. A related interpretation suggests that this may be an ideology, but of a positional kind—deriving a malleable set of commitments and convictions from the elements in its ideological rivals to which it is most opposed.

(Matthew Festenstein and Michael Kenny, eds., Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 119)

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (78.9 miles).

Here.

Are you backing up your computer's hard drive on a regular basis? See here. Remember: There are two reasons to back up your hard drive. The first is to recover data if your hard drive crashes. This does not require off-site storage of the backup. The second is to recover data if, for example, your house burns. This requires off-site storage of the backup. What good does it do to have a backup of your hard drive if you keep it in your house and your house burns? I keep both on-site and off-site backups.

To the Editor:

Of all the arguments opposing the teaching of intelligent design in our schools, the one advanced by Holden Thorp is the silliest: that by exposing students to this controversy we will hamper their scientific development and thus our own economic prosperity.

The opposite, in fact, is true: insisting that evolution cannot be questioned will only discourage young scientific minds. Controversy invites inquiry. Young minds thrive on responding to challenges.

If the case for evolution really is as strong as its advocates say, they should embrace a debate that would leave all better educated and more interested in science.

Peter McFadden
Cold Spring, N.Y., May 12, 2006

Nobleman, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American maids ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.

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

The moonbats want Al Gore (not Hillary Clinton) to run for president in 2008. See here. Who says only conservatives are nostalgic?

I have a series of one-gallon cider jars on the shelf of my walk-in closet: one for quarters, one for dimes, one for nickels, and one for pennies. (The penny jar is full.) I love putting coins into these jars, even though I have no plans to spend any of them. I find coins on my runs and walks. This morning, for example, I found four coins on my walk with Shelbie: a quarter, a nickel, and two pennies. One of the pennies is a wheat penny: a 1942D. You don't see wheat pennies very often. That I found a 64-year-old penny in the street near the middle school is mind-boggling. Who dropped it? Why hasn't anyone noticed it and taken it out of circulation? Does anyone else save coins? Be honest: Do you pick up pennies when you see them in the street or in a parking lot? I picked up a penny during yesterday's bike rally in Saginaw (while at a rest stop). People saw me pick it up. I don't care.

Here.

As for sneering at the bourgeoisie, it is a sophomoric grab at status with no claim to moral or political virtue. The fact is that the values of the middle class—personal responsibility, devotion to family and neighborhood, avoidance of macho violence, respect for liberal democracy—are good things, not bad things. Most of the world wants to join the bourgeoisie, and most artists are members in good standing who adopted a few bohemian affectations. Given the history of the twentieth century, the reluctance of the bourgeoisie to join mass utopian uprisings can hardly be held against them. And if they want to hang a painting of a red barn or a weeping clown above their couch, it's none of our damn business.

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], 416)

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (106.2 miles). Note the mountaintop finish. If a mountain comes in the middle of a stage, those who reach the top first are usually caught by the poor climbers, who catch up on the descent. If a mountain comes at the end, however, the best climbers take time out of the poor climbers. Lance Armstrong won his Tours de France by (1) outclimbing his rivals and (2) doing better than his rivals in the time trials.

Addendum: If you get the Outdoor Life Network (OLN), you can watch two hours of same-day coverage tomorrow (Sunday) starting at 5:00 P.M. Eastern Time. See here. The finish ought to be exciting.

American Justin Gatlin broke the world record in the 100-meter dash yesterday in Qatar. See here. His time was 9.76 seconds, which is a hundredth of a second faster than the time set by Jamaican Asafa Powell this past June. It's good to see this record in American hands again.

Here is a list of the best works of American fiction of the past 25 years. I haven't read any of them. I haven't even heard of more than one or two of them. Why anyone would read fiction is beyond me. I've read only a handful of novels in my life, and all of them had philosophical themes. I like to stay focused on reality.

To the Editor:

How much longer are the American people and our elected Congress going to sit by idly and watch our civil liberties, our rights to privacy and our Constitution be systematically torn apart by President Bush and his administration?

This latest in a series of efforts to undermine the very freedoms this country is based upon, all in the name of protecting the country against terrorism, should make us ashamed and scared.

It is time we all stood up and said: "Don't lie to us again, Mr. President. We're not going to take it anymore."

Gail C. Weisgrau
Clifton, N.J., May 12, 2006

This story says that Karl Rove is about to be indicted. I don't see anything about it on the New York Times website. Could this be a case of wishful thinking by the Left?

Here.

Read this. I'm 49 years old. I've owned one new car in my life, and I'm still driving it. I bought a light blue 1989 Pontiac Grand Am in mid-August 1989, which means it's almost 17 years old. My friends laugh at me because I put The Club on the steering wheel whenever I'm out. I realize that nobody would want to steal the car, but I'm a creature of habit. As much as I've berated this car over the years (it began falling apart from the moment I bought it), it has gotten me around quite reliably. I don't drive much. The odometer shows 129,176 miles after today's drive to and from Saginaw (Texas) for the bike rally. I live only six miles from the UTA campus, and I've been teaching on a Tuesday-Thursday schedule for many years. Add it up. That's 24 miles a week driving to work and back—for 30 weeks a year. Most of my miles have come from driving to and from bike rallies and footraces. I expect to buy a new car (probably a Honda Civic) this fall. But I expected the same a year ago, and I'm still driving the Grand Am. Isn't it a sin to get rid of something that works?

Addendum: I've washed the car (by driving it through an automatic washer) fewer than a dozen times, and not at all in at least a decade. I let the rain wash it.

Corporal, n. A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military ladder.

Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
Our corporal heroically fell!
Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
And said: "He hadn't very far to fall."
Giacomo Smith.

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

Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, has posted a funny comic. See here. While you're there, read his posts for this date—and keep in mind that Dissecting Leftism is just one of many blogs John compiles. He's a one-man blogging industry!

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day. Here is tomorrow's stage (146.6 miles).

Millennium, n. The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be screwed down, with all reformers on the under side.

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

Here is a New York Times story about Abilene.

Here.

[C]ontemporary American universities are full of people who would not know how to take a theological claim with cognitive seriousness if their eternal salvation depended on it (which, of course, it may).

(James R. Stoner, Jr., et al., "Theology as Knowledge: A Symposium," First Things [May 2006]: 21-7, at 24)

To the Editor:

What do you call a president who wages war under false pretenses, runs up a record deficit, kowtows to religious conservatives at every turn, ignores global warming and alienates many of America's longstanding allies? Re-elected.

What do you call that same president when he presides over a rise in gas prices to more than $3 a gallon? In a whole lot of trouble.

Niels Aaboe
New York, May 10, 2006

Here.

Here is the report. Team CSC won the time trial with an average speed of 35.33 miles per hour. Here is the image of the day.

If you see this post in the next few minutes, you might want to tune in to ABC's Primetime. See here for details.

