AnalPhilosopher

8-31-86 Sunday. This past Friday, while [I was] playing frisbee and talking to several friends, Lynn Hofmann came by. Lynn sat in on my [Introduction to Philosophy] class during the spring semester. He’s extremely religious, but we’ve always gotten along fine. During our conversation, I mentioned to him that I sometimes see religious signs during sporting events. The most common says “John 3:16.” Now, I memorized this verse when I was little. It was in a small booklet that I found in a laundromat. So I decided to impress Lynn with my knowledge. “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son, that whosoever shall believeth in him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life.” I then said “Of course, it’s false; but I’ve memorized it nonetheless.” This threw Lynn into a rage. He accused me of insulting him and began to walk away. I tried to stop him, but he insisted that it was an insult and that our friendship was over. I couldn’t believe it. Finally he mumbled something about staying friends and walked away.

In all honesty, I didn’t intend to insult Lynn. My intention was simply to impress him with my knowledge of this verse and perhaps stimulate discussion. But even if I did insult him, the sword is two-edged. Lynn followed my recitation with the word “Amen” and went on to say something about “Jesus, our Lord.” He knows very well that I’m an agnostic and that this would irritate me. If my comment was an insult, then surely his was. Perhaps Lynn was just looking for a way to end our friendship. If so, then so be it. I recount this incident only to show the reader how touchy religious belief can be in our age. People are fighting the world over in defense of their religious beliefs and lifestyles. It has always been this way and probably always will be. I saw Friday just how strongly such beliefs are held, and how they influence personal relationships.

I had a record-setting day on my bike. Not only did I break my gross-average-speed record of 15.77 miles per hour (set four months ago, on 27 April 1986), but I broke the sixteen-mile-per-hour mark for the first time. My gross-average speed today was 16.65 miles per hour. I covered 40.2 miles in 144.81 minutes. What explains this, you ask? I don’t rightly know. The wind was virtually nonexistent, so that didn’t help. Traffic was no lighter. I stopped once to change a [cassette] tape. And the temperature was in the high eighties [degrees Fahrenheit]. The best explanation is that I’m stronger and more determined. I rode eighty miles last [sic; should be “this past”] weekend, which had to have strengthened my legs. I was also determined, once I got to the cave [Colossal Cave], to ride hard on the way back and shoot for the record. Lo and behold, I did it. I feel great about it.

Twenty-five years ago today, on 31 August 1981, a friend and I saw Def Leppard and Ozzy Osbourne in concert at the Pine Knob Music Theatre (an outdoor venue) in Clarkston, Michigan. We couldn't believe how good Ozzy's young guitarist was. Sadly, Randy Rhoads would die soon. My friend himself died in less than a year—in a motorcycle accident.

To the Editor:

Re “Rumsfeld Says War Critics Haven’t Learned Lessons of History” (news article, Aug. 30):

If the Bush administration does not screen speeches given by cabinet members, it should start.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s smug rhetoric, directed at critics of the administration’s policies in Iraq and in the war on terror, arrogantly demeans not only a good portion of Congress, but at least half of the citizens and voters of this country.

Now, not only are critics accused of being unpatriotic, but according to Secretary Rumsfeld, they also suffer from “moral or intellectual confusion.”

Instead of educating us on why they are right, President Bush and his team are constantly telling critics that they are just plain wrong.

It must be nice to be so smart, so moral and so right, 24/7.

The slick public relations effort of a few months ago that tried to paint the president as a leader now willing to listen to ideas and suggestions from his critics was, in fact, just that—a slick public relations effort.

This administration will not be held accountable, and there will be no acceptance of new ideas. There will be a continuation of the same tired, failed policies.

Patricia A. Weller
Emmitsburg, Md., Aug. 30, 2006

Deluge, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world.

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

The season is down to its final month. Detroit and Chicago lost today; Minnesota won. Detroit, which no longer has the best record in Major League Baseball (the New York Mets do), is 83-51, having lost two of three games in New York to the hated Yankees. (Sorry, Tom.) Chicago is 78-55 and Minnesota 77-55. If the Tigers split their remaining 28 games, they’ll finish 97-65. The White Sox will have to go 19-10 to tie them. The Twins will have to go 20-10 to tie. So while the Tigers have been struggling (can you say “Placido Polanco”?), they’re still in control of their destiny. Just win, baby! I’m afraid that if the Tigers lose the division, I’ll be scarred for life. P.S.: If this post seems disjointed, it’s because I’m writing under the influence—of Van Halen. You should not try to write while listening to “Panama.”

I'd like to publicly thank Khursh Mian Acevedo (whom I don't know) for sending me items on animal rights. I post some of them here and some at Animal Ethics, which is dedicated to philosophical discussion of the moral status of nonhuman animals. Here is an essay by Peter Singer and Bruce Friedrich about the reform of factory farms. Some people, such as law professor Gary Francione, think that reforming factory farms, as opposed to abolishing them, only entrenches them. I'm inclined to agree with Francione. What do you think?

"Doctor! Doctor!" (1984).

Here.

The enormous problem is how we move human agents, who are genetically programmed to be highly selfish and whose natural concern for others is limited and fragile, to act better. The problem is that we are programmed in a primitive form of egoism; we care about only a small range of prudential values: our own survival, advancement, and gratification, and that of a few others.

(James Griffin, Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 75)

The Corps of Discovery is making good progress down the Missouri River. It is in present-day South Dakota. The aim is to reach St Louis—civilization—before the river freezes. Meriwether Lewis, who was shot by mistake a couple of weeks earlier, is regaining his strength. The party is collecting animal specimens (both alive and dead) for transport to President Thomas Jefferson. Today there was a tense incident with the Teton Sioux, who tried to detain the Corps two years earlier. The Corps was outnumbered more than three to one, but William Clark was undaunted. He rowed across the river with three interpreters to find out who the Indians were, and, when he discovered that they were Tetons, threatened to kill them if they interfered with the party's progress downriver. The Tetons were the pirates of the Missouri River. Besides intimidating white traders, they kept neighboring tribes in a state of fear. Clark wanted them to understand that this would not be tolerated by the White Father in Washington. See here for Clark's account of the incident, as well as the other events of the day.

Sammy Sosa. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)

8-30-86 . . . I had a semi-productive day. The main accomplishment was drafting a reply to the State [of Arizona]’s response in the [Anthony] D[.] case. At issue is a statute which requires concurrent sentences. On a literal interpretation, the statute does not apply to our case. This, of course, is the State’s suggested reading. On a more liberal interpretation, the statute does apply; this is my suggested reading. But who knows what the Arizona Supreme Court will do? All I can do is argue and hope for the best. Unlike academic argument, something practically important hangs on this one. If we lose, Tony will have to serve two months in the Pima County Jail. If we win, he goes scot free. We’re hoping for the best.

For the second night in a row the Detroit Tigers blew a ninth-inning lead and lost. Last night’s loss was nightmarish. Apparently (for the game was not broadcast), the Tigers took a 12-5 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning, but California [the Angels] scored eight runs in the ninth to win the game, 13-12. Dick Schofield hit a grand-slam home run to put the Angels ahead. Tonight, much the same thing happened, except that the “culprit” was Doug DeCinces. I’m just sick about these losses. Detroit is now eight games behind division-leading Boston [the Red Sox], which continues to play good baseball. Toronto [the Blue Jays], which is on a tear, is only three and a half games behind, while the [New York] Yankees are in third place. If Toronto continues to play well and Detroit founders, I’ll root like heck for Boston. I can’t stand the Blue Jays.

To the Editor:

Re "Nonconformity Is Skin Deep" (column, Aug. 27):

Two cheers for David Brooks, who writes, "There is nothing more conformist than displays of individuality," whether those displays are tattoos, piercings, or wild or mismatched clothing.

As soon as people think about how to show their individuality, they're not individuals; they're superficial consumers who depend on their looks rather than having confidence in their actions, behaviors and personalities.

True individuals don't worry about how others see them. They just live each day true to themselves.

Jonathan Carey
Astoria, Queens
Aug. 27, 2006

Datary, n. A high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the Pope's bulls with the words Datum Romæ. He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of God.

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

See here.

Several readers have commented on my various tenure posts. I appreciate the feedback. Let me say a few things, in no particular order:

1. I have tenure. It cannot be taken away from me. Personally, it doesn’t matter to me whether the tenure system is abolished. If it is, it will be prospective, for both legal and moral reasons. Anyone who is tenured at the time of abolition will remain tenured until he or she retires.

2. As someone who is “in the system,” and has been there a long time, I can testify as to my experience, including my motivation. I would not have gone into academia if there were no tenure available. I would have practiced law instead. Someone (Kevin?) said that not everyone has a law degree to fall back on. That’s true, but it misses the point. People for whom academia isn’t an attractive option, because there is no tenure system, will go into other fields, such as law. Most academics could succeed in any of a number of other fields. They are among the brightest, most creative, most highly motivated people in the world.

3. Be careful what you ask for. Don’t abolish the tenure system until (a) you think through the consequences and (b) you are prepared to accept those consequences. As I’ve said many times, if you abolish tenure, you’re going to turn academia into a business, with mercenary professors who have no loyalty to their institutions. Who will mentor graduate students? Who will conduct research? Who will administer the universities? Abolish tenure and you’ll get what we now have in high schools.

Just to repeat: None of this affects me personally. If society wants to turn its universities into high schools, it’s fine with me.

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Here is a scene from today's stage of the Tour of Spain, which was won by German Erik Zabel.

My 15-week summer vacation is kaput. As always, I enjoyed it tremendously. My days were filled with reading, writing, running, riding, and reflecting, not to mention napping, eating, rambling with Shelbie, playing softball, watching the Tour de France live, watching baseball games, going to The Ballpark in Arlington, mowing the lawn, and blogging. (Memo to Mom: Tell me again why I should have practiced law for a living?) I began my 18th year of teaching at UTA this morning. I have 46 Logic students and 45 Philosophy of Religion students, for a total of 91 eager young minds. Today was introductory in nature. Thursday we jump head first into the intellectual waters. I hope the students know how to swim!

Put bluntly, we are living in a time of cultural revolution. From Socrates to the modern era, the great sapiential task was to seek, cherish, and obey truth. Now, much of modern humanistic study wants to tell us that seeking truth amounts to self-deception, that to pretend to cherish truth is a mask for exercising power, and that obeying truth is nothing more than submission to the disguised will of another. This sentiment is the late, autumnal fruit of a continental tradition in philosophy that has consistently positioned itself in the Big Picture approach to the difficult problems of modern life.

(R. R. Reno, reply to critics, First Things [August/September 2006]: 8-9, at 9)

To the Editor:

“Clergywomen Find Hard Path to Bigger Pulpit” (front page, Aug. 26) shows the continuing role that sheer prejudice plays in the lives of many people. In my church, we simply don’t ordain women . . . yet. Theological reasons are given, even though women do much of the heavy lifting in many ministries.

One wonders what lies behind “theology” in both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches when it comes to our attitudes toward women.

At issue may be some deeply ingrained feelings about what women can and can’t do—even when many women do it very well, as in preaching, doing pastoral work, administering large organizations.

I often wonder why some women themselves do not accept women in pastoral leadership. Is this some sort of strange jealousy or envy? And for men, various sorts of the “old boy” network go on and on.

But any of us who apply the term “Christian” to ourselves ought to do some soul-searching about how Christian we really are in our thoughts and feelings about our sisters in Christ.

(Rev.) Tom Zelinski
Marathon, Wis., Aug. 26, 2006
The writer is a Capuchin priest.

If this is not the best album ever made, then I'm a monkey's uncle.

Here.

Cui Bono? (Latin). What good would that do me?

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

This column by Victor Davis Hanson is disappointing. He conflates two issues: first, what (if anything) should be done about the leftist bias in academia; and second, whether to retain the academic tenure system. The only connection I see between these issues is that, if tenure were abolished, biased professors could be gotten rid of. Yes, but at what cost? I'll say it again: If you abolish tenure, you will get an entirely different breed of professor. Many of us went into college teaching precisely because we valued job security, autonomy, and other goods more than wealth. (Put differently, we viewed job security and autonomy as a constituent of our wealth rather than as a competitor to it.) Take away tenure and you get mercenary teachers. Either universities will pay much more in salary to get the same quality of teaching (since the other goods are no longer present) or the quality of teaching and mentoring will decrease. You can't have it all. TANSTAAFL. The tenure system gives everyone what he or she wants. Professors get job security and autonomy, which they prefer to wealth; universities get teaching and mentoring on the cheap. If I didn't have job security, believe me, I'd have been practicing law for the past 23 years and earning a lot more money.

Here.

See here. Note that Democrat Senator Joseph Lieberman makes the list. He received a score of 83 from the American Civil Liberties Union. John Kerry scored 100, Hillary Clinton 78, and Trent Lott 22. See here. I guess "conservative" means "someone we at Democratic Underground don't like."

Here are my friends Joe and Jason Culotta at the start of Saturday's Hotter 'n Hell Hundred bike rally in Wichita Falls, Texas (click to enlarge):

As you can see, it was dark when we got started. Here are the Culotta boys in the first hour, traveling at about 20 miles per hour away from the rising sun:

It was a beautiful morning in West Texas. Here is a rest stop, showing the bustle of activity:

The theme of the rest stop was pirates and mermaids. Here I am, saying "Arghh!":

Here is the fruit spread, which was jaw-dropping (I ate grapes, watermelon, and a banana):

I carried my Casio camera in the middle pocket of my jersey. I pulled it out several times while riding in a pack. Here are Joe and Jason, hauling butt:

It may not look like it, but we were going at least 25 miles per hour. There are no words to describe how much fun this is. Here I am at the Burkburnett rest stop at about 60 miles, ready to head for Wichita Falls:

I know, I know: My jersey is droopy. I've worn it for many years. I ordered a new jersey today. Here is the part of the course that goes through Sheppard Air Force Base:

I hope you enjoyed this visual tour as much as I enjoyed the rally!

I've been having an interesting discussion of retronyms with Mark Spahn, who loves language as much as I do. Mark asked whether there is a retronym for "non-laser pointer." The first pointers were physical in nature. I'm sure some professors still use them. Then there were laser pointers. What do we call the old-fashioned pointers, now that we have laser pointers? I told Mark I don't know, since I've never used a pointer of any kind—except my index finger. It then occurred to me that "non-laser pointer" is itself a retronym. Mark objected, claiming that this is too general. He said that any noun could have a retronym fashioned in this way. But why can't there be two kinds of retronym: generic (e.g., "non-automatic transmission") and specific (e.g., "manual transmission")? Perhaps some generic retronyms mutate into specific retronyms, as the need arises. For example, perhaps one day there will be (if there is not already) a "physical pointer."

Here is a scene from today's stage of the Tour of Spain, won by Spaniard Francisco Ventoso. I think I would like Spain.

Addendum: I don't like the caption on this image. Is Viatcheslav Ekimov retiring? I hope not. I think he needs one more Tour de France to tie the record of Tours completed.

Addendum 2: A quick Google search confirms the retirement. See here. I will miss you, Slava! You rode with class and dignity, whether in setting world records on the track or in working for your teammates. You are a credit to your sport.

Some people disclaim responsibility for their deeds. Some people claim responsibility for their nondeeds. See here.

An often heard objection to conservatism is that it is committed to the mindless perpetuation of the conventions that happen to prevail in a particular society. There may have been conservatives who actually held this commitment, but, if they did, they should not have. What conservatives should be committed to is the perpetuation of conventions that have endured for a considerable length of time, measured in decades or more rather than months, because people have voluntarily adhered to them—and have been right to do so because the conventions have made their lives better. I shall say that conventions that meet these criteria (endurance, voluntary adherence, and contribution to well-being) have stood the test of time.

(John Kekes, "Justice: A Conservative View," Social Philosophy & Policy 23 [summer 2006]: 88-108, at 96-7 [footnote omitted])

Here.

In their messianic zeal to expunge religion from public spaces, including public schools, leftists, who fear the power of religion, deny people their First Amendment rights to speak freely and to exercise their religion. It's disgraceful. See here.

Conservatives are pessimistic. Progressives are optimistic. See here for Adam Cohen's New York Times essay on the great divide. Cohen's final paragraph is revealing:

Part of Mr. Bush’s legacy may well be that he robbed America of its optimism—a force that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other presidents, like Ronald Reagan, used to rally the country when it was deeply challenged. The next generation of leaders will have to resell discouraged Americans on the very idea of optimism, and convince them again that their goal should not be to live with their ailments, but to cure them.

This is question-begging. The question is whether optimism is justified. If it is, then, to the extent that President Bush has dampened it, he can be accused of "robbing America of its optimism." But if it isn't, then President Bush is doing nothing more than promoting a realistic view of the world. Suppose optimism is not justified. Would not President Bush be deceiving people if he induced optimism in them? A president's job, arguably, isn't to paint rosy pictures but to bring public sentiment into line with reality.

Here.

Read this. Lockheed Martin, which employs a great many people in my hometown of Fort Worth, has banned smoking on its premises, on the ground that (1) smoking is unhealthy and (2) bad employee health costs the company money. Doesn't the logic of this decision commit the company to banning smoking by its employees even at home? There may be practical reasons to limit the ban to the company's premises (e.g., how would the company know whether someone has been smoking at home? blood tests?), but the principle sweeps much more broadly. Are we approaching the day when, if one's employer pays for one's health care (in whole or in part), one will have to abide by certain dietary and other restrictions (including a requirement to exercise)? This isn't totalitarianism, for no governmental coercion is involved. It's a matter of contract. People who don't like a given company's restrictions can seek employment elsewhere. What do you think?

To the Editor:

It took a lot of courage for Bob Herbert to write about black street culture in these days of restrictive political correctness.

I taught in a district that was predominantly African-American for 22 years. I was determined to foster literacy in our public schools, and I became a reading specialist. What was very disheartening was the predominance of street culture and how it dominated the attitude of too many black children and their parents.

Most of the remedial kids I worked with in predominantly black neighborhoods did not value book learning, and neither did their parents. The reading at home required as part of the program was rarely done. Most of these children did learn to read, but they may never catch up to peers whose parents started reading to them in infancy and later made sure that there was homework time.

Yes, values make more of a difference than money. My parents didn’t get past the sixth grade but they valued books and an education and I am so grateful to them.

Janet Robinson
Mahopac, N.Y., Aug. 24, 2006

Court Fool, n. The plaintiff.

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

One of my friends sent this.

The rubber band finally snapped. I refer to the oppressive heat we've had in North Texas. Yesterday was the first day since 7 August, and only the second day this month, in which the official high temperature was below 100º Fahrenheit. For 18 straight days, the temperature was 102º or higher. See here for the gory details. There was no rain during this time, at least at my house. There's been little rain all summer. But yesterday things changed. It clouded up and rained. It's been raining today as well, although not hard. I just ran 3.1 miles in a steady drizzle, which soaked me to the skin and made my shoes heavy. The humidity made it hard to stay cool, despite the 74.8º temperature. Incredible, isn't it? Twenty-five degrees cooler, and it's still too hot for running. I'm gearing up for my first race of the year, on Labor Day. As I'm fond of saying, all bad things must come to an end.

This 1995 essay by Christopher Wolfe is still worth reading and thinking about.

This, in my expert opinion, is the funniest skit in the history of Saturday Night Live. This is the second funniest.

Here is a scene from today's stage of the Tour of Spain, which began yesterday. American Tom Danielson is expected to be a contender for the overall title. Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, who crashed out of the Tour de France this past July, is also a favorite.

Here.

This column by Charles Krauthammer appeared two years ago today. Prescient, wasn't he?

To the Editor:

Re “Officials Seek Broader Access to Airline Data” (front page, Aug. 22):

Despite being a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, I find the organization’s opposition to screening airline records for clues to terrorist plots illogical.

How can we liberals be contemptuous of the administration for failing to heed the pre-9/11 intelligence while at the same time handcuffing it in its efforts to use intelligence-gathering techniques?

We have to trade a little privacy for security. One has to be alive to have civil liberties.

James Schwartz
Barrington, R.I., Aug. 22, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Ya think?

Condole, v.i. To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.

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

I hate to say it, but my beloved Detroit Tigers, who have had the best record in Major League Baseball almost all season, are flailing. The Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians today after losing the first two games of the series. The Indians began the day 20 games behind the Tigers in the American League Central Division. Counting today’s victory, the Tigers have gone 6-13 in their past 19 games. Yikes! Meanwhile, the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago White Sox have been making up ground.

It’s enough to make a person shake. But Chicago beat Minnesota today, which helps. After today’s games, the Tigers are 82-49 (still the best record in Major League Baseball); the Twins are 76-53; and the White Sox are 76-54. A four-game lead with more than a month to play is not a comfortable margin; but hey, I’d rather be ahead by four games than behind by four games! If the Tigers go 16-15 the rest of the way, which I would like to think is feasible, they’ll finish 98-64. The Twins would have to go 22-11 to tie. The White Sox would have to go 22-10 to tie. Go Tigers! (I hope I’m not jinxing them with these angst-ridden posts.)

