California makes two

California State Supreme Court says same-sex couples have right to marry: "Gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry in California, the state Supreme Court said today in a historic ruling that could be repudiated by the voters in November."

The last clause is due to a potential ballot initiative that would change California's constitution, forbidding same-sex marriage. The Chron article explains the relevant history:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has twice vetoed same-sex marriage bills, citing a ballot initiative approved by more than 60 percent of the state's voters in 2000 that reaffirmed California's opposite-sex-only marriage law. That initiative was not a constitutional amendment, which requires more signatures to qualify for the ballot.

I believe a constitutional amendment in California also requires a 2/3 majority. Given that attitudes towards same-sex marriage have moved steadily left across the country over the past decade and the fact that a less radical law could only muster 60 percent of the voters, I'm pretty optimistic about this ballot initiative failing.

Lawyerly types can get the opinion here, In re Marriage Cases, S147999, available in both PDF and DOC formats.

We now return to your regularly-scheduled blog silence.

Idioms

Twice in less than a day I've seen someone online use the idiom "X is Y at best." and both times the person said something like "Saying X is disingenuous at best!" That leaves a remarkably narrow band of things that it could be at worst and seems to overlook the possibility of laziness, ignorance, or mistake. I guess, however, that my annoyance is based on a culture which places those latter three possibilities as better than lying. Maybe the people online come from a land where up is down, crime is good, and following the rules is only for the weak.

Also, The Ra is now four years and four days old. Hurray!

Summer Movies

Batman and Iron Man try to reach an accord regarding this summer. Link.

Rob Liefeld Sucks

Rob Liefeld is to comic art as Chris Claremont is to comic writing. If you're looking for the connection, it's that they're both among the most over hyped A-list artists in their field. They both got incredibly popular on a couple skills that helped them sell books like gangbusters. They both totally suck. Here's a list of Rob Liefeld's crap. I have to say that I haven't had a good laugh like that at the internet in a long while. Link.

Taking a break

Every time I go to write a post, it's either (a) a completely inadequate response to the immolation of the feminist blogosphere, or (b) utterly trivial. I'm going to take this as a sign that it's time for a blog vacation. I'll be back sometime in May.

30 Rock

They just mentioned "The Uncanny Valley." Rad.

So Tender

I love bad photos of John McCain. Let's put some good captions in the comments!



Link.

Quick debunking: The rape rate

Myth: The rape rate in the US has fallen 25% over the last 25 years.

Example: I found this rather bizarre claim on a YouTube video arguing that, first, the rape rate had fallen, and second, this was because of the increased availability of pornography. Hence, third, YouTube should allow pornography. Not only is this a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but it didn't even sound true.

Response: Historical statistics on rape are surprisingly hard to find online. 1960-1998 data are here, and 2004 data here. In 1980, the rape rate was about 36 incidents per 100,000 people. In 2004, the rape rate was 32 per 100,000. That's a decrease of about 9%.

Now, in about 1992, the rape rate peaked somewhere around 42 or 43. This makes for a 25% reduction. But focussing on this period of time is completely disingenuous. In the early 1960s, before the lifting of indecency laws allowed the pornography industry to flourish, the rape rate was less than 10 per 100,000. So, since pornography became easily available, the rape rate has seen a net increase of 200%.

This is evidence supporting the claim that pornography encourages, rather than discourages, rape. But it's far from conclusive. There are simply too many other factors that aren't being taken into account to draw that conclusion.

Martha Nussbaum is omnipresent

How is this woman so prolific? Does she just not sleep?

Obama/Jay-Z '08?

Link.

Anti-intellectual and the classism of American education

In the context of the clucking about Obama saying that poor, rural Americans are bitter (which, hello, is entirely true, as anyone who's lived in a community populated in large part by poor, rural Americans can tell you), nojojojo shares the hypothesis of progress author, Joe Bageant:

The result of all this [the class divisions in the American education system], according to Bageant? People from rural, poor communities have been virtually programmed for generations to listen not to their own reasoning, but to whoever speaks loudest and most authoritatively on any subject. They respond to simple, emotionally charged messages — even when the the issues that the messages involve are complex and nuanced. They resent, and therefore distrust, those Americans who had greater access to education, or who were taught to question as they were not; Bageant believes this is less about anti-intellectualism/anti-elitism than it is simple schadenfreude [sic; I think the blogger means `resentment'] towards the more fortunate. And they’ve developed the perfectly reasonable survival mechanism of listening to whoever seems willing to help them, regardless of whether those people actually are helpful. Bageant notes cases of conservative politicians who visited rural areas and shared a beer with poor constituents — then turned right around and instituted policies that made health care, housing, food, and education unaffordable for those same people. Frequently these politicians got elected multiple times in spite of this. Loyalty, after all, is one of the values their constitutents were taught in school.

In certain respects, this is very much like the thesis of Richard Hofstadter's Anti-intellectualism in American life. Hofstadter would disagree, though, with the claim that anti-intellectualism isn't, well, anti-intellectualism. There is, he thinks, a close link between anti-intellectualism and egalitarianism.

Supes

Every time I hear someone argue why Superman sucks, I suspect they haven't read many Superman stories, have a lack of imagination, or both. Link.

Gamers Dissapoint Me Once Again

I know, it's the internet, and I really should have expectations in the basement as far as good debate goes. Still, the reactions to this interview with N'Gai Croal about the controversial Resident Evil 5 trailer are pretty abysmal. It's not that most gamers seem to disagree with Croal that bothers me, it's that they seem completely incapable of engaging his points directly. The number of people that respond with "it's just a game" when he explains in the interview itself why that's not a sufficient answer it just disheartening.

A weird argument from Clinton supporters

I've seen this line from Clinton supporters before, and it was just as bizarre:

Obama's advantage hinges on a system that, whatever the actual intentions behind it, seems custom-made to hobble Democratic chances in the fall. It depends on ignoring one of the central principles of American electoral politics, one that will be operative on a state-by-state basis this November, which is that the winner takes all. If the Democrats ran their nominating process the way we run our general elections, Sen. Hillary Clinton would have a commanding lead in the delegate count, one that will only grow more commanding after the next round of primaries, and all questions about which of the two Democratic contenders is more electable would be moot.

How do you infer from `Clinton would beat Obama in a winner-take-all electoral system' to `Clinton would beat McCain in a winner-take-all electoral system'? Or from `Obama would not beat Clinton in a winner-take-all electoral system' to `Obama would not beat McCain in a winner-take-all electoral system'? Obama is not McCain. Clinton is not McCain. And a majority of Democratic voters is not a majority of registered or likely or expected or actual voters.

Bad Meme, Bad!

Ok, I was not an early Obama supporter. I was an Edwards guy first and was concerned that Obama was a really good speaker with not a lot of substantial policies backing up the oratory. This was, of course, a year ago. Then the primaries began and bit by bit, whether through the necessity of having to answer a grilling by the press or just because he was releasing plans as they came together in his policy shop, Obama filled out his policy initiatives. After Edwards' ship sank I spent a while not supporting either Obama or Clinton because I believed, and still believe, that they're both similarly liberal and would both make fine executives. Then I got moved by a couple Obama speeches and Clinton's campaign started doing some really indefensible things, like advocating that she get delegates from Michigan where Obama wasn't even on the ballot and continuing to employ the odious Mark Penn, and I became an Obama supporter. I still think Clinton herself would be a fine executive, but I won't support the campaign that she's running. Anyway, it was endlessly annoying to me to hear a Clinton supporter at dinner last night use the old "Obama is all rhetoric" meme. Sadly, this is also something I hear other supporters online and even the Clinton campaign itself argue sometimes. Look, he was a relatively new politician at the start of this process and his policies were admittedly thin, that that's simply no longer true. I think there's plenty of room to disagree with Obama's specific policies, and indeed on some I do, and it's completely legitimate to argue that he won't be able to pass some of his initiatives, but let's have that debate rather than recycling arguments from 2007 which aren't relevant anymore.

The warm, fuzzy, unthreatening sort of radical

I love Martin Luther King. First, he is without a doubt in my mind the most brilliant American orator of the twentieth century, and quite possibly the greatest since Abraham Lincoln. Second, he words are not just moving; they are deep and insightful. `Letter from Birmingham city jail' is one of the great philosophical treatises on civil disobedience.

And third, King was truly radical in his opposition to racism, poverty, and war.

That last sentence might be kind of surprising. In the narrative I got in high school American history, King was the moderate, keeping the civil rights movement from spiraling off into the violence and destruction of Malcolm X and, later, The Black Panthers. King was the safe alternative, who wanted us all to get along. He wasn't going to shoot at you, or burn your house down, or make a pass at your wife. He was the Nice Black Man who, after centuries of being stomped on, was politely asking for those evil racists to please take their boot off his face.