[T]he whole imperative force of logic can be summed up in one directive: "Be consistent: accept what in consistency you are bound to admit, and avoid commitment to anything which would be, explicitly or by implication, contradictory." Being thus consistent is the minimum requirement for avoiding commitment to what is false in the determination of beliefs, and is the sine qua non of rationality in thinking.

(Clarence Irving Lewis, Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics, ed. John Lange [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969], 192)

How could this story be written without mention of abortion? I smell a rat.

To the Editor:

Re "Optimistic, Democrats Debate the Party's Vision" (front page, May 9):

The Democratic Party in recent years has been so fearful of losing elections by taking "liberal" positions that no one knows what it stands for.

It should take clear-cut, defining positions on universal health and child care and educational opportunity. It should declare that it is an obligation of this elected government that no American family need live in poverty and that all Americans should share these goals.

It may take years to achieve these results, but these are goals that all Americans can share, be proud of and participate in.

As to the war in Iraq, we must withdraw by a stated date, with the participation of the United Nations and all countries that wish to participate in rebuilding the country.

Cyril D. Robinson
Carbondale, Ill., May 9, 2006

Here.

In 49 minutes, I'll get up from the computer and turn on ESPN—in glorious high definition. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees play the third game of a series in Yankee Stadium. Each team has won a game. Although I dislike both teams, I enjoy watching them play each other. The fans are almost as much fun to watch as the players. Boston's fans are grim. They look fearful, as if they expect the worst. New York's fans are somewhere between confident and arrogant. They're more playful than Boston's fans—and more obnoxious. The players for these teams know that each game between them is important, even if it's in early May. The stands are full; the owners are present; the nation is watching. It's a great stage for individual accomplishment. Nobody should be surprised that these teams get the players they want. Jason Giambi. Roger Clemens. Alex Rodriguez. Gary Sheffield. Randy Johnson. Johnny Damon. David Ortiz. Manny Ramirez. Curt Schilling. Josh Beckett. Who wouldn't want to play meaningful games from the first of April to early October? Who doesn't want to have pressure to perform?

Forty-three minutes. Enjoy the show.

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

See here.

Here.

Danger, n.

A savage beast which, when it sleeps,
Man girds at and despises,
But takes himself away by leaps
And bounds when it arises.
Ambat Delaso.

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

While watching the best-of-seven-game series between the Buffalo Sabres and the Ottawa Senators hockey teams, the question arises: Is it not in the interests of the league and of both teams to make the series last as long as possible, for all seven games, to maximize revenue from fan-filled stadia? Has this conflict of interest between playing your best and wanting to prolong the series ever led to a sports scandal? (I know nothing about sports history.)

Mark Spahn

P.S. Hockey, field hockey, polo, lacrosse, basketball, football, soccer, water polo—they're all basically the same game.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I've been a baseball fan for almost 40 years. I've never had the slightest doubt about the integrity of postseason play. There were four-game sweeps in the World Series in 1976, 1989, 1990, 1998, 1999, 2004, and 2005. I can't speak to other sports. Perhaps others can.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News polled conservative bloggers about their favorite columnists. Here is the result.

Today is the first rest day of the 2006 Giro. Here is a summary of the first four stages. Tomorrow's stage is a team time trial. Expect high speeds, especially if there's a tailwind. The course is pancake flat.

Here is Dr Stanley Renshon's post about the Iranian nutcase.

If men were left wholly to themselves in their various undertakings, and were cut off from all external resources, save those which their own efforts obtained, they would still, whether through their own fault and inadvertence or not, fall frequently into embarrassment and misfortune. But the happiness for which man is plainly destined, is no other than that which his own energies enable him to secure; and the very nature of such a self-dependent position furnishes him means whereby to discipline his intellect and cultivate his character. Are there no instances of such evils, I ask, where State agency fetters individual spontaneity by a too special interference? There are many, doubtless; and the man whom it has habituated to lean on foreign strength for support, is thus given up in critical emergencies to a fate which is truly far more hopeless and deplorable. For, just as the very act of struggling against misfortune, and encountering it with vigorous efforts, tends to lighten the calamity; so do baffled hopes and delusive expectations aggravate and embitter its severity tenfold. In short, to view their agency in the most favourable light, States like those to which we refer too often resemble the physician, who only retards the death of his patient in nourishing his disease. Before there were physicians, only health and death were known.

Clio, n. One of the nine Muses. Clio's function was to preside over history—which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers.

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

5-10-86 I had an amazing day on my bike. Once again, David Cortner accompanied me. He drove to the corner of Ina Road and Interstate 10 and we set out over the mountains and into the Avra Valley. The high temperature was ninety-one degrees [Fahrenheit]. At one point, I rode thirty miles in tenth gear [my highest gear], without missing a pedal, and at or above eighteen miles per hour. Thirty miles! I realized after about ten miles of smooth sailing that I had not stopped pedalling in some time, so I decided to go all the way to Picacho Peak under those conditions. There were times when I was in jeopardy of dipping under eighteen miles per hour, but I always surged onward to maintain my pace. I had to ride several miles past Picacho Peak in order to get my thirty miles in, but I knew that it would be some time before David got to the Peak, so I went for it. I met him on the way back, at the Dairy Queen.

Here are some other statistics: (1) I passed the 5000-mile mark for all-time riding (5004.2, to be precise). (2) I’ve ridden 2131.8 miles in the past year, an average of 40.9 miles per week. (3) Last year, it took until 6 October to accumulate as many miles (952.2) as I’ve accumulated already this year. (4) At this pace, I’ll cover 2606.0 miles in 1986. [I ended up with 2,808.1.] (5) I broke my 1984 mileage mark today. Thus, 1986 is my third-best riding year of all time. (6) Today’s mileage was 91.1. David covered seventy miles. The difference is that I rode back and forth to talk to David and urge him on. Hmm. Today I rode over ninety-one miles in ninety-one degree heat. Looking at my chart, my previous best combinations were forty-two miles in (at least) forty-two degree heat and seventy-four miles in (at least) seventy-four degree heat. David thinks that I’ve got a chance for 110 miles in 110-degree heat, but that’s doubtful. I’m shooting for a 100/100 day. [Stay tuned.]

Here.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "The Pretenders" (editorial, May 9): You appear to have missed the message. Fair tax rates, especially on capital formation, give people a reason to work harder and invest more efficiently, generating more jobs and more revenue to the federal government. With tax revenues surging to record levels, the proof is in the pudding.

The Republican pro-growth tax policies enacted in 2003 have triggered two and a half years of unprecedented job creation and economic growth and tax revenue increases. We should extend these gains, not end them.

The issue of the deficit is primarily one of spending in entitlement accounts and of course paying the cost of the war and Katrina. You should focus on the looming crisis that will be brought on by the retirement of the baby boom generation.