See here for the back story of my Leiter blog.

First there was the transmission; then there was the automatic transmission; now there is the manual transmission.

Here.

Here is philosopher Richard Rorty's review of a new book on the biology of morality.

Yesterday, in Wichita Falls, Texas, I did my 17th bike rally of the year and 388th overall. It’s the biggest rally of the year: the Hotter ’n Hell Hundred. Just the name strikes fear into a bicyclist’s heart. People come from every state and many foreign countries. My riding companion, Joe, pointed out that there were ride numbers in the 11,000s, which is evidence that at least 11,000 people turned out. The rally has been going on for a quarter of a century (I received a 25th-anniversary pin when I crossed the finish line). I believe it had as many as 13,000 participants in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Numbers fell into the 8,000s after that, but they’re back up. I have no idea why things fluctuate like this.

When you see these numbers, you probably think crowds and waiting. There are crowds, to be sure, but no waiting. The rally is beautifully organized. I’ve never had to wait for anything, anywhere. Everyone is friendly to a fault. When you stop at a rest stop, volunteers (of all ages) rush around like ants, caring for the riders. Someone comes up with a pitcher of ice water, asking to fill your bottle. Someone holds out an icy cloth. Someone directs you to the porta-potties. There is every kind of fruit you can imagine on the tables, which are under awnings. There are cookies and sport drinks. There are massage tables. There are emergency crews with walkie-talkies and ham radios. It’s really quite incredible. What it shows is that if something is properly organized, it can run smoothly, despite crowding.

This was my 17th Hotter ’n Hell Hundred. I did my first in 1990, when I was 33. For the past few years, I’ve ridden 74 miles instead of the full hundred. I could do the longer distance, but it would mean getting home at 4:00 instead of 2:00. All things considered, I’d rather do the shorter course. Yesterday, unfortunately, I had two problems. Joe and his son Jason were my companions—on their tandem. We left early, as is our custom, to avoid waiting in the pack. (There are so many people lined up on Scott Street that you have to wait five to 10 minutes to start moving once the cannon goes off.) Shortly after leaving the first rest stop, about 15 miles in, I felt a softness in my rear tire. We were flying along at 25 to 30 miles per hour (with a tailwind), with riders all around. Usually, when you have a flat, you can’t keep riding. Sometimes it simply blows. I looked down; the tire seemed to be inflated. Since it wasn’t flat, I kept going, but it didn’t feel right. Then the second problem occurred. My computer went blank. Damn! To an anal-retentive person like me, data are everything. I yelled to Joe that I’d see him at the next rest stop (in Electra) and rolled to the side of the road. As I stood there, dozens—perhaps hundreds—of riders passed me. I could hear a whizzing sound as they went by.

First I tried to revive the computer. It didn’t work. And when I pushed the reset button, all the data were gone. Poof! No sense crying over spilled milk. I reached down to feel my back tire. It was soft. Damn again! But it wasn’t flat, so I decided to keep going. Maybe I could make it to the rest stop several miles away and replace the tube there, where Joe would know what’s happening. Or maybe I could pump it up and make it the rest of the way. I got back on the road and hammered to the rest stop. As I did so, I fell in with various others for various lengths of time. One woman broke the wind for me for a while, so I pulled ahead of her to reciprocate. I could see by her shadow that she wasn’t in the proper position to take advantage of the draft, so I turned to the right and motioned with my hand to where she should be. She moved there. Perhaps she didn’t grasp the concept. I pulled her for several miles.

By the time I reached the rest stop, I had decided that I’d better replace the tube. Otherwise, I’d have trouble later. Joe and Jason were departing when I arrived, so I bid them adieu. They were going 100 miles and couldn’t afford to wait. I replaced the tube and browsed around the rest stop, eating two chocolate-chip cookies (delicious!) and sipping sport drink. Hundreds of riders were milling about. It was getting hot already. It was 82° when we started, at 6:45. By this time it was close to 90°. After about 15 minutes, I headed out. I had no more trouble with the tire, thank goodness. It was sad, however, to keep glancing at the computer and see nothing but gray. Perhaps the battery died. It’s been over a year since I bought the computer. I just wish it hadn’t died at the Hotter ’n Hell Hundred.

The nice thing about having so many people doing a rally is that there are packs and pacelines everywhere, going every speed. Wherever you are on the course, there are others around you. You can ride by yourself if you want, but most people enjoy the experience of riding in a pack with others. It sometimes feels effortless. You can go much faster in a pack than you can on your own. About halfway to Burkburnett, for instance, I fell in with a group of about 20 riders. (In other words, a group of riders caught me.) Three of them, riding at the front, wore the same jersey. They were strong. Once I got rested, I went to the front from time to time to do my share of the work. We were flying. There was a stretch when we were going at least 30 miles per hour—on rough roads!—for several miles. At that speed, you cover a mile every two minutes. This was the highlight of my day. I’m just a 49-year-old recreational rider, but I felt like Lance Armstrong.

I stopped in Burkburnett. This is where I part ways with the century riders. I saw my friend Julius here. I ate a large dill pickle. I put an icy cloth on the back of my neck and sipped ice water. I had pictures taken. (Stay tuned.) I thought I might see Joe, but I didn’t. Either he and Jason went much faster than I thought (which is unlikely, since they had farther to go) or they stopped at one of the rest stops between Electra and Burkburnett. Finally, eager to finish the ride and get home, I mounted my bike and headed south, into the wind. It was slow going. I intersected with the 100-kilometer course in a mile or so and had company all the way back to town. A funny thing happened near the end. I caught up to a female rider. She looked tired, so I thought I’d cheer her up. As I rode alongside, I turned and asked, “How far are you going?” I expected her to say either “100K” or “50 miles,” since those were the two possibilities. I was going to say, “You’re doing great!” She looked at me and said, “To the end.” I almost fell off my bike. I chuckled about it all the way back, and even while driving home.

To be honest, I’m glad I didn’t do the long course. I could have done it, without question, but I would have suffered to no purpose. My legs were shot by the time I finished. I was glad to get off the bike and get in the car for the long drive (two hours) to Fort Worth. Based on past experience with this course, I’d say that I averaged 18 miles per hour. (It’s conceivable that I averaged 19.) I rode 17.48 miles the first hour (with Joe and Jason), but the fast riding on the 20-mile stretch into Burkburnett increased my average speed dramatically. The official high temperature for the day in Wichita Falls was 103°. It was between 82° and 99° during my ride. Hotter ’n Hell indeed!

Here.

Canonicals, n. The motley worn by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.

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

To the Editor:

Re “Wanted: Scarier Intelligence” (editorial, Aug. 25):

The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is horrifying a priori?

Arguably, a balance of nuclear terror is preferable to an imbalance, whether regional, in Israel’s favor, or global, in ours.

Ken Bronfenbrenner
New York, Aug. 25, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Gee, why don't we just hand out nuclear weapons to every nation, big and small, democratic and undemocratic? That would create, by this writer's logic, a perfect equipoise of terror—and, very shortly, the destruction of life on earth.

The tenure system of academia has many dimensions: legal, moral, historical, and pedagogical, for example. Here is an essay about the economic dimension.

Mylan Engel has replied at length to the criticisms of his letter. See here.

It is surprising that one obvious method of arranging one's matter has been used so seldom, and then so rarely with success. Philosophy, as Plato said, is a kind of dialogue of the soul with itself, and the dialogue, expertly used, is an effective way of winding one's course through a subject. But it is a far more difficult and treacherous method than it seems. Try to make it dramatic by accentuating the characters and their idiom, and the philosophic reader feels that he is being dragged off into irrelevancy for the sake of a frivolous brightness; make your characters into mere philosophic abstractions, and, like all other abstractions, they will be dead. I can think of only three writers who have handled the dialogue form in philosophy with conspicuous success—Plato himself, Berkeley, and Lowes Dickinson; and the exactingness of the form is suggested by the fact that these men were all masters of expression outside this particular form.

(Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967], 61-2 [first published in 1954])

Here.

If you're a political junkie, as I am, you'll enjoy this. My choice for president is Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Addendum: Here is Hugh Hewitt's column about Romney.

To the Editor:

Although we now understand that we are losing Afghanistan largely because we diverted our efforts into the pointless war in Iraq, there is a larger lesson to be learned there.

Western forms of governance do not readily take root in the soil of the Middle East. It follows that victory in a form familiar to the West may not be achievable. Now that we have alienated the Muslim world, we must dismiss the concept of victory as we know it in the West and plan on a very long-range engagement with an implacable worldwide foe.

Americans are not a patient people, and they expect that their efforts will culminate in closure. Our leaders must recognize this and inform the public of the realities of the extended nature of this conflict.

If the American people are unwilling to continually feed their young into this vortex, we will have to reinstitute the draft or establish a mercenary force similar to the French Foreign Legion.

Robert D. Chagnon
Martinsburg, W.Va., Aug. 24, 2006

Bottle-nosed, adj. Having a nose created in the image of its maker.

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

Here.

Here is an essay about academic tenure—or so the title would have you believe. It's actually about the value (or lack thereof) of philosophy. I'm always amazed when people say (or imply) that it isn't fair that professors have tenure. Why isn't it? We contracted for it. It's part of our bargain with our employers. If you want tenure (i.e., job security), earn a Ph.D. degree, jump through the hoops, and have at it! But don't expect a substantial income. We academics sacrifice income for security, autonomy, and other goods.

Our evaluations are themselves events in the natural world, and it is always illuminating to consider empirical explanations of their origin and growth. Freud suggested that ‘ethics must be regarded . . . as a therapeutic effort: as an endeavour to achieve something through the standards imposed by the super-ego which had not been attained by the work of civilization in other ways’—namely, control of the constitutional inclination of humans to be aggressive toward one another. And it is likely that some ethical standards originally arose as solutions, not always conscious, to social co-operation problems. Ethical constraints serve the useful social function of making things go better than they would if natural human failings ran on unchecked. One might think—some philosophers do—that these psychological or sociological explanations become wide-ranging and deep enough to leave nothing more to explain. Just as psychological or sociological explanations of religion may explain it so cogently as to convince us that religion is no more than the entirely natural phenomenon just explained, whatever we thought of it before, the same fate, these philosophers think, befalls ethics. The causal explanation of ethics has a corrosive effect, leaving no non-natural subject in need of separate understanding.

(James Griffin, Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 42 [ellipsis in original; endnotes omitted])

Here.

Beg, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.

Who is that, father?

A mendicant, child,
Haggard, morose, and unaffable—wild!
See how he glares through the bars of his cell!
With Citizen Mendicant all is not well.

Why did they put him there, father?

Because
Obeying his belly he struck at the laws.

His belly?

Oh, well, he was starving, my boy—
A state in which, doubtless, there's little of joy.
No bite had he eaten for days, and his cry
Was "Bread!" ever "Bread!"

What's the matter with pie?

With little to wear, he had nothing to sell;
To beg was unlawful—improper as well.

Why didn't he work?

He would even have done that,
But men said: "Get out!" and the State remarked:
"Scat!"
I mention these incidents merely to show
That the vengeance he took was uncommonly low.
Revenge, at the best, is the act of a Siou,
But for trifles—

Pray what did bad Mendicant do?

Stole two loaves of bread to replenish his lack
And tuck out the belly that clung to his back.

Is that all, father dear?

There is little to tell:
They sent him to jail, and they'll send him to—well,
The company's better than here we can boast,
And there's—

Bread for the needy, dear father?

Um—toast.
Atka Mip.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

Re “Spike Lee Films the New Orleans Disaster His Way,” by Nicholas Kulish (Editorial Observer, Aug. 21):

Spike Lee’s film about New Orleans, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” is a compelling work that gives voice to the black and white victims of our government’s incompetence after Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Lee does not endorse the rumor that the levees were purposely blown up. He offers alternative perspectives from other residents, journalists and scholars. That so many black residents believe that the levees were purposely blown up is a result of their historical experience and their continuing sense that their safety and well-being will be sacrificed.

To acknowledge race is to be accused of exaggerating its role. No one can deny that the poor were disproportionately affected by the broken levees. No one can deny that in New Orleans, the poor are disproportionately African-American. No one can deny the continuing impact of structural racism on the lives of black people in that city.

Mr. Lee does not silence non-black victims of Katrina’s aftermath. He simply refuses to turn a colorblind eye to the continuing significance of race in American society.

Farah Jasmine Griffin
New York, Aug. 22, 2006
The writer is a professor of African-American studies, English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

Joseph Reese is a senior at Pflugerville Hendrickson High School in Texas. Yesterday, the Dallas Morning News reported that "Reese, who has made a non-binding oral commitment to the [Texas A&M] Aggies, doesn't know if there's any substance to the rumors [that A&M coach Dennis Franchione may be fired after this season]."

The term "non-binding oral commitment" jumped out at me. It appears to be oxymoronic (and hence moronic). To the extent that the "commitment" is non-binding, it's not a commitment. To the extent that it's a commitment, it's not non-binding. I'm sure the thing in question is understood by all concerned, but isn't there a way to describe it that doesn't butcher the language?

Just when I'm ready to give up on The New York Times, I read this. It shows that, to the Times's editorial board, the end—weakening President Bush—does not justify the means.

Here, for your edification and enjoyment, are some essays on sexual and marital ethics.

See here for Judge Richard A. Posner's column.

Here is Norman Podhoretz's column about the Bush Doctrine. Don't say I never did anything for you.

Tom Glavine. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)

Here.

Tragedy in the Benelux Tour. See here for details.

To the Editor:

Re “Big Talk, Little Will” (column, Aug. 16):

As a longtime peace activist who was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning, I deeply resent Thomas L. Friedman’s reference to us as “antiwar activists who haven’t thought a whit about the larger struggle we’re in.”

We were bitterly opposed to the notion of pre-emptive war and to a devastating attack on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. But one of our major arguments against this ill-planned, ill-executed tragic war was that it would distract energy and resources from a truly effective attack against terrorism and Muslim extremism.

This is exactly what has happened.

The Iraq war (and sadly, now the war in Lebanon) has only strengthened the terrorists, worsened hatred toward us and rendered us less rather than more capable of fighting terrorism.

Ann Edelman
Los Angeles, Aug. 16, 2006

It’s a great time to be a conservative. Leftists have been routed, both intellectually and politically. Every day, I shake my head in wonder at the things leftists do to vent their frustration, resentment, anger, and hatefulness. They can’t stand it that they’re impotent. They refuse to believe that their ideas have been rejected—emphatically—by the American people, so they persuade themselves that it’s a matter of style rather than substance. They haven’t used the proper language in communicating. They haven’t “framed” issues properly. They haven’t found a photogenic, charismatic candidate. This is of course condescending, for it implies that the leftist message hasn’t gotten through. In fact, it has gotten through loud and clear. Americans don’t like it.

To release their frustration at being impotent and, increasingly, irrelevant, leftists lash out at conservatives, calling them names, insulting them, questioning their intelligence, mocking their policies, and impugning their character. Hardly a day goes by when one doesn’t see a story in the mainstream media about how immature, inarticulate, or stupid President Bush is. The American people know better. They know that for all his faults, foibles, and failings, President Bush is keeping them safe. They know that he is doing far better than either Al Gore or John Kerry would have. Politics isn’t about perfection; it’s about getting the job done. It’s not about looking pretty or sounding good; it’s about having the right values, vision, and character. Say what you will about President Bush: He was elected twice to lead this great nation.

The latest leftist gambit is to question the motivation of every administrative action. The idea is to create the impression that everything the Bush administration does is motivated by electoral considerations. The midterm elections are coming up. The composition of Congress is at stake. Leftists want you to believe that the Bush administration is orchestrating events with the aim of getting Republicans elected (or, in the case of Joseph Lieberman, getting leftist Democrats defeated). The other day, law-enforcement officers in England disrupted a terrorist plot that, by all indications, would have made the death toll of 9-11 look meager. This is one small part of a war on terror that all of us in the West, including leftists, have a stake in winning.

Leftists don’t see it that way. They’re busy belittling the incident. Some say it proves that the so-called war on terror is nothing more than good police work. Others point to the fact that some of the people arrested have been released. Still others say that it’s not clear that the suspects intended to go through with the attacks. Perhaps they were imaginative kids, playing a game, or boastful adolescents, talking trash. They didn’t kill anyone, did they? How do we know they would have, if left alone? Maybe they were entrapped. Some leftists even suggest that the police were overzealous—and that this is evidence of nascent authoritarianism. The war on terror is compromising our liberty! Liberty must not be compromised!

One inconvenient fact for leftists is that the plot was disrupted by British authorities, not American authorities. Ah, but that doesn’t matter, they say. Tony Blair and George W. Bush are in cahoots. Each has an interest, politically, in keeping people afraid. They timed the arrests to divert attention from their problems. They’re manufacturing the news. They’re concerned only with retaining power. If it takes a disrupted “terror plot” to do this, so be it. Fear-mongering. That’s their game. If you keep people afraid, they’ll keep you in power.

Let’s think about this. Fear, like fire, is neither good nor bad, in and of itself. If it protects one from harm, it is good. If it exposes one to harm, it is bad. Fear can be rational or irrational, grounded or groundless. In this respect it is like anger and other emotions. Fear of being robbed can induce me to take precautions, such as staying out of certain parts of town at certain times of the day or night. Fear of failure can make me work harder, train harder, study harder, all of which redound to my benefit. Fear of premature death can make me eat a healthier diet, exercise, and do things in moderation. Fear, like pain, has evolutionary value. If it didn’t, we would long since have lost the capacity to experience it. It would no longer be part of our emotional repertoire.

Fear can also debilitate. If I so fear snakes that I refuse to leave my Fort Worth house, I have a groundless belief, for there are no dangerous snakes in these parts (so far as I know). If I so fear failure that I refrain from competing, I act irrationally, for competition leads to prizes, awards, and other goods. If I so fear commitment that I refuse to marry, befriend, or procreate, I cut myself off from various goods that I would otherwise have and enjoy. A rational person fears what is worth fearing, and in proportion to the value of what is at stake. A great danger should be feared greatly. A lesser danger should be feared less. There isn’t just one error; there are two. The first is not fearing what is worth fearing. The second is fearing what is not worth fearing. One can fear too little as well as too much.

Leftists make it seem as though nothing is fearworthy. Over and over, you hear them refer to “the politics of fear.” But think about it. A president’s job is not to keep people from being afraid. It is to keep people from being unduly afraid. If there are real dangers out there, then the president should do whatever he or she can to make people fear them. What would you think of someone who told you not to be afraid, when there were real dangers out and about? You would think that the person doesn’t care about you. President Bush believes—with good reason—that the terrorist threat is both real and significant. His job is to make Americans appreciate the threat—and, insofar as he can, to protect them from it. If people get complacent, they will increase their exposure to risk. The president must see that this does not happen.

In short, leftists think the world is a safe place and that President Bush is either generating fear or exploiting people’s fears for political gain. This is one way of looking at it—the cynical way. President Bush and I see it differently. We see the world as a dangerous place, indeed, as an exceedingly dangerous place. Franklin D. Roosevelt said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. That may have been true when he said it (although I doubt it), but it no longer is. In 2006, we in the West, and especially in the United States, have an implacable enemy to fear, an enemy who would be delighted beyond measure to wipe us off the face of the earth. President Bush is determined to proportion people’s fear to the danger they face; nothing more, nothing less.

Here is law professor Ann Althouse's op-ed column about Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who recently struck down President Bush's surveillance policy. The ruling will almost certainly be reversed, either by the Sixth Circuit or by the United States Supreme Court.

Addendum: Here is Althouse's popular blog, in which she discourses on life, law, music, and other matters. By the way, it won't surprise you that Brian Leiter, the academic thug, has abused Althouse. See here for her post about him. She gives him the rhetorical spanking he deserves. Leiter abuses everyone who doesn't share his bizarre leftist values. He is as creepy a person as I've ever run across.

Mylan Engel has replied to Kevin Stroup's objections. See here. Perhaps Kevin will have a rejoinder; or perhaps others will want to get involved.

Bastinado, n. The act of walking on wood without exertion.

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

Here.

If you listen to leftists, who are stuck in a time warp, the greatest issue of our time is inequality of material condition. Day after day, The New York Times runs stories about the growing gap between rich and poor. Who cares about income or wealth, much less disparities therein, when Western civilization itself is at stake? That is the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. Read this. What do leftists propose to do about the Iranian menace? How do they propose to handle North Korea? Leftists have no solutions to these problems. They don't understand that the world in which we live is fundamentally different from the world in which Karl Marx lived. The issues are different. The problems are different. The challenges are different. The threats are different. Leftists see everything in economic terms, and in particular in terms of socioeconomic class. They are all but irrelevant in the modern world, in which the great divide is between Islam and the Christianized West. Thank God we have a president—and the United Kingdom a prime minister—who understand the nature of this new world.

Did you know that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the two richest people in the world, play bridge? They do. And guess who plays with them? That's right: the beautiful and talented Peg Kaplan, my longtime blog buddy from Minnesota. See here. I feel wealthier just knowing Peg.

