Softwood lumber. Again.

I've been watching the development of PM Stevie's latest gambit, this time over the ongoing softwood lumber finagle. I have no idea if the deal's any good or not. What interests me is the political maneuvering going on. The basic plot is that Stevie is wagering his government on this deal: if the deal is defeated in the House, then we go to an election. So, where do the players stand on the deal? Well, according to this, Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois are hoping to get some traction against the Cons in Quebec. It's not clear from that whether or not they will oppose. According to this, the Liberals and the NDP will oppose the deal. Also according to this same article, however, the BQ will probably be supporting the deal, as Quebec industry is basically in favour of it. Let's suppose that's all true: Liberals and NDP will oppose, Cons will vote in favour, BQ will also vote in favour. This means the deal passes, 175 to 131 or 132 (depending on which way the sole independent MP votes). My questions are two. First, what the hell is Duceppe thinking? And, second, did Stevie knew this all along?

If Duceppe doesn't start distinguishing his party from the Cons, he's going to start bleeding support. After all, why support a party on the way down, fracturing at the seams, when you could support the next governing party? On the other hand, though, Duceppe and the BQ have to been as standing up for Quebec's interests in order to shore up their flagging support. Opposing a deal that Quebec industry leaders like would be pretty clearly exploited by the Cons in the next election (whenever it ends up happening).

This then leads into my second question. Initially, I thought Stevie was being an idiot on this -- finally overplaying his hand. The Liberals would get it together to oppose a bad softwood lumber deal, if only so that they can negotiate a "better" one when they resume their role as natural governing party. The NDP would never support a deal that the Cons like. And the BQ would try to distance themselves from the Cons and throw a bone to their base. As said, that was my initial thinking; however, now it looks like Stevie had an ace up his sleeve. Duceppe has been really backed into a corner here: on the one hand, he has to do something to keep his left-wing, union and artistic bases happy; but, on the other hand, he has to defend Quebec's economic interests. It seems he may impale himself on the second horn, and hope for an opportunity to show his left-wing credentials on a different issue. It's disappointing to see -- personally, I'd like to see Stevie go to the polls, only to find out that Canadians, on the whole, still don't want to give him a majority -- but it's understandable.

On an interesting note, though, according to this, the money the US government basically stole from Canadian lumber producers is, at least in part, going to be spent without any oversight from Congress. One wonders if Stevie agreed to the deal in order to help Dubya shore up the Republicans before mid-term elections. (Admittedly, this is a bit conspiracy theory. Given how far to the right the Democrats actually are, I'm not convinced that Stevie really cares if the Republicans lose control of Congress.)

The rule of law.

Anyone remember my good friend, Rick Salutin? I took apart his understanding of morality a couple of months ago, right here. Now, it's time to take apart his (lack of) understanding of law.

There's no real connection, for instance, between law and justice. Law is law and justice is justice.

If you're a hard positivist. If you're a soft positivist, or a natural lawyer, or a Dworkinian, then there is an essential connection between law and justice. (Jurisprudence should be mandatory as part of a good liberal education.) See this essay by York U prof, Leslie Green. Section 3 in particular is relevant, but the whole is excellent.

But there are other options, mostly in what's known as the oral tradition. Elders, sages, councils, healing circles. Some of these rely on handed-down legal traditions, but those are more transparently human and challengeable under that tradition.

This is stupid. Salutin is drawing a distinction with no difference. Oral traditions are legal traditions (at least under Hartian theories of law) if there is a system of primary rules of right and wrong conduct over which range a system of secondary rules. Basically, Salutin has confused statute with law.

The Talmud, Judaism's oral law, recounts a dispute between two schools of legal thought when a voice from heaven intervened to declare: "These and those are the words of the Living God!" It settled nothing, but it sounds more honest and, in its way, more democratic than our Procrustean system. Taught (meaning written) law is tough law, Harold Innis said, just as taught philosophy (like Aristotle) is tough philosophy compared to Plato's dialogic approach. We forget there are alternatives.

Confirms my suspicion that Salutin is running together statute and law. There is a rigorous common-law tradition in the UK, Canada, and the US -- and many other countries -- and this tradition is not written law. It is interpreted from the bulk of cases -- this is what distinguishes common law from statute. Moreover, there is at least some vestige of customary law in all three of those countries -- law that is not made by judges and is not written in statutes. One of my favourite examples (from Les Green) is the law that says the leader of the most numerous party in Canada's federal Parliament gets to be Prime Minister. There's no statute and there's no precedent that says this is so -- it's a matter of custom. But, nonetheless, the law. So, all this nonsense about "written law" ignores that a significant proportion of our law -- not law in some other society, but in ours -- is unwritten.

The one thing inherently just in the rule of law is that it applies equally to all (in theory), which is just, or would be, except that, as everyone knows, it doesn't happen in practice. If you doubt me, spend a day in criminal court. (I think making everyone do so would do more democratic good than compulsory voting.) This season, charges against Conrad Black and others are being flaunted as examples to prove the law does so apply equally, which merely proves they are exceptions meant to obscure the norm.

This is just bizarre. In the beginning, Salutin distinguished justice and law. He ran the distinction a bit too hard, but the distinction is fair. Here, however, he criticizes the claim that law applies to everyone on the grounds that, frequently, the law's conclusions are unjust (i.e., the rich get off and the poor don't). It makes no sense at all. I wonder if he thinks these things through before sending them off to the editor?

Since equal treatment is the soul of whatever is worthy in rule of law, it's an embarrassment to hear the term used to justify the Bush war on terror. Under it, people are held secretly without charge, shunted around the world, relabelled creatively as unlawful combatants and "rendered" to countries for torture. Whatever you call this, it doesn't resemble rule of law.

Here, at least, he's right. The "rule of law", at base, claims that everyone is equal before the law. What the Bush admin is claiming is that some are entitled to less legal protection than others -- and some entitled to more.

But I think Borys Wrzesnewskyj got confused trying to apply the core principle of rule of law: equal treatment. Under it, Israel, too, would qualify for using terror tactics, as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have all more or less said. Its acts include kidnapping legislators, bulldozing homes as collective punishment, destroying power plants, roads and bridges, dropping cluster bombs etc. In general, this conforms to the definition of terror as violence against civilians for political ends. ... Israel is far from alone among states. The U.S. was convicted by the World Court of terror against Nicaragua, and ignored the ruling. Most Arab states have terrorized their own populations. But states are routinely and irrationally excluded from the charge. I'd say that, confused by this hypocrisy, Borys Wrzesnewskyj called for the exclusion of Hezbollah from the category, rather than the inclusion of many worthy governmental candidates. On that basis, I think he deserves another shot at the mire of Canadian politics.

I sincerely doubt that Wrzesnewskyj was motivated by a concern for equal application of the law. Moreover, if he was, he was wrong. Hezbollah is not a state; Israel is. Being a state is a relevant property in normative (moral, political, legal, etc.), and can serve to ground real differences in conclusions. That is, since Israel is a state, and Hezbollah is not, we could justify differential treatment. On the other hand, if Wrzesnewskyj was thinking that treating Hezbollah as a terrorist group is ineffective in securing peace in the region, then his claim really wasn't legal at all -- it was strategic policy (the best means) aimed towards a principled outcome (peace in the region). I really have no idea where Salutin got the idea that "rule of law" was even at stake here. Not to mention that Israel has refused to sign onto the International Criminal Court, and so, strictly, can't be prosecuted even if it does violate international law. (And, Hezbollah, as a non-state group, also couldn't be prosecuted under those laws. Hezbollah would have to be prosecuted under Lebanese laws, as it acts in Lebanon.)

Stupidity on Canadian Status of Women agency.

This article takes the prize for the stupidest feminist-bashing I've seen in a long while. Apparently, a conservative astroturf group calling itself "REAL Women of Canada" has decided that Canadian women are now, magically, doing just fine and don't need even a few measly million dollars of support from the federal government. (Aside: why are they an astroturf organization? Why else do they not list their executive members on their very own website? Why would an advocacy organization hide the names of its leadership -- unless it had something to hide.)

Here's what the Status of Women agency does:

The governmental branch, with a budget of about $23-million and some 130 staff, not only funds a variety of women's groups across Canada, but also co-ordinates pro-equality measures across government departments. ... Its stated objectives include addressing violence against women and promoting women's human rights. Its latest focus is on women's poverty and improving economic security.

Kind of hard to figure out why anyone would object to this, right? Particularly given that (compared to the size of the government's overall budget) only a small amount of money is at stake. Well, here's the gist of the objections:

"Like typical radical feminists, they have decided that they speak for all women, and they only consult those groups and women that agree with their agenda," says an entry on the Big Blue Wave blog from Suzanne, who does not give her last name. "So it's a bunch of radical feminist bureaucrats consulting radical feminists to hear what they want to hear to promote more radical feminism on my dime." ... Gwendolyn Landoldt, executive director of REAL Women of Canada, says Status of Women's time has passed and is no longer relevant. "It's based on the premise that women are allegedly victims of a patriarchal society and need support and special recognition," said Ms. Landoldt. "Our view is that the vast majority of women are not victims, and quite capable of making decisions in their lives."

Note the use of the vacuous buzzword "radical feminist". Frankly, I doubt most conservatives could tell you what the difference between a radical feminist and a non-radical feminist is. Also note the laughable "critique" that government shouldn't use tax money to fund programs that some taxpayers disagree with. As Canadian Cynic has pointed out recently, federal and provincial governments support organized religion, which I'm certainly no fan of. Using the same logic, I should be advocating for a revocation of their tax-emept status. (A conclusion I doubt "REAL Women" would favour.)

Finally, note Ms. Landoldt's amusing -- and unsupported -- claim that women are "allegedly" victims of a patriarchal society. (The aside about "making decisions in their own lives" is a blatant non sequitur.) I'm not a big fan of the "patriarchy" buzzword, as it implies a social tyranny that doesn't actually exist. However, anyone who claims that there are no social conditions which systematically disadvantage women is an idiot.

Why I will never be a conservative...

...because I can't look at this information, which suggests that welfare recepients are earning well less than a poverty-level income, and fathom the conneciton to this conclusion:

Mike Cardinal, Alberta's Minister of Human Resources and Employment, said in the current economy punctuated by a massive labour shortage, there's no reason for able-bodied people to be on welfare.

So, his government's paying below the poverty line, but it's okay, because all those people on welfare should be working anyway. Ad hoc circular reasoning par excellence.

Follow-up on the CMA election.

Further to my previous post here, I note this article, particularly this paragraph:

Family physician Danielle Martin, the head of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and a non-delegate, was shouted down when she asked for permission to address the meeting on double-dipping.

I can't think of a better example of a dysfunctional organization fracturing at the seams than shouting down a member who wanted to speak on an unpopular topic.

Stem cells and the futility of pandering to dogma.

I've yet to see a good argument as to why one can't harvest embryos for stem cells. On a related note, though, this shows why it's not worth trying to reason one's way around the inherently unreasonable. The article describes the process by which a group of scientists recently managed to create embryonic stem cells by taking a biopsy from an embryo, rather than harvesting an embryo outright. Note this:

Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "We still don't know the dangers of taking a biopsy from an early stage embryo, whether it has any effect on the baby's future development. On paper it looks like an ethical solution, but that requires the biopsy to be completely harmless."

In other words, we have no evidence whatsoever that the biopsy is harmful, but because it might be, this is still not a good solution. A second example, same article (emphasis added):

Prof [Peter] Braude [of ob/gyn in King's College London] said he doubted whether the controversy could be avoided by the American breakthrough. "We don't undertake embryo biopsy willy-nilly, as it is better not to remove a cell from a developing embryo unless one really has to," he said. "I certainly cannot see why one would wish to try and remove a cell from a healthy embryo with such low odds of developing a stem line from it when many thousands of useful cells are harvested from a baby's placenta at birth, if one needed to do it. Equally, I'm not persuaded by arguments that this is a more ethical way of getting stem cell lines, as it is not impossible that biopsy compromises the developing embryo from which one removes the cell."

Again, since there's a non-zero probability of harming the embryo, this is still a poor solution. (As an ethical principle, this is crap, incidentally. If a zero probability of harm is required before one acts, then one will never act.)

There's no pleasing the dogmatic; I really wonder how long rational people will continue to try.

For tomorrow....

Got busy with some real-life stuff, and will be pushing back the transit and softwood lumber posts till tomorrow, as well as some more timely issues.

Healthcare.

The promised healthcare post.

There's a ridiculous amount of newsprint been consumed recently regarding the election by the CMA (Canadian Medical Association) of a president who owns a private clinic, in contravention of the Canada Health Act, in Vancouver, BC. Samples: here, here, here, and here. There's also been a fair amount of comment, from both the left and the right.

Here's the gist of what I have to say: everyone's wrong. No, seriously, everyone. The CMA will fall apart before the public system. And, two-tier healthcare is not fair.

Dealing with the first. No one seems to understand that these sorts of professional organizations aren't monolithic and uniform entities. They're cobbled together groupings of smaller, more cohesive groups, that will hold together only so long as the interests served by the larger group are not undermining the interests of the smaller groups. (For example, as we see here, the Professional Associations of Interns and Residents of Ontario (PAIRO) -- future physicians -- is clearly against private healthcare.) Unfortunately, I don't see any information on the demographics of the election, so this is going to get a little speculative. There's usually a split in physicians' groups, in my experience, between the hospital physicians and physicians in private practice. The former, oddly enough, tend to be more money-obsessed than the latter. My explanation for this is that the latter have to see more patients. Physicians who work in hospitals can be more selective in who they see, and usually make their decisions on the basis of who they can bill the most for. By contrast, physicians in private practice will, on the whole, get a better sense of the needs of the general patient population, because they have to see a large number of patients in order to make their overhead. Physicians in private practice will usually favour public healthcare for just that reason -- they know what the general patient population needs, and they know that private insurance would tend to exclude a significant portion of that population. (More on that later.)

I'd also suggest that there may be a split between older and younger physicians. The Canada Health Act was only adopted in 1984. An individual born in 1984 is currently younger than I am -- about 22 years old -- and thus probably not a physician. Which means that most physicians will have grown up in a Canada that did not have public healthcare. To what extent, I wonder, do older physicians tend to favour private healthcare, because it's what they grew up with? Possibly confounding this is the fact that there are foreign-trained and -born physicians practicing in Canada who may have grown up under public systems. Not to mention that, sometimes, people will hate what they are familiar with, rather than being drawn to it. On the whole, though, I would suspect that there is a certain amount of yearning for the "good ol' days" going on.

Furthermore, the formation of Canadian Doctors for Medicare suggests that there are significant numbers of physicians who want an organization that will openly endorse public healthcare. So, far from tolling the end of public healthcare, I'd think that the CMA president endorsing private healthcare would signal the end of the CMA as an organization that represents all Canadian physicians -- if their new president actually uses his position to endorse private healthcare.

And that is a very salient point that, so far, has been completely overlooked. Just because the elected president believes in private healthcare doesn't mean that he's going to use his position to espouse it. Particularly if I'm right on the first point, and there are sufficient splits within the CMA that the organization itself might splinter over the issue of privatizing healthcare.

So, on the whole, there's some important issues that we simply don't know enough about, at this point, to go off half-cocked proclaiming the end of public healthcare -- either as a good thing or a bad thing.

But, that aside, let's consider the issue of public vs. private healthcare. There are really three possible systems: public alone, private alone, and a combination of public and private. Private alone I will reject out of hand. I don't know anyone sane who suggests that there should be entirely private healthcare, leaving even the very poorest and neediest without public support for their medical bills. That leaves either a purely public system or a two-tier system.

There's a couple of defenses of two-tier systems that get trotted out, and they don't really work. The first is that the injection of private money might alleviate the problems facing the public system. This is false. The public system lacks money, that much is true. However, the public system also lacks other resources, particularly healthcare providers. A two-tier system will take healthcare providers out of the public system and put them in the private system. This is a basic logical point -- there's a limited supply of providers, so anyone practicing in one system is therefore not able to practice in the other (at least while they're practicing in the one). Private money might be able to help create more resources; but, then again, public money could do so just as easily. In this respect, publicly- and privately-funded healthcare are on all fours with each other; so, it's no mark in favour of a two-tier system that private money could solve this problem.

