One caramel macchiato coming up

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

It seems that the much heralded TPMCafe is now open for business. As soon as I can figure out what all the XML feeds actually point to, I'll start enjoying it. Thanks to deva for the pointer.
 

Not so deep anymore

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

So W. Mark Felt is "Deep Throat" from the Watergate scandal. Vanity Fair got the scoop. This would seem to confirm Bob Woodward's statements last year claiming that "Deep Throat" was ill. But apart from that, I have no special insight on the matter, or much of an interest in the whole thing. I just wanted in on the action that will doubtlessly ensue.
 

Comparative terminology

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

Lawrence Solum explains the difference between the different terms used to describe the abstract study of what the law is: jurisprudence, legal theory or philosophy of law? One sentence caught my eye.

Moreover, in other legal cultures, for example, in Europe and Latin America, my sense is that the move to identify jurisprudence with philosophy of law never really took root.

Ther reason is quite simple. In many of these countries (certainly the French- and Spanish-speaking ones, but perhaps also others) the term "jurisprudence" refers to "case law," to the body of decisions made by the courts, usually the highest courts in each area of the law.

The distance between case law and legal philosophy, moreover, is all the greater because the official position in these countries—all of which follow the Civil Law tradition—is that judicial decisions are not a source of positive law, but only an interpretation of a statute in the particular circumstances of a given case. Legal practicioners (and professors, to an increasing degree) ignore this rule and study case law as much as their Common Law counterparts, but they are less likely to consult the work of judges when thinking about Law in the abstract.
 

The critics and the lawmen

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Eugene Volokh states the obvious which, sadly, needs to be stated.

A couple of readers argue that the group [American Gold Star Mothers Inc.] is a private group (which it is, despite its federal charter, which really doesn't give it much by way of special benefits beyond what other nonprofit corporations have), and should be free to set whatever rules it wants, and also free to decline to defend them substantively. I agree entirely; and the rest of us are free to criticize them.

(Emphasis added)

Why is it so hard for some people (the "couple of readers" above) to understand that saying that something is bad and asking that the government take action against it are two different things?
 

Concentration of production

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism:

The enormous growth of industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises are one of the most characteristic features of capitalism.
[...]
From this it can be seen that at a certain stage of its development concentration itself, as it were, leads straight to monopoly, for a score or so of giant enterprises can easily arrive at an agreement, and on the other hand, the hindrance to competition, the tendency towards monopoly, arises from the huge size of the enterprises. This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important?if not the most important?phenomena of modern capitalist economy, and we must deal with it in greater detail.

Matthew Yglesias is giving up his blog merging with the TPM Cafe juggernaut.
 

Talk amongst yourselves

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Eszter Hargittai's (of Crooked Timber) gives us a preview of her study on "Mapping the Political Blogosphere: An Analysis of Large-Scale Online Political Discussions"

Cass Sunstein in his book Republic.com talks about the potential for IT to fragment citizens? political discussions into isolated conversations. Borrowing from Negroponte, he discusses the potential for people to construct a "Daily Me" of news readings that excludes opposing perspectives. Sunstein argues that for democracy to flourish, it is important that people continue to have conversations with those in disagreement with their positions. However, he is concerned that with the help of filtering out unwanted content people will fragment into enclaves and won?t be exposed to opinions that challenge their positions.
[...]
Overall, it would be incorrect to conclude that liberal bloggers are ignoring conservative bloggers or vice versa. Certainly, liberal bloggers are more likely to address liberal bloggers and conservative bloggers are more likely to link to conservative bloggers. But people from both groups are certainly reading across the ideological divide to some extent.

The results are interesting, and are likely to prove even more so once libertarian and "other" bloggers are drawn into the map. Will they emerge as translators across the red and blue divide, or as the strategic allies of conservatives, as many of them are in real-world politics?

more...

Another interesting question, and one addressed neither by Sunstein or by Hargittai, is whether the ideological divide is the one that we should most be worried about. I don't have the numbers with me, but I'm fairly certain that a disproportionate, vast, overwhelming majority of bloggers are highly educated, wealthier than average, and of the professional and academic classes. I also recall, from the "Power and Politics of Blogs" panel at APSA, that they are less likely, after taking up blogging, to engage in more "traditional" forms of activism, namely those that involve actual human contact. This is from the McKenna and Pole paper:

[T]he data show that bloggers are highly educated, white men who participated in more traditional forms of offline politics prior to writing their weblogs. A majority of bloggers are concentrated in occupations related to writing and education. Though the Internet offers great potential for non-elites to break through the barriers that the elite have erected to monopolize political discourse, few non-elites have taken advantage of this opportunity.
[...]
Surprisingly, our data revealed a slight drop in traditional forms of participation by bloggers. In fact, most bloggers were more politically active prior to starting their weblog than we expected. ...However, there was no evidence that bloggers became more involved in more traditional forms of participation as a result of their weblog activities.

Traditional politics—ward meetings, rallies, conventions—offer the possibility that people with similar ideas but different demographics might actually interact. Blogging effectively restricts this interaction to other academics, pundits, journalists and other Geistesarbeiten. It reduces the exposure of the intellectual classes to the experience of, well, everyone else. Political debates might suffer a fate worse than balkanization: unintellegibility.

That, I fear, is more dangerous to a democracy than the predictable tendency of like minded individuals to talk to each other more than to the other side.
 

And burn 'em while you're at it

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via the indefatigable Wonkette, a judge in Indiana has decided, sua sponte, to prevent two divorcing parents from exposing their child to the religion that they both practice. In divorce procedings between persons of the same faith it's common for some settlement over the religious edication of the children to be reached. But in this case, there is no controversy, except for the judge.

The parents, you see, are Wiccan, and the child goes to a Catholic school. So the judge decided that, as the child would be "confused" by the competing religious views, the school's doctrine took precedence over the parents' wishes. So much for family values, eh?
 

What's good for the goose

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The name game is, by now, long forgotten, but the NYT Magazine doesn't know it.

My name is Arpard Herschel Fazakas -- or at least it was until last year, when, at age 51, I changed it. I wanted a name that everyone could say and spell on the first try, not to mention one that wasn't awkward and embarrassing for me. I thought my life would become easier as a result.

Having gone through all that, would he expect his wife to change her name?

