Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
More on Hawaii: Who Are Today's "Native Hawaiians"?
By Gail Heriot

In my last post, I argued against the Akaka bill (which is scheduled for September 6th cloture vote in the U.S. Senate). If passed, the bill would put in motion a process under which ethnic Hawaiians would form their own self-governing Indian tribe, and thus (it is hoped) preserve from constitutional attack the extensive set of special benefits that are currently made available to them by the State of Hawaii. The Akaka bill is in essence an end-run around the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.

Here's some more information that you may find interesting: Hawaii is a one of the best examples of a racial melting pot in the world, and it has been for many generations. Even during the short-lived Kingdom of Hawaii, intermarriage was common. The Hawaiian royal family itself intermarried with people of other races. As a result, the overwhelmng majority of "Native Hawaiians" who qualify for special benefits today (and who would qualify to participate in the creation of the tribe) are of mixed race. This should be kept in mind whenever you hear argument that "we" owe "them" or "they" owe "us." We are they, and they are we.

According to the statistics posted on the web site of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (the agency that administer the special benefits programs in Hawaii), only about 3.95% of Native Hawaiians have what the OHA not-so-delicately calls a "blood quantum" that is "100% Hawaiian." Only 34.88% have a "50% to 99% Hawaiian" "blood quantum." And 61.17% have a "blood quantum" of less than 50%." These figure were obtained back in 1984. We've had another generation since then, and you can bet that intermarriage has continued and probably even accelerated. That's the wonderful thing about love. It can transcend even the silliest of politics.

And here's a further thought to ponder: My suspicion is that the descendents of 19th white settlers on Hawaii are much more likely to be of mixed race than the descendents of whites who came to Hawaii relatively recently, simply because they've had more opportunities over the years. That makes for an interesting situation. If those 19th century white settlers are the ones who wronged the 19th century Native Hawaiians, isn't it funny that we in the 21st century would think that we're making things right again by conferring special benefits on their descendents?

This racial stuff will tie you in knots in the end. That's why it's best to stay away from it.
posted by Gail at 8/30/2005 08:35:00 AM

 
Trouble from Paradise: Hawaii's Divisive Racial Politics Hits the National Agenda
By Gail Heriot

Here is my op-ed from Sunday's San Diego Union-Tribune paper edition:

America's 50th State has always been known for its friendly and welcoming "Spirit of Aloha." But for the last decade or so, Hawaii has begun to earn a reputation for something else entirely: the nation's most divisive racial politics. And with the proposed "Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act" (known as the Akaka bill) currently pending before the U.S. Senate, it may only get worse. A prelimnary vote is scheduled for September 6.

Put simply, the Akaka bill will allow the nation’s approximately 400,000 ethnic Hawaiians to organize themselves into one vast Indian tribe--the largest in the nation. A commission appointed by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and consisting of nine "Native Hawaiian" commissioners with "expertise in the determination of Native Hawaiian ancestry" will sit as judges to ensure that only those who can prove their Native Hawaiian bloodline are permitted to join.

Why would 400,000 American citizens want to retroactively declare themselves an Indian tribe? There's a good chance they don't. The only full-scale poll indicates that ethnic Hawaiians reject the notion of a tribe–48% to 43%–when they are informed that under a tribal government they would not be subject to the same laws, regulations and taxes as the rest of the state. And Hawaiians generally oppose the so-called "reorganization" by an astonishing 2 to 1 ratio. But vocal leaders in the ethnic Hawaiian community, many of whom no doubt fancy that they will be the tribal leaders themselves, consider tribal status a top priority. And politicians are falling in line behind them. Senator Daniel Akaka, for whom the bill is named, claims to have the votes he needs to pass the bill.

To understand why ethnic Hawaiian leaders want tribal status, one must know a bit about Hawaiian racial politics. In an age in which racial entitlements are an unfortunate feature of the political landscape in so many parts of the country, Hawaii is in a league by itself. The State’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs administers a huge public trust–worth billions–which in theory benefits all Hawaiians, but for reasons that are both historical and political, actually provides a bonanza of benefits exclusively for ethnic Hawaiians. Among other things, ethnic Hawaiians are eligible for special home loans, business loans, housing and educational programs. On the OHA web site, the caption proudly proclaims its racial goal, "Office of Hawaiian Affairs: For the Betterment of Native Hawaiians."

The problem for supporters of special benefits came in 2000, with the Supreme Court case of Rice v. Cayetano. Unsurprisingly, the Court ruled that the Constitution's Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibits States from discriminating on the basis of race in voting rights, applied to Hawaii just as it does to every other state in the union. Hawaii could not prohibit non-ethnic Hawaiians from voting in state elections for OHA trustees.

That ruling caused an uproar in Hawaii that has not yet subsided. If the Fifteenth Amendment prohibits Hawaii from limiting voting rights to ethnic Hawaiians, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and other civil rights laws might prohibit all or part of the OHA’s massive system of exclusive benefits. Cases like the Ninth Circuit’s decision last month prohibiting the Kamehameha Schools from operating for the exclusive benefit of ethnic Hawaiians only added to this controversy. The whole racially-exclusive system is in legal jeopardy.

That’s where the Indian tribe idea comes in. States cannot discriminate on the basis of race except in extraordinary cases. But Indian tribes can. They are essentially exclusive racial groups and are not directly (or in many respects even indirectly) bound by the U.S. Constitution (or by most civil rights laws). If ethnic Hawaiians can be morphed into an Indian tribe, and the State of Hawaii can then transfer the OHA’s functions (and the vast acres of real estate and other property it administers) to the tribe, the racial spoils system can be preserved–or so its advocates hope.

There are many reasons that the Akaka bill is a bad idea–including a strong likelihood that both the bill and the overall plan to transfer the OHA’s functions and property to the "tribe" are simply unconstitutional. If the State of Hawaii cannot confer preferential benefits on its citizens based on race, it cannot give away land and property to a newly-minted tribe created for the purpose of conferring benefits based on race. The Constitution’s requirements cannot be by-passed that easily.

But perhaps the most important reason to oppose the Akaka bill is the disturbing precedent it sets. The United States has long recognized the sovereign status of Indian tribes. But until now, it has done so only with groups that have a long, continuous history of self-governance. Tribes were treated as semi-autonomous entities, because they were; they had never been brought under the full control of both federal and state authority. Our policy towards them was simply a bow to reality.

By retroactively creating an Indian tribe out of individuals who are already full citizens of both the United States and the State of Hawaii, and who do not have a long and continuous history of separate self-governance, the Akaka bill will be breaking new ground. If ethnic Hawaiians can be an Indian tribe, why not Chicanos in the Southwest? Cajuns in Louisiana? Religious groups–like Orthodox Jews in New York or the Amish in Pennsylvania–may be particularly interested in gaining tribal status, since doing so will arguably allow them to take on governmental authority without being subject to Constitutional prohibitions on the establishment of religion. Who will say no to these (and other) groups?

Earlier this month, Senator Akaka was asked in a National Public Radio interview whether the sovereign status granted in the bill "could eventually go further, perhaps even leading to outright independence." The question might have seemed extraordinary for anyone unfamiliar with how strong the push for Hawaiian independence has become. Back in the 1970s, its supporters were considered kooks and lunatics. But today, although by no means a majority, they are a political force to be reckoned with. It’s hard to drive down a Hawaiian road without seeing an upside down Hawaiian flag, the symbol of the movement, flying over someone’s home. Even more extraordinary was Akaka’s answer: "That could be. That could be. As far as what’s going to happen at the other end, I’m leaving it up to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren."

Akaka’s fellow Senators should think long and hard about the whether the Akaka bill will, in the long run, lead to greater harmony among Hawaiians and among Americans–or less. Is our "One Nation" indivisible or not?
posted by Gail at 8/29/2005 10:55:00 AM

 
Say it with cash
By Tom Smith

Here is the link to the American Red Cross. I suppose it is still the best way to help out the victims of Katrina. The Southern Baptists are said to be poised to offer a lot of help. If anyone has any good links for them, I could post them. Presumably in a state like Louisiana, which is heavily Catholic, the Church will be actively involved. Ditto for them.

I am trying to give more to charity. My accountant, for one, says I should. It's pretty bad when your accountant tells you that people in your tax bracket usually give more to charity than you do. I figure I am already paying about half my income to various charitable organizations, albeit extremely inefficient ones, to support old people, poor people, well connected corporations, and so on. But, with something like this storm, I think everyone needs to pitch in.
posted by thomas at 8/29/2005 10:35:00 AM

 
Rich people get pussy cat fever
By Tom Smith

I think the overall message is, we will live forever because of nanotechnology, but only if the lions don't eat us first. Instapundit seems to be encouraging this notion that if you live in the country, watch out for them thar mountain cats; thar comin' to gatchya! The New York Times, reporting from a city with many more predators than the mountain West, tells the story of Matt Thomas, a 54 year old retiree in silicon-rich Atherton, California, who now spends his time prowling for cats amongst his neighbors' palatial estates. Check out his photo. For those of you who don't get all the best manly gear catalogs in the mail as I do, that is top of the line safari gear he is wearing. This guy desperately needs to go on a real hunting trip so he can relax in old Atherton. What a joke.

I live in lion country. I would be thrilled to see a lion on my local McGinty mountain, where there surely are some, at least once in a while, much more thrilled than the far more probable sight of a teenaged motorcyclist illegally tearing up the rare botanicals. The sight of a mountain lion actually chowing down on a dirt biker? I should not comment, so will only say it's too bad lions are afraid of noise.

A lion was spotted recently by the Singing Hills golf course, about five minutes from my house. My only concern would be that a lion might be hit by a ball. Cars are, often enough.

Maybe a year ago I was out walking the dogs in a patch of scrub that was a lot prettier before the dirt bikers tore it apart. A woman out for a walk addressed me:
"At cher trackmekkers?"
I did not feel able to comment, so said only "I beg your pardon?"
"At cher trackmekkers? Yer dawgs?"
Ah yes. My dogs. Indeed they were. She had apparently seen their tracks. I was then treated to a description of a mountain lion that had been spotted less than a mile away, only a week before, by this hardy lady's mother in law, or perhaps cousin, or perhaps both. No doubt it frightened Molly the Pit Bill half to death. And I'm supposed to be worried about the lions.

I'm sorry, but the notion that Mr. & Mrs. Software feel prisoners in their own palatial estate -- and can't even let Johnny and Chippy go to the tennis court on their own! -- because of the lion, is just too comical for words. How much do you want to bet Mr. and Mrs. Software are Democrats and know all about how we should handle Iraq. All this, because somebody saw a lion. Oh eek! Somebody call 911, somebody call the lawyers!

If you are really that worried, and you are a zillionaire, for heaven's sake, there are lots of things you can do, besides cowering in your mansion and whining to the Times. Like, buy a couple of big dogs. Like say, a German Shepherd and a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Of course, they will poop all over your three hole golf course, but there's no such thing as a free dog. Of course, having a dog is probably much more statistically risky than lions, because Johnny might step in it, slip, crack his head on the tennis court, and never be the same. Tradeoffs. But lions aren't stupid, unlike some rich suburbanites. They see a couple of big dogs, or more likely smell them, they'll take a detour. Or give your gardener a .45 and tell him to keep his eyes open. Probably not a bad idea anyway.

I have seen a Mexican bobcat (forget the precise name) on my property, many, many snakes, with and without venom, coyotes, tarantulas, and all manner of wasps, bees and ants. Dude, that's why they call it nature. If you tie a bunch of filets around your neck and take lots of solitary walks in the mountains around here (or Atherton), you might, eventually, run into a lion with dinner in mind. Otherwise, you are very lucky if the most you have to worry about is your two darlings getting eaten on their way to your private tennis court. And why are you letting them play tennis anyway? That's a good way to put an eye out.
posted by thomas at 8/28/2005 12:26:00 PM

 
Fake But Accurate
By Gail Heriot

This is an incredible story (that I at least didn't hear about until today). For two years, readers of the University of Southern Illinois' Daily Egyptian have been riveted by a continuing series of letters from a little girl named Kodee to her father, Sgt. Dan Kennings, in Iraq. For example: "Don't die, OK dad? ... You should find Saddam and run him over with your tank ... I love you and don't die. Love, Kodee."

Readers were told that Kodee already lost her mother when she was just five years old. Her father was all she had left. So when the news came a little while ago that her father had been killed too, Carbondale residents were devastated.

Except there is no Kodee Kennings. And there is no Sgt. Dan Kennings. The whole story was a very, very elaborate hoax. Read the articles for a flavor of it.

It is not yet clear whether anyone from the Daily Egyptian was in on the ruse. The woman who actually wrote the letters (and brought in a little blonde-haired girl to the newspaper office whom she identified to the paper as Kodee) says one of the student editors (who has since graduated) was originally an accomplice in the fraud. He denies it. The rest of the folks at the paper were dupes.

Evidently, the Chicago Tribune can take credit for unravelling the story. The aspiring journalists who worked at the Daily Egyptian had best send their resumes elsewhere. (Hat tip to Chicago Boyz.)
posted by Gail at 8/27/2005 04:38:00 PM

 
Donna Frye and Maxine Waters Together at Anti-War Rally
By Gail Heriot

Not everyone can picture my fellow Right Coaster Maimon Schwarzschild and me listening to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) at an anti-war rally down at the Union Hall (IAMAW). But while it's hard to classify such gatherings as a part of our natural habitat, those who cannot picture it are suffering from a lack of imagination. Right Coasters make it a practice to turn up in improbable places....

Curiosity inspired us to see whether San Diego mayoral candidate (and self-described surfer chick) Donna Frye would appear before this crowd of 250-300 Friday afternoon as a handbill advertising the event had promised. We figured her political handlers would surely persuade her that such an appearance was too risky. Waters is a charter member of the Angry Left and introducing her at a rally while a candidate for mayor of San Diego is not the wisest of moves. San Diego has plenty of Democrats, more than it has Republicans, but in general they are not fans of Waters. Frye did appear, however, and gave Waters a cordial introduction (though she was careful enough to avoid specifically endorsing Waters' views).

Waters, of course, first burst onto the national scene during the L.A. riots that took place in her district in the early 1990s--she called them a "rebellion" and "a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice." Rather than express concern for the Korean grocers and other small businessman who had their livelihood destroyed by looters and arsonists, she made it clear that her sympathies lay with the rioters:

"One lady said her children didn't have any shoes. She just saw those shoes there, a chance for all her children to have new shoes. Goddam it. It was such a tear-jerker. I might have gone in and taken them for her myself."

And whose home do you suppose she visited--that of Reginald Denny, the innocent bystander who was dragged from his truck by rioters for the "crime" of being white or that of Damian Williams, the rioter who hurled the chunk of concrete at Denny, coming just a hair short of killing him, and then performed a hideous victory dance over his body? Williams', of course.

Since then, Waters has continued to earn her reputation as a favorite of the Angry Left. In 2004, not a single member of the House of Representatives had staked out a voting record on foreign policy or on social policy to her left, according to the National Journal. She was the fringe. And as for her anger, she put it best herself: "I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me that I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that's something's wrong with me because I get angry."

On this outing, however, Waters was almost subdued. Perhaps that's because the Frye campaign asked her to be. Or perhaps it's just that she's getting along in years. It's hard to be angry all the time, year after year. But it seemed to me that the crowd was longing to be whipped into a frenzy. And she (deliberately I think) didn't do it.

It's not that she was reasonable. She repeated the "Bush lied" canard and the audience seemed more than happy to believe her accusaion. And she claimed to be concerned that the Pentagon is deliberately concealing the true death toll among Americans in Iraq and vowed to go to Germany to ...uh... well she apparently intends to count hospital beds, I guess. During the question period, she called for Bush's impeachment arguing that "[t]his is what impeachment is all about;" it's not "who you slept with but who you killed." She also appeared to endorse a statement by the audience that the 2004 election had been rigged by the manufacturers of election machines and added that "we're being ripped off at the ballot box."

But on the whole Waters' tone was more even than what is normally associated with her public statements. It's a good thing for Frye, I suppose. But the whole incident lends credibility to something I was told by an activist in local politics I spoke to a few evenings ago. He obviously liked Donna Frye on a personal level. But he complained that she accepts as fact anything she is told by those on the far left and rejects anything she is told by those to the right of that group. That's not a great instinct. If the polls are correct, however, it won't matter. They show her opponent, Jerry Sanders, ahead by a substantial margin.
posted by Gail at 8/27/2005 12:03:00 AM

 
Ideological nondiversity
By Tom Smith

Interesting link from JL at VC, regarding dominance by the left of universities.

I have no trouble believing that self-selection accounts for a huge part of the paucity of conservatives in the academy. That it does, is not really of defense of anything. Self-selection combined with even slight prejudice can be an extremely powerful force of social ordering.
posted by thomas at 8/26/2005 04:14:00 PM

 
Calling Things By Their True Names
By Gail Heriot

Roger Clegg does a splendid job responding to one of Ralph Neas' sillier allegations. Neas (of People for the American Way) alleges that John Roberts' opposition to "comparable worth" policy shows a callous disregard for women's rights. But John Roberts (who wrote the offending memo in the early 1980s, before the comparable worth issue had been as thoroughly discredited as it is today) didn't oppose women's rights. He opposed government wage setting. And everybody in the country had better hope he still does. I cannot imagine a more pernicious policy. A government that control wage structure controls the economy. A government that controls the economy ... well I shouldn't have to say this...if you're readng the Right Coast, I assume that I don't have to say this....
posted by Gail at 8/26/2005 11:43:00 AM

 
Hayekian coffee
By Tom Smith

This reminds me of that sentiment Hayek expressed that you could spend your whole life studying how bread got produced and to the market.

posted by thomas at 8/26/2005 09:03:00 AM

 
We are very concerned
By Tom Smith

It always nice to hear on the radio that the local Indian tribe is planning to build a 30 story casino complex on the 6 acres they own in your rural paradise. I don't see why I should care, except for the effect it would have on property values, turning the local highway into even more of a death trap, and having to look at a 30 story highrise against what has been a scenic horizon.

After shock, I suppose I am thinking a little tribe such as they are can't possibly carry this sort of absurd project off, given the intense outrage it is sure to provoke among residents (including me), not to mention the politicos who oppose it, from Arnie to County Supervisor Dianne Jacobs, who has been very good on this issue (and who actually is a pretty impressive lady). I mean, can a few dozen Indians really put up a skyscraper up in the middle of a residential area, and to hell with everything from fire protection, to water worries, to all the little critters, to caring about ruining the neighborhood for everybody else? Can that really be legal? I'm a law professor, and it beats the heck outta me.

I suspect this is a negotiating ploy by the Jamul band to get opponents of a less horrific plan (I guess less horrific) to back off. I don't know enough to judge whether it is clever or not. It certainly is provocative. If it looks like the Jamul Indians really plan to go through with it, the level of opposition will be extreme. I would call many people who live in Jamul a trifle eccentric to begin with, and a giant gambling tower could make them go frankly insane. You could get something like a war. But I don't think most people believe the Indians really mean it, yet.
posted by thomas at 8/25/2005 03:44:00 PM

 
Are lawyers unhappy?
By Tom Smith

I just had a conversation with a student who casually remarked, "being a lawyer is the worst job in the world. They're all so bitter and unhappy." I hardly knew what to say, but indicated I had heard of the surveys that suggested job satisfaction among lawyers was low. I wonder if it is really is, compared to other professions, and if so why. I have never actually seen these surveys, and don't know if they are any good, assuming they exist. It certainly seems to have become an official factoid, however, that lawyers are miserable. It would trouble me, if it were true, since I hate to think I am preparing people to be miserable.

I worked two years in the "real world" in government, assuming that is not a contradiction, and both of those were extremely illuminating if not always exactly fun, though they certainly were sometimes. I worked a little less than four years in practice. The first year was kinda fun, but admittedly it went down from there, as the work seemed to become more routine, and I became surer I wanted to get out of practice and into teaching. I will say my impression of the lifestyles of lawyers in big city big firms was not very positive, but there seemed to be a number of people either enjoying or at least doing what they were doing with a lot of energy, even if I knew I was not going to be one of them. Deep, widespread misery, that is, was not particularly evident. On the other hand, the atmosphere was not conducive to a lot of psychological self-revelation.
posted by thomas at 8/25/2005 02:46:00 PM

 
What not to put on your law school teaching application
By Tom Smith

I agree with Brian that putting on your FAR that you are only interested in teaching in blue states is stupid. However, the idea that it is stupid because there is a good chance that there will be one or more Republicans on the faculty hiring committee is, well, improbable. There may be a number of conservative law professors, but most of them are conservative Democrats. Republican law professors, such as perhaps a few of us at the RC, are a pretty rare lot. Displaying an inability to live next to Republicans is tacky, and suggests that one would perhaps be a doctrinaire teacher, but the odds of offending actual Republican law professors is pretty small.

When I first applied to law schools back in the dark ages, I expressed a geographical preference for the mountain west. This was at a stage in my life when I cared about skiing more than scholarship. Now, of course, I realize that producing erudite papers that have a low probability of being read by more than a few dozen people is more important than fun in the outdoors. In any event, I think this actually helped me get my first job at Colorado, or at least one person who interviewed me seemed to like that about my application. So I think if you really do have a strong geographical preference, and that coincides with the market where you have the best shot anyway, it makes sense to express it. Otherwise, be prepared to swear that you always wanted to live in a really humid, remote, and rural location and that you coincidentally have a passion for whatever pasttime the locals use to stave off boredom.
posted by thomas at 8/25/2005 02:33:00 PM

 
The Supreme Court Justice diet
By Tom Smith

Which person lost the most weight prior to becoming a Justice? Now you know.
posted by thomas at 8/23/2005 07:57:00 PM

 
Catholic kerfuffle
By Tom Smith

Looks like a little doctrinal donneybrook in the halls of St. Pete's over evolution. See how much trouble those Protestants can cause? I'm with the Jesuits on this one.
posted by thomas at 8/22/2005 05:46:00 PM

 
A voice crying in the wilderness, but not as hard as I thought
By Tom Smith

I was lying on the couch in my office, trying to take a nap, when it popped into my head that I had made a miscalculation in my post on law review citation distributions. So if you revisit that post, you will see I have done the honorable thing, and corrected it. I am not about to have anything interfere with my naps. To sum up, the top .5% of articles gets 18% of the cites, the top 5% or so, about 50%, and the top 18% of articles, about 80% of cites, and 40% don't get cited at all. Much better than I thought, but not enough to stop crying. Also, rather close to the distribution in high energy physics, and closeish to the many, many examples of 80/20 distributions, curiously enough. These numbers are still very, very preliminary, so just remember that.
posted by thomas at 8/22/2005 04:14:00 PM

 
East County update
By Tom Smith

I have heard that some people at least enjoy these occassional stories from the fringes of civilization, using that term broadly to apply to Southern California. So, I will go on.

Anyway, this from our estimable nanny, who is from an old Lakeside family. This last Saturday night, she, her husband and her son were enjoying a quiet evening at home when they heard the sound of a car crash. They reasoned it was an accident on the dangerous highway bend near their home, the site of several accidents, including one with very serious injuries, since somebody stole the solar panels which power the yellow warning light. Her husband jumped in their pickup and drove toward the probable crash scene, about a mile up the dirt road leading from the highway to their ranch property. Waiting back at the house, our nanny heard gunshots, and decided to send her son in their other pickup to see if her husband was alright, and to warn him that she had heard shots. She had already called 911, for all the good that that does. Her son jumped in their other pickup, turned on the highbeams, and began to turn around. His headlights swept across their land, and suddenly illuminated an extemely fat woman, posed in what one might suppose was supposed to be an alluring position, on the hood of her car, being photographed by her boyfriend/husband/spritual counsellor/artistic director/whatever. The son stopped the pickup, and ran back into the house, his eyes covered and shouting "I'm ruined for life!" In the meantime, her husband had reached the accident scene. A woman had driven off the road, left her car, and was now staggering down the road attempting to call someone on her cell phone. Or perhaps she was just continuing the same call she was making when she drove off the road. She appeared to be drunk, on drugs, or both. As the husband attempted to assist the accident "victim," two cars drove by full of young people with guns. Apparently, they were just shooting for fun. Nothing to do with accident or the fat lady. The fat lady and her assistant had driven off quickly upon being illuminated. This may somehow be related to the popular superstition that trouble comes in threes. Just remember, if you lived in La Jolla, something else would annoy ya.
posted by thomas at 8/22/2005 01:05:00 PM

 
NYT book review review
By Tom Smith

When I was young, I used to read the NYT book review every week and thought it full of wonderful stuff. Now I read it occassionally and am appalled of how full of cant and hackery it is. I don't know if I have gotten grumpy or if it really has gotten worse. But today, miraculously enough, there are not one but three items actually worth reading (and of course, many more that are not). First, Christopher Hitchens has a review of three books about pirates in the foundling (?) era of our Republic. I had no idea the Barbary pirates had kidnapped as many as a million Americans and Europeans into slavery, knew nothing of the Lafitte brothers or Jackson's deal with them, or where the words to Rule Britannia came from. Fascinating stuff.

One Charles Taylor (not the philosopher) has a mildly amusing essay about bad behavior in NYC mega book stores. He does not like the way people slouch and sit all over the place and get in the way of his browsing. At first I thought he was just being a weenie. It is hard to imagine someone would not get out of your way if asked them nicely, and if that didn't work, threatening to break their arms. There are some relevant martial arts principles here, but that would be a digression. But on reflection, I think Taylor may be correct. It's just not a problem in San Diego yet. NYC is more crowed, and while New Yorkers are not as rude as their reputation has it, they still can be fairly rude. Book store denizens are probably worse than the average New Yorker as well. Surely, though, there is something encouraging about so many people wanting to read.