(Aside: some practitioners in the public system do not practice year-round, because they hit their provincially-mandated billing caps. That is, there is a limit on how much any physician can bill during a calendar year, and some physicians do hit it. They are thus left with the choice of either not practicing or practicing for free, as they are not legally entitled to charge for covered services. Does two-tier healthcare have a lever here? Simply, no: any physician whose services are genuinely in demand can apply to the provincial government to have the cap removed, thus allowing for unlimited billing. Physicians can also perform non-insured services, such as medico-legal examinations for private auto insurance (in provinces that have them) or worker's compensation systems, for which they can thus bill privately. Therefore, most physicians who do not practice the full year seem to be doing so out of choice, not out of need.)

The second argument that often gets trotted out is that people have a "right" to pay for healthcare if they are able. However, it is, first, utterly bizarre to claim that there is a "right" to buy what one is able to buy. I'm sure there are sufficiently poor people who would sell themselves into slavery to sufficiently rich people, but nonetheless it is obviously wrong to buy a slave. So, really, the "right" being invoked is, as with most rights, a limited one: one can buy whatever there is no good reason to prevent one from buying. In the case of slavery, the autonomy of the individual is sufficiently valuable that it cannot be violated, even if an individual would voluntarily choose to give up his autonomy. That's at least a reason not to allow buying slaves. Similarly, there is a reason not to allow people to buy private healthcare: the competition is necessarily unequal, and thus unfair. The inequality comes from two sources. First, the problem of the uninsurable. As anyone who's tried to buy, say, private auto insurance with a bad driving record can tell you, insurers are risk-averse. That is, they don't like to take on clients that they believe will make large claims and cost them lots of money. This extends to health, as well. Insurers will charge higher premiums to people with expensive chronic conditions (such as AIDS) or with a high likelihood of sustaining serious acute injury (such as the severely mentally ill). In many cases, insurers will either price their premiums sufficiently high to in effect render people uninsurable, or will simply refuse to insure them outright. How can the competition for private insurance be fair if some people are blocked from entering the market? Second, the middle class will continually lose out on access to treatment. The lower classes will be treated publicly, on the basis of need. The upper classes will have quick access to the private system. How can the middle class compete with the lower classes on the basis of need -- particularly if they pass whatever threshold of income is necessary to be excluded from the public system. Similarly, how can the middle class compete with the upper class for access on the basis of income? Thus, when it comes to either the public or the private system, the middle class will tend to be systematically discriminated against. How can this be fair?

So, for all its (reparable) flaws, the public system is still better than a two-tier public/private one.

Preview of tomorrow (and special bonus spleen!)

I have three more posts on the boil, on the CMA election of a private healthcare advocate (which is being misanalyzed on all sides of the political spectrum), the possibility that the Cons might revoke funding for expanding public transit in Toronto (an underreported story), and the threat from PM Stevie to make the upcoming softwood lumber deal a confidence vote (which is pure posturing). They will have to wait until tomorrow, however. For now, though, enjoy this tour de force rant from UK MP George Galloway. 'Bout time somebody said it. (All of it.)

One law for high school football players, another for the rest of us.

This is horrifying. Apparently, a few high school football players nearly killed someone with a stupid practical joke. One would expect a severe sentence in order to teach them a lesson, correct? One would be wrong: sixty days in juvie, to be served after the football season is over, and then write an essay. Seriously.

Police brutality.

I'm sure most have heard of this incident, wherein Florida police shot a female protestor in the face with a rubber bullet, then laughed about it (on camera, no less). The rather cavalier attitude of officials involved -- excusing the officers of all wrongdoing, offering a half-hearted apology -- simply compounds the egregious immorality. However. It is always worth remembering (though this does nothing to excuse the behaviour nor reduce its wrongness) that the only reason this is news is because, in the United States, it is news. There are parts of the world -- Mexico City, for example, where my father lives -- where the police are little more than gang of paramilitary thugs, and incidents like this would go completely unnoticed.

First Napster, now guitar tab. (When will this end?)

I can't believe the music industry sometimes. I don't even have words to describe how stupid this is. Music industry trade groups are trying to shut down sites that offer fan-written guitar tablature. That is, when fans take the trouble to transcribe the music they listen to, and put up a website offering downloads of those transcriptions, in the music industry's eyes, these fans are committing a hideous felony and infringing on their copyright (and, of course, profit). As I said, I don't have words to express how stupid this is.

Potayto, potahto.

Offered as further proof that Liberals and Conservatives aren't really that far apart, the Ontario Liberal government has cancelled a public television program (Studio 2) as it provided a forum for opposing views. Classy.

Pharmaceutical companies and the "innovation" myth.

Why is it that whenever a pharmaceutical manufacturer's patent is threatened, they have to go for the "but this will stifle innovation!" defense? See here for my inspiration. There's a couple of problems with this whole line of defense. First, pharmaceutical companies aren't terribly innovative. They keep churning out drugs for the same, relatively narrow scope of problems -- largely ones which affect Westerners, because those are the people they can sell to. One of my favourite examples of this is the anti-allergy medication, Claritin, manufactured by Schering-Plough. Claritin has been over the counter (OTC) in Canada for years, but was only approved OTC by the FDA in 2002 (http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2002/NEW00855.html). Moving from prescription to OTC generally drops the price of a drug significantly. So, what does Schering-Plough do? They start to manufacture Clarinex -- which is, as far as I can tell, basically the same chemical -- which requires a prescription.

Second problem is the presumption that private pharmaceutical funding is the only, or even the primary, source of money for drug development. I've seen no data, ever, to suggest that public funding is not at least equal to private funding. And, certainly, if private funding drops below a reasonable level, the public funding could be stepped up to cover it.

Third problem, and really most severe, is the conceit that a thriving industry needs to be sheltered from market forces, else simply die. That is, are we really supposed to believe that the pharmaceutical industry is so tenuous, so close to bankruptcy, that forcing it to compete with generic drug manufacturers would lead to the end of pharmaceuticals as we know it? Granted the generics profit largely because they have little or no R&D costs, while the prescription drug manufacturers do have an R&D overhead. But, on the other hand, I have a hard time believing that the difference in price between name and generic branded versions of a drug is solely due to the associated R&D costs of the name brand manufacturers. I find it more plausible that the name brand manufacturers are exploiting the protection of their patents to, not to put too fine a point on it, screw over sick people. Really, then, if name brand manufacturers want these iron-clad patents to recover their R&D costs, why shouldn't they be price-controlled -- to ensure that they are only recovering their R&D costs?

Profiling Arabs.

On a similar note to the previous post, note that anti-Arab hysteria is spreading outside the political arena. According to this, an Arabic physician from Winnipeg was escorted off a plane from Denver -- because he was praying (presumably, in Arabic). There's no justification for this sort of obvious racial profiling. I have yet to hear, though, of any official complaint being made by our stalwart Conservative government.

According to this article, the British are being sensibly cynical about the whole exercise. Good points made throughout. However, according to this, the trend is not universal, as two Arabic men were hounded off a plane by racist fellow passengers. (Original article here.)

Thomas Nadelhoffer has an amusing post here, arguing that if we should profile the dangerous kinds of people, we should first be profiling politicians and their kowtowing pundits.

On a serious note, though, am I the only one who remembers Jean Charles de Menezes? How long until the next shooting -- by reason of not being white?

Should Hezbollah be marginalized as terrorists and Nazis?

What a week it has been on the "War on Terror!" front. First, we have three Canadians MPs calling for Hezbollah to be removed from the official list of terrorist groups. About bloody time. Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day refuses, and is, really, a bit of a baby about it. But, then, we get this bit of insanity. In more ways than I can conveniently count. Mr. Jason Kenney, Conservative MP, has compared Hezbollah to the Nazis. Of course,comparing any current group to the Nazis requires a vast misunderstanding of (or deliberately ignoring) the depth of unquestionable evil and suffering inflicted by the Nazi regime. No one and no group currently active is that bad. Now, as far as I can tell, what Kenney is trying to say is that the Nazis ran in elections and provided social services, but were dedicated to eradicating Jews, and Hezbollah is no different in those respects: runs in elections, provides services, wants to eradicate Jews. Well... wants to eradicate Israel, or, at the very least, run Israel out of Lebanon. But let's overlook this conflation of Jews with Israelis. I'm also not sure if Kenney's aware that the Nazis actually succeeded, at least partially, in their goal of eradicating Jews, while Hezbollah has been pretty much a colossal failure. And the Nazis won control of the country, hence were not really terrorists, but a stupefyingly evil state.

All those points aside, here's the real problem: the Nazi comparison is being invoked in order to dodge the suggestion made by opposition members that visiting Lebanon and trying to negotiate with Hezbollah members might help defuse future violence. (I'm sure someone else has a Neville Chamberlain example all ready to go as well.) Which means it's really a massive ad hominem attack: anyone who claims that negotiating with a power in the region (and Hezbollah are a power) might help to undercut the anti-Israeli agenda and marginalize the violent extremists is an appeaser, no better than a Nazi-sympathizer, and not worthy of any further attention. Which ignores, of course, that the neocon solution -- bomb the crap out of people we don't like -- has created a civil war in Iraq. What I don't understand is what's wrong with trying it. Certainly, we shouldn't go so far as to allow the equivalent of Poland to fall before getting worried. The lead-up to WWII can teach us at least that much. But, Hezbollah are not the Nazis. (Neither is Hamas.) Their goals are pro-Arab, pro-Muslim and anti-Israeli. They have extremist, violent wings, but also political ambitions. They command thousands if not millions of loyal supporters, spread across many countries. They are, as with all mass movements, rife with internal divisions, which could be exploited to marginalize the violent and support/encourage the diplomatic and political. Note that there's really nothing wrong with a political party in an Arabic country that doesn't want to deal with Israel. The problem is with actively trying to destroy Israel.

When all's said and done, it should be obviously stupid to wade in swinging without trying the diplomatic option first. At the very least because wading into the Middle East swinging is an easy rationalization to support the September 11 attacks (and the allegedly planned Toronto attacks, and the London bombings, etc.). In short, while we need to accept that we are dealing with sub-groups of violent extremists within groups who hold some odious views, we also need to stop pretending that the Israelis parallel the innocent Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. We also need to stop pretending that calling people "terrorists" justifies sending off our military to bomb them into oblivion -- and that this will stop violent retribution coming back against us when the members of the next generation are old enough to handle guns.

Worth noting, incidentally, that Amnesty International has called Israel onto the carpet for war crimes in Lebanon. One wonders what it would take for a Western government to do the same.

(Extra-special bonus for Conservatives or conservatives who object to these views: you've been wrong so many times, you're just not worth listening to any more.)

Nothing today.

For reasons I won't get into, no posting today. Will continue as per usual tomorrow.

More on academic freedom.

Read this. Then, read this. Plus ce change, eh?

Freedom of speech and the workplace.

This raises an interesting question. Is your workplace wrong to discipline you for views you express outside of work? (I'm ignoring, out of sheer weariness, the "oppressed conservative" subtext.) On the whole, I'd say it depends on the views. However, at the end of the day, in a capitalist system, the employer can fire an employee for a host of reasons, many of which are extremely dubious: "bad attitude", for example, or "not being a team player". So, there's certainly enough wiggle-room to allow an employer to fire an employee for holding views the employer condemns (whether or not they are justified in condemning them). Moreover, employers have no obligation to give employees freedom of speech. As freedom of speech has been interpreted, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, there is no obligation on the state to protect the speaker from reprisals, only from being prevented from speaking in the first place. (There is also no obligation to provide a forum in which to speak.) So, if I speak my mind on a certain issue, and my employer takes exception to it, then my employer could, with some legitimacy, fire me; what the employer could not do is try to stop me from speaking my mind.

I don't think these are morally defensible distinctions. I've long had problems with the idea that you can have a "freedom of speech" which does not provide protection against retaliation, and does not provide a corresponding obligation to hear. However, I do think that an employer could reasonably fire someone for holding views the employer doesn't care for. After all, the employment relationship is a relationship -- if one individual cannot maintain the relationship due to some feature of one of the people in the relationship, then there seems to be good reason to end the relationship. This is not to say one should only enter relationships with entirely like-minded people, but that everyone has a limit on the divergence from their own views that they are willing to tolerate in people they relate to. That is, for every individual person, there are some views that the person finds "beyond the pale" and intolerable in a spouse, a friend, a co-worker, an employee -- or, for that matter, an employer. (Would it be wrong for an employee to quit a job because his employer espoused racist views?) This looks like a pretty basic feature of human relationships.

So, really: where's the oppression if an employer decides that an employee is no longer a "good fit"?

Warrantless wiretapping.

Glenn Greenwald has the goods here.

Cons attack the poor. Again.

Y'know, it's getting a bit tiring having to note when the federal Conservatives try to asault the poor. Here the NDP catches the Cons in a blatant lie. On the one hand, Minister of Human Resources and Social Development Diane Finley, said that funding for affordable housing wouldn't be touched. On the other hand, Toronto's funding will be cut by $5.8 million, London's by $513,000, Ottawa's by $1 million and Yellowknife's by $416,000. (That would be $7,729,000 in known cuts.) Nice.

Pornography.

This editorial raises, again, the question of whether pornography is a "dangerous influence" that "causes crime". Let's look at the argument in a little more detail.

Those who profit from the production and sale of pornographic and violent material in magazines and books, on videos and television, argue that there is no evidence to prove that what they create can foster violence, child molestation, and sex crimes in those exposed to it. The ugly case of Craig Roger Gregerson, and what happened to 5-year-old Destiny Norton, is at least one convincing piece of evidence that it can and does.

So, first point: given one case of a self-proclaimed "porn addict" who commits a violent crime, we can conclude that pornography causes violent crime. Over-generalization is a formal fallacy, and unfortunately seems common, particularly when the case(s) generalized over are somehow shocking or emotionally significant. Generalization is an instance of inductive reasoning and is held to be (inductively) valid when the particulars generalized over are representative of the whole. One shocking case is hardly representative, for two reasons: first, it's only one case; and, second, the fact that it's shocking makes it unusual (i.e., non-representative).

It should not require a doctorate in psychology to understand that what we see and hear can influence our behavior.

But how it does so requires careful research, not trite homilies.

But if evidence is needed, there is serious research that proves this to be the case. For instance, the Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh has just published in the current issue of Pediatrics the results of a survey indicating that teens who listen to music full of raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs.

I debunked this study here. The study lacked any measure of "degrading" that was worth taking seriously.

This is a familiar echo of the plaint by some Hollywood movie and TV producers who argue that when they splatter their movies and TV productions with violence, profanity, and lurid sexuality, they are merely reflecting society as it is. To be asked to clean up their acts is an infringement upon their artistic freedom.

Oddly, this argument is never actually engaged with in the article. There certainly could be reasons to infringe on artistic freedom, particularly if there's demonstrable harm in allowing freedom to reign unchecked.

But as Corydon Hammond, codirector of the Sex and Marital Therapy Clinic at the University of Utah, says: "I don't think I've ever yet seen an adult sex offender who was not involved with pornography."

More over-generalization, combined, in this case, with cherry-picking the data. Unless Hammond has made a systematic study of all cases at her clinic, and has compared these cases to those who didn't self-select by coming to the Clinic, then there's good reason to suspect the sample is non-representative.

Judith Reisman, author of "The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography," sees a direct causal link between pornography and sex crimes. "In many cases I don't think we have any problem saying pornography caused [the sex offense]. We have tons of data," she writes.

That would be this Judith Reisman, who has tried to link homosexuality and pedophilia, who has attempted to critique Kinsey, and who has apparently perpetrated some blatantly-flawed scholarship. What a wonderful authority to appeal to. Moreover, although Reisman does hold a PhD, it is apparently in Communications, not Psychology.

Congress has attempted legislation seeking to control pornography but found it vetoed by courts claiming the legislation hobbled free speech. The courts, on copyright grounds, have outlawed the sale of videos in which distributors have edited out profanity or questionable scenes.

That is a violation of copyright, though. Except for quotes for review or critical purposes, an original work cannot legally be exhibited in altered form without the author's consent. Honestly, I'm not sure what point is being made here.

