Strange Doctrines

Virtue, Law and Decadent Television

No doubt Edward Skidelsky is correct in pointing out that John Stuart Mill's harm principle (and the neat autonomy it presupposes) cannot stand on its own as a full-blooded morality.

Persuasive Authority

The New York Times reports that the international influence once enjoyed by the Supreme Court is "waning," noting the "diminishing number of foreign courts [that] seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices."

Either that, or they're paying more attention to the writings of one Supreme Court Justice in particular.

UPDATE [9.19.08]: Shorter Scalia, et al.: Let's just cut this "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" crap, shall we?

The Best F#&king Oppo Research Team Ever

The Daily Show's history of doing great oppo research (subsequently ignored by the candidates who could use it most) dates back to 1999:

The whole thing is funny, but the climax of the clip ("Let's do a lightening round") runs 2:49-3:33.

Daily Show writer Ben Karlin describes the moment as "represent[ing] both the triumph and the failure of our show."

(Daily Show clip and New Yorker article via Rachel Sklar at The Huffington Post.)

Blackmail

Or something close to it (pertinent exchange starts at 4:04):

Completely of a piece with Roger Ailes' "We wouldn't have had to screw you if you'd just given us an interview."

Stay classy, guys.

(Via Mark Kleiman.)

It Involved Something About Reading

I only managed to skim this Mark Bauerlein article. Which means he must be right.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Qualification-Off

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina insists that none of the major-ticket candidates is qualified to run a Fortune 500 company.

Then again, neither was Fiorina.

UPDATE: Looks like the McCain campaign has decided Fiorina isn't qualified to run her mouth, either.

UPDATE II: But Mark Kleiman observes, "[The McCain campaign] can't plausibly argue with Fiorina, both because she's on their team and because she is, after all, perhaps the world's leading expert on being incompetent to run Hewlett Packard...."

More Regular Than Thou

George Saunders loves meeses to pieces.

Seeing is Believing

Since I'm hardly the only one struck by how weak the Obama ads have been, I'll just point out what seems to me their number one weakness: A consistent reliance on voiceover to the exclusion of what you might call "best evidence."

Preventive Obliviousness

Uh, folks? The issue isn't that the precise outlines of the Bush Doctrine are hard to articulate. (Not least because the Bush Doctrine is inherently vague.)

The point is that it was obvious Governor Palin had never even heard the phrase -- even as her son was about to be deployed pursuant to the doctrine.

We've already seen this movie.

UPDATE: From the comments under Russell Korobkin's post, it would appear that for an awful lot of conservatives, "Who cares what you don't have a clue about?" is the new standard for leadership.

Alas, we really do live in a post-fact world.

Ontology as Oenology: Feynman on the Reduction (and Reconstitution) of Wine

[I]f we look at a glass closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imaginations adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secret of the universe's age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals are there in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
    --Richard Feynman, as quoted in The New Quantum Universe (313).

The Devil's Dictionary

9/11 (nahyn i·lév·vən)
n.

1. Events of September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon in multiple suicide attacks, killing almost 3,000.

2. Just another day on which approximately 18,000 children will die of famine without any discernible commemoration.

Risky Philosophy - Part I

The post title comes from an essay by Georges Rey [1], in which he discusses what he calls the "philosophy fallacy":

The idea that one needs powerful philosophical theories to settle [whether there are gods, witches or ghosts] might be called the “philosophy fallacy.” [P]eople are particularly prey to it in religious discussions, both theist and atheist alike; indeed, atheists often get trapped into doing far more, far riskier philosophy than they need (247-248).

Indeed, Rey contends,

Broken Record

John McCain's flagging that his torturers broke him, amidst a long and dramatic appeal to his own POW experience (which I've been told he's very reluctant to discuss, especially in nationally televised speeches), hardly strikes me as a statement against interest.

But it would be cynical to suggest that the admission was at all calculated to elicit additional, fawning praise from his admirers.

Yes on Ngo

Deep thoughts on politics, competence and goin' with yer gut from Obsidian Wings guest-blogger Dr. Ngo. I like.

They See 'Em As They Call 'Em

It's no surprise the dittoheads would line up behind whatever bozo McCain picked (yes, even a former mayor of a not-a-big-town and less-than-full-term-governor) and call strikes as homeruns.

But it ain't gonna play with independents. And they're just judging her on her delivery of a prepared speech. Wait till they get a taste of her actual resume...

Of Two Minds? Or Of No Mind At All?

What else is there to say?

The Community-Organizers-are-Mere Smear

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities."
  --from Sarah Palin's GOP Convention Speech

Yeah. And Giuliani (as he introduced Palin) also made a similar nifty about Obama's ostensibly lowly beginnings. I guess community organizing is beneath those GOP elitists.

No doubt about it: Being a community organizer is without question an utterly ridiculous occupation.

UPDATE: Well, hell. I can't beat this: "Jesus Christ was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor."

From the "Things That Could Have Been Brought To Our Attention YESTERDAY!" Files

The attorney for the GOP pick for Vice President of the United States stipulates that Ken Starr's investigation of Bill Clinton was a fraud: "Our concern is that Hollis French turns into Ken Starr and uses public money to pursue a political vendetta rather than truly pursue an honest inquiry into an alleged ethics issue."

Nice to know.

Debating Debating Religion

Lately I've been revisiting the question of whether there is any point at all in debating religious claims. For awhile (a very short one) I'd "closed the book" on the topic, taking to heart Daniel Davies' wisdom: "[A] sensible man does not spend his precious and decidedly finite waking hours talking or thinking in any great depth about that in which he does not believe."

Bailin' on Palin

No more from me on Palin; I'm running out of fresh rhymes.