Strange Doctrines

L'aiguille de l'escalier

I usually suck at the New Yorker's cartoon caption contest, but I immediately knew the correct solution when I saw this one:

"I'm also a client."

Alas, it is just so much staircase wit; the call for entries is closed. (I coulda been a contenduh.)

New Finding: Lack of Delusion May Confer Social Benefits

This Boston Globe piece about a new breed of researchers interested in the relationship between secularity and societal health relates their finding that "some of the world's healthiest societies have the lowest levels of piety." Which shouldn't, but of course will, come as a surprise to most. 

The article also suggests that the influence of the New Atheists has done more good than harm. From page 3 of the article:

[S]ome [of the researchers] cite the influence of "New Atheist" polemicists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have spurred nonbelievers inside and outside the academy to be more strident. But the researchers say they're eager not to replicate the errors of wishful thinking that [Columbia University psychiatrist Richard] Sloan pointed out in the work on religion.

No, I didn't think "strident" was the right word either.

(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

"She Left Me for Jesus"

Hayes Carll's "She's Left Me for Jesus" (iTunes link) cracks me up:

We've been datin' since high school we never once left this town
We use to go out on the weekends and we'd drink 'til we drowned.
But now she's acting funny and I don't understand
I think that shes found her some other man.

(CHORUS)
She left me for Jesus and that just ain't fair.
She says that he's perfect -- how could I compare?
She says I should find him and I'll know peace at last;
If I ever find Jesus I'm kickin' his ass.

She showed me a picture all I could do was stare
At that freak in his sandals with his long pretty hair.
They must think that I'm stupid or I don't have a clue.
I'll bet he's a commie -- or ever worse yet a Jew.

REPEAT CHORUS

She's given up whiskey and ah takin' up wine
While she prays for his troubles has forgot about mine
I'm a gonna get even, I can't handle the shame
Why last time we made love she even called out his name.

REPEAT CHORUS

It coulda been Carlos or even Billy Ortez
But if I ever find Jesus
He's gonna wish he was dead.

Amen.

Whitman Still Gay

From the Washington Post:

A group of seven congregants from Topeka, Kan., set up outside Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda yesterday to protest the sexual orientation of the poet for whom the school was named.

Unfortunately for the protesters, the event comes too late to effect any relevant change, as Whitman died in 1892.

(Via How Appealing.)

Good News, Bad News

The good news is I learned something new today: the Jobim/Moraes classic, elegant but lamentably overplayed-by-hacks "Girl from Ipanema" was inspired by an actual girl (now obviously a woman), whom Jobim and Moraes once ogled admired as she walked past their perch at the "Veloso" bar-café (which is in Ipanema, as you might have guessed).

The bad news is I learned this from watching a segment of America's Top Model.

A Modesty Proposal

At the gym, the Missus approaches me mid-workout, having removed her outer sweatshirt, and says, "Guys really look at you if you take your shirt off."

I think about it for a sec, then reply, "But I don't feel like taking my shirt off."

Transgressive Wikipedism

Looks like Doug Stanhope has been updating his Wikipedia article again (click here for a screen shot):

Stanhope was the winner of the San Francisco International Comedy Competition where he edged out notable gay comedic actor Dane Cook in a three-week contest. (My emphasis.)

Dane Cook, of course, is not really an actor.

Standing by Stare Decisis

I was much amused by Justice Stevens' majority riposte in Arizona v. Gant (pdf) to the dissenters' appeal to stare decisis:

We have never relied on stare decisis to justify the continuance of an unconstitutional police practice. (15)

Because of course conceptually, that would be very hard for a Supreme Court majority ever to do.

A Hanging Jury

Evidence suggests that jurors in a Texas murder case conferred with Numbers 35:16 before sentencing Khristian Oliver to death. Oliver petitioned for habeas relief, claiming the jury's consultation with Biblical sentencing guidelines was a violation of the Sixth and Eighth Amendments.

The Fifth Circuit held that while "[t]he jury’s use of the Bible during the sentencing phase of Oliver’s trial amounted to an improper external influence on the jury’s deliberations," Oliver "failed to rebut [with clear and convincing evidence] the state court’s factual finding that the Bible did not prejudice the jury’s decision." Opinion (pdf) at 23. (Read: they'd've hanged 'im anyhow.)