A new legislative attempt may require cable TV channels, where most questionable material appears, to carry a label warning of the offensiveness, but without deleting it, thus circumventing the free speech issue.

This is the only sensible comment made in the editorial. The more information viewers have at their disposal, the better able they are to make informed judgements about what they want to consume.

The Kaiser Foundation has undertaken extensive research on the amount of sex-oriented and violent programming on TV, and its impact on young viewers.

The point here is also obscure. It's not even clear which Kaiser Foundation is in question -- Googling the name gives two or three different organizations with similar names.

The watchdog Parents Television Council has campaigned vigorously against sex, violence, and profanity on television and in other media. It has lobbied against the cable industry's mandatory inclusion of questionable channels in omnibus packages offered to subscribers, arguing that subscribers should have the right to pick and choose individual channels.

The PTC was founded by L. Brent Bozell III and is well-known to wrestling fans for its bizarre attacks on WWE and its founder, the (thankfully) inimitable Vince McMahon. Bozell himself is best described here by SourceWatch, as a right-wing zealot with close connections to Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Pat Bucahanan. In other words, we can explain the PTC's judgements equally well on the basis of puritanism as on the basis of fact. Lacking a corroborating source with less (or at least differing) ideological committments, their judgements cannot be taken as authoritative.

So, on the whole, we have an appalling bad argument, consisting of over-generalization, random comments with no clear argumentative merit, and appeals to highly-questionable "experts". There are good arguments against pornography; it's unfortunate that the Christian Science Monitor didn't bother to consult them.

Should 10 year-olds appear in court?

I'm of two minds regarding this proposal by Canada's Justice Minister to allow the courts to intervene in cases of criminal behaviour by children as young as 10. On the one hand, he does have something of a point: young children can be under criminal influences, and require intervention in order to prevent temporary tendencies from becoming permanent dispositions. On the other hand, the courts are a pretty blunt instrument, and I'm not sure what empowering them is supposed to do that couldn't be just as easily (if not better) accomplished by expanding the interventionist powers of child welfare organizations. Or, for that matter, providing parents and communities with more resources to help prevent criminal influences from taking hold in the first place. (But that would require funding childcare, and no Con will ever do anything so reasonable.) On the whole, then, although it's good to see the Justice Minister at least doing something to try to prevent criminals from becoming professional criminals, the methodology seems to suffer from the typical Conservative myopia. The notion of rehabilitative or community-based initiatives doesn't appear to occur to Mr. Toews, and it may end up being children who suffer.

"White privilege".

Here we have a truly bizarre editorial on explaining "white privilege" to a child. Personally, I think this is a horrible thing to do to a young white child -- try to instill some sort of racial guilt for things he has no control over, as opposed to encouraging positive development and a sense of social responsibility.

Moreover, the notion of "white privilege" always sets my teeth on edge. Firstly because of the invocation of race as a source of benefit; secondly because of the invocation of "privilege" as a way of measuring the benefit. The former drives me nuts because race is really incidental: it's social class that really determines benefit. That many whites tend to be higher-class, and non-whites tend to be lower, is a contingent feature of our society. Focussing on the coincident racial feature ignores the underlying systematic problems, namely, the inequitable distribution of goods and the (subsequent) extreme difficulties involved in trying to move upwards in social class. The latter drives me nuts because "privilege" implies that benefit is undeserved. But the particular benefits cited -- for example, ability to access particular educational or employment opportunities -- don't look undeserved. Indeed, they look like basic benefits that everyone should have in society. So, rather than worry about "white privilege", shouldn't the discourse instead be focused on improving the deficits suffered by those in lower classes?

A real moral equivalency: freedom of speech vs. concern and respect.

This is why you have to be very careful when you start defending someone's "right" to say whatever the hell they like. Remember the whole Danish Muslim cartoons mess? And how many people piled on about "freedom of speech" -- ignoring entirely the basic moral responsibility to treat people with dignity and respect (even if their beliefs are weird)? And then how Iran started a contest on Holocaust cartoons? Well, a museum exhibit has just opened in Tehran of Holocaust cartoons. I'm sure they are all deeply offensive. However, the original set of cartoons were deeply offensive to Muslims. If cartoonists have a right to draw what they like, regardless of how offensive it might be, then this extends to offenses to non-Muslims and Muslims alike. On the other hand, if there's some sort of obligation to not offend others (on the basis that it tells against treating them with respect), then the original cartoons were equally wrong.

Canadian university rankings.

Hm. According to this, a dozen or so leading Canadian universities have opted out of the annual Maclean's ranking of university programs. Something smells, though. Even though the rankings surely have technical problems -- two are identified in the article linked -- I'm highly suspicious of the move to withdraw, rather than improve the rankings. Or, for that matter, substitute a different set of rankings for Maclean's. It looks more like the big kids on the playground taking their ball and going home, leaving the smaller kids to fend for themselves. Losing some of Canada's biggest universities from the rankings will seriously reduce their impact on student decision-making, and, I would suspect, encourage students to stick with the "known" universities, and avoid the lesser-known (but still possibly good) institutions.

Furthermore, there's really nothing other than Maclean's providing ranking of undergraduate programs across Canada. Depriving students of even a flawed ranking tool leaves students faced with no way of deciding between programs. At the very least, there needs to be more information given to students in order to make an informed decision between various university programs. Dumping university hopefuls on the (at best) barely-competent high school guidance department is no solution.

More comments here at Leiter's Law School Reports.

Grad student unions.

An editorial here discusses graduate student unionization. There's always a back and forth in higher ed about this issue. The heart of the problem is that the contemporary graduate student serves two roles: student and part-time instructor. And this is because the student is being trained for two completely different jobs: researcher and full-time instructor. They're not necessarily incompatible, but they can exert opposing pulls on the person who's trying to fill both. Here's where unions come in: unions purport to be able to make the instruction role as hassle-free as possible, leaving people more time to be students. (The parallel case can be made for full-time instructors being allowed more opportunities for research.)

To be sure, there are bad unions -- or, more strictly, bad union executives. A weak executive is easily exploited by canny university negotiators, leaving grad students with a choice between a bad contract and a contentious strike. This suggests that unionized grad students, as with unionized workers of any stripe, need to keep an eye on what their executive is actually doing. And, when the executive goes wrong, it is up to the membership to yank them back into line. On the whole, though, unionization is really the best option for protecting grad student workers at universities. The alternatives, after all, are a toothless collective group (only a union has the legal right to strike) or individual departmental negotiation (which would leave grad students in more cash-poor departments vulnerable to loss of funding, and grads in more student-heavy departments trying to bear impossible teaching loads). So, what's the problem?

As I see it, there are two serious objections made against grad student unions. The first is that it allows the administration to treat grads as instructors first and students second, giving grads even less time and ability to fulfill the student role. While this is probably somewhat true, in my experience, a union limits the time that one can be compelled to work, thus forcing the university to either hire more instructors or pay the instructors it has more in order to cover the shortfall. Moreover, it's simply naive to think that contemporary universities wouldn't use grads as cheap labour anyway. Thus,

The second is that grad students are not employees, but apprentices, and hence should not be represented by unions. This is a distinction without a difference. An apprentice is a form of employee, who performs simple tasks in a field (and with supervision) while being trained for performing more advanced ones (and without supervision). Put simply, as long as grad students are actually providing instruction, then grad students are being employed as instructors, and deserve protection in order to prevent exploitation by university administration.

Landlords and smoking.

This notes a rather odd side effect of banning smoking, at least in Quebec. Apparently, Quebec has followed many jurisdictions in banning smoking in public areas (bars, restaurants, etc.). But, some landlords are taking this as opportunity to keep smokers from renting their properties.

On the face of it, it's surprising that landlords wouldn't do this already. The ban is on public smoking, after all, and rented property is private. Landlords already try to ban (or at least severely restrict) pets and children using their properties. (Incidentally, I've recently been house-hunting, and was surprised to find that even condos have no pets and adults-only policies. And you own a condo.) The grounds given, reasonably enough, is that pets and children are more likely to damage the landlord's property. The same could be extended to smokers (ever smelled carpet that's been in a smoker's house for over a decade?).

However, trying to ban smokers seems like a strategy that could only work in a tight rental market. If there's more than enough spaces for renters, then any given landlord can't afford to be terribly choosey. (But could insist on a damage deposit to cover the expected costs of removing any smoking damage, as well as charge rent to include at least part of the property's fire insurance.)

What's truly bizarre are the comments in the article about how it's a violation of "human rights" for landlords to refuse to rent to smokers. I might go along with the claim that it's a violation of something for smokers who can't afford to buy a place to have nowhere to live. But, at the end of the day, the landlord owns the property. Why can't they rent to whomever they want?

Is compromise always a good?

I have to take exception to this editorial, which tries to argue that (1) the mid-term US elections may make Congress more "polarized" and (2) "polarization" is bad. (1) is probably true. (2) is the one I have a problem with.

There's a tendency to think that compromise is always good, that there are always two sides to a story and the truth lies somewhere in between. I've blogged already on whether we have to listen to both sides before forming an opinion (see here). The short of it is that we don't. However, this doesn't imply that compromising between two extreme views isn't often better, only that we are not obligated to compromise.

So, the remaining possibility is that compromise may not be obligatory, but it is nonetheless better than alternatives. But why should that be so? There are certainly many obvious cases where compromise is highly irrational. 2+2=4, regardless of how "extreme" this position might seem. That is, we have a class of what might be called self-evident truths or axiomatic truths which should be adhered to regardless of considerations of compromise.

To these we can add a class of inter alia (or all things considered) claims which are carefully-articulated and -reasoned sets of judgements. Compromising on claims that one has already devoted a great deal of consideration to would require giving up something that one is convinced of, and has good reason for being convinced of. That is, if one has taken the time to articulate and defend a comprehensive universal healthcare policy, then one has an inter alia claim in hand: something that one can and should refuse to compromise on. (At least, without extremely good reason to change.)

In other words, it's not just the odd axiomatic cases where we can know with perfect confidence that we are right, but also the much more commonplace cases wherein a great weight of evidence has been marshalled in support of one's views. Which implies that it is only in the much-rarer cases where one is not sure what to believe that compromise is really a rational strategy.

Therefore, very often moderation and compromise are a result of lack of insight or depth of understanding. They are thus not good ends in themselves, but waypoints at which one can rest before gaining the ground necessary to support one's inter alia claims.

Should inmates be used for medical testing?

I admit to being of two minds about this article. On the one hand, there's something inherently odious about taking a captive population and treating them literally like lab rats. On the other hand, if the prisoners freely consent, why shouldn't they be allowed to participate?

There are different principles motivating each intuition, I think. The first intuition is motivated by the principle that no one should be compelled to do something that they would not freely will. Though this is clearly not an exceptionless principle, it's a generally good one. You can't force someone to do something they don't want to, unless you have good reason. Problematically, of course, prisoners are such that we already have good reason to force them to things they don't want to do: as they have violated our laws (or, at least, been convicted of violating the laws), then they are forced to lose certain freedoms and have their behaviour monitored closely. This reason is not, however, a carte blanche: inmates can't be forced to do anything, just because they are inmates.

The second intuition is motivated by the principle that one should be able to act on one's freely-willed decisions. Again, this is not exceptionless, but generally good. We can't prevent people from acting on whatever decisions that have freely arrived at unless we have some good reason to do so. Again, problematically, prisoners are already being interfered with, but only to a certain extent.

So, really, it looks like the conflict I'm having here can be resolved if there's some good reason to allow extending the interference inherent to the life of a prisoner such that they can be compelled to participate in medical trials, or if there's some good reason to refrain from extending that interference such that they cannot be prevented from participating in medical trials. Generally, I would think that there is no good reason to force someone to participate in a medical trial. That is literally gambling with their life, and I can't think of a single reason for compelling someone to risk their life against their will. So, there could only be good reason to stop inmates from participating. One, which is raised in the article, is a concern for the inmate's future health. Another may be the possibility of coercion. But, as long as coercion can be ruled out, and as long as inmates are informed about the risks of the trial, then there seems to be no reason to prevent them from engaging in medical trials.

The appropriate attitude towards terrorism...

... is mockery (and getting on with your life).

Religious insanity: Kenyan edition.

At least insane religious people aren't a peculiarly American problem. According to this, Kenyan Christians want early hominid bones removed from museums because (1) keeping them around would support evolution as a fact rather than a theory, and (2) evolution can't be true because it's inconsistent with a literal interpretation of the Bible. These are both obviously nonsense.

I have serious issues with the "he said, she said" tone of the article, which seems to imply that both sides of the issue have equal rational weight. (For those who may be new to the party: religion = irrational, science = rational. Approximately.) I have more serious issues with the same tone being adopted by staff at the museum in question:

"We have a responsibility to present all our artefacts in the best way that we can so that everyone who sees them can gain a full understanding of their significance," said Ali Chege, public relations manager for the National Museums of Kenya. "But things can get tricky when you have religious beliefs on one side, and intellectuals, scientists or researchers on the other, saying the opposite."

I don't really see how things are tricky. Religious people can have control over what goes in museums when scientists can have control over what's presented in churches. Since no priest (or equivalent) would (probably) let a scientist stand up and deliver a lecture on evolution, no museum should be allowing Christian leaders to proselytize their views through museum displays.

I said I wouldn't blog on Lamont. BUT...

I knew as soon as I'd hit "publish" that I'd probably revisit the Lamont primary victory, sooner or later. I just didn't expect the right-wing noise machine to kick into as high a gear so soon. Don't they realize that mid-term elections are still about three months away? They may run out of faux outrage.

Anyway, here we have a reprint of an Economist editorial on Lamont. It starts out reasonably enough, but degenerates into the mostly badly-argued bullshit about 8 paragraphs in. Here's the 8th:

Lieberman lost because his opponent was rich, because his own campaign lacked sparkle and because, by promising in advance to run as an independent if Connecticut's Democrats rejected him, he seemed to put personal ambition above party loyalty.

Note that Lamont is being tarred as rich, but Lieberman's own wealth is being overlooked. At last count, US Senators are paid $165,200 a year. Lieberman's been a Senator since 1988, so that's about 18 years (give or take, depending on when he drew his first cheque), or a notch or two under $3 million. I'm sure there's been some salary increases over the years, and I can't be bothered to try to adjust for inflation. Suffice to say, Lieberman's earned more as a US Senator than most people will see in a lifetime of work. (If one earns an average of $60,000 a year for a working life from 20 until 65, one would earn $2.7 million. $60,000 a year is, however, extremely high in the US. About $40,000 is average, which would work out to less than $2 million.) In short, yes, Lamont's rich. But Lieberman is probably rich, too. Most people in control of the government are rich. I'm not sure why it's supposed to be a reason for Lamont's victory.

It's also noteworthy that there's nothing positive about Lamont's positions being cited here (such as, for example, that his views on the Iraq war align more closely with those of the majority of the American public). Instead, we have his money compared to Lieberman's poor campaign and Lieberman's own (at least perceived) arrogance. Which suggests that Lamont could've been a broomstick and people would've still voted for him over Lieberman -- terribly insulting towards Lieberman, but also a backhand at Lamont.

The remainder of the article becomes increasingly unhinged. I honestly can't follow much of what's being marshalled in the remainder of the piece. I think the point is something like:

1. Leftists generally don't like wars.
2. Leftists really didn't like the Iraq war.
3. Anyone opposed to the Iraq war must be a die-hard leftist.
4. Diehard leftists can't win elections.

(1) is drive-by smearing of the worst order. There's leftists of all stripes, from pacifists to militants, as with conservatives. (2) is probably true, but is misleading; (3) is simply false. Anyone sane thought this war was a particularly bad idea, whether leftist or not. (4) is possibly true in the current US political climate, but it's really hard to say. When more than 50% of the population stays home rather than voting in a presidential election, you have to wonder whether a radical candidate from the other side of the spectrum might mobilize some interest.