"I miss Art Fazakas. I miss being Art Fazakas," he writes. "Recently, to my own surprise, I have started to sign my name Faz. . . . My sneaking sense is that Segal is not really me, and that I might indeed want to change my name back. 'Just do it,' my friends say. 'Be proud of Fazakas.' But I hesitate."

"Be proud of Fazakas." Now there's a catch-phrase.
 

Bye bye boycott

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The Republic of Letters has regained its composure. (Via Crooked Timber.) The allegations against Bar-Ilan and Haifa, if true, are troublesome, but a university boycott is anathema to all the values of a Academia. David Hirsh's comments are right on target.

A boycott is a tokenistic gesture which does more harm than good. | The need for hard work, building links with Palestinian and Israeli academics, is less glamorous but much more important.

The statements of boycott supporters troubling. Here's Sue Blackwell,

The struggle goes on. This is the end of the beginning. | We are not surprised. We saw people who did not come to earlier meetings there and we knew what the outcome would be. | We won the moral argument. They just won the vote.

So democracy only valid when you win? Mobilization only acceptable when it's in your favor?

more...

Perhaps I'm a little touchy about the matter. Back in law school I got people "who did not come to earlier meetings" to pack a National Law Students Association assembly and rescind a resolution calling for a boycott of the 1997 referendum. The resolution had been passed at the last minute in a sparsely attended Association meeting. When it was overturned, the supporters of the referendum boycott cried foul.

Earlier this year, a like-thinking mob (from the same student organizations) paralized the University of Puerto Rico for a month. They'd won a strike vote at the last minute in a sparsely attended student assembly. After a few weeks of pointless protests a new student assembly was called and the strike vote overturned. But respect the will of the student body? Feh! They were the student body, and if the students didn't know it, too bad for them. Fortunately student sentiment ran strong against the strike, and classes were resumed.

To curtail, condemn or even regret greater participation while claiming to defend democracy is bad faith at its worst.

In any case, cheers to Chris Bertram, et al.
 

Straight-ticket

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

UPDATE: A couple of years ago, Jacob Levy wrote in much more detail about this question. "[W]hat's the rational voter to do, when confronted with two candidates with similar positions on the voter's primary issue or issues, one of whom belongs to a party that shares those views, one of whom does not?"

• • •

I've always been a straight-ticket voter, because the political institutions under which I've lived allocated legislative power on the basis of party membership. The delegation's majority ultimately determines legislative policy, and the occasional dissenter from any given issue contributes to that majority. Sure, I'd find it hard to vote for a pro-lifer, a homophobe, or a Dixiecrat, and might abstain or even cross party lines to get an especially odious character out of office, but most of the time I'd put party over person and let the system sort things out.

Now the Daily Kos takes issue with NARAL's endorsement of pro-choice Republican Lincoln Chafee. (Via Mark Kleinman.)

Armando has rightly taken NARAL to task for their endorsement of Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee. NARAL was one of the groups that fully opposed anti-abortion Democrat Jim Langevin's short bid for the Senate seat.

Nevermind that Langevin would've crushed Chafee and gotten us one seat closer to a Democratic-led Senate. And a Democratic-led Senate wouldn't ever let any abortion legislation see the light of day. But NARAL, myopic fools that they are, think Chafee is a better bet, despite his vote for Trent Lott, Bill Frist, and their allegiance to the James Dobson, American Taliban agenda.

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Kos is right, but his loyalty to party seems institutionally deficiant. A set of governing principles does lead one to make a checklist of prefered policies, and it is the hope that this checklist will be voted into law that leads one to make the strategic choice to vote the straight-ticket. Statements like this

Problem is, abortion and choice aren't core principles of the Democratic Party. Rather, things like a Right to Privacy are. And from a Right to Privacy certain things flow -- abortion rights, access to contraceptives, opposition to the Patriot Act, and freedom to worship the gods of our own choosing, or none at all.

are politically meaningless. The right of privacy means different things to different people, and to some the importance of reproductive rights will be a dealbreaker. Political parties are not organized around vague principles, but from different interpretations and application of those principles. You can't avoid coalitions.

If anything, NARAL is guilty of tactical short-sightedness, if even that. NARAL is not in the business of propping up the Democratic party, but of advancing reproductive rights. In most cases, electing Democrats in congressional elections willl advance that goal. In some others promoting the candidacy of a pro-choice governor or President, even if a Republican, could be more advantageous to the cause. In this case, NARAL may have very well decided that propping up a vew pro-choice Republicans will take some of the edge off the conservative majority.

It could cost them, both in the missed opportunity to get a pro-choice congressional majority—which, given the current landscape, will only come from the election of a Democratic majority—and from the ill-will that they may reap from slighted Democrats. But ultimately, in the coalition game, the question is how much you can bring to the other side. It's all about the checklists. Live with it.
 

Extreme makeover

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The website of the Liberal International has been thoroughly revamped, through the efforts of Electric Putty. It used to be an outdated and amateurish site with little personality, but is now slick and professional, as befits a world-class organization.

The content has also been expanded and, I would argue, corrected. The old site, for instance, omitted John Rawls from the list of liberal thinkers. He's now there, along with both the likes of Hayek Mises, and Nozick, and those of Hobhouse, Hobson and Green.

One big happy liberal family!
 

The long way home

¶ When going to the District of Columbia, to travel through any airport except Reagan National (tho' I shudder at the name) is foolhardy, and even masochistic.

That was the principal lesson of my trip to the IHS Research Colloquium this weekend. Not that I didn't learn any other fine lessons; quite the contrary, the weekend was entertaining and productive. But the pedagogy of itinerancy was the most instructive.

I am convinced that, because of my persistent flirtation with classical liberalism (not yet consummated, but heated nonetheless) the Old Socialist Gods brought their vengeance upon me. I planned my trip on a leisurely schedule, with no special concern for the place of arrival and departure. It's all in the same city, I naïvely assumed. I would arrive at National on Friday with three hours to spare, and leave from Dulles on Sunday five hours after the end of the colloquium. With so much leeway, I'd get a peek at the new National Museum of the American Indian, glance at a few paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, and after a short ride out to the airport, I'd make it home in time for supper.

I saw the sights, but alas, the following ride was not short. The supper was missed, as were the next day's breakfast and lunch. But I get ahead of myself...

more...

The trip out to D.C. was largely uneventful, with the exception of the taxicab driver from Hyde Park to O'Hare who insisted on telling me every detail of his family's financial disputes—something to do with him loaning his brother money and not getting it back in time to pay his lease, and his family not showing him proper respect even though he is a prince in his country. I just laid back and nodded.

I arrived at O'Hare less than an hour before departure. No matter, since I had no luggage to check. I walked up to the dozen self-service ticketing machines that line the terminal, punched in the relevant numbers, received my boarding pass and walked onto the plane. No lines, no hassles, no delays, even at the security line. I fell asleep as the plane took off, as I always do, and woke up as we landed. On the runway, out of the airplane window, rose the Washington Monument. Through the trees I saw the Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, all within an arm's reach, just across the Potomac. Even for one who thinks himself a foreigner in this country, it was a solemn sight.

Solemnity, however, was sorely lacking on the way back to Chicago. The fault, I admit, was largely mine. I had been fooled by the comforts of the capital, the cleanliness of the subway, the leisurely walks up and down the Mall. It was all so close, so neat, so orderly. I knew that Dulles was a bit further away than National, but how far can anything be in Washington anyway? I'd get to the hotel by five thirty and make the flight at seven. Alas, Dulles is very, very far away, and once you get there, your trip is just beginning.

There was little traffic on the road to the airport; indeed, there was little of anything besides green rolling hills and no signs of habitation on either side of the highway. Then, abruptly, the concrete monolith that is the Dulles terminal, best described as an enormous green and gray intercontinental bus stop. Once inside, four rachitic ticketing machines hide beside the AmericanAirlines ticketing counter. Not that they did me any good. Although I was there before the flight had even started boarding, that was too late for the folks at Dulles, who have found it convenient to design an airport around an internal rail system that takes three quarters of an hour to transport passengers from the ticketing counter to the gate. So I missed my flight.

The next available plane out of Washington left the next morning. Already short on finances, frustrated, and embarrassed, I called a friend who—bless his heart—lent me his sofa for the night. The next morning I set off to Dulles airport once again, this time by rail and bus (taxi fares were already beyond the scope of the expense account). An hour later I was back in front of dreaded counter, but I could not see it. Why? Because the waiting room was crowded by three intercrossing lines of passengers, one for first-class, another for electronic tickets, a third for old-fashioned paper slips. All three lined crossed at the same spot and it was impossible to tell them apart. And over the din of voices I kept hearing the rumor that a flight—which flight?—had been cancelled. Some said it was the non-stop to Los Angeles, others the one to Dallas, and Chicago? Well, they were all correct: L.A., Dallas, Chicago, all grounded, all several hundred people waiting to get on with their lives far, far from the intercontinental gray-green bus-stop in the D.C. suburbs.

And I was here the night before, mind you.

After an hour or two of waiting a few frantic, yet fruitless, phone calls to American Airlines, I intercepted the attendant as she walked past the crowd and begged her to find me a flight home. I didn't even lie (although my Kantian heart is frail in these situations) when I told her that I needed to be in Chicago by three for a medical appointment. She tapped some keys and found me a flight leaving at two o'clock from—dramatic silence—Washington National Airport. This time, however, the taxicab was on the airline's tab, and the ride down was marked by pleasant conversation with my driver on Pakistani family customs—out of respect, younger siblings don't call their elders by their name—and South-Asian history—it was Lord Mountbatten's fault, I gathered.

Reagan National was a stark contrast to its northern cousin. Crisp and clean, one only had to go down a flight of stairs to reach the gate, and along the way could browse aisles at Borders or the wares at the Smithsonian store. Overall, it looks much like Chicago's Midway Airport, the smaller, but better behaved partner to lumbering O'Hare; as I recall, it even has the same color scheme.

As pleasant as the trip was, my troubles were not over. The plane, only slightly delayed when we left the gate, was left in the runway for an hour because it missed its turn to take off. Once back in Chicago, I let my haste overcome my good sense and dashed for a cab, thinking that it would get me downtown faster. Soon enough, we were in the midst of rush hour. Desperate, I told the driver to drop me off at the next El station (that's "subway" for New Yorkers). He was not pleased.

By then it was late. I met M. downtown, walked to the bus, and was happy to be finally home.
 

Peace train

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Design Observer, the solution to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict will come by train. And not just any train, but "a transportation and infrastructure backbone that accommodates substantial population growth in Palestine, by linking current urban centers to new neighborhoods via new linear transportation arteries that support both commercial and residential development."

The project for a high-speed train connecting the West Bank and the Gaza strip is the brainchild of architect Doug Suisman, and the result of a comission by the RAND Corporation's Palestine Project. RAND brands it as a project for "what would happen if such a state is created—recommending actions that Palestinians, Israelis and the international community can take to increase chances a new state would be successful." Nonetheless, it sounds like a splendidly bad idea to me: a miles-long multi-million dollar Hamas target, or a source of endless friction whenever Israel decides to close it down for security reasons. And the idea of a discontinous state, no matter how quickly the trains run, seems like a non-starter (Pakistan anyone?).

¶ Which brings me to an important, if tangential point: you should really be reading Design Observer. It's bitchin'! And charcoal and orange are the colors of the season.
 

Never meant to be

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I ran across this a while back: Stalinist plan for the development of Moscow. (Via Design Observer)

Among the far-reaching projections of the first stalinist "five year plans", the 1935 General plan for the reconstruction of Moscow overshadowed all others. According to this plan, Moscow was to become, in the shortest possible time, the showpiece capital of the world's first socialist state. The General plan envisaged the development of the city as a unified system of highways, squares and embankments with unique buildings, embodying the ideas and achievements of socialism.

Most of the building designs are straight out of science fiction storyboards, although perhaps the arrow of causality goes in the other direction. I would say that the architecture is garish, but after watching the Donald Trump biopic last night, all of my frames of reference are in the dust.
 

Home, Sweet Home

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Forgive the hiatus. I was in the nation's capital for a few days and the trip back was rough, long and exhausting. Let's just say that I was supposed to be here waaaay before I got here. Like, twenty hours before.

But the stay in D.C., courtesy of the Institute for Humane Studies, was quite enjoyable. I talked about my work, met interesting people, and learned a lot not only about classical liberalism (I'm still not clear on what it is) but about the way that libertarians think of their place in the academy. It was a little strange to be distinctly on the Left for the first time in half a decade, but the folks at the IHS made me feel very welcome.

That's all for tonight. I'll have more to tell in the morning.
 

Happy blogiversary to me

Tomorrow (May 21) marks a full year since I first posted something on this blog. I'm not sure if it counts as a blogiversary, since the only thing I wrote was this:

Ceci n'es pas un blog

... or so I tell myself. Self-delusion is of the essence in this business. Perhaps in a few days when procrastination beckons once more, I will take the time to say something meaningful.

¶ Who am I kidding? I have been sucked into the blogosphere. From here, the future is laid out in full: I will withdraw into the inner citadel... I will never write my dissertation... I will die alone.

It took me three weeks to post anything else; then, a four month hiatus before a couple of posts on The Princess Bride appeared. In early November, Political Arguments got started and I got me some discipline.

¶ So if it's tomorrow, why are you posting this today? • Because I'll be out of town tomorrow with no reliable access to a computer, so blogging will be light. ¶ Not that it's ever been especially heavy. • Aw, shut up and let me blow out the candle...

Poof.
 

Don't let it end

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Mr. Volokh is at it again, this time asking women who married and didn't change their last name to give their reasons.

From the comments so far, the motivation to keep one's "maiden" name is either principled or pragmatic (both being entirely valid modes of justification). Some women wonder why he didn't even consider changing his name, and don't see why they should bear a disproportionate burden. Other women have a professional reputation built on their "maiden" name and would seriously disrupt their carrer by changing it.

The common thread is that the only people who've had a problem with the two-persons/two-names arrangement are meddlesome adults who disaprove of the couples' subversive ways. The kids, as one would expect, are all right.
 

The day of reckoning

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I've been looking for this passage in Rawls for a long time. It's cited at the beginning of chapter 8 in Roberto Alejandro's The Limits of Rawlsian Justice. Alejandro wields it against Rawls, as part of his case that justice-as-fairness is an "exhausted" conservative paradigm that does little but preserve the status quo. I read it as an acknowledgement of political, economic and historical contingency on Rawls's part, a statement that gives the lie to all those who accuse Rawls of idealistic abstraction. (Thanks Amazon's Search Inside!)

By way of comment, these principles and priority rules are no doubt incomplete. Other modifications will surely have to be made, but I shall not further complicate the statement of the principles. It suffices to observe that when we come to nonideal theory, the lexical ordering of the two principles, and the valuations that this ordering implies, suggest priority rules which seem to be reasonable enough in many cases. By various examples I have tried to illustrate how these rules can be used and to indicate their plausibility. Thus the ranking of the principles of justice in ideal theory reflects back and guides the application of these principles to nonideal situations. It identifies which limitations need to be dealt with first. In the more extreme and tangled instances of nonideal theory this priority of rules will no doubt fail; and indeed, we may he able to find no satisfactory answer at all. But we must try to postpone the day of reckoning as long as possible, and try to arrange society so that it never comes.

The passage is from the Revised Edition of A Theory of Justice, section 46, page 267; the emphasis is mine. For those who, like me, are far too enthusiastic about the Rawlsian minutiae, I have given the text of the original edition—with additions and deletions—below the fold.

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By way of comment, these principles and priority rules are no doubt incomplete. Other modifications will surely have to be made, but I shall not further complicate the statement of the principles. It suffices to observe that when we come to nonideal theory, we do not fall back straightway upon the general conception of justice. [t]he lexical ordering of the two principles, and the valuations that this ordering implies, suggest priority rules which seem to be reasonable enough in many cases. By various examples I have tried to illustrate how these rules can be used and to indicate their plausibility. Thus the ranking of the principles of justice in ideal theory reflects back and guides the application of these principles to nonideal situations. It identifies which limitations need to be dealt with first. The drawback of the general conception of justice is that it lacks the definite structure of the two principles in serial order. In more extreme and tangled instances of nonideal theory there may be no alternative to it. At some point th[is] priority of rules for nonideal cases will [no doubt] fail; and indeed, we may be able to find no satisfactory answer at all. But we must try to postpone the day of reckoning as long as possible, and try to arrange society so that it never comes.

A Theory of Justice (1971), section 46, page 303.
 

New York type

I can't pass up an article about typography in the newspaper of record.

Typography, it turns out, is not always such dumb fun. Graphic designers, who often have fonts to sell, can be cranky about where their p's and q's come from, and they seem to be getting crankier by the minute. Maybe it's because there is less and less demand for original typefaces; free fonts are easy to come by on the Web.

Of course, for those of us who are called upon to design flyers and posters and the like with no graphic design training and no operating budget, free web fonts are a godsend. But that shouldn't excuse shoddy design. So take some time to learn why Mark Simonson is right about Arial or why white-on-red Futura Bold Italic may not be the best choice for an AEI or Claremont Institute pamphlet.

The Design of Dissent

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

New York's celebrated School of Visual Arts is hosting The Design of Dissent, an exhibition of posters and graphic arts from around the world. There's also a companion book, with an introduction by Tony Kushner.

The exhibition and book examine the varied, vital graphic response to the constraints of government and the ?powers that be? from around the globe. The works contain an element of discord, an appeal to justice and an attempt to liberate some truth that lies beneath the surface of public discourse.
[...]
The graphic works tackle a variety of issues ranging from peace, animal rights, gun control, religion, the Iraq war, equality, women?s rights, gay rights and the corporate world.

Interesting stuff, though none of it groundbreaking.

(Via Design Observer)
 

Pape on suicide terrorism

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Robert A. Pape, a professor of international relations in my department, has an Op-Ed in the NT Times today.

Over the past two years, I have compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003 - 315 in all. This includes every episode in which at least one terrorist killed himself or herself while trying to kill others, but excludes attacks authorized by a national government (like those by North Korean agents against South Korea). The data show that there is far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than most people think.

Pape made some waves a couple of years ago with an article in the American Political Science Review, where he argued "that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Moreover, over the past two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays.... In all but the case of Turkey, the terrorist political cause made more gains after the resort to suicide operations than it had before." Pape argued that neither concessions not offensive military action was likely to lessen the appeal of suicide terrorism, and that efforts should be concentrated on defensive efforts and homeland security. "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," APSR 97(3):343-361 (2003)
 

Couverture by any other name

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ms. Lauren joins the naming game. Oh how fun, the naming game!

UPDATE: Tyler Cowen chimes in on the dispute over women taking their husband's name upon marriage. Eugene Volokh, you may recall, got the whole thing started, and I've blogged about it below and before.

If a married woman changes her name because she feel like it more power to her, right? Let's have a closer look.

To start, this argument is besides the point when it comes to the claim that everyone in a family must have the same last name in order to avoid some unspeakable confusion. Will the children of a woman who kept her "maiden" name go through life thinking that she's not their mother? Will they think that she loved them less than their father?

But the real reason is that husbands, who were weaned on the rememberance of couverture, will feel that their wives have not surrendered themselves completely if they don't take their name upon marriage.

For a wife to take her husband's name in the eighteenth century was to have her identity erased, her rights suspended, her agency subsumed under her husband's. For a woman to take her husband's name today is not to lose any of her rights, but it is to concede that the identity that dominates in a family is that of the husband, not her own, that the family is his family, that its name is his name, and what's more important—what people like Leon Kass can't stop yelling about—that the children are his children.

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Historically the roles of men and women within marriages have reflected their roles within society. Laws and customs have traditionally restricted women?s opportunities, limited their legal rights, and required them to be under the protection and control of a man. For example, under the legal doctrine of couverture, developed in England during the Middle Ages, the law viewed the husband and wife as one person?and that person was the husband. In the 18th century, English legal scholar Sir William Blackstone summed up the laws of marriage by stating that ?the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated? into that of the husband. English colonists in North America brought their legal traditions with them and the common law of the United States and Canada incorporated the legal disabilities of women. As a result of couverture, a married woman lost many of the legal rights she may have possessed before marriage. For example, a single woman who owned property lost her rights over that property upon marriage. A bride?s wealth became her husband?s.

The tradition of legal patriarchy (male authority) is reflected in social practices related to weddings and marriage. For example, in many cultures the bride?s father ?gives? his daughter to the groom. During the wedding, the father may physically walk the bride to the groom and transfer her to the groom?s arm or he may verbally state that he gives her to be married. Traditionally the woman?s loss of her maiden name after marriage signified that her identity was absorbed by that of her husband. It also signified her subordination to him in many matters. For example, a wife was legally obliged to live wherever her husband chose, as well as to maintain the home and submit to her husband?s sexual demands. The husband also had the right to control and physically discipline the wife. In return, the husband was obligated to financially support the family. Wives had no control over property, even if they had owned it before marriage.

So your "maiden" name is also the name of a man; isn't your husband's less oppressive because you chose to assume it? If anything, it's even more so. I recommend a discussion on h-net a few years back; here's the highlight:

Peter Fosl [another commenter] has hit on the crux of this issue: the long history of couverture, or "woman covered by man." A huge body of patriarchal custom was built upon this concept, including the loss of all personal and property rights of the woman.

To those who ask what the difference is between using the father's name and taking the husband's, there's a difference. Girls grow up with the patronym as their identity, the name they are known by and answer to, but this identity is seen as malleable, unlike male identity. Taking their husband's name renders them unrecognizable and often unfindable to old schoolmates or whoever. The culture teaches women to conflate loving their husband with subsuming their own identity, while few men would dream of proving their love for their wives in this way. (Well done, Peter.)

Meanwhile, the custom of naming after the father persists as the dominant model, anyway. Another alternative to hyphenated names, but one that is not often considered, is naming the children with the mother's last name. This often gets a strong reaction, though, as being unjust to the father. Matrilineage is still unthinkable within the dominant culture. Different standards for goose and gander are very ingrained indeed. It's worth pointing out that even in strongly patrilineal cultures like the Arab or Chinese, women keep their birth names.

If you want to change your name because you don't like it—say your daddy named you Robin and his last name's Banks, but you've always wanted to be a financial analyst—by all means, go ahead. If you want to change it to keep your kids from going though life singing "Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child," get over it; they won't.

And if all you want is to uphold tradition, well, just make sure you're clear on the tradition that you're holding up.
 

Encyclopedic knowledge

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has new articles on Friendship,

Friendship, as understood here, is a distinctively personal relationship that is grounded in a concern on the part of each friend for the welfare of the other, for the other's sake, and that involves some degree of intimacy. As such, friendship is undoubtedly central to our lives, in part because the special concern we have for our friends must have a place within a broader set of concerns, including moral concerns, and in part because our friends can help shape who we are as persons. Given this centrality, important questions arise concerning the justification of friendship and, in this context, whether it is permissible to "trade up" when someone new comes along, as well as concerning the possibility of reconciling the demands of friendship with the demands of morality in cases in which the two seem to conflict.

and Evolution,

'Evolution' in contemporary discussions denotes the theory of the change of organic species over time. Prior to the second half of the nineteenth century, the term was used primarily, if not exclusively, in an embryological sense, to designate the development of the individual embryo. Since the writings of Herbert Spencer, and particularly since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, the term has been used to designate historical alterations of species. This meaning of the term also covers two primary forms of species evolution: (a) progressive linear historical changes of species from simple to complex forms, such as can be found in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of evolution (1809); (b) branching transformation from common ancestors as formulated by Darwin in 1859. Since Darwin's work, evolution has been typically linked with the theory of natural selection as the primary explanation of the causes by which such species change has occurred over historical time. This coupling of evolution and natural selection theory, and the claimed competence of natural selection theory to explain both micro and macro evolution has, however, formed one of the most commonly debated issues in the history of evolutionary biology since Darwin. Since this article will survey the broad history of these theories, the term 'transformism' will generally be used to designate the theory of species change prior to the shift in meaning of the term 'evolution' that occurs in the 1860s.

Enjoy. And while you're at it, give the Encyclopedia a hand.
 

What's in a name

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Eugene Volokh asks why women take their husband's name when they marry. Most of the comments on his post sound the same refrain: "I want my children to have the same last name as both their parents." (Janine Peterson) "It's just easier, from a child's perspective, to have mommy and daddy have the same name." (Elizabeth Foley) "I know one couple so egalitarian that both spouses took the hyphenated name. Lord only knows what will happen if children of two such marriages marry! A name can stand only so many hyphens." (Michelle Dulak Thomson)

If I may be so bold, I think this is bullshit.

In Spain and every Latin American country, people get along just fine with two—count 'em, two— unhyphenated last names. Women don't go around taking their husband's last name, and the kids have a last name that is different from both of their parents'.

Here's how it works: Juan Pérez López marries María Román García. They have a daughter, Petunia; her full name will be Petunia Pérez Román. Let's say that Petunia grows up and marries Luis Rodríguez Ortiz. Their son, Carlitos, will be Carlitos Rodríguez Pérez.

Carlitos has a paternal and a maternal last name. His paternal last name is his father's paternal last name; his maternal last name is his mother's paternal last name.

¶ Another example. I'm Víctor M. Muñiz-Fraticelli (I hyphenate my name in the US so Americans understand that both are my last name). My Father is Luis Muñiz Argüelles and my Mother is Migdalia Fraticelli Torres. I inherited my father's paternal last name followed by my mother's paternal last name.

Granted, all the last names that are inherited are those of men, so the feminist potential of this system is far from satisfactory. But for our purposes that's beside the point. In the Spanish system husbands, wives and children in the same family all have similar, but different last names, yet the kids suffer no trauma and the institution of the family is going strong.What's clear from a cross-cultural analysis is that changing one's name "for the sake of the children" is completely overblown.
 

Septidi de Floréal de l'Année CCXIII

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Oh those crazy Germans! Toasting the French Revolution every year, as Hegel was said to do, is not enough these days; the revolutionary calendar must be revived. From Design Observer:

Now, two hundred years later, the decimal day reappears in the manifesto of German conceptual design group REDESIGNDEUTSCHLAND. There it is, point six in their ten point plan to redesign Germany from scratch: "Introduce decimal system in all areas. 1 day have 100 hours. 1 hour have 100 minutes. 1 year have 1000 days."

The REDESIGNDEUTSCHLAND project is a joke (no, seriously) and a clever one at that, but as one of the commenters points out, the Swiss have taken digital time seriously for a while now.

I think it's all good and fun, and I have no problem with it. But, just in case, I'm dusting off my James Scott.

For centralizing elites, the universal meter was to older, particularistic measurement practices as a national language was to the existing welter of dialects. Such quaint idioms would be replaced by a new universal gold standard, just as the central banking of absolutism had swept away the local currencies of feudalism. The metric system was at once a means of administrative centralization, commercial reform, and cultural Progress. The academicians of the revolutionary republic, like the royal academicians before them, saw the meter as one of the intellectual instruments that would make France "revenue-rich, militarily potent, and easily administered."

Local time zones, after all, are the invention of railway companies and should thus not enjoy any special deference by the traditionalist. Which goes double for me, since I'm not a traditionalist. But we should keep in mind, whether we cling to local custom or abandon ourselves to cosmopolitanism, that all struggles over standarization have concrete effects on the ground. Trade is sped or hindered, culture preserved or hybridized, farms and small towns isolated or depleted. It's no wonder that Steven Thoburn, the so-called "Metric Martyr", was a Sunderland greengrocer, not a futures-trader in London.

(Thanks to the Virtual Stoa for the Revolutionary date.)
 

Classy

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Brad DeLong and Kevin Drum have some thoughts on the New York Times series on Class in America. But you already knew that.

UPDATE: And Stephen Darwall too.
 

Je suis un autre

Brian Leiter faces his Other, a web designer in Maryland.

Not to be left behind, I learned a while back that my alter ego was an artist and designer from Brooklin, NY.

Brooklin! Boo-ya! Beats Maryland every time!
 

While we're at it

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Have you ever wondered which canon of statutory construction you are?

You are the Plain Meaning Rule! You interpret statutes according to what an ordinary speaker of English would understand from the text. You're upfront and direct. You claim that you're just following the rules, but often find a clever technicality to interpret the rules however you want.

Which Canon of Statutory Construction are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'd like to say that I resent that, but I don't.
 

One nation, under the influence

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Nunc est bibendum! SCOTUSBlog explains the US Supreme Court's intoxicating jurisprudence on the shipment of wine, and provides the relevant links to today's opinion in Granholm v. Heald. (Via Mr. Baude.) From the syllabus:

This Court has long held that, in all but the narrowest circumstances, state laws violate the Commerce Clause if they mandate “differential treatment of in-state and out-of-state economic interests that benefits the former and burdens the latter.” Laws such as those at issue contradict the principles underlying this rule by depriving citizens of their right to have access to other States’ markets on equal terms.
[...]
Section 2 of the Twenty-first Amendment does not allow States to regulate direct shipment of wine on terms that discriminate in favor of in-state producers.
[...]
The Twenty-first Amendment’s aim was to allow States to maintain an effective and uniform system for controlling liquor by regulating its transportation, importation, and use. It did not give States the authority to pass nonuniform laws in order to discriminate against out-of-state goods, a privilege they never enjoyed.

For the locals who are wondering, this means that Sam's Wines and Spirits is safe, although it may still be sketchy.

As for the court's reasoning, from what I've read, I have no qualms with it. It seems eminently reasonable to interpret the Twenty-First Amendment in a way that is consistent with the rest of the Constitution, especially the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. The second clause of the Twenty-First Amendment allows a state the option of controlling the consumption of alcoholic beverages in its territory. But in-state liquor gets you just as happy as out-of-state liquor and, as the Court pointed out today, there's no connection between the provenance of alcohol and its inebriating qualities. Any argument to the contrary is protectionist babble.
 

Monk-y business

I order my inkjet printer supplies from Laser Monks (motto: "Real Savings. Real Monks."), a Cistercian monastery in Wisconsin. They sell good quality ink at great prices... and they're monks!

¶ Don't say it, I know. I have a weird relationship with the Church. If they'd only let go of that "belif in God" requirement, I'd be dandy with all the dogma and the hierarchy.

In any case, they have a page with links to monastery products ranging from fruitcakes and preserves to urns and bonsai. The Trappist Preserves look especially yummy, especially spread on a slice of Monk's Bread.

Now, uncork a bottle of Chimay and we'll call it breakfast!
 

Dark Ages

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I wanted to blog about this when it happened, but the opportunity passed me by. On May 6 Thomas J. Reese, S.J., the editor in chief of America magazine, was forced to resign by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The ouster is seen as a warning shot to other liberal Catholic publications and universities. Most notable among these is Commonweal, which—perhaps sensing that its fate is already sealed—has published a sharp and courageous critique of Reese's dismissal.

It is hard to judge what is more appalling, the flimsy case made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)—apparently at the instigation of some American bishops—against Reese's orthodoxy and stewardship of America, or the senselessness of silencing perhaps the most visible, and certainly one of the most knowledgeable, fair-minded, and intelligent public voices the church has in this country.
...
For those who had hoped that the pastoral challenges of his new office might broaden Benedict's sympathies, this is a time of indignation, disappointment, and increased apprehension. For those who know Reese and his work, the injustice of the CDF's action is transparent. No intellectually honest person could possibly claim that Reese's America has been in the business of undermining church teaching. If the moderate views expressed in America, views widely shared by the vast majority of lay Catholics, are judged suspect by the CDF, how is the average Catholic to assess his or her own relationship to the church?
...
Those calling for the strict regulation of Catholic discourse argue that public dissent from church doctrine creates scandal, confusing or misleading the "simple faithful." What really gives scandal to people in the pews, however, is the arbitrary and self-serving exercise of ecclesiastical authority. What the CDF has done to Thomas Reese and America is the scandal. Is it possible that not one bishop has the courage to say so? That too is a scandal.

Thomas J. Reese is Jesuit and a scholar—he was ordained in 1974, the same year that he earned a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. His studies of the Roman Catholic Church's organization and hierarchy are highly regarded. Reese is also something of an expert on tax reform.

This is precisely the kind of scholar that the Jesuit order attracts: brilliant, engaged, well-versed in matters theological and secular. It's what's propelled the Society of Jesus to be the largest order in the Roman Catholic Church, even after enduring a forty-year suppression. It's the greatest promise for the emergence of a serious Catholic contribution to current dialogues in philosophy and social thought.

Ultimately, that is why non- (and lapsed-) Catholics should take interest in the suppression of opinions by Ratzinger's new Inquisition. What is the alternative? A Church that cannot produce arguments, but only apologetics? A "leaner, smaller, purer Church"—so lean it starves for knowledge, so small it goes unnoticed by the world, so pure it doesn't care?
 

One stop blawging

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Brian Leiter, a new site that collects major blawg (that's "law-related blogs" to the layperson) posts: Juris Novus.

Juris Novus is loosely translated from Latin to denote "law refreshed". Juris Novus is a law headline syndicator and aggregator. An aggregator is a web portal which syndicates multiple news/content sources into a single page. Juris Novus syndicates headlines from relevant sources to bring together the most up to date happenings in the online law space.

Juris Novus was designed, created and is maintained by Greg Smith. I developed JN to "scratch an itch": easy access to headlines from multiple sites I read daily. Rather than use a desktop aggregator I chose to code my own and place it online. Why? JN is accessible from any computer with an Internet connection and available to the community at large. There are several excellent law related tools online already and this is merely my own contribution to that tradition.

It even has a link that allows the reader to choose which blawgs to show and which to hide. Juris Novus does nothing that can't be done with a folder in Bloglines, but it's worth a look for those who prefer this sort of interface.
 

Eighties Flashback!

So I'm sitting at home editing my dissertation proposal and listening to my favorite Chicago station, The Drive (91.7FM).

¶ It's pretty much the same as my favorite San Juan station, Alfa Rock (105.7FM). I'm a man of consistent taste.

In any case, they're doing a 1985 retrospective. Nineteen freaking eightyfive! I was ten! So far they've played Dire Straits' Walk of Life, Bryan Adams' Summer of '69, Katrina and the Waves' Walking on Sunshine... Bowie, Van Halen, John he-was-still-Cougar-then Mellencamp.

Needless to say, my proposal is moving right along with this soundtrack. Gnarly!

Hello, strangers

Soon, you will notice—yes, you, the one lurking in the corner there—that there may be strange and unusual folks showing up in the pages of this blog.

Do not be afraid.

They come in peace (or so they've assured me) and they've been given free rein to be racuous and rowdy and roam the rambling reaches of the realm. So wait, and listen, and enjoy.
 

Liberally uninformed

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

My prediction about British politics—which, I admit, is almost wholly uninformed—is that, when Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister in a couple of years (if not sooner), Labour will move left, and the LibDems will have to readjust their position towards the center, which is to say, towards a more distinctly liberal position.

Since the rise of Labour, the LibDems have repositioned themselves to fill whatever vacuum there was to the left of the Tories. They can do this now with surprising flexibility because of their hybridity, being the product of the union of liberals and social democrats. When they tried it before, it led to the Asquith-Lloyd George schism and disaster. When Labour was Old Labour, they were convincingly centrist; now Labour is New Labour, and the LibDems seem on their left on most issues. Could they move to the center again? Their leadership seems tilted towards SDP (and therefore Labour) veterans; is their gauchisme is a cause or a product of this? The party, however, understands itself as liberal, not social-democrat.

more...

But let's say that the LibDems move to the center, or rather, that they budge a bit while Labour moves leftward. Would that be good for the Liberals, that is, would it translate into more votes—a lot more—and thus lead to the sought-after displacement of the Tories as Britain's second party? Somehow I doubt it, first because I think Gordon Brown is more of a pragmatist and less an ideologue that he leads on, and second because the LibDems seem to be benefiting (although not that much) from their anti-war stance, which differentiates them from both Labour and the Tories.

If the issue of the war goes away, or if it's blurred under a Brown government, only the pursuit of some disastrous policy would do Labour in, and then the electorate might turn to a Conservative government (after all, they've actually governed in the last ninety years). The best liberal hope? A hung parliament that forces a LibLab pact and gives the LibDems credibility as a governing party. But that's also unlikely, not only because "England does not love coalitions"—as Disraeli famously put it—but also because the LibDems have demanded some deviation from First Past the Post as a requirement to join any coalition, and that demand has always been a dealbreaker.

All that said, I beg to be corrected.

INSTANT UPDATE: The Guardian argues that the LibDem gains (11 seats and a move to 2nd place in over 50 constituencies) were due to more than just the war.

ANOTH[E]R UPDATE: An unidentified Liberal MP is quoted in the Guardian:

But the risk is that the Lib Dems could end up being seen as a party of the left, especially following the defection of the veteran leftwinger Brian Sedgemore and other Labour supporters such as Greg Dyke. 'We have to be very careful to place ourselves; we have to avoid the cul-de-sac of thinking that winning Labour seats means embracing leftwing policies.'

 

Typophile relaunch

The most important typography site on the web today, Typophile, has been relaunched in beta. I'll update this post with anything worth noting.

UPDATE: The Typophile Wiki is starting to take off, and promises to become a comprehensive encyclopedia of all things typographic. Go check it out! You might learn something.

And if you're wondering whether there's a link between typography and political theory, check out Blackletter: Type and National Identity, which came out of an exhibition at the Cooper Union's Herb Lubalin Center.

¶ Not that there has to be a connection between everything and political theory. But there is, you know. I'm just saying.
 

Liberalism ascendant

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

John Vaught LaBeaume at Reason argues that the UK's LibDems are rediscovering their liberal roots:

While their economic policy might fail to satisfy a Chicago School economist, this election has seen the Liberal Democrats stake out the most explicitly liberal economic policy in a century. The party's website pledges to get the British government 'off the back of businesses' and assures voters that the LibDems 'want to cut the red tape that stops businesses from growing.' Press releases during the campaign have excoriated 'Labour's business record' as 'complex, interfering and over regulating' and have promised that 'Liberal Democrats will set business free.'

This is something I argued back in December:

The LibDems did emerge from the merger of the Liberal and the Social Democratic parties, but the liberal faction has clearly come to dominate, as evinced the LibDems membership in the ALDE (formerly ELDR) and the Liberal International.

That the LibDems have been portrayed as being to the "left" of Labour has more to do with Blair's New Labour than with the LibDems. Without falling into Nolan chart hermeneutics, it's safe to say that the position of liberalism and social democracy on the left-right scale is partly substantive, but also partly the result of historical contingency. Trade protectionism has a long conservative, not liberal, history; opposition to "bourgeois lifestyles" has been used by socialist governments to crack down on gays. So it doesn't surprise me to see liberalism reemerging as a progressive force in Albion.

British politics

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Most of the British election results are in. The Liberal Democrats have done pretty well for themselves, and Labour has lost a fair number of seats. Among the Labour dissapointments, Oona King—daughter of political philosopher Preston T. King—lost her Bethnal Green & Bow constituency to George Galloway, a notorious Saddam Hussein apologist [reg. req'd.].

More juxtapositions

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

On David Horowitz this time (via Crooked Timber), Jennifer Jacobson writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

For Mr. Horowitz, this battle is personal. He is feisty, single-minded, and like many a professor, loves to lecture. He is a man of contradictions. An ideologue with feelings, he is sensitive to how he appears in press accounts and admits he sometimes overreacts. While he wants desperately to be included in the academy -- for professors to assign his books and invite him to speak in classes -- he seems eager to punish it, in part, for turning a cold shoulder to his work. And although he contends his bill of rights is not a political document, it is large conservative foundations that make sure he, and the handful of people helping him, have plenty of cash for the fight.

A continent away, and one hundred and eighteen years earlier:

For every sufferer instinctively seeks a cause for his suffering; more exactly, an agent; still more specifically, a guilty agent who is susceptible to suffering—in short, some living thing upon which he can, on some pretext or other, vent his affects, actually or in effigy: for the venting of his affects represents the greatest attempt on the part of the suffering to win relief, anaesthesia—the narcotic he cannot help desiring to deaden pain of any kind. This alone, I surmise, constitutes the actual physiological cause of ressentiment, vengefulness, and the like: a desire to deaden pain by means of affects.

Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morals. Walter Kaufmann, trans. New York: Random House, 1967. P. 127 [Pt. III, Sec. 15].

 

Better dead than sinful

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

From NewScientist (Via Eugene Volokh):

DEATHS from cervical cancer could jump fourfold to a million a year by 2050, mainly in developing countries. This could be prevented by soon-to-be-approved vaccines against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer - but there are signs that opposition to the vaccines might lead to many preventable deaths.

The trouble is that the human papilloma virus (HPV) is sexually transmitted. So to prevent infection, girls will have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active, which could be a problem in many countries.

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

more...

From Andrew Dickson White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom:

In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially in Massachusetts, to Franklin's rod. The Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of the Old South Church, published a sermon on the subject, and in the appendix expressed the opinion that the frequency of earthquakes may be due to the erection of "iron points invented by the sagacious Mr. Franklin." He goes on to argue that "in Boston are more erected than anywhere else in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God."

Three years later, John Adams, speaking of a conversation with Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: "He began to prate upon the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the points and the presumption that erected them. He talked of presuming upon God, as Peter attempted to walk upon the water, and of attempting to control the artillery of heaven."

As late as 1770 religious scruples regarding lightning-rods were still felt, the theory being that, as thunder and lightning were tokens of the Divine displeasure, it was impiety to prevent their doing their full work. Fortunately, Prof. John Winthrop, of Harvard, showed himself wise in this, as in so many other things: in a lecture on earthquakes he opposed the dominant theology; and as to arguments against Franklin's rods, he declared, "It is as much our duty to secure ourselves against the effects of lightning as against those of rain, snow, and wind by the means God has put into our hands."

Is there a pattern here?

Telenovelas

Tyler Cowen takes notice of Spanish language television:

For young adults at least, often it is Univision, the Spanish-language broadcaster. And yes I mean in the United States. On nineteen different nights (since September), Univision has ranked number one among 18 to 34 year olds. Two-thirds of the time Univision has made it into the 'big four' (the three networks plus Fox) with this age group.

My previous post on television forgot to mention Spanish-language shows, which are a superior form of bad TV. I've long been a fan of Primer Impacto, despite the departure of Maria Celeste Arras.

more...

I, for one, don't think much of Ms. Arrarás. She has a Katie Couric quality about her—and I really dislike Katie Couric. Maybe it's the "acento Univisión," the pan-American accent that all (female) anchors on the network are forced to emulate. The most egregious case of it is Carmen Dominicci (also of Primer Impacto); you'd never guess that Carmen or María Celeste were Puerto Rican from listening to them on the show. Yet none of the Mexican hosts or anchors have abandoned their native accent. Go figure!

But I must come to the defense of (some) Spanish TV: primetime soaps. First, the technical mastery of the Mexican makeup artists: no matter how much the heroine cries (and on Mexican soaps, she cries a lot), I have yet to spot a single instance of running mascara... unless it was made to run intentionally, for dramatic effect. And the base and foundation are flawless, I tell you. Flawless!

You can always tell a Mexican soap by the makeup. And if it's a period-piece, by the historical details, which are meticulously researched. On Amor Real, for instance, the wardrobe was updated with the story to keep up with mid-nineteenth century fashion. The characters made generally accurate references to the liberal uprising against Santa Anna.

Now, the vast majority of Latin American soaps are contemptible rubbish, especially the ones from Venezuela. But occasionaly a little gem appears, like Betty la Fea (Colombia), Rubí (Mexico), or Amor Real (Mexico). They have the good sense to run for only six months to a year—making them more like a long miniseries—unlike their American counterparts. And they haven't resorted to vampires or talking marionettes yet.