I Hope They're Joking

But, apparently they're not:

LONG, pointed kitchen knives should be banned as part of a concerted effort to reduce the terrible injuries and deaths caused by stabbing attacks, doctors warned today.

I would cry, but the commenters at BrothersJudd Blog have made me laugh instead. First, a new constitutional amendment:

A well regulated kitchen, being necessary to the cuisine of free-range Steak; the right of the people to keep and bear cutlery, shall not be infringed. (Hat tip: Ed Bush)

And, someone else pointed to this old, old Monty Python skit (Hat tip: Mike Earl) which is suddenly looking plausible:

Sergeant: ... Right. Now, self-defence. Tonight I shall be carrying on from where we got to last week when I was showing you how to defend yourselves against anyone who attacks you with armed with a piece of fresh fruit.

(Grumbles from all)

2nd Man: Oh, you promised you wouldn't do fruit this week.

Sergeant: What do you mean?

3rd Man: We've done fruit the last nine weeks.

Sergeant: What's wrong with fruit? You think you know it all, eh?

2nd Man: Can't we do something else?

3rd Man: Like someone who attacks you with a pointed stick?

Sergeant: Pointed stick? Oh, oh, oh. We want to learn how to defend ourselves against pointed sticks, do we? Getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you eh? Well I'll tell you something my lad. When you're walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of loganberries, don't come crying to me! Now, the passion fruit. When your assailant lunges at you with a passion fruit...

Just keep in mind, "pointed" sticks will probably be outlawed soon as well...

Anti-Gay?

Due to discussions at Left2Right, I've ended up contemplating what it means to be anti-gay. Since the topic is highly charged in the current political environment, I'd like to discuss it with a metaphor outside the realm of homosexuality.

Consider the following potential statements that might be made by an individual regarding persons of ethnicity x (represented below by Eth(x)).

1. ∀ persons ρ ∈ Eth(x), I think ρ should be killed.
2. ∀ persons ρ ∈ Eth(x), I think ρ should not be killed, but should be a slave.
3. ∀ persons ρ ∈ Eth(x), I think ρ should not be a slave, but should be segregated.
4. ∀ persons ρ ∈ Eth(x), I think ρ should not be segregated, but may be discriminated against.
5. ∀ persons ρ ∈ Eth(x), I think ρ should not be discriminated against, but I don't feel comfortable with ρ, so I have no friends who are members of Eth(x).
6. I have no prejudice relative to members of Eth(x), I have good friends who are members of Eth(x), but I have never been romantically or sexually attracted to any member of Eth(x), though I don't mind if others of my ethnicity are involved with or married to members of Eth(x).
   
7. Same as (6) except I am attracted romantically and sexually to members of Eth(x) and I would certainly consider being, or already am, married to someone who is a member of Eth(x).
8. ∀ persons ρ ∈ Eth(x), ρ is superior in every way to all persons α ∈ Eth(y), where I am a member of Eth(y) and y ≠ x, and I worship the very ground that ρ walks on.

This list represents a spectrum of thoughts and feelings regarding Eth(x). Virtually everyone can make a statement somewhere between (1) and (8) that more or less expresses their belief. Each individual can be more or less accepting of members of Eth(x), and conversely, less or more anti-Eth(x). If you define someone as anti-Eth(x) who would make any statement less than (8), and you consider anyone who is anti-Eth(x) by this definition to be hostile, then that definition would find a lot more hostility toward Eth(x) in the general population than would a definition that considered only those people who would make statements less than (7) or even (6) as anti-Eth(x). By raising the bar (i.e., raising the statement number corresponding to the dividing line between anti-Eth(x) and neutral), suddenly people are defined as being anti-Eth(x) and hostile, when those same people, to the population in general, don't seem all that hostile.

Another thing to consider is that the distribution of the above statements that individuals who are not members of Eth(x) would choose as most closely representing their viewpoints forms an important context for what constitutes anti-Eth(x) and what doesn't. For example, in past centuries, depending on which ethnicity is being considered, making statement (3) might, on average, have been considered pro-Eth(x), not anti-Eth(x). At those places and times, the context might have made statement (5) incredibly enlightened and utterly unfathomable by most people of that time and place.

Right now, in the United States, regarding all races and ethnicities, the median person would probably pick something between (6) and (7) as best representing their views. Because we've evolved as a society to be getting closer to non-racist (statement (7)), we can discuss this particular spectrum pretty calmly.

If, instead of considering ethnicity, we consider homosexuality, the discussion seems to become far more charged. The spectrum for anti-gayness is different than for anti-Eth(x)ness with somewhat different categories (which I'll let someone else define). More importantly, the distribution of views across the spectrum is, at this point in the evolution of American society, far more spread out, with lots of people at both ends of the spectrum. But, that sort of spread happened for race during the civil rights movement, and we've made slow, not so steady progress toward racial equality. Another few generations and we may actually achieve true color blindness, both in heart and thought.

My guess is that gayness will also one day be a non-issue. At that point, we (or our descendents) will not even notice the difference between a man and woman getting married and two men (or women) getting married. Perhaps babies will be grown in beakers by that time so there won't even be a difference in family structures. But once again, I think we are at least one, and possibly many more, generations away from that point.

In the meantime, I'm hoping that the advocates for Single Sex Marriage (SSM) do understand, at this point in time, even if the government were to recognize SSM, most of the people would not. In other words, gay people still won't be married in the eyes of most people, even if they are in the eyes of the State. This is analogous to prejudice against blacks continuing for generations after Jim Crow laws were overturned. I've seen a number of statements indicating that SSM advocates are hoping that by having the government recognize SSM, gay people will become accepted by the general population. If that's the main motivator, I'm afraid there's going to a lot of disappointment for a long time.

Justice

Benjamin Franklin thought "that it is better [one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer." For "one hundred", substitute N, and probably everyone can find some N, between 0 and infinity, that they feel comfortable with. As one rather amusing essay points out, lots of people over time have put forth different values for N, with the current mean value being approximately 59.72. In other words, in the United States, we believe that on average, it is better for 59.72 guilty persons to go free than to have one innocent punished, but better to have one innocent punished than to have more than 59.72 guilty people go free. Note that an N of 0 means we would have to round up an imprison everybody and an N of infinity means that we should never punish anybody because we can never be absolutely, one-hundred percent sure of guilt. In the latter case it would be pointless to even bother to arrest anybody since we wouldn't end up punishing them. In that case, we could close down the courts, fire all the policemen, and with the expenses saved, we could cut taxes. The point is that it doesn't make sense to insist that innocent people are never punished - it will simply happen some of the time if anybody is ever punished, and indeed, in some ratio to the number of guilty who go unpunished.

I know someone who was a Public Defender for several years and a fantastic story teller. The stories she told of how she helped numerous guilty crooks escape justice were captivating and enjoyable. She saved the guilty from serving countless thousands of years of time in jail. She was proud of it too, because these guilty people were, in her opinion, the downtrodden of the earth, to be protected and kept free at all costs in that horribly oppressive and unjust society that is the United States today. We can imagine that her N is quite a bit higher than the 59.72 average. I can also imagine that she and her colleagues pushed the actual N well past the 59.72 ratio desired by the people of the United States.

Of course she also helped the innocent avoid punishment. I'm sure that was a good thing. But even here, some of the stories gave me pause. For example, a drunken homeless guy finds an unlocked parked car and crawls inside and goes to sleep. The owner (a woman) finds this guy in her car and freaks out and calls the police. The police arrests the guy and he's charged with breaking and entering a vehicle. But he was clearly innocent of breaking and entering because the vehicle was unlocked. The owner claimed otherwise, but there was no sign of breaking and entering. The guy, defended by the Public Defender, goes free and justice is served - sort of. What about the poor woman who had to deal with the rather scary situation of finding some guy in her car? I guess no real harm done, but still, I'm left with this nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right.

One of the results of hearing these stories is that it is going to very hard for me to buy into any proposal that we increase the number of Public Defenders since it's clear to me that more Public Defenders will mean yet more criminals avoiding punishment. That being said, stories like the one a of a woman in Gulfport, Mississippi who was in jail eleven months before a lawyer was appointed, was in jail two more months before the lawyer came to see her, and was in jail one more month before they went to court and pled guilty to time served, all for shoplifting merchandise worth $72 does bother me a lot. So there are a few things I might try and change.

1. Shorten trials: this would have the benefits of freeing up Public Defenders for other clients and reducing the strain on the courts of having to recruit jurors. I don't know exactly how to do this. However, having recently received a jury duty summons for a four month trial, I've thought a lot about it, and I don't see how I personally could absorb four months worth of information and make a better decision than if I had just received one month of information. I'm not a walking encyclopedic computer that can utilize all of that information. The last three of the four months would basically be a farce.

2. Make bail easier to get for non-violent criminals: the alledged shoplifter should have been out on bail (unless she had previously skipped bail). The government should pay the interest on the bail bonds when the system is too slow. Perhaps the government should even guarantee bail bonds for the poor. I realize this doesn't solve the problem regarding the right to a speedy trial, but that concept becomes a lot less important if one is free and presumed innocent. I suspect that most of those out on bail would just as soon their court date be postponed forever. Those that did want a speedy trial could be given priority. Those waiting in jail for a trial should certainly be given priority.

3. Use fines instead of jail for punishments wherever possible: the resulting revenues could be used to hire more Public Defenders or to cut taxes. Drug possession and prostitution could easily be punished by hefty fines instead of jail time.

4. Use the punitive damages portion of tort settlements to fund the court system instead of having the money go to the plaintiffs.

I'm sure that there are better ways to enhance the system, and I'm all ears. But any politician who suggests spending more money for more Public Defenders will definitely not get my vote (all other things being equal).

Jonesing for Janice

I would be thrilled to see Janice Rogers Brown sitting on the bench of a high federal court. This speech which is heavily excerpted below demonstrates that she has tremendous historical perspective. Her judicial tendencies are well leavened by a respect for precedent. Finally, she is highly competent. Lovers of liberty should strongly support her, all others should fear her!

"One cannot maintain forever one's language and judgment against the pressures of a world that works in different ways," for we are shaped by the world in which we live.2

Writing 50 years ago, F.A. Hayek warned us that a centrally planned economy is "The Road to Serfdom."3 He was right, of course; but the intervening years have shown us that there are many other roads to serfdom.

Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.

It is my thesis today that the sheer tenacity of the collectivist impulse — whether you call it socialism or communism or altruism — has changed not only the meaning of our words, but the meaning of the Constitution, and the character of our people.

Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.

America's Constitution provided an 18th Century answer to the question of what to do about the status of the individual and the mode of government. Though the founders set out to establish good government "from reflection and choice,"6 they also acknowledged the "limits of reason as applied to constitutional design,"7 and wisely did not seek to invent the world anew on the basis of abstract principle; instead, they chose to rely on habits, customs, and principles derived from human experience and authenticated by tradition.

Collectivism sought to answer a different question: how to achieve cosmic justice — sometimes referred to as social justice — a world of social and economic equality. Such an ambitious proposal sees no limit to man's capacity to reason. It presupposes a community can consciously design not only improved political, economic, and social systems but new and improved human beings as well.

The great innovation of this millennium was equality before the law. The greatest fiasco — the attempt to guarantee equal outcomes for all people. Tom Bethell notes that the security of property — a security our Constitution sought to ensure — had to be devalued in order for collectivism to come of age.

Intellectuals visualized a planned life without private property, mediated by the New Man."12 He never arrived. As John McGinnis persuasively argues: "There is simply a mismatch between collectivism on any large and enduring scale and our evolved nature. As Edward O. Wilson, the world's foremost expert on ants, remarked about Marxism, 'Wonderful theory. Wrong species.'"13

"Socialism concentrated all the wealth in the hands of an oligarchy in the name of social justice, reduced peoples to misery in the name of shar[ed] resources, to ignorance in the name of science. It created the modern world's most inegalitarian societies in the name of equality, the most vast network of concentration camps ever built [for] the defense of liberty."17

Of course, given the vision of the American Revolution just outlined, you might think none of that can happen here. I have news for you. It already has. The revolution is over. What started in the 1920's; became manifest in 1937; was consolidated in the 1960's; is now either building to a crescendo or getting ready to end with a whimper.

There were obviously urgent economic and social reasons driving not only the political culture but the constitutional culture in the mid-1930's — though it was actually the mistakes of governments (closed borders, high tariffs, and other protectionist measures) that transformed a "momentary breakdown into an international cataclysm."22 The climate of opinion favoring collectivist social and political solutions had a worldwide dimension.

Protection of property was a major casualty of the Revolution of 1937.

Something new, called economic rights, began to supplant the old property rights. This change, which occurred with remarkably little fanfare, was staggeringly significant. With the advent of "economic rights," the original meaning of rights was effectively destroyed. These new "rights" imposed obligations, not limits, on the state.

It thus became government's job not to protect property but, rather, to regulate and redistribute it. And, the epic proportions of the disaster which has befallen millions of people during the ensuing decades has not altered our fervent commitment to statism.

Has the constitutional Zeitgeist that has reigned in the United States since the beginning of the Progressive Era come to its conclusion? And if it has, what will replace it? I wish I knew the answer to these questions. It is true — in the words of another old song: "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."27

Newsweek and violence

I've said and written statements like the following many times: "I just don't trust the media - any of it." So it was completely unsurprising to me that Newsweek published a false report "claiming that US guards at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center desecrated the Koran, including an incident in which the Muslim holy book was flushed down a toilet, in order to provoke detainees into talking." Newsweek later retracted the statement saying:

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay."

The problem with the report (other than the fact that it was false), was that:

"Local Muslim leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan seized on the article and called for anti-U.S. demonstrations. Over a four day period last week at least 16 people died, a United Nations compound in Afghanistan was attacked and crowds burned American flags and effigies of U.S. president George W. Bush."

Many people, such as Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, are attributing a substantial part of the responsibility for the violence and deaths to Newsweek. I disagree completely. A magazine printed something in error. It then retracted it. Even if I loved the media and had a high degree of confidence in it, mistakes would still happen from time to time. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake and then fixing it. That is what Newsweek did.

On the other hand, there is something wrong with violence and murder. But I lay the responsibility for such actions directly at the feet of the perpetrators. That such people claim they were incited by some fact, mistaken or not, printed in a magazine half way around the world, in no way justifies their actions. We must not allow them to even think that we think it justifies the violence. Indeed, I think we need to desensitize these people. I personally am going to start flushing Korans down my toilet. Well, or at least I would, except for the minor detail that the Korans won't fit down my toilet. Nonetheless, I think the U.S. military should build a giant toilet and begin flushing Korans down it. Indeed, what a simple and gentle way to get the Guantanamo detainees to talk. That's not torture. I don't even think it qualifies as abuse.

At the same time, the message to the Muslim world is that if they're going to riot and murder because of such things, we're simply going to increase the occurrences of those actions until they learn to restrain themselves.

Back to Deflation

Well, that's what I get for posting my concerns regarding the economy a couple of weeks back before really letting the data accumulate adequately. Basically, starting the day after that post, there's been nothing but good economic news (for the United States). First, that ever so important commodity, oil, is dropping significantly in price, which should put a damper on inflationary forces:

Oil prices continued recent heavy losses Thursday as dealers focused on a glut of U.S. stockpiles, which have grown to the highest in six years. Weakness was curtailed, however, after OPEC's president said the cartel could rein in output if inventories rose too fast and after an oil workers' strike forced shut several refineries in France.

U.S. light crude for June delivery ended down 33 cents to $46.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after falling as low as $46.80, its lowest since mid February. U.S. crude is now nearly 20 percent below April's all-time high of $58.28 a barrel as a tide of imports fills storage tanks in the world's largest energy consumer to levels not seen since 1999.

Another sign that inflationary pressures have dissipated is that long term interest rates are gently drifting lower:

Mortgage rates fell last week, reaching a low not seen since February, despite incremental interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

The average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 5.71 percent this week, with an average 0.7 point payable up front, from 5.77 percent last week, the government-chartered mortgage company Freddie Mac said.
Last year at this time, the rate on the 30-year fixed-rate loan stood at 6.30 percent.

I'd say Greenspan has done a more than adequate job controlling inflation. It may be time to start worrying about deflation again.

A Lone Voice Among Historians?

The vast majority of those in academia are critical of the Bush administration. During a recent lecture, John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale, was no exception. His many criticisms of Bush included the following:

[Bush] had failed miserably in getting United Nations support for the invasion of Iraq.

The phrase “axis of evil” originated in overzealous speechwriting rather than careful thought.

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had diminished, in advance, the credibility of whatever future intelligence claims Bush and Blair might make.

The so-called “coalition of the willing” there had been more of a joke than a reality.

Within a little more than a year and a half, the United States had exchanged its long-established reputation as the principal stabilizer of the international system for one as its chief destabilizer.

Nonetheless, Gaddis concludes the following:

"This historian is also leaning, somewhat more controversially, in the direction of acknowledging that George W. Bush is likely to be remembered as the first great grand strategist of the 21st century."

"Somewhat more controversially" is a stunning understatement in that as far as I can tell, he is the only one (of any stature) who thinks that. Indeed, Gaddis acknowledges that "he is ... somewhat ahead of most of his faculty colleagues ... in this respect".

We'll see if he's right.

The transcript of the entire lecture can be found here and I highly recommend it.

Having fun at the expense of the academy

Rather than bemoaning how ridiculous some ideas emanating from college professors are these days, this blogger has some fun. Here are some snippets from "Academic Cavemen."

Two years ago [in March], Alan Lowenstein, associate professor of philosophy at Harvard University, came to a fateful conclusion. "I suddenly realized that the oppression of western technology extended to my own life," he explained. "That's when I got rid of my computer, threw away my Brooks Brothers suits, changed my name to Grok and moved into a cave."

A passionate critic of Euro-American "linear thought," Grok is one of a growing number of college professors around the nation who have relocated to caves, mud huts and makeshift sweat lodges to demonstrate their disdain for western culture and technology. For Grok, 44, the move to a cave was a natural step in his intellectual progression.

The shocking realization lead Grok to a new stream of research that unveiled the oppressive nature of western civilization. He immersed himself in the writings of third world revolutionaries Franz Fanon, Rigoberta Menchu and Ted Rall. With CUNY professor Leonard Jeffries, he documented NASA's theft of earth-orbiting satellites from the K!ung bushmen of sub-Saharan Africa.

While it has been tough at times, Grok says he has no regrets. "Western culture is a cancer, and I'm committed to wiping it out. Plus, the whole cave-dwelling thing should help with my promotion case and journal articles."

I don't think Jared Diamond is anywhere near this bad, but perhaps he has aspirations!

Everybody Makes Mistakes

Even Warren Buffett:

The stubbornly resilient dollar has cost Warren Buffett a lot of money this year and has disappointed many other investors who thought that a weaker dollar would be their friend.

Buffett's bet against the dollar resulted in a $307 million loss for his company, Berkshire Hathaway, in the first quarter.

I was quite surprised to hear he had bet so heavily against the dollar. As a hedge I would understand it, but as speculation it surprised me. The dollar could certainly go lower from here relative to the Euro, but I don't think it's a great bet with the weak economic conditions in Europe and tighter monetary policy in the United States. But we'll see.

More Good News

Tax Receipts Exceed Treasury Predictions:

After three years of rising federal budget deficits, a surge of April tax receipts brought unexpected good news to fiscal policymakers -- the tide of government red ink appears to be receding.

The Treasury Department this week reported there would be a $54 billion swing from projected deficit to surplus in the April-to-June quarter, after an unanticipated gush of tax payments poured into the Treasury before the April 15 deadline. That prompted private forecasters to lower their deficit projections for the fiscal year that ends in September.

Coupled with solid job numbers, it seems like the economy is still rolling along nicely.

Economic Strength Continued

I wrote recently that "[t]he economy seems to be pulling back a little", but the latest jobs data contradicts my belief:

The latest employment report marks 24 straight months of positive job creation in the U.S. economy – more than 3 million jobs’ worth of good news. [...]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics May 6, 2005, report, about 3.3 million jobs have been created in the past two years. The latest numbers showed 274,000 new jobs were created in April and the report also added 93,000 jobs to previous totals. Unemployment also held steady at the low figure of 5.2 percent.

Not bad!

Consequences of Lack of Faith

The philosopher J. David Velleman at Left2Right posted an essay today titled "people of faith". Janice Rogers Brown is reported to have said "These are perilous times for people of faith." Regarding this statement, Velleman muses in his post: "I cannot resist wondering what people mean by calling themselves 'people of faith'."

His musing defies belief (which I guess means that I have no "faith" that Velleman was serious when he wrote it). In English (especially American English), "usage is king" (as my sister, the linguist, is very fond of saying), and it simply cannot have escaped David Velleman's perceptual abilities and great intellectual capacity to notice that a substantial majority of Americans use the phrase 'people of faith' to mean those with faith in monotheism in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

So I assume that what Velleman really means (though it's hard with philosophers to know what the meaning of "meaning" is), that he wonders why, given that everybody has faith in something (and that something can, in his opinion, lead to a moral existence), people should care whether or not that the faith is a Judeo-Christian faith.

Why indeed? Well, perhaps that's because when people have veered away from Judeo-Christian beliefs in the past, really terrible things have happened: facism and communism to name a couple, each of which contributed to the wars and geno/politicides than killed many tens of millions of people. Indeed, an anthropologist once told me that the wars and geno/politicides of last century killed more people than had been previously killed by such conflicts since the beginning of time.

Further, I hypothesize that if the United States had not had strong Judeo-Christian beliefs in the early part of the last century, we would have ultimately embraced communism (it was, after all, a very powerful and compelling idea), and without the United States and other countries that stayed the course with us producing new technologies that the whole world, including the communist block, benefitted from (and survived because of them), the world would have been plunged into a new Dark Age, from which, judging by the economic and ecological disasters in the communist block such as Chernobyl, might have, by now, led to the extinction of homo sapiens (but don't worry, cockroaches would've survived, so life would've continued on).

I'm sure J. David Velleman is a profoundly moral person with the best intentions. But, it seems to me he is incorrectly projecting his own six sigma capabilities in the area of reasoning, intuition, belief, etc. onto a species (that'd be us homo sapiens) where such capabilities are extremely rare. In other words, if we all had his capabilities and hung around and studied philosophy all day, the world would be a better place.

But we don't.

A Few Holes in the Peer Review Process

Published papers, especially those presented at scientific conferences, are supposed to go through a rigorous peer review process. Unfortunately, there are a few holes in the process:

An MIT student has had a paper consisting of computer-generated gibberish accepted by technology conference WMSCI. The pretentious gathering bills itself as "an international forum where researchers and practitioners examine Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics key issues" [...]

Stribling's paper consisted of randomly generated buzzwords munged into complete English sentences by a madlib-like program, so they were grammatically correct but meaningless [...]

The paper, entitled Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy, and contained such wonderful claims as -

"We can disconfirm that expert systems can be made amphibious, highly-available, and linear-time."

And -

"One must understand our network configuration to grasp the genesis of our results. We ran a deployment on the NSA’s planetary-scale overlay network to disprove the mutually largescale behavior of exhaustive archetypes. First, we halved the effective optical drive space of our mobile telephones to better understand the median latency of our desktop machines. This step flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but is instrumental to our results."

You can probably guess the moral of the story: don't believe everything you read.

Science Oversold

All eyes have been on Kansas for the past few years, watching the fight between Creationist and Intelligent Design advocates on one side, and the mainstream scientific community (supporting evolution), on the other. An article from the Salt Lake Tribune describes the battle:

Classrooms ... have come under scrutiny - again - in Kansas' seesawing battle between left and right over the teaching of evolution.

The battle could heat up over the coming weeks, with Kansas' State Board of Education expected to revise its science standards in June.

In 1999, the board deleted most references to evolution in the standards, bringing international ridicule and wisecracks from the late-night comedians. Elections the next year made the board less conservative, resulting in the current standards describing evolution as a key concept for students to learn.

Last year's elections gave conservatives a majority again, 6-4. A subcommittee plans six days of hearings in May, and advocates of intelligent design plan to put nearly two dozen witnesses on the stand to critique evolution.

National and state science organizations plan to boycott the hearings, contending they are going to be rigged in favor of intelligent design.

I think that there are several very powerful emotional and conflicting issues here. First science has been oversold as being capable of explaining the Truth (with a capital 'T'). Evolution is a theory. I think that it is an excellent theory in that it logically and consistently provides a plausible explanation for the available empirical evidence. I look around at biological diversity in the world today and I say to myself, "yup, I could believe that evolution is responsible for part or all of it." What's important to understand is that I say "could believe" as opposed to "do believe". The reason I don't "believe" in evolution is that it isn't a belief system. It's a theory. There is no point in believing or having faith that evolution actually describes how the current biosphere came to be.

Instead of science being presented as "the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena", it has been presented as a belief system. It has been presented almost as a pseudo-religious faith. Scientists have acted like high priests issuing edicts about what everybody should believe to be the Truth. This arrogance has really annoyed a lot of people and the battle over evolution in Kansas is the resulting backlash.

A second problem is that parents get really tired of others deciding what their children should be taught. I have absolutely no patience for outsiders coming in and telling me what my children should be taught. Fortunately, we've been able to enroll our children in schools that provide learning environments that we enthusiastically endorse. But I can certainly understand the feelings of the parents in Kansas if they don't want their children taught Evolution, at least from the "belief system" perspective.

I'm saddened by this, because Evolution is a powerful concept in computer science (called genetic algorithms). We use it in our work in robotics. Biological evolution is a nice, intuitive way to introduce the concept. Too bad it was oversold.

Multi-culti collision with reality

Multiculturalism and cultural liberalism collide in a place called reality! British columnist John O'Sullivan presents some interesting observations and analysis in this article. The focus is on Britain but it has relevance for anywhere. Many people assume that being nearly infinitely tolerant is a good thing, but it is possible to be so openminded that your brains fall out. Here are several excerpts with emphasis mine.


…all change occurs at the margin. And these marginalized figures revealed in their clash that multiculturalism and liberal values are incompatible.

Multiculturalism is easy enough to grasp. It is the doctrine that all cultures are equal and must be given equal respect and protection by government. It was fueled by the arrival in Britain of immigrant groups with different religious cultures. And it has led to such social changes as rewriting British history and allowing strict Muslim dress in school.

Cultural liberalism is a larger and vaguer concept. Its essential meaning is that people should be helped to free themselves from irksome traditional moral customs and cultural restraints. And in the last 30 years it has affected a quiet revolution in Britain — in religion, family life, national identity, and moral values.

Public life is increasingly and aggressively secular.

Family life has been devalued: Fewer people get married; more get divorced; more children are born out of wedlock.

A combination of cultural liberalism and welfare has produced its own human sacrifice in the form of a growing underclass, victims of crime, and children with fewer opportunities because they are brought up in homes without two parents.

For a long time, it seemed that multiculturalism was simply one ingredient in cultural liberalism. But this was a delusion resting on three errors: First, it did not take into account that a nation, society, or community is held together by a common culture and common moral values — often values that its members are not conscious of holding until they are challenged. That common culture had already been subtly undermined by cultural liberalism; it was now directly assaulted by multiculturalism.

Second, it did not take into account that some of these cultures and multiculturalism itself were incompatible with liberalism. Multiculturalism holds that all cultures are equal; liberalism is the doctrine that all human beings have equal rights; so if a culture holds that some human beings, (e.g., women) have fewer rights than others, then liberalism has to confront that culture and reject the multiculturalism sheltering it.

And, third, liberals have failed to persuade these other cultures that the liberal theory of universal human rights is an entirely secular one posing no threat to their religion. Muslims in particular persist in seeing it as an expression of Christian civilization — which, historically, it is certainly is — and thus tainted at best.

Even from a narrow political viewpoint, it seems unrealistic of liberals to take on Muslims and Christians simultaneously. It also ignores the cultural truth that debates between secular liberals and Christians in the West are arguments within the family. They almost never involve first-order differences such as honor killings. They are debates in which it is possible to live with defeat.

Besides, how many divisions does secular liberalism have? Would a liberalism divorced entirely from religion and its own cultural heritage have the numbers and morale to resist what looks likely to be the proselytizing force of growing numbers of Muslims in Europe? Liberal multicultural Holland — which simply dithers in the face of Muslim terrorism — offers very little assurance here. Many Dutch liberals are now worrying that their multiculturalism has an ethical vacuum at its heart that ultimately disarms them in matters as necessary as punishing murder and protecting critics of Islam.


The newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, on the other hand, proclaims that Europe can resist multiculturalism and live with Islam without surrendering to it — but only if it recovers its own Christian traditions of moral behavior. Given that some of the fruits of Britain's cultural liberalism taste distinctly sour, secular liberals might be persuaded to examine this prospect sympathetically. They should be at least half-encouraged by the Pope's acceptance of the mutually stimulating role of religion and secular liberalism: "To this extent we must be grateful to secular society and the Enlightenment. It must remain a thorn in our side, as secular society must accept the (Christian) thorn in its side."


......
Pretty relevant and potent observations if you ask me!!

Now for Some Really Important News

Here's a problem you don't run into every day:

German toad experts are baffled by an acute outbreak of exploding toad syndrome which has totalled hundreds of the amphibians since the beginning of the month. The former inhabitants of a Hamburg pond - now chillingly renamed the "pond of death" - spontaneously swelled to enormous proportions before going bang, in the process propelling their entrails for up to a metre.

Thank heavens, the government took swift action to protect the public:

The authorities have moved swiftly to protect the public from the exploding toad menace. The pond is now closed and a biologist is on station every night between 2 and 3am, when toad explosions reach a peak.

So you can watch for exploding toads and shooting stars at the same time! Fortunately, the baffled German experts finally figured out what was causing the phenomenon:

... crows have been fingered as the culprits. Apparently the crow pecks a small hole in the toad to get at the liver. The toad begins to inflate itself - its normal defence mechanism - but because there is no separation between lung cavity and abdomen, the poor blighter keeps on expanding until it goes pop.

I just hate when that happens. Well, that's all of the important news for today. Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel...

Perception is reality...unless it's just a big delusion

Perception can make for reality, but sometimes it's so divorced from reality that it is merely a delusion waiting to be exposed...

It took about 70 years for the socialist model to show itself as an irredeemable failure. I suspect that the social democracy/welfare state model will groan mightly under the pressure from global competition until it is viewed with less fondness. Our system in the U.S is really misperceived by many foreigners. This case is made by a German journalist, Olaf Gersemann, in his book
Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality.
Book Description (on Amazon)
Europeans and many American pundits believe that while the U.S. economy may create more growth, Europeans have it better when it come to job security and other factors. Olaf Gersemann, a German reporter who came to America, found the reality quite different. He checked facts and found the market freedoms in America create a more flexible, adaptable and prosperous system then the declining welfare states of old Europe.

As an example, the Norwegians cling to some myths...

If you missed it, here is the entire article from The New York Times.

April 17, 2005
PERSPECTIVE
We're Rich, You're Not. End of Story.
By BRUCE BAWER

OSLO — THE received wisdom about economic life in the Nordic countries is easily summed up: people here are incomparably affluent, with all their needs met by an efficient welfare state. They believe it themselves. Yet the reality - as this Oslo-dwelling American can attest, and as some recent studies confirm - is not quite what it appears.

Even as the Scandinavian establishment peddles this dubious line, it serves up a picture of the United States as a nation divided, inequitably, among robber barons and wage slaves, not to mention armies of the homeless and unemployed. It does this to keep people believing that their social welfare system, financed by lofty income taxes, provides far more in the way of economic protections and amenities than the American system. Protections, yes -but some Norwegians might question the part about amenities.

In Oslo, library collections are woefully outdated, and public swimming pools are in desperate need of maintenance. News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets, as The Los Angeles Times recently reported, but applicants for methadone programs are put on a months-long waiting list.

In Norway, the standard line is that there must be some mistake, that such things simply should not happen in "the world's richest country." Why do Norwegians have such a wealthy self-image? Partly because, compared with their grandparents (who lived before the discovery of North Sea oil), they are rich. Few, however, question whether it really is the world's richest country.

After I moved here six years ago, I quickly noticed that Norwegians live more frugally than Americans do. They hang on to old appliances and furniture that we would throw out. And they drive around in wrecks. In 2003, when my partner and I took his teenage brother to New York - his first trip outside of Europe - he stared boggle-eyed at the cars in the Newark Airport parking lot, as mesmerized as Robin Williams in a New York grocery store in "Moscow on the Hudson."

One image in particular sticks in my mind. In a Norwegian language class, my teacher illustrated the meaning of the word matpakke - "packed lunch" - by reaching into her backpack and pulling out a hero sandwich wrapped in wax paper. It was her lunch. She held it up for all to see.

Yes, teachers are underpaid everywhere. But in Norway the matpakke is ubiquitous, from classroom to boardroom. In New York, an office worker might pop out at lunchtime to a deli; in Paris, she might enjoy quiche and a glass of wine at a brasserie. In Norway, she will sit at her desk with a sandwich from home.

It is not simply a matter of tradition, or a preference for a basic, nonmaterialistic life. Dining out is just too pricey in a country where teachers, for example, make about $50,000 a year before taxes. Even the humblest of meals - a large pizza delivered from Oslo's most popular pizza joint - will run from $34 to $48, including delivery fee and a 25 percent value added tax.

Not that groceries are cheap, either. Every weekend, armies of Norwegians drive to Sweden to stock up at supermarkets that are a bargain only by Norwegian standards. And this isn't a great solution, either, since gasoline (in this oil-exporting nation) costs more than $6 a gallon.

All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise. So did a paper by a Swedish economics writer, Johan Norberg.

Contrasting "the American dream" with "the European daydream," Mr. Norberg described the difference: "Economic growth in the last 25 years has been 3 percent per annum in the U.S., compared to 2.2 percent in the E.U. That means that the American economy has almost doubled, whereas the E.U. economy has grown by slightly more than half. The purchasing power in the U.S. is $36,100 per capita, and in the E.U. $26,000 - and the gap is constantly widening."

The one detail in Timbro's study that didn't feel right to me was the placement of Scandinavian countries near the top of the list and Spain near the bottom. My own sense of things is that Spaniards live far better than Scandinavians. In Norwegian pubs, for example, anyone rich or insane enough to order, say, a gin and tonic is charged about $15 for a few teaspoons of gin at the bottom of a glass of tonic; in Spain, the drinks are dirt-cheap and the bartender will pour the gin up to the rim unless you say "stop."

In late March, another study, this one from KPMG, the international accounting and consulting firm, cast light on this paradox. It indicated that when disposable income was adjusted for cost of living, Scandinavians were the poorest people in Western Europe. Danes had the lowest adjusted income, Norwegians the second lowest, Swedes the third. Spain and Portugal, with two of Europe's least regulated economies, led the list.

Most recently, the Danish Ministry of Finance released a study comparing the income available for private consumption in 30 countries. Norway did somewhat better here than in the KPMG study, lagging behind most of Western Europe but at least beating out Ireland and Portugal.

The thrust, however, was to confirm Timbro's and Mr. Norberg's picture of American and European wealth. While the private-consumption figure for the United States was $32,900 per person, the countries of Western Europe (again excepting Luxembourg, at $29,450) ranged between $13,850 and $23,500, with Norway at $18,350.

Meanwhile, the references to Norway as "the world's richest country" keep on coming. An April 2 article in Dagsavisen, a major Oslo daily, asked: How is it that "in the world's richest country we're tearing down social services that were built up when Norway was much poorer?"

Obviously, this is one misconception that won't be put to rest by a measly think-tank study or two.

Bruce Bawer,a freelance writer based in Oslo, reports frequently on social and cultural issues.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

Yearning to be free!

This Michael Ledeen column highlights some key events not being played up in the press.

Not only are we participating in a global struggle against tyranny, but, if we look carefully enough, we can see the collapse of the conventional wisdom about the relationship between tyrannical rulers and their subjects.

Let's start with a thoughtful article in the April 19 Asia Times written by an Australian named Andrei Lankov ...."for the first time in some 50 years a large group of North Koreans, acting openly and in the presence of foreign journalists and camera crews, dared to challenge the representatives of authority..." Lankov believes that the demonstrations bespeak a significant erosion of the regime's ability to repress its subjects. That erosion has sapped the will of the soldiers and police, who are now "often ready to look the other way, especially when there is an opportunity for a small bribe."

Meanwhile, across the border in the People's Republic of China, there have been several demonstrations in recent months, ranging from peasant protests (shades of Mao!) in the hinterland (when Communist-party officials were caught stealing money that was supposed to go to dispossessed land owners) to worker's agitation in the big cities along the coast. Thomas Lifson, of American Thinker, suggests that the Chinese regime senses its own growing weakness. The regime has certainly intensified its repression of religious freedom, arresting the Catholic priest Zhao Kexun in Hebei Province, and continuing its mindless persecution of the Falun Gong. Luis Ramirez, the brilliant reporter of Voice of America, noted last fall that China was facing a most unexpected crisis: a shortage of qualified workers. And along with this manpower shortage, the brutal demographic consequences of the Communist-party's strict rule of "one child per couple" are beginning to take hold: The population is aging, the number of people retiring is higher than those entering the workforce, and retirement pension funds are drying up. Moreover, corruption is pandemic, and the recent National People's Congress provided the occasion for an anti-corruption campaign, with the usual showcase arrests and trials. But it is hard for a regime that claims sole authority to blame corruption on individual sinners.

As Janet Klinghoffer put it, "China is facing the same innovation roadblock the Soviets did." The Soviet Union could never match Western technological innovations, because Soviet citizens were never given the freedom to do so. Klinghoffer quotes a U.S.-embassy report from Beijing that suggests the Chinese are facing the same bleak future: "Recently a Chinese scholar remarked...that the lack of intellectual freedom and the extraordinary waste of resources severely handicap Chinese science. Both problems are rooted in the Communist Party's monopoly on power and in the socialist system...Nobody believes in Marxism, said the scholar, it is just a slogan..."

The importance of that freedom thang!!!

This is precisely the sort of thing we heard from Soviet citizens in the
years leading up to the great implosion of the Soviet Empire. The Russians had brilliant mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, but the rigidity and corruption of the system prevented them from translating their brilliance into high-quality products. The same is going on in China, with the same political results: The people are angry, and want fundamental change.

The same process is even further advanced in Iran, where near-constant demonstrations, protests, and even armed attacks against the institutions of the Islamic republic have raged.

The popular contempt for the regime is so blatant that the mullahs' usual pretense that all is well, has been openly discarded, and replaced with mounting repression. Like the North Koreans and Chinese, the Iranian leaders' greatest fear is that their own people will bring down the regime, and the mullahs have taken desperate action against the spread of ideas within the country.

Five hundred years ago Machiavelli insisted that tyranny is the most unstable form of government, and he warned that the most dangerous development for any tyrant was the contempt of his own people. That dramatic tipping point is now very close in China, Iran, and North Korea. All that is required to get there is a steady flow of the truth from outside their borders, guidance for those who undertake the struggle against the tyrants, and constant reminders — backed up with modest action — that we are with them.

Next Year in America

Yesterday was Passover, a very widely celebrated Jewish holiday. Indeed, many non-practicing Jews and even non-Jews end up participating in a Seder, the traditional Passover dinner during which the escape of the Jews from slavery in Egypt is described. The last line of the Seder service is "next year in Jerusalem", which, during the many centuries of oppression and persecution of the Jews, was a statement of hope. Now its meaning is more difficult to understand, since there are actually Jews in Jerusalem and the rest of us could go and have a Seder there if we really wanted to. I think David Cohen expresses nearly exactly my feelings when he wrote:

We are taught that there are two Jerusalems (the Hebrew word, "yerushalayim" is plural), the earthly city, shel mata, and the ideal or Heavenly city, shel ma'ala. I have no desire to live in the actual Jerusalem. Unlike previous generations of Jews, I am free both to leave my home and to live in Israel, but I am American through and through and know that any emigration would be my loss. (Some argue that the wish is simply to celebrate the Seder in Jerusalem, not to move permanently to Israel, but tourism as religious obligation has no appeal to me.)

Turning to the ideal Jerusalem, the prayer is often understood as a hope that we will find peace and justice next year. I am as much in favor of peace and justice as the next Jew (everywhere but on bumperstickers), but I find this understanding of the prayer as unsatisfying as the first. First, unlike most Jews of my acquaintance, I don't believe that peace and justice go hand in hand, but rather I believe that they are often at odds. Second, during the many centuries of Jewish persecution during which Israel was forbidden to us, this was a powerful prayer of physical redemption. Turning it into an anodyne wish that we could all just get along is offensive to me.

So, assuming for the sake of argument that I'm not satisfied to simply be a hypocrite, what will I mean when I say "next year in Jerusalem." It came to me a few years ago that I had subconsciously come to identify the United States with Jerusalem. I don't mean this as an argument that Americans are now G-d's chosen people (although I'm open to that argument) or that the US is shel ma'ala, the ideal city. But I do believe that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and, most importantly, American life as we live it are now the best practical example to mankind of how life should be lived. Tonight, when I say L'shanah haba'ah biyerushalayim, I will be praying that next year, the world will be that much closer to living in freedom and prosperity, as Americans do.

There has never been a better time and place to be Jewish than now in the United States. When I say "next year in Jerusalem" I really mean "next year in America".

New Great Guys Blog Contributor

I've invited a new blogger to join Great Guys Weblog and I'd like to extend a hearty welcome to him. He and I run together and often have deep philosophical discussions while running (or at least they seem deep in my oxygen deprived brain state). Hopefully, we'll be able to recreate those conversations here, without being oxygen deprived.

Indeed, that would help increase the frequency of posting. I haven't been posting much because there isn't much going on in the world that's really catching my attention. The economy seems to be pulling back a little, but not enough that the data really shows it clearly. The middle east seems to be in a wait-and-see holding pattern. There are no elections coming up in the United States. There really haven't been any postings on other blogs that have stimulated me either. And I've been too lazy to finish some of the longer essays I've been working on (I'll get them done eventually).

No doubt all of this will change soon. Some new catastrophe will occur and I'll have something to write about, or our new contributor will stimulate an exchange. Then I'll get back to tapping the keys more frequently.