The ultimate conclusion seems to be that Lamont can't win a senatorial election because he's attracting support from left-leaning people, and this will require that he adopt increasingly more left-leaning positions. I'm not sure why it's supposed to be automatically bad to be on the political left (see previous point about voter turnout). I'm also not sure why leftists are supposed to only vote for radically leftist candidates -- rather than candidates who are more to the left than the alternatives. Leftists are as capable of voting strategically -- or, better term, pragmatically -- as anyone, and I suspect that the reasoning actually deployed will be that Lamont is better than Lieberman, even if he isn't exactly perfect. (Much the same as the reasoning that led to many leftists endorsing Howard Dean, whose record as Vermont's governor was hardly a paen to socialism. Dean's support for universal healthcare tends to overwhelm his support for balanced budgets and cutting taxes in many people's eyes.)

In short, what we see here is a truly bizarre set of attempted rationalizations of the Lieberman loss, in terms that always privilege the rightist political view over the leftist. Should I know not to expect better from The Economist? I had rather hoped that this sort of flagrant nonsense was largely confined to this side of the Atlantic.

Airport hysteria.

This details the tremendous waste generated by the airports' panicked decision to ban all liquids, gels, etc. A few paragraphs are striking, though.

In Pennsylvania, state officials were considering pulling some discarded items for a state program that resells on eBay any items of value relinquished at airport security checkpoints, said Edward Myslewicz, spokesman for the General Services Department. However, officials at the state's main airports in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh said they were discarding all the liquids and gels.

So, in short, the items are too dangerous to allow onto passenger planes, but just fine to sell and put in with the mail freight -- which is often transported by plane. Anyone else smell a bit of a cash-grab?

Tisha Presley, bound for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, hurriedly sipped from her bottled water before going through security at the Atlanta airport. "I assume before too long we'll be naked on the plane -- and that's fine with me," she said.

I seriously hope she was joking. I'm not convinced that there's the market -- or the stomach -- for naked flying.

Universal childcare.

A few days back, the C.D. Howe Institute (a conservative thinktank) came out with a report, discussed here, to the effect that universal childcare is unnecessary, given that it only provides measureable academic benefit to children from the lower classes and single-parent families. I'm not sure they entirely get the idea, though, given that the article talks exclusively about preschool preparation -- nothing about childcare persisting into the grade school years. (While I have no doubt, having done it, that a 9 or 10 year old child can take care of him or herself after school, I have doubts about whether the average kindergarten child -- about 4 or 5 years old -- could manage.) But, let's just look at the preschool argument.

The C.D. Howe Institute (hereafter CDHI) presumes that it can measure academic benefit. I have no idea how they did, not having the study at hand, but let's grant this presumption. CDHI also presumes it can non-controversially delineate a lower-class (or lower-income) family -- again, let's grant it. Finally, let's grant the result: that lower-class and single-parent children benefit more academically.

This brings us to the heart of the problem I have with the conclusion: that there's no negative side-effect of isolating lower-income and single-parented children from their more well-off peers.

Here's one negative side-effect: it screws the middle class over. Part of the childcare problem in Canada, insofar as I understand the issue, is that there aren't enough spaces to go around. Thus, if the lower classes are being subsidized, and the upper classes can win in a head-to-head market-based competition, the middle classes get frozen out.

Here's another negative side-effect: if we're trying to create a diverse, but integrated, society (and surely that's the aim?), we shouldn't be imposing more artificial barriers between people of different backgrounds. Hence, we should allow for children from different backgrounds to interact with each other, at least in the limited amount of time they will spend in childcare, in order to, as much as is reasonably possible, break down any inherited prejudices and bigoted attitudes. (This will also, incidentally, probably help the families of the children interact with each other as well.) Of course, unless there's actually a ban on privately-provided childcare, like there is on physicians accepting private money for providing OHIP- (or equivalent-) covered services, the upper classes will still probably opt out. At least, though, we could get a little lower class/middle class solidarity going, which is no bad thing.

If I'd voted for this guy, I'd be a little peeved.

Remember Wajid Khan, the guy who here decided to cozy up to PM Stevie's office, by acting as an "advisor" on the Middle East? (One wonders how much of this is sincere, and how much is PR damage control.) Apparently, according to this, he won't be serving as assistant defence critic any more (not really a big deal), and won't be part of caucus meetings (a much bigger deal). What Khan has said is that he's going to help out the PM and skip out of participating in the party that he's actually a member of. That is, he was elected as a Liberal, but he's going to be helping the Conservatives. Which means he's basically left the party.

In addition to my earlier concerns about how secretive Khan's "advice" is going to be, this contributes to my growing suspicion that the Liberals really have no interest in playing the role of Opposition: to the point that they'll prop up the Conservative government in order to get just a little taste of governance themselves.

New Orleans prisoners.

As if the Hurricane Katrina debacle couldn't get any worse, according to the ACLU, New Orleans prisoners were treated as little more than animals. Read the whole report: it's here.

US demanding passports from Canadians. (It's like we're different countries.)

According to this article, the US will start demanding Canadians display passports when crossing the US/Canada border. I've heard a little about this for a while now, and I still don't totally see what the problem is. Granted, this will make those oh-so-entertaining waits at the border a tish bit longer. However, the economic arguments I'm seeing (viz., that commercial traffic will be slowed down) make no sense to me, for I'm more than confident that industry on both sides of the border will put significant pressure on both governments to work out some sort of "pre-screening" protocol, whereby truckers need only flash a card in order to expedite clearing customs. (Indeed, there's no in principle reason why this couldn't be extended to non-commercial traffic.)

Overall, though, I'm sympathetic to the view that's sometimes expressed that Canada, the US and Mexico (and possibly even through Central and South America) should seriously think about reducing the internal barriers and strengthening the external ones. That is, share responsibility for securing non-North American traffic, but make it easier to cross between Canada, the US and Mexico. Problematically, of course, it'd never happen, at least without some serious shifts in US foreign policy. The current climate is (a) too paranoid and (b) too anti-Mexican for the US government to cede any control over security of international traffic to another government and for the US government to make it easier for, say, workers to traverse from country to country. (However, I have blogged on that issue here.)

I suppose that my point, at the end of the day, is that it's not surprising that passports are now going to be required to cross the international border between the US and Canada, because the security protocols for entry into both countries are different, hence each government has a responsibility to ensure that traffic coming from the other is safe.

Weekend Big Ideas: Should we always hear both sides?

This was inspired by a very old post at Fake Barn Country (which now appears, unfortunately, to have gone moribund). Do we have to hear "both sides" to a story before we make a judgement about what's true? First, we should put aside an extremely bad reading of the "both sides" claim, namely that there is always two and only two sides to any story. That's clearly nonsense. The spirit of the claim seems to be, though, that one is obligated to undertake a fair and complete understanding of all views on a subject before one forms a settled or considered opinion.

On its own, though, that reading won't quite work, either. Some subjects are just obvious. The Sun is hot. Water is wet. 2+2=4. And so on. I don't need to consider opposing views -- the Sun is cold, water is only wettish, 2+2=5 -- in order to believe that these are true. The reasons I don't need to consider opposing views are not all the same. That the Sun is hot I know because I know the surface temperature, in at least an approximate sense, and I know it vastly exceeds what I could tolerate. I call temperatures I have a hard time tolerating "hot", so the Sun is very certainly hot. I consider water to be wet because all instances of water I have encountered produce in me the experience which I associate with wetness. 2+2=4 because that is a definitional truth of arithmetic, which can be grounded in various more fundamental mathematical views. Or, in summary, I know these by inference from other beliefs, by inference from prior experience, or by inference from rules of a system. To really simplify even further, if the issue is one which can be settled by inferences from what I've already got at hand, then it seems I don't need to consider opposing views before settling on an opinion and calling it true.

Of course, I could always be wrong. This is not an infalliblist doctrine, by any means. The question is at what point my obligation to only believe things I have good reason to believe is discharged, and it seems that it usually gets discharged when I can make good inferences from what I already know.

This method won't settle all issues. Sometimes, I'm exposed to things I know nothing about, or sufficiently little about that I cannot make any good inferences from what I already know. Sometimes I exceed my past experience and experience something novel. I had no idea what bulgar would taste like until I tried it (answer: kind of like a combination of wheat and sesame seeds). I know nothing about neurophysiology, and claims about how brains operate tend to confuse me on that basis. And so on.

So, when the "good inferences" method fails, am I then obligated to consider all possibilities before making a considered judgement? The answer, simply, is "no". The reason the answer is "no" is that my epistemic obligation discharges when I can make a good inference from what I already know. The failure to pass that hurdle is what sends me off with another method -- I have insufficient information already at hand to support a good inference, so I try to get more information. Once I pass the threshold, though, once I gain enough information to leap over the hurdle of being able to make a good inference, then my usual strategy can kick in again and my obligation can be discharged.

The objection that could be raised here is that I'm justifying dogma and closed-mindedness. I'm doing no such thing: what I'm suggesting is that I only have good reason to ensure that everything I believe is supported by good inferences. When my inferences are challenged, either by attacking the chain of reasoning or by attacking the beliefs on which the reasoning is founded, then I no longer can claim to believe things based on good reasoning. I would then have two options: show that the attack fails (that is, that my reasoning actually is good or its founding beliefs well-grounded), or redeploy my reasoning (and thus potentially refine my beliefs, possibly radically).

The claim is not that, once one has passed the obligation of good inferences, then one never has to think again -- if I were saying that, then the charge of dogmatism and closed-mindedness would be apt. Instead, the claim is that there is a threshold beliefs must pass in order to be taken seriously: they must be founded on good inferences from past information. Once their passing that threshold is called into question, then the obligation cannot be said to be fulfilled, and one is therefore obligated to re-found one's beliefs on good inferences.

That, I think, is really the best sense that can be made of the "two sides" claim: that one shouldn't believe things dogmatically or instinctively, but because one has good reasons for them. However, in many cases, this doesn't require one do anything more than inspect what one already believes. Which is why it is important to engage in open and fair debate with different-minded people, for only through that mechanism will one be able to ensure that one's inferences are genuinely good.

Weekend Big Ideas: Purposes in a world of causes.

I want to talk about propensities a bit here, and their relation to action. A propensity is a technical concept, but the fundamental idea is that a propensity is whatever an object has that makes it able to increase the causal probability of a certain effect. (At least, that's how I'm going to use the term.) So, for example, take a standard probabilistic causal claim: smoking causes cancer. By this we mean that if one smokes, then one is more likely to develop cancer than if one did not smoke. Which means that, by smoking, one develops a propensity for having cancer.

My question is whether propensities are one of the building blocks of purposes. Purposes are pretty foundational in action -- we do things because there's something we're trying to achieve or make happen. Whatever it is that we're trying to achieve is the purpose. Clearly, though, our actions are at least somewhat caused: we're biological creatures, we have physical bodies, there's all kinds of complicated electrochemical activity going on all the time. That's all causal material -- there's no purposes involved in neurons firing in particular orders. There can, however, be propensities: a certain disjunctive set of electrochemical structures (for simplicity, I'll presume in the brain) can be held to constitute a propensity, something that increases the causal likelihood that certain events (movements) will occur.

So, we have propensities operating at some minor abstraction from a physical level, and purposes operating at much higher, much more abstract level. What's the connection between them? They're clearly not the same thing: propensities are what propels one into certain movements, purposes are what one achieve through certain actions. Even if we equate action with movement (usually a bad move), the former are still backward-looking while the latter are forward-looking. This characteristic difference in perspectives demonstrates that the two are not actually the same. Presuming that we don't want to eliminate one in favour of the other, there needs to be a way to link the two together.

My sense is that the connection has to be agency. It is only agents who can get purposes out of physical propensities. And agents do this because of the power they have, namely agency itself. Agency itself I have already argued is a form of causal influence: agents, through exerting their will (the power characteristic of agency), can change the course their causal histories are in the process of determining. Propensities are the causal history of the agent: they capture what it is the agent is likely to do, assuming no interference by the will. Purposes are what the agent's will is directed towards: the agent is attempting to turn the tide of causation, so to speak, towards a particular goal. So, to get from propensities to purposes, we need an agent's will (agency itself) that encourages certain propensities to be actualized, and inhibits certain others.

This implies that there is a non-natural element involved in action: namely, the will. I know of no way to analyze the will naturally that doesn't collapse it into some complex set of propensities, which is one of the eliminativist moves I was trying to avoid a few paragraphs ago. However, this is not non-naturalism or supernaturalism all the way down: propensities are still analyzed naturally.

From this, it also follows that we can offer a teleological model of action-explanation -- that is, explain actions by citing purposes -- that is non-mysterious (constituted by natural purposes and the non-natural will) and yet still has the full explanatory potential characteristic of teleology.

So, in short, we don't have to give up anything in order to fully understand actions: we don't have to give up our sense of ourselves as largely non-natural beings in a world of purposes, nor do we have to give up our sense of ourselves as largely natural beings in a world of causes (propensities). Furthermore, assuming that the teleological model is a better model of action-explanation than competitors, we have as much predictive and explanatory power as we could ask for. And, finally, actions end up being a special case of events. Events occur when the propensities are not interfered with. Actions occur when the will exerts itself (possibly only successfully) upon the propensities.

Slow news day again.

Not a lot going on lately that's really worth commenting on. A few items in here, though.

First, I'm going to ignore the Lieberman-Lamont thing. Basically because it's happening as everyone was pretty confident it would -- Lamont got the nomination, but Lieberman is an entitled crybaby and won't back out with dignity. Until we see some polling data about who's likely to win in a three-way race, it's not worth much commentary.

Second, according to this, PM Stevie has tapped a Liberal MP to help advise him on Middle East issues. I actually have no particular objection to this per se -- after all, that's how minority governments are supposed to work, by tapping the resources of multiple parties. What's disturbing about this particular instance, though, is it signals the continuing willingness of the federal Liberals to prop up this government rather than serve as an effective Opposition. If the Liberals want to advise the Prime Minister, they could just as easily do it in public and in Parliament. Instead, it's happening in a back-channel, covert way -- the MP in question, Mr. Wajid Khan, will be reporting directly to the PMO. So, instead of openness and accountability, we get collusion between the two major federal parties. Nice.

Third, the whole London terror plot thing. I'm very suspicious about this. There's been too many terror arrests that are hopelessly overblown: the Canadian terror plot recently, for example, or the Brazilian shot entering the London Underground. It's not that terrorists don't exist -- they do, and they have for years. It's also not that terrorists wouldn't attack Canada -- if an attack on Canada might further their political agenda, they would plan and attempt to execute one (of this I have no doubt). But, whenever someone is arrested or suspected of planning a terrorist attack, there's a huge wave of fear-mongering that is entirely disproportionate to the reality of the situation. This is a case in point.

There was allegedly a plot to bring liquid explosives onto planes. Let's take it as given that this is, in fact, true (although it still has to be proven in court -- another point that tends to get overlooked). But, the people planning this attack were arrested. In other words, the current system seems to be working. And yet, now anyone flying is barred from bringing liquids on board, with a handful of exceptions. (It's worth noting how easy it would be to exploit these exceptions. Get a bottle of prescription medication, empty the medication, and replace it with explosive. While security officials could insist that the contents of a juice container or baby bottle be sampled in front of them, I fail to see how they could insist that prescription medication -- or even insulin -- be subject to the same restriction.) Why this additional restriction is supposed to help prevent further attacks, when the current restrictions successfully did just that, is completely opaque. Perhaps the thought is that not all the conspirators have been arrested? If that's the case, though, then isn't holding a big press conference announcing that some, but not all, of the suspected terrorists have been arrested a stupendously bad idea? If the idea is to actually catch the terrorists, that is.

But, by all means, let's all hide under the bed from the big scary terrorists that hate our freedoms. It's easier than thinking, I suppose. Yes, Bush is making that claim:

In the US, President George Bush said the plot was "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom".

The man's never met a talking point he couldn't recite.

Are dirty and suggestive lyrics forcing our children into sex? (Probably not.)

There's been a ridiculous amount of attention (see here for a bunch of Google News results) over the last few days to a study purportedly showing that exposure to "sexually degrading" lyrics in popular music leads to "risky" sexual behaviour among teens. Very lurid, and very much plays into conservative fantasies about controlling young people's sex lives.

I don't seriously think any reported actually read the study, though. Full text is here.

Unless you're a total science geek, you can usually get away with reading the abstracts on these studies. They'll tell you everything you really need to know, while avoiding technical details of how studies were constructed and experiments were performed. (Not that that stuff is irrelevant, but it takes some expertise to figure out what it all means.)

