Strange Doctrines

Touché

Sarah Palin's thrust:

I got to meet quite a few candidates who are lining up in a contested primary who want to take out Alan Grayson. And I think Alan Grayson -- what can you say about Alan Grayson? Piper is with me tonight, so I won't say anything about Alan Grayson that can't be said around children. But thank you, Florida.... [and so forth.]

Alan Grayson's parry and riposte:

Palin, the former half-term Governor, current-nothing and future-even-less, charmed the all-Republican audience with her folksy folksiness and her homespun homespunnery. Atypically, Palin was wearing clothes that she had paid for herself. At the end of the event, she shared her recipe for mooseface pie.

In response to Palin's attack on Rep Grayson, Grayson actually complimented Palin . . . for having a hand large enough to fit Grayson's entire name on it. He thanked Palin for alleviating the growing shortage of platitudes in Central Florida. Grayson added that Palin deserved credit for getting through the entire hour-long program without quitting....

(Via Mark Kleiman.)

New Rule

What Spiros says about philosophy Q&A goes for all f#$king Q&A. And radio and television call-in programs, too. Also, when you are asking me a question.

(Via Brian Leiter.)

The Roundup

In my capacity as Blogger at the Federal Public Defender, I've taken to doing a "TGIF Roundup" series on Fridays (as you will have guessed from the series title). My brief for the series is to enable members of the federal indigent criminal defense bar in our district to get plugged into the Juristischerzeitgeist of the past week in under 60 seconds. (And maybe get a laugh or two.)

The blog is currently designed mostly for internal use, so there are no bloggy accoutrements like RSS, tags, comments, trackbacks or the like. Still, I thought some readers might be curious, and legal readers might even find it useful, so a link to today's Roundup post is here. An item for the nonlegal readers:

Kind Only to Be Cruel. The AP reports that condemned Ohio inmate Lawrence Reynolds took an overdose of medication in an apparent suicide attempt just hours before his execution, which had been scheduled for Tuesday. Authorities say that Reynolds is recuperating in a Youngstown hospital and should be well enough by next week to be put to death.

Doh! Squared

Daniel Davies (a.k.a. d squared), usually so right about so much, has published two posts in one day on the two topics he consistently gets wrong.

The first is about the "new atheist" v. "accommodationist" debate. It's a tiresome business, made every bit as tiresome by the indiscriminate flailing of the accommodationists as by the ululating polemics of the new atheists. (See how I did that? I mentioned two opposing cohorts, and then positioned myself as socially and philosophically superior to both by using carefully chosen epithets, all without really dealing with the merits of the competing claims. (One can learn much from the accommodationists.))

DD apparently thinks that Dawkins is getting his comeuppance because, after all, his being called an "utter twat" by mean atheists is only a taste of his own medicine. Yes, finally - payback for all those times Dawkins called this religious figure or that an "utter twat." Whatever.*

The second, and far more egregiously wrong, post is about the nylon v. tortex guitar pick debate. DD blithely claims that "[n]ylon is for jazz, tortex is for rock." What utter tosh. Dunlop's Gator Grip picks are superior for both idioms. 

*I realize that the real moral the authors of the linked-to pieces mean to draw is that there is justice in Dawkins' finally being abused by denizens of his own forum, which abuse heretofore had been heaped only upon Dawkins' critics. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to spot the gaping hole in this argument.

It's a Calling

In the recently-decided Ninth Circuit case United States v. Cha, Guam police officers seized the home of In Ha Cha and his wife. The seizure was undertaken without a warrant, and would ultimately last 26.5 hours.

At about Hour 7 of the seizure, Mr. Cha, after tending to his wife (who had been arrested),

returned home to find a police officer outside, guarding the house. He called his lawyer, Mr. Van de veld, anxiously recounted the night’s events and told Mr. Van de veld that “the police were still there and would not allow him access to the premises.” Mr. Van de veld told Mr. Cha that he would stop by as soon as he finished his golf game.

Personal Confessions

Eric Schwitzgebel makes out a problem with Kant as a problem for philosophy:

Kant's philosophical moral reasoning appears mainly to have confirmed his prejudices and the ideas inherited from his culture. Therefore, we should be nervous about expecting more from the philosophical moral reasoning of people less philosophically capable than Kant.

More on Stewart Baker

About the only redeeming feature of Stewart Baker's post on the Liz Cheney affair is that its title is phonetically identical to "Moron: Liz Cheney."

I'd like to think that my post has at least one such redeeming feature.

Reasons

The headline of this inane blog post by Stanley Fish (but I repeat myself) asks: "Are There Secular Reasons?"

Paul Gowder has the correct answer: "I sure hope so. Because otherwise there aren’t any reasons at all."

Base Alchemy

Professional journalist Thomas Friedman, in the Paper of Record:

If you combine CO2 with seawater, or any kind of briny water, you produce CaCO3, calcium carbonate.

(Via Daniel Davies, who wonders "about the kind of person who will write such an obviously self-contradictory sentence without even thinking for a moment about how you put NaCl, CO2 and H2O together, and get Calcium anythingate.")

Has Someone Waterboarded Orin Kerr Recently?

I was surprised to see Orin Kerr stipulate that "[w]aterboarding seems to be pretty clearly forbidden under [18 U.S.C. § 2340]," and that "the only fair reading [of the section] is that waterboarding is prohibited by it."

Of course I agree with Orin - the question is a no-brainer. And Orin is a brilliant legal analyst (no snark - he's one of the best legal writers out there), so it wouldn't normally be any surprise to read that he similarly concludes that the question isn't a difficult one.

But I am surprised. Because back in 2007 Orin gave me all sorts of grief for suggesting the question was, well, a no-brainer. I've excerpted our 2007 exchange below the fold (starting with my comment; Orin's comments in official VK pine green):

What the Hell Is Fodor On About?

Did Jerry Fodor actually expand this error into a book-length argument? It appears so.

UPDATE: Block and Kitcher have more. (Via Brian Leiter.)

UPDATE II: Very fine, informative post by PZ Myers, here.

And Be Sure to Blog Every Now and Then

[W]here are you hurrying to?
You will never find that life for which you are looking.
When the gods created man they allotted to him death.
But life they retained in their own keeping.
As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things;
Day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice.
Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water.
Cherish the little child that holds your hand.
And make your wife happy in your embrace.
For this too is the lot of man.

From The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sandars, Nancy K., trans. )

(Via Brad DeLong.)

Health Insurance and Health Care Denialism

I haven't had time to get up to snuff on the studies (or actually I guess it's just "study") Megan McArdle and others cite in support of the notion that health insurance has no discernible effect on mortality. But there are heuristics one can use to evaluate their claims.

Spare the Rod

...and pour the water instead. Such has long been my counsel.

And I am most gratified to learn that, at last, a forward-looking head of household appears to have taken heed of my call.

Let it not be gainsaid: one can make a difference.

Testosterone as Fairness

This is fascinating (emphases mine):

Evidence from animal studies in rodents shows that testosterone causes aggressive behaviour towards conspecifics. Folk wisdom generalizes and adapts these findings to humans, suggesting that testosterone induces antisocial, egoistic, or even aggressive human behaviours. However, many researchers have questioned this folk hypothesis, arguing that testosterone is primarily involved in status-related behaviours in challenging social interactions, but causal evidence that discriminates between these views is sparse. Here we show that the sublingual administration of a single dose of testosterone in women causes a substantial increase in fair bargaining behaviour, thereby reducing bargaining conflicts and increasing the efficiency of social interactions. However, subjects who believed that they received testosterone—regardless of whether they actually received it or not—behaved much more unfairly than those who believed that they were treated with placebo.

The paper is Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour, C. Eisenegger, M. Naef, R. Snozzi, M. Heinrichs & E. Fehr, Nature 463, 356-359 (21 January 2010).

(Via Crooked Timber.)

Boo!

Lawrence Lessig at Huffington Post, on Citizens United:

Whatever else one believes about the Supreme Court's decision striking down limits on corporate speech in the context of political campaigns, there's one thing no credible commentator could assert: That money bought this result.

Jack Balkin's response:

The Supreme Court we have today is the ghost of campaign expenditures past.

The Phatic Wilde

From Prospect Magazine:

(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

Perspectives on Perspectivism

Mike solicits other views on the similarities (if any) between Nietzsche's perspectivism and the "perspectivism" of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. Go lend him your many eyes.

Call Me Ungrateful

Stephen Meyer writes a letter to the editor of the London Times:

Functional RNA catalysts arise only once RNA bases are specifically arranged into information-rich sequences – that is, function arises after, not before, the information problem has been solved. For this reason, invoking prebiotic natural selection in an RNA World does not solve the problem of the origin of genetic information; it merely presupposes a solution in the form of a hypothetical, information-rich RNA molecule capable of copying itself.

Therefore, God did it.

Okay - the last sentence was mine. But the interpolation fairly captures the logic intended.

BTW, Thomas Nagel has a letter on the same page, who describes himself as having recommended Meyer's book "as a grateful reader." Good heavens.

All Work and All Play

Blogging's been slow because when I'm not delivering justice for the Federal Public Defender, I'm learning material for a new country rock project. In the residue of time I try to, you know, eat. So: not much time for blogging.

In lieu of a proper post, then, I'll recap a few of my apothegmatic Facebook stati for the past week, which seems suitably frivolous:

A poor workman can't afford tools.

A journey of a thousand miles ends after about two million steps.

Moderation in a reasonable number of things.

It takes two to tango. Unless it's more of a solo or group tango.

Don't count your chickens before they've actually become chickens.

If it's not one thing, it's either more or less than one thing.

A rose by any other name would still have the same physical characteristics.

Now you go.