This narrative is almost 100% bullshit. It's true that King and X disagreed deeply over the use of violence. But King didn't speak with a voice of submissive pleading. He didn't ask for improvement. He demanded justice, at whatever costs necessary. Jim Crow was his most famous enemy, but it was far from the only one. King fought the de facto apartheid of the Northern cities, the invasion of Viet Nam, and the way capitalism ground down communities into a fine, atomic powder of poverty. (Obviously, I'm not as good with the metaphors as he was.) King was systematically and radically opposed to virtually every aspect of the American and international power structure. And on the fortieth anniversary of his death (which was yesterday, but I was busy and the past two weeks have been exhausting -- sorry Dr. King) it's vital that we respect the radicality of his vision.

Some links:

1. Kai Wright with more on this theme:




His 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' is in fact a blunt rejection of letting the establishment set the terms of social change. 'The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation,' he wrote, later adding, 'We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.'





2. The NewsHour segment from last night, with three academics who work on race issues and Cory Booker, the progressive mayor of Newark, NJ. (Booker is undoubtedly someone to keep an eye on. I predict that this man is going to be one of the great activists of the 21st century.)

Pregnant husband

Watching the news last night, I was horribly depressed to find out that Iraq is, once again, on the verge of a civil war, and a large chunk of antarctic ice is about to break off.

This story, about a transman carrying his child, cheered me right up:

To our neighbors, my wife, Nancy, and I don’t appear in the least unusual. To those in the quiet Oregon community where we live, we are viewed just as we are -- a happy couple deeply in love. Our desire to work hard, buy our first home, and start a family was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would carry our child.

I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy. Unlike those in same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships, or civil unions, Nancy and I are afforded the more than 1,100 federal rights of marriage. Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights. Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.

Ten years ago, when Nancy and I became a couple, the idea of us having a child was more dream than plan. I always wanted to have children. However, due to severe endometriosis 20 years ago, Nancy had to undergo a hysterectomy and is unable to carry a child. But after the success of our custom screen-printing business and a move from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest two years ago, the timing finally seemed right. I stopped taking my bimonthly testosterone injections. It had been roughly eight years since I had my last menstrual cycle, so this wasn’t a decision that I took lightly. My body regulated itself after about four months, and I didn’t have to take any exogenous estrogen, progesterone, or fertility drugs to aid my pregnancy.

Knowing there are people in the world this courageous really restores my optimism. Yes, the next few decades are going to suck. But we might just be able to pull through.

Post!

Ezra has a very creepy discovery in buying his Wii. Link.

Life: The Musical

If only this happened more often. Actually, now that I think about it, there are some aspects of life which might be made slightly more awkward if set to music. Link.

Way To Go Huck!

I've long thought that Mike Huckabee would have been close to the worst, if not *the* worst, person to win the presidency out of the initial field, but was conversely among the most likable guys running. Even though he's out of the race now and every political instinct should probably be screaming to find some way to help McCain's chances (and his own political career), ol' Huck is still totally decent. Good show sir. Link.

It's not as simple as `let them fail'

I've seen some progressive and mainstream voices denouncing the `too big to fail' Fed bailout of Bear Stearns a week ago. I'm much more ambivalent about this sort of thing.

The financial sector of the American economy functions much like a private toll road system. Some roads -- like the one from your savings to your neighbor's new mortgage or small business loan -- are small, low-volume, and highly local. Others, like Bear Stearns, are superhighways, moving tens of billions of dollars back and forth all over the place in both financial and physical space. Bad loans, in this metaphor, are like cars with severe mechanical problems -- no breaks, bad transmissions, maybe a couple cylinders aren't firing. And when lots of them break down in the middle of the superhighway, it gets clogged and slows down. The dead cars have to be cleared out, which adds to the operating expenses of the superhighway.

Now, the superhighway can, as it were, only allow cars that pass mechanical checks to use it. This keeps everything moving along nicely, but it's sacrificing some profit. More risk-friendly superhighway operators aren't going to have such checks, betting that the additional costs from cleaning up after the failures of bad cars will be less than the additional profit from having a higher number of cars move through their system.

Bear Stearns failed, essentially, because it lost this bet. As traffic ground to a halt on the Bear Sterns superhighway due to all the broken cars littering the roadway, the other superhighways closed their connections to keep the backup from spreading to their systems. (Imagine you have an east-west superhighway passed underneath a north-south highway, with a complex series of ramps that allow you to move from one to the other. Now imagine there are barriers that can be lowered to prevent cars from using those ramps. That's essentially what the other giant securities banks did to Bear Stearns late last week.)

This is good, at least in the short term, for the other superhighways, because it keeps them from grounding to a halt along with Bear Stearns. But it's bad, in the medium term, for the economy as a whole, for exactly the same reason suddenly shutting down one of the major superhighways through the middle of a large city is bad. Money/cars still need to move around. Either traffic will be diverted onto other superhighways, which will likely push them beyond their efficient capacity and slow them, and hence the system as a whole, down. Or people will, as it were, just stay home, and not bother trying to fight the nightmare traffic. Money won't move from the people who have it to the people who want it to do things, so people do less things -- don't open new businesses, don't expand existing business, don't build new houses, etc. In either case, economic growth slows down, and there's a potential for recession.

At least, that's the `too big to fail' theory. Closing fifty feet of surface street in the middle of a residential neighbourhood probably isn't going to do much damage -- the failure of small economic players, at least individually, might be inconvenient, but the system will adapt pretty easily. Shutting down a massive superhighway that carries a significant percentage of all the city's traffic will have complex effects that will ripple through the traffic network as a whole, and possibly even damage it severely -- letting Bear Stearns fail could have made the recession even worse.

So, did the Fed do the right thing, in essentially paying another superhighway operator to clean up the mess Bear Stearns made of its system by letting on all the junk cars? Well, they acted to prevent a medium term disaster. The clogged superhighway will be cleaned up. But the incentive to create such clogs will not have been removed. If superhighway operators knew that they would be the primary losers when a massive traffic jam developed on their superhighway, they would be likely to sacrifice some profits and allow only cars that passed mechanical checks onto their part of the system. But they don't know this. They know the exact opposite: that they can create a huge mess, and the Federal government will buy them out. According to a purely self-interested conception of reason, they have no good reason not to just do the same thing again.

It's this last point that critics of `too big to fail' are trying to get at. Or, at least, I think it's the best related point. With a prevalent short term profits mentality, a pure free market system will cease to function efficiently as these sorts of disastrous decisions are made again and again. A more virtuous business culture will help, but the temptation to tempt fate might still be too large. (Remember, Bear Stearns was enormously successful until it finally imploded. Even without the bailout, the former CEO could have walked away from the mess he created a ridiculously wealthy man.) And stopgap, emergency intervention by the government is just that -- it might avert the most looming disasters, but it completely misses the underlying cause of the problem. What the system needs, I think, is vigorous regulation -- the kind that pretty much made these disasters impossible in the '50s, '60s, and '70s.

Does the welfare state hurt us all?

Free marketers like to tell a story that is prima facie plausible, and suggests that life under a system of the redistribution of wealth is worse for everyone, even the poor, than life under a free-market system. The story goes something like this: The high tax rate needed to appropriate wealth from the people who produce it takes away the incentive to produce more wealth. So, under a distributive system, less wealth is produced overall, and since there's less to go around, the people who would have benefited from the redistributive system are actually worse off.

There are obviously some huge gaps in the reasoning there, and I've some suppressed some very, very important ceteris paribus (`all other things being equal') clauses. Ignore those for the moment. The story revolves around the claim that, under a distributive system, less wealth is produced overall. This is an empirical claim. Is it true? Here are two graphs from the US Department of Commerce that suggest not.

These graphs show the percentage change in the US GDP over the past several decades, including during the rise and fall of the Roosevelt-Johnson redistribution system. GDP is a measure of the size of the economy, and is one rough way of measuring how much wealth the country has. The percentage change in GDP over a given period of time shows how much the economy grew -- how much total wealth increased -- over that period of time. If the free marketer's claim is right, then ceteris paribus, percentage change in GDP should be less under a more radical restributive system (with more regulation, higher marginal tax rates, etc.) and greater under a system closer to the free market ideal.

 

 

And the exact opposite is the case. During the height of the Roosevelt-Johnson system, the US economy actually grew a little bit faster than after Reagan started to dismantle it. The '70s, with the highest marginal tax rates the strictest regulation, actually saw the highest economic growth rates of the past half-century. Since Reagan started lowering tax rates and removing regulation, the economy has seen relatively mild growth.