BACKGROUND. Early sexual activity is a significant problem in the United States. A recent survey suggested that most sexually experienced teens wish they had waited longer to have intercourse; other data indicate that unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are more common among those who begin sexual activity earlier. Popular music may contribute to early sex. Music is an integral part of teens' lives. The average youth listens to music 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day. Sexual themes are common in much of this music and range from romantic and playful to degrading and hostile. Although a previous longitudinal study has linked music video consumption and sexual risk behavior, no previous study has tested longitudinal associations between the content of music lyrics and subsequent changes in sexual experience, such as intercourse initiation, nor has any study explored whether exposure to different kinds of portrayals of sex has different effects.

While the language is a bit loaded, the hypothesis is clear: teen sex is considered a problem, teens like music, perhaps there is a correlation or causal connection between teen sex and music.

DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS. We conducted a national longitudinal telephone survey of 1461 adolescents. Participants were interviewed at baseline (T1), when they were 12 to 17 years old, and again 1 and 3 years later (T2 and T3). At all of the interviews, participants reported their sexual experience and responded to measures of more than a dozen factors known to be associated with adolescent sexual initiation. A total of 1242 participants reported on their sexual behavior at all 3 time points; a subsample of 938 were identified as virgins before music exposure for certain analyses. Participants also indicated how frequently they listened to each of more than a dozen musical artists representing a variety of musical genres. Data on listening habits were combined with results of an analysis of the sexual content of each artist's songs to create measures of exposure to 2 kinds of sexual content: degrading and nondegrading.

What should be flagged here is the division of music into these two categories: how the division is made might sway the results. Other than that, the design seems fair.

OUTCOME MEASURES. We measured initiation of intercourse and advancement in noncoital sexual activity level over a 2-year period.

Again, fair enough.

RESULTS. Multivariate regression analyses indicated that youth who listened to more degrading sexual content at T2 were more likely to subsequently initiate intercourse and to progress to more advanced levels of noncoital sexual activity, even after controlling for 18 respondent characteristics that might otherwise explain these relationships. In contrast, exposure to nondegrading sexual content was unrelated to changes in participants' sexual behavior.

So, they have a statistical correlation between exposure to degrading (the meaning of which we will have to read on to find out) sexual content in music and initiating more sexual activity at 13 to 18 years old (the initial 12 to 17 year old group plus one year).

CONCLUSION. Listening to music with degrading sexual lyrics is related to advances in a range of sexual activities among adolescents, whereas this does not seem to be true of other sexual lyrics. This result is consistent with sexual-script theory and suggests that cultural messages about expected sexual behavior among males and females may underlie the effect. Reducing the amount of degrading sexual content in popular music or reducing young people's exposure to music with this type of content could help delay the onset of sexual behavior.

It's important to note that scientific papers of any significance will rarely, if ever, give a normative conclusion. And this is no exception: all that's claimed is a possible causal connection (indeed, the implied test of the causal connection seems to be something like Mill's method of concomitant variation -- scroll down for the definition), which could be deployed to control behaviour.

Immediately, then, the headlines are all wrong. It's not all sexual lyrics -- only "degrading" ones. And there's no suggestion that it is better or worse for teens to engage in sex earlier or later -- no normative conclusions are being drawn.

So, to deal with the lingering issue (about whether this study really shows anything interesting at all): what does "degrading" mean? Well, this:

Two raters independently coded the lyrics, obtained from Internet Web sites, of all songs (N = 193) from each of the 16 albums. The unit of analysis was the song. Raters first judged whether a song contained 1 or more references to sexual behavior (implicit or explicit references to intercourse, oral sex, or other sexual acts). For each song deemed to contain ≥1 sexual reference, raters then judged whether the song contained only nondegrading references to sex or contained ≥1 degrading sexual reference. Thus, these classifications of content were mutually exclusive, and the degrading/nondegrading designation accounted for all of the instances of sexual content.

So, the division into degrading/nondegrading was done by two people (who are unnamed and whose potential for bias has not been explored in the study). These two people ignored all songs which had no references to sex -- which is a pity, as that might've been an interesting control, but it is within the bounds of the study. However, these references could be "implicit", which is a dicey proposition at best. What marks off an implicit sexual reference that's actually in a song from an implicit sexual reference that a person listening to the song insists is there? Again, no information is provided. Among the list of songs with references, "raters then judged whether the song contained only nondegrading references to sex or contained ≥1 degrading sexual reference." So, in total, two people reviewed the songs and, based on their own judgement (as it could be "implicit"), decided if there was at least one sexual reference, and then decided, based on their own judgement, if at least one of the references was degrading.

In short, it all comes down to whether we can trust the judgement of these two people. What do we know about these people? Well, we know that they tended to agree with each other:

To establish interrater reliability for classifying the type of content in a song, raters double-coded one third (n = 63) of all of the songs. These songs were selected via stratified random sampling, with artists as strata. Interrater reliability was satisfactory (Cohen's {kappa} ranged from 0.74 to 0.92).

And that's it. So, the only check on whether the judgement of the raters was valid was whether the judgement of the raters was reliable. In other words, the study is junk science par excellence: there's no basis given on which we can conclude it measures what it claims to be measuring. Thus there's no reason to take it seriously.

Fisking a repugnant neocon editorial.

I have to say, I have never heard of "Kamloops This Week", nor do I have any idea who "Christopher Foulds" is. But this editorial is one of the most vile pieces of neocon apologetics I've ever seen in a Canadian periodical. (Disclaimer: I refuse to read the Western Standard on moral grounds.) Let's go point by point, shall we?

About the only thing missing from the local NDP press release concerning the carnage in Lebanon and Israel was a paragraph extolling the virtues of the freedom fighters known as Hezbollah, that misunderstood band of lovable renegades battling the demon child that is Israel.

Strawman. Since Foulds doesn't actually tell us what release he's talking about (giving him an easy out in case he's called on his bullshit), it's hard to figure out what he's trying to attack. Helpfully, though, the NDP have a page here, gathering all their positions on the Lebanon/Israel debacle into one convenient location. I'm missing the part, though, where the NDP say they think Hezbollah is loveable. It's particularly hard to spot in this release, which reads in part (emphasis added):

"I call upon Stephen Harper to speak up and denounce the brutal attacks being perpetrated against civilians in Lebanon, Israel and the Gaza strip," says [Alexa] McDonough [NDP Foreign Affairs and International Development Critic].

Back to Foulds.

Leave it to the loopy left to send out, presumably with a straight face, a news release condemning Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his "pro-Israel stance," and calling for our leader to issue a plea for an immediate ceasefire in the region.

Only those crazy leftists can't see the humour in asking people to stop killing each other.

Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo NDP president Ruth Fane even went so far as to mock Harper for being a "senseless cheerleader for Israel," and for not calling for the creation of a "multinational peacekeeping force."

Apparently, multinational peacekeeping forces are funny, too. 'Cause, y'know, widespread multilateral intervention into conflicts in order to keep people from dying is... um.... Sorry, I seem to have overlooked the part that was supposed to be funny.

There's a reason the New Democrats have never and will never gain power in Canada

Will never? Last time I looked at a poll, the NDP were pulling away votes from the Liberals, who were busily self-destructing. As for "have never" -- perhaps Foulds is unaware that his very own province was ruled by the NDP for decades. Or he's a blithering idiot. Whichever.

and complaining about Canada's decision to stand with a country under siege from a group deemed by Ottawa to be a terrorist organization is at the top of the lengthy list.

This is really picky, but: he starts the sentence with "there's a reason" and concludes with a "lengthy list", presumably of reasons. Anyone want to copy-edit Kamloops This Week? Note also the vacuous "group deemed by Ottawa to be a terrorist organization" swipe. According to Wikipedia, only three countries designate the entirety of Hezbollah to be a terrorist group: the US, Israel, and Canada (a decision reached under the Martin Liberal government). Three more consider the Hezbollah External Security Organization to be a terrorist group: the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia. And one more considers Hezbollah member Imda Mugniyah a terrorist, and considers Hezbollah to have engaged in terrorist activities: the EU. So, being generous, that's seven countries that call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Counting only the members of the UN, that's 7 out of 192 countries in the world, or about .04%. Not exactly a resounding condemnation.

If Harper is a "senseless cheerleader for Israel," then hand me some crazy pills and toss me some pom poms.

I don't think Foulds needs any more pills.

The NDP and other apologists for terrorist fascists like Hezbollah and Hamas have pointed to the awful death toll that the Israel bombing runs on Lebanon have wrought.

Where did Hamas come from? What do they have to do with this? Hamas is over in Gaza, not in Lebanon. I know bombed-out ruins under Israeli attack tend to look the same after a while, but, seriously.

Entire apartment blocks have been levelled. Homes have been destroyed. And in each are the bodies of Lebanese moms, dads and children. To call it tragic is an understatement. But to lay the blame on Israel is wrong.

Because someone else dropped the bombs?

Nowhere in the NDP's couched condemnation of Israel is a call for Hezbollah's anti-Semitic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to stop committing war crimes by using the Lebanese population as cover for his group's missile barrage into northern Israel.

(Moral point, not legal point, coming.) Because Hezbollah isn't a state. So it can't engage in war. And so it can't commit war crimes. Hezbollah is an independent organization that can commit murder. States can't murder. States can commit war crimes. Israel is a state. Israel cannot murder. Israel can commit war crimes. (Perhaps I need to start making these arguments in monosyllables.) Worth noting that Israel has refused to participate in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and will not give the Court jurisdiction over its citizens. So, anyone defending Israel should be a little careful about lobbing around the "war crimes" thing.

When terrorists use residential buildings to launch rockets into a neighbouring country, attacks that kill people in that neighbouring country, is it not reasonable to expect that neighbouring country to respond by attacking the sites of those rocket launches?

Well, one, sane people don't consider civilian deaths "acceptable losses", so would try to minimize if not eliminate civilian deaths while responding. Thus, two, sane people would launch commando raids, such as Israel is renowned for, into the terrorist-controlled territory. And, therefore, three, sane people would steathily capture or kill the ones actually responsible for launching the rockets, and leave the innocent civilians alone. I swear, it's like Foulds is treating civilians as part of the scenery. Nice to look at, occasionally worth saving, but legitimate targets if a "bad guy" is hiding behind them.

Nor do I recall Jack Layton and the gang calling for a ceasefire as Hezbollah lobbed rockets into Israel during the past six years, after Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon.

I love the quick jog past Israel's repeated invasions of Lebanon throughout the late '70's/early '80's, which necessitated the withdrawal in the first place. A withdrawal that didn't happen fully until 2000. (See here.) I also love the implicit, but entirely untrue, claim that the Conservatives or the Liberals were busily calling for a ceasefire as Hezbollah "lobbed rockets into Israel during the past six years" (which, incidentally, overlooks the retaliatory skirmishes by the Israeli military).

And I cannot seem to find the press release from the left that demanded that Hezbollah terrorists release the two Israeli soldiers abducted on Israel soil.

Because "the left" has a pressroom. Honestly. Note, again, how the Israeli-held prisoners that the soldiers were supposed to be traded for have mysteriously vanished from Foulds' consideration. Note also the blatant tu quoque fallacy: "if "the left" doesn't condemn Hezbollah, then I don't have to condemn Israel!"

In fact, it was this act that precipitated this latest round of misery in the Middle East.

Very, very arguable, but certainly simplistic. A single event is most often the excuse, not the reason, for an explosion of violence. To find its true causes requires delving into the history behind the single event, and tracing the undercurrents of policy and principle. Of course, that does require not taking one's editorials from Conservative press releases, so I understand why Foulds couldn't be bothered.

Many, including the New Democrats, have attacked Harper for describing Israel's response to the abductions as "measured." Perhaps in the opinion of members and supporters of Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda - organizations that brainwash followers to embrace death, yet whose leaders curiously fight like hell to stay alive - Israel's massive response to the abduction of two soldiers and the wanton attacks on innocent civilians is odd.

Wow. So, now the NDP are like Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda (who aren't even like each other). And anyone who thinks Israel should really stop killing Lebanese people who aren't (yet) trying to kill them is also like Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda. I think we've heard this rhetoric before:

There have always been people who have opposed wars ... I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right to say what they want to say, and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees. They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it.

Then again, for those of us who feel life is to be cherished, even if it's "only" two soldiers, or the hundreds of Israeli citizens killed randomly simply because they are Jewish, the response of Israel looks absolutely justified.

Except they're randomly killing Lebanese, not even because they're Lebanese, but simply because they're in the way. "Absolutely justified" is a bit of an overstatement; "justified, on balance" is arguable. But, Foulds doesn't live in the real world of moral complexity, he lives in a world of cowboys and Indians, white hats vs. black hats:

Each and every death of an innocent Lebanese is the fault of Hezbollah.

See? Hezbollah are bad guys. Israel are goods guys. Killing Lebanese is a bad thing. Only bad guys do bad things. Therefore, Hezbollah are killing Lebanese.

Foulds gets worse before the end, though.

Instead, we see "Canadians" marching in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, waving Hezbollah flags and demanding that Israel be punished for "war crimes." If Hezbollah is officially a terrorist group, and outlawed in Canada, why can't we ban lunatics from soiling our streets with such putrid nonsense?

First point: Israel is violating international law by targetting civilian areas. Second point: Israel is possibly using incendiary devices to do so, which is also a violation of international law. Third point: note how Foulds is now questioning the "Canadian-ness" of anyone who criticizes, not even the Canadian government, but the Israeli government. And, fourth point: note how Foulds wants to restrict freedom of speech to only opinions he agrees with. The line between neocon apologist and fascist fanatic is a thin one, and I think he's just crossed it.

Even the CBC has done a good job of showing the anguish Israeli citizens feel for the deaths of innocent Lebanese.

Because, normally, the CBC glories in showing Israelis being blown to pieces.

Reporter Adrienne Arsenault, formerly of Vancouver, has done a first-rate job showing us that residents of Tel Aviv care deeply for Lebanese victims.

This is the most offensive sort of pseudomoral thinking. It's one of the many reasons I have deep disdain for most Christians (not all are this dense, but many, many are). There's this line of "thought" in modern Christianity that you can do any horrible thing you like, as long as you go and confess about it and do some minimal penance afterwards. Similarly, Foulds is suggesting that as long as the Israelis feel really, really bad about the bombs they're dropping on Lebanese cities, it's okay to drop even more bombs.

But that sympathy for the victims of the war is sympathy for victims of Hezbollah, not Israel. The terrorist group invited this carnage. When will the Lebanese demand its ouster?

Hezbollah controls the south of Lebanon. They have a (very small) role in the Lebanese government. How, exactly, is the Lebanese government supposed to condemn Hezbollah without (1) putting their citizens at potential risk, (2) putting their own hold over the country at potential risk, and (3) risk being tarred as ostracizing a political opinion they disagree with? Again: white hats vs. black hats. Hezbollah are bad guys. Bad guys must be condemned. Lebanon must condemn Hezbollah. It's moronic pseudomorality, but it's got a pervasive hold in some people's minds.

And I thought Kamloops was such a nice little town.

Cons using national security to dole out pork.

I swear, I was thinking of blogging on this latest bit of lunacy from our Conservative overlords. Apparently, they're invoking "national security" to justify doling out fat military contracts to regions in which they need to shore up support (always searching for that elusive majority, never actually bothering to prove they deserve it). However, The Jurist beat me to it, demonstrating that not only is the national security justification dubious at best, but internal trade laws allow for other justifications for favouring one region over another.

Does wrestling really cause violent behaviour?

According to this article, watching wrestling causes violent behaviour. According to the actual study, though, it's not nearly that clear.

Firstly, the data were taken in 1999, in the midst of WWF's (now WWE) so-called "Attitude" era (think Stone Cold, the Rock, and D-Generation X) and near the beginning of ECW's end. In other words, wrestling programming was far more violent, sexist, and offensive (and, by some measures, better) than today. That is, it was directed at adults (twenty- and thirty-somethings), not teens.