Not counting as one of the things worth reading is Richard Cohen's weekly ethical musing (in the Magazine section). He has become something of a still point in my turning world; he can be counted on to get every ethical issue, no matter how trivial, wrong, and at length too. Two burning ethical issues this week. First, a would be yoga instructor writes in to whine that she is not being allowed to take her instructor's exam because the National Association of Yogi, or whatever, believes that the required postures could harm the fetus (by squashing it perhaps) and the mother, and so sorry, you'll have to wait until there's no bun in the oven. How very outrageous. How shocking. How downright unethical. Not to worry. Herr Prof. Cohen writes to a law professor at Hofstra, who assures him such would be illegal discrimination. I don't know if that is true, but it is certainly plausible. Between Congress, the Department of Labor and the Supreme Court, the very notion that an employer could lawfully both test for actual competence and protect fetuses at the same time, seems dubious indeed. But, Cohen is not a lawyer, he is an ethicist, dammit! The idea that it is unethical for Yoga Instructors to say, what are you crazy, you want to lie on your stomach, grab your ankles, and touch your head to your heels while you're pregnant? That's insane! -- seems anything but immoral. It seems downright prudent, common sensical and to be commended. Other trades pregnant ladies might want to consider avoiding are human cannonball, professional wrestler, and food tester for a mafia don. Richard Cohen's other missive is more routinely idiotic. An election observer writes in to say, my job is observing elections and trying to make them fair; I found out my driver was taking kickbacks for setting up others in employment with me; this is a common practice in the third-world hell hole where I currently work; should I worry about this, or should I just focus on free elections? The correct answer is, Just shut up! But out of politeness, one may say, ah, don't worry about it; you just work on the democracy thing. It is far from clear there is anything unethical about a driver taking a finder's fee to recommend a cook, or whatever. Maybe the driver has a duty of loyalty, maybe not. But surely to worry about the ethics of that in your typical third world hell displays well, an untoward over-scrupulousness. Still, I want Cohen to keep writing. He has refined self-parody to high art. Is it wrong to hope he keeps entertaining us with his peculiar brand of self-important, pseudo-moral fussy-pants-isms?

Finally, here is a pretty devasting review, which shows one function of the reviewer: to attempt to kill really bad books before they can corrupt public sensibilities. A well-crafted dart.
posted by thomas at 8/21/2005 01:30:00 PM

 
Let's do it!
By Tom Smith

A few years ago I had the idea of setting up an on-line betting market on weather, weather events, warming and cooling, storms, all that good stuff. I went so far as to get a former student now at a big firm to look into it, price out advertizing on the Weather Channel (a natural!), and to see how much it would cost to get the web page designed and set up in Bangalore. Everyone I explained the idea to reacted with enthusiasm. They enthusiastically said it was one of the stupidest ideas they had ever heard of. Moreover, it seemed pretty illegal too, given laws against online gambling. But, it would have been pretty cheap to set up in Bangalore. Now, there is still more talk of doing it, what with global warming uncertainty and all.

I still think it's a swell idea, and will continue to say so until some 22 year old becomes a billionaire and then writes a book about how to get brilliant, original business ideas, called "The Spirit of the New Warrior Entrepreneur" or some such.

I'm still not completely sure it is illegal. Betting on purely random events like dice is gambling, games of chance are gambling, sports is gambling, but weather is none of those. Maybe it would be insurance, or something. Then you could add lines on such things as the Singularity and whether it gets here by 2050. I know there are already futures markets of sorts on scientific propositons and various event lines at online casinos. But they sure haven't gone Ebay. Just another way in which regulation has made our lives more dull. Maybe American Indians could do it; they claim in all the ads promoting a casino in my neighborhood to have a nature thing going. It's a natural.
posted by thomas at 8/21/2005 01:18:00 PM

 
The BTK killer, psychopathology and punishment
By Tom Smith

Even as these cases go, this is a pretty bad one. Like I suppose many people, these sorts of cases make me think there is a place for capital punishment, even in a civilized society. There is, of course, the sheer horror and scale of the crimes Rader committed. For depravity, it is hard to exceed torturing to death children, not to mention men and women, for sexual gratification.

Interestingly and appropriately, the prosecutors have asked that Rader be deprived of anything (such as writing or drawing materials) that would help him relive his murders. Sexually sadistic psychopathic killers commonly want to relive the excitement of their crimes. They will revisit crime scenes, store bodies and have necrophilic sex with them (sorry, but it's true -- indeed, this has been used by police as a trap to capture sexual predators), collect trophies and of course obsessively relive them in their imaginations. It seems quite reasonable to me to view the re-imagining of his horrible crimes, albeit just mentally, as additional harms that the murderer does to the victims' families. Indeed, this seems to me one of the best reasons to put people like Rader to death. It gives victims' families the consolation of knowing that the murderer is not sitting in his cell savoring his past crimes. One might say, if he wants to delight in his crimes, let him do it in hell. I am sure many people, like me, regret that Rader cannot be executed under Kansas law.

It seems fair to say that psychopathic sexually sadistic predators are not that well understood, but more is known about them than used to be. Several articles noted the strangeness of Rader's statement at sentencing in which he tried to humanize himself by drawing parallels between him and his victims. One of the boys he murdered had a dog. Rader had a dog as a child. One of the women he tortured and murdered liked to garden. He liked to garden. This sort of grotesquely inappropriate "moral" thinking is common in psychopaths, or so I have read. They typically have an emotional poverty and superficiality, and lack of empathy and conscience, that makes them unable to engage in moral and empathic talk without appearing ridiculous. It is like someone who does not speak French trying to do so, and coming out with ridiculous nonsense -- "Waiter, please boil the blue tractor and eat it for me." It is not much of an exaggeration, if it is one at all, to say it is like a monster pretending to be human, and failing when the context disfavors his imitation. Yet in other contexts, psychopaths can be extremely glib, smooth and persuasive. One suspects many sucessful con artists are psychopaths.

Not all psychopaths are sadistic sexual predators, though inappropriate sexual behavior, such as early and extreme promiscuity, is apparently common. Scarily enough, psychopaths can be quite sucessful, in business or politics for example. Though no expert, I find it hard to believe that the extreme depravity evinced by Rader and similar killers, comes about without either a marked genetic predisposition, some sort of organic brain trauma, or both. Rader, again typically, apparently hanged stray cats as a child, showing an early preference for strangulation. This is not something he got from watching TV or growing up in a mean, capitalist society. This was evil bred in the bone. Cruelty to animals in childhood is definite danger signal of psychopathy, something parents and teachers should take seriously indeed when they come across it. (The two others in the triad are setting fires and fighting with other children.)

It remains mysterious to me, however, and perhaps to psychologists, why there should be a way in which humans can go wrong, such that they end up wanting to torture and kill people for sexual gratification. But then, a lot of sexual perversions are very odd. But at least some are odd, but not so extremely evil. Creatures such as Rader leave one wondering, where does it come from? One wonders for a while, but then one must turn one's face away.
posted by thomas at 8/20/2005 11:23:00 AM

 
Rafting adventure
By Tom Smith

Here are some photos of my family unit and the Cassells (dad Paul is a federal district judge in Utah, his wife and my sister is Trish Cassell, a DA in SLC) rafting on the Salmon River in Idaho. If you look at the sequence starting at number 28, you will see my lovely wife Jeanne having fun, then slipping to the edge of the raft, then in the water, then under the water. (You can just see her head under the water underneath the copyright symbol.) I am the handsome fellow on the left front (or port bow, as we river rats say) oar. First I am oblivious that she is in the water, then I see she is, then I start to move to pull her out. It was not a particularly dangerous swim as these things go, but it still scared me. If you want to know whether you love your wife, try dropping her in some raging rapids.

If you go back before 28, you can see a federal judge falling into the water, a sight many litigators will probably enjoy.
posted by thomas at 8/19/2005 04:14:00 PM

 
Bush's trip to Idaho
By Tom Smith

The Gem State (which sounds so much better than "the Potato State") is all atwitter about W's scheduled trip to Idaho this coming Monday. By coincidence, I just returned from the mountainous, lakey area where he is heading to recreate. I cannot confirm rumors that I was there on a secret mission for the White House. It's way too secret for that.

The politics of this are interesting. Bush is supposed to be going to a new resort being built on Lake Cascade, about 90 miles or so north of Boise. The resort, called Tamarack, is the first destination resort to be built in the West in twenty-five years (they say). A large French development company tried for ten years to develop a ski resort in the area, naively supposing that the U.S. Forest Service would eventually give them the required permission for the ski resort. Finally, the French surrendered, perhaps unable to grasp that the Forest Service was never going to help them. American developers took over the project, and hit upon the elegant solution of moving the whole resort north (I think, either that or south) a few miles, taking it off federal and onto state land. The State of Idaho issued its permits, and almost immediately ground was broken and brochures were printed. Home prices in the area shot up in a speculative frenzy. Perfectly modest homes on the lake are now selling for over a million, and on nearby (and more picturesque) Payette Lake, there are houses selling for close to $5 million, which is nuts in the view of many locals.

Idaho has two well established destination resort areas, Lake Coeur d'Alene and Sun Valley. Why isn't Bush going to one of these spots, which have much more in the way of infrastructure than Tamarack, which is still largely a gleam in speculators' eyes? I'm guessing several reasons. Both established resorts are heavily Democratic, especially old money and Hollywood frequented Sun Valley, where you may recall John Kerry has one of his palatial homes. (And where he reportedly stood up the gathering of supporters who worked on his visits to Sun Valley during the campaign.) But also, cynic that I am, I wonder whether there is not some serious Texas money behind the new resort. W's trip creates millions of dollars worth of publicity for the fledgling resort. It would be interesting to know everyone who wins by that. Whether or not friends of W are in on the deal, however, it is a very nice thank you to the folks at Sun Valley, who have got to be eating their hearts out at the prospect of Marine One touching down among the pines and mountains, but a hundred miles or so northwest of them. It is a gesture that has Karl Rove written all over it. But Sun Valley should take heart. They can look forward to visits from Sir and Lady John for many years to come. Just remember to stay out of his way.
posted by thomas at 8/19/2005 07:40:00 AM

 
Slade Gorton and Hank Brown on the Akaka Bill
By Gail Heriot

Former Senators Slade Gorton and Hank Brown weigh in against the Akaka Bill in today's Wall Street Journal:

"The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation's most cherished civil rights statutes. Indeed, the champions of the proposed legislation boast that the new Native Hawaiian entity could secede from the Union like the Confederacy, but without the necessity of shelling Fort Sumter.

The Akaka Bill classifies citizens by race, defying the express provisions of the 14th Amendment. It also rests on a betrayal of express commitments made by its sponsors a decade ago, and asserts as true many false statements about the history of Hawaii. It should be defeated.

The Akaka Bill's justification rests substantially on a 1993 Apology Resolution passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton when we were members of the Senate representing the states of Washington and Colorado. (We voted against it.) The resolution is cited by the Akaka Bill in three places to establish the proposition that the U.S. perpetrated legal or moral wrongs against Native Hawaiians that justify the race-based government the legislation would erect. These citations are a betrayal of the word given to us--and to the Senate--in the debate over the Apology Resolution.

We specifically inquired of its proponents whether the apology would be employed to seek 'special status under which persons of Native Hawaiian descent will be given rights or privileges or reparations or land or money communally that are unavailable to other citizens of Hawaii.' We were promised on the floor of the Senate by Daniel Inouye, the senior senator from Hawaii and a personage of impeccable integrity, that 'as to the matter of the status of Native Hawaiians . . . this resolution has nothing to do with that. . . . I can assure my colleague of that.'

The Akaka Bill repudiates that promise of Sen. Inouye. It invokes the Apology Resolution to justify granting persons of Native Hawaiian descent--even in minuscule proportion--political and economic rights and land denied to other citizens of Hawaii. We were unambiguously told that would not be done."

Read the whole thing.
posted by Gail at 8/17/2005 10:38:00 AM

 
L.A. Times on Tort Reform
By Gail Heriot

The L.A. Times has a remarkably one-sided piece on tort reform today entitled "Legal Urban Legends Hold Sway." Ted Frank and Walter Olson comment at Overlawyered.com.
posted by Gail at 8/14/2005 09:56:00 PM

 
More on the Akaka Bill: Poll Suggests that Even Ethnic Hawaiians Oppose It
By Gail Heriot

The Akaka bill, which would put into motion a process transforming ethnic Hawaiians into America's largest Indian tribe, continues to fascinate me.

Last month, the Grassroot Institute released a massive poll with 39,000 participants. The results of the poll appear to show that Hawaiians oppose the Akaka bill by a remarkable ratio of 2 to 1 (56.8%/28.2%) when asked the following question:

"The Akaka Bill question, now pending in Congress, would allow Native Hawaiians to create their own government not subject to all the same laws, regulations and taxes that apply to other citizens of Hawaii. Do you want Congress to approve the Akaka Bill?"

Even ethnic Hawaiians were against the bill. Forty-eight percent (48%) opposed it to only forty-three percent (43%) in favor and nine percent (9%) not responding.

When the poll first came out, there was a lot of talk that other polls had shown the opposite. But it turns out that just one poll was being cited in the other direction, and it is a flawed one. In 2003, the very pro-Akaka bill Office of Hawaiian Affairs commissioned a poll in which ethic Hawaiians were asked:

“Do you think that Hawaiians should be recognized by the U.S. as a distinct group, similar to the special recognition given to Native Americans and Alaska Natives?"

Eight-six percent (86%) of the 303 ethnic Hawaiians polls and seventy-eight percent (78%) of the 301 "non-Hawaiians" said "yes." But what are they saying "yes" to? "Recognition." Well, ladies and gentlemen, who wouldn't want recognition? It really seems to me that the Grassroot Institute's question comes a lot closer to the reality of the Akaka bill than the Office of Hawaiian Affairs question.
posted by Gail at 8/14/2005 04:18:00 PM

 
Basically Silly
By Gail Heriot

Basic Books used to be a great publisher. Now it is reduced to publishing a book with a title like "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)." The author is a professor of media studies at New York University, and as the title suggests, the book is the product of a fevered mind. How do I know? I was unlucky enough to see an advance copy sent out to drum up book reviews.
posted by Gail at 8/13/2005 06:46:00 PM

 
Surveillance society
By Tom Smith

I suppose a lot of people will concerned about this, but not me. I wish there were CCTV cameras on every mile of California freeways, with AI drones watching, so they could send tickets to every miscreant in a slammed Accord or a jacked up Ford 350 who is weaving in and out of traffic. There is no constitutional right to be an asshole on the road.

The stoplights with cameras are fine with me. I even got a ticket from one, along with a picture that showed a fat, bald guy running a red light. It was hard to say which was more depressing, the $350 fine or the photo. I remember thinking, as I ran the red light, boy, that sucker is red. I wish I had seen the little warning sign. I had been waiting a long time to make a left; it was not a life threatening red light run. I would never do that. Just as I started to turn, it turned red. I deserved the ticket. I guess my Supreme Court seat is out too.

In fact, the more public surveillance there is, the less tapping of phones and email there would have to be. I would feel safer with more cameras around; it's no different from having more cops around, which I would like too.

As long as I'm on the subject, maybe if there were more cameras, people would look better. I went to the beach with the boys yesterday, and you would have thought we were at a marine mammal convention. With few exceptions, the guys had big guts and tattoos, and those just got out of Vacaville doing 5 to 10 for armed robbery shaved heads and goatees. Maybe I was at the wrong beach. And the ladies, well. Out of each one you could have made two or three babes. Yet all the children were beautiful. Something very bad happens after 30 or so. Maybe we need more cameras.
posted by thomas at 8/11/2005 07:07:00 PM

 
Bush should talk to her
By Tom Smith

I think W is handling this badly. He should just send a car to pick her up, ask her into the ranch, give her some iced tea, and let her pour her heart out. She lost her son, for Christ's sake. He should explain to her as clearly as he can, which, granted, is not very clearly at the best of times, what we are doing in Iraq. Even if she does not agree with him, she would at least like to hear that her son died trying to bring some measure of democracy and justice to a land that otherwise would be both a sinkhole of misery and a threat to the rest of the world. One of the most disgraceful things about Bill Clinton was the way he treated the parents of the soldiers killed in Somalia. Bush should show how it should be done. Let him spend 45 minutes sitting with a grieving mom. It would do both of them good. Yes, it may be politically risky. Lots of things are risky. Putting on a uniform is risky.

THIS is interesting, too, if not exactly on point.

BUT a loyal reader and former student writes to say there is more to the story. Apparently, Bush did meet with the mom, who at first was effusive in her praise of W, then changed her mind and said he was standoffish in later interviews. I don't think Bush is obliged to meet with her twice, especially if she is mischaracterizing their first meeting to the press. Oh, well.
posted by thomas at 8/11/2005 03:51:00 PM

 
Michigan Civil Rights Initiative 2
By Gail Heriot

An anonymous e-mailer accused me (and by extension the Wall Street Journal) of hyperbole for calling BAMN "Trotskyite." I can understand the e-mailer's skepticism. There aren't many Trotskyite groups out there. But now and then they pop up. And BAMN is one of them.

Here's a copy of a document complaining about BAMN's tactics during the Proposition 209 campaign here in California. And guess whose doing the complaining? Leaders in the Socialist movement. Nobody likes BAMN--except the Michigan Board of Canvassers and the Michigan Democratic Party.

"Socialist organizations condemn attack at UCB by "Coalition to defend affirmative action by any means necessary" and the Revolutionary Workers League/NWROC.

"6 September, 1995

"The following statement has been signed by a range of national socialist leaders and Bay Area socialist activists (see the list at the end of the statement):

"STATEMENT:

"On Wednesday, August 30th at UC-Berkeley, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary, which is composed largely of members of the Revolutionary Workers League, assaulted leaders of the broad student Diversity in Action (DIA) coalition and sought to disrupt DIA's pro-affirmative action rally. Members of the Revolutionary Workers League assaulted students and shoved them aside in order to seize DIA's microphone and harangue the crowd gathered at the rally. This followed a pattern of disruption of DIA organizing by the Revolutionary Workers League.

"As socialists, we condemn the actions of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary and the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL). The Revolutionary Workers League's actions in no way reflect socialist values and contribute nothing to social change, "revolutionary" or otherwise. The Revolutionary Workers League, both under that name and its National Women's Rights Organizing Committee (NWROC) name, has a history across the United States of similar disruption and undermining of progressive coalitions.
We call on all socialists and left-minded individuals of principle to reject the tactics of the Revolutionary Workers League and the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary.

"Militant socialist values can and must be promoted with respect for the broad progressive movements. There is no room in the left for the sabotague and disruption that has been too common a characteristic of the Revolutionary Workers League.

"As members of the left, we are committed to supporting progressive change and our allies fighting for affirmative action.

"In Solidarity,

National Socialist Leaders

David McReynolds, Socialist Party USA, National Co-chair
Duane Campbell, Democratic Socialists of America, Anti-Racism Commission
Sushawn Robb, Committees of Correspondence, National Co-Chair
Claudette Begin, Solidarity National Political Committee

Bay Area Socialist Organizations/Chapters

Northern California Committees of CorrespondenceFreedom Socialist Party

UC-Berkeley Campus

Nathan Newman, Committees of Correspondence
Tom Boot, AFSCME Local 3211, Diversity Council
Janice Kimball, AFSCME Local 3211, President
Anders Schneiderman, Committees of Correspondence
Jim Cane, AGSE/UAW, History Department Steward
Steve Ongerth, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) member

Other Areas of Country

Robert Naiman, Socialist Forum, Urbana Illinois
Chris Faatz, Oregon Fellowship of Reconciliation, Board
Stan Yasaitis, AFSCME Local 82, Pres U-WI-Milwaukee
Paul Burke, Appalachian Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, Vice-Chair
J.J. Plant, Editorial Board Revolutionary History, London
Warren Davis, Solidarity, Philadelphia Branch
Justin Schwartz, Solidarity, Columbus Branch Chair
Pablo Vragus, Solidarity, San Diego Branch"

It's a crazy old world, isn't it?
posted by Gail at 8/11/2005 01:24:00 PM

 
Terry Teachout
By Tom Smith

is almost enough to make me care about the New York art scene, almost. He is a dangerous man. He wrote an essay called: "Mailer: Forgotten but not Gone."

posted by thomas at 8/11/2005 11:35:00 AM

 
Intelligent design discussion
By Tom Smith

Interesting discussion.

The writer makes the perfectly fair point that several popularizers of evolution, most notably Richard Dawkins, argue for the proposition that "Evolution shows that X" where X is that Nature is indifferent, there is no God, and there are no good and evil. X might follow, but it's certainly not obvious, Dawkins et al. have not made and are not qualified to make that case, and there's certainly no need to teach X in public schools.

I assume it was something like that that the Cardinal meant when he rejected "neo-Darwinian ideology" in his op-ed piece in the New York Times, which I am too lazy to link to just now.

On the other hand, all this is a far cry from teaching "Intelligent Design" as if it were science, which it obviously is not.

But, to skip ahead a little bit, consider some of the debates in cosmology. George Lemaitre, the originator of the Big Bang theory, was a Belgian Catholic priest. It cannot have escaped his notice, and may well have played a role as an esthetically motivating factor, that his theory of creation was consistent with the idea of divine creation. Many other scientists then disliked the Big Bang for equally esthetic reasons. Einstein really liked it, but Fred Hoyle, for example, hated the notion, and came up with the moniker "Big Bang" as a term of derision. These days, Stephen Hawking, as least as of A Brief History of Time, goes to extraordinary lengths, for example, to come up with a model in which there are no "days without a yesterday," that is, no universe that actually had a beginning. Hawking, Dawkins and many other scientists, some of them great scientists, are not motivated just by a dispassionate love of the truth. They are as eager to find that there is no God as others are to find that there is.

A more contemporary cosmological debate concerns the idea of multiple universes. Apparently it would solve various quantum puzzles if we suppose we are but one of a practically infinite number of universes. But, take another current notion, some version of the anthropic principle, that notes the extreme fine tuning of the physical constants that allows for the evolution of life in the first place. This really is an odd thing. Suppose as science progresses, it just seems odder and odder. One way to dispell this oddity is to postulate that there are in fact a practically infinite number of universes, and we just happen to live in one, as of course we would, where life happened to evolve. If extreme fine tuning is the only evidence of infinite universes, however, this amounts to cosmology done on a no-design principle. We would be postulating an infinite number of otherwise unobserved universes in order to avoid the implication of design. Well, that's a lot to postulate. Indeed, an infinite number of universes is so much that it is hard to see how you could postulate more. We are not in this position now; this is just a guess about where cosmology could end up in a few decades. The point is that it would be mere ideology to say infinite universes had to be accepted on scientific grounds. And it might be to say, there must be a God, as well. More generally, theistic or atheistic esthetic motivations are going to play a role in science, and neither one should be advantaged. What we observe in Nature should do the choosing between hypotheses. Some people think God plays with dice, some think he doesn't, some people think there is no God, only dice, and for all I know, some people think there aren't even any dice, either. Everybody needs a reason to get up in the morning, but the science part comes from letting the evidence decide who is right.

One final cryptic comment about ID. One place where it goes wrong in my view is its naive view of randomness. What if random processes want to evolve into living systems? Does that show there is no design or that the design is woven right into the math? There are lots of deep questions here that both ID and its critics do not seem especially hip to.
posted by thomas at 8/11/2005 07:21:00 AM

 
By Any Means Necessary
By Gail Heriot

Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal includes this story about how a Trotskyite group calling itself BAMN (The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action ... By Any Means Necessary), with the assistance and cooperation of the Michigan Democratic Party and Board of Canvassers, is attempting to prevent the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative from reaching the ballot, despite the fact that the requisite number of valid signatures have been collected. And so far, as I have reported earlier, BAMN is winning.

You couldn't make up this stuff. Really. It's that outrageous. And I'm not kidding that this group is Trotskyite. Yet I am optimistic that the courts will intervene here. Fun is fun, but we don't want to die laughing.

BAMN claims that some of the signatures were obtained fraudulently by signature collectors who lied about the initiative's effect. Even if it were true, it should make no difference. Voters who signed the petition are responsible for their own decision to sign. Otherwise every election would be litigated to death as losing candidates argued that the "voters were lied to." But even if the law were otherwise, BAMN's claims are not credible. Do you really trust the affidavits of a group that calls itself "By Any Means Necessary"? Isn't perjury such a means?

For a previous entry on BAMN, click here.
posted by Gail at 8/10/2005 10:32:00 PM

 
Is This A Great Country or What?
By Gail Heriot

I had dinner about a week ago with Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior. (Impressed? Well don't be. I was at the table in my capacity as girl friend of another of the guests, I was seated far enough from Secretary Norton that I had to watch her lips to have any idea what she was saying, and had I stolen her purse, she probably would not have been able to identify me in a police line up, even ten minutes later.)

Still, I left the table rather charmed by her--something I didn't expect to be. Of course, there's something charming about all American Interior Secretaries. Unlike many of their foreign counterparts--Ministers of the Interior--they're in charge of the national parks and not the secret police. But Norton was particularly appealing. She was agitated over the case of the widow of a park ranger. After her husband's death, this elderly widow--now in her eighties--had been entitled to live in a house on national park land for a certain number of years. But her lease had recently expired and Park Service employees were eager to have her thrown out so they could raze the house and restore the land to its pristine state. Norton was appalled at the notion of throwing an elderly widow out of her home (and evidently had put a stop to it).

Or at least theat's what I think she said. Maybe it was an elderly window of a clark danger. It's hard to tell when you're having to read lips.
posted by Gail at 8/10/2005 07:24:00 PM

 
Free medical care for hate mongers
By Tom Smith

Got to love that national health scheme.

posted by thomas at 8/10/2005 10:23:00 AM

 
Are we bored yet?
By Tom Smith

This over at InstaMegan, is worth reading. Boredom is rife, even in high paying jobs. Bruce Bartlett, well known economist who held a high post in the Bush 1 Treasury Department, once slipped out to a movie in the middle of the day, because he was just so . . . bored. He ran into another high Bush official at the movies. It was awkward. But at least he has broken the silence.

Boredom is a scourge and should be talked about. There may be little for it. Schopenhauer, a truly great if possibly evil philosopher, complained of it bitterly, and said (more or less) it was one of the reasons it would be better never to have been born. I would not go that far, but I hate being bored.

I worked in a grand-sounding but mostly powerless job in the "White House", the OEOB actually, for a year, but I found it fairly fun, though it had boring days. It was fun because I was surrounded by academic economists, some on leave from faculty posts and others who were graduate students. (This was the Council of Economic Advisers.) There was lots of talk, people worked on academic papers, and we stuck our nose in policy issues only if they looked interesting. Some pompous git from the White House Counsel's office tried to tell us we could not use government time or typewriters to work on academic papers, but we ignored that. My boss's secretary once found me asleep on the couch in my office (you should have seen my office -- marble fireplace, couch, elaborate plasterwork . . . ah, government), but that was after lunch, and I had every reason to be sleepy.

The Post article makes it sound like not having enough to do is the main cause of boredom. No doubt it is a major cause, but it is possible to be overwhelmed with work, and still horribly bored. I was a corporate law associate for 3.746 years, and though the first 9 months or so were fairly interesting, it got boring after that. I was astonished that I could be under so much pressure, and yet so bored, at the same time. Nobody likes to be bored, but I'm convinced I hate it even more than most people.

One of the great blessings of academic life is that it is a lot less boring than most jobs. Not as exciting I imagine as Naval Aviator or firefighter, but at least you are master of your own time, except for a few hours a week, and can work on your own projects. I still get bored often enough, but at least it is my own fault when I do, and I can do something about it with a little effort.

I had more to say on this, but as I'm starting to get bored, it's time to do something else.
posted by thomas at 8/10/2005 09:56:00 AM

 
People, who kill people
By Tom Smith

are the normalist people/ in the worrrllllllld . . . That corny song is probably before your time, lucky you. But, according to David Buss's new book, just about everybody has fantasized seriously about killing somebody sometime (oops! another corny song!). His thesis is that we all have highly developed killer instincts, and that killing can be a very effective way to deal with rivals, threats and inconveniences. That's why killers prospered and the instinct got passed on. We should not think that people who kill are sick. We all would, or would probably, under the right circumstances. Which are, getting a serious benefit, and getting away with it.

My 13 year old snatched the book up and read most of it before I did. He dismissed it, saying he thought Buss had a twisted and overdark view of human nature. He made one pretty powerful point. He noted that most police officers and the like who do kill people typically find it an extremely unpleasant, even traumatic experience, even when the victim had it coming. Police departments routinely provide counseling to officers who have killed to help them deal with the psychological consequences.

Buss would say, I suppose, that this shows we also have an instinctive aversion to killing, which also was evolutionarily valuable. But this treads pretty close to unfalsifiability. Unlike some, I don't think this shows evolutionary psych is pseudo-science, just very hard to do.

That said, the book is enlightening. Buss makes it sound as if the vast majority of people have fantasized in detail the plans for killing somebody. How they would do it, how they would try to get away with it. I find that rather shocking. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much fantasies mean. He asked people as well how close they came to actually killing. But when a respondant says, eighty percent, what does that mean? Is killing someone like sliding down a slope, or climbing up a steep hill? The last twenty percent in each case is very different. I also think actually killing a human is a lot different from thinking about it. I think people can be desensitized to it, and this happens in war, but for most of us, the actual, bloody business of it would be an enormity. I'm not a hunter, but I was once required to cut a cow's throat before it was butchered. It was shot, but not dead. I thought little of it until the critter looked deep into my eyes and we both knew it was about to die, and I was about to kill it. It was a strange, intimate and not pleasant experience. Not to mention a complete, bloody mess. Having to kill a human would be many times worse for most people who are not total psychos.

I think it's interesting as well that people generally don't admit that they have or do fantasize about killing someone, except apparently on confidential questionnaires. Some strong social inhibitions there. Yet much popular entertainment seems little more than catering to that desire, or instinct.
posted by thomas at 8/09/2005 06:40:00 PM

 
Lessig, Communism and all that
By Tom Smith

Interesting overview from a while back.

I agree that there is something deep going on with diffuse, not really for profit cultural production. I certainly don't blog for money, nor do most bloggers. We will produce for fun, recognition, to bite ankles of tormenters, lots of reasons besides money. But this hardly makes anything communist, or makes property irrelevant. There are lots of norms in the blogosphere about linking, hat tips and so forth. That's recognition of a property interest.

At the same time, IP is weird property, a monopoly granted by the state. It doesn't follow that the longer you think that monopoly should be, the more you are a supporter of property.

I'm an infant in this area, but it's bery eenteresting.
posted by thomas at 8/09/2005 12:38:00 PM

 
You couldn't make up the NY Times
By Tom Smith

I'm probably out of the loop. Could this really be true? Looking into Judge Roberts's kids' adoption records? If those aren't treated like medical records they should be.
posted by thomas at 8/08/2005 02:41:00 PM

 
Superstitious Nonsense, or, Waiting for Waste Management to take the Vampire Bat Away (Family life update)
By Tom Smith

In 2003, my lovely wife Jeanne, I and the three boys, plus one more in the oven, treked down to Peru to visit friends, play eco-tourists in the rainforest, and in my case, fulfil the life-long dream of scaling a really big mountain. We brought back a fair amount of Peruvian Indian art, much of which really is wonderful stuff. Amongst other stuff, however, we brought back an object my oldest boy had picked out at the Indian market in Lima, a scary-looking, dessicated bat, enclosed in a cheap wood and clear plastic box. The bat had hardened into an attitude of snarling death, exposing his nasty little set of fangs. It was without a doubt a remarkably ugly object. But as he had picked it out and I was in a hurry to get out of the market without losing any children to the international human trafficing network, we just bought it and left, and didn't make a fuss over it. Jeanne and I hated the thing from the moment we saw it.

In due course the bat was placed in his room, and thus began what was a tough year for my oldest. Everything is fine and better than fine now, but for a while there, we wondered. Somewhere in the midst of all this, I said something like, "let's get that damn bat out of his room." Jeanne said, "yes. God, that thing really is creepy." So I took the thing from next to his bed, where it was hidden behind some blinds anyway, and stuffed it inside a closed cabinet in the garage, thinking I would throw it away when I got around to it. A couple of years went by. Last week, I finally decided to throw the thing away, having just finished an extremely stupid, but entertaining book I read that touched upon such things as cursed objects. Apparently, they are bad, and you want to stay away from them. So, I decided to toss the bat, hideous thing that it was in any event, not to mention unsanitary. Plus, I am one of those people who likes to throw things away, especially stuff from the garage.

So into the outside trash it went in its very own black garbage bag, and then down to the street to be picked up. Thursday came and went, and no garbage was picked up, not from my house, or anywhere else in my neighborhood. A Waste Management screw up. It happens, though it had never happened before in my 12 years in this neighborhood, but that is just a coincidence. So, naturally, I called. A new driver, they said, and all would be taken care of Friday. Friday, no garbage pick up. The weekend passes, hot weather, and garbage festering in front of 60 or so houses. So I call this morning. Ah, the computers say, they tell me, the garbage has been picked up. Well, it hasn't, I say. I am sure. Complaints are noted, and today they say, all will be cured. I hope so. I now really want the little vampire bat carted away. Not that I think there is anything preternatural at work here. It is just a coincidence. Of that I am certain. Almost entirely certain.

Just out of curiosity, I googled Peru bats folklore and so on. Big mistake. Vampire bats were especially associated in ancient Peru, among the Moche in particular, with their very active cults of human sacrifice. Indeed, some experts think they were monotheists of a sort, worshipping the Great Fanged God, who was at least part bat. Their crescent shaped decapitating knifes (they did a truly huge amount of decapitating) were adorned with bats, showing their nasty fangy teeth. I really can't stress enough, they were really into bats. And yes, shamans are still very active in Peru, carrying on traditions that I suppose date back to such happy times. So, it seems entirely possible we picked up in Lima a jolly, little cultural remnant of the good old human-sacrificing, blood drinking, Great Fanged God worshipping days in Peru. Swell. Great. Dandy.

So, I am hoping, I really am, that Waste Management will come today and relieve us of the wicked little bat. If the garbage truck wrecks on the freeway on the way here, or takes away everything else but mysteriously leaves one bagged bat, or worse, the bat reappears in the garage without explanation, then I really will be worried. Now, I'm more annoyed than worried. Sort of the usual rage at poorly performing utility provider, tinged just ever so slightly with superstitious dread. An odd, and not particularly pleasant feeling. Come on, Waste Management, deliver us from evil.
posted by thomas at 8/08/2005 10:50:00 AM

 
Yet another link to David Bernstein's post
By Tom Smith

If you didn't read it before in Professor Rappaport's post below, read it now. Left wing bloggers say very nasty things about conservative bloggers. But, the RC does not get mentioned. I admit, I am a little disappointed. But then, I would have been outraged to have been parodied and pilloried, so maybe it's just as well.

It does raise some (mildly) interesting questions. Is the American right hindered in a way the American left is not by having at least some manners? Call me old-fashioned, but to refer to a woman's body when insulting her views, especially to specifically feminine parts thereof, is not just beyond the pale, it's not even visible from the pale. I have referred to George Will's glasses, true, but that's different. If you affect a smarty-pants appearance, with wire rim glasses and bow-tie, then that's fair game. I suppose if Dolly Parton had a blog, maybe you could refer to some of her distinguishing characteristics, since she has thrust them upon you, so to speak, but otherwise, no, I think not, and you are due for a caning. (When asked if she felt insulted by having the large-uddered cloned sheep from Scotland named after her, Ms. Parton replied, "There's no such thing as baaaaaaaad publicity.") I admit it was very funny when that guy referred to David Gergen as a pompous mellon-head (or whatever his exact words were), but Gergen really richly deserved it, for being such an oleagenous climber and for having such a mellon-shaped head. But again, that seems different, if only because it is not sexually degrading, or "sexist," as some say.

Some of this may be a generational thing. Every once in a while something drifts up from the student culture here that just makes you wonder, is that how they talk to each other? Isn't that considered rude? But then, who knows. I just accept the fact that SoCal youth are from a different country than I, and that if I carefully respect their culture, they will not boil me in a big pot and eat me.
posted by thomas at 8/08/2005 10:27:00 AM

 
We have no idea what is going on
By Tom Smith

Keeping you updated on alternative cosmological models. Not only is the universe stranger than we can imagine, it's stranger than a very strange person could imagine after dropping too many magic cactus beans.

While on the topic of fractals, I think (it would be nice if) law is one of these. I don't know that it is. I speculate that it is. Conjecture that it is. Article with hundreds of boring footnotes to be provided later.

You may want to reread this paper.
posted by thomas at 8/08/2005 09:54:00 AM

 
Hack city
By Tom Smith

Hackers strut their stuff in Vegas.

I just got a mailgram from AX asking me if I bought $700 worth of pager and phone service in Italy and $200 worth of EZ Lube service. Lube, yes, Italian pagers, no. Somebody has lifted my AX number. Probably over the web, but I don't see how.
posted by thomas at 8/06/2005 11:04:00 AM

 
With a name like . . .
By Tom Smith

It could be worse. I could be named Buttafuco. Or like that poor woman at my high school named "Pigg." She must have really loved her husband. But you really get tired of the "is that your real name?" cracks, usually from some guy who works at a Motel 6, like he should be ragging anybody. Anyway, I came across this, where I do pretty well, considering.
posted by thomas at 8/05/2005 03:50:00 PM

 
Internet porn drives tech innovation
By Tom Smith

Or so says New Scientist.

In other news, bird flu is some scary doodoo. You might want to stockpile some common drugs.
posted by thomas at 8/04/2005 12:21:00 PM

 
In the future, we will all . . .
By Tom Smith

Here is more on future biotech, post-humanity and so forth.

This is one of those areas where the mass of people seem more sensible than many of the ethical experts. Everyone with any sense is in favor of technology that ameliorates the human condition. Looking for something to read the other night, I pulled down Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic from the shelf, and was reminded of the unbelievable misery of living in early modern England. One third of all children died before age 5. One fifth of the remainder died before age 20. Life expectancy was 30 something. Everybody suffered from some sort of chronic pain. The rich had gout, stone and terrible constipation (they ate too much meat and not enough vegetables); the poor from various maladies of malnutrition. The plague worked on everybody. Don't even ask about tooth decay. It's a wonder anybody could stand to reproduce. They probably got drunk first.

All this garbage from the anti-technology crowd, Fukiyama et al., makes me ill. Everybody's on Prozac, everybody's kid is on Ritalin, yada yada. It's the end of the University of Chicago as we know it. If these people had their way, we'd still be picking lice off of ourselves and drinking ourselves senseless to escape toothache. At least now we can drink ourselves senseless by choice. Similarly, prejudice about mental illness is one of the last things to go. I say, let's develop the drugs so we can treat it like high blood pressure or scabies. I say, go Ely Lilly go. If you have son of son of son of Prozac, bring it on.

Human nature is to live miserably and die young. To hell with that. In that world, Stephen Hawking would be sitting beside the muddy track, selling cow pies and trying to get somebody to listen to his nutty ideas. I think it's swell that in America you can make a great living posing as a defender of the Moral Order, but the rest of us should not be so stupid as to listen to them. It's not the 17th century, and we don't have to. I hope that annoys them as much as it pleases me.

On the other hand, these post-human sorts are so nutty that it will be a while before we have the drugs to fix them. Modems planted in brains, human-machine fusions, trans-human intelligences. O yeah, right. Why don't we calm down and cure a few more diseases before we worry about getting wireless in our sleep. We still don't have a good therapy for migrane headaches; maybe we should before we start planting chips in the squash.

So this is a plea for good old fashioned progress. Making things better. Making us less miserable. Cure stuff. Make cars safer. Make air cleaner. Improve schools. Calm down. We don't need post-human and we don't need pre-modern.

Disclaimer: Ron Bailey once took me to some journalist's dive in DC where they made scotchs by filling a highball glass three-quarters full and dropping in an ice cube, and I'm not sure I ever fully recovered. Maybe we should develop legs that really are hollow . . .
posted by thomas at 8/04/2005 10:54:00 AM

 
Good morning. Time to feel stupid
By Tom Smith

Smart kids. Very depressing.

posted by thomas at 8/04/2005 09:15:00 AM

 
Technical analysis of law school teaching trends
By Tom Smith

Not only is this article interesting (at least mildly, if you're in the law teaching biz) but it is actually funny. It identifies what areas are hot and not in law school hiring by subject area, with some surprizes. It uses chartist type analysis some people use to look for buys and sells in the stock market, of which I am very skeptical, but heck, it's fun.
posted by thomas at 8/03/2005 02:14:00 PM

 
That looks just like my dog
By Tom Smith

Dog clone revealed in South Korea. I think it's just a matter of time before all the associates at big law firms will look alike.
posted by thomas at 8/03/2005 11:34:00 AM

 
Posner beat up upon
By Tom Smith

I think these criticisms of Posner are somewhat unjust. But interesting nonetheless.

My guess is Posner has very productive habits.
posted by thomas at 8/02/2005 06:14:00 PM

 
Bush lied!!!!!
By Tom Smith

Except he didn't. (This is why bloggers get under the MSM's skin so much). (via instapundit.)

posted by thomas at 8/02/2005 06:09:00 PM

 
Declining influence of legal scholarship with Court
By Tom Smith

The trend is for the highest (not in the sense of marijuana) Court in the land to cite legal scholarship less and less. The numbers are driven by a precipitous fall in citations to the Harvard Law Review. It is not clear if this is because the Harvard Law Review sucks more than ever before, or if Justices increasingly have a hard time finding scholarship which supports their views. This latter difficulty is much aggravated by the necessity of citations being to already published works. New technologies may allow future courts to insert "dummy" cites, which can later be filled in with post-hoc rationalizations generated by scholars. These after the fact rationalizations are much easier to produce than are predictions of what the Court will want to do.
posted by thomas at 8/02/2005 12:56:00 PM

 
Old Maui
By Gail Heriot

I've been exploring the town of Lahaina today--an old whaling town and the first capital of the Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands under Kamehameha I (he was himself from the Big Island and had conquered Maui as part of his unification of previously independent islands).

The old courthouse in downtown Lahaina has a magnficent banyan tree planted in 1873 to honor the Christian mission's 50 anniversary there. It was little more than a sapling when planted--about 8 feet tall. Today it is still only 50 feet tall, but it spreads over the better part of an acre, with a huge core of central trunks and 12 major additional trunks. It is a thing of beauty.

Nearby are the ruins (actually a mid twentieth century replica of the ruins) of a nineteenth century fort. At first glance, it appears to be made of stone. But on closer inspection, it turns out to be blocks of coral--not something you see a lot of these days.

It was never much of a fort, but it's history is pretty cute. It seems that the royal authorities in Maui had prohibited the young women of Maui from going out into the harbor to "welcome" the whaling ships' crews on their ships. The unhappy sailors blamed the local missionary for this rule and fired upon his home. The royal authorities decided they needed a fort to prevent such things from happening in the future.

It's a nice story, don't you think? Who says that 19th century sailors didn't support women's rights?
posted by Gail at 8/01/2005 09:47:00 PM