This isn't a Quick Refutation, since I haven't shown that the crucial ceteris paribus clause is satisfied. And it seems quite likely that it's not -- there have been wars and changes in energy costs and all sorts of things that can make a difference. But this does place a burden on free marketers: if regulation and taxation are supposed to be bad for the economy as a whole, then why did our economy do better when it was more highly regulated and highly taxed?

I think I'm voting for Obama

I'm still wary of his policies. But yesterday, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, Obama spoke about race and class to Americans as though they were adults.

Obama gets a lot of flak for campaigning on a supposedly nebulous rhetoric of meaningless hope and dangerous bipartisanship. I think his speech yesterday should (not will, unfortunately) finally refute that criticism. Obama's hope and unity is much the same as King's was. From `I have a dream':

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

The hope is that, despite our conflicting interests, the emotional tension, and the deep-seated grudges, a real conversation, and the real understanding that comes with it, is still possible. Black and White, rich and poor, native-born and immigrant -- even progressive and conservative -- aren't so different that we can't live together as a community. To say that it's going to be awkward for a while is an understatement. (The dramatisation the Daily Show did last night was fantastic.) But we can, and should, still try.

A Couple Links

Obama's response to all the flak about his former pastor. I think he does a good job of diffusing all the fuss, but then again I'm not one of the people that was so terribly offended in the first place. Link.

Do The Test. I'd just like to point out that I failed. Link.

Quick debunking: Singular `they'

Myth: `They' is always a plural pronoun, never a singular pronoun, and hence it is grammatically incorrect to use it as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. (`The student turned their paper in a day late.')

Example: David Gelernter's recent anti-feminist grammar prescriptivist rant

He-or-she'ing added so much ugly dead weight to the language that even the Establishment couldn't help noticing. So feminist authorities went back to the drawing board. Unsatisfied with having rammed their 80-ton 16-wheeler into the nimble sports-car of English style, they proceeded to shoot the legs out from under grammar--which collapsed in a heap after agreement between subject and pronoun was declared to be optional. "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, they are about to address the congregation." How many of today's high school English teachers would mark this sentence wrong, or even "awkward"? (Show of hands? Not one?) Yet such sentences skreak like fingernails on a blackboard.

Response:

Language Log suggests that `they' is used as a bound variable -- it doesn't pick out any one person or particular group, but instead ranges over some set of people or some set of groups of people. `It' can work analogously, ranging over individual things as a variable rather than a temporary name for some one thing. `He' and `she', by contrast, are not variables. They're temporary names, and have to pick out some one person, with some one gender. (Note that the two examples -- mine and Gelernter's -- can both be read this way.)

Still not happy with what you might be tempted to call a crazy revisionist grammar of `they'? Shakespere used singular they, as did Jane Austen.

Academic nerdiness

As an academic in the humanities, a great deal of my research involves tracking down 20-50 page papers published in professional journals. When I was an undergrad, this was mostly a two-step process: First, EBSCOhost and other such search engines would give you matches based on author and title names; occasionally it would also have an abstract, so you could tell whether or not it was worthwhile. Second, you would stalk through the periodicals section of the library, three-page list of citations in hand, tracking down the library's archive copies of all those journals.

By the time I got to Notre Dame, those two steps had been combined. I rarely have to go track down a physical copy of a journal to read an article -- academic search engines now include links directly to electronic archives, and I can typically read or download a PDF of the desired article within about 30 seconds. In preparing the list for my oral exam, I've had to request a handful of articles that were only published in books, one or two published in articles to which my library did not happen to have a subscription, and only one where I had to go down to the basement to get the physical copy of the journal (because the electronic version was of the wrong article).

So today my research consists largely of downloading 5-12 PDFs, skimming them for relevance, and arranging most of them into various folders and subfolders depending on which project they're relevant to. As a result, I have approximately 300 PDFs in various places on my computer. (Think about that for a second: on the order of a 10,000-page library right on my laptop. Thirty years ago, that would have required a small but very, very strudy trunk to transport. Today it all fits very comfortably in my backpack.)

This creates an archiving problem. Obviously many (most) of the projects I work on are closely related. And it would be nice to be able to be able to easily search through and arrange and re-arrange all those documents on the fly. Which is why I was really, really excited when I discovered links to Papers and iPapers.

And then really, really disappointed when I realised they're only for Macs. I guess this means I need to break down and finally buy my new laptop.

Watchmen Screens

Of course, the release of these photos of the cast of Watchmen has brought out all the angry nerds who are ready to boycot the film because Nightowl isn't fat enough, but I don't think a couple pictures can really tell you all you need to know about a movie. It's amazing enough that this is actually happening at all. Link.

P.S. If you didn't know, Watchmen is teh awesome.

Ultimate Universe No More?!

There have been lots of rumors over the past several months that Mavel Comics would be ending their "Ultimate" line of comics. Launched back in 2000 with Ultimate Spiderman (written by Brian Bendis, who is amazingly still on the title), the purpose of the Ultimate universe was to create books which shed all the weighty continuity of the mainstream Marvel U. as well as some of the more hooky facets of that world that crept up over the years. Sure, radioactive spiders (ok, *genetically modified spiders*!) still grant super spider-based powers but the idea was that the world was a bit more grounded than the 616 universe (that's the mainline universe where most Marvel books occur). In short, it was awesome. Well, Ultimate X-Men had some serious ups and downs, but there was lots of good stuff there. In the last couple years, however, the line appears to have lost some steam and most books are just relying on introducing "Ultimate" versions of old characters. In addition, several things which were signatures of the Ultimate U. have been transplanted back into the 616 (the recent reboot of Amazing Spidey is a lot like Ultimate Spidey, etc.).

Anyway, I think it's much more likely that, as this article says, Marvel is just going to shake things up drastically rather than kill off the line. By all accounts the lines sells very well, it's just stagnating a bit creatively. Hopefully this doesn't mean massive killings for characters, which is just the laziest way to grab people's attention, but I'm intrigued with where they could go. While the Ultimate U. was supposed to be more in tune with the "real" world, maybe they'll reinvision it instead as a world which actually moves forward, as opposed to the 616 which is pretty much trapped in sliding scale of a dozen years or so. Maybe "more real" doesn't have to mean "more like the real world" if it means "things happen, and they matter."

Scary McCain

No specific thoughts right now, but this might be the best screen grab ever. Thanks Ezra.

A nice statement of apatheism

From John Wilkins:

no matter what other beliefs an intelligent person may hold, so long as they accept the importance of science and the need for a secular society, we simply do not care if they also like the taste of ear wax, having sex with trees, or believing in a deity or two.

The seven deadly sins test for institutional corruption

Here's the idea: you pick an institution of choice, and run through the list of the seven deadly sins/cardinal virtues. The ratio of vices to virtues exemplified by the institution is a rough (and tongue-in-cheek) indication of how corrupt the institution is.

For example, let's take the American news media. I'll bold the one in each pair exemplified by the media, and give a little explanation of what the pair means, just in case you haven't seen Se7en lately.

1. Pride or humility
   
   Pride is the desire (or belief) to be better and more important than others. Pride can be exemplified as vanity (pride of appearance or physical beauty), as pride of intellect, or by some other standard of dessert.
   
2. Envy or kindness
   
   Envy isn't a desire for material goods (that's greed, covered below). We don't have a good English term for this vice, I think; the German Schadenfreude is better. Roughly speaking, envy is the desire (satisfied or unsatisfied) for others to suffer.
   
3. Wrath or forgiveness
   
   Wrath is an uncontrolled hatred, anger, or desire for (disproportionate, unjust, or undeserved) revenge. The media don't typically exemplify this vice directly (except when it comes to immigration and powerful women), but do encourage it.
   
4. Sloth or diligence
   
   Sloth is laziness, but also idleness and a lack of zealousness more generally -- being unwilling to pursue and lacking enthusiasm for one's vocation.
   
5. Greed or charity
   
   Greed is the desire for material goods, especially wealth. The object of desire need not be owned by another, and greed need not be accompanied by a lack of concern for justice (although it often is).
   
6. Gluttony or temperance
   
   Gluttony is the wasteful over-consumption of consumable goods, especially food. Gluttony is exemplified both in the act of over-consumption itself, but also in anticipating over-consumption. Like wrath, gluttony is not typically exemplified directly by the news media, but it is certainly encouraged in viewers.
   