This demographic shift will result in an explosion in the cost of entitlements, which will crush our children's chances of continuing to enjoy robust economic growth and prosperity. This should be the primary issue of fiscal policy relative to controlling the long-term deficit.

(Senator) Judd Gregg
Chairman, Budget Committee
Washington, May 9, 2006

See here.

To this.

See here for a promotional blurb about a new book by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. I will review the book soon.

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

Having just read the letter posted in the NYT by Jean C. Berman, ostensibly someone who has passed through Jr. High and High school, I am nonplussed.

Does she really believe that any country extends the right to a trial to a combatant?

I don't seem to remember it being an issue in any previous conflict.

I have to admit, writers like JCB are why I cannot tolerate the Times.

Enjoy your blog.

Bob Smith
Arlington, TX

Columnist Richard Cohen has discovered the hateful Left. I guess he hasn't been reading Brian Leiter's blog. (Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.)

Here is the report. Here is the image of the day.

Texas
That's where I
Belong
It seems to me
Texas
Lonesome star
Shine on
The big country
Texas
With open skies
And you
For company
Texas
Oh prairie rose
How happy
I should be
Hey hey
You can take it from me
Hey hey
I'll be coming, you'll see
Hey hey
Oh what a state to be in
Hey hey
You're tantalizing me
Texas
I will compose
In fancy rhyme
Or just plain prose
Texas
A song of praise
To you
Prairie rose
Texas
Though I'm not sure
I can explain
Your strange allure
Texas
Oh prairie rose—
A crown of thorns
A scented flower
Hey hey
I'd better leave right away
Hey hey
I can hear you calling me
Hey hey
Prairie rose

Ally Eskin has been blogging for two years. Tempus fugit. Here is my post announcing her matriculation.

Rear, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.

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

Jason Kendall of the Oakland Athletics blasted Major League Baseball today, calling it a "badminton league." Read this. If Kendall is implying that Major League Baseball is for sissies, he should look in the mirror. He's the one who wears armor. Wouldn't a real man step up to the plate without protection, the way all the great players did?

To the Editor:

Your editorial about the verdict in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui and the situation at Guantánamo was dead on ("Due Process," May 4). The contrast between a trial in accordance with long-held American standards of justice and the imprisonment for years of hundreds of people, without charges or hearings and with considerable secrecy, could not be more glaring.

Sadly, we are all familiar with other examples of American disregard for due process, human rights and international law that have been justified by our "war on terror."

The United States cannot hope to support democracy and the rule of law around the world while flagrantly violating its own and widely accepted international principles of justice and due process. The tragedy, besides our own loss, is that respect for the rule of law everywhere is critical to ending poverty and armed conflict, and our country has lost valuable currency as its advocate.

I hope that the American legal community, speaking out publicly, loudly and with urgency, will help set us back on the right track.

Jean C. Berman
New York, May 4, 2006
The writer is executive director, International Senior Lawyers Project.

A cynic is someone who questions other people's motives. You say you were motivated by X; the cynic says you were motivated by Y, which is, of course, disreputable. This opinion by the editors of The New York Times is a perfect example of cynicism. The editors admit that, while they agree with what Vice President Dick Cheney said, they question his motives in saying it. How charitable of them.

Democrats are trying to decide what they stand for. See here. That pretty much explains why they're impotent, doesn't it?

Here.

In 1989, The Wall Street Journal published an exchange of letters between economist Milton Friedman, who wrote in his capacity as a libertarian, and lawyer/philosopher William J. Bennett, who wrote in his capacity as drug czar, i.e., Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Friedman argued for decriminalization of drugs; Bennett replied to his argument and argued for continued criminalization. The letters are reprinted in James Rachels, ed., The Right Thing to Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 248-54.

In his reply to Friedman, Bennett wrote the following:

I remain an ardent defender of our nation’s laws against illegal drug use and our attempts to enforce them because I believe drug use is wrong. A true friend of freedom understands that government has a responsibility to craft and uphold laws that help educate citizens about right and wrong. That, at any rate, was the Founders’ view of our system of government. (page 254)

The final sentence is a factual claim about the Founders. I’m not sure it’s true, but I don’t want to focus on that here. Nor do I want to focus on the normative claim that it’s the business of government to enforce moral norms or “educate citizens about right and wrong.” Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this is the government’s business. I’m interested in Bennett’s claim that “drug use is wrong.” He’s talking about drugs such as cocaine, heroin, LSD, and marijuana. Notice that he’s not talking about manufacturing, selling, purchasing, or transporting drugs. He’s talking about using drugs. He thinks it’s wrong to use drugs. Nor is he talking about actions one commits while under the influence of drugs, such as driving. He thinks it’s wrong to use drugs, even if nobody—including the person using them—is harmed or put at risk of harm.

I’m genuinely puzzled by this. In discussing the matter with my Ethics students the other day, I went back to something we had discussed earlier in the semester, namely, Immanuel Kant’s belief that there are duties to oneself. Some duties are “perfect” in the sense that they allow no discretion as to their fulfillment. Kant’s example is committing suicide. One has a duty—to oneself—not to kill oneself. Other duties are “imperfect” in the sense that they allow discretion as to their fulfillment. Kant’s example is not letting one’s talents rust. One has a duty—to oneself—to develop one’s talents, but one gets to decide which talent or talents to develop.

Perhaps Bennett, like Kant, thinks we have duties to ourselves and that one such duty is to develop our talents. But what does this have to do with using drugs? Does Bennett think that using drugs prevents one from developing one’s talents? It could, certainly; but does it have to? One student suggested that drug usage can facilitate, rather than impede, artistic creativity, in which case the duty to develop one’s talents might require the use of drugs! It’s all very puzzling. I should probably write to Bennett for clarification, but I don’t know his e-mail address and I’m too lazy to write a snail-mail letter. Any ideas?

Here.

Here is the report.

But of course the minds of men and women are not identical, and recent reviews of sex differences have converged on some reliable differences. Sometimes the differences are large, with only slight overlap in the bell curves. Men have a much stronger taste for no-strings sex with multiple or anonymous partners, as we see in the almost all-male consumer base for prostitution and visual pornography. Men are far more likely to compete violently, sometimes lethally, with one another over stakes great and small (as in the recent case of a surgeon and an anesthesiologist who came to blows in the operating room while a patient lay on the table waiting to have her gall bladder removed). Among children, boys spend far more time practicing for violent conflict in the form of what psychologists genteelly call "rough-and-tumble play." The ability to manipulate three-dimensional objects and space in the mind also shows a large difference in favor of men.

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], 344 [endnotes omitted])

Here is John Fund's latest column.

Preside, v. To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable result. In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, "He presided at the piccolo."

The Headliner, holding the copy in hand,
Read with a solemn face:
"The music was very uncommonly grand—
The best that was ever provided,
For our townsman Brown presided
At the organ with skill and grace."
The Headliner discontinued to read,
And, spreading the paper down
On the desk, he dashed in at the top of the screed:
"Great playing by President Brown."
Orpheus Bowen.

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

To the Editor:

Re "Our Sick Society," by Paul Krugman (column, May 5):

I have been reading with interest, but not surprise, about the sad state of health in American society. In his usual clear and concise way, Mr. Krugman has articulated many of the possible reasons for the phenomenon as to why we are such a sick society.

I offer a few more suggestions that fall into the "behavioral risk" category. Americans are always looking for the quick fix—easy food (prepackaged and processed); fast food; fast health care (just give me a prescription, Doctor), fast fitness (drive to a gym for a furious workout, instead of savoring a morning walk); obsessive eating out (and the portions better be big!).

I recommend putting together your own package—be informed, focus on healthy food, exercise, have a good personal philosophy, and you're on your way to better health.

Ellen Belmont Rosichan
Miami Beach, May 5, 2006

Here.

Are you a fan of The Twilight Zone? If so, you might be interested in purchasing The Definitive Edition of the series. There are five seasons. I own the first three and recently ordered the fourth. I believe the fifth is available, but I’ll wait a while before ordering it. (It contains my favorite episode, “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms.”) All in all, there are 156 episodes: 36 in the first season, 29 in the second, 37 in the third, 18 in the fourth, and 36 in the fifth. I’m watching the episodes in the original order, as befits an anal-retentive person. It’ll take a while, but I’m patient. I like to savor each episode.

Yesterday, after watching episodes of Miami Vice (the first season) and La Femme Nikita (also the first season), and before watching the second half of Bonnie and Clyde, I watched the eighth episode of The Twilight Zone, entitled “Time Enough at Last.” This episode first aired on 20 November 1959, when I was two and a half years old. I’m pretty sure I saw it in rerun, because I remember my brother Glenn talking about it. Have you seen it? Stop reading this post unless you want me to spoil the plot for you!

The episode stars Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis, a bookish bank teller. The poor man wants nothing more than to read, but between his job and his overbearing wife, he has no time. What an awful life! One day, determined to find some peace and quiet, Bemis takes his lunch break in the bank’s vault, which ends up saving him when an atom bomb goes off. He emerges to find everyone dead and all the buildings destroyed. Just as he is about to shoot himself in the head with a revolver, he spots the words “Public Library” on a column in the rubble. There on the steps of what used to be the library are hundreds of books. Hallelujah! He has food, drink, books, and, finally, all the time in the world. You can guess what happens next. (Okay, so I didn’t spoil the plot.)

If you’ve seen this episode, I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Addendum: More than one student over the years has referred to me as “Burgess-Meredith.” It always cracks me up.

Addendum 2: According to the book (written by Marc Scott Zicree) that accompanied Season 1, this episode “remains one of the best-remembered and best-loved episodes of The Twilight Zone. Few can watch it and not be seduced by its simplicity and its pathos.”

Here.

It cracks me up to hear leftists describe George W. Bush as "the worst president ever." Worse than Jimmy Carter? Is that possible? Peg Kaplan weighs in on the 39th president here.

The only consistent cynic would be one who believes whatever he wishes to, and for no reason, and whose assertions are made simply for the emotive satisfaction of hearing himself talk.

(Clarence Irving Lewis, Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics, ed. John Lange [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969], 167)

Here is a fascinating new blog by political scientist and psychoanalyst Stanley Renshon. I will add it to the blogroll.

To the Editor:

You tout cellulosic ethanol as an alternative fuel. But if we become dependent on ethanol, the world will soon face a shortage of cropland.

If agribusiness has a choice between growing crops to run the S.U.V.'s of wealthy countries or food to feed the poor, which will it choose?

We must vastly improve fuel efficiency, decrease the use of private vehicles and focus on truly nonpolluting energy sources, like solar and wind power. Ethanol could still have a small place in the overall energy mix.

Building a large ethanol infrastructure will create vested interests that will fight against reducing usage, preserving biodiversity and using cropland for food production.

Ginny Donnelly
New York, May 2, 2006

Here.

Here is Gerry Fraley of The Dallas Morning News:

Los Angeles Angels right-hander John Lackey spoke for every pitcher this week when he ripped Oakland's Jason Kendall for wearing body armor at the plate.

Lackey's taunt of "stick that thing out there" prompted Kendall to charge the mound. The ensuing brawl fanned the rivalry between the clubs, but it should also cause decision-makers to consider cutting back on the armor.

Wearing armor on the front arm allows hitters to crowd the plate with impunity. They can handle the inside pitch and reach the outside pitch.

It's unfair to pitchers. They must have a chance at controlling at least one side of the plate. Taking away body armor would help pitching.

Exactly.

Addendum: It occurred to me after posting this item that the expression "body armor" is redundant. See here. Accordingly, I changed the title from "Body Armor" to "Armor."

Limb, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.

'Twas a pair of boots that the lady bought,
And the salesman laced them tight
To a very remarkable height—
Higher, indeed, than I think he ought—
Higher than can be right.
For the Bible declares—but never mind:
It is hardly fit
To censure freely and fault to find
With others for sins that I'm not inclined
Myself to commit.
Each has his weakness, and though my own
Is freedom from every sin,
It still were unfair to pitch in,
Discharging the first censorious stone.
Besides, the truth compels me to say,
The boots in question were made that way.
As he drew the lace she made a grimace,
And blushingly said to him:
"This boot, I'm sure, is too high to endure,
It hurts me—hurts my—limb."
The salesman smiled in a manner mild,
Like an artless, undesigning child;
Then, checking himself, to his face he gave
A look as sorrowful as the grave,
Though he didn't care two figs
For her pains and throes,
As he stroked her toes,
Remarking with speech and manner just
Befitting his calling: "Madam, I trust
That it doesn't hurt your twigs."
B. Percival Dike.

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

I don't read Paul Krugman's* op-ed columns anymore, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten about him. Here is his review of a new book by David Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery.

* "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.

See here.

Here is some Saturday evening reading for you.

The diabolical New York Yankees are in town this weekend. Yesterday, to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the Texas Rangers wore special jerseys with "Los Rangers" across the front. I watched the game on television even though it was being played only nine miles from my house. Michelle Malkin sees something sinister in this, but I don't. It's just another marketing gimmick for the Rangers, no different from wearing "throwback" uniforms, giving bobblehead dolls to the first 20,000 fans, or selling hot dogs for a dollar apiece. The idea is to sell jerseys and drum up interest in the team. I don't see anything wrong with marketing products to the Hispanic community. The Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex has a sizable Hispanic population, and many of them are baseball fans. Only someone who wants to suppress Hispanic culture could possibly object to reaching out in this way. Chill out, Michelle. There are bad things happening out there that deserve your attention. This is not one of them.

See here.

Schoolchildren are currently fed the disinformation that Native Americans and other peoples in pre-state societies were inherently peaceable, leaving them uncomprehending, indeed contemptuous, of one of our species' greatest inventions, democratic government and the rule of law.

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], 332)

Physiognomy, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.

"There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man,
"To read the mind's construction in the face."
The physiognomists his portrait scan,
And say: "How little wisdom here we trace!
He knew his face disclosed his mind and heart,
So, in his own defence, denied our art."
Lavatar Shunk.

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

To the Editor:

We tell people not to speed, Nicholas D. Kristof says, but equip cars with air bags in case they do. So what's wrong with telling kids not to have sex, but making Plan B available in case they do?

There is nothing intrinsically harmful about driving fast; it is the potential consequences (an accident) that are bad and must be protected against. But with teenage sex, the real harm is in the act itself; if pregnancy results, it may be inconvenient, but it is not intrinsically evil.

I know how damaging early, uncommitted sex can be to a young woman's sense of self. I came of age in the era of "make love, not war," and although I avoided unintended pregnancy and disease, the decades since have impressed upon me the invidious and slow-healing effects of my youthful behavior.

It's the sex itself we must protect teenagers against. And that is something Plan B can never do.

Susan Beck
Milford, Conn., May 4, 2006

The New York Times is determined to make President Bush look bad. Major economic indicators are good? No problem. Send a reporter out to find people who aren't happy—and who blame their unhappiness on the president. Unbelievable.

I hate to pick on Tom Grieve (the television analyst for the Texas Rangers), but the other night he used the expression "coup de grâce," pronouncing it "coop de grah." He was doubly wrong. It's "koo-de-grahs." Tom is the one who says "he swung and missed at it" (instead of "he swung at and missed it" or "he swung at it and missed"). I'm going to strangle him.

Here.

The 89th Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) begins tomorrow in, of all places, Belgium. It's the second most difficult stage race in the world, behind the Tour de France. I wish Lance Armstrong had ridden it, but he was always focused on the Tour. Some of the greatest cyclists, such as Miguel Indurain and Marco Pantani, have won both the Giro and the Tour in the same year. Indurain did it two years in a row. Here is a preview of the race. My prediction: Italian Damiano Cunego, the 2004 winner. If you're a cycling fan, make your prediction in the comments section.

I started this blog two and a half years ago today. Where has the time gone? At first, I felt as though I was groping in the dark, but eventually—with the assistance of kind people like John Ray—I began to see. I now consider myself a sophisticated blogger, even if I haven’t yet mastered HTML. I enjoyed my time at Blogger, despite occasional outages, but after a while I decided to move to PowerBlogs, where I would have someone to contact if things went wrong. Chris Lansdown always responds promptly to my messages, even the testy ones. He continues to tweak the software to make the blog more user-friendly. If you’re thinking of starting a blog, please contact Chris.

By now, blogging has become so integrated into my life that I can’t imagine my life without it. If you look at the time stamps on my posts, you’ll see that I post throughout the afternoon and evening. I reserve mornings for teaching or reading. This doesn’t mean I’m glued to the blog all afternoon and evening. I always have dozens of things to do at the computer. I use the blog as a reward for getting work done. Longtime readers know that while I’m a philosopher, and while the blog’s name is “AnalPhilosopher,” the blog was never meant to be a vehicle for philosophical writing. I’m not even sure there is such a thing as philosophy, if that means a subject matter. We philosophers have specialized skills, which we can and do apply anywhere and everywhere. Just as law students are trained to think like lawyers, philosophy students are trained to think like philosophers—using philosophical concepts and methods. How else could it be that there are philosophers of mind, philosophers of law, philosophers of science, philosophers of religion, and political philosophers? Sometimes I think philosophy is a mood or style rather than a discipline. That mood or style expresses itself in all aspects of my life, including everything I write.

I love the blogosphere. That doesn’t mean I spend a lot of time reading other people’s blogs. Truth be told, I don’t read many blogs. There are simply too many good ones out there and not enough time. But I love the idea of the blogosphere. I think it’s a good thing in many ways. First, it provides people an outlet for their thoughts and feelings. This is cathartic. Second, it’s a written medium, so it can’t but improve people’s writing abilities. Goodness knows we need more and better writers in the world. Third, it builds community. I have met many fine people through this blog—people like John Ray, Peg Kaplan, Bill Keezer, Ally Eskin, Steve Rugg, Jeff Percifield, and Bill Vallicella. The downside is that I have met many scoundrels, such as Brian Leiter. The blogosphere is no better, on average, than the world at large. But it’s no worse, either. It’s a microcosm.

It’s still too early, in my opinion, to tell what effect the blogosphere will have on the so-called mainstream media. There are signs that the mainstream media are co-opting it. Many newspapers, for example, have blogs. But there will always be unaffiliated bloggers, for there will always be independent-minded people. The former are blogospheric urbanites, the latter mountain men. I, for one, am beholden to nobody. I don’t belong to a political party; I’m not a member of an organization (even the American Philosophical Association); and I’m nobody’s shill. What you read in my blog are my own reflections, distilled from 49 years of experience. I call myself a conservative, but I don’t conceive of conservatism in substantive terms, as a set of doctrines. I simply accord tradition great weight—and I’m skeptical of the power of reason to make the world a better place. The burden of persuasion is always on those who would tinker with longstanding practices, institutions, and ways of life.

In addition to being a conservative (in the sense just described), I’m an egoist (in ethics), a subjectivist (in metaethics), a retributivist, an atheist (albeit a friendly one), and a proponent of animal rights. I’m a runner, a bicyclist, and a softball player. In music, I’m a headbanger. That doesn’t mean I dislike other musical genres; it means I like heavy metal the best. Ozzy Osbourne is god. I’ve been known to play Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven in my house. In a given week, I might play Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, and Barry Manilow as well as Quiet Riot, Led Zeppelin, and AC/DC. What I put in the platter depends on my mood—or on the mood I want to put myself in.

This blog, which has had 579,517 visitors in 30 months, is my main literary outlet. It replaced the journal I kept for many years. Thank you for dropping by. I hope you find something of interest each time you visit.

Would I lie to you?
Would I lie to you honey?
Now would I say something that wasn't true?
I'm asking you sugar.
Would I lie to you?

My friends—know what's in store.
I won't be here anymore.
I've packed my bags.
I've cleaned the floor.
Watch me walkin'.
Walkin' out the door.

(Believe me—I'll make it make it.)

Tell you straight—no intervention.
To your face—no deception.
You're the biggest fake.
That much is true.
Had all I can take.
Now I'm leaving you.

(Believe me—I'll make it make it.)

Chorus repeats.

(Watch me—watch me! Ooh yea.)

Critical legal studies sometimes presented itself as a theory of law. That led professionally trained philosophers to subject critical legal studies to examination with the tools of their trade, resulting in a judgment that, considered as philosophy, much in critical legal studies was amateurish. For example, sometimes critical legal scholars gestured in the direction of Wittgenstein when they talked about the indeterminacy of law, but philosophers who knew Wittgenstein better than the lawyers did also knew that the very most that could be wrung out of Wittgenstein for purposes of the critical legal studies arguments required one to rely on interpretations of Wittgenstein that were, at the least, extremely controversial among professional philosophers.

(Mark Tushnet, "Survey Article: Critical Legal Theory (Without Modifiers) in the United States," The Journal of Political Philosophy 13 [March 2005]: 99-112, at 102 [footnotes omitted])

Here.

Barrack, n. A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.

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

To the Editor:

Re "To Pump or Not to Pump," by T. C. Boyle (Op-Ed, April 30):

Learning how to ride that bicycle a second time, I couldn't help but agree with the article's assessment of Californians' automotive ambivalence.

Returning home to Los Angeles from college life in an environmentally conscious Vermont town, I decided to ride my bike the short distance to work every summer instead of driving a Suburban.

Even though I lived less than a mile away, my choice was met with incredulity, amusement and the occasional mockery.

It's sad that even in times of rising gas prices and bipartisan outrage at the nation's failure to put a satisfactory energy policy into effect, many so-called environmental Californians (and Americans) remain opposed to the most immediate relief from gas prices. Don't drive unnecessarily!

Karen Stahlheber
Pasadena, Calif., May 1, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I'm going to marry this woman.

Here.

Whether a laissez-faire economy or state capitalism, or something in between, represents the ideal of social justice is not determined by any a priori principle of justice; and individual adherence to one or another such ideal must depend upon the empirically determined consequences of that manner of organizing the social economy which is in question, and upon the relative value assigned to such consequences—for example, the relative value of the larger freedom of individual initiative and, possibly, the greater productivity under private enterprise, as against the greater security of individuals and, perhaps, the gain in distributing goods more nearly according to need under socialism.

(Clarence Irving Lewis, Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics, ed. John Lange [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969], 151-2)

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column. This Moussaoui guy doesn't deserve to die. Only murderers deserve to die.

My love for baseball is unconditional. It has survived the designated hitter, strikes and lockouts, agents, steroids, nighttime World Series games, baggy uniforms, crooked hats, facial hair, late-October games, George Steinbrenner, body armor, bandbox ballparks, lights at Wrigley Field, interleague play, Boston's World Series victory, even cancellation of the 1994 World Series. I'm sure it will survive other atrocities, such as the term "quality start." A quality start is a pitching performance in which the starting pitcher goes at least six innings while allowing no more than three earned runs. (Earned runs are those attributable to the pitcher, not to poor fielding.) My problem is that the term should be "high-quality start." After all, it makes sense to say of a thing that it has low (or poor) quality. Why is "quality" expected to do the work of "high quality"? Perhaps it's just a shorthand, but I don't like it, for it threatens to destroy the meaning of the word "quality," which is neutral. This isn't the only context in which "quality" is being used to mean "high quality." If you have other examples, please comment. High-quality comments are especially appreciated.

Enough, pro. All there is in the world if you like it.

Enough is as good as a feast—for that matter
Enougher's as good as a feast and the platter.
Arbely C. Strunk.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

"Revamping FEMA" (editorial, May 1) makes it clear that you would prefer to see the Federal Emergency Management Agency revamped, not dismantled.

As an organizational psychologist who worked at the Office of Personnel Management for 29 years, I beg you to reconsider your position.

Most government offices become less effective over time. Some experts go so far as to recommend that agencies be eliminated after 10 years and created anew.

The best reason for recreating FEMA would be to get rid of all middle management. Most middle managers in the federal government create their own empires, in which size and power are more important than customer satisfaction.

FEMA's best chance for success is to start anew with managers chosen from state, local and federal government. And it should be independent of the Department of Homeland Security, reporting directly to the White House.

Walt Mann
Tucson, May 1, 2006

I was driving home today on a three-lane road. The middle lane is reserved for turning. The speed limit is 30 miles per hour. I usually drive 35 miles per hour in this area, figuring I won't be pulled over for going only five miles per hour too fast. This afternoon, a man tailgated me. I was obviously going too slowly for him. He wanted me to break the law even more than I was. If he was in that much of a hurry, he should have passed me in the turning lane. But wait; that would have exposed him to the risk of being pulled over. He wanted me to run the risk, for if I had sped up to 40 or higher, it would have been me and not him who was ticketed. What a brave man!

See here for Bill Vallicella's post about Ted Kennedy. The Senate will be a better place when the windbag from Massachusetts retires. He is a national embarrassment. That the citizens of the Bay State keep sending him back speaks volumes about them.

Addendum: Here is a New York Times story about immigration.

Here.

The conservative resurgence in the United States has left liberal legal theorists somewhat at sea. They have not located social movements like the civil rights movement or the anti-Vietnam War movement to provide them external social supports. Their theorizing, such as it is, consists mostly of nostalgia for a past—in public law, for the Supreme Court under Earl Warren—and romanticism about developments in other nations, such as South Africa and the international human rights community. These are, in my view, unlikely to generate much of enduring value.

(Mark Tushnet, "Survey Article: Critical Legal Theory (Without Modifiers) in the United States," The Journal of Political Philosophy 13 [March 2005]: 99-112, at 111 [footnote omitted])

Here.

Sometimes I wonder whether words mean anything to the editors of The New York Times. To quote John Searle, the editors have "a distressing penchant for saying things that are obviously false." Today, the Times comes out against the judicial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, calling him "unqualified." See here. Gee, I wonder why the American Bar Association—an organization of lawyers—deems him "well qualified." Something is amiss. Oops! I forgot. Kavanaugh might issue rulings that the Times doesn't like. It's all just politics to the Times. If you're on the left, you're qualified; otherwise not. See here for Kavanaugh's impeccable academic credentials and impressive (as well as diverse) legal background. If he isn't fit to serve as a federal appellate judge, then nobody is.

To the Editor:

Your editorial, which supports the nationwide "immigrant rights" demonstrations, obfuscates the distinction that should be made between legal and illegal immigrants in this debate.

Legal immigrants today have the right to earn their citizenship. But I fail to understand how immigrants who choose to bypass the legal process and who enter this country illegally are entitled to any preferential route to citizenship or any rights afforded to legal immigrants.

To grant them any such route or rights diminishes the efforts of millions of immigrants (my parents included) who have stood in line patiently to enter this country legally and to become citizens.

To accept the attitude of entitlement that illegal immigrants are voicing in the demonstrations is repugnant.

I am pro-immigrant. I am against illegal immigration. There is a difference.

Steven Hong
Los Angeles, May 2, 2006

5-3-86 Saturday. We had talked about it for several weeks, and finally, today, we did it. Michael Gulezian, Helen Jefferies, and Ian Patterson, all current students, accompanied me to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum [on the west side of the Tucson Mountains]. We met at the Dunkin’ Donuts shop near campus and Ian drove. I had a fantastic time. We joked constantly, pestered the employees with questions about the animals, walked around the complex, and even negotiated our way through a fake cave. I couldn’t believe that the Museum would permit such a thing, because the cave was dark and treacherous. Tort liability could be substantial. But we made it out in fine shape. [Damn!] My favorite exhibit was the otter tank. From inside, you can see both below and above the water. From outside, you can see the otters cavort in the sunshine. By the time I got home I was hoarse from talking and laughing. These people are crazy! It’s too bad that Julianna [Wilson] didn’t want to go. I took a whole roll of pictures to commemorate the occasion. [This was one of the happiest days of my life. Michael and I still joke about it.]

At home, I took a two-hour nap and read more of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons. I’ve now visited two main Tucson attractions: Old Tucson and the Desert Museum.

Mark Spahn sent a link to this interesting column from The Guardian. It made my blood boil.

Here.

Positivism, n. A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.

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

To this.

Physicist Stephen M. Barr discusses the relation between religion and science. "Evolution," he argues, "is part of God's design."

One of my readers sent a link to this.

See here for Shelby Steele's column.

Bob Herbert, like Paul Krugman, hates President Bush. I don't think anyone can reasonably deny that. Twice a week, Herbert expresses his hatred for the president in his op-ed column for The New York Times. The columns are pretty much interchangeable, as this shows. What I'm wondering is what Herbert will write about when President Bush leaves office.

Chomsky is an irresistible example of the quality problem that besets the market for academic public intellectuals. But he may not be the best example. The establishment press generally does not publish his public-intellectual work, though whether by his choice or theirs I don't know. He has, however, a following on college campuses, where he speaks frequently, and abroad, where his anti-Americanism is welcome. And he is mentioned frequently enough in the media, and mostly for his political views, to be among the one hundred most frequently mentioned public intellectuals.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 89 [footnotes omitted])

Reconciliation, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.

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

Here.

Here is an interesting essay about peer review in scientific periodicals. I'd be interested in Dr John J. Ray's reaction to it, since he's published many essays in scientific periodicals. John?

To the Editor:

Re "Bush Enters Anthem Fight on Language" (front page, April 29):

For the first time in his presidency, I can actually agree with President Bush. English is our language, and if you wish to live in this country and be a citizen, then learn English.

Moreover, it is an insult of the highest order that someone would translate our national anthem into his native tongue. We are not obligated to change our ways to suit you; it is just the opposite.

And by the way, for it is really the same topic, multiculturalism adds nothing. Rather, it is a distraction to forming a national identity, which is sorely lacking these days.

Let us begin by eliminating references to hyphenated Americans. They reflect a duality in allegiance that must be eschewed.

This position does not make me a conservative, as some might suggest. Rather, it is an example of common sense in the face of forces that are trying to have it both ways but are in the process putting us further and further apart.

Richard M. Frauenglass
Huntington, N.Y., April 29, 2006

Darby Shaw is riding up a storm. See here for an account of his latest bike rally.

YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE KEITH! FUCK YOU AND QUIT BEING SUCK [sic] A DICK TO EVERYONE! YOU ARE A FOOL.

BUT WE ALL ARE FOOLS NOW AND AGAIN, SO PLEASE TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO STOP BEING ONE.

Here.

I hate to gloat, but I must. My Detroit Tigers outscored the Minnesota Twins, 33-1, in three games this weekend. The scores were 9-0, 18-1, and 6-0. The Tigers began the year 5-0 and have gone 11-9 since. That's 16 victories in April. As for Minnesota, I hate the Twins with a passion, largely because they've been so hard on my Tigers over the years. I have not forgotten 1987.

Two days ago, in Muenster, Texas, I did my fourth bike rally of the year and 375th overall. I stopped twice along the way. As I stood in line for the porta-potty during my first stop, someone pointed out to the woman next to me that she had a grease mark on her leg from her bike’s sprocket. She laughed and said, self-deprecatingly, that it was her first “race.” Little did she know that even experienced cyclists get these “shark-attack marks” on their legs. Wouldn’t she have been aghast to learn that this was my 375th rally? I’ve enjoyed every one of them, even those in which the weather was bad.

Speaking of bad weather, it’s the time of year in North Texas when you don’t know what you’re going to get from day to day. The forecast all week was for storms. But the night before the rally, I watched the television news and learned that the storms were supposed to pass over the area by the time of the 11:00 start. On the way to Muenster (85.5 miles from my Fort Worth house), the sky was dark gray, but no rain fell. I thought the clouds might blow over before we started. When I reached Gainesville, which is 13 miles east of Muenster, I noticed a CBS truck in a hotel parking lot. “Why would CBS be in Gainesville?” I wondered. Within a mile I had my answer. Overnight, there were high winds (80-100 miles per hour, according to The Dallas Morning News) or tornadoes in the area. It looked like a disaster zone. Many trees were uprooted and many others stripped of their smaller limbs. Telephone poles were down. Several buildings were demolished. Twisted pieces of corrugated metal were strewn along the highway. Emergency crews were hard at work repairing the damage. I hope nobody, including animals, got hurt.

Just as my friends and I rolled to the starting line in downtown Muenster, rain began to fall. The wind (out of the west) was vicious. I had the foresight to bring my clear-plastic rain jacket, so I took it out of my jersey pocket and put it on. Thank goodness! I felt sorry for the riders who wore only cotton jerseys. One man had a tank top. Poor wretch! As for the wind, it was so strong that it nearly blew me off the bike a few times. I’m dead serious when I say that my bike was angled into the wind. More than once, the wind caught my front wheel and nearly wrenched the handlebars from my hands. Luckily, I didn’t crash; nor did I see any crashes. I guess everyone was being especially careful.

About 10 miles into the ride, as we turned into the wind toward Rosston and Forestburg, the rain let up and the clouds parted. Sunshine! Within minutes I was roasting in my rain jacket. My friends caught up to me on the hills. I stopped momentarily to remove the jacket, which I stuffed into my jersey pocket. How quickly things can change. One minute I was thinking of cutting the ride short; the next I was marveling at how much fun I was having. No, the wind didn’t let up, but you can’t have it all, can you?

Alas, the clouds returned by the halfway point. And eventually I felt raindrops again. Or maybe it was drizzle. Whatever you call it, it was cold, and it depressed me. When the wind is strong, it feels as though it slows you unless it’s directly behind. The only real tailwind we had all day was on the stretch from Bulcher (near the Oklahoma border) to where the course turned south. I rode most of the way with Joe Culotta. Joe is a superb climber, so I invariably got dropped on the hills. Usually I was able to catch up, but after Bulcher I stopped trying. There comes a point where you need to draw inward and focus on your own pedaling. Thinking about someone else is an unwelcome distraction. Just as I reached Muenster, having fought a crosswind for nine miles, the sun came out. Go figure.

My average speed for the 59.84-mile course was 15.82 miles per hour. This is less than the previous week’s 16.20 miles per hour, but Muenster is much hillier. In fact, it’s the hilliest rally of all, in terms of feet climbed per mile. A couple of the hills are brutes. I’ve done this course 16 times since 1990, 14 of them in April and two in August. I can’t believe I averaged 21.2 miles per hour one year. I was insane! Actually, I was in good shape and rode much of the way with others. The best correlate of speed is time spent drafting. I now do most of my riding alone. My maximum heart rate was 161 and I reached a top speed of 44.9 miles per hour on the big hill north of Saint Jo. (That’s right: “Jo,” not “Joseph.”) The official high temperature for the day at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was 74° Fahrenheit, but with the rain and wind we experienced, it was cold. All in all, I had a good time, as did my friends. Misery loves company.

Here is John Fund's latest column.

[T]he disagreements on crime and war fall right out of the conflicting theories of human nature. Given the obvious waste and cruelty of war, those with the Utopian Vision see it as a kind of pathology that arises from misunderstandings, shortsightedness, and irrational passions. War is to be prevented by public expressions of pacifist sentiments, better communication between potential enemies, less saber-rattling rhetoric, fewer weapons and military alliances, a de-emphasis on patriotism, and negotiating to avert war at any cost. Adherents of the Tragic Vision, with their cynical view of human nature, see war as a rational and tempting strategy for people who think they can gain something for themselves or their nation. The calculations might be mistaken in any instance, and they may be morally deplorable because they give no weight to the suffering of the losers, but they are not literally pathological or irrational. On this view the only way to ensure peace is to raise the cost of war to potential aggressors by developing weaponry, arousing patriotism, rewarding bravery, flaunting one's might and resolve, and negotiating from strength to deter blackmail.

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], 292-3)

Here.

5-1-86 Thursday. I feel great. I drafted approximately half of my epistemology seminar paper today. It’s an interdisciplinary work in epistemology and law. What I’m doing is applying epistemic concepts (such as truth, power, speed, and reliability) to the subject of legal relevance—the rules which determine which evidence will be admitted in a court of law. Alvin Goldman believes that there are many objects of epistemic evaluation, including beliefs, mental processes, scientific research programs, social processes and institutions, and even sets of rules. I’ve taken his conceptual framework and applied it to something familiar [to me]: the rules of relevance. I hope he enjoys the result. The paper is due a week from tomorrow. [I published this essay—“An Epistemic Approach to Legal Relevance”—in the St. Mary’s Law Journal. Alvin cited it in a published essay of his own.]

The temperature rose to ninety-five degrees [Fahrenheit] this afternoon. To clear my head from all of the writing and thinking that I’ve been doing, I took a walk around the block. I love these walks. They give me a chance to escape intellectual pressures, let my mind wander, and listen to music. Besides, you can’t beat the view. For much of the walk I’m looking directly at the Santa Catalina Mountains. What an imposing and beautiful sight! I still can’t get over the fact that I live near mountains. I’m a resident of Tucson, Arizona.

Hemp, n. A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.

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

See here for Richard Posner's blog post about the gasoline price spike.

To the Editor:

Congress and the president have it exactly backward. Now is not the time for tax rebates or suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

If we had courageous leaders, they would seize the opportunity to impose a $1-to-$3 increase in the tax on gasoline.

This would force consumers to demand an energy policy that had its base in alternative fuels and hybrid automobiles, which in turn would speed up Detroit's lethargic response to the need for more efficient vehicles.

Yes, the short-term effect of a higher tax would be a burden to people who had to use their cars for work, but if we are ever to cut our dependence on foreign oil, it will be necessary to decrease the carbon emissions that are contributing to global warming and develop sustainable alternative sources of energy.

Now is the time for courageous leaders to stand and deliver. Unfortunately, President Bush and Congress do not have the stomach to make the hard choices.

Henry A. Lowenstein
New York, April 28, 2006

According to The Dallas Morning News, this past April was the warmest April on record in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The average high temperature was 83.1º Fahrenheit. Here is my chart:

       Jan   Feb   Mar   Apr   May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1989  ----  ----  ----  ----  ---- -----  ----  ----  85.8  81.8+ 70.3  51.1
1990  63.3  64.8  66.7  73.8  83.3  94.1  93.2  96.1  90.9  79.2  71.0  54.0
1991  51.4- 65.4  71.5  78.4  ----  91.4  96.0  92.5  85.5  79.4  61.8  59.2
1992  55.6  63.9  70.1  76.1  80.2  89.1  93.8  90.5- 87.7  81.7  61.9  58.6
1993  53.6  57.3  65.7  73.5  81.4  91.2  97.3  98.0  89.7  73.2  61.8  58.9
1994  53.8  60.0  70.3  77.1  80.3  94.1  93.9  95.3  87.0  76.8  66.9  57.7
1995  58.3  64.0  66.1  75.1  82.0  90.4  96.3  95.2  85.9  80.5  67.3  56.4
1996  54.7  64.5  65.6  77.2  89.3  92.9  95.6  91.0  83.8  77.7  64.0  60.5
1997  54.1  57.9  69.0  69.8- 79.3- 85.2- 94.6  92.7  91.0  77.0  61.3  54.9
1998  57.0  60.5  64.5  75.4  89.7+ 95.9+102.3+ 98.0  93.0  78.7  65.5  55.6
1999  59.3  67.3  65.9  78.2  83.2  90.6  96.4 101.7  89.9  81.4  75.0+ 62.5+
2000  60.7  69.6+ 71.3  75.4  86.3  88.9  97.9 101.8+ 92.4  78.2  57.8- 47.7-
2001  52.3  60.2  60.2- 76.6  83.8  90.6  96.7  94.1  83.7- 77.0  69.3  59.0
2002  59.4  58.9  65.9  77.4  81.3  89.4  92.3- 94.7  90.4  72.1- 65.0  57.4
2003  54.3  54.6- 67.1  78.3  85.0  88.6  96.9  97.5  84.1  80.0  68.7  61.0
2004  58.5  54.6- 72.1  75.8  83.5  88.0  93.0  90.6  89.1  81.4  65.4  60.2
2005  59.4  61.0  67.7  76.3  82.8  93.7  95.6  97.3  95.2+ 80.8  72.8  60.0
2006  68.2+ 60.6  72.5+ 83.1+

One of my colleagues sent a link to this. The hottest thing in Major League Baseball for the past few years has been bobblehead dolls. Perhaps departments of philosophy should make bobblehead dolls of their philosophers. Would you buy one?

Here.