American George Hincapie leads the Benelux Tour with one stage to go. He is three seconds ahead of Stefan Schumacher of Germany. See here for the report. Go Georgie!

Here.

Apothecary, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider.

When Jove sent blessings to all men that are,
And Mercury conveyed them in a jar,
That friend of tricksters introduced by stealth
Disease for the apothecary's health,
Whose gratitude impelled him to proclaim:
"My deadliest drug shall bear my patron's name!"
G.J.

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

8-22-86 . . . What a game there was last night in Cleveland! Boston beat the Indians by a score of twenty-four to five. The Red Sox had twenty-four hits, five of them by Bill Buckner. Tony Armas drove in six runs and Spike Owen, who was recently acquired from Seattle [the Mariners], scored six runs. Most amazingly of all, the game was played in Cleveland. When I first heard the score, I said “Oh yeah; the wind must have been blowing out in cozy Fenway Park.” But the game was played in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, which is much larger than Fenway Park. By the way, baseball’s best hitter, Wade Boggs, went zero for five in the game. This is the greatest irony of all. I would have figured Boggs for four or five hits.

Here.

Mark Spahn writes:

I happened to read somewhere today the saying “one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens.” Is this a philosopher’s joke? They are two different forms of reasoning (although each can be reworded in the form of the other). A Google search for “modus.ponens modus.tollens” attributed this (wise?)crack to a Fred Dretske (know him?). But I am unable to find the context in which Dretske made this remark, in 1995, says Wikipedia.

Modus ponens (Latin for “affirming mode”) and modus tollens (Latin for “denying mode”) are elementary valid argument forms. Modus ponens goes like this:

1. If p, then q.
2. p.
Therefore,
3. q.

Modus tollens goes like this:

1. If p, then q.
2. Not q.
Therefore,
3. Not p.

To say that these are valid argument forms is to say that the truth of their premises entails the truth of their conclusions. Or: The truth of their premises is incompatible with the falsity of their conclusions.

Consider the following three propositions:

1. If p, then q.
2. p.
3. Not q.

These propositions are inconsistent. The truth of any two of them entails the falsity of the third. Suppose 1 and 2 are true. Then q is true; hence 3, which denies the truth of q, is false. Suppose 2 and 3 are true. Then 1 is false, for 1 says that the truth of p is sufficient for the truth of q. Suppose 1 and 3 are true. Then p is false; hence 2, which affirms the truth of p, is false.

In modus ponens, the arguer affirms 1 and 2, which commits him or her to denying 3. (To deny “Not q” is to affirm q.) In modus tollens, the arguer affirms 1 and 3, which commits him or her to denying 2. Modus ponens and modus tollens are different ways of preserving consistency.

Let me get to Mark’s question. Suppose someone reasons as follows:

1. If God exists, then there is no gratuitous evil.
2. There is gratuitous evil.
Therefore,
3. God does not exist.

This argument for atheism is an instance of modus tollens. But a theist can turn the argument around and make it an instance of modus ponens:

1. If God exists, then there is no gratuitous evil.
2. God exists.
Therefore,
3. There is no gratuitous evil.

Both arguments are valid. The atheist thinks the existence of gratuitous evil is more likely than the existence of God. The theist thinks the existence of God is more likely than the existence of gratuitous evil.

Both arguments imply that the following set of propositions is inconsistent:

1. If God exists, then there is no gratuitous evil.
2. God exists.
3. There is gratuitous evil.

The atheist denies 2. The theist denies 3. Both accept 1. Arguably, 1 is necessarily true, and hence undeniable.

Let me say one more thing. Suppose someone makes a modus ponens argument in an attempt to persuade me to accept its conclusion. If I accept its premises, then, given that it’s a valid argument, I am committed to accepting its conclusion. If I reject its conclusion, then, given that it’s a valid argument, I am committed to rejecting at least one of its premises. There are always different ways to respond to a valid argument: either by accepting the conclusion or by rejecting a premise. One person’s modus ponens is another person’s modus tollens.

To the Editor:

Re “Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not Be Named?” (Editorial Observer, Aug. 15):

Adam Cohen was right to urge Americans to embrace the principle of equal protection for voters inherent in the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore ruling—even though the court itself stated that this ruling could not be cited as precedent. Unfortunately, even if we do embrace this principle, our current electoral system is far from providing equal protection.

Unlike India and Canada, the United States does not have a uniform set of rules that determine how ballots are cast and counted, but a patchwork of 13,000 different systems, one for each county and municipality.

This lack of a unified system with consistent standards—along with the varied weight the Electoral College accords votes from different states and the absence of a constitutionally protected right to vote for president, also cited in Bush v. Gore—poses a serious threat to the integrity of our democracy.

The Supreme Court declared that the state may not “value one person’s vote over that of another.” But until we as a nation begin to carry out comprehensive electoral reform, this declaration will remain an empty promise.

Bennett Singer
David Deschamps
Brooklyn, Aug. 16, 2006
The writers are co-directors of a documentary film about the evolution of the American electoral system.

The prosecution of the British terror suspects is going forward. See here. Believe it or not, there are people (such as Brian Leiter) who think the British government made it all up. See what a Ph.D. degree can do for you?

Should the horse-slaughtering industry be shut down? See here.

If asked why good and bad things are equally deserved, the usual answer is that everyone has the same basic moral worth, or that everyone is entitled to the same basic respect, or that everyone has the same basic freedom and welfare rights.

This is one of the passionately held shibboleths of our egalitarian age. It comes packaged in a self-righteous, moralistic rhetoric that maligns doubt as indecent. But those whose critical faculties are not numbed by the ceaseless repetition of these catchphrases will recognize their absurdity. They will ask how apparently reasonable and well-educated people trained to think analytically and critically could believe that terrorists and hostages, felons and their victims, friends and enemies of one's society, evildoers and decent, law-abiding citizens have the same basic moral worth, are entitled to the same basic respect, should enjoy the same basic freedom and welfare rights, and deserve to have the same good and bad things.

(John Kekes, "Justice: A Conservative View," Social Philosophy & Policy 23 [summer 2006]: 88-108, at 95 [footnotes omitted])

This past Saturday, in Dallas, Texas, I did my 16th bike rally of the year and 387th overall. You might wonder how I could do a bike rally in Dallas, which is a large city. Easily. We started in the southern part of the city and went south to Joe Pool Lake and environs. It’s a nice course. With police protection at most intersections, it doesn’t matter that you’re riding through neighborhoods from time to time. You keep moving. Much of the ride was in the countryside, where traffic is sparse and the scenery interesting. Riding over Joe Pool Lake, which I have done hundreds of times, is always fun.

It was hot again. We haven’t had a high temperature below 102° Fahrenheit since 8 August. It reached 102° Saturday, which felt cool compared to the 105° of the previous two days. I was done riding long before the temperature peaked, but it was still hot and humid during the ride. Before we started (at 7:30), a man walked up to me as I prepared my bike. I didn’t recognize him, but he seemed to know me. It turned out to be Pat, a man I had ridden with many years ago. When he told me his name, I remembered him. His soft voice clinched it. He used to ride a tandem with his wife. We rode together in Greenville one year. Had he not shaved his beard, I might have recognized him. Pat has been active in motorcycling, so he hasn’t done a bike rally in a long time. He said his wife no longer rides. It was great to see him again—and to know that he is alive and well.

I kept a steady pace most of the way. I covered 17.53 miles the first hour and 18.12 the second. I averaged 17.41 miles per hour for the final 1:19:16, for an overall average speed of 17.66 miles per hour (for 58.66 miles). That’s my third-fastest of 16 rallies this year. A year ago, I got off course and ended up with over 60 miles. Luckily for me, I knew the area, so I made it back with no trouble. One year, the Dallas rally was 67 miles. I prefer that distance. It helps me prepare for the Hotter ’n Hell Hundred. I wish I had something exciting to report, but it was an uneventful rally. I listened to music most of the way, stopped twice for refreshments, rode hard up the hills, and kept a steady pace on the flats. After a long, hot summer, I feel good in the heat.

Human beings are animals. If we forget that, we will be puzzled by their behavior. Males are programmed to acquire status so as to attract females. What counts as status varies by society. Females are programmed to adorn themselves so as to attract high-status males. What counts as feminine attractiveness varies by society. See here for a New York Times story about "the fame motive."

I love this column by John Fund. First, he notes the bias displayed by leftists when it comes to evaluating conservatives. Leftists are far more likely than conservatives to say that their political opponents are stupid (as opposed, say, to ignorant, misguided, or evil). There is no reason whatsoever to believe that this is the case. It's merely leftist bigotry. Second, Fund distinguishes between intelligence and articulateness. Leftists are prone to confusing the two. They shouldn't. John Rawls stuttered. Was that a sign of imbecility? I agree with Fund that President Bush has done a poor job of articulating his policies. See here for my open letter to the president, which I posted herein more than two and a half years ago.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re “The Television Has Disintegrated. All That’s Left Is the Viewer” (Editorial Observer, Aug. 13):

After reading Verlyn Klinkenborg’s personal testimonial on buying his first high-definition, flat-screen television, I appreciate the double meaning of the word “disintegrated” as applying both to the “what” that is being transmitted as well as to the “how” of the transmission, which makes the viewer the fine tuner.

Having grown up with the advent of television, I have observed over my lifetime that the “what” of content has disintegrated in quality even as technological advances escalate, giving the viewing public with wired, fingertip control an endless array of inputs, but a paucity of real choice.

Once upon a time (B.C., before cable), the three networks were obliged to fulfill a public service function, with their news divisions not expected to make money. Now that quaintly obsolete notion of prestige has been abandoned to the all-consuming pursuit of commercial profit.

In 1958, the broadcaster Edward R. Murrow foretold this sorry state when he declared: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

Barbara Allen Kenney
Atlanta, Aug. 13, 2006

Here.

Altar, n. The place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.

They stood before the altar and supplied
The fire themselves in which their fat was fried.
In vain the sacrifice!—no god will claim
An offering burnt with an unholy flame.
M. P. Nopput.

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

See here for an interesting exchange.

One of my attorney readers sent this.

Juan Williams gets it.

8-20-86 The fall semester begins in five days. I worked registration this afternoon from twelve until four [o’clock] with Clark Wolf, a new teaching assistant from Oberlin College in Ohio. He came here, he says, “to study under Joel Feinberg.” I told him that I had done the same three years ago. Clark is friendly, intelligent, and witty. We should have many interesting discussions over the next couple of years. As for registration, things went well. Our table was situated on the walkway in McKale Center. Students dropped by regularly to add or drop courses. Clark handed them their cards while I flipped th[r]ough the class lists to find the appropriate class. I then had the student sign in. I actually enjoy working registration. Isn’t that perverse? It gives me a chance to interact with prospective students. [Clark Wolf is Director of Bioethics at Iowa State University, having taught at The University of Georgia for many years. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1993. Joel Feinberg directed his dissertation.]

Walt Terrell of the Detroit Tigers had a brush with history this evening. He had a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth [inning] when Wally Joyner of the California Angels lined a clean double down the rightfield line. What a disappointment! I was watching a nationally televised game between the [New York] Mets and the [Los Angeles] Dodgers at the time. The network switched to the Tiger game in the ninth, and then back when Joyner got his hit. The Tigers ended up winning the game. I just love watching baseball games on television. I look forward to them all day long, and even structure my work and other activities around them. It has been hot lately. Today the official high temperature was 105 degrees [Fahrenheit].

George Hincapie, who had a disappointing Tour de France, captured the lead in the Benelux Tour today. Here he is, en route to winning the individual time trial.

Here is an interesting blog that I discovered while using Blogger.

My favorite sport, baseball, can be frustrating, even heartbreaking. I suppose that’s part of its charm. The late commissioner, Bart Giamatti, wrote, “Baseball breaks your heart; it’s designed to break your heart.” I have two teams: the Detroit Tigers and the Texas Rangers. The former is my biological child and the latter my adopted child. I love them equally, despite their differing connections. Ordinarily, I can root for both teams with neither cognitive nor emotional dissonance; but when they play each other, as they did this weekend, I’m torn. Rooting for one team means rooting against the other, no matter how I try to rationalize it.

This weekend, before the four-game series began, I chose to root for the Tigers. Here’s my reasoning. The Tigers have a chance to win the Central Division title, which would be a glorious accomplishment, given their spectacular failures in recent years. They’ve been leading the division—indeed, they’ve had the best record in Major League Baseball—for most of the season. The Rangers, meanwhile, are struggling to keep pace with the Oakland Athletics, who were six games ahead of them going into today’s games. Even if the Rangers catch Oakland, there’s another team in the picture: the Los Angeles Angels. In short, it’ll be a miracle if the Rangers win the West Division title. A wild-card position is already out of the question.

The other day, as you may recall, I gloated about the big lead my Tigers had and expressed concern that I would jinx them. That lead has shrunk to five games as of this afternoon. Texas took three of four games from Detroit. The Minnesota Twins took two of three games from the Chicago White Sox, which helped the Tigers, since Chicago was closer to them than Minnesota was. The Tigers sit atop the division at 79-45. Chicago is in second place at 73-50. Minnesota is in third place at 72-51. That’s not much of a lead with 38 games yet to be played. If the Tigers win half their remaining games, they’ll finish at 98-64. The White Sox would have to go 25-14 to tie. The Twins would have to go 26-13 to tie. Difficult, yes; impossible, no. Bigger leads have been lost.

I’ll be honest with you. I’m worried sick that my Tigers will collapse. They lost second baseman Placido Polanco to injury the other day. He made the team go. The team’s young pitchers show signs of wear. The hitters aren’t hitting, especially in the clutch. The game today was both illustrative and ominous, for Detroit jumped in front early, 6-0, only to lose, 7-6. The past three games (won by Detroit) were close. The usual pattern is for Texas to lose close games. The irony is palpable. Precisely when I’m rooting for them to lose, they win close games. As I said, frustration. But what would life be like without the occasional frustration, especially as regards something as unimportant, in the scheme of things, as baseball? That I am able to agonize over the fortunes of a baseball team (or two) testifies to the wonderful life that I have, for which I am immensely grateful.

It's an irony of contemporary American politics that the party of Big Visions—the party of the New Deal and the Great Society—has gone blind. It used to be that Democrats acted and Republicans reacted. Republicans were derided as "reactionaries." These days, it's the Republican Party that is full of ideas and energy. Democrats have been reduced to sniveling, impotent reactionaries. (Just read a Paul Krugman column if you doubt me.) They have no synoptic vision of how things should be, much less a coherent political program. They have constituencies, not principles. They are powerless, frustrated, angry, even, disturbingly, hateful. All they do is try to thwart Republican initiatives, even if that means weakening national security. They are against much but in favor of little. They are so beaten down by the Republicans that they see conspiracies everywhere. The mere mention of the name "Karl Rove" makes them sputter with rage. They are paranoid, hysterical, and, in the end, comical. See here for Matt Bai's essay on the misfortunes of Democrats.

Roger Scruton is a model philosopher: at once perspicuous and perspicacious. Here is his column about Islam. Note that he supports one of the two premises of my argument that there cannot (logically) be an Islamic fascist. Islam, by its nature, cannot accommodate itself to the nation-state (as Christianity has). It is essentially stateless. The second premise of my argument is that fascism glorifies the state (i.e., accords the state intrinsic moral significance). These two ideas cannot be combined. They are like "male" and "widow." If you're a male, then you're not a widow. If you're a widow, then you're not a male. Note too that Scruton is aware of the condemnatory force of "Islamofascism." As I said in my original post, it functions as an all-purpose term of abuse, the way "communist" does (or did), and the way "atheist" still does in some quarters. By the way, someone wrote to me a while back to say, triumphantly, that we know what "Islamofacist" means. Of course we do. We know the denotation of the term. My point all along has been that the term is infelicitous. We need something better, something that does justice to both the nature of Islam (as a religion) and the nature of fascism (as a political morality). We need a term that is coherent. I have proposed "Islamism."

Adamant, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.

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

Note from AnalPhilosopher: When I typed this definition, I thought of Adam Ant. Have I been missing something all these years?

Here.

Read this. The only thing missing is the most important thing: an explanation of why the Democrat Party is tinkering with its long-standing primary schedule. The New York Times loves to speculate about the motives of Republicans (such as President Bush), but it can't even state the motives of Democrats! I think I know why. The motives don't reflect well on the party, which has been having trouble winning presidential elections. The Democrat Party knows that, with the exception of Bill Clinton, it has been nominating leftists for the presidency (Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004), and Americans don't want a leftist president. One reason the party nominates leftists is that the first two states in the nominating process, Iowa and New Hampshire, are skewed to the left. (Can you say "moonbat"?) By moving Nevada and South Carolina to the front of the pack, the Democrats are giving moderates a chance to gain the nomination, and hence a chance to win the presidency. In other words, the party has a problem with its leftists. You won't find any mention of this in the Times story.

I take it that one cannot intend to win the lottery. Why exactly is that? Perhaps Brian Leiter's sycophants can address this, since they are allowing me—a nobody—to set their intellectual agenda. (Do you see the irony?)

To the Editor:

Re “Panel Suggests Using Inmates in Drug Trials” (front page, Aug. 13):

This proposal is not only a violation of the basic tenet of the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics, which requires “freely given informed consent” by the subject of the trial, but it is also a bad idea.

The abuse of human beings by physicians and scientists is well documented during the past 100 years. Let us not revert to behavior that is morally wrong and use prisoners, who while incarcerated have no freedom of action.

Michael J. Franzblau, M.D.
San Rafael, Calif., Aug. 13, 2006
The writer is a clinical professor of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Why can't prisoners consent to medical experimentation?

Here is a story about federal appellate judge Richard A. Posner.

Here.

[R]hythm is one of the subtlest of all instruments in the delicate work of conveying thought. But there is one general rule that is at once so simple and so near the heart of the whole matter, that I must at least mention it.

This rule is to make the emphases of sense and rhythm coincide. Plain men know by a sort of instinct where to hit hard; they never say, "There is in my mind a desire which would be gratified if you were to transfer the hammer into my possession"; they say, "Give me the hammer." This is true style. Someone has said, "All peasants have style," and philosophers cannot afford to get wholly out of touch with the fine economy of natural talk.

(Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967], 57 [first published in 1954])

Here is law professor John Yoo's op-ed column. Compare Yoo's thoughtfulness and maturity with Brian Leiter's juvenile rantings. Which do you suppose has greater influence? Leiter is an embarrassment to his university and to academia generally.

Accountability, n. The mother of caution.

"My accountability, bear in mind,"
Said the Grand Vizier: "Yes, yes,"
Said the Shah: "I do—'tis the only kind
Of ability you possess."
Joram Tate.

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

This is what it looks like when a breakaway is caught. Frightening, isn't it? And imagine how disheartening it is if you've been working hard for several hours to make the breakaway succeed. Why do people break away? Well, why do people buy lottery tickets? The answer is simple. The probability of success is small, the magnitude is large, and the cost is negligible.

KBJ:

Some days ago you asked for examples of phrases whose meaning changes when their accentuation changes. A few years ago there came out, at the same time, two movies whose titles illustrate this.

A Tom Hanks movie about a FedEx official who is stranded on a tropical island was titled 'Cast Away'. As spelled, this must be accentuated as "(He has been) CAST aWAY". Yet I just heard a TV commercial for a broadcast of this movie, and the announcer pronounced the title "CASTaway", as if it were spelled 'Castaway'.

A movie about giant spiders was titled 'Eight Legged Freaks'. As spelled, this title must be pronounced in three syllables of equal stress, because it refers to eight freaks, each of whom has at least one leg. I don't know what kind of title proofreaders they have in Hollywood, but the intended title must have been 'Eight-legged Freaks' (with a hyphen). This four-syllable title, accented on the first and last syllables, refers to freaks (giant spiders) each of which has eight legs.

Mark Spahn

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This 1986 film is very good. (I use my mother's rating system, which has two ratings: "good" and "very good.") I haven't seen the Tom Hanks film. Is it good?

To the Editor:

It’s happened many times before and undoubtedly will happen again: a trial-level judge strikes down a statute and the news media treat the decision as an event of great importance.

Actually, lower court legal rulings are given no deference by higher appeals courts, which write on a clean slate.

Of course, a lower court opinion might be so well written as to be persuasive to the appellate judges, but so could a law review article or any other print medium. That a judge happened to perform the analysis will not be especially weighty to the higher court.

Peter Lushing
New York, Aug. 18, 2006
The writer is a professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Here.

Imagine being in a breakaway and seeing this behind you. It's how fish must feel when they see a shark.

An overwhelming majority of the American people are strongly opposed to it [viz., homosexual "marriage"]; even the homosexual community is divided over it. . . . A complex and by no means airtight line of argument would be necessary plausibly to derive a right to homosexual marriage from the text of the Constitution and the cases interpreting that text—a tightrope act that without a net constituted by some support in public opinion is too perilous for the courts to attempt. Public opinion may change—Eskridge's book may help it change—but at present it is too firmly against same-sex marriage for the courts to act.

(Richard A. Posner, "Should There Be Homosexual Marriage? And If So, Who Should Decide?" review of The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment, by William N. Eskridge, Jr., Michigan Law Review 95 [May 1997]: 1578-87, at 1585)

Here.

The editorial board of The New York Times is gleeful about yesterday's ruling by federal district judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit. Judge Taylor ruled that the Bush administration's surveillance policy violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the First Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment (which prohibits, inter alia, unreasonable searches and seizures). The Times says Judge Taylor's ruling vindicates the rule of law. We'll see. This was just the first volley of the battle. I expect the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to reverse Judge Taylor's decision (perhaps on the ground that the plaintiffs, which include the ACLU, lack standing), and if it doesn't, the United States Supreme Court will. What is it with leftists? They get excited about Ned Lamont's primary victory in Connecticut, knowing full well that he will lose the general election in November. They get excited about a trial judge's ruling, knowing full well that it won't stand. It's not even in effect, since Judge Taylor's injunction has been stayed pending appeal. Nothing has changed. I guess when you keep losing wars, such as those for the presidency, you take heart in the occasionally successful battle.

Addendum: President Bush gets it. See here. What part of "We're at war" do leftists not understand? Remember: They're the intelligent ones. Ha! With intelligence like that, who needs stupidity?

Addendum 2: Here is a Wall Street Journal article about Judge Taylor's ruling. Expect her to be rebuked by the Sixth Circuit.

Addendum 3: David Corn realizes that Judge Taylor's ruling will probably be reversed, but he can't resist gloating about it. "Someone said no to President Bush! Yeehaa!"

Here.

To the Editor:

Re “Military’s Discharges for Being Gay Rose in ’05” (news article, Aug. 15):

Whenever questions about “don’t ask, don’t tell” are raised, we are told that gay troops would “undermine” the military services’ mission.

Since this has not happened in Britain, Australia or Israel, where gay service members have been seamlessly integrated, why is it unhesitatingly assumed that such disruption would occur here? Doesn’t this say something quite damning about our definition of democracy?

There seems to be a curious reluctance to ask how, precisely, a blatantly discriminatory policy can be justified, and those in charge are clearly in no hurry to tell.

Joel Conarroe
New York, Aug. 15, 2006
The writer is an Army veteran.

Abracadabra.

By Abracadabra we signify
An infinite number of things.
'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
And Whence? and Whither?—a word whereby
The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
Is open to all who grope in night,
Crying for Wisdom's holy light.

Whether the word is a verb or a noun
Is knowledge beyond my reach.
I only know that 'tis handed down
From sage to sage,
From age to age—
An immortal part of speech!

Of an ancient man the tale is told
That he lived to be ten centuries old,
In a cave on a mountain side.
(True, he finally died.)
The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
For his head was bald, and you'll understand
His beard was long and white
And his eyes uncommonly bright.

Philosophers gathered from far and near
To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
Though he never was heard
To utter a word
But "Abracadabra, abracadab,
Abracada, abracad,
Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!"
'Twas all he had,
'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
Which they published next—
A trickle of text
In a meadow of commentary.
Mighty big books were these,
In number, as leaves of trees;
In learning, remarkable—very!

He's dead,
As I said,
And the books of the sages have perished,
But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
In Abracadabra it solemnly rings,
Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
O, I love to hear
That word make clear
Humanity's General Sense of Things.
Jamrach Holobom.

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

I'm 49 years old. I've owned six cars in my life, the first being a 1965 Plymouth Fury. Only one of the cars—my 1989 Pontiac Grand Am—was new when I acquired it. Today is its 17th birthday. It has 130,289 miles on the odometer, which works out to 7,664 miles per year. I drove only 4,140 miles in the past year. The car still runs, but not well. I expect to have a new Honda Civic by the end of the year. If I drive it as long as I drove the Grand Am, I'll be driving it in 2023, when I'm 66. By the way, I hate driving, even though I'm the best driver in the world. Does anyone out there enjoy driving? If so, why?

In the wake of September 11, the stakes have been raised for the American left. Even if the "war against terrorism" doesn't continue to overshadow all other issues, it will inevitably force activists of every stripe to make clear how they would achieve security for individual citizens and for the nation. How can one seriously engage in this conversation about protecting America if America holds no privileged place in one's heart? Most ordinary citizens understandably distrust a left that condemns military intervention abroad or a crackdown at home but expresses only a pro forma concern for the actual and potential victims of terrorism. Without empathy for one's neighbors, politics becomes a cold, censorious enterprise indeed.

There's no need to mouth the Pledge of Allegiance or affix a flag pin to your lapel or handbag. But to rail against patriotic symbols is to wage a losing battle—and one that demeans us and sets us against the overwhelming majority of Americans for no worthwhile moral or political purpose.

(Michael Kazin, "A Patriotic Left," Dissent 49 [fall 2002]: 41-4, at 43-4)

Here is a beautiful image from today's stage of the Benelux Tour, which is taking place in The Netherlands and Belgium.

Another blogger concludes that Andrew Sullivan "has let his emotion override his critical thinking skills."

Here.

Here.

Prelate, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven's aristocracy. A gentleman of God.

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

Who knew that New York Times reporters could read minds? This reporter says that President Bush didn't mention Democrats, but was, nonetheless, referring to Democrats. How does he know? Can he read President Bush's mind? For all he knows, President Bush was referring to all people who share a certain characteristic, whether Democrat, Republican, or unaffiliated. Who's being partisan here, the president or the reporter? Who turned a generic remark about the war on terror into a partisan attack?

To the Editor:

Stephen L. Sass shows how resource scarcity has promoted innovation and advancements in technology and people’s welfare. He says the lesson to learn from history is that we need “something like a Manhattan Project” to address the “harsh reality of fossil fuel scarcity.”

But governments have a dismal record in picking technology winners. Billions in federal subsidies haven’t produced any viable alternative energy technologies. Fossil fuels aren’t even particularly scarce—known reserves could last hundreds of years and continue to grow exactly because of the scarcity-driven innovation Mr. Sass identifies.

Recent supply problems result mainly from governments’ market interference, rather than underlying scarcity of the actual fossil fuels.

Innovation results when inventors and entrepreneurs apply their expertise and take financial risks to seek economically viable solutions to real problems. Having central planners spend other people’s money on politically driven pet projects is a recipe for waste.

Joel Schwartz
Sacramento, Aug. 11, 2006
The writer is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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)
Thomas Anger (Liberty Corner)

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

Kevin Stroup sent a link to this column by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

First there was the camera; then there was the digital camera; and now there is the film camera.

What is left? What is right? See here.

fascism (Lat., fasces, the bundle of rods and axe carried before Roman consuls as insignia of authority) The loose amalgam of aspirations and influences crystallized in the early 20th-century governments of Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and General Franco in Spain. Elements include nationalism; hostility to ideals of equality; hatred of minorities, degenerates, and deviants; élitism; hostility towards the ideals of liberalism, and in particular towards freedom of expression; the cult of the charismatic leader or Übermensch; belief in the destiny of the race; and a love of political symbolism such as uniforms and other emblems of militarism. The whole cocktail is animated by a belief in regeneration through energy and struggle.

(Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 136 [asterisks omitted])

Here.

How many planets are there? It depends. "On what?" you ask. On what "planet" means. If it means one thing, then there are x planets. If it means another thing, then there are x+1 planets. This shows the role of philosophy: to clarify. Some questions cannot be answered until they're clarified. See here.

Addendum: Here's another example. Has the incidence of rape been increasing over time? This question can't be answered until the concept of rape is clarified, and, most importantly, the same conception (analysis, theory, understanding) must be used for all time periods. "Rape" can't mean "forced sex" at one time and "unwanted sex" at another time. Those are different conceptions of rape. The extension of "unwanted sex" is far greater than that of "forced sex." I have argued (in my essay "A Theory of Rape") that for legal purposes, rape should be conceived as coerced sex.

Addendum 2: Philosophers get teased (or worse) because we answer questions with questions. "Is the United States a democracy?" you ask. I reply: "What do you mean by 'democracy'?" When we do this, we're not yanking people around. We're being careful. It's our job to be careful. It's why they pay us the big bucks.

Here.

To the Editor:

Though I can’t think of one domestic policy initiative of President Bush’s that I support, I do think he has it exactly right on foreign policy. He, more than most of us, understands the stakes and the challenge involved in fighting the global war on terror, and he is willing to say what the politically correct won’t: that the global war on terror is, in fact, a global war against radical Islam.

How many more terror attacks and “near misses” will it take for the world to understand that radical Islam (Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Iran) has a genocidal agenda and that it is not just targeting Israel? It is also targeting the United States and the entire Western world.

Diane Werner
White Plains, Aug. 15, 2006

Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

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

Pete Rose. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)

Here is Bernard Goldberg's column about Iran.

When I use the blockquote function in my Ethics of War blog, Blogger uses italics for the blocked part. I hate this. I want normal font. Is there a code that I can use to turn the italics into normal text? I researched a bit, but couldn't find anything.

Addendum: Problem solved! Thanks to the two people who commented. It honestly never occurred to me to change the template. I was thinking about an HTML fix in the post itself. The change took only seconds. I even changed the line height while I was there.

Here.

Is torture ever permissible? Philosophers love to discuss this question, but there is no consensus among them as to the answer. The absolute deontologist says no. Torture is a type of act that must not be performed, no matter how good the consequences. Moderate deontologists say yes. Torture is intrinsically wrong, but can be performed if enough good will be produced (or harm prevented) thereby. How much good? It depends on where the theorist sets the threshold. A high threshold requires a lot of good. A lower threshold requires less. Consequentialists say yes. That an act is an act of torture is morally irrelevant. The only question is whether the consequences of torturing in a given case are better than the consequences of any alternative act, including not torturing. Note that both moderate deontologists and consequentialists, but not absolute deontologists, require that consequences be examined before a moral judgment is made. See here.

Addendum: Henry Shue is one of the first philosophers to discuss torture. In 1978, long before the word "terrorist" had entered our vocabulary (but not before there were terrorists), he wrote this:

Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there are imaginable cases in which the harm that could be prevented by a rare instance of pure interrogational torture would be so enormous as to outweigh the cruelty of the torture itself and, possibly, the enormous potential harm which would result if what was intended to be a rare instance was actually the breaching of the dam which would lead to a torrent of torture. There is a standard philosopher's example which someone always invokes: suppose a fanatic, perfectly willing to die rather than collaborate in the thwarting of his own scheme, has set a hidden nuclear device to explode in the heart of Paris. There is no time to evacuate the innocent people or even the movable art treasures—the only hope of preventing tragedy is to torture the perpetrator, find the device, and deactivate it.

I can see no way to deny the permissibility of torture in a case just like this. To allow the destruction of much of a great city and many of its people would be almost as wicked as purposely to destroy it, as the Nazis did to London and Warsaw, and the Allies did to Dresden and Tokyo, during World War II. (Henry Shue, "Torture," Philosophy & Public Affairs 7 [winter 1978]: 124-43, at 141 [italics in original])

Shue is pretty clearly a moderate deontologist. That he believes torture to be intrinsically wrong is indicated by his expression "the cruelty of the torture itself." That he believes torture is sometimes permissible, in spite of its intrinsic wrongness, is shown by his example. As for where he sets the threshold, he sets it very high. Torture, in his view, is rarely permissible.

Addendum 2: Boy, was I wrong about the word "terrorist." I just checked the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., and found that the earliest use of both "terrorist" and "terrorism" was in 1795, in reference to the French Revolution. Mea culpa.

Trust, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.

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

To the Editor:

It may be simplest just to ban carry-on luggage, but that means either trusting expensive and fragile things like cameras and laptops to the tender mercies of overworked baggage handlers or traveling without such items.

Who wants to go on holiday without a camera? How can one use the waiting time in the airport productively with no laptop? What if your baggage arrives a day late and you have absolutely nothing with you?

Can you function in the business meeting that is the reason for the trip with no notes, no computer, no anything?

Sorry, but carrying some things with you on the plane is not a luxury. If I can’t keep my camera and my laptop and my business papers with me, I don’t fly.

Ada M. Prill
Rochester, Aug. 12, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Enjoy your drive, Ada.

The New York Times is a reliable anti-authority when it comes to judicial nominations. If the Times supports a nominee, chances are very good that the nominee is either unqualified or a leftist ideologue (or both). If the Times opposes a nominee, chances are very good that the nominee is superbly qualified. See here.

Here.

There are two common ways in which writers with more power than considerateness impose such efforts upon him [the reader]. One is to leave out much-needed intermediate stones. A pupil of Laplace once said that when the lecturer introduced a statement with "now, gentlemen, it is evident that," he knew that a long later struggle would be required to see that it followed at all. I suspect that this was not so much a proof of intellectual brilliance on the teacher's part as of incompetent pedagogy. It is the business of the teacher or writer to insert the links that are needed if the hearer is to go along; and I think we might well be less patient than we are with that lack of imagination which, through its very gaucheness, gets the reputation of brilliance and profundity. Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.

(Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967], 52-3 [first published in 1954])

Here is Austin Dacey's op-ed column (now a few months old) about relativism. I don't think you can do justice to relativism (or anything else, for that matter) in 750 words, but that hasn't stopped people from trying.

See here. That these moonbats consider Joe Lieberman a conservative shows how far to the left they are. It may be decades before we see another Democrat president.

8-14-86 President [Ronald] Reagan’s nominations to the [United States] Supreme Court, William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, were recommended today by the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Rehnquist’s nomination, of course, is to be Chief Justice.) Scalia’s recommendation was unanimous, 18-0, while Renhquist’s [sic] was by a vote of 13-5. It now appears that the full Senate will confirm the nominations come September. [It did.] During Rehnquist’s testimony, it was learned that he had challenged black voters in Phoenix during the 1960s [Arizona had a literacy test for voting], owns property with restrictive covenants against blacks and Jews, and was once addicted to pain medication for a period of five years. He testified that he did not recall challenging any black voters in the 1960s, but several witnesses testified that he did. In any event, the appointments seem certain. Personally, I think that we’ll have a much better court with Scalia instead of [Warren] Burger. As I told Jules Coleman last night, I’d rather have a bench of conservative jurisprudes than liberal hacks, although, for me, the ideal scenario would be a bench of liberal jurisprudes. [In other words, I wanted judicial excellence first and foremost. Ideology was secondary.]

Here is an essay by Daniel Pipes on the term "Islamic fascists." He makes the point I've been making when he says that fascism (necessarily) glorifies the state. And please don't say that Muslims want one state. If there is only one state, then there are no states. (Thanks to Mark Spahn for the link.)

Addendum: Bob Hessen sent a link to this column by Janet Daley, who argues that the term "Islamic fascist" is appropriate. The problem is that her conception of fascism—"an extreme totalitarian system that suppresses human rights and democratic freedoms"—is too broad. It counts the Soviet Union as a fascist state.

Addendum 2: Some people evidently think that by denying the appropriateness of the term "fascist" to describe Al Qaeda (and others), I am commending them, or at least failing to condemn them. Not so. I condemn them. I'm trying to keep the word "fascist" from losing its meaning. Not all bad people are fascists, even if all fascists are bad people.

Addendum 3: See here.

Here.

Trichinosis, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.

Moses Mendlessohn having fallen ill sent for a Christian physician, who at once diagnosed the philosopher's disorder as trichinosis, but tactfully gave it another name. "You need an immediate change of diet," he said; "you must eat six ounces of pork every other day."

"Pork?" shrieked the patient—"pork? Nothing shall induce me to touch it!"

"Do you mean that?" the doctor gravely asked.

"I swear it!"

"Good!—then I will undertake to cure you."

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

To the Editor:

Re “15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense” (front page, Aug. 7):

Where is the moral compass of our nation? In 2003, we entered Iraq, guns blazing. Bodies fell. Now 15 states in the last year have expanded laws to defend those who use deadly force rather than leave a situation or ask a question.

What kind of “trickle down” lack of moral courage is engulfing us? Where is our shared humanity?

Life, whether of the person or the nation, is a series of choices. Violence is a primitive choice. Why are we regressing at this phenomenal rate?

Valerie Swigart
Pittsburgh, Aug. 9, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This writer fails to make a simple distinction: between aggression and defense. Only the former can be characterized as "primitive." Defending the innocent from aggressors is the mark of civilization.

Here. For the record, I weighed 160 pounds this morning.

Here is Richard Posner's blog post on terrorism.

Some of you may know that my fascism post got a link on InstaPundit a few days ago. It caused the expected InstaLanche. Every Monday, I record the number of site visits in a Word document. This past week was my best ever. I had 13,183 visits. That's an average of 1,883.2 visits per day. My previous best was 1,495.8 visits per day, and I had been averaging just over 1,000 per day when InstaPundit linked to me. (Readership is higher during the fall, winter, and spring months, when college courses are being taught.) Thanks, Glenn! I appreciate your generosity. I'm reminded of a story told by Judith Jarvis Thomson in her famous essay "A Defense of Abortion." Suppose you have an ailment that will be fatal unless you receive the cool touch of Henry Fonda's hand on your fevered brow. Fonda has no obligation to save your life (i.e., you have no right that he save you), especially if it burdens him in any way, but if he does save you, he does a wonderful thing (morally speaking). Glenn Reynolds has no obligation to link to small bloggers like me. When he does so, he does a wonderful thing.

We don't often notice the uses to which we put emphasis. A few minutes ago, Carlos Lee of the Texas Rangers drove in a run to increase the score from 5-3 to 6-3. The announcer, Josh Lewin, said, "It's now six to three." It didn't seem right to me, and then I realized why. Lewin should have said, "It's now six to three." See the difference? One emphasizes the numeral that changes, not the numeral that doesn't change. Josh is a superb announcer, but he messed up on this occasion (as I'm sure he realized as soon as he said it). As an exercise, come up with a sentence which, depending on which word is emphasized, has different meanings. I'm sure Mark Spahn will come up with something. When it comes to language, he's more anal-retentive than I am.

Mark Steyn has an interesting column about the use, by Muslims, of the state apparatus.

Yesterday, in Rockwall, Texas, I did my 15th bike rally of the year and 386th overall. It was the 20th annual Hot Rocks rally. I’ve done 16 of them. I missed the first two, in 1987 and 1988, plus the 1994 and 1995 rallies when I was riding out west. They call it Hot Rocks because, well, it’s hot at this time of year. Yesterday, the official high temperature at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was 103° Fahrenheit. It wasn’t that hot during the rally, obviously, since we started at eight o’clock, but you get the idea. Actually, it wasn’t uncomfortably hot until near the end. Rain fell early on, which, while annoying (it obscures my vision through my glasses), felt good. It was probably in the low to mid-90s by the time I finished, at noon.

If it were up to me, I’d do a bike rally every Saturday from mid-March to early November. Unfortunately, there are open Saturdays every now and then, sometimes two in a row. This doesn’t help when you’re trying to get stronger each week. Sure, I could go out on my own to ride, but I don’t. The only riding I do is in rallies. I’m on track for 25 rallies this year, after doing 27 a year ago. My first footrace of the year will be on Labor Day, in Fort Worth. I used to do the 15K race, but this year I’ll do the 5K and go faster. For about two months—September and October—I’m doing both bike rallies and footraces. By the time November rolls around, the rallies are all but done and it’s time to pound the pavement for several months. I never get bored or burned out, because I have two sports to focus on at different times of the year.

I had fun yesterday. Several of my friends were there. We missed our old buddy Norm Weatherby, who has moved to Georgia with his lovely wife Ruth. Norm continues to ride at a high level, despite his advanced age. (Just kidding, Norm.) We always met after the Rockwall rally to tell war stories and fill our faces with food. That’s one sad thing about bike rallies. People come and go. I’ll see someone for five years or more, and then, one day, he or she is gone, never to be seen again. At 49, I’m one of the old-timers. I doubt that anyone else has done 386 rallies. The other day, I was wondering how many rallies I’ll end up with. Suppose I do 25 rallies a year until I’m 75. That’s 650 more rallies, which will give me 1,036. There you have it: my next goal. I want to do 1,000 bike rallies before departing this vale of tears. If I have to keep riding until I’m 80, so be it.

I rode most of the way with Joe and his son Jason, who were on their tandem. Jason, who is about 11 years old, is getting stronger by the year. It won’t be long before the two of them are kicking everyone’s ass. They dropped me with about 10 miles to go, on rolling hills. By then, my legs were tired. Every hill slowed me down. I ended up with an average speed of 17.10 miles per hour for 60.49 miles. That’s my third-highest average speed this year, in 15 rallies. My maximum speed for the day was 31.4 miles per hour. I wish I could report my maximum heart rate, but the heart-rate monitor conked out a few weeks ago. I replaced the battery, and it worked for a couple of days, but then it stopped. I guess it’s time to buy another one.

Here are my splits. I rode 17.76 miles the first hour (much of it on rough roads and in the rain), 17.86 the second, and 16.81 the third. I averaged only 15.01 miles per hour for the final 32:12, which shows how tired I was at the end. The heat and humidity eventually wore me down. It could have been worse: It could have been windy. When things are difficult, that’s what I tell myself: It could be worse.

Apart from this reservation, I find Eskridge's argument for recognizing homosexual marriage quite persuasive—but only as an argument addressed to a state legislature. His arguments for recognizing a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage, which are pressed in the last two chapters of the book, are unconvincing. They are good lawyers' arguments—cleverly distinguishing same-sex marriage from polygamous and incestuous marriage; building bridges from the Supreme Court's decisions striking down state laws against interracial marriage and allowing prisoners to marry (marry, but not have sex—so Bowers v. Hardwick, in allowing states to forbid homosexual sex, should not be taken as authority for not allowing homosexuals to marry!); speculating that "[a]s women made gains in politics and the marketplace, middle-class anxiety about gender and the family was displaced onto another object: the homosexual" . . . (thus grounding opposition to homosexual marriage as a form of hostility to sexual equality); and, of course, balancing the benefits of homosexual marriage against the costs to important state interests and finding that the former predominate.

There is nothing wrong with these arguments, except—a crucial except, however—the tacit assumption that the methods of legal casuistry are an adequate basis for compelling every state in the United States to adopt a radical social policy that is deeply offensive to the vast majority of its citizens and that exists in no other country of the world, and to do so at the behest of an educated, articulate, and increasingly politically effective minority that is seeking to bypass the normal political process for no better reason than impatience, albeit an understandable impatience. (Americans are an impatient people.) A decision by the Supreme Court holding that the Constitution entitles people to marry others of the same sex would be far more radical than any of the decisions cited by Eskridge. Its moorings in text, precedent, public policy, and public opinion would be too tenuous to rally even minimum public support. It would be an unprecedented example of judicial immodesty. That well-worn epithet "usurpative" would finally fit.

(Richard A. Posner, "Should There Be Homosexual Marriage? And If So, Who Should Decide?" review of The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment, by William N. Eskridge, Jr., Michigan Law Review 95 [May 1997]: 1578-87, at 1584-5 [footnote and parenthetical page reference omitted])

Here.

Plaudits, n. Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and devour it.

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

To the Editor:

While I agree with David Brooks’s account of the undeclared third party in this country, the problem we “progressives” face is an uneducated public blinded by talk radio, and the likes of Karl Rove who see no in-betweens and name-call and badger the other side.

The mistake John Kerry made in not fighting being called a flip-flopper was not pointing out the alternative. I’d much rather have a president who keeps an open mind and is able to change his mind and see different sides of the same issue, than a president who refuses to alter course.

Standing firm in one’s beliefs is a weakness of our current president and one that should have been exploited. As humans, we learn from our mistakes and grow. This president remains weak because he cannot see past the end of his nose.

I think David Brooks is right on. But we must fight extremes with extremes. We can all make nice once we’re in office.

Karen George
West Allis, Wis., Aug. 10, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This woman wants power, but calls those who are essential to her achieving it "uneducated" and "blind." Good luck with that.

Nobody should be surprised by stories like this. Islam, unlike Christianity, is essentially stateless. That is to say, it accords no intrinsic moral significance to the state. Muslims are Muslims first and citizens of a state second. This is true whether the state is England, Jordan, Iraq, the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt. To a Muslim, a state has at most extrinsic moral significance. It is a mere means to an end. The end is the spread of Islam throughout the world. Leftists, most of whom reject nationalism and advocate cosmopolitanism (i.e., the breaking down of national identities), should not take heart in this fact. Muslims are cosmopolitan not in the sense that they accept and celebrate diversity, which is how leftists view cosmopolitanism. They are cosmopolitan in the sense that they seek to impose Islam on everyone. They want one Islamic cosmos.

Addendum: Here is the key paragraph of the New York Times story: "In a recent poll of Muslims in 13 countries conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 81 percent of those surveyed in Britain said they considered themselves Muslims first and Britons second. That contrasts with Spain, where 69 percent of those surveyed considered themselves Muslims first and Spaniards second; Germany, where the comparable number is 66 percent, and even Jordan, with 67 percent."

Here.

Look at the religious symbolism of this image. It shows philosopher of science Michael Ruse (who, I might add, has no scientific credentials) near a statue of Charles Darwin. Religions conjure emotions such as awe and reverence and inspire worship. The worshipped being is fetishized, idolized, and iconized. Is Darwin the new deity for secularists such as Ruse?

8-12-86 . . . Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hit leader and currently player-manager of the Cincinnati Reds, went five-for-five yesterday. This was the tenth time in his career that he has accomplished that feat. What is more, his batting average before the game was below .200, and he hadn’t played much in several weeks. This man is fantastic. In other baseball news, Steve Carlton has signed to play with the Chicago White Sox after a short stay with the San Francisco Giants. He, like Rose, is a future Hall of Famer. The division leaders are the New York Mets (by an astounding nineteen games), Houston [the Astros], Boston [the Red Sox], and California [the Angels]. The [Detroit] Tigers are five games out of first place. [Carlton finished his career in 1988. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994, with 95.82% of the vote. Rose is not a member of the Hall of Fame. He was banished from Major League Baseball for wagering on baseball games while managing the Reds.]

You have to admit: This is funny. It would be interesting to see the same thing done to John Kerry, who is nothing if not simian.

Scarabæus, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar "tumble-bug." It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity. Its habit of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal reverence among ourselves. True, the American beetle is an inferior beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.

Scarabee, n. The same as scarabæus.

He fell by his own hand
Beneath the great oak tree.
He'd traveled in a foreign land.
He tried to make her understand
The dance that's called the Saraband,
But he called it Scarabee.
He had called it so through an afternoon,
And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
Had smiled and said naught. O the body was fair to see,
All frosted there in the shine o' the moon—
Dead for a Scarabee
And a recollection that came too late.
O Fate!
They buried him where he lay,
He sleeps awaiting the Day,
In state,
And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
Gloom over the grave and then move on.
Dead for a Scarabee!
Fernando Tapple.

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

See here for a hilarious letter to the editor.

To the Editor:

Re “Terror Plot Foiled; Airports Quickly Clamp Down” (front page, Aug. 11):

The actions of the British in stopping this bomb plot were classic examples of good international police work. President Bush touted this as part of the “war on terror,” but it apparently did not involve any army, navy or air force.

No bombs were dropped. No country was invaded. No one was killed, and nothing was destroyed.

It was effective, and it did not enrage millions as the invasion of Iraq has done. It was a police action, not an act of war.

The “war on terror” is not a war. President Bush calls it a war so that he can be a wartime president and claim to be a heroic protector of America, but this is bogus.

Terrorism cannot be fought with armies. They make things only worse. Mr. President, bring the armies home and concentrate on good police work.

John Hilberry
New York, Aug. 11, 2006

Here.

Mark Spahn sent a link to this essay from The Middle East Quarterly.

This political analysis by New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney is hilarious. He seems incredulous—even outraged—that Republicans would take political advantage of the foiled terror plot. But don't Democrats do the same? Is it permissible for one party but not the other to exploit events for political gain? I should look at the bright side. At least Nagourney doesn't imply that the Bush administration orchestrated the foiling. Think about it. If the Bush administration had wanted to get maximal political mileage out of the foiling, it would have announced it the day before, not two days after, the Connecticut primary election. This would almost certainly have helped Joe Lieberman, and since he lost by a narrow margin, it could have made the difference. Not everything that benefits the Bush administration was orchestrated by the Bush administration. Sometimes administrations—and political parties—get lucky. By the way, here is my favorite sentence from Nagourney's piece: "Republicans have successfully portrayed Democrats as weak on terrorism for two national elections in a row." Note the sly implication: Democrats aren't really weak on terrorism; they're just portrayed that way by unscrupulous Republicans, and, unfortunately for Democrats, it works. But isn't it an open question whether Democrats are weak on terrorism? And why should Republicans not insist that they are at every opportunity? That's not objectionable; it's good politics.

Addendum: Oh my. This moonbat thinks Nagourney is biased toward the right. What he's really mad about is that Nagourney isn't biased enough toward the left! "Damn New York Times reporters! Can't we leftists count on them to skew things our way?"

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Here.

Here.

To the Editor:

The news of a second, more devastating 9/11-like terror plot uncovered by the British authorities underscores starkly the facile nature of the incessant lambasting of the Bush administration recently for its pursuing clear-eyed, tough-minded measures to protect the United States from just such an attack.

In light of the intended magnitude of the thwarted attack—“mass murder on an unimaginable scale,” as one London official described it—the out-of-touch-with-reality critics of President Bush come off looking more benighted than ever.

Rather than trying constantly to undermine the efforts of a wartime president to keep us safe, these folks should try redirecting their outrage at those who truly deserve it—the terrorists the world over who would like nothing better than to kill every man, woman and child who does not share their radical, religious fundamentalist worldview.

Nicole Samura
Chelsea, Mass., Aug. 10, 2006

I have posted several addenda to "Fascism." The comment thread is now quite long. See here.

Different people have different goals. One of my goals, sick as it may sound, has been to complete a run in 100º heat. I've come close three times. In 1999 and again in 2000, the temperature was 99.9º when I got done running. Three weeks ago, it was 99.5º. Today, at long last, I accomplished my goal. The temperature was 98.1º when I left the house and 100.6º when I returned. It was only 3.1 miles, but I didn't stop, walk, or slow. I guess I'll have to find a new goal to accomplish. Any suggestions?

Addendum: The official high temperature for this day, at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, was 105º Fahrenheit. It was a scorcher.

Islamic jurisprudence does not recognize secular, still less territorial, jurisdiction as a genuine source of law. It proposes a universal law that is the single path (shari‘) to salvation. And the shari‘a is not understood as setting limits to what can be commanded, but rather as a fully comprehensive system of commands—which can serve a military just as well as a civilian function. Nor does Islam recognize the state as an independent object of loyalty. Obedience is owed first to God, and then, below him, to those situated at greater or lesser remove in the web of personal obligations. Nor is there any trace in Islamic law of the secular conception of government that Christianity inherited (via St. Paul) from Roman law.

(Roger Scruton, The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat [Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002], 66)

Plebeian, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

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

It's a momentous day on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Actually, it's more like the Lewis expedition and the Clark expedition, since the two explorers have been separated for more than a month—since 3 July. Lewis explored Marias River, had a skirmish with a band of Blackfeet, and fled with his companions to the Missouri River, where they joined the waterborne party of Sergeants John Ordway and Patrick Gass. Clark explored the Yellowstone River. The parties reunite tomorrow in present-day North Dakota, below the mouth of the Yellowstone. What makes this a momentous day, first, is that Lewis was shot by one of his men, Pierre Cruzatte, who had poor vision. (Memo to self: Never go hunting with a one-eyed person—or with Dick Cheney.) Cruzatte mistook Lewis, who was wearing buckskin, for an elk. (Fans of J. L. Austin will note that Cruzatte shot Lewis by mistake, not by accident. See "A Plea for Excuses.") The bullet went through one of Lewis's thighs and grazed the other. Luckily for him, it struck neither bone nor artery. Lewis had to lie on his stomach for several days, which prevented him from writing. Tomorrow's entry is his last of the expedition. Meanwhile, Clark's party, which is a few miles ahead of Lewis's, has met two white men, who are trapping beaver. This is the first contact with whites in 18 months. Unfortunately, the trappers had been away from civilization for almost as long as Lewis and Clark, so they couldn't have provided much information about goings-on in Washington or elsewhere. Here are the journal entries of this date.

8-10-86 It didn’t last long, this good feeling that I had about my fourth Sony Walkman [cassette player]. Today, while riding down the hill from Colossal Cave at forty-three miles per hour, my Walkman loosened up and fell off, crashing to the pavement in spectacular fashion. I looked back just in time to see parts flying every which way. At least one of the parts was twelve to fifteen feet in the air. I hit the brakes, came to a skidding stop, and walked back dejectedly to survey the damage. There was no way in hell that the unit could be functional, I thought. But when I replaced the cover and batteries, it worked! Even my Ozzy Osbourne tape, which had flown out, was in fine shape. I listened to the unit all the way home and found nothing unusual about the sound. The only damage appears to be to the case itself; the cover does not close properly. [The Sony Walkman: It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.]

The moonbats over at Democratic Underground think there's a conspiracy afoot. The Bush administration (they say) manufactured the terrorist scare (or its timing) to divert attention from Ned Lamont's primary victory in Connecticut. I kid you not. See here.

I'm a nice guy. I really am. But I wouldn't tolerate someone coming into my home and abusing me. Would you? I approve all comment-account requests to this blog. This is my way of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. I do not approve all comments. Whether I approve a given comment depends on both its content and its tone. If the tone is insulting or sarcastic, it gets deleted and the account is terminated. Engage my ideas and leave the abuse out of it. Focus on what is said, not on who says it. Just to give an example, a reader said that my post on fascism is "sophistry." That questions my motives. It says that my aim is to manipulate rather than to persuade, that I am unconcerned with the truth, that I put rhetoric above logic. Bye bye.

To the Editor:

The most frightening aspect of Joseph I. Lieberman’s concession speech was his statement that “for the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot, I will not let this result stand.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that exactly how a democracy is supposed to work?

From the Supreme Court deciding the 2000 presidential election (which ironically cost Senator Lieberman the vice presidency), to voting irregularities in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election, our democracy is at grave risk of falling victim to those who feel that their personal power and ambitions are more important than the voice of the people.

Mike Campbell
New York, Aug. 9, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: How is democracy threatened by Senator Lieberman's decision to run as an independent? The voters of Connecticut haven't spoken. A subset of Democrats has spoken. They said they don't want Lieberman in the party. We'll find out what citizens of Connecticut want in November. That's how democracy works.

There is no reason why a person should not be a devotee of both truth and beauty; but unless in his writing he is prepared to make one the completely unobtrusive servant of the other, they are sure to get in each other's way. Hence ornament for its own beautiful irrelevant sake must be placed under interdict. Someone has put the matter more compactly: "Style is the feather in the arrow, not the feather in the hat."

(Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967], 50 [first published in 1954])

I thought something was strange when I had seven new comment accounts to approve. Sure enough, I'm experiencing an InstaLanche. (Thanks, Glenn.) To the thousands of you who are coming here from InstaPundit, welcome. Poke around. Enjoy your stay. Links are of course appreciated. Please visit Brian Leiter, Academic Thug when you leave. You may be interested to know that Brian Leiter has abused Glenn Reynolds. See here. Charming guy, isn't he? Leiter's motto is, "I abuse; therefore I am."

Here.

There's a lot going on at my Leiter blog. See here for the latest. Please make the Leiter blog one of your daily stops, especially now that I have a site counter.

Here is a sentence from today’s New York Times:

President Bush called the arrests [in Great Britain] “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom.”

I can’t think of a worse word for the people President Bush has in mind than “fascists.” The term “fascism” has both a particular and a generic meaning. (It picks out an individual as well as a type of individual.) It referred originally to the corporatist society of Benito Mussolini in Italy. The word “corporatist” comes from the Latin “corpus,” meaning body. A corporation, in the broad sense, is a body—an organic, functioning thing, a social organism. It is not a mere collection of members; it is a whole consisting of interrelated parts. The parts are valuable only as, and only to the extent that, they contribute to the health of the whole. Mussolini sought to create an organic state, where business firms, guilds, universities, the press, and other entities would function as one. The whole was supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts. Any society in which this is the case can be described as “fascist” (with a small “f”), even if it has nothing to do with the Fascist Party of Mussolini. It’s a type of society. Mussolini’s Italy was the prototype.

The reason it’s inappropriate to describe Islamists as fascists is simple: They’re not statists. To Muslims, including that subset of Muslims I call Islamists (see below), a state is at best a temporary thing, performing certain administrative, organizational, or ideological tasks. It has no independent significance, as it does in, say, the Christian tradition. (“Render unto Caesar” and all that.) Islamists aren’t trying to create a state in which all the parts work as one; their ultimate goal is a stateless world in which everyone worships Allah. Read up on Islam if this seems strange to you. Start with this.

Why would President Bush use “fascist” to describe such an ideology? I honestly don’t know. The only thing I can think of is that “fascist,” like “communist,” has negative emotive meaning. It’s an all-purpose term of abuse. To call something fascist is primarily to condemn it—that’s President Bush’s goal—and only secondarily to describe it. (This is why Brian Leiter and other leftists call President Bush a fascist. It’s pure abuse, with little or no cognitive content.) The best term to describe the people President Bush has in mind is “Islamists.” A Muslim is an adherent of Islam, which is a religion. Islamism is not a religion; it is a political morality (note the “ism”) and a set of doctrines about permissible means of social change. (Terrorism is one such means.) Those who subscribe to it are Islamists. All Islamists are Muslims, but not all Muslims are Islamists. Islamism competes not with Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Confucianism but with liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, anarchism, and socialism. See here for more on this important distinction.

Addendum: See here. I thought of a perspicuous way to express my argument:

1. All fascists are statists (by which I mean people who assign intrinsic moral significance to the state).

2. No Muslims are statists.

Therefore,

3. No Muslims are fascists.

Therefore,

4. The concept of an Islamic (Muslim) fascist is incoherent.

Does that help?

Addendum 2: Here is a good encyclopedia entry on fascism.

Addendum 3: Someone wrote to deny the first premise of my argument, claiming that one fascist who is not a statist refutes it. This betrays a misunderstanding of the argument. I'm not making empirical claims. I'm making conceptual claims. Here's a version that gets closer to what I have in mind:

1. It is of the essence of fascism that the state has intrinsic moral significance.

2. It is of the essence of Islam that the state lacks intrinsic moral significance (i.e., the state has, at most, extrinsic moral significance).

Therefore,

3. There cannot (logically) be an Islamic fascist.

Is that better?

Addendum 4: On the essential statelessness of Islam, see here.

Addendum 5: I said in my original post that Islamism is a proper subset of Islam. All Islamists are Muslims, but not all Muslims are Islamists. I have been arguing that there cannot (logically) be an Islamic fascist. The concepts are mutually exclusive, like male and widow. (If you’re a male, then you’re not a widow. If you’re a widow, then you’re not a male. You can be neither, but you can’t be both.) But aren’t Islamists fascists? And if they are, then, since all Islamists are Muslims, there can be, contrary to what I’ve been arguing, Islamic fascists.

Islamists are not fascists. A fascist is someone who assigns intrinsic moral significance to the state, who views the state as an independent object of attachment or loyalty. Islamists, qua Muslims, do not assign intrinsic moral significance to the state. But this doesn’t prevent them from assigning extrinsic moral significance to the state. In fact, this is a good (partial) definition of “Islamist.” An Islamist is a Muslim who is willing to use force or coercion, either individually or collectively, to promote the spread of Islam. (One way to promote something is to destroy its rivals, either directly or by destroying the cultures in which those rivals flourish.) The state is one tool with which this can be done. The state, to an Islamist, is a mere means to an end, not an end in itself. It is an instrument, a convenience, an expedient. When the state has served its purpose, which may be a long time from now, it will be discarded.

I hope nobody is having trouble with the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic moral significance. Utilitarians, for example, deny that torture has intrinsic moral significance. That an act is an instance of torture is neither here nor there, morally speaking. What matters are the consequences of the act, however one describes it. Utilitarians refuse to rule out as wrong any particular act type, such as torture, lying, killing the innocent, and breaking a promise. (In this respect, they differ from deontologists, who believe that certain types of act, such as killing the innocent, are intrinsically wrong.) Any of these acts can be right if they maximize overall utility. Suppose a utilitarian judges a particular act of lying to be wrong. What makes it wrong is not that it is a lie, which is irrelevant, but that, as an act, it fails to maximize overall happiness. To a hedonistic utilitarian such as Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) or John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), there is only one intrinsically valuable thing: happiness (which they oddly defined as pleasure and the absence of pain). Everything else that is of value is extrinsically valuable. Friendship, for example, is valuable, but not because it’s friendship. It’s valuable because it’s either a part of or a means to happiness.

In conclusion, a Muslim can assign value to the state, but the value is extrinsic and not intrinsic. The state, to a Muslim, is valuable only as a tool. It can be a valuable tool, for it can be an instrument for the spread of Islam, which is a very good thing (in their view), but it is never anything more than a tool.

Here.

I just learned about the foiled terror plot in Great Britain. I may be the last person on earth to do so. In case I'm not, or in case you haven't read the New York Times version of events, see here. By the way, will the Left ever get serious about the war on terror? One doubts it. The Left is obsessed with President Bush, with the ever-present threat of Christian theocracy, with nascent authoritarianism and fascism in the United States, with American hegemony in the world, with global warming, and with disparities in wealth between "North" and "South." The Left is fiddling while Rome burns. Thank goodness leftists such as Noam Chomsky and Brian Leiter have no power. They are utterly detached from reality. They are so detached from reality that they think they alone have access to reality. It would be funny if it weren't so frightening.

Addendum: I have two predictions. First, there will come a day, perhaps soon, when people and baggage travel separately, both on airplanes and in trains. Those who transport baggage will be paid a premium for the risk they incur. Second, passengers will wear special clothing on flights. When you go to your doctor for a checkup, you remove your clothing and put on a gown. Passengers will fly in gowns.

Scrap-Book, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect. One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following, by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:

Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
You keep a record true
Of every kind of peppered roast
That's made of you;

Wherein you paste the printed gibes
That revel round your name,
Thinking the laughter of the scribes
Attests your fame;

Where all the pictures you arrange
That comic pencils trace—
Your funny figure and your strange
Semitic face—

Pray lend it me. Wit I have not,
Nor art, but there I'll list
The daily drubbings you'd have got
Had God a fist.

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

Some of you may have heard about, but not seen, this.

I bought my first bicycle 25 years ago today, on 9 August 1981. I was 24 years old. The bike, which cost $125, was a blue Sears Free Spirit 10-speed. I loved it. I was terribly busy with law school and clerking, but I found time to ride it on weekends during the summer months. In August 1982, I used it to ride around Michigan (742 miles) in 10 days. It performed admirably. The bike accompanied me to Tucson in August 1983, but it lasted less than a year before I traded it in for a better model at a bike shop. It’s a sad story. I was about to depart on a month-long journey to Yellowstone National Park and back. The bike-shop manager told me, to my horror, that my Sears bike wouldn’t make it. I hated to part with it, but I had to. I’m now riding my fourth bike: a Douglas titanium. (My third bike, which lasted from September 1989 to May 2001, was a red Schwinn 564.) The second and third bikes now reside in my garage in Fort Worth. The Douglas stays in my dining room.

Are you ready for some statistics? I’ve pedaled 58,795.2 miles in 25 years. That’s an average of 2,351.8 miles per year, 45.0 per week, and 6.4 per day. Imagine riding 6.4 miles per day, every day, for 25 years—in addition to all the running I’ve done in the past decade. The earth is 24,901.55 miles in circumference at the equator, so I’ve ridden the equivalent of 2.36 times around the earth. I’m working on my third circuit. Incredibly, I have had only a handful of accidents. One, in December 1991, resulted in a broken left elbow. It is held together by a stainless-steel screw. The other accidents produced only soft-tissue injuries, soreness, and abrasions. I’ve been lucky, especially when you consider that much of my riding has been in fast-moving packs. I have reached speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour many times. It is an exhilarating—and sometimes a terrifying—experience.

I’ve had two bicycling careers. The first involved mostly solo riding. I used to go out into the Sonoran Desert by myself, testing my strength, stamina, and resourcefulness. I saw coyotes, tarantulas, rattlesnakes, javelinas, roadrunners, deer, ground squirrels, and many other animals. Once, caught in a thunderstorm, I got hypothermia. In the desert! During this time I wore only sneakers and cutoff shorts. I rarely wore a shirt, and never a helmet or gloves. To this day, I don’t wear cycling gloves. To be honest, I don’t know why anyone wears cycling gloves. I’ve never heard a good reason for it. I do, however, chew toothpicks. And no, I’ve never swallowed one. I get asked that question all the time.

My second career began in September 1989, when I did my first bike rally (in Seagoville, Texas). Having ridden thousands of miles by myself, it was exciting to ride in close proximity to others. By this time, my riding attire had changed. I bought a helmet. I replaced cutoff shorts with spandex. I wore a jersey. After a couple of rallies, I was indistinguishable from the other riders—except for the gloves and the toothpicks. I enjoy both types of riding: alone and with others. I’ve gone very fast and very slow, and everything in between. In 1993, I did a weeklong bike tour of New Mexico. In 1994 and 1995, I did weeklong bike tours of Colorado. These were wonderful experiences. I will never forget how hard they were and how much fun I had. To suffer is to be. And, as they say, misery loves company. Climbing mountains with friends, even in frigid air, pouring rain, high wind, hail, or brutal heat, is an unforgettable experience. We are the sum and substance of our experiences. When we die, we live on in those we touched.

My longest ride in one day is 126 miles—in the mountains of Colorado. I’ve done dozens of centuries. My fastest rally came on 5 May 1990, when I averaged 25.34 miles per hour in Dallas. My best Hotter ’n Hell Hundred came in 1991, when I completed the course in 4:29:19 (an average speed of 21.69 miles per hour). I averaged 21.59 miles per hour in 1995. Many people go faster than this, so I’m not bragging. I’m just reporting the highlights of my bicycling career. So far. With any luck, I’ll still be pedaling away 25 years from now, when I’m 74. My late friend Don Tennant, with whom I did all three of the western tours I mentioned, was cycling at a high level at 69 years of age, when he succumbed to a heart ailment. I’ll be happy if I can do half as well. I miss you, old man.

I have a confession to make. I don't much care what President Bush does, as long as he puts the right people on the Supreme Court. So far, he has given us two magnificent justices: John Roberts and Samuel Alito. (Yes, I defended his choice of Harriet Miers, and believe she would have been a great justice, but I'm just as happy with Alito.) Both Roberts and Alito are young (as jurists go); both are brilliant; and both reject the lawlessness that has characterized so much of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence for the past 40 years. There may be no mechanical procedure for resolving constitutional disputes (whoever thought there was?), but it doesn't follow that anything goes, as legal realists would have us believe. Law is not politics in disguise. It's an autonomous institution, with norms and canons of reasoning of its own. Judging, in other words, is a fundamentally different activity from legislating. I hope President Bush gets at least one more Supreme Court appointment in the remaining two and a half years of his presidency—which is why we need a Republican Senate. That would shift the balance of the Court. Wars come and go. Policy debates in Congress are never-ending and often trivial. Give me a humble, law-abiding Supreme Court for the next 30 years—a Court that respects individual liberty, protects property rights, and, most importantly, understands federalism—and I'll consider the Bush presidency a great success.

The principal opposition to homosexual marriage comes from people who believe that for the state to recognize such marriage would be to place a stamp of official approval on homosexuality. Eskridge discusses this objection at length, but I do not think he refutes it. He points out correctly that since rapists and child molesters, along with "transvestites, bisexuals, and other gender benders can obtain marriage licenses, usually without any fuss," it cannot be that giving a homosexual couple a marriage license would connote official approval of homosexuality. . . . But there is a difference between approving a form of union and approving particular individuals who are utilizing that form. Obviously the fact that a man wearing a dress can marry a woman wearing a suit, or a rapist his victim, does not entail that the state must allow a man to marry three women at once, or his cat, or his sports car.

(Richard A. Posner, "Should There Be Homosexual Marriage? And If So, Who Should Decide?" review of The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment, by William N. Eskridge, Jr., Michigan Law Review 95 [May 1997]: 1578-87, at 1583 [italics in original; parenthetical page reference omitted])

8-9-86 Saturday. This is a significant day for me. I purchased my first ten-speed bike exactly five years ago, on 9 August 1981. (I determined this by looking at my journal of that date.) Thus, in five years, I’ve ridden 5640.2 miles, an average of 1128.0 miles per year, 94.0 miles per month, 21.6 miles per week, and 3.0 miles per day. Not bad, huh? All of this mileage was accumulated on two bikes. The first, a Sears [Free Spirit] ten-speed which I purchased new, carried me 2252.1 miles (39.9% of the total), while the second, also a ten-speed and currently in my possession, has carried me 3388.1 miles (60.0% of the total). I obtained the second bike on 27 July 1984, the day before I left on my trip across Arizona. Thus, I rode roughly forty percent of my miles in roughly sixty percent of my time (three of five years), and sixty percent of my miles in forty percent of my time (two of five years). I’ve also had two odometers. The first, a mechanical model, racked up 4052.0 miles, while the second, an electronic model, currently has 1588.2 miles on it.

Five years from now, things could be much different. For one thing, I could be living in a cold-weather climate (such as Vermont or New Hampshire) where biking isn’t possible or feasible for much of the year. [I was living in Grand Prairie, Texas, where cycling is possible all year ’round.] Second, I could have other interests, including a young family. But this much is clear: Where possible, I’ll be riding my bike every Sunday. I’ve got two years left in Tucson [that turned out to be correct], and I plan to enjoy them. In fact, here’s a new goal: I hope to have a grand total of 10,000 miles under my belt by 9 August 1988, two years from now. [I had 11,812.2 miles.] That will be a really significant accomplishment. I also hope to have taken a cross-country trip by then. [That didn’t happen.]

Jens Voigt, a native son, won the Deutschland Tour. See here for the report. If you wonder why Voigt is my favorite cyclist, read his comments after the race:

"It has of course been a fantastic race for me, where everything has worked out brilliantly," said Voigt to team-csc.com. "I finished the Tour de France in great shape, and in the period in between then and here in the Deutschland Tour I did some criteriums to keep me going. I stayed serious and focused instead of partying. I've really just made sure I kept focus on this particular race, because I badly wanted to do well in front of my home crowd. It's always fun to win a race in Germany and especially a big one like this.

"It's a good race for me. There are many of the Tour de France riders who didn't do this one, and I am able to manage those seven or eight-kilometre climbs with lots of will power and motivation. It's much worse in the races where we have to climb 30 kilometres or so.

"I was aiming for something like the top-five, top-six or maybe just the top-ten, but it's definitely been a nice little surprise that I was able to go this fast. It's more fun than when you expect a lot without being able to deliver. I would also like to give credit to the team, because I think they have done some fantastic work. We've had a good mix of riders, some who are good on flat stretches and some who are good in the mountains," Voigt concluded.

He's humble to the point of being self-effacing. He's grateful to his teammates for their assistance. He's honored to represent his country so well in the national tour. What's not to like? Congratulations, Jens! With so much bad news coming out of cycling, it's a treat to see your hard work pay off.

Bush-haters are hyperventilating about President Bush's use of signing statements, as if such tools are unprecedented or obviously unconstitutional. But as liberal-leftist Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe argues in this op-ed column, they are "constitutionally unobjectionable." (Tribe—a treatise writer—is not known for the mellifluousness of his prose, so be prepared to have your eyes glaze over as you read.)

Frank Thomas. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)

Plow, n. An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the pen.

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

Here.

To the Editor:

Why can’t we stay focused on what actually happened in the period in 2002 before the war began and the events that unfolded afterward?

The overwhelming vote in the Senate that year to authorize the use of force against Iraq was based almost entirely on claims the president had explicitly made about weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the United States.

Under those circumstances, would any responsible senator not vote in favor?

Since that momentous turning point, we’ve watched a continuing series of miscalculations and calamities in Iraq, accompanied by a running narrative of mission creep from the White House.

We’ve moved from imminent threat of W.M.D.’s to potential threat, from ridding the world of a tyrant to planting the seeds of democracy, and finally to fighting the larger war on terror.

By now, most Americans have come to see the Iraq venture for the costly disaster it has become. But to view the vote to use force back then through the lens of subsequent misfortunes is manifestly unfair to the senators who cast those votes.

Robert Proctor
Coventry, Conn., Aug. 5, 2006

First, there was the typewriter; then there was the electric typewriter; and now there is the manual typewriter.

Hey Keith,

I know how much you love reading the Letters to the Editor section of The New York Times. Take a look at this letter to the editor of USA Today:

No refuge for Cuba's poor

As the idea of the end of Fidel Castro's era surfaces, one aspect will be ignored by the American press.

Those who fled Cuba to the United States are now drooling at the prospect of returning to Cuba to take advantage of the Cuban citizenry in the name of capitalism. Watch their hopes of becoming wealthy by returning to their "homeland" circulate. They are salivating at the profits they hope to achieve by becoming the next ruling class to subjugate the Cubans economically.

Once again, the poor will watch as one ruling class replaces another.

John Frenzel
Saginaw, Mich.

Never mind the equivalence the author makes between a dictator and the millions of people he oppressed and the relatives he killed. According to Mr. Frenzel, how dare the Cubans return to their homeland and actually want to make a reasonable living? But never mind that. How about the assumption that all these displaced Cubans care about is the chances of making a profit—they're "salivating" over it. They couldn't possibly be "salivating" over the prospect of living as free people in their homeland?

I can't think of a better example of Liberal Elitism than this letter to the editor.

It's still oppressively hot in North Texas. The official high temperatures so far this month have been 101, 101, 101, 102, 103, 103, 94, and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. See here. The 94º day felt chilly by comparison to the others. I've been staying active this summer, as you know if you've been reading this blog. Today I had a lot of things to do in the morning, so I went out for my run at one o'clock, by which time it was 96.8º. (It was 98.1º when I finished.) The more I run in this heat, the tougher it makes me. Today I felt so strong that I sprinted for half a mile in the middle. People must have thought I was nuts. Sometimes the body wants to go, the way a horse wants to run. A sensible rider/runner lets up on the reins and lets the horse/body go. I'm looking forward to cooler weather. All the hard work I've done this summer will pay dividends in terms of speed. I expect to win some medals and trophies this fall. Stay tuned. By the way, there's a full moon tonight. Get out for a walk and enjoy it.

My law-school buddy Steve sent this.

Here.

How dumb are Democrats? Consider this. They gang up on Joe Lieberman, their 2000 vice-presidential candidate, effectively forcing him out of the party. He will run as an independent and be reelected to the United States Senate this fall. So the Bush-hating Democrats lose a Senate seat and prove to Americans that they can't be trusted on national security. Can you say "George McGovern"? See here for a brief analysis. In other news, Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who claimed to be President Bush's "worst nightmare," lost her runoff election. Bye bye, moonbat. President Bush will sleep well tonight. Come to think of it, so will Capitol police officers.

Addendum: Some of the nutjobs at Democratic Underground understand the situation. Others, to their discredit, do not. It makes you wonder about the intelligence of the Left.

Addendum 2: Here, hot off the press, is Noam Scheiber's New York Times op-ed column entitled "The Lieberman Lesson."

I have finally, officially, gotten under Brian Leiter’s skin. Of all the people who think he’s deranged—and take my word for it, there are many—I alone have the honor of being mentioned in his blogroll (which he calls “Recommended Blogs”). Yeehaa! No, he doesn’t link to this blog, but anyone who visits the blog he does link to will come here (or to Brian Leiter, Academic Thug) and see what a thug Leiter is. I might add that, if you type “Brian Leiter” into Google, my Leiter blog comes up on the first page. Thanks for the publicity, Brian. You’re dumber than I thought you were, which, when you consider how dumb I thought you were, is darn near impossible.

Addendum: I fully expect Leiter to go insane, like his idol Friedrich Nietzsche. He shows many of the symptoms of insanity already, such as paranoia, dissociation, hysteria, and narcissism. If he doesn’t go insane, it’s going to be a great run. Let’s see. I’m 49. Leiter is 43. I expect to be around for at least 25 more years. That’s a quarter of a century in which to bring Leiter’s thuggishness to the attention of the world. Stay tuned. You’re going to enjoy the show. When I get done with Leiter, he’ll be crying like a baby.

Addendum 2: In case you’re wondering, I get more than 1,000 visits a day to AnalPhilosopher. I began the blog on 5 November 2003, nearly three years ago. Every month, without fail, I have had more visits than the same month a year earlier. In other words, the blog is growing at a steady rate. For example, in November 2003, I had 3,289 visitors. In November 2004, I had 18,543 visitors. In November 2005, I had 31,261 visitors. I expect to have at least 35,000 visitors in November 2006, and maybe as many as 40,000. Keep sending visitors my way, Brian! You’re only spreading the word about your own thuggishness—and stupidity.

I know I shouldn't admit this, but I enjoy watching people fall apart, mentally. It's why I read Brian Leiter's blog. He is going the way of his idol, Friedrich Nietzsche, who lapsed into insanity in 1889, at the tender age of 45. (Leiter is 43.) Lately, I've been reading the blog of Deborah Frisch, Ph.D. There is only one word for it: "riveting." See here.

Here.

What about colour-words in philosophy, words that carry images with them or emotional overtones, the sort of words that poets use, or those writers who have written the gorgeous purple passages that get into our prose anthologies? I must confess a weakness, if it is a weakness, for this sort of rhetoric; indeed, when Burke or Sir Thomas Browne, De Quincey or Ruskin, lets out all the stops, one has to be pretty deaf not to hear. But one thing I feel sure about: this is not the way to write philosophy. It has often been tried, but never, I think, with much success. Plato, who is sometimes thought of as a philosopher of poetic mind, was on his guard against such writing; he distrusted poetry and imagery, and when he deserted plain prose, he preferred to do it with notice, and to go all the way over into myth.

(Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967], 48-9 [first published in 1954])

Jens Voigt won today’s individual time trial in the Deutschland Tour. See here. My first thought upon hearing the news was, “I guess Levi Leipheimer wasn’t sandbagging.” But then I got to wondering whether this followed. Couldn’t Leipheimer have been sandbagging and still gotten beat? It seems so. If Leipheimer were sandbagging, then, by definition, he was pretending to be weak when in fact he was strong. He might have thought he was strong enough to beat Voigt, but didn’t want Voigt to know it. Perhaps Leipheimer reasoned that, if he made it seem as though he expected Voigt to win, Voigt would get overconfident and not ride as hard, thus opening the door for Leipheimer to win.

Sandbagging is one of many mind games athletes play. I can’t speak to every sport, but it’s perfectly acceptable in cycling. A few years ago, Lance Armstrong pretended to be fatigued while riding in the lead group on a difficult climb, only to attack his rivals near the end. They must have been shocked to see him go. “Wasn’t this guy just hurting a while ago?” Lance was not only superbly conditioned and strong-willed; he was adept at psyching out his rivals. In this respect, he was like Eddy Merckx, the greatest cyclist of all time. It’s no accident that Merckx was called “The Cannibal.”

What the Leipheimer case shows is that sandbagging—if that’s what he was doing—doesn’t always work. (It must sometimes work, or it would long since have died out as a strategy.) People can overestimate their strength, either absolutely or relative to the strength of their rivals. Or—and I suspect this is what happened in the case of Leipheimer—their rivals can rise to the occasion and perform beyond all reasonable expectations. Congratulations, Jens!

Understanding, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.

His understanding was so keen
That all things which he'd felt, heard, seen,
He could interpret without fail
If he was in or out of jail.
He wrote at Inspiration's call
Deep disquisitions on them all,
Then, pent at last in an asylum,
Performed the service to compile 'em.
So great a writer, all men swore,
They never had not read before.
Jorrock Wormley.

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

Mark Spahn drew my attention to this interesting blog, which I will add to the blogroll.

"What a Fool Believes" (1978).

Here.

To the Editor:

Your solution hinges on the ability of the international community to impose a truce on a horde of hate-filled, well-armed terrorists who want to kill as many Jews as possible and who are willing to sacrifice as many Lebanese civilians as necessary to achieve their goals.

It hinges on the assumption that Hezbollah will start behaving in a civilized manner, for the first time in its history, after it stops raining rockets and missiles down on Israeli civilians. It hinges on the ability to halt Iran’s military and financial support for Hezbollah.

Iran, the country that does not care what the international community thinks about its nuclear weapons program. Iran, the country whose leader calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Oh, and there’s still Hamas, that other implacable terrorist menace, and Syria, that other hostile state.

Good luck on all of that.

Kenneth Freedland
St. Louis, Aug. 7, 2006

consequentialism

[f. consequential a. + -ism.]

An ethical doctrine which holds that the morality of an action is to be judged solely by its consequences; cf. teleological ethics s.v. teleological a.

1969 J. Cargile in Analysis XXIX. 83 Utilitarianism is sometimes thought of as a form of consequentialism. 1973 K. Nielsen Ethics without God iv. 67 By such investigation we can get to the heart of the issue between such an absolutism and my kind of consequentialism. 1980 Times Lit. Suppl. 12 Sept. 1002/5 Consequentialism..consists in views which take the rightness or wrongness of actions to depend upon their substantial consequences. 1982 N.Y. Times 16 Nov. d26/6 A sound theological base, well defined and free from consequentialism and false ‘ends justify the means’ reasoning, is needed.

Hence consequentialist n. and a.

1969 Analysis XXIX. 88 A race of thorough-going consequentialists would not be human. Ibid., The consequentialist hero is a man whose reason is in complete control of his actions. 1973 J. Fletcher in R. H. Williams To live & to Die ix. 121 Our moral acts..are right or wrong depending on the consequences aimed at... In the language of ethics this is called a ‘consequential’ method of moral judgment. 1980 Times Lit. Suppl. 12 Sep. 1002/5 He makes some familiar points against certain consequentialist views.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: The OED needs to be updated. G. E. M. Anscombe used the term "consequentialist" in 1957, in a letter to The Listener. She used "consequentialists" and "consequentialism" in 1958, in her classic essay "Modern Moral Philosophy."

Dennis Prager gets it exactly right.

My beloved Detroit Tigers won again today, beating the Minnesota Twins, 9-3. The Tigers have had the best record in Major League Baseball for most of the season. I continue to be astounded. The Tigers were so bad for so long that I can't wrap my mind around what is happening. Am I dreaming? Every day, I expect to see a collapse; but it never comes. The Tigers are 76-36, for a winning percentage of 67.8. The Chicago White Sox are nine games behind in the loss column. The Twins are 10 behind. If the Tigers win only half their remaining 50 games, they'll finish 101-61. Chicago would have to go 36-16 the rest of the way to tie. Minnesota would have to go 36-15. It's not going to happen. The Tigers are going to win the American League Central Division title. (I hope I didn't just jinx them.) Here's my fear. The Tigers get to the World Series but don't win it. Let me be very clear: I'd rather the Tigers finish in last place with the worst record in baseball than get to the World Series and not win it. Go Tigers!

What's the difference between bluffing and sandbagging? If I pretend to be strong when in fact I'm weak, I'm bluffing. If I pretend to be weak when in fact I'm strong, I'm sandbagging. Now go back to your poker game (or bike race).

Addendum: I have a question for Bill Vallicella. Is there bluffing or sandbagging in chess? I have a question for Peg Kaplan. Is there bluffing or sandbagging in bridge? I have a question for everyone. Is there bluffing or sandbagging in marriage (for marriage is a game in the game-theoretic sense)?

If you want articles of impeachment drawn up against President Bush, vote Democrat this fall. If you think this would be a grave injustice as well as a monumental waste of resources, vote Republican. See here.

Jens Voigt, who is the toughest (but not the most talented) cyclist in the professional peloton, won an epic stage of the Deutschland Tour today, increasing his lead over American Levi Leipheimer to 24 seconds. The tour ends Wednesday, but whoever leads after tomorrow's individual time trial will win the race. Leipheimer is a better time trialist than Voigt, but he says he's unlikely to prevail. Levi is sandbagging. See here for the report.

Here is the good news, and it is profoundly good. First of all, as Mart Laar, our honoree tonight, can tell you, all of us in this room live in a world fundamentally unlike the world in which our parents lived. We live in a world where the American model is the only serious model for running a modern society. Fascism is gone. Communism is gone. Socialism is gone. Al-Qaeda has no rival model of modernity. Al-Qaeda is a howl of rage against modernity.

We had an uncommonly clear social experiment after the Second World War. We divided the city of Berlin, the country of Germany, the continent of Europe, indeed, the whole world, and had a test. On the one side, the collectivist model, a society run by command, by elites with a monopoly on information. On the other side, what deserves to be called the American model. It has the maximum dispersal of decisionmaking based on the maximum dispersal of information, with markets allocating wealth and opportunity. The results are in. They're decisive. We're here. They're gone. The Soviet Union tried to plant Marxism in Europe with bayonets for 70 years. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe.

(George F. Will, "Cato: Upholding the Idea of Liberty," Cato's Letter: A Quarterly Message on Liberty 4 [summer 2006]: 1-6, at 5-6)

If you like cooking, which I do not, you will like this blog, which I found serendipitously while using Blogger.

Here.

Politics can be viewed as a game, albeit a serious one. As with any game, some people are good at playing it and others are not. Leftists love to insult conservatives by calling their intelligence into question. Gerald Ford was a buffoon. Ronald Reagan was a dunce. George H. W. Bush was frivolous. George W. Bush is a monkey. But how intelligent can leftists be if they can't get elected? They are utter failures at what they themselves view as the most important game of all: acquiring political power (especially the presidency). Perhaps this explains why leftists hate Karl Rove. He runs intellectual circles around them. He toys with them. See here.

To the Editor:

I applaud Katie Couric for her response in late May to a question about whether she’d go to Iraq as the new CBS anchor. She said, “I think the situation there is so dangerous, and as a single parent with two children, that’s something I won’t be doing.” I agree with her decision. I also agree with Judith Warner’s assertion that it was a brave move.

But I think CBS should have hired someone else.

Anyone who cannot perform a key part of the job—no matter how noble the reason—should not get the job.

Ms. Couric is right to make her needs clear, but she’s a talented—and popular—woman who can pick her job and set the price. I think CBS should have looked at other talented professionals who are willing to do the whole job.

Bambi Nicklen
Las Vegas, Aug. 1, 2006

Here.

Portable, adj. Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of possession.

His light estate, if neither he did make it
Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,
Is portable improperty, I take it.
Worgum Slupsky.

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

Here is Judge Richard A. Posner's blog post on Internet gambling.

Alvin Plantinga is one of the top analytic philosophers in the world, and has been for nearly half a century. He teaches at The University of Notre Dame. Plantinga has published important work in two of the three main areas of philosophy: metaphysics and epistemology. (The third area, about which he has written little, is ethics.) Here is Plantinga's commentary on the recent case involving Design Theory (infelicitously called "Intelligent Design" in some quarters).

If you have any remaining doubt about Brian Leiter’s moral retardation, consider this. At the end of a long post in which he viciously attacked me, he added:

A REVEALING BIT OF CORRESPONDENCE from one of KBJ’s former students, who cc’d me. This student wrote to KBJ: “If anyone is an academic thug, it would be you Keith. I’ve seen you bully enough students in class including myself. It shows on your blog except your bullying doesn’t get any attention at all, which is kind of sad if you think about it. . . . Instead of attacking everything (screaming for attention) Keith, why don’t you try defending your beliefs and be compassionate about it. You don’t need to alienate half of the UTA philosophy department because you think you only have the right world view and everyone else is wrong. I have never seen students get so angry at the professor in class as I have seen students in your class get.”

I have no idea what this person is talking about (if indeed it’s someone other than Leiter). It’s barely comprehensible. Bullying in class? Nobody has accused me of that before, although I’ve been teaching since August 1983. Being compassionate? What’s that all about? I’m my students’ teacher, not their friend or companion. Alienating half of my department (my department has seven members, counting me) because I believe everyone else is wrong? I’m shaking my head in wonder at the sheer idiocy of that statement. This, in all honesty, is the most absurd thing I’ve ever read, and believe me, I’ve read some ridiculous things in my life.

As for students being angry at me in class, if that’s the case, wouldn’t I know about it? I’m more likely to put students to sleep than to make them angry. Keep in mind that I teach all the hot-button courses: Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Law, and Social and Political Philosophy. I bend over backward to be fair in these courses, as anyone but this student will tell you. I have had no complaints of unfairness. None. I get letters from former students on a regular basis, thanking me for being such a good, fair, and helpful teacher. I take pride in my work, and I’m damn good at it.

What was the purpose of Leiter’s posting this scurrilous letter, other than to try to embarrass me in front of my peers? Does he even know that the person who wrote it was my student? Does he just take people’s word for such things? Has he talked to other students of mine? Has he read any of my student evaluations? Is he implying that this student’s reaction is representative or typical? How would he know? None of this matters to Leiter. The end—embarrassing me (and harming my career)—justifies the means. If you get on Leiter’s bad side, he will attack you in any way he can. He will impute the worst motives to you. He will give you the detriment rather than the benefit of the doubt. He will be eager to believe the worst about you, even if there is little or no evidence for it—and to pass it on as fact. It’s all about personal and professional destruction. If that’s not despicable, I don’t know what is.

If Leiter had any decency, he’d send me the student’s name. I could then post the student’s grade (without his or her name, of course) so that readers of this blog could make up their own minds about the student’s motives. Every professor knows that students who do poorly in class blame it on the instructor. It’s called displacement. How would Leiter like it if I posted his worst student evaluation on my blog, without attribution? He would cry foul. He would be outraged. He would threaten a lawsuit. But he thinks nothing of doing the same if it serves his nefarious purposes. What a creep. What a moral retard. Why anyone would associate with this thug—except for personal gain—is beyond me. Maybe that’s it. Maybe people put up with his thuggishness for fear of being his next victim, or in hope that he can advance their careers.

By the way, the only student who might have been angry at me in the past 20 years is the one I mentioned the other day: the deaf and (doubly) dumb one. He was angry not at me in particular but at everyone at my university, for he thought his translator was inadequate. Every day, when I got home from school, I found an abusive e-mail message in my inbox. He threatened to sue me for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. He told me I should not have taught the course that day knowing that he wasn’t understanding me. (Meaning what, exactly—that nobody gets taught if he doesn’t?) I can still see him in the back of the room, simmering. A cartoonist would have drawn smoke coming out of his ears.

Everyone at my university was aware of his intimidating antics, for he had threatened all of them, individually and collectively. (Talk about bullying!) One of the disability specialists told me in confidence that he was out of control. We were glad he was leaving. Guess where he went? UT-Austin! That’s right: Leiter’s home. This student wrote to me after he got to Austin to tell me that Leiter is right about political matters and I’m wrong. Isn’t that special? That’s why I believe he’s the one who wrote the scurrilous letter Leiter posted. He was trying to ingratiate himself with Leiter as well as get back at me for giving him the grade he deserved instead of the grade he wanted. If there is any justice in this world, he will take one of Leiter’s courses and give Leiter the thuggish treatment he gave me.

Make of it what you will. I don’t think any professor would appreciate having his or her worst student evaluation posted for all the world to see. But again, that doesn’t matter to Leiter. There are no moral rules when he is out to get someone. Civility, fairness, honesty, even decency go out the window. He’s a thug and a creep.

Thank God we're getting some sensible laws. If you break into my house, you die.

It is the very conservatism of marriage as an institution that should attract support for homosexual marriage from conservative heterosexuals, desirous of “civilizing,” of embourgeoising, the homosexual community—turning homosexuals into the Republicans they ought to be. Homosexuals, especially male homosexuals, tend to be at once affluent and childless, so they should be natural supporters of limited government.

(Richard A. Posner, “Should There Be Homosexual Marriage? And If So, Who Should Decide?” review of The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment, by William N. Eskridge, Jr., Michigan Law Review 95 [May 1997]: 1578-87, at 1582 [footnotes omitted])

8-6-86 I spent the morning in [Tucson] City Court, before Judge Eugene Hays. Judge Hays is the judge who failed to give reasons for denying my motion for concurrent sentences on behalf of Tony D[.] The matter is currently before the Arizona Supreme Court. This, of course, made me reluctant to appear before him, but I agreed to do so and everything went fine. All six of my clients showed up for their pretrial conferences and there was only one “confrontation” with the judge. I opposed severance of trials for one of my clients, but Judge Hays severed them anyway. This was my first appearance in City Court in several weeks, and just about everyone I saw, from bailiffs to prosecutors to other defense attorneys to judges, did a double take when he or she saw me. I explained that I was filling in for Bob Bushkin during August. In a way, it was nice to be back.

After class I mailed my revised “evil” manuscript to the editor of the American Journal of Theology & Philosophy and talked to one of my students, Chuck Denk. Chuck is one of the brighter students in the class and has been around, most notably in the Navy. We talked about the mind-body problem and about artificial intelligence, after which, since Chuck had walked all the way to my car with me, I offered to drive him home. It turns out that he lives even farther east than I do, so it wasn’t very far out of my way. Chuck usually takes the [Sun Tran] bus. [I remember Chuck. That’s saying a lot, since I’ve had thousands of students in the past 20 years.]

Tonight, while I was napping, the telephone rang. It was Joel Feinberg [1926-2004], of all people. I turned my classical music off and listened. Joel explained that Jules Coleman will be back in town soon and that several professors are getting together to mark his departure to the Yale Law School. Jody Kraus is the guest of honor, since he’s currently finishing his preliminary exams, so Joel asked Jody to invite a couple of friends. Apparently I’m one of them. Joel asked if [sic; should be “whether”] I would like to come to a party at his house in one week. “Sure,” I said, although, in truth, I hate these formal occasions. Actually, I was still groggy while I talked and listened to Joel, so I’m not sure exactly how I came to be invited. I’ll talk to Ann Hickman in the Philosophy Department Office to get further details, as well as a map to Joel’s house.

The [Detroit] Tigers are only five games out of first place. What a comeback they’ve made! Boston [the Red Sox] is falling apart. [The Tigers finished in third place, 8.5 games behind the Red Sox. The New York Yankees finished second, 5.5 games behind.]

Try as I might, I cannot figure out why so many people hate President Bush. Disagreement with his policies I can understand. That’s normal—indeed, desirable—in a democracy. I can even understand how someone might envy him his worldly success. He does seem to have lived a charmed life, right down to being born into a powerful, prosperous family. Who wouldn’t want that? But hatred? What’s that all about?

Two years ago today, sociologist Gary Alan Fine drew attention to the phenomenon of Bush hatred in this op-ed column. I think he does a good job of explaining why people envy President Bush. I don’t think he goes any way toward explaining why people hate President Bush. (Envy and hatred are different emotions, even if they share a genus. They might be called—along with jealousy, spleen, and spite—the green emotions.) The hatred isn’t limited to the uneducated, either. If anything, it’s more pronounced among the highly educated, such as Paul Krugman. I used to read Krugman’s op-ed columns twice a week (before The New York Times started charging for access). It was the rare column in which Krugman focused on policy rather than the person propounding the policy. He seemed obsessed with the man.

As someone who agrees with President Bush on many things, I’m glad that a significant segment of his opponents hate him, for hatred is a distorting, and sometimes a stifling, emotion. It interferes with thought, with judgment, and, ultimately, with action. I got the feeling sometimes that Krugman’s hatred of the president made him see red. His columns devolved into incoherent rants. This works to President Bush’s political advantage, for if Krugman would calm down and apply his economic expertise, he might persuade his readers that President Bush’s policies are unacceptable. By ranting, he only succeeds in shifting attention to his own mental stability. The president comes off looking mature, serious, and composed by comparison.

I believe it was Michelle Malkin who coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” It’s apt. Perhaps one day, historians will point out that President Bush succeeded politically by shifting the focus from his policies to his personality. Leftists such as Krugman will come off looking like fools—which is ironic, for, in their view, they are much more intelligent than the president. How intelligent can you be if you continually shoot yourself in the foot?

By the way, I wrote a column some time back about Bush hatred. See here.

Addendum: Emily Puskar wrote to inform me that it was Charles Krauthammer, not Michelle Malkin, who coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” I typed it into Google and found this. Thanks, Emily.

If Floyd Landis loses his Tour de France title, it will be because he offended the fashion gods. I don't understand why people wear baseball caps to begin with, but wearing them backward? What's up with that? Is it BMX chic? Skateboard cool? And facial hair on a professional bicyclist? Come on. These are people who shave their legs. It's all about being sleek. Here is a classic look by a man who—not coincidentally—won five Tours de France.

I'm a bibliophile. I admit it. Hell, I'm proud of it. What better fetish is there than a fetish for books? I once thought that I would read everything. Ha! When I reached 40, nearly a decade ago, I realized that if I continued reading at my current pace and lived to be 80, I'd read about one row of one library shelf of books. It was one of the most depressing thoughts I've ever had. The first thing I did is vow never to read anything crappy, for every moment spent reading something crappy is a moment not spent reading something good. Students hand me things, saying, "You have to read this." Actually, I don't, and won't. I have books in my library waiting to be read—books that I paid good money for and can't wait to read. Like the author of this essay, I read several books at once, sometimes at a mechanical pace of four, six, or 10 pages per day. If you read 10 pages of a 300-page book per day, you'll be done in a month. That may not sound like much to you, but you must consider what I'm reading. You don't fly through philosophical tomes the way you fly through a novel, a magazine article, or a newspaper. Truth be told, I'm a slow reader. I long ago trained myself not to proceed unless I've comprehended what I just read. It might take me 10 minutes to read a single page. I also read with pen in hand, so as to engage the author. My books and articles are filled with underlining, footnotes, brackets, circled numerals, and other marks that have no meaning to anyone except me. If there is a heaven and I get there, I hope it has one hell of a library.

Scimetar, n. A curved sword of exceeding keenness, in the conduct of which certain Orientals attain a surprising proficiency, as the incident here related will serve to show. The account is translated from the Japanese by Shusi Itama, a famous writer of the thirteenth century.

When the great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court. Soon after the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his Majesty's surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man who should have been at that time ten minutes dead!

"Seventeen hundred impossible dragons!" shouted the enraged monarch. "Did I not sentence you to stand in the market-place and have your head struck off by the public executioner at three o'clock? And is it not now 3:10?"

"Son of a thousand illustrious deities," answered the condemned minister, "all that you say is so true that the truth is a lie in comparison. But your heavenly Majesty's sunny and vitalizing wishes have been pestilently disregarded. With joy I ran and placed my unworthy body in the market-place. The executioner appeared with his bare scimetar, ostentatiously whirled it in the air, and then, tapping me lightly upon the neck, strode away, pelted by the populace, with whom I was ever a favorite. I am come to pray for justice upon his own dishonorable and treasonous head."

"To what regiment of executioners does the black-boweled caitiff belong?" asked the Mikado.

"To the gallant Ninety-eight Hundred and Thirty-seventh—I know the man. His name is Sakko-Samshi."

"Let him be brought before me," said the Mikado to an attendant, and a half-hour later the culprit stood in the Presence.

"Thou bastard son of a three-legged hunchback without thumbs!" roared the sovereign—"why didst thou but lightly tap the neck that it should have been thy pleasure to sever?"

"Lord of Cranes and Cherry Blooms," replied the executioner, unmoved, "command him to blow his nose with his fingers."

Being commanded, Jijiji Ri laid hold of his nose and trumpeted like an elephant, all expecting to see the severed head flung violently from him. Nothing occurred: the performance prospered peacefully to the close, without incident.

All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama. His legs trembled and his breath came in gasps of terror.

"Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a ruined and disgraced swordsman! I struck the villain feebly because in flourishing the scimetar I had accidentally passed it through my own neck! Father of the Moon, I resign my office."

So saying, he grasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and advancing to the throne laid it humbly at the Mikado's feet.

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

Reuters (the news agency) has published a fake photograph. Someone at the agency doctored an image to make Israel look bad. See here for details. Remember, folks: To the Left, the end justifies the means. It's called consequentialism.

Read this. Men and women have different values and therefore make different choices. Women are less likely than men to be willing to sacrifice family for work. Nobody gets it all. Each sex sacrifices something it values to get something it values more. Women sacrifice the rewards of work to have rich family lives; men sacrifice the rewards of family life to have remunerative careers. You don't hear men complaining about having to make a choice. They accept it as one of life's tragedies. Feminists have led women to believe that they don't have to make choices—that they can "have it all." When women realize that they can't have it all, they complain. Some women go further: They try to change the workplace. But nothing is costless. Just as squeezing a balloon in one place creates a bulge somewhere else, changing the workplace to promote one value or to help one type of employee thwarts another value or harms another type of employee. The workplace, like an ecosystem, is in equilibrium. If you kill the toads, you get more mosquitoes.

Addendum: If you want to learn more about the science of men's and women's choices, read Biology at Work, by Darwinian law professor Kingsley Browne. (I'm a Darwinian.) Science can't supply us with norms, but it can show us the costs of implementing various norms, and thus make our choices informed.

Addendum 2: If you don't have time to read Biology at Work, try this. It's shorter.

To the Editor:

In commenting on President Bush’s veto of embryonic stem cell financing, Deborah Blum implies that his act will all but halt research in the field. In reality, what Mr. Bush did was to inhibit using additional taxpayer money (yours and mine) to pay for the research. The abundant private research and private financing for it will continue.

Noted researchers have said potential cures from embryonic stem cells are many years away, if indeed they ever occur, unlike from adult and umbilical cord stem cells, which have already shown promising results in humans.

The president was correct when he refused to use our money on questionable research that is ethically repugnant to many. We would support financing for stem cells obtained from adults and umbilical cords as a wiser use of taxpayer money.

Germaine Wensley
Middleville, Mich., Aug. 2, 2006
The writer is secretary, California Nurses for Ethical Standards.

Here.

Dr John J. Ray has a new blog. I will add it to the blogroll.

Here is the latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly. It contains several essays about retirement.

What is the moral status of embryos? Are they persons, like you and me? Are they mere objects, like acorns? Or are they somewhere in between? See here.

Here.

When you're done with your Sunday newspaper, read this.

See here.

Here is the latest on American cyclist Floyd Landis, who is accused of cheating during the recently concluded Tour de France, which he won. Somebody tell me what the following means:

In a phone call from his vacation home, [Tour de France Director Christian] Prudhomme told Reuters: “For us, he cannot be the Tour de France winner anymore. Technically, we cannot say he has lost his title, but he has soiled the yellow jersey.”

Say what?

Read this. Is there a morally relevant difference between cows and horses that could justify opposing the slaughter of horses but not opposing the slaughter of cows? How many of those who agitate against horse slaughter eat beef?

See here. Key passage: "What drives so many Democrats crazy about [United States Senator Joseph] Lieberman is not simply his support for the Iraq war. It's that he's unashamedly pro-American."

"Baby Hold On" (1977).

Most men's minds are so constituted that they have to think by means of examples; if you do not supply these, they will supply them for themselves, and if you leave it wholly to them, they will do it badly.

(Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967], 32 [first published in 1954])

Here.

Here is the latest version.

Here is a New York Times story about United States Senator Hillary Clinton. Key sentence: "While Mrs. Clinton has come under fire for not repudiating her initial vote to authorize the war, she contends that intelligence reports that her husband saw in the White House supported the Bush administration's contention that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction."

To the Editor:

Re “Time for Plan B,” by Thomas L. Friedman (column, Aug. 4):

Plan B? There should never have been a Plan A, at least not for the reason to “democratize” Iraq. It is clearly time to leave.

The only acceptable reason for invading Iraq would have been to counter a real threat to the security of the United States. That was the reason given to the public when the issue was said to be Saddam Hussein’s campaign to accumulate weapons of mass destruction.

Whether that was a mistake, a public relations campaign or a combination of hidden policies, private agendas and lies, the shift to the democratization notion was fanciful or convenient, all belied by the reality of what has taken place.

The public gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt in Iraq, and it has not worked out. The cost has been extraordinarily high, almost unbearable. It is not likely that this president will find his way out of Iraq. But it is the No. 1 issue facing the nation.

Bruce Neuman
Sag Harbor, N.Y., Aug. 4, 2006

Piracy, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.

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

It took me only a few months to size up Andrew Sullivan. The man has a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University, but he prefers to manipulate rather than persuade. What a waste! He is the Brian Leiter of the right: a raw, quivering emotion, with no intellectual discipline and no sense of either epistemic or social responsibility. And why, exactly, is Sullivan of the right? No conservative can support homosexual "marriage," for marriage is a bedrock social institution. Should we demolish the Notre Dame Cathedral and try to do better? What hubris! Everything changed for Sullivan when President Bush came out in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Before that, Sullivan loved him. After that, Sullivan hated him. Sullivan is many things, but he is first and foremost a homosexual. How sad, to define oneself in terms of one's sexual proclivities. I'm glad to see that Hugh Hewitt, whom I admire, has come around. See here.

Here is a New York Times story about the role of bloggers in political campaigns.

The Bush administration exploits our fears, but it is not interested in a collective effort to cope with them—that is, to provide the necessary forms of protection and to stimulate the necessary forms of mutual assistance. That is the project of the near-left. The ideological right aims deliberately at undermining security, in the name of self-reliance, but with a deeper purpose: to discipline the workforce and stabilize the new forms of inequality. By contrast, the left project is egalitarian because we are committed to distribute the costs of security fairly and to make sure that the most vulnerable people are the first to be protected—or to be helped to protect themselves. It seems to me that most of our values can be connected to this project. We can tell a plausible story about "freedom from fear" that addresses the actual vulnerabilities of ordinary people and advances the cause of democratic equality. We may not be able to match the excitement of real war: the Red Army marching on Warsaw in 1919, say, or the U.S. Army marching on Baghdad in 2003 (these two provide another example of the great crossover). I am not advocating a crusade for security—just a "battle." I doubt that faith will figure in our story; we won't be able to claim divine support, and in parts of the United States today, that is a serious and for us an unavoidable liability. But the American people will figure in the story, and their democratic values, and the anxieties they share, and the old liberal-left commitment to humane reform. If we can connect the values, the anxieties, and the commitment, we will have begun a "fight" that we might be able to win.

(Michael Walzer, "All God's Children Got Values," Dissent 52 [spring 2005]: 35-40, at 40)

If this isn't the best album ever made, then I'm a monkey's uncle.

This image (courtesy of James Taranto) says it all. Remember the image when you hear leftists portray Israelis and Hezbollah as moral equals (implying that the United States should not take sides in the conflict). By the way, this is just one example of moral disorientation on the left. Leftists cry crocodile tears for mass murderers such as Tookie Williams, without so much as mentioning the victims. Whenever you hear someone say that capital punishment is murder, or no better than murder, or the moral equivalent of murder, you know that the person's mind has been warped by leftist dogma. The Left is incapable of making simple moral distinctions, such as (1) that between attacking and defending (i.e., between initiating and responding to aggression), (2) that between intending to kill civilians and accidentally killing civilians, and (3) that between causing harm and allowing harm to occur.

Negro, n. The pièce de résistance in the American political problem. Representing him by the letter n, the Republicans begin to build their equation thus: "Let n = the white man." This, however, appears to give an unsatisfactory solution.

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

I love it that Brian Leiter and his sycophants (fellators) read my blogs. This means that I set their agenda. Every day, I am the center of their attention. They hang on every word I write: thinking about it, analyzing it, trying to find fault with it, comparing it to other things I've written, perhaps even ridiculing it. I don't tell them what to think; I tell them what to think about. And they comply! The power to set another person's agenda is one of the most profound powers a person or institution can have. Keep it up, sycophants! I write for you! See here for the Wikipedia entry on agenda-setting theory.

Addendum: There is nothing wrong in principle (per se) with letting another person set one's intellectual agenda. There are philosophers, for example, who devote their entire careers to understanding some other philosopher, usually one long dead. John Rawls lectured throughout his career on Hume, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel. See here. But these are great thinkers. Trying to understand them repays the effort. According to Brian Leiter, I'm nothing. I teach at a third-rate university; I teach only undergraduates (horrors!); I have an undistinguished publication record; I'm not even a full professor (much less the holder of an endowed chair). Leiter, by contrast, is a Big Important Man. Do you see the irony? I'm nothing, but I'm worth the time, energy, and attention not only of Leiter, but of his legion of sycophants. Something's not right with this picture. Either Leiter and his sycophants are irrational (by devoting so much attention to a mere nothing) or, perish the thought, I'm not nothing.

Here.

To the Editor:

It would be wise for the international community to remember the price that was paid after the first President Bush did not complete the job in the first Persian Gulf war, when Saddam Hussein and the rest were spared.

Israel’s war with Hezbollah is really the whole world’s. Not allowing Israel completely to dismantle Hezbollah forces in Lebanon could have dire consequences for the entire world and would be tantamount to giving up the struggle with worldwide terrorism.

Nachama Kanner
Rehovot, Israel, Aug. 3, 2006

Here.

Suppose I'm visiting your house. You ask, "Would you like a glass of milk?" What should I say, since I don't consume dairy products? Here are two possibilities:

1. "No thanks."
2. "No; thanks."

See the difference? The first sounds as though I'm refusing to give you thanks. The second is correct. It answers your question in the negative, then expresses gratitude for the offer. It says, in effect, "No, I don't want a glass of milk; but thanks for asking." This isn't just a difference in writing, either. The semicolon is a half stop. Practice saying them and you'll see.

See here. Draw two partially overlapping circles. Let the circle on the left be the class of feminists. Let the circle on the right be the class of law professors. There are four classes: (1) feminists who aren't law professors; (2) feminists who are law professors; (3) law professors who aren't feminists; and (4) people who are neither feminists nor law professors. I take it that this blog consists only of people in the second class, i.e., in the overlapping area. I'm a member of the fourth class. I used to be a member of the first class. I guess my status has fallen.

Addendum: I haven't checked the membership roll. Are there any male blog members? I should hope so, for not all feminists are women. (Nor are all women feminists.)

The moonbats won't like this.

You decide.

Here is a gratuitous image from today's stage of the Tour of Gippsland in Australia. By the way, Jens Voigt won today's stage of the Tour of Germany.

I've written about Keith Olbermann a few times in this blog. As embarrassing as it is to say this, I misunderstood his show, Countdown (on MSNBC). Yesterday, I watched The O'Reilly Factor, as I often do. Bill O'Reilly's guest was Geraldo Rivera. The topic was ostensibly Mel Gibson, but somehow it led to a rant by O'Reilly about people who attack the rich and famous. It was clear that O'Reilly was identifying with Gibson and objecting to being dragged through the mud by journalists, comedians, politicians, bloggers, and others. I like O'Reilly, but he was over the top during this segment. There is no doubt in my mind that he was talking about Olbermann, but he refused to mention either Olbermann's name or Countdown.

Tonight, while watching the baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians (my Texas Rangers play later, in Anaheim), I surfed to Countdown. Olbermann had a segment on O'Reilly's meltdown. It was funny! I had tears streaming down my cheeks. Then it hit me. Olbermann's show is not to be taken seriously. He's doing comedy! Why did I ever think of his show as anything but a whimsical, cynical, wacky look at world events? He does a tabloid segment, for God's sake. He does impersonations. He makes faces. He throws things. There is laughter in the background on many of the segments. Even when the topic is something serious, such as the war in Iraq, Olbermann makes light of it. He is obsessed with the dark side of American politics. He finds conspiracies everywhere and is happy to give conspiracy theorists airtime.

I hate to say it, but until tonight, I didn't grasp the premise of Countdown. Olbermann is doing comedy, not commentary. He's a comic, not a pundit. All along, I've been cursing him. I should have been laughing with him.

Addendum: Hmm. Maybe I've been taking Brian Leiter's blog the wrong way as well. Much of what he writes in his blog is so over the top—so patently ridiculous—that it can't be taken seriously by anyone with any intelligence. Perhaps it's not meant to be taken seriously! Think about it. Leiter's idol, Friedrich Nietzsche, didn't expect to be taken seriously, and he isn't (except by the likes of Leiter). It's why he didn't take care to express himself clearly, to argue, or to engage the arguments of others. Nietzsche's writings are, for the most part, incoherent rants. He hates Jews. He hates Christians. He hates women. He hates utilitarians. &c.

The other day, Tom Anger listed the works in his reference library. I found it fascinating. Here, in one convenient location, are the founding documents of our great nation, The United States of America. I will add a link to this page to the sidebar, in case you lose it.

It's a sad day for the legal profession when its largest organization, the American Bar Association (the largest voluntary professional association in the world), succumbs to Bush-hatred. How else to explain the ABA's recent report to the effect that President Bush's use of signing statements is unprecedented and unconstitutional? It is neither. See here. As I said the other day, a president swears under oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This implies that he or she must refuse to enforce unconstitutional provisions of a statute—and if this is so, then the president may announce as much in a signing statement.

The problem with politically motivated calls for the restoration of a moral dimension to public life is that they are driven by the instrumental purpose of gaining or retaining power. But a morality manufactured in response to the demands of political pragmatism is bound to lack any organic relationship to lived experience, and is thus unlikely to find resonance with the wider public.

(Frank Furedi, "The Curious Rise of Anti-Religious Hysteria," Spiked [23 January 2006])

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Here.

"Year of the Cat" (1976).

Here.

Magnet, n. Something acted upon by magnetism.

Magnetism, n. Something acting upon a magnet.

The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.

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

To the Editor:

“Beginning of the End in Cuba” (editorial, Aug. 2) would have been more useful had it recognized the legitimate role that educated, industrious Cuban-Americans can play in our native land’s eventual political and economic transformation.

Those you refer to as refugees and exiles all came from Cuba or are descended from Cubans. We are not strangers to Cuba or Cubans. We pump close to a billion dollars a year into the Cuban economy in remittances alone.

If Cuba’s eventual evolution toward a democratic society is thwarted, it won’t be because of our meddling. Its success will depend more on the Cubans’ ability to heal the damage caused by a half-century of brutal physical and emotional control and an unforgiving political and ideological state apparatus that deprived them of basic freedoms and human rights.

We exiles yearn for more than Cuba’s political or economic metamorphosis. We long for reunification. We possess not only the economic power and political will to participate in its development, but also the moral imperative to help realize it.

Alberto F. Montero Valdes
Miami, Aug. 2, 2006

If you're interested in evolutionary psychology, as I am, you'll like this.

There is much talk these days about proportionality. Some commentators think Israel is violating the principle of proportionality in its engagement with Hezbollah. Dr Bill Vallicella disagrees. See here for his characteristically lucid discussion.

In his extended introduction to From the Gulag to the Killing Fields, [Paul] Hollander cites a study by the late Edward Shils of the similarities in beliefs and attitudes between the extreme ideological right and the extreme ideological left. His examples are drawn from Nazism and Communism, but the analysis applies to situations of ideological and political polarization more generally. Shils focuses on these characteristics: (1) Extreme hostility to “outgroups.” You are either for us or against us. Dialogue or civil conversation with the “enemy” is betrayal. (2) Complete submissiveness to “ingroups.” Our party and its leaders are to be supported without question. Criticism of our side is breaking ranks, and breaking ranks is treason. (3) All relationships are subordinated to the criterion of what will advance the “cause.” (4) The most important thing to know about the world is that it is divided by the conflict between them and us. (5) Purely theoretical ideas that do not clearly serve the cause are to be repressed. (6) The expression of sentiment is a sign of weakness. (7) We and our group can survive only by the manipulation of others, who are there to be manipulated. (8) The triumph of the cause will result in a harmonious world without conflict. There are some differences between causes, of course, as there were significant differences between Nazism and Communism. For all the talk about our polarized circumstance—about culture wars, the religious right, and threats posed by theocrats and secular humanists—we are far from those forms of political madness. Yet we deceive ourselves if we deny the possibility of being overwhelmed by fanaticism. It can happen here. Fanaticism, it is worth remembering, comes from fanum, referring to the pagan temple in which people worked themselves into an orgy of frenzied ecstasy. There is a seductive pleasure in hating, and hating absolutely. To judge by some of the vicious messages received in this office—and, I am sure, received also by those on the other side of controverted issues—more people than we would like to think are susceptible to that seduction. Securing the bonds of civility within which we engage our differences is a never-ending task.

(Richard John Neuhaus, “The Public Square,” First Things [June/July 2006]: 55-71, at 71)

If you've come here from Brian Leiter's blog, welcome. Enjoy your stay. Come back often. When you leave, please visit Brian Leiter, Academic Thug, which will show you what a creepy, despicable human being Leiter is. You might begin with this post. Leiter, who has all the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, is a master of psychological projection. Instead of taking responsibility for his own failings, insecurities, shortcomings, weaknesses, neuroses, animosities, and vices, he projects them onto others. If you explore the blog's archive, you will find not only many posts in which Leiter's abusiveness is exposed, but links to dozens of other blogs that show how Leiter is viewed by law professors, philosophers, attorneys, students, and others. Won't his children be proud when they Google his name many years from now? They'll realize that their father is, and always has been, a thug.

Addendum: People who know Leiter well are worried about his deteriorating mental condition. The poor man is lapsing into insanity. Jules Coleman, for example, who was my teacher many years ago, calls Leiter "complicated." That means nuts. Is it any wonder that Leiter idolizes Friedrich Nietzsche—and thinks that he alone among philosophers understands Nietzsche? It takes a basket case to understand a basket case.

Nick Schulz is editor of TCS Daily, which has published many of my essays. Here is Nick's review of a new book on economics.

Here.

To the Editor:

You do Alan Beggerow, the laid-off steelworker, a disservice when you use his life to illustrate the theme of nonworking, “idle” men.

In the first sentence, you say he “has stopped looking for work”; how can that be true if, as you say later, he recently applied for a job as an editor-writer?

Idle? Hardly. He reads two to three books a week, plays the piano and writes novels.

Mr. Beggerow’s life seems unusually rich, and I wish him the best in making ends meet.

Jean Kazez
Dallas, July 31, 2006

Here.

Alan Trammell. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)

Incubus, n. One of a race of highly improper demons who, though probably not wholly extinct, may be said to have seen their best nights. For a complete account of incubi and succubi, including incubæ and succubæ, see the Liber Demonorum of Protassus (Paris, 1328), which contains much curious information that would be out of place in a dictionary intended as a text-book for the public schools.

Victor Hugo relates that in the Channel Islands Satan himself—tempted more than elsewhere by the beauty of the women, doubtless—sometimes plays at incubus, greatly to the inconvenience and alarm of the good dames who wish to be loyal to their marriage vows, generally speaking. A certain lady applied to the parish priest to learn how they might, in the dark, distinguish the hardy intruder from their husbands. The holy man said they must feel his brow for horns; but Hugo is ungallant enough to hint a doubt of the efficacy of the test.

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

Here, for your downloading and reading pleasure, is the autumn 1980 issue of Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought. It contains a long essay—"The Literature of Ethics in the Twentieth Century"—by philosopher John Hospers. The cover contains an image of the great legal scholar Lon L. Fuller (1902-1978). If you haven't read Fuller's book The Morality of Law (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964; rev. ed. 1969), you ought to do so.

See here.

Barrett Wendell, in his admirable book on writing, points out that clearness and vividness often turn on mere specificity. To say that Major André was hanged is clear and definite; to say that he was killed is less definite, because you do not know in what way he was killed; to say that he died is still more indefinite because you do not even know whether his death was due to violence or to natural causes. If we were to use this statement as a varying symbol by which to rank writers for clearness, we might, I think, get something like the following: Swift, Macaulay, and Shaw would say that André was hanged. Bradley would say that he was killed. Bosanquet would say that he died. Kant would say that his mortal existence achieved its termination. Hegel would say that a finite determination of infinity had been further determined by its own negation.

(Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style [Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967], 30-1 [first published in 1954])

This is funny.

You're welcome, Peg.

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)
Thomas Anger (Liberty Corner)

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

"Fooled Around and Fell in Love" (1975).

I love James Taranto's Best of the Web Today, which is why I link to it every weekday. James has a feature called "Bottom Stories of the Day." Here are today's items:

"Venezuela Says It 'Will Not Cut Off Oil' to US"—headline, Financial Times, July 31

"Pub Will Not Close—Landlord"—headline, EDP24 (Norfolk, England), July 31

"Brad Pitt Will Not Marry Angelina Jolie, According to Family"—headline, Fashion Monitor Toronto, July 30

"Pakistan Will Not Model Madrassas on West Bengal System"—headline, Pakistan Daily Times, July 30

"Man Behind Failed Barney Fife Tribute Not Angry"—headline, Associated Press, July 31

I know that James—a journalist—is playing around, but sometimes saying that something did not occur says a lot, for it implies that it was expected to occur or that it usually does occur. The classic example is the cabin boy's notation in the ship's log: "Captain sober [i.e., not drunk] today." Another example: "Brian Leiter didn't abuse anyone today."

I feel sorry for people who weren’t around—or old enough to appreciate good music—in 1976. It’s the date Frampton Comes Alive! was released. This album—this event—took a generation by storm. Everyone loved it: male, female, old, young, black, white, city dweller, hayseed. It was new; it was fresh; it was exciting. Nobody could stop talking about it, reading about it, dancing to it. Radio stations played it nonstop. I was 19 years old. I’ll never forget how these songs affected me. That Peter Frampton was a polished guitarist only added to the charm, for I was learning the instrument with an eye toward becoming a rock star. He showed that the guitar can be gentle as well as powerful, melancholy as well as joyous, lush as well as spare.

The other day, while channel-surfing on my Dell 42-inch plasma high-definition television (read it and weep), I came across a performance by Frampton of “Do You Feel Like We Do.” I was transfixed. Frampton had short, gray hair, instead of the signature golden locks, but he looked great and sang with as much gusto as ever. He has lost nothing in his guitar playing, as far as I could tell. I have no idea whether any of the other musicians were the same, but they played the song beautifully. I was 19 again: innocent, wide-eyed, full of enthusiasm, with nothing to fear and everything to hope for. I wanted to call Vicki Stout and ask for a date, but she’s probably babysitting her grandchildren.

Does anyone remember Frampton Comes Alive!? Please share your stories.

Here.

See here.

Here is a fascinating New York Times story about commercial advertising. It raises a number of philosophical (conceptual) questions, such as (1) whether stereotypes are necessarily reality-based (you've probably heard it said that a stereotype wouldn't exist if there were not a grain of truth to it), (2) whether the same act can be right if performed by one person or group and wrong if performed by another person or group, and (3) whether there is such a thing as an authentically black (or Asian, or Hispanic, or white) person. If nothing else, the story shows the tensions that still exist among the various races in this country.

Here is a New York Times story about the conspiracy theorist at The University of Wisconsin—Madison.

See here.

To the Editor:

Re "A Senate Race in Connecticut" (editorial, July 30):

It is apparent that The Times's editorial board was not really positively endorsing Ned Lamont but rather was angry with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman for not challenging the Bush administration enough (11 paragraphs on Senator Lieberman, one on Mr. Lamont).

Senator Lieberman opposed the Bush tax cuts, opposed President Bush's Social Security privatization proposal, opposed Mr. Bush on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and voted with fellow Senate Democrats more than 90 percent of the time since President Bush has been in office. That is why virtually every major liberal organization in the Democratic Party has endorsed Senator Lieberman.

Your decision not to endorse Senator Lieberman seems to be explained by one sentence: "If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today."

But Senator Lieberman did exactly that not only once but many times publicly on the critical issues you cited.

He wrote legislation with Senator John McCain carrying out the 9/11 Commission's recommended ban on torture, consistent with the Geneva Convention. He specifically called the president's warrantless surveillance program illegal. He morally condemned and has publicly stated that he was "deeply outraged" by the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib. And he publicly stated in 2003 that if he were president, he would have replaced Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

I wonder why, given these facts, the editorial reached the conclusion that it did.

Lanny J. Davis
Washington, July 31, 2006
The writer, a longtime friend of Senator Lieberman, served as President Clinton's special counsel, 1996-98.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Davis is right. The Times is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

Here.

Ichor, n. A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of blood.

Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
Restrained the raging chief and said:
"Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled—
Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"
Mary Doke.

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

Shelbie kidnapped another turtle this morning. (See here for background.) I thought something was up when she didn't meet me at the street crossing. I noticed when she ran up that she was carrying something, which she promptly dropped. Sure enough, it was a turtle—just like this. This one was the size of a baseball cut in half. It's already over 90º Fahrenheit, with a forecast for 100º, so I couldn't leave the turtle there. I carried the critter half a mile back to the creek. I waited a few minutes to see what would happen. The turtle eventually poked its head out, looked around, and scampered (if that's the appropriate word for how a turtle moves) into the reeds.