Secondly, the correlations are actually weak (emphasis added):

There were significant correlations between frequency of watching wrestling on television during the previous 2 weeks and engaging in date fighting, fighting in general, and weapon carrying for both males and females, although the relationships were stronger among females than among males. The frequency of watching wrestling was highest among students reporting date fighting when either the victim or perpetrator had been drinking alcohol or using illegal drugs. When analyzed using logistic regression, the strongest relationships were observed between the frequency of watching wrestling and date-fight perpetration among females in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. These findings persisted after adjusting for multiple other factors.

In other words, if one is under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, and wrestling is on in the background, it's more likely that the behaviour in the wrestling program will be modelled by either oneself or whomever one is with. (Hey, drunk people can be annoying; I can relate.) I'm not sure why this is a surprising result.

Thirdly, the study itself clearly only cites a correlation, not a causal relationship:

CONCLUSIONS. For males and females, the frequency of watching wrestling was highest among students who fought with their dates when alcohol or other drugs were involved. The association between watching wrestling and date fighting was stronger among females than males. The relationship between watching wrestling on television and being the perpetrator of dating violence was also stronger among females and remained consistent over a 6- to 7-month time period.

This has been yet another lesson in why reporters shouldn't try to report on science.

"Failed state": a repugnant idea.

What the hell is a "failed state", anyway? Is that neocon code for "somewhere we can blow up with impunity"? The phrase crops up a lot in this opinion piece, and I'm finding it really frustrating. The argument, as far as I can tell, is that if a state cannot exert full and total authority over the land that is supposedly its to command, then the state is "failed" and can legitimately be attacked by anyone to any extent. This is supposed to include Lebanon and Palestine.

Even if we suppose that the empirical claims hold (and I"m not sure they do), I have no idea how the concept of a "failed state" is supposed to bridge the gap between "these governments are having a hard time keeping control" and "these governments don't really exist and their people can be bombed at will".

I think the bridge is supposed to be here:

Failed states in general, and particularly those in the Middle East, represent potential threats to the US because they could be transformed into terrorist bases. Those failed states that have already become terrorist bases, have clearly moved from potential threats to emerging ones, and thus the administration's fundamental national security strategy requires that it act forcefully in order to head off such threats.

But, of course, that someone is potentially dangerous (not actually, but potentially) doesn't justify doing whatever the hell you want in response. So, really, it has to be the concept of a "failed state" -- some sort of moral black hole, in which conventional (let alone ideal) normative standards do not apply.

It's the most vile idea I've run across in a while. (The author, for those who are wondering, is Dr. Nadav Morag, a political scientist and the University of Judaism in Bel Air, CA, who has worked as a policy advisor for Israel. So, he's a little biased. I'm surprised he's such a neocon hawk, though.)

"Male" brains and "female" brains.

I found a lot of howlingly bad articles over the weekend. Here we find another one, purporting to demonstrate that "girl brains" are different than "boy brains". The first problem, which I will from here on ignore, is that there are only two sexes. The intersexed (and, for that matter, the transgendered) would disagree.

The article proceeds to witter on about different "operating systems" in the brains of the two sexes, and that females are "naturally" better at communicating and understanding social/emotional situations. We then get some blatant deployment of the naturalistic fallacy, claiming that since there is this "natural" difference, women "should" be in different social positions and there "should" be change in the political realm.

It's too stupid to deserve a point-by-point refutation, but it's really funny to read.

Social isolation in America.

Weird article here about Americans and "loneliness" -- by which is actually meant social isolation, not a feeling. I call it weird not because of the problem itself (which I would think is ubiquitous), but because of the proposed explanations and solutions. Here's one:

"People are increasingly busy," said Margaret Gibbs, a psychologist at Fairleigh Dickinson University. "We've become a society where we expect things instantly, and don't spend the time it takes to have real intimacy with another person."

Considering I know of and have known of people who spend hours chatting online to the same person, day in day out, I'm not sure where Dr. Gibbs came up with this little conclusion. I'll accept the "busy" angle insofar as it limits the opportunities for social engagement (less time to cruise the bars!), but I don't see why it follows from that that we "expect things instantly" or "don't spend the time" to get to know people. If opportunities are limited, then they have to be exploited to maximum benefit, but that doesn't mean that things are expected instantly, nor (more importantly) that we aren't willing to spend time to get to know people. What follows instead is that people are less willing to invest time and effort into getting to know someone who doesn't immediately seem worth it. And what's wrong with that?

(It's worth noting that Dr. Gibbs has actually no academic or professional expertise in "diagnosing" causes of social problems. From her own faculty webpage: "Although my Ph.D. is in clinical psychology, I have always believed, perhaps as a function of going to liberal universities in the sixties, that clinical psychology should try to ameliorate the impact of social conditions." In other words, she's pretty much a counsellor, who has interests in social problems. And her research interests bear this out: "Psychological impact of disasters and trauma, both environmental and social trauma, including sexual and domestic abuse and sexual harassment", "Psychological functioning of minority and cross-cultural groups", "Personal Problem Solving System on the TAT" and "Malingering".)

Our next participant is Dr. John Powell, "a psychologist at the University of Illinois counseling center" -- in other words, he's probably going to give us a few anecdotes rather than anything rigorous.

John Powell, a psychologist at the University of Illinois counseling center, says it's common for incoming freshmen to stay in their rooms, chatting by computer with high school friends rather than venturing out to get-acquainted activities on campus. "The frequency of contact and volume of contact does not necessarily translate into the quality of contact," Powell said. John Powell, from his vantage point at the Illinois counseling center, says students increasingly have difficulty "making really satisfying connections" even though the university offers many activities to bring students together. "All the students I work with have incredibly many pseudo-intimate relationships online — but without the kind of risk and vulnerability that goes with sitting across a cafe booth from another person," Powell said.

Where to start. First, it's bullshit to say that the "risk and vulnerability" that goes with sitting with another person is necessarily a good thing. It can be, but that's a contingent, contextual feature, not something that goes hand in hand. Indeed, more often than not, the risk and vulnerability of being around another person can lead to embarrassment and its uglier cousin, humiliation. It's hardly surprising that many college-age people, who experience enough embarrassment on a regular basis, might opt for a safer alternative, at least at first.

Second, chatting with high school friends is no bad thing. Maintaining a network of contacts and friendships from several years ago seems to be exactly the sort of anti-isolation solution that Dr. Powell should be encouraging.

Third, Dr. Powell's comment that "[t]he frequency and volume of contact does not necessarily translate into the quality of contact" directly contradicts the claim that college students should venture out into the get-acquainted activities, which involve little more than making a large volume of contacts in a very short space of time.

Fourth, I have no idea what "pseudo-intimate" means. I wonder how old Dr. Powell is. Seriously -- in my experience (yes, this is just anecdote), older people have a hard time taking seriously the idea that online relationships can be as serious as "real" ones.

Fifth, in my experience (again, anecdote), university get-together activities involve some variation on drinking, sports, and/or popular music. If you aren't into all three -- and a significant minority are not -- then the activities will not reach you.

Sixth and finally, rather than accepting that the modern university is largely faceless and inhuman, little more than a degree-factory, to most students -- who, it should be noted, tend to live at home and not on campus due to the paucity of on-campus housing -- Dr. Powell is blaming students for lacking social development through the university. If universities are serious about helping their students' social development, I question why, for example, the college system has mostly been disbanded, and why common meal-times have been replaced by buffet-styled cafeterias.

Finally, we have a sociological study that is supposed to be damning:

In June, an authoritative study in the American Sociological Review found that the average American had only two close friends in whom they would confide on important matters, down from an average of three in 1985. The number of people who said they had no such confidant soared from 10% in 1985 to nearly 25% in 2004; an additional 19% said they had only one confidant — often their spouse.

Let's suppose it is authoritative, although I have no idea how one is supposed to conclude that on the basis of one study in a controversial area. But, the supposedly shocking result is that most people have one less close friend in 2004 than in 1985. Egads. The other supposedly shocking result is that 25% (compared to 10%) have no close friends. I wonder if the study asked whether this were a bad thing -- there's a presumption under the surface here that not having close friends is bad. But why presume that? (I'm ignoring the 19% figure as, without the context of the original study, it's meaningless.)

There's a fatuous comment to close this out, from a sociologist who worked on the study (and, according to her faculty website, has no special expertise in this area):

"That [19% only have one confidant, their spouse] may be the most worrisome thing," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who co-authored the study. "If you lose that one person, because the relationship declines or the person dies, you have no one to support you. If we're all becoming more dependent on our spouse or partner for that kind of complete knowing of each other, we're all vulnerable to losing that."

This is why I don't take sociology serious. "COmplete knowing of each other"? Jesus wept.

Qualifying foreign professionals.

This opinion piece discusses the problem of qualifying foreign doctors in Canada. I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, even a doctor from Holland (as the author of the article is) should have to prove that his training qualifies him to practice medicine in Canada. After all, Holland doesn't have the same medical and health laws as Canada, so the training will differ. On the other hand, Canada needs more doctors (as does everywhere), and it's ludicrous to see credentialed individuals working in warehouses rather than in their professional capacities. And this would apply to engineers, accountants, lawyers, etc. as well as physicians. There has to be a balance that can be struck between the two principles.

My suggestion would be this. Find, say, the top twenty countries from which professionals of a given kind (e.g., physicians) are emigrating. I'm sure Immigration has the data. Review the training of these professionals in those twenty countries, and set up "fast-tracked" re-credentialing (perhaps a reduced time in residency, or fewer written tests) for those that seem to be close to Canadian standards. Those from countries that are sufficiently far away from Canadian standards could be required to undergo full training. This seems like a sensible procedure that strikes the balance between requiring accordance to Canadian standards and giving professionals opportunities they should get (also helping Canada's labour shortages).

It would, of course, be quite expensive and would require likely another branch of the federal bureaucracy to administer (and repeat) the process. But, it strikes me that it's at least as expensive to have qualified professionals that Canada needs working at data entry in warehouses rather than hospitals and medical clinics. If we want Canada to benefit, we need to spend money.

Cuba.

There's been some discussion in the mainstream media about what effect Castro's illness will have on prospects for political reform in Cuba. Most has been fatuous, focusing on the "us vs. them" stories the corporate media loves to tell: US and democracy (and Bush) = good guys, Cuba and dictatorship (and Castro) = bad guys. I think we should be used to that by now.

What's interesting, though, is how little talk there has been about this: Cuba is ramping up the repression in order to ensure that the Communist government can't be brought down. I understand why this has been ignored, as it doesn't fit the storyline, but since it actually contradicts it, shouldn't it at least be discussed?

A bizarre editorial on welfare reform and solving unemployment.

This editorial is one of the most schizophrenic pieces of opinion writing I've seen. Here's the basic thesis:

In August 1996, President Clinton signed a bill - passed with Republican support - that was designed, in his grand words, to "end welfare as we know it." Though millions of Americans still need government cash payments, and poverty rates are still too high, Washington and the states did learn valuable lessons from this historic policy shift that can be applied to many federal programs. The main lesson is that it is far easier and far better to nudge employable and healthy people to stay off government assistance than was once believed.

In other words, when Americans need government help, and many are incredibly poor, the solution is to make them even poorer by taking assistance away.

Asking Americans now to retire later and work longer, for instance, could help the finances of Social Security. Asking people to take more responsibility for their health will help reduce the costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Americans "should" work more than 40 hours a week, and work past 65, because then Social Security won't have to pay them as much. (And, hey, they might die before getting anything!) Similarly, Americans "should" pay for their own healthcare, because then Medicare and Medicaid can operate in the black. Nowhere in this is any suggestion that people who have worked 40 hours a week for forty years of their lives might deserve a break, particularly given that workers who are nearing 65 began work under the presumption that they would be able to retire at 65. In other words, they were promised, tacitly, a pension beginning at 65. Also nowhere is any suggestion that it is better for the government to pay for health insurance, such that workers can take less time off for illness and injury, than to rely on the workers themselves.

Here's how nasty the "welfare reforms" actually were:

The 1996 law, which created a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, restricted recipients to only five years of benefits while setting up better ways for them to find work and offering financial incentives such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and child care.

If the law really offered "better ways ... to find work" and offering "incentives" including child care, then those are indeed good things. What's not good is the artificial five-year ceiling. What that says, quite clearly, is that anyone who has been unable to find a job within five years is entirely to blame themselves, with no regard for the problems of market forces and failed government employment-related policies.

Welfare rolls have since been reduced by more than half. More single women with only a high school degree or less have found jobs. The law was also a main reason for declines in poverty among blacks and children (although poverty remains high among Hispanic immigrants).

I'm not sure how the claim that the law was responsible for declines in povery among blacks and children can be established. I also note that there's no discussion of which jobs were found, nor whether all those who left welfare actually found work.

Government is seen less as a solver of social problems and more as a source of empowerment. Simply redistributing wealth through taxes becomes less important than innovative programs that create opportunities for jobs and education. An individual needing help is treated with greater respect for his or her abilities to grow and live a sustainable life. Government becomes less of a safety net and more of a springboard.

This is the entirely correct attitude. But it's odd to see how dissonant the notes sounded by this attitude are with the data discussed in the opening of the article. The way governments are "solving social problems" is not by "redistributing wealth" (fine) but also not through "innovative programs", but through taking people off welfare, regardless of need, and dumping responsibility for social harms -- unemployment, ill workers -- on individuals.

The article gets even odder as it goes on.

Despite these reforms, welfare has hardly ended, mainly because of potential barriers to employment for millions.

This is quite true, as I'm sure anyone who has tried to find a job lately knows. But, the examples are weird:

Work is difficult for people who are mentally ill, addicted to drugs or alcohol, disabled, or have disabled family members. Many parents who seek welfare also have a record of being investigated on suspicion of child abuse or neglect.

There's really no recognition of the thousands who cannot find meaningful, fairly-paid work, despite being well-trained, well-educated and willing to work hard. In short, there's no recognition of exactly how difficult it is to find someone to give you a job, even if you're not mentally ill, an addict, or suffer from physical disability.

We get another weird turn back to conservative spin right at the end:

Congress can muster a bipartisan spirit when the right ideas come along. It did so with welfare reform and again in 2001 with the No Child Left Behind act that is holding public schools accountable for the learning achievements of students.

As discussed here, No Child Left Behind was a bad law. It was underfunded, it advocated a "one-size-fits-all" approach to a complex situation, and it punished those who didn't fit the criteria (rather than rewarding those that did).

If the welfare reform and No Child Left Behind bills are shining examples of Congress doing something right, I'd frankly hate to see examples of doing something terrifyingly wrong.

Another reason the US needs universal health insurance.

Apparently, Medicare may become insolvent. Now, the article does cite the lunatic "Social Security will go bankrupt!" arguments, but it raises a good point. The US is not immune to the same pressures that the Canadian healthcare system is facing -- doctor shortages, rising medical costs, an aging population -- and US health costs are, per person, higher than in Canada. So, Medicare is likely to go broke far before the Canadian health insurance systems (which, really, aren't in much danger of going broke).

Unfortunately, the article typifies what's wrong with US healthcare thinking, and advises private investment to cover the costs. Which is nice for those who have money to spare, but I don't, off the top of my head, know many who are even in my bracket (twenty-something, college-educated, employed enough to pay the bills), let alone lower down, who have money to invest in anything. One wonders what the middle (and lower) classes are supposed to do.

File-sharing and copyright.

The next target of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is, apparently, LimeWire. I've never used LimeWire -- I got off the file-sharing thing when Napster closed, in large part because (1) the corporations got involved and started charging for crap (instead of the obscure stuff I was downloading), and (2) the software got a bit too user-unfriendly for my limited technical ability. But, really: doesn't the RIAA get it, at this point? They can't win these fights.

File-sharing, in its prototypical form, was tape-trading. People would buy records or audiotapes and dub them, then swap them with others. Similarly, people would buy videotapes and dub and swap them. Television shows could also be traded. With the advent of CDs and CD-ROMs, the process continued. (I've done all these things, incidentally; so, RIAA, come get me!) File-sharing takes out the hardware, and allows direct transfer of data, but the structure is basically the same: person A has some copyrighted material, A makes a copy, A swaps the copy with B for something B has copied (or, simply gives B the copy).