7. Lust or chastity
   
   Strictly speaking, lust is any form of love for another creature that is given precedence over love for God. As such, it's more of a `qualitative' vice than the `quantitative' ones of greed and gluttony. But today we tend to think of lust as another `quantitative' vice -- an excessive desire for sex, in particular. I prefer to understand lust as the objectification and commercialisation of love, especially sexual love.
   

Final tally for the American news media: 7-0.

Two election notes

1. It's going to come down to the convention

I've had a feeling this was going to be the case since before Super Tuesday, but now enough states have voted to see just how tight the race is. CNN has a delegate count applet that lets you fiddle with the delegate pledges. I started by giving Clinton 55% of all the delegates in each of the states whose votes have not yet been counted. (Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Texas haven't been entered into the set of fixed counts yet.) I chose 55% as a healthy and statistically significant (large enough to drown out the noise from sudden minor emergencies, people forgetting to vote, the polling machine craps out, that sort of thing) but still not overwhelming victory.

Clinton ends up with 1,899 pledged delegates; Obama with 1,898. That leaves Clinton the front-runner by a hair, and 126 delegates short of the number required to secure the nomination.

Now swing the 55% victories the other direction. Clinton ends up with 1,800, Obama with 1,997. Again, the front-runner is still short -- although in this case only by 28 delegates.

There have been plenty of victories with larger margins than this, of course. So Pam is simply wrong when she says `the math doesn’t favor any possibility of a Clinton win on the delegate side in the remaining contests'. First, it's far from mathematically impossible for either candidate to win. And, second, while it is unlikely that Clinton will secure a sufficiently large number of overwhelming victories, it's about as unlikely that Obama will secure a sufficiently large number of overwhelming victories.

I'm tempted to say: The primaries in the remaining states will just make the intraparty fighting more acrimonious and drain resources that would be better used squashing McCain like the pandering warmonger he is. Democrats should call off the remaining primaries, just cool off until the convention, and let the superdelegates decide who the nominee will be, since they're going to be doing it anyways.

I'm going to say: The primary in Indiana (exactly two months from today, if I remember correctly) is just going to continue this stalemate. So I don't feel obligated to choose between two slightly-left-of-center candidates whose campaigning has left me pretty disgusted. I'll either vote for Edwards (he's been getting a handful of percentage points in primaries over the past month, so I'm guessing he'll still be on the ballot) or Kucinich (ditto, without the handful of percentage points) or not at all.

2. I wish John Edwards hadn't dropped out

And not just because I genuinely wanted him president. Before Edwards dropped out, the media were (unfairly) focussed on Obama and Clinton, but there was little antagonism between them or their partisans. Clinton (and Edwards) partisans criticised Obama for the gap in his health care plan, Obama (and Edwards) partisans criticised Clinton for not renouncing her vote for the invasion of Iraq, and so on. Occasionally some issues of racism or sexism came up (some reactions to Clinton getting a little misty-eyed right around the New Hampshire primary were, to put it mildly, weird), but things were civil.

Then Edwards dropped out, we had Super Tuesday, and an all-out Democratic civil war errupted. Blogs I normally have the utmost respect for have degenerated, and do little more than repeat the disingenuous (and often racist or sexist) spitballs generated by the campaigns and right-wing lunatics. Rational discussion -- whether over the small but critical policy differences, the quality of campaign strategies, or the significance of racist or sexist comments -- has become virtually impossible.

I don't think Edwards leaving the field caused this to happen. Eight years of Bush has made Democrats jumpy and, quite naturally, they project the qualities of their ideal presidential candidate onto one name or another, even despite evidence to the contrary. (Aside: The NewsHour has been interviewing potential voters from highly contested states once or twice a week since before Super Tuesday. At first I watched these segments with interest. After a few of them, though, I realised that everyone involved was simply repeating the talking points handed down by their campaign, and many of the interviewees demonstrated spectacular factual ignorance. For example, there was one woman in Ohio who supported Obama because, she said, his health care plan covered more people than Clinton's. Another woman in Ohio claimed that, if Obama had been in the Senate five years ago, he would have voted to invade Iraq. I still watch these segments occasionally, but mostly they're just depressing.) The media ... well, are simply insane, and have badly fucked up this phase of the campaign in innumerable ways for over a year. And suggesting that you'll stoop to less-than-honest technical manoeuvres to secure the nomination (Florida and Michigan from the Clinton side; effectively eliminating superdelegates from the Obama side) that prompt accusations of `changing the rules in the middle of the game!' haven't helped.

What Edwards could have done, even if he was consistently getting only 10% or so of the votes in each state, is play mediator. There's no major public figure willing to honestly call out both Obama and Clinton when they or their campaigns pull inappropriate shit. There's no-one who can say `Obama's domestic policies have some serious problems and Clinton's foreign policies have some serious problems' and be taken seriously by everyone. Or that the media's sudden realisation that they've been giving Obama a free pass doesn't mean it's time to suck up to Clinton instead. And, most importantly, Edwards could have told people to calm down. Democrats can do a lot of good things in this country if, and only if, they learn the difference between constructive internal criticism and a circular firing squad.

Quick debunking: The college education gender gap

Myth: Colleges are facing a `man shortage'

Example: Weekly standard, 2006:

At colleges across the country, 58 women will enroll as freshmen for every 42 men. And as the class of 2010 proceeds toward graduation, the male numbers will dwindle. Because more men than women drop out, the ratio after four years will be 60--40, according to projections by the Department of Education.

The problem isn't new-women bachelor's degree--earners first outstripped men in 1982. But the gap, which remained modest for some time, is widening. More and more girls are graduating from high school and following through on their college ambitions, while boys are failing to keep pace and, by some measures, losing ground.

Response:

The percentage of men 25 years and older with a Bachelor's Degree or higher has risen steadily since 1940, and continues to rise. In particular, while only 7.3 percent of men 25 and older in 1950 had at least a Bachelor's degree (that would be around the time all the WW2 vets who went to college under the GI Bill started to graduate), in 2000 26.1 percent of men 25 and older had at least a Bachelor's degree.

For comparison, in 1950, the percentage of women 25 and older with at least a Bachelor's degree was 5.2 percent; in 2000, 22.9 percent.

Education is not a zero-sum game; the statistic is only alarming if you think that, for every woman who has a Bachelor's degree, a man is prevented from having one, or vice-versa. Every decade for the past sixty years, both more men and more women have gone to college than before.

Source: US census, A Half-Century of Learning: Historical Statistics on Educational Attainment in the United States, 1940 to 2000, Table 2 (XLS).

Le tribunal FISA ? Ce ne pas du tout démocratique !

Par Glenn Greenwald:

But for decades, the FISA court -- for obvious reasons -- was considered to be one of the great threats to civil liberties, the very antithesis of how an open, democratic system of government ought to function. The FISA court was long the symbol of how severe are the incursions we've allowed into basic civil liberties and open government.

The FISC is a classicly Kafka-esque court that operates in total secrecy. Only the Government, and nobody else, is permitted to attend, participate, and make arguments. Only the Government is permitted to access or know about the decisions issued by that court. Rather than the judges being assigned randomly and therefore fairly, they are hand-picked by the Chief Justice (who has been a GOP-appointee since FISA was enacted) and are uniformly the types of judges who evince great deference to the Government. As a result, the FISA court has been notorious for decades for mindlessly rubber-stamping every single Government request to eavesdrop on whomever they want.

Mais le désastre démocratique n'est pas seulement avec le tribunal. Il est aussi avec la «fenêtre Overton». Greenwald continue:

Yet now, embracing this secret, one-sided, slavishly pro-government court defines the outermost liberal or "pro-civil-liberty" view permitted in our public discourse. And indeed, as reports of imminent (and entirely predictable) House Democratic capitulation on the FISA bill emerge, the FISA court is now actually deemed by the establishment to be too far to the Left -- too much of a restraint on our increasingly omnipotent surveillance state. Anyone who believes that we should at the very least have those extremely minimal -- really just symbolic -- limitations on our Government's ability to spy on us in secret is now a far Leftist.

C'est formidable, la démocratie américaine, non?

Doing Moller Okin one better: Self-ownership is inconsistent

In the process of writing and reflecting on a recent post, I realised that libertarianism is inconsistent with a reasonable assumption about the existence of unwilling dependency workers. This post is a self-contained presentation of that argument.

Libertarianism, as that is understood by the political philosophers who call themselves libertarians, is based on two principles: self-ownership and non-interference. First, all persons own themselves.

(x)(Person(x) -> Owns(x,x))

Second, if x's claim of ownership of y would interfere with z's self-ownership (for example, x steals z's car), then x does not own y.

(x)(y)((Person(x) ^ (Ez)((Person(z) ^ Owns(x,y)) -> -Owns(z,z))) -> -Owns(x,y))

Call the conjunction of these two the general principle of self-ownership (GPSO).

Suppose Helen is an unwilling dependence worker: she does not want to care for Ben, her adult son with muscular dystrophy. However, without Helen's care, Ben is trapped in bed, and cannot exercise self-ownership. Hence, if Helen owns herself, Ben does not own himself. On the other hand, if Ben does own himself, it is because Helen was somehow forced, against her will, to care for him. So then Helen does not own herself. In either case, the second conjunct of the GPSO then implies that the first conjunct is false. This can be formalised:

(UDW) (Ex)(Ey)(Person(x) ^ Person(y) ^ (Owns(x,x) <-> -Owns(y,y)))
UDW + GPSO |- -GPSO

Strictly speaking, this does not show that the GPSO is inconsistent. But it does show that it is inconsistent with a fairly obvious fact about humanity: without care, often from unwilling dependency workers, dependent individuals cannot exercise the autonomy on which libertarianism rests. Given this fact of dependency, GPSO has to be rejected.

We Are Wizards

Harry Potter Mania, documented. Link.

Thanks PA.

A short argument for political correctness

(1) One is being politically correct if one is deliberately avoiding using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason.
(2) In general, one should deliberately avoid using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason.
(3) Hence, in general, one should be politically correct.

Let's take a look at the good reason clause, since it's actually doing some important work here.

Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor said many things that others found offensive. I don't think they said many things that others found derogatory, but maybe that's just because I haven't listened to enough of them. But, without the good reason clause, one would come to the conclusion, from 2, that Bruce and Pryor did not act as they should have. And I don't think that sounds right.

We could fix this by dropping the offensiveness condition, so being politically correct amounts to only avoiding language that is derogatory. But not everything offensive is derogatory -- a crude comment about your coworker's breasts might be meant as a compliment, but would still be offensive, and would not be politically correct. Similarly, to talk about lynching a black person doesn't seem to be derogatory, but it's still offensive.

So leave the offensiveness condition in, and the good reason clause. Bruce and Pryor had good reason to be offensive, I think -- they were challenging a racist, classist, and sexually repressive social order. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any good reason to use (as opposed to mention) the phrase `nappy-headed hos'. There was no good reason for Imus' use of that phrase, in particular, so we can still say that he did not do what he should have.

One might try to claim that challenging the oppressive social order of political correctness itself is a good reason to use offensive or derogatory language. This seems to be the typical strategy when someone complains semicoherently about political correctness -- that liberals who insist on political correctness are being intolerant, or some such. This claim assumes that it's oppressive to say that one should deliberately avoid using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason. That is, it assumes that 2 is oppressive. If the opposite of `oppressive' is `liberting', then the claim assumes that there's something liberating about offending or derogating people without good reason. This sounds downright bizarre to me; at the very least, it can't be assumed.

Flag Pins

I don't have strong feelings on wearing flag pins. I mean, I don't think it's a particularly bad thing to do, but I also don't think it should be a big deal if someone opted not to. Indeed, I respect Obama for taking a stand on what is a relatively minor issue. What I love even more, however, is hand wringing by a republican Congressman about Obama's pin hating while not wearing a pin himself. Priceless. Link.

K(p) & -K(K(p))

A fascinating short piece in Salon about some neuroscience work on knowing -- from the `aha!' moment when we recognise that an explanation fits the data to the certainty attached to deeply cherished beliefs. What's tricky here is that this self-conscious experience of knowing isn't, the author thinks, a rational or truly conscious process.

In his bestselling "Blink," New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell describes gut feelings as "perfectly rational," as "thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously" than conscious thought. But he's flying in the face of present-day understanding of brain behavior. Gut feelings and intuitions, the Eureka moment and our sense of conviction, represent the conscious experiences of unconsciously derived feelings.

Look at the feeling of knowing in the light of evolution. It explains how we learn. Compare it with the body's various sensory systems. It is through sight and sound that we are in contact with the world around us. Similarly, we have extensive sensory functions for assessing our interior milieu. When our body needs food, we feel hunger. When we are dehydrated and require water, we feel thirsty. If we have sensory systems to connect us with the outside world, and sensory systems to notify us of our internal bodily needs, it seems reasonable that we would also have a sensory system to tell us what our minds are doing.

To be an effective, powerful reward, the feeling of conviction must feel like a conscious and deliberate conclusion. As a result, the brain has developed a constellation of mental sensations that feel like thoughts but aren't. These involuntary and uncontrollable feelings are the mind's sensations; as sensations they are subject to a wide variety of perceptual illusions common to all sensory systems. Understanding this couldn't be more important to our sense of ourselves and the world around us.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Garfield is a really popular punching bag these days. While I feel that most of the people hating on the strip are perhaps outside of its intended age group, I have to admit it doesn't make me chuckle like it did when I was 8. Taking the cat out of the strip, however, is hilarity itself. Link.

Thanks PA.

Formalising Moller Okin

In chapter 4 of Susan Moller Okin's Justice, gender, and the family, she gives a feminist argument against Nozick's Lockean/libertarian/free market account of property. Libertarians have tried to respond to this article, but often seem to fail to understand its structure. Formalising Moller Okin's argument will help us get a grasp on how, exactly, it presents a problem for libertarians.

Libertarians, as a general rule, want to argue from a conception of individual liberty and autonomys as self-ownership to a fairly robust right to property. Let's start with two predicates, Person(x) and Owns(x,y). Person(x) means that x is a person -- as opposed to just a thing, like a hammer or a pizza -- while Owns(x,y) means that x owns y. The full depth of the property right involved is not so important here. But to get a feel of what libertarians want to show, here are two quotations that start to cash out the Owns relation:

`x is A's property' means `A has the right to determine the disposition of x'

Narveson suggests the following set as giving some sort of full ownership: (1) exclusive use, which includes the right to permit or refuse the right [sic; I think this is supposed to be `use'] by others; and (2) transfer in the form of sale, exchange, gift or bequeathal.

What's important is that, if x owns y, then no-one besides x (or another owner of y) can use y (presumably, in any way) without x's consent. We will also need a predicate for the relation of x gives y to z; Gives(x,y,z) will work nicely.

Of course, capitalism isn't just a system of free exchanges. It's also a system in which people make things. As part of the property system, libertarians want to say that, if something is made in the right way (with resources that are either unowned or acquired through fair exchange, and a few other so-called Lockean provisos that aren't important quite yet), then it is owned by the maker. So our last predicate is Makes(x,y), meaning x makes y in the right way.

The ultimate, fundamental principle on which libertarians attempt to ground their justification of private property is a right of maximal liberty:

(L) people have a non-overridable right to such liberties as do not interfere with those of others

This, they claim, can be read as a principle of self-ownership:

(S) one owns oneself

Formalise this as

(SO) (x)(y)(Person(x) -> (Owns(x,y) <-> x=y))

Moller Okin's argument focuses on the purported inference from this to a principle of original acquisition. And so shall we. Narveson states original acquisition in this way:

things acquired in ways that meet the initial (Lockean) conditions are indeed the property of those who acquire them, for precisely the same reasons that we have the general right of liberty, and as a straight implication thereof

Formalise the first clause of this as

(OA) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

The final clause of the quotation from Narveson is the claim that SO implies OA. Formally, this is false -- Makes and Owns don't show up in SO, so it can't imply OA. However, presumably there is some set of definitions and/or axioms D that, Narveson thinks, will, when combined with S, imply OA. That is, Narveson's claim is

(1) SO + D |- OA

Moller Okin's argument is an attempt to show that 1 is false. Her counterexample is based on the fact that mothers make their children -- literally. She carefully works through Nozick's version of original acquisition, and describes a scenario in which all of the Lockean provisos have been satisfied: the mother was freely given the sperm, say, and procured all the resources necessary to maintain herself and (this bit varies from version to version) give birth to a healthy infant/raise a healthy child to adulthood according to free exchange and the principles of original acquisition. But then she doesn't give her child away -- either to another person or to himself. Instead, she keeps him as a slave. Hence the subtitle of Moller Okin's chapter: `Matriarchy, slavery, and dystopia'.

Let's formalise this counterexample as follows: there is a person, x, who makes another person, y, in the right way, and does not give y to any z.

(MOC) (Ex)(Ey) Person(x) ^ Person(y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)

Moller Okin's criticism is that MOC, with OA, implies the negation of SO.

(2) MOC + OA |- -SO

Hence, either SO is inconsistent, or SO implies the negation of at least one of MOC and OA.

(3) SO is inconsistent
(4) SO |- -(MOC ^ OA)

Cashing out (4) gives two possibilities (which are not exclusive): either SO implies the negation of MOC, or SO implies the negation of OA.

(5) SO |- -MOC
(6) SO |- -OA

Of course, if SO implies the negation of OA, and is consistent, then it can't imply OA. And throwing in D won't help things, either.

(7) SO+D |/- OA

So, to sum up, the libertarian wants to claim that self-ownership implies an account of property that includes original acquisition (1). Moller Okin's counterexample shows that at least one of three things must be true: (a) self-ownership is inconsistent (3); (b) self-ownership implies that mothers do not make their children in the right way (5, roughly); or (c) self-ownership does not imply an account of property that includes original acquisition (7). Clearly option a is a disaster for libertarianism. I don't think b is all that promising, either -- at the very least, a libertarian who chooses to take this route would have to work through Moller Okin's discussion of how mothers make their children in exactly the right way just as carefully as she worked her way through Nozick's account of original acquisition. A libertarian cannot, as Narveson does, simply dismiss Moller Okin's counterexample by asserting that `What parents do is initiate a process that eventuates in human organisms, which grow up' and concluding immediately that `We should ... deny that children are `made' by their parents'.

Note that libertarians also cannot simply dismiss Moller Okin's argument as `absurd' -- again, as Narveson does. Anyone who knows a little about formal validity will agree with the analysis I gave in two paragraphs ago. The only option for a libertarian, then, is c.

Denying 1 might seem like a serious blow to libertarians. But is it? What if libertarians don't want OA, but instead want some more sophisticated principle of original acquisition? Recall that OA, the property right, wasn't the original principle. Rather, S, a basic right of self-determination, was. And Nozick is quite clear that, when property conflicts with self-determination, property must yield. Hence he introduces `side constraints', that limit property rights. These can be nicely incorporated into my formalism. For example, suppose we want to replace OA with a qualified version: so long as the made thing y isn't a person, x owns anything she makes in the right way.

(OA') (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -Person(y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

This can be generalised: if C(x,y) is a predicate formalising a side constraint (or conjunction thereof, etc.), then let

(OA/C) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -C(x,y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

We include the side constraint in the antecedent, and so it blocks an inference to ownership in bad cases. Indeed, it does so in Moller Okin's case: MOC and OA' do not imply the negation of SO.

MOC + OA' |/- -SO

Hence Moller Okin's counterexample does not cause problems with this argument.

But there are, I think, at least three problems with this side constraint strategy. First, Nozick (I'm not sure about Narveson) believes that there's nothing wrong with selling oneself into slavery. That is, a side constraint concerning personhood does not show up in the principle governing free exchange. But why should it show up in the principle governing original acquisition, but not in the principle governing free exchange? That seems ad hoc. But, since the idea that there's nothing wrong with selling oneself into slavery is kind of weird, perhaps this isn't a serious objection.

Second, adding qualifications to OA makes it trickier, in general, to derive from SO. We haven't looked at the set of definitions D that libertarians will use to bridge the formal gap, so perhaps SO does indeed imply OA'. But showing this will require more care than I have seen libertarians giving.

Third, and most importantly, adding side constraints seriously compromises the robust property rights that were supposed to be implied by self-ownership. Consider the following side constraint: there should not be a person z such that x's ownership of y interferes with z's self-determination (self-ownership). This seems to be a good way of capturing the non-interference on which libertarians want to base side constraints. We'll call it C*(x,y), and formalise it as

C*(x,y) =df (Ez)(Person(z) ^ (Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(z,z)))

Now we plug this into OA/C.

(OA*) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -(Ez)(Person(z) ^ (Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(z,z))) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

Note that OA* does just as nice a job of avoiding Moller Okin's counterexample as OA'. It also applies more generally -- it blocks ownership in any case where this would interfere with the self-determination of anyone, not just the purported `owned thing'.

But what does it mean to interfere with someone's self-determination? Suppose Maria has just baked a loaf of bread, using ingredients and an oven that she procured using free exchanges, and Jorge, just outside the door to her bakery, is starving to death. Without Maria's bread, Jorge will surely die in the near future. It seems clear to me that her ownership of the bread -- in particular, her right to refuse to give it to Jorge -- would interfere with Jorge's self-determination, as he certainly cannot determine the course of his life if he is dead. If this seeming is right, then OA* does not imply that Maria owns the bread. (Note that it does not imply that Jorge owns the bread, either, as he did not make it and has not been given it.)

This thought experiment can be generalised. First, let's formalise. If there is a person x such that x owning (or, more generally, using or having) y is necessary for x's self-determination, then no-one but x can own y.

(N) (x)(y)((Person(x) ^ (-Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(x,x))) -> (z)(z=/=x -> -Owns(z,y)))

Now, N is not implied by OA*. However, with the additional assumption that original acquisition and free trade are the only ways anyone can own anything, which libertarians all seem to endorse, N does follow.

Now consider Jamal, who is homeless. It is a bitterly cold night, and without the use of a small house nominally owned by Tasha, Jamal will surely die. It follows from N that Tasha does not own the house -- indeed, no-one except possibly Jamal owns the house. If Jaime nominally owns a course of treatment of a drug, and Lorenzo will surely die without taking it, then Jaime does not own the course of treatment of the drug.

Services are more difficult, because it does not seem like there is a thing that is owned or transferred in the case of, for example, a teacher teaching a student. It is also difficult to generalise to cases in which a suffering person needs any one of a variety of things. For example, Jorge will surely die if he doesn't get some food in the near future, but he would survive for at least a while if he had Maria's bread, or Michael's pizza, or Dana's apples, and so on. But, with the examples above, it is clear that OA* seriously compromises the libertarian's property rights: she does not own anything which is materially necessary to sustain the life of anyone nearby.

Economics is tricky II

Okay, let's talk about externalities. In a nutshell, an externality is something -- good or bad -- that you don't pay for. For good reason, the examples that always seem to get trotted out are instances of pollution. For example, without the EPA around to correct things, a factory that pollutes a river generally doesn't have to pay to clean up the river. Either the state, and hence the taxpayers, do, or no-one does, and the people living downstream `pay' for the pollution by getting cancer and dying.

The contemporary environmentalist's favourite examples of externalities are `cheap' fossil fuels and `cheap' beef. Both are `cheap' because the cost -- as in, dollars the oil baron/cattle baron pays -- to procure these goods (in the economist's sense, not the ethicist's sense) is much lower than the selling price -- what people will pay to consume them. But, in the quantities which we consume and produce, respectively, both fossil fuels and beef release horrendous quantities of greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide, as per Part I, and cows release methane as waste (as well as consuming even more fossil fuels, using up lots and lots of water, and so on).

And yet, because these costs are externalized, it is rational (again, in the economist's sense of maximising one's self-interest) for people who can produce fossil fuels and beef to do so. Which is where carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes come in. Since carbon taxes are simpler (cap-and-trade schemes amount to a market on carbon tax thresholds, and that means the analysis is an order of magnitude more complicated), I'll focus on those. From an economic point of view, the idea is quite elegant: if emitters of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas compounds, eg, methane) are required to pay at least a significant fraction of the externalized costs, they will generally shift production to processes and products that emit that much less carbon dioxide. It's no longer rational for (former) carbon-emitters to emit carbon.

I'd also like to argue that carbon taxes can be justified on libertarian grounds. This seems entirely straightforward to me: for every metric ton of carbon dioxide you release, you do US$12 of harm to everyone else. (IPCC report, summary for policymakers, 24) Rather than collecting these damages individually and retroactive to the damage suffered, it makes far more sense (in terms of avoiding the legal costs of everybody suing everybody else) for the state to collect them proactively, and hence use them as a deterrent.

Finally some sense! Or not

Clearly fashion designers are insane sexists:

As usual with this designer, there were things to admire: a lean clerical silhouette, the severity of a nearly monochrome palette, the way color and its absence were used to mark out the torso in floating zones. But when designers stop conceding to biological function, they move away from the realm of fashion and into that of social engineering.

The feminist imagination boggles at the monstrosity that made a fashion `journalist' for the Times sound like one Twisty Faster. What could be even more egregious than designing shoes that can only be worn by women with eight toes?

Your answer is below the fold.

Men's pants without a fly. I shit you not. Guy Trebay throws a fit because of a pair of pants that subject men to that most horrible of disgraces: having to use the bathroom like a girl.

It is one thing to nudge men toward exploring their girly sides and quite another to suggest they sit to urinate.

Other `humiliating' features of the line, designed by Miucca Prada, include `tutu belts' and `severe high-collar shirts that buttoned up the back'. Evidently, Trebay either (a) believes that all women -- unlike men -- are contortionists, or (b) is such a horrible fashion `journalist' that he doesn't know how to put on an evening dress.

Which leads me to the questions I often pose my female friends when I hear about this sort of spectacular douchebaggery from the fashion industry: Why the hell do you listen to these people? They are clearly misogynists and hate you. When is it ever rational to treat someone who hates you and wants you to suffer as a good source of advice?

Why I'm going to be a philosopher of science

This semester, I entered the orals stage of my Ph.D. programme. Sometime in the next 7-14 months, I will spend 90 minutes locked in a room with five faculty members, who will happily interrogate my understanding of a list of classical and recent works of philosophy. Should I pass, I move on, more or less immediately, to the final (and interminable) thesis-writing stage. Should I fail, I can try again before the end of my fourth year (next May); if I fail at that point, or don't manage to get a second try scheduled before the end of the year, I get kicked out of school.

Despite the immense pressure, what's nice is that I get to choose what's on the list. At least, to an extent. I pick the general area, and about 2/3 of the list is standard for that general area; I get to decide what goes on the remaining 1/3. So, roughly speaking, everything on the list are things I'm interested in. I don't have to read any metaphysics or Plato or Scotus if I don't want to.

But I've had some problems picking the general area. I enjoy both philosophy of math and philosophy of science immensely, and while I don't think that they should be seen as two distinct areas of philosophy, trying to fit them both into a single orals list has proven impossible. On Thursday I met with one of my professors to get some help with figuring out the list. She gave me an ultimatum: Within two weeks, I have to decide whether I will be a philosopher of science who knows a bit about philosophy of math, or a philosopher of math who knows a bit about philosophy of science. She recommended I think about potential thesis projects and look through the major philosophy of math and philosophy of science journals to decide.

While I had some thesis projects in mind, they were hopelessly vague, and this is part of the problem I was having putting together a list. (One thing that's especially great about this particular professor: she never, ever lets me get away with any sort of hand-waving.) So I went and looked through journals and spent an hour writing down rough versions of thesis projects. Most of the projects I came up with were either impossibly difficult or, upon closer inspection, would be incredibly boring to actually work on in detail. The philosophy of math projects that looked both feasible and interesting came in two distinct flavours:

1. The relationship between mathematics and society, especially the relationship between ethico-political values and `good mathematics'.
   
2. The epistemological significance of certain features of the community of mathematicians, such as the underrepresentation of women and racial and ethnic minorities.
   

Philosophers of science are interested in these two things. But -- critically, and counterintuitively -- philosophers of math generally aren't. Philosophers of math, almost uniformly in this country, work on formal logic, the metaphysics of math (do numbers exist?), and foundations. Furthermore, what I discovered in the journals was that, to the extent that someone works on such things, they're published in philosophy of science and history of mathematics journals, and not published in philosophy of math journals. So, to work on one of these projects, I would have to read a lot of philosophy of science literature, and most of the philosophy of math literature would be completely irrelevant.

So I've made my decision. Strictly speaking, I will be a philosopher of science. Like most philosophers of science, I'll have a certain amount of expertise and affection for one science in particular -- mathematics -- and this will be reflected in what I write and teach. But I won't, strictly speaking, be a philosopher of math. My interests and research projects simply aren't the sort of things philosophers of math work on, at least in the English-speaking part of the world.

A horrifying realisation

For those of you who don't know this, I was born in 1980. The earliest distinct memory I have of a major political event was the August Coup that destroyed the Soviet Union. So I became aware of the world outside my school and my house during the first Bush presidency and the first Gulf War, the democratisation (more or much, much less) of the former Warsaw Pact countries, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. It was a time in which the dynamic and rhetoric of the Cold War was replaced by the dynamic and rhetoric of decolonialisation, democratisation, and universal human rights.

So let's say 11 years old is the typical age at which children start to become aware of events happening on the world stage. (If anything, I think I was precocious in this respect. If 12, 13, or older is more accurate, this doesn't cause a problem for my argument.) My students (and my step-sister) were born in 1989-90. This means they were starting to become aware of events happening on the world after 2001 -- a time in which (and sense which) the dynamic and rhetoric was dominated by paranoid, defensive imperialism and the unitary executive.

I'm not sure why I find this so disturbing. There's certainly no direct causal link between the political climate in which one's identity as a citizen is formed and, say, one's political values. Perhaps my worry is this: If these ideas, in some sense, make up the basic conceptual framework with which they analyse politics, then how well can they understand the dangers of totalitarianism?

Economics is tricky I

Some bad news about ethanol:

Researchers led by Timothy Searchinger at Princeton University said their study showed greenhouse-gas emissions will rise with ethanol demand. U.S. farmers will use more land for fuel, forcing poorer countries to cut down rainforests and use other undeveloped land for farms, the study said.

Searchinger's team determined that corn-based ethanol almost doubles greenhouse-gas output over 30 years when considering land-use changes. Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, said the study used a flawed model and overestimated how much land will be needed.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that the carbon you release in burning it was trapped in the corn just a few months ago.

Let's back up. The oxygen combustion of carbon fuels, no matter how efficient (ie, no matter how little particulate pollution is produced) produces carbon dioxide. Yearly averages of carbon dioxide levels are rising because we burn lots of fossil fuels -- essentially, highly compressed prehistoric swamps. This is carbon that was in the atmosphere millions of years ago, but has been out of the atmosphere since the beginning of human civilization. Hence we say that fossil fuels result in a net emission of carbon dioxide.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that, rather releasing carbon that was trapped by plants while our shrewlike ancestors were trying to steal eggs from dinosaur nests, burning ethanol releases carbon that was trapped by corn a few months ago. So, over the scale of a couple years, ethanol results in zero net emissions of carbon dioxide.

However, you can't just magically find some unused tract of land and grow lots and lots of corn for use in producing ethanol. At least, the land that's not currently being used is in environments that are too hostile for corn to grow -- the middle of the Sahara, the tundra, etc. You have to take land that's currently in use -- namely, for growing corn or other crops for food -- and change its use -- to growing corn for ethanol.

This results in an increase in food prices -- nothing's changing the demand for food (if anything, it grows as the global population increases), and the supply's just dropped a few percentage points. And, because of globalisation, an increase in food prices in the US increases food prices in places like rural Brazil.

The people of rural Brazil are, generally speaking, already quite poor. So if food prices go up, there's now a (larger) gap between how much food they can afford to buy (it's not like they've gotten any less poor) and how much food they need to survive. It's a lot easier for them to clear-cut another X number of acres of rainforest and grow enough food to fill that gap than it is for them to scrounge together enough additional money to maintain their level of food consumption. But the X number of acres of rainforest would have absorbed a certain amount of carbon from the atmosphere. This counted against the net emission of carbon from burning all the fossil fuels (and, I might add, raising all the methane-producing cattle we do). Effectively, a mandate to switch a certain amount of US land from food production to ethanol production does actually increase net emissions of carbon.

The question is how big of an increase, and how that compares to the decrease in net emissions from burning ethanol instead of petroleum. And the answer, it appears, is enough to double the emission rate in 30 years.

Part II, on externalities, when I feel like writing it. Link from Paul Krugman.

Pope Benedict: Divine command theorist

From Charles Rice's latest nebulous attack on secular liberalism:

Benedict describes as "presumptuous and false," the idea that "[s]ince there is no God to create justice ... man himself is now called to establish justice." "It is no accident," he said, "that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice .... A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope." No. 42. Justice will be whatever man decrees. Thus Kelsen [some legal positivst] said that Auschwitz and other Nazi exterminations were "valid law." In accord with his "philosophical relativism," he could not reasonably criticize them as unjust.

(Ellipses and brackets in Rice.)

That's right: Plato's Euthyphro caused Auschwitz. The fact that it took a couple millennia just shows that the Catholic Church is the only thing standing between a humanist ethics and genocide.

Frankly, I don't get it. Ratzinger was an academic theologian for 26 years. Presumably at some point during that time he encountered at least a few ethicists and moral philosophers who (a) are not divine command theorists and (b) also not anything-goes moral relativists. Now maybe he doesn't think that their positions are consistent or whatever. That's fine. But he should at least recognise the need for an argument that (a) implies (b). You can't have a reductio ad absurdum without the reductio.

Bonus egregious academic dereliction: Charles Rice, emeritus professor of law, displaying his complete lack of understanding of the difference between logical positivist ethics (which is an anything-goes moral relativism) and legal positivism (which, as I understand things, just distinguishes legality from justice).

The Future Of Video Games

N'Gai Croal has an interesting piece up about the cultural acceptance of video games as an art form. He discusses a blogged wager between two video game designers where one asserts that video games will forever be dismissed as a juvenile media, like comic books. The other designer is a bit more optimistic about the chances of video games. Link 1 and Link 2.

Indy 4 Trailer

Ok, I've said for years now that I wouldn't believe a fourth Indiana Jones movie was happening until I saw it with my own eyes. Well, I'm going to count the newly released trailer as proof enough. I've heard rumors that this movie might be a jumping off point for a revitalized franchise with Shia LeBouf (or however that's spelled) as the new, young Indy. Personally, I'm always interested in some new Jones adventuring, but I wonder whether the new films would have some of the traits that made Harrison Ford's character so appealing. 1) First and foremost Indy is an academic. He may not worry about getting his hands a little dirty/bloody, but he's really a nerd at heart. Would a 20 something Jones just be an action seeking thief or would he be doing it all for the museum like our good Doctor Jones? 2) Indy was always so world weary. Everything that happened seemed to frustrate, annoy, or tire him. Ford really managed to capture the "Oh what now" face and I loved that about the character. Link.

Future Rock Band DLC?

Some intrepid young haX0r took a look-see into a recent Rock Band downloadable content file and found a list of previously unconfirmed songs for the game. The Harmonix response?

"This list of Rock Band DLC that was discovered within the files of a recent DLC pack is unconfirmed and subject to change. Please stay tuned for confirmation of Rock Band DLC closer to their release."

Doesn't sound like a denial to me. There are definitely some songs to get excited about in there, but I'm still waiting for my prog pack. Link.

Vaginas: Kryptonite for bishops

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has been run off-campus by the spectre of The vagina monologues:

A two-day seminar for bishops hosted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the University will start today at a convent in Mishawaka, instead of Notre Dame, because organizers wanted to avoid connections to the likely presentation of 'The Vagina Monologues' in March.

Now, the play isn't being performed for five or six weeks. Apparently, John D'Arcy believes that the public discussion of vaginas is so soul-corrupting that its vile power can actually work backwards in time and on people who will not in any way participate in that discussion.

Beware the evil time-travelling vaginas!

Two Things

1. In all the hype about McCain basically securing the Republican nomination people are all kinds of worked up about how scary he's going to be in the general. Being prepared for a good fight is never a bad idea, but let's also try not to forget just how much some sectors of the party hate him. His VP candidate is going to have a huge effect on the trajectory of his campaign, and I haven't heard any names mentioned that really make the ticket unstoppable, or even widely appealing.

2. Ezra has been teasing folk about his secret kung pao recipe for months now, but it's finally released. I might or might not sub in some chicken for the tofu (depends on if I'm cooking for the lady friend), but it certainly sounds like a good meal. I'll probably need to head into Chinatown in Philly for ingredients though...

Not just about `choice' or `life'

At the last vegan potluck we had, a month or so ago, my friend Sarah said something about how she didn't like basing abortion rights just on the notion of choice, nor the idea that opposition to abortion is based on the notion of life.

Reproductive Health's Reality Check's factsheet on immigration and reproductive justice gives an excellent summary of reproductive justice, which I think might be a far superior feminist framework for analysing these issues:

Reproductive justice involves more than the right to end a pregnancy. Safeguarding an individual's right to determine her or his own reproductive future is an integral part of an overall agenda to promote social justice. That vision includes the ability of all people, whether American-born or immigrant, to:

1. Become a parent and parent with dignity.
2. Determine whether or when to have children.
3. Have a healthy pregnancy.
4. Have healthy and safe families and relationships.

Note first that this notion incorporates both choice -- in point 2 -- and life -- in 1 and 3 -- subsuming them under the more general notion of justice. Second, in addition, this notion straddles the liberal (that is, individualist)/communitarian divide. There is a recognition of both the irreducible value of the individual's life on her or his own terms and the necessity of living that life as a part of a flourishing community.

For Sure

Yes, it's Super Tuesday (I refuse to call it Tsunami Tuesday both because I find it to be dumb and just a bit offensive), and everyone should be out there voting today. Still, when you find a minute or two to yourself, I have a link for anyone that has trouble understanding rap lyrics but loves graphs. Link.

Thanks Andy.

And Edwards is out, too

NYT: Edwards Drops Out of Race for President

If I could still plausibly claim to be a citizen of the Republic of California, then I would have a serious dilemma on my hands. Clinton's policies are slightly more left-of-center (not to mention concrete) than Obama's, but I'm worried about what twenty-seven years of continuous governments by two families (the Clintons and the Bushes) will do to our democracy. (Think about it: assuming Clinton is elected and re-elected, a large percentage of eligible voters will have never lived under a president who was not named either Clinton or Bush. Already the youngest voters in this year's election were born in 1989 and 1990, after George HW Bush took office, and the oldest twentysomethings can't remember life under Reagan.) On the other hand, Obama's calls for `hope' and `change' are at best meaningless and at worst Democratic pandering to conservatives taken to the highest possible level. (As Glen Greenwald put it, `in almost every significant case, what "bipartisanship" means in Washington is that enough Democrats join with all of the Republicans to endorse and enact into law Republican policies, with which most Democratic voters disagree'.) People are pissed off at Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for doing precisely what Obama is saying he'll do if elected, and yet Reid's vice is Obama's virtue. This doesn't make any sense.

Really, California Democrats are, IMHO, faced with a choice between two very mediocre candidates. Fortunately, as Indiana does not hold its primary until more than three months (May 6) after Super Tuesday, the nomination will have long since been secured de facto by the time I get to vote.

Allowing people to have children is, apparently, not Pro-Life

A bunch of Catholic MPs in Gordon Brown's government, `linked to the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group', are throwing a fit, insisting that they be allowed a free vote on a bill.

[Transport Secretary] Kelly recently met Geoff Hoon, Labour's chief whip, to ask for voting restrictions to be removed from much, if not all, of the bill. At the moment MPs will only be allowed a free vote on any amendments that are tabled on abortion. Defence Secretary Des Browne is also understood to have concerns. All three [sic] ministers are prominent Catholics. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of Britain's four million Catholics, has condemned the bill as 'profoundly wrong'[.]

What sort of abominations will the bill allow? What grave sacrifice of human life will it make to the dark gods of the selfish feminist gynocracy?

None whatsoever. On the contrary: the bill allows people to become parents, if they so choose. It does not allow any killing of babies, whether actual babies or foetuses. What it does do is `allow children to be born [sic] by IVF without a father's involvement'. `That change would mean they [IVF clinics] were [sic] no longer able to deny treatment to lesbians and single women, with a child's birth mother and her female partner being regarded as legal parents.'

This shows two things. First, Dennis Campbell, health correspondent for the Guardian, needs to brush up on counting, how to use the hypothetical mood, and the difference between pregnancy and birth. Second, `Pro-Life' only means pro-parenthood for the right kind of parents.

Pretty much every conversation I have with a non-academic ends up sounding like this

From Adventures in Ethics and Science.

Dr. Free-Ride is washing the younger of her two offspring before bedtime. Younger Offspring has some unconventional ideas about the relationship between body and mind.

Dr. Free-Ride: Fascinating. Does that mean that your body and mind only feel like 'you' when you can get them to behave a certain way you want them to?

Younger offspring: Uh ...

Dr. Free-Ride: Or when they're acting in a certain unified way rather than acting in different directions?

Younger offspring: Mmm ...

Dr. Free-Ride: What's you theory on this? Can you explain it to me?

Younger offspring: You know, I'm in the water now, and I should get washed soon so there will be time for stories.

Kucinich resigns

AP: Democrat Kucinich quits White House race. Apparently not without good reason:

Kucinich, 61, is facing four challengers in the Democratic congressional primary March 4, and earlier this week he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his re-election. Rival Joe Cimperman has been critical of Kucinich for focusing too much time outside of his district while campaigning for president.

His decision comes a month after the death of his youngest brother, Perry Kucinich.

Kucinich's run was always symbolic anyways. He might actually do a little bit of good in Congress, so it's fair that he drops out now, saving what money he has to fight off these challengers. And I had no idea about his brother. I can't imagine how Kucinich has done as much as he has over the past month -- demanding a recount of the New Hampshire primary, and suing for access to the debate in Nevada, just for a start -- while grieving the loss of his brother.

Thanks, Dennis, for putting as much time and energy into your presidential campaign as you could.

Since Dodd, my #2, dropped out a while ago, my endorsement goes to Edwards. I'm not comfortable choosing between Clinton and Obama, even over the #2 spot -- basically, neither of their policies platforms is sufficiently progressive for my endorsement.