The Supreme Court is not interested in reviewing whether the jury's consulting a Biblical passage that calls for death before imposing a sentence of death is constitutionally...problematic. Ostensibly, the Supreme Court agrees with the Fifth Circuit's holding that the jury's impropriety did not prejudice their decision. In this, at least, the Supremes are almost surely correct.

It's the Strictures that Got Small

A Wall Street goon repines:

No one complains when Julia Roberts pulls down $25 million per movie or A-Rod has a $300 million guarantee. We have ex-presidents who cash in on their presidencies.... Honestly, you can pick on Wall Street all you want, I don't think it's fair. It's fair to say you ran your companies into the ground, your risk management is flawed -- that is perfectly legitimate. You can lay criticism on GM or others. But I don't think it's fair to say Wall Street is paid too much.

Hilzoy is ready for him:

People at firms that would not have survived without government assistance might have been Julia Roberts a couple of years ago. Now, they're Norma Desmond.

(Via Brad DeLong.)

The Benefits of Paralegal Advice

TPM reader DP is teed off:

If only Saddam Hussein had been smart enough to solicit a legal opinion from his government lawyers that gassing people was within the law, he could have been playing golf in Myrtle Beach right now.

Everybody's Very Happy

From Edward B. Rackley, "Werner Herzog: Beyond the Syphilitic Machine":

In a recent interview with an awestruck Henry Rollins in annoying gee-whiz mode, Herzog was not expansive but did confirm that he’s living in Los Angeles and liking it. “LA is the city with the most substance in the US, period.” Henry tried to wrap his head around that one and couldn't. He leaned forward: "And all the plastic surgery? What about that?" 

Herzog smiled, unfazed: "Hollywood is where the dreams of the world are organized and manufactured … including stupidity."

The Use and Abuse of Mendacity for Life

Kurt Vonnegut:

Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.

Remainder: Literature and Philosophy

Julian Baggini:

Perhaps a period of New Atheist exuberance was necessary. At least it got people thinking, although I fear it has confirmed every negative stereotype about it. We now need to turn down the volume and engage in a real conversation about what of value is left of religion once its crude superstitions are swept away.

That should be a very short conversation.

(Via Julian Baggini.)

Torture: It's Hard Work

From OLC memo of August 1, 2002 (Via Hilzoy [RTWT]) signed by Jay Bybee:

You would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. (...) As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar. If you do so, to ensure you are outside the predicate death requirement, you must inform him that the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain. If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so, you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect is present which has a sting that could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death.

And from this news report on Former President George W. Bush's recent trip to China:

[Bush] told an audience in China on Saturday that he recently took the former First Dog, Barney, for a stroll - and brought his own baggies to clean up the terrier's mess.

"I was picking up what I had been dodging for eight years," Bush said, scoring laughs at the Boao Forum for Asia, a gathering for government, business and academic leaders.

Bush also said that after the transfer of power, he flopped on the couch and sighed, "Free at last."

Yes, what a relief it must have been for him.

Social Welfare Function Junction

From Brad DeLong's "Non-Socratic Dialogue on Social Welfare Functions":

Glaukon: "We are value neutral economists! We don't care about distribution! We care about efficiency!"

Agathon: "But claiming that you don't care about distribution is implicitly saying that shifts in distribution are of no account--which can be true only if the social welfare function gives everybody a weight inversely proportional to their marginal utility of wealth."

Glaukon: "You're introducing politics into a value-neutral technocratic social science."

Agathon: "Politics?! Moi? I'm simply evaluating the derivatives of a social welfare function under the assumption that the market allocation is its ArgMax.*

Read the whole thing. See also Robert Waldmann's comment here.

*This passage reads more elegantly in the original Greek.

"Love" Means Never Being Afraid to Say You'll Secede

Josh Marshall:

Deep Thought

Conservatives are so incensed by warnings about the threat of right wing radicalism that they're considering overthrowing the federal government

Lots of Tea

This seems to have achieved a new timeliness:

Extreme Microbes

Super cool. Literally.

Metablogging Tea-Bagging

From Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish:

"It's hard to talk when you're tea-bagging," - Anderson Cooper. Actually, as a reader notes:

It's hard to talk when you're being tea-bagged. When you're tea-bagging, you can actually say quite a bit.

I'm confused now. But the visuals are great.

Then again, I don't imagine you can see much when you're being tea-bagged, either.

And yes, latecomers, this post does belong under 'politics'.