So, really, if the RIAA is objecting to file-sharing, they have to object to tape-trading and all the other at best quasi-legal ways the fair use provision of copyright has actually been interpreted by the citizenry. That is, tape-trading was never clearly legal. Taping something off the television and sending a copy to a friend was never clearly legal. But, everyone has done it. Even if it wasn't legal as a matter of common law, it was legal as a matter of custom. Thus, file-sharing is nothing more than an extension of this principle. I believe (I have no evidence for it, but it seems reasonable) that the reason the RIAA is objecting so strenuously to file-sharing rather than tape-trading is that the former is done in tremendous volume in comparison to the latter. And I believe that the reason that consumers are objecting so strenuously to the RIAA's actions is that they see file-sharing and tape-trading are really two instances of the same practice, and they believe the latter is acceptable. (Thus, by transitivity, the former is as well.)

There's the source of the conflict, then: the RIAA sees that they are losing control of their copyrighted material, and consumers see that they are extending a practice that they've been engaging in for decades. The only way to solve it, really, is legislatively. A piecemeal common-law approach will yield, very probably, a set of decisions that favour those with the better lawyers. Shockingly, this will probably be the RIAA, as they can afford them. The current situation is untenable: two social groups will continue to butt heads and there will be real damage done, both to the corporations and the consumers. Legislation is the only other option. But, which way should the legislation go?

I tend to think that copyright is only extended in order to protect the right of an author to control and profit from his work. And the reason this right should be protected is that it is of greatest benefit to society to do so. For, if an author had no guarantees that his work would lead to renumeration for his efforts, why would he expend the effort in the first place? To be sure, some will do so because they feel compelled to, but I think most need to know that there will be at least some reward. If that's the case, though, then there need to be some revisions to copyright. First, if an author does not wish to profit from his work, then he loses his copyright. That is, you have the right to collect reward due given your efforts, but you can waive the reward -- and, in doing so, waive the right. Second, the reward that can be collected needs to be proportional to the effort that has been expended: profit cannot be unlimited, for this then disadvantages smaller authors in favour of larger (corporate) authors, when both are really exercising exactly the same right for exactly the same reason. Once the reward has been collected, the copyright lapses. If we apply these principles to file-sharing, we can see that most file-sharing is done of content on which copyright should have lapsed, as the requisite reward has been collected.

The point I'm making, ultimately, is that copyright was never supposed to be a license to print money indefinitely. It was supposed to give authors a chance to recoup their costs, and make a little profit, from their work. The balance needs to swing back towards the benefit of society at large, to have these creative works freely available, and away from the benefit of large corporations, to have these creative works controlled in order to make as much money as possible.

Wal-Mart can't even defend itself any more.

Apparently, some Democrats are making Wal-Mart's anti-worker policies their focus in the mid-term elections. I don't really care one way or the other: Wal-Mart's just the most visible example of a systemic problem. However, it's worth noting how weak Wal-Mart's defense of itself really is (emphases added):

Last year, in response to criticisms of its healthcare provision for its 1.3m workers, Wal-Mart announced changes that included extending medical cover to the families of part-time workers. The retailer maintains that its pay and benefits are better than average in the low-pay retail sector. It has also set up its own support group, Working Families for Wal-Mart, headed by Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta and first black US ambassador to the United Nations, under President Jimmy Carter. Mr Young put out a statement saying it was wrong for politicians concerned about healthcare issues to make Wal-Mart the focus of attacks, saying they were "leading America in the wrong direction".

So, basically, Wal-Mart is accused of paying workers far less than they deserve. And, in response, Wal-Mart says: (1) we're not as bad as some other people (tu quoque), and (2) going after the biggest employer in the US is the "wrong direction" to solve compensation problems.

I though they had better PR people than that.

Executive compensation.

This is fun. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) in the UK has started a website (http://www.worksmart.org.uk/) which displays executive pay packages. You can also compare the company's profits to the average worker's salary. It's a decent idea: one wonders why there's (as yet) no US or Canadian equivalent.

Weekend Big Ideas: Free will and causation.

I'm not a free will expert by any means, but I think about it a lot as my research focuses on reasons and actions. I think I have a novel way of approaching the issue (of course, if it's novel would require a deep survey of the literature which I haven't done!). Now, to my understanding, free will debates usually centre on the apparent contradiction between our causal understanding of events, and our committment to free action. (For example, this is the root of Kant's distinction between pure and practical reason.) The problem of free will is standardly presented as follows.

1. Either it is true that all events are causally determined (determinism) or it is false that all events are causally determined (indeterminism).
2. If determinism is true, then there is no real choice, for a choice is an event, and all events are causally determined.
3. If indeterminism is true, then there is no real choice, for a choice is an event, and events are either causally determined or not determined at all.
4. If there is no real choice, there is no free will.
5. Therefore, if determinism is true or indeterminism is true, there is no free will.
6. Therefore, there is no free will.

Given this presentation of the problem, though, it should become clear that the issue is not actually about causation or about choice in action. The issue is really about determinism versus indeterminism. That is, the whole argument hinges on (1). If (1) is false -- if there is some intermediate option, then the conclusion at (6) won't follow. That is, what needs to be shown is that this is a false dilemma, not an actual instance of the law of excluded middle.

I have thought for a while that the solution lies in this word "determined". It's at least sometimes glossed as semantically empty. That is, "causally determined" just means "caused". If that's true, though, then (2) and (3) are false. (2) is false because even if an event is caused, its causes may only contribute to its likelihood of occurring. So, there can still be room for real choice, in that any particular choice is only made more likely, but not guaranteed, by the causal history. If we conceive of agency as a source of causes (which, plausibly, it is), then choice, although in part caused by external circumstances, is also caused by an internal event which "flows from" the agent. So, the causal influence of the external circumstances can be overwhelmed or swamped by the internal influence of the agent's own will. By the same token, (3) would turn out to be false, because (3) suggests that at least some events are causally determined -- and, as said, if "causally determined" means "caused", then this leaves room for free will.

However, if there is supposed to be a difference between "causally determined" and "caused", then why is the possibility that an event is caused (such as by having its probability increased by its causes, including agency) being ruled out in favour of the (apparently stronger) requirement that events are causally determined?

In short, once we accept that there is a difference between a cause determining (or guaranteeing) its effect and an effect being caused, we can allow that an agent has a will that itself exerts causal influence. At least sometimes, agents will not choose what they do, and will be under the sway of external circumstances. (We've all experienced something like that at various points in our lives.) However, at least sometimes, agents will choose what they do, by exerting their own internal influence over events.

Really, this requires accepting two metaphysical committments. First, the world is not deterministically causal, but is probabilistically causal. Second, agency is a form of causal influence. (Which, I should note, can itself be caused: it is "free" in the sense that its "actions" are not determined by its causal history, but only influenced.)

Weekend Big Ideas: Must we obey the law?

The question in the title is serious. Why should one obey the law? Ordinarily, one only obeys norms that have some sort of normative force. That is, a norm that doesn't have force -- by which I mean, basically, a norm that makes a legitimate demand -- is one that one does not need to obey.

Generally, it seems that the normativity of law is hypothetical. That is, the norms law imposes are all phrased in terms of conditionals: if you want x, then y. So, for example, if you want to stay out of jail, then don't kill people. If you want to buy a house, then you must be 19 (depending on jurisdiction). And so on and so forth.

However, generally, morality is seen to have a categorical force. That is, the norms morality imposes are all phrased in non-conditional ways: do y. Do not kill. Do help the poor. And so on.

Since the normativity of morality is categorical, and the normativity of law is hypothetical, then it seems that morality will always trump the law. The law will always be exerting a lesser normative force than morality.

This seems far too pat to me (and I came up with it!), but I can't see where the argument's going wrong. Perhaps it isn't? If it isn't, then civil disobedience is always justified, and there is never a moral obligation to obey the law. These are, on the face of it, counter-intuitive results. But, perhaps we should accept them.

Slow news day.

I cannot really find anything worth blogging about. Nothing in international news, US news, Canadian news, labour news, academic news... nothing. It's all the same old shit.

Ah, well. Weekend Big Ideas will be coming tomorrow.

Younger workers: a laughable letter.

The Star's letters have been a good source lately of stupid letter-writers. Here is another one.

In response to the little rant from letter writer Joel A. Berger regarding baby boomers not stepping aside and taking early retirement, maybe if the spoiled young people of today were not staying at home until their 30s with the parents footing most of the bills, those same parents would be able to think about leaving their jobs early.

I'll grant that complaining about older workers staying at work longer is a red herring. The problem, of course, is that there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. And this is accepted as being okay. However, there's enough non sequiturs in this paragraph to give a logic professor an aneurysm. First, young people are not "spoiled" because they are staying at home later. (It's also not clear to me that more are staying home later.) My understanding is that those who stay at home, or move back home, do so because salaries and wages have not kept pace with the cost of living (particularly the cost of renting or owning a home). Second, young people who live at home are often contributing to the household expenses as much as they are able. Third, while it's nice to think of older people as sacrificing their retirement years to provide for their layabout offspring, I find it more plausible that parents stave off retirement for the same reasons that their children might stay at home: they simply can't afford the alternatives.

It is my observation, after 30 years at my company, that the younger workers coming in don't want to earn the promotions and perks that we older workers toiled and fought for.

Or, perhaps, they aren't idiots and don't see the rewards as equal to the work. I'm beyond sick of complaints that young people feel "entitled" to things they don't "deserve". My impression generally is that previous generations settled for less than they deserved, and diminished their expectations accordingly. If previous generations were that stupid, that's hardly the fault of later ones.

I'm guessing that we created this attitude by handing our children anything they wanted and not instilling a work ethic in them. Maybe, we were too busy working ourselves.

Ah, the mythical "work ethic". A good old Protestant carry-over: suffer in this world, be rewarded in the next. Of course, there's a growing number of people unwilling to buy into the myth, who demand that they be compensated fairly in this world for their labour. And when they do so, they don't have a "work ethic". I've never seen compelling evidence that younger generations aren't willing to work hard, only that younger generations aren't willing to kill themselves for a pittance and a pat on the head. Which, to my mind, is just good sense.

(I need to come up with some sort of mock "award" to give to letter-writers whose idiocy I deal with here. Any ideas?)

Self-discipline and success.

This article gets a big "duh" from me. Apparently, success in difficult endeavours (such as the academy) depends strongly on one's self-discipline. (I know I was shocked.) The only point I take exception to is the idea that you have a limited amount of self-discipline to draw from. The article refers to a "moral muscle" which can get tired out if overused. The problem with that metaphor, of course, is that with progressively increasing use, most muscles become more capable, not less. Which is really what seems to be the case with, at least, academic success: the more you work at it, the more capable you are of discipling yourself towards unpleasant tasks.

And, it is important not to overlook the implementation of effort-saving or -reducing strategies: that is, shortcuts. I know, for example, that once I've marked a stack of tests once, and the average comes in too low, I don't need to remark them. I can adjust the grades in my spreadsheet -- as long as I do it consistently across the board, the relative rankings don't change significantly. So, I might give everyone who got a 4.5/5 a 5. Similarly, if I'm writing a paper on a narrow problem, I won't necessarily read an entire book -- I'll only read the chapters I need.

Obsessive overwork is fun and all, but I don't think it's necessary to succeed in your endeavours, whatever they may be. I also don't think that you ever really "run out" of self-discipline. But, apart from that, the article's a decent little read.

Did the US Civil War really happen? Rumsfeld doesn't think so.

Okay, this is really just for fun. But, if you take Donald Rumsfeld's reasoning that Iraq is not in a civil war seriously, it seems to follow that the US never had one.

A new poll.

Found a poll that shows how far Stevie's sliding due to his Middle East stance: here.

Four idiots.

There's some choice quotes here which successfully undercut what lingering respect I had for PM Stevie's intelligence. On Israel as compared to Hezbollah:

"What we refuse to do is to be drawn into a moral equivalence between a pyromaniac and a fireman," Harper stated in a telephone interview with The CJN [Canadian Jewish News]. Israel is well within its rights to defend itself from Hezbollah, a terrorist organization bent on using violence to destroy Israel. If a terrorist organization crossed Canadian borders, kidnapped our soldiers and hurled missiles at our population centres, Canada would do the same as Israel, "fight back," the prime minister said.

While it'd be nice if sweet little innocent Israel was always "putting out fires" started by the mean ol' Hezbollah, in reality, things aren't nearly that clean.

Since the Israelis withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 - after 18 years of oppression over the natives - the still land-mined border has been porous. Far more for the well-equipped Israelis than to Hezbollah. Israel routinely violated Lebanon's airspace and coastal waters, terrorized the area with abductions and damage, retained control over Lebanese territory called Shebaa Farms, and generally got away with it without international news coverage. Since 2000, Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters would ritually eye each other over the border and sometimes engage in skirmishes. Still, Hezbollah and Israel wisely negotiated some prisoner exchanges. Israel had 100 times more prisoners to exchange than did Hezbollah. So on July 12, Hezbollah went for another prisoner exchange by capturing two Israeli soldiers in a firefight, and thought the result would be another such exchange. Big mistake. Even Hezbollah under-estimated the need for each new Israeli Prime Minister to demonstrate his capability for massive mayhem.

The tone of my source article here is blatantly partisan; but, controlling for tone, what's said is disturbing. Hezbollah and Israel have been trading attacks back and forth for years; suddenly, for whatever reason, Hezbollah's latest attack was met with crippling force from Israel. So, who's supposed to be the pyromaniac in the real story, and who the fireman? Stevie won't say, because Stevie refuses to look at reality.

In his statements to The CJN, Harper said, I don’t think the Liberal Party has a coherent position on this."

I find it interesting that he doesn't say the Liberals are wrong, just that their position isn't "coherent". I also note that he doesn't say why the position isn't coherent, only that it isn't.

He said Canada should not treat a democratic state like Israel the same as terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas (Hamas instigated the current crisis when it seized soldier Gilad Shalit on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza.)

The parenthetical insertion, I'm guessing, is the reporter's; unsurprisingly, given the source, it is blatantly pro-Israeli. Problematically for Stevie's view, no one (sane) is suggesting that Israel and Hezbollah or Hamas be treated the same. What's being suggested is that Israel and Lebanon be treated the same: namely, all their citizens have a right to live in their own countries in peace, without bombs raining down on their heads. Additionally, while Dubya-styled paranoid fantasies about terrorists under the bed may make Stevie smile, they really don't stand up to scrutiny. A group like al-Qaeda has no political presence. Hezbollah and Hamas both do -- they run candidates in elections and have members in Parliament. As I'm sure I've said several times already, the better parallel is to Sinn Fein/the IRA. Hezbollah and Hamas are broad political and cultural movements, with paramilitary wings. The paramilitary wings can certainly be classified as terrorists, but it's simply idiotic to tar the political side with the same brush -- indeed, these organizations should be encouraged to develop their political arms and demobilize their paramilitary, rather than being marginalized and (thus) forced into extremist violence.

Of course, this isn't true in Harper-land:

It is unreasonable to engage in dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah as if they were democratic states. "Hamas and Hezbollah resort to violence not as a tactic, but as a matter of principle," Harper said.

Does Stevie care about the Qana atrocity?

Asked if he stood by his comments that Israel’s response to the Hezbollah attack was "measured," the prime minister said that statement was made early in the crisis, which has turned into "a full-blown conflict." Speaking before the attack on Qana, in which at least 54 civilians were killed, he said Israel has the right to respond to Hezbollah attacks and defend itself.

Although he was apparently interviewed before Qana, he's basically backed himself into a corner. He's allowed Israel pretty much any "response" it wants, as long as they can find some Hezbollah attack to claim they are responding to.

Of course, Harper isn't the only idiot in this article.

Israeli ambassador Alan Baker suggested the government’s position on the conflict was "consistent with Canada’s function as a serious country fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and standing with a state fighting terrorism. Canada’s position is consistent with the position of the international community, which has been repeatedly calling for the dismantling and disarming of Hezbollah in south Lebanon. [It is] completely consistent with Canada’s values of supporting the right of a sovereign state to act in self-defence against a terrorist organization that is part of the world Islamic jihadist attempt to destroy the state of Israel."

I don't know where to start with this one. Okay, first, we have a conspiracy theory about "world Islamic jihadist attempt to destroy the state of Israel". There may well be a number of so-called jihadist groups who would like to bulldoze Israel. But a "world" attempt? Another one jumping at terrorists under the bed. Second, the idea that Canada has a "function as a serious country fighting terrorism". I thought that Canada's function, as with any country, was to provide for its citizens first and foremost. Apparently, I was in error -- mea culpa, mea culpa. (I do like the little swipe at countries that are sitting this particular conflict out -- they aren't "serious". I never know that having moral reservations about bombing civilians indiscriminately constituted being frivolous.)Third, that the international community wants Hezbollah dismantled and disarmed. Ambassador Baker needs to stop reading US government propaganda and realize that there's a very short list of countries that even consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization -- indeed, according to Wikipedia, there's only three: the US, Canada and Israel.

[Federal Liberal Interim Leader Bill] Graham’s position, Baker continued, "is a continuation of the non-committal and un-useful position that was held by previous Canadian government, which neither helped advance peace or prevented terrorism."

I seriously question how targetting every Lebanese civilian within firing range helps advance peace and prevent terrorism.

Canada’s position is being noted in world capitals, the ambassador stated, adding the government is remaining firm despite criticism from former Canadian diplomats who argue "Canada take a balanced approach, which basically means sit on the bench and allow terrorists to bomb Israel."

I wonder who has advocated that, exactly. If I recall correctly, the countries that are expressing serious reservations about this conflict are calling for a mutual ceasefire. Which would mean Hezbollah has to stop shooting, too. (Perhaps understanding difficult concepts like "mutual" isn't a requirement for becoming the Israeli ambassador to Canada?)

Moving on, we find words from Mr. Shimon Fogel, the "CEO of the Canada-Israel Committee, the Jewish community's lobbying arm on Israel". It's next to impossible to figure out who this guy really is or what his organization is actually about, but I note that their board of directors includes Linda Frum and Ezra Levant. The former is a known neocon apologist who has written for the National Post (and whose brother, David, wrote speeches for Dubya), and the latter is the publisher of the Western Standard -- whose virulently racist readership I've commented on here. I'm not confident that the CIC is really worth taking seriously, given their involvement.Harper’s response to Hezbollah’s unprovoked aggression displayed "clarity"and contributed to the international debate about the crisis, Fogel continued. Harper "is a very unequivocal kind of guy. He takes a position and he articulates it clearly and moves forward. You may or may not like it, but you know where he stands. The Liberals tend to foster, by design, a certain degree of what they call constructive ambiguity, a reluctance to be pinned down on a specific position." Unfortunately for Fogel's effusive praise, clarity on what is unclear is not an epistemic virtue -- it's a vice, one of willful blindness to complexity and an unwillingess to accept that reality may be more nuanced and difficult than one might prefer. (Sound like any Presidents we know?)

Harper believes "there is a right and a wrong and he wants Canada on the right,"Fogel said.

How unfortunate that his ambitions have been thwarted.

Among the broader population, Fogel said Harper’s stand reflects on his leadership abilities. "He is seen as a leader, not flip-flopping, vacillating or sitting in the corner."

Polls really don't bear out these claims about Harper's wonderful leadership -- given current results, it seems that most Canadians believe Stevie to be a bit of a blockhead (and an off-putting one at that). (And, isn't "flip-flopping" at this point neocon code?) Moreover, there's nothing leader-like about taking a needlessly strong position and sticking to it, despite evidence that one is horribly, horribly wrong.

Our final guest in this article is, unfortunately, a professor of political science at U of T, one Aurel Braun. He should really know better (but, then again, it's political science not political philosophy, so maybe it's understandable):

Aurel Braun, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said Harper has clearly put Canada behind a fellow democracy facing international terrorism. "It is a stand on principle," he said, and "the best kind of political consideration is behind it. You’re looking out for the best interests of the country."

Prof. Braun did not explain two things. First, what principle Harper is standing on. Israel can kill who it likes? Lebanese people don't deserve to live? Canada likes civilian bombings? Second, what "best interests" this serves. I, for one, have no intention of travelling to any Middle East country in the foreseeable future and admitting that I'm a Canadian. (Fortunately, as a dual citizen, I have another passport I can deploy.) I'm really not a big fan of making myself a potential target for passing lunatics -- or even the average, understandably aggravated, citizen.

Braun said Graham seems to be seeking "some mythical middle ground between terrorism and the fight against terrorism."

I'm not sure why Braun thinks the middle ground is "mythical". This seems to be argument by ridicule rather than by reason. More importantly, though, he's off on a tangent. The issue isn't terrorism: it's Lebanese civilian slaughter at the hands of the Israeli military. Bill Graham seems to think that's a bad thing. Aurel Braun seems to think it's okay, as long as the Israelis say their fighting the terrorist boogeyman.

I despair.

(Worth noting, by the way, that Braun is actually an expert in Russian and East European Studies, and has no particular academic qualification on the Middle East. Since he's no expert, he needs arguments; and he has offered none.)

Is the US a police state yet?

If not, it soon may be:

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors. Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

Y'know, Canada is really nice this time of year....

As if you needed more proof Republicans are cheaters....

The Republican Party has been funnelling money to the Green Party in the Pennsylvania US Senate race in order to split the progressive vote and get their boy, Rick Santorum (he of "man on dog" fame) re-elected. Rather than complaining about it, though, I suggest the Democrats do a similar thing and fund the Libertarian Party, to try to bleed off the fiscal from the social conservatives. Although the Republican move is clearly dirty, I'm not convinced that it's morally wrong, so why not use their own strategy against them?

Canadian internet users -- friendless loners? Only if you believe the Globe and Mail.

This article describes a recent survey of Canadians, tracking correlations between internet use and other practices. The headline is:

Heavy Internet users fall down on social, household tasks

One would expect, then, that the article would demonstrate that a "heavy" internet user is, consequent of their internet use, spending less time on social and household tasks. One would be wrong. A heavy user is defined as someone who spends more than an hour a day using the internet (or so it seems -- it's not entirely clear from the article). Fair enough -- it's a technical term and those conducting the study are entitled to their own defintions. However, it also seems that half of all Canadians qualify as "heavy users".

The average Internet user spends nearly 1½ hours surfing the Web each day, the study concluded.

I wonder what justifies calling the conduct of most Canadians "heavy use" (rather than, say, "average").

The article describes, however, a significant confounding factor that likely swayed the social/household participation numbers, namely age:

Younger people tend to use the Internet more than older Canadians. On average, frequent surfers were two years younger than moderate users (those who spend between five minutes and an hour on the Internet each day) and nearly eight years younger than non-users. Barry Wellman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, said those large age gaps account for some of the study's results. He said because heavy users are younger -- many without spouses or children -- it is natural for them to interact less with other people in the household.

Moreover, the claim that heavy users are engaging less socially is also not clearly supported (emphases all added):

Heavy users spend about 30 minutes less each day socializing with friends than those who rarely logged on but more time talking on the phone, said the study, which included daily diaries of 20,000 Canadians aged 15 and older. ... "We did find certainly that they are spending less time in social face-to-face contact with other people, but what we did find is that they're interacting in other ways," said Mr. [Ben] Veenhof, [study author] who said he would consider himself a heavy Internet user. "We do know they were using e-mail and chat rooms to interact with others. So we might say they're interacting in different ways."

And, to make matters worse:

Dr. Wellman also said there is research to suggest Internet users actually socialize more than non-users. "Earlier studies have shown that they have at least as much face to face contact both in the neighbourhood and outside," he said. "People are using the Internet to socialize, therefore (Statistics Canada's) conclusion that the Internet is hurting socializing is only partially right. Because what it's really doing is shifting the means of socializing."

So, in other words, the headline promised us less social/household involvement due to internet use. The article demonstrates that age may have played a role (younger people having fewer social/household entanglements); that there may have been social interactions (e.g., phone, email, chatrooms) that the study wasn't tracking; and that other studies show internet users may be socializing in conventional ways even more frequently than non-users. In other words, everything promised by the headline was a lie.

When can we have that moratorium on newspapers writing about studies they clearly didn't understand?

Fisking a horrible letter.

I haven't done this in a little bit. The letter is here.

The best place for a wolf to hide is among the sheep — and Hezbollah knows this. To get at the wolf you must kill some sheep and the wolf knows that decent people won't do that.

Or scatter the sheep. Or wait for the wolf to leave to go somewhere else. Or, y'know, shoot for the wolf-shaped thing amongst all the sheep-shaped things. I don't know off-hand of any sheep farmers or shepherds who advocate bombing a herd to oblivion to get at a wolf. Seems like it might quickly put them out of business. Or make give the remaining sheep a good reason to hate the shepherd.

Hezbollah seeks out areas of high population density to set up its rocket launchers. Its headquarters are right in apartment blocks.

This is questionable, to say the least. (As this suggests, some of the claims made about Hezbollah firing from civilian areas are physically impossible.) Even if it is true, which it may well be, so what? Why does this justify bombing? On the face of it, if Israel can't target bombs without hitting civilians, because the areas are simply too (population) dense, shouldn't Israel be trying something else? If a guerrilla is standing on a rooftop with a rocket launcher, why didn't Israel send in a few snipers (plus appropriate ground support) to shoot him down? I thought they had a fantastically-trained, US-equipped military -- and they can't figure out a way to take out hostile guerrillas without hundreds of civilian casualties?

It deliberately draws down bombs and gunfire onto the heads of its countrymen. It gambles that the outrage at the civilian casualties will give it an advantage — and in previous battles, as in 1970, that has been the case.

As indeed it should have been. Killing civilians in order to get at paramilitary targets is pretty obviously morally wrong -- treating unalikes alike. (Not to mention it's stupid strategy. Is there a better way to foment extremism than to treat extremists and non-participants alike?) Furthermore, I find it bizarre to think that Hezbollah's (allegedly) deliberately drawing down fire justifies the Israelis providing that fire. If it's wrong for Hezbollah to draw it down, isn't it at least equally wrong for Israel to be drawn?

But all that is changing. Yes, decent people are incensed by the slaughter, but they are not letting the wolf get away with it this time.

I'm confused. Weren't we the ones killing the sheep in order to get the wolf? Now the wolf's killing the sheep? Are we both killing the sheep? Are we the wolf? Is the wolf we? Am I the walrus? (Goo goo k'choo.)

Terrorists exploit the values of civilized societies, which they consider weaknesses. Our values are our Achilles heel and Hezbollah thinks it can hamstring us once again. But, at last, we are learning that one cannot be a gentleman when fighting a lout — unless you want to end up dead. The Queensberry rules no longer apply.

This is a nice bit of rationalization for any atrocity one cares to imagine. "Oh, we're fighting someone horrible, so we can do horrible things!" The doctrine amongst genuinely moral people, however, is one of proportional response. If Hezbollah is truly hiding amongst civilians, then that does not justify Israel randomly bombing civilian targets. It might, however, justify Israel invading civilian locations and taking control. Ordinarily, an invasion would be immoral as a matter of punishing civilians for something they did not do and are not involved with; however, it may be a necessary wrong in order to prevent a greater wrong. (Note that preventing a greater wrong doesn't make a lesser wrong right. That's juvenile moral thinking. If one is faced with a choice between bad and worse, one should clearly choose bad; but one is an idiot to think that makes bad into good.)

The Lebanese civilian casualties will continue to mount until they give rocket launch sites — and Hezbollah terrorists — a very wide berth. Why they have not done so already, defies explanation.

It defies explanation only among idiots. The roads are destroyed. The shelling puts them at risk if they leave their homes. Hezbollah is fighting back, and hence can be viewed as protecting the civilians. The civilians have nowhere else to go. The Israelis are attacking sites that may not even be related to Hezbollah's attacks. And so on, and so forth.

This is little more than a grotesque example of blaming the victim, the same sort of reasoning that has been demonstrated by PM Stevie himself. Why is it that the Lebanese civilians must leave their homes rather than the Israelis must stop shooting at them? It's like saying that a bullied child should run away from the bully rather than the bully should stop hitting them. It's evidently asinine; and yet, it's fit to print in the city's major newspaper.

(The author, Mr. Peter Weygang of Bobcaygeon, ON, has a few other articles floating around the web. Here we find the anti-immigrant "Immigration Watch" favourably citing Mr. Weygang's own anti-immigrant bullshit. There's also an application to build a boat launch in Bobcaygeon, and a letter regarding local bylaws. In short, he doesn't seem like a kook or a bigot, just an idiot.)

Is there an obligation to aid?

It's suggested by some ethical thinkers that there is a general, weak ethical obligation to render aid to others, insofar as it does not impose an unreasonable cost on the one giving aid. Articles like this seem to (uncritically) accept that claim. Is it really well-founded, though?

I tend to think not. This is in large part because of my committment to a moral view known as partialism. It's hard to find links regarding partialism that aren't behind a password wall; but, the definition is pretty intuitive. It's the contradictory to impartialism. That is, while impartialism says that moral reasons are reasons regardless of who they are about, partialism says that moral reasons are reasons only in regard to who they are about. So, for example, an impartial morality would say that, if one has reason not to lie, then one has this reason regardless of who one is lying to. A partial morality, on the other hand, would say that, if one has reason not to lie, this reason only has force based upon who one is lying to. (The example could also be spun subjectively: that is, impartially, one has reason not to lie regardless of who one is; while, partially, one has reason not to lie depending on who one is.)

I'm not going to defend partialism generally, but it is not as implausible as it might initially seem. We often favour our family members and friends over complete strangers. So, I will help my friend pay his electric bill before I will buy food for a starving man I don't know. We also tend to favour our own goals and projects over those of others. I will spend money on my own education before I will donate to a local public school. So, to at least some extent, we're all already partialists.

The interesting question, of course, is whether we should be. I don't have a general defense of partialism, but I think I do have one in the case of rendering aid to others, which goes like this. There is a limited amount of aid I can give. I am a finite being of finite resources. Thus, I need some basis on which to decide who gets my aid. I need to keep back at least a small amount of this aid for myself -- I must ensure my own survival, else I cannot aid anyone. But this is a partialist reason: it favours my survival over that of others. Impartially, I should be evaluating whether my survival is worth as much as that of someone else; perhaps I should be sacrificing my life and health to a great physician who will thus be able to cure cancer. If I am to favour my survival over others, then I have already accepted a partialist criterion for deciding whom to aid. And it seems that I am right: a morality that would (or could) require (rather than possibly approve of) self-sacrifice seems far too restrictive to be a human one. Therefore, the partialist criterion is, presumptively, the criterion to be used in deciding when to render aid.

Certainly it is possible for the partialist criterion to give out in some cases of aid, and be replaced by an impartial one. The most obvious suggestion is cases of aiding others rather than aiding myself. I freely grant that others are different than myself, and the difference is morally significant. However, I don't see why the morally significant difference between myself and others can be taken to justify switching the criteria. For, the impartial criterion serves to obliterate the morally significant differences between myself and others: it presumes that what happens to others is morally equivalent (in some sense) to what happens to me. Thus, if we use the difference between myself and others to institute an impartial criterion for distributing aid, we end up undercutting the difference, and thereby destroying the base upon which the impartial criterion was supposed to be resting. In short, we kick the chair out and kill the impartial criterion.

Therefore, there is no general obligation to render aid to others; there is, instead, an obligation to render aid dependent upon partialist reasons.

In the case at hand, though, the aid is calling 911. Even though this aid would not have been terribly costly to those who gave it, given what I have argued so far, it might seem that there is no obligation to give it. But, that conclusion is not supported by my partialist criterion for aid. Being someone's neighbour is a partialist consideration. Certainly, if the choice is between a neighbour and a friend, or a neighbour and oneself, the neighbour would lose out. But, if the choice is between aiding no one and aiding a neighbour (or, aiding a stranger and aiding a neighbour), then the neighbour wins. Therefore, although the article is incorrect to presume a general requirement to aid anyone, there is at least some reason, in some cases, to aid a neighbour. (There's a passing reference in the article to the Kitty Genovese case. Note that Ms. Genovese was killed outside her home, and hence her neighbours did indeed have a partialist obligation to render aid.)

A new kind of pest.

This is hysterical, but also a little discomfitting. What would you do if a bison wandered into your backyard?

Kansas and evolution.

The Kansas State Board of Education has, apparently, turned back towards the Enlightenment and away from the Dark Ages (see here). That's a good thing, certainