Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit

How About Jailing the Bastards?

The Catholic Church wonders what to do about its pedophilic priests.

That it wonders at all suggests that it doesn't get it.

Kill religion. Elevate man.

This is rich:

Some [priests] have been convicted in a canonical trial but determined to be too elderly or infirm to endure being defrocked and are instead sentenced to a life of prayer and penance. Others have had the accusations against them referred to an archdiocesan advisory board consisting mostly of laypeople, including psychologists and lawyers. The board, which can interview the priest but does not have to, issues a recommendation to the cardinal on whether the priest should continue to minister.

A "life of prayer and penance" for raping young boys?

If I go out on the street tomorrow and rape a woman can I escape with a "life of prayer and penance"? Please? I promise to pray extra-fervently!

Kill religion. Elevate man.

Dope

Posner on doping in sports:

So is the ban on doping athletes just a mindless reaction against novelty and science, a Luddite reaction? Or does it just reflect a confusion between cheating when drugs are banned and lifting the ban? I think not. There are two valid reasons for the ban. One is the pure "arms race" character of the doping; there is no improvement in the entertainment quality of football if 400–pound linemen confront each other rather than 200-pound linemen. In contrast, the overworking law firm associates increase their firm's utput.

The other justification for the ban is that it is a rational means of protecting children. Because successful athletes earn high salaries, because success as an athlete does not require a high order of intelligence, and because an athletic career to be successful must begin in high school (in the case of tennis, perhaps even earlier), there is enormous competition by minors to achieve athletic success. If performance-enhancing drugs were legal, their use by teenagers would be pervasive, and teenagers lack sufficient maturity to trade off the benefits of an athletic career (discounted by the very low probability that any given teenage athlete will have a really successful athletic career) against the long-term damage to their health. Of course adult athletes could be permitted to use such drugs but minors forbidden to do so, but such a legal regime would be difficult to enforce, especially given the "role model" status of adult athletes in the eyes of minors. The lifting of the ban would remove all stigma from the use of such drugs. Their legal and widespread use by star athletes would validate the drugs in the eyes of impressionable youth.

Suffice it to say I think this analysis misses the point. People are interested in bigger, badder, meaner, mroe obese football players; witness, for evidence, the popularity of "The Fridge" in the '80s. (See this morning's earlier post for yet another round of football-bashing, if you're interested.) People are interested in who can belt a home run 600 feet 40 times in a season, and still steal 40 bases in a season (hello, Jose Canseco!).

Etc., etc.

Of course, you may still argue that, to retain the "purity" of sport and competition, it is necessary to ban certain performance-enhancing drugs. But it doesn't follow from any of this that the race to bulk up to monstrous proportions is in any way anything like a nuclear arms race; applying history lessons learned from the 1980s to the world of professional sport is the kind of folly of which only an academic is capable.

I would also add that Posner's counterpart, Gary Becker, destroys any credibility he has on the issue by misspelling Mark McGwire's name. That is sacrilege.

Texas Has Its Priorities Right

It pays football coaches more than it does teachers, Joanne Jacobs reports.

Clearly, Texans have their priorities in order.

Remind me never to go to Texas, lest they suffer from my withering condescension, the morons. Football, especially high school football, is, to my mind, the biggest pile of steaming dog shit since, well, dog shit.

In Which The Stupidity of the Academy is Laid Bare

Just finished a very interesting book, One Bullet Away, which is a memoir of a guy, approximately my age, who enlisted in the US Marines and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq before leaving in 2004 to return to graduate school. The author, Nathaniel Fick, graduated with honors from Dartmouth College in 1998, and by all rights, should have headed into investment banking or management consulting, as he readily admits.

For some reason, which is never really made clear to the reader, he decides to chart a different course and serve his country. Of course, this decision was made before 9/11 and the War on Terror, but one of the hallmarks of enlisting in the Armed Forces, I suppose, is that you don't know what the future holds, and, enlisting during a time of peace is no guarantee that your life will not be in danger.

He describes his time after leaving the Corps:

I drifted after leaving the Corps. At age twenty-six, I feared I had already lived the best years of my life. Never agian would I enjoy the sense of purpose and belonging that I had felt in the Marines. Alist, I realized that combat had nearly unhinged me....

After channeling all my energy into applying to graduate school, I got a phone call from an admissions officer: "Mr. Fick, we read your application and liked it very much. But a member of our committee read Evan Wright's story about you platoon in Rolling Stone. You're quoted as saying, 'The bad new is, we won't get much sleep tonight; the good news is, we get to kill people.'" She paused, as if waiting for me to disavow the quote. I was silent, and she went on. "We have a retired Army officer on our staff, and he warned me that there are people who enjoy killing, and they aren't nice to be around. Could you please explain you quote for me."

"No, I cannot."

"Well, do you really feel that way?" Her tone was earnest, almost pleading.

"You mean, will I climb your clock tower and pick people off with a hunting rifle?" [Ed: See here for an explanation.]

It was her turn to be silent.

"No I will not. Do I feel compelled to explain myself to you? I don't."

Now, this is probably the best demonstration of the stupidity and insularity with which academics conduct themselves. A couple of observations come to mind: (1) Marines are trained, primarily, to kill; (2) what one says in the heat of battle need not be indicative of what one will say or do in peace time, any more than a woman's ability to fend off a person trying to rape her is any indication of her strength when not threatened; (3) a person who cannot bring himself to say he looks forward to killing the enemy should not be a Marine, or, indeed, any officer of the Armed Forces.

So, here's a man who chose to serve his country at a time when his fellow classmates were working at those lucrative investment banking and management consulting jobs, and, yes, while those classmates were tearing up Manhattan, he, well, he launched a grenade at an Iraqi and blew the guy's head off. Says so right in the book. So, yes, he killed someone. But the killing he did is certainly as justifiable as the rape victim's incapacitation of her attacker.

We can either agree or disagree with the reasons why the US went to Iraq, and we can either support or disavow America's recent militarism. But to insinuate that this man is tantamount to a murderous thug for having chosen to serve his country instead of expatiating upon theoretical abstractions, as most of his demographic (including yours truly) are wont to do, well, that's repellent.

"dead Americans decomposed on American soil"

Trying to wax grandiloquent, the New York Times apparently takes the position that an American who dies ought not to decompose:

The dead man, a black man, had been sprawled like carrion on dry Union Street, just outside a parking garage, for several hot-crazed days after the late August hurricane. The only dignities granted him were a blue tarp across the face and orange traffic cones near the head, placed by a state trooper to keep the milling soldiers and reporters and law enforcement officials from driving over him like a speed bump.

...

A full week after the hurricane, as the colossal forensic challenge before them came more clearly into focus, various government officials struggled with an awkward but unavoidable question: Who is going to pick up the bodies?

Federal and state officials quarreled with one another over who had responsibility for collection: The Federal Emergency Management Agency? Louisiana? The National Guard? Meanwhile, dead Americans decomposed on American soil.

Now, I can accept that the New York Times wants to slam government bureacurats for gross negligence and caprice. But "dead Americans decompose on American soil" all the time; this is what happens to your body when you are dead and buried. (What, you thought that you'd rise from the dead like an angel? You're kidding, right? You're maggot food when you die.) Surely there is a less inane and inflammatory way to describe corpses rotting in the Louisiana sun?

Jesse Jackson Jr Is a Fool

It should come as no surprise that Jesse Jackson Jr is a fool, intelligence being closely linked to one's parents:

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat, says he has allies on both sides of the Wal-Mart battle. The retailer recently opened a new store near Mr. Jackson's Chicago district. About 3,000 people applied for the store's 300 positions. Wal-Mart also hired local minority businesses to do accounting and logistical work for the store. But Mr. Jackson says he isn't ready to move into Wal-Mart's camp.

"I fundamentally believe in a living wage. What I refuse to believe is that the richest company in the world can't pay it. I can't reconcile that," he says.

Some quick observations: (1) Wal-Mart is not "the richest company in the world" as its profits are very small relative to its revenues; (2) Wal-Mart's wealth or lack thereof has no bearing on the wages it "should" pay its workers.

Kill political grandstanding. Elevate man.

And, speaking of racist blacks, let us not forget Wal-Mart's blunder when it had as one of its spokesmen the racist Andy Young:

The company's efforts took a step backward recently when Andrew Young, a former civil-rights leader hired to promote the company in urban areas, resigned under a cloud. Defending Wal-Mart in an interview with an African-American newspaper in Los Angeles, Mr. Young said mom-and-pop stores run by Jews, Koreans and Arabs had been "overcharging us" for poor-quality food. Mr. Young later called his remarks "completely and utterly inappropriate."

Overheard at Starbucks

Being somewhat of a yuppie, I begin my day with a venti soy chai latte from Starbucks. (If you don't know what that is, well, get thee to the twenty-first century! It is the nectar of commerce.)

Anyway.

A wee bit hung over from last night's exertions, I stood on line, and heard a conversation which I can't quite believe:

Son: Dad, what's 3.5 over 7?

Dad: You learned fractions in school. Why don't you do the math yourself?

Son: Yeah Dad but 3.5 isn't a fraction!

Dad: It isn't? Then what is it?

Son: My teacher says it's a decimal.

Dad: Well, what's a decimal?

Son: It's a part of a whole number.

Dad: So that's a fraction right?

Son: No, my teacher said decimals aren't fractions.

No doubt this innumerate kid is a proud product of New York City's public schools.

To adopt a slightly different mantra: Kill puiblic education. Elevate man.

Darwin

Lest anyone still think that man is not descended from ape here is a video showing a monkey doing martial arts.

Lawyer, Spammer, What's the Difference?

In which I take a jaundiced look at lawyers, or, my father used to be a corporate litigator.

When I was ten or so, I was hanging out in his office, and he had a TV, so, naturally bored listening to him tell his minions what to do, I watched TV. All of the sudden an ad came on for a personal injury law firm. Innocently, I asked my Dad how come his firm didn't have ads on TV? Mind you, I asked this question in front of his fellow partners and associates.

Anyway at that young age I learned that there is a hierarchy of lawyers, from which one must not deviate, lest the world stop spinning and we all fly off into space at an angle tangential to the Earth's surface: at the top of this hierarchy are the skilled lawyers who steal money from corporations, white collar defendants, and municipalities, in the form of "litigation." Far below them are the ambulance chasers, those avocats who chase the infirm and the wretched.

I am reminded of this because a lawyer, likely a member of the skilled part of the hierarchy, has unearthed an inept piece of lawyer-marketing by one of the denizens of the lower end of the lawyer-hierarchy:

In any event, Mr. Sheehan did three things wrong. First, his subject line was misleading. The e-mail had nothing to do with a "Wrongful Death Case." Rather, it was a commerical solicitation. Likely, Mr. Sheehan wanted to trick his e-mail's receipients into thinking a potential client, rather than a spammer, was e-mailing him.

Second, since Mr. Sheehan sent the e-mail to the Crime And Federalism inbox, it appears he is harvesting e-mail addresses from law blogs. In other words, he's a professional spammer.

Third, he sent spam to a computer-savvy blogger. Big mistake - times two. I found his e-mail addresses, which I am going to share. And now anyone looking for information on David Sheehan will learn that he's a spammer.

Lawyer-as-used-car-salesman. Where have we heard that before? Seems to me lawyers are always chasing their own tails, claiming they exist on a higher ethical plane than we common folk, and, therefore, they are right to be avaricious pusuers of justice.

But for the fact that what passes for "justice" in lawyer-speak is either slick marketing or else a wanton disregard for the facts (to say nothing of taxpayer or shareholder money).

Let's do away with the idea that lawyers are any more or less honroable than we common folk. Some are competent, many are incompetent, some are upstanding, many operate in a kind of moral squalor. Atticus Finch most lawyers are not. Lawyers suffer from the same deprivations as the rest of man; let us not pretend they are immune from the caprices of man.

Idiots Concerned About Pluto's Status

The freakshows otherwise known as astrologers are concerned about Pluto's demotion:

"Scorpios can be extremely explosive, and very direct, and this could be the trigger that makes them explode," says Milton Black, an Australian astrologer who claims to have more than 580,000 clients. Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, take note. All three are Scorpios.

How a group of astronomers decided that diorama you built in grade school has one too many planets.

Yesterday's ruling in Prague brought good news to some. The astronomers indicated that several planet-like bodies -- including the asteroid Ceres and the newly discovered UB313, sometimes known as Xena -- will also be classified as dwarf planets. That has generated excitement among a small group of practitioners known as "minor-planet astrologers" who have long contended that outer-lying asteroids and ice balls exert a powerful tug on our psychological makeup. Some astrologers believe that officially introducing new dwarf planets to the charts might give astrologers additional information about people, by providing more planetary bodies and forces to study in the charts.

"This is a moment that I've been waiting for a long time," says Eric Francis, a minor-planet astrologer who edits the Web site Planetwaves.net. "People are finally talking about Charon." Charon is Pluto's largest moon, which astronomers briefly considered granting official planet status at the IAU meeting.

Mr. Francis and many other minor-planet enthusiasts are interested in raising awareness about Charon and the new dwarf planets, Ceres and UB313, in part because they consider them female planets that would symbolize a rush of new maternal energy into the cosmos.

"Most of our clients are women, and we need stories women can relate to," says Mr. Francis. (A planet's sex is determined largely by the name given to it by astronomers.)

Kill religion. Elevate man.

That this shit should appear on the front page of the Wall St. Journal beggars belief.

By the way, are women really as weak as "most of our client are women, and we need stories women cna relate to" implies? If so, they should no longer have the right to vote or to drive, or to do anything which qualifies them as "human" for those beasts for whom astrology is a reliable guide are not man at all but fool.

Concision

Mantra, again.

Explain the Religious Mindset to Me

Posner on stem cell research:

There are several economic points that spring to mind about the U.S. ban. The first is its futility, and this for two reasons. Since the researchers are not tied to any particular country, the maximum effect of the U.S. ban would simply be to shift all stem cell research to other countries; it would not stop the research and save the embryos. In addition, however, U.S. law does not ban stem cell research, but only the use of federal funds for that research. The main therapeutic applications of stem cell research lie too far in the future and are too uncertain to attract much private investment, given the high discount rates that most businesses use to evaluate projects. But there is plenty of state and especially private charitable spending on medical research, and so the ban on federal funding of this one area of medical research should merely cause a reallocation of research funds. More state and private money will go to stem cell research and more federal money to areas of research that will be receiving less state and private money because more of that money will be used for stem cell research.

But if the federal ban is not affecting the amount of financial support for stem cell research, why are many of our researchers going abroad to conduct that research? Why do countries like the U.K. and Singapore think they can steal a march on us? The answer may be that the U.S. research community does not think that opposition to stem cell research will express itself only in a ban on federal support for such research. Although the Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to abortion, it is unlikely to recognize a constitutional right to conduct stem cell research, even if the objections to such research are the same as the objections to abortion. The fact that the objections are primarily a product of religious belief would not invalidate them, because banning stem cell research does not infringe anyone's free exercise of religion or constitute an establishment of religion. Many moral precepts embodied in laws that no one supposes unconstitutional are the product of sectarian beliefs that secular people (or indeed religious people belonging to sects that are less influential in this country) reject. However, most of the precepts themselves, such as the taboo against murder, are shared by people of different, and of no, religious faiths; you don't have to believe that Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai (you don't have to believe there was a Moses) to condemn murder. In contrast, opposition to abortion and stem cell research is not widely shared by people who do not belong to a particular subset of religious sects.

The loss of leading-edge biological researchers to other countries could be costly to the United States, especially if there are complementarities between stem cell research and other areas of biological and medical research. We may wake up some day to find that foreign institutions have obtained patent protection for highly lucrative medical therapies that our population will demand the government subsidize. I predict, however, that generous state and private funding of stem cell research will stem the reverse brain drain. (And if researchers are easily lured abroad, they are easily lured back.) Moreover, as therapeutic applications of stem cell research become more imminent, the pressure to relax the ban on federal funding is bound to give way.

Now, what's that mantra I keep hearing about?

Oh yes: The only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religious belief has sunk man.

What's that? There's another mantra? Why, you're right: Kill religion. Elevate man.

Yankees vs. Evil

Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, the Yankees are busy kicking the shit out of the Red Sox.

At Fenway.

Boston will continue to lick its wounds, and slide ever further into obscurity.

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

One of the reasons I refer to myself as libertarian-ish as opposed to plain old libertarian is that there are some uses of government power about which I don't get too exercised; among them, most obviously, is the death penalty.

Another argument for which I have little sympathy is the notion that the government ought not be spying on international communications without warrant.

I don't pretend any expertise in the area, however, and therefore, my opinion on it hardly amounts to the veritable hill of beans.

But. There are a lot of people who are knowledgeable about the issue, and the legal problems surrounding it. None of them are too happy with the legal analysis put forth by the peanut-farmer appointee, Anna Diggs Taylor:

The main problems, scholars sympathetic to the decision’s bottom line said, is that the judge, Anna Diggs Taylor, relied on novel and questionable constitutional arguments when more straightforward statutory ones were available.

She ruled, for instance, that the program, which eavesdrops without court permission on international communications of people in the United States, violated the First Amendment because it might have chilled the speech of people who feared they might have been monitored.

I don't pretend to know one way or the other whether this woman's reasoning was competent, incomeptent, or merely inflamed by passion, as some have argued. What I do know is this: the New York Times doesn't get it:

Judge Taylor also ruled that the program violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. But scholars said she failed to take account of the so-called “special needs” exception to the amendment’s requirement that the government obtain a warrant before engaging in some surveillance unrelated to routine law enforcement. “It’s just a few pages of general ruminations about the Fourth Amendment, much of it incomplete and some of it simply incorrect,” Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who believes the administration’s legal justifications for the program are weak, said of Judge Taylor’s Fourth Amendment analysis on a Web log called the Volokh Conspiracy.

Where's the problem in that quote, you ask? Go to the source: click on the link I give you, above, and see if there is any link to Kerr's blog post.

What's that? There's no link? In the Times' lame attempt at "analysis" it fails to link to the sources on which it bases its analysis? That gets me more exercised than this warrantless wiretapping bullshit.

How stupid is the New York Times?

Link to the ludicrousness that passes for the Times today via Althouse, natch.

UPDATE: I would also add that it appears at least some commenters at Althouse's blog don't understand how newspapers work; they feign surprise and indignation at the fact that the Times' editorial board can be pro-Diggs and, at the same time, report on blawgers who trash the opinion. Talk about not understanding how journalism works. Ignorance on either side of the issue does little to inform debate, no more so than does the Times' resolute refusal to link to those blogs it considers relevant to its reporting.

Cluelessness abounds.

Disinfectant

Disinfectant.

Via Coyote Blog.

Brandeis if you don't get the reference.

Islamofascism

Writes one Roger Scruton in the Wall St. Journal:

Christians and Jews are heirs to a long tradition of secular government, which began under the Roman Empire and was renewed at the Enlightenment: Human societies should be governed by human laws, and these laws must take precedence over religious edicts. The primary duty of citizens is to obey the state; what they do with their souls is a matter between themselves and God, and all religions must bow down to the sovereign authority if they are to exist within its jurisdiction.

That duty to God or belief is subordinate to duty to nation should not surprise anyone; that it irks Muslims who fell maligned when references to "Islamofascism" are uttered by politicians or the media suggests that Islam is no "religion of peace" as its "mainstream" adherents like to claim.

Kill religion. Elevate man.

The only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religious belief has sunk man.

"If your self-esteem requires being told you're attractive by anonymous horny net geeks with their dicks in their hands, you really need to reevaluate your life"

So says Dispatches From the Culture Wars about Jacqueline Passey.

Sure, she's self-righteous and arrogant as hell, but I also think she makes a good point: successful, intelligent, attractive people tend to seek in their mates people they see as their equal. Now, that may not be a truth we all want to acknowledge, it being rather superficial, but it is nonetheless the truth.

Never Forget

If anyone needs a reminder of the depths to which religion can sink man, read this discussion of a group of survivors of 9/11 reminiscing about their experiences.

Then, consider the mantra: the only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religion has sunk man.

Then, go read Becker:

Objectors to profiling of particular groups complain that this would subject many innocent members of groups being profiled to obtrusive and sometimes embarrassing searches and even harassment. No question that profiling of a group inevitably means that innocent members of that group would experience greater delays and more unpleasant encounters than would innocent members of groups not profiled. This is regrettable, but there is no effective alternative to profiling when one or a few groups pose far greater threats than do the rest of the population. To limit the discomfort and anger caused by profiling, members of the profiled groups should be treated politely and with dignity. They should also be reminded that they too are being protected from terrorist activities by a small fringe.

Those objecting to profiling potential terrorists usually want to subject everyone to the same detailed examination and inquiry. However, when potential terrorists are part of a group that constitutes only a small fraction of the population, searching everyone with the same detailed care at airports or at other venues would be needlessly costly and time consuming. This would slow down and thereby reduce air travel and other vulnerable group activities. It would also lead to loud complaints by those affected after the fear of terrorism had abated.

People in the United States and other free countries are gradually realizing that effective conduct of the war on terrorism means that it is no longer possible to have the full complement of liberties they have been accustomed to. Terrorists and suspected terrorists may be subjected to psychological pressures in order to gain vital information, pressures that would not have been acceptable in the past. In addition, government anti-terror agencies will be listening in on some phone conversations, they will inspect some emails, they will check some spending and bank accounts, they will monitor travel, and in other ways too they will intrude on traditional liberties. Of course, profiled groups, including innocent members, would be subject to more extensive surveillance than others. Unfortunately, mistakes will continue to be made, as in the detention by Britain a few months ago of some Muslim men who turned out to be innocent.

There are two enemies in our fight against terrorism: (1) religion and (2) the naive, sentimental, and ignorant belief that all men are created equal.

Neurosurgeons are Not Pharmacologists

Eliot Spitzer is, allegedly, an intelligent man.

He bases his stance on medical marijuana on the claim, by his brother, a neurosurgeon, that "other drugs" work better than marijuana:

A Spitzer spokeswoman says the candidate’s not “ideologically opposed, but scientifically opposed” to medical marijuana use because his brother, a neurosurgeon, has told him other drugs work better. Spitzer is open to analyzing the issue further though, she said.

So, the next time you have a headache, go see an allergist, because hey, it's a doctor as well. No need to see a neurologist. An allergist knows more about biology than you; therefore, that should be sufficient.

Just don't blame me if you die from an aneurysm. Because, really, an allergist is qualified to make an informed comment about your headache.

Huh?

In an article about the alleged dangers that laptops batteries pose in flight (unexpected fires, not terrorism) the Journal explains FedEx's handling of "dangerous cargo":

FedEx says the shipper violated federal guidelines requiring the batteries be packaged in a plastic sheath to protect them from making contact with other objects. Instead they were rolled in cardboard wrapping and placed in a cardboard box with metal tools used to install the batteries. Mr. Sudduth said the tools probably shifted during transit and struck the batteries, causing sparks. The Memphis-based air cargo carrier says it has tightened standards to exceed federal requirements. It now refuses to carry hazardous materials without first confirming they have been packaged according to federal standards.

So, federal guidelines require that batteries be sheathed in plastic, to prevent accidental short circuiting...and so FedEx "exceeds" that requirement by confirming that shipper have met the federal requirement?

And that exceeds the requirement how? Up next: a man who pays his taxes early and therefore "exceeds" the IRS' requirements for tax payments.

Posner on Terrorism

Posner appears to advocate the radical idea that we--the West--are at war with Islam:

Our ostrich brgade may retreat to the claim that "our" Muslims, unlike the British and Canadian Muslims, are fully integrated into American society and so pose no threat. That is false. The percentage of American Muslims who are potential terrorists is undoubtedly smaller than the corresponding percentages in either Britain or Canada. But as there are many more American Muslims than there are British or Canadian ones, and as (we now know) British (and presumably Canadian) Muslim extremists want to attack us and not just their own host nations, we cannot afford to assume that we are safe. Perhaps we shall no longer indulge that dangerous assumption.

Posner is correct. We are at war with an enemy that hides behind the guise of religiosity and piety; politically correct appeals to multiculturalism will not help us vanquish this enemy.

Kill religion. Elevate man.

Mantra: The only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religion has sunk man.

Paroxysms of Existential Despair

A libertarian has paroxysms of existential despair:

Do libertarians honestly believe that there will only be a few creationist private schools? The idea that school choice will end the culture wars, which I’ve read many a time, is downright insane. All it will mean is that even more kids grow up in a bubble of irrationality and godtalk, making things even more fucked up when they grow up and vote.

But I want to believe the public schools are unnecessary; I want to like school choice. The idea of giving a dime of public money to anyone who’s going to talk about Jesus, though, makes me physically ill. Meanwhile, L. is always on my case to be nicer to “people [I] don’t understand,”* and we all have to pay for things we don’t like (Quaker taxes do go to defense spending, after all), so I was trying to make myself buy into the more accomodationist position (which I honestly consider complete bullshit).

How exactly is it "libertarian" to oppose free choice?

Asinine Hyperbole

The New York Times, never known for its intelligence, claims that Staten Island is like Alaska:

There is a place in this city where teenagers go crabbing from the old railroad bridge, where people consider themselves residents of a town of half a dozen rather than of a metropolis of eight million, where the waterfront still harbors ancient secrets along with the inevitable clash of development interests.

It’s called Staten Island. It is the fastest growing county in New York State, yet it remains, in pockets, and in its peculiar way, the Alaska of New York City.

That is, a place where nature, however debased, still plays a role in daily life and where there is room to pursue a dream, whether that means amassing a mansion-full of musty antiques or a yard full of cars up on blocks patrolled by roosters, or building an artwork along a quarter mile of beachfront, or simply drinking a beer outside the corner store without having to hide it in a paper bag.

This Staten Island, somehow urban, rural and suburban at once, is hard to spot from the typical perspective of the nonislander taking a sight-seeing round-trip ferry from Manhattan or driving through to New Jersey and points west. But on a leisurely journey by foot, the island blossoms.

This is, to be sure, rather stupid and ignorant. Alaska is many things, but it is neither urban nor suburban. Alaska is twice the size of Texas, with fewer than 600,000 people. Which implies a population density of less than one person per square mile. Further, Alaska is a place where nature is not "debased" (despite all the prattling from the enviros about the Valdez and the ANWR).

Having actually been to both Alaska and Staten Island, I can tell you that Alaska has as much to do with Staten Island as Al Gore has to do with cogency. Which is to say noe.

Mantra

First, consider the mantra: The only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religion has sunk man.

Then, consider this:

Ervil LeBaron died in the Utah state prison in 1981. Before his death, he reportedly wrote a "bible" which included a commandment to kill disobedient church members.

It was also rumored that he left behind a "hit list" and that some of his 54 children were carrying out his commands.

Jacqueline LeBaron is one of six LeBaron family members charged with the June 1988 murders of three men who chose to leave the sect and the 8-year-old daughter of one victim. Each was shot in the head with a shotgun.

In 1995, three of the accused killers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Another was convicted of ordering the deaths and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. The youngest, who was 16 at the time of the murders, pleaded guilty to killing the child and served five years in prison.

Note also the moral lesson: if you kill a kid in the name of religion you will be out of jail in half a decade.

Kill religion. Elevate man.

0!

Of all the things that are certain in life, among them being evolution and gravity, add mathematics.

Anything multiplied by zero equals 0.

Except.

0! = 1.

In Which A Yuppie Wields a Gun to Subdue Canadian White Trash

Priceless.

What's that you say about gun control laws?

In Which I State the Obvious

Companies' market capitalizations are proxies for their skill--or lack thereof--in doing what it is they specialize in doing.

GE's market capitalization, therefore, is a proxy for its finance arm's ability to maintain its AAA rating, Wal-Mart's market capitalization is a proxy for its renown in logistics and efficient operations, and Coca-Cola's market capitalization is a proxy for its ability to sucker people into drinking sugared water like it's going out of style.

What the hell, then, does the following say about FEMA:

FEMA field officials working with the new systems say that their abilities, particularly those of the tracking system, are overblown.

For example, FEMA is equipped to track only the trucks delivering its own pre-positioned supplies. It can't electronically monitor the shipments of private contractors, upon whom the federal government relies heavily during emergencies. There also is some confusion about whether FEMA managers can communicate directly with drivers should they get lost or if FEMA needs to divert them.

FEMA officials in Washington say the system allows them to talk to drivers, but officials on the ground working in its warehouses say that the system's communications ability is so limited as to be almost useless, and that the tracking system as a whole is very basic.

"Without the ability to communicate with a driver, all we have is a dot moving aimlessly around a computer screen. What's the value in that?" says one senior FEMA official in Mississippi.

FEMA, being a government agency, is very much like a poorly run business, in which decisions are made from on high, without regard to how the people on the ground will actually use the systems put in place. If this year's hurricane season is as bad as last year's the smart money will be on the Wal-Mart's and Coca-Cola's to get needed supplies to devastated areas quickly because, unlike FEMA, their existence depends upon the goodwill they engender among their customers. They have an incetive to operate efficiently and competently where FEMA does not.

Solution: shitcan FEMA and outsource disaster relief to those organizations normally tasked with creating wealth, namely, America's corporations. Besides, if the next Katrina wipes out your house, whose van would you rather see roll up: FEMA's or Wal-Mart's?

The smart money, as always, is on private industry to fulfill a need in the marketplace. Kill FEMA.

Reuters

Wow.

Are they intentionally trying to destroy what remains of MSM credibility?

What beggars belief here is that Retuers thinks it could get away with something like this, in the age of the blogosphere.

Reuters' CEO is Tom Glocer. He must be sweating bullets now.

Gambling

I don't gamble, as I find it rather boring. But lots of people do gamble, and seem to enjoy it. For every breathless news story of some poker-addled blue collar mom who lets her kid die locked in the car in the casino parking lot, my bet is that there are thousands of gamblers for whom gambling is a diversionary activity no more harmful than skydiving or driving really fast on the interstate.

In other words, most people gamle for the same reason that skydivers like to jump out of perfectly good planes and some drivers like to drive fast: the thrill.

Becker makes a good point on the issue of online gambling prohibitions:

As with many other laws, restrictions on gambling mainly impact the poor and middle classes since wealthier individuals can and do gamble through equities, derivatives, housing, and in many other ways that are not readily available to families with modest incomes. There are many ways to spend money in ways that others do not approve. Why single out families with modest incomes who may enjoy the excitement of gambling, or the dreams gambling provide about striking it rich?

To his point about the wealthy being able to gamble on equities, derivatives, housing, and the like, I would also argue that the rich are better able to set up offshore accounts with which to gamble. If a gambling web site requires, for example, a credit card account, it is much easier for the wealthy to establish an account domiciled in, say, Prague or Hong Kong than it would be for a blue collar worker. Money buys access to circumvention of American law.

Human Life Has a Calculable Value

David Bernstein at Volokh asks an interesting question:

[L]et's say you are an Israeli officer in charge of taking out the Party of God commanders in question. Your analysis shows that a bomb is 90% likely to be effective, as is a commando raid. Expected losses from an air attack to your forces are zero. Expected losses from the commando raid are two killed, eight wounded. The only reason to prefer the commando raid is to avoid civilian casualties (this may not be true in this particular case, but play along). How many civilian casualties do you need to avoid to justify the deaths and injuries of your own men? What if five civilians live in the building and would likely die from the raid? Ten? Fifty? One hundred?

To which one commenter responds, without warrant:

The value of human life is infinite. Which means, not that it's big (it's not), but that you can't calculate with it.

The value of human life is not "infinite": were it so, there would be no actuarial science and no life insurance industry. Bernstein asks an interesting and important question; muddying the waters with sentimental appeals to the "infinite value" of a human life doesn't answer the question.

Where's My Money?!

Wikipedia cites the following statistics about readers of Barron's:

Its readership is 90.8% male, average age of 54, 93.8% of whom attended college, 44% of whom are employed in top management, have an average household income of $203,000, average personal income of $171,000, average household net worth of $1,228,000.

Where's my $1.2 million? I'm a faithful reader. Clearly, Barron's owes me some money. Anyone want to be my lawyer? I'm going to sue them.

Existentialism, Revisited

Here's a news flash: regions change over time. Geographical areas, under the direction of man, are not static objects but rather are re-made to suit man's needs.

It is therefore unsurprising that rural New Jersey is being suburbanized as Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and New York City have grown over the past several decades.

Some, apparently, see this and engage in existential cries of disbelief:

For Dave Sandor, from Sicklerville, N.J., about 30 miles east from Cowtown Rodeo — which bills itself as the nation’s oldest continuously operated rodeo — the outing offered an escape from his job at the United Asphalt warehouse in Cedar Brook, and could be about as close as he will come to living his dream.

“I always wanted to have a farm, animals,” said Mr. Sandor, a soft-spoken 24-year-old who was taking in the rodeo with his wife, Amber, and his 3-year-old cousin, Christopher. “But it just didn’t work out that way. At least here, you could come and have a little part of that.”

But these days, broncos and bulls have to share a shrinking swath of grazing land with Capes and nouveau colonials in this southwestern corner of rural Salem County, N.J., which is rapidly becoming a bedroom community for Wilmington, Del., about 15 miles away; Philadelphia, about 35 miles away; and even Atlantic City, 55 miles away.

This kind of story is as stupid as it is old: the nature of development and economic progress is that some wealth will be created, which will pass some people by, and enrich others. Who cares? Far better to have progress than to have stasis.

"The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted"

The New York Times has a fascinating article about a pygmy who was used by the Bronx Zoo in the early 1900s in an exhibit with an organutan. Some religious people, unconcerned with the implicit equivalence of man and beast, were more upset with the implicit support of Darwinian evolution that such an exhibit demonstrated.

It is good to know the religious of one hundred years ago, as today, have their priorities in order. Never mind the epistemological failings of religion; Man is being insulted by being compared to a mere ape!

One racist man nonetheless demonstrates a better sense of perspective on the matter than the clergy:

The New York Globe printed a letter from a reader that said: “I lived in the south several years, and consequently am not overfond of the negro, but believe him human. I think it a shame that the authorities of this great city should allow such a sight as that witnessed at the Bronx Park — a negro boy on exhibition in a monkey cage.”

It is one thing to dislike a man based on the color of his skin, and it is quite another to judge a man as not human based on the color of his skin.

Numbers

Nothing is as important as numeracy.

When I was in high school I had a chemistry teacher with an odd sense of humor, and on the final for the year he had as an extra credit question something like the following: "It was 300 degrees yesterday and I went for a swim. Explain how this is possible."

The answer of course--immediately obvious to the numerate among us--is that "300 degrees" doesn't tell us anything about the scale being used. 300 degrees Kelvin is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which, for May in Maine, was not unusual.

I'm reminded of this because Marginal Revolution quotes Richard Feynman on the size of 100 billion:

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Environmental Law

Jonathan Adler explains why he specializes in environmental law, despite not being a liberal:

My primary answer is that I find environmental law very challenging and rewarding because of the nature of the trade-offs involved. On the one hand, environmental law concerns our efforts to protect human health and the world around us. Failure to provide for environmental protection can leave the world a less safe, less vibrant, and less beautiful place. On the other hand, because environmental concerns are ubiquitous, environmental law itself can pose a serious threat to individual liberty. Today, environmental protection is probably the only intellectually respectable basis for urging policies that amount to central planning. As I see it, the stakes are enormous on both sides, making this a challenging and important field, and one that is worth far more serious attention from those who generally prefer limited government.

To which my response is: The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Mantra, Again

First, consider the mantra: The only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religion has sunk man.

Then, consider all the confusion over the Islamic/Christian murderer in Seattle:

The (take your pick) mentally ill individual/evil Muslim terrorist who shot six at the Seattle Jewish Federation, killing one, recently converted to Christianity, according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer report.

Naveed Haq, now widely portrayed as a Muslim American so angry at Israel that he shot up a Jewish charity in Seattle, had recently converted to Christianity. His conversion is perhaps the most startling contradiction in a puzzling life.

Clearly, this proves that Christians hate America and that there is an organized effort to kill Jews among Christians and that Haq was part of it. Sure, sure–most Christians don’t murder Jews. But many do. There’s a long history of Jew-hating Christians going way back, from the earliest days of the church right up to Mel Gibson. And now this.

Outsidethebeltway's snarky interpretation of this murderer's religioisty seems to be in response to Michelle "perpetually suspended between meltdown and release" Malkin's insinuation that Islam is inherently murderous (a contention with which it is hard to disagree).

Nonetheless, all these people and all their interpretations of man and religion miss the simple point: religious has wrought destruction upon man. When will we jettison it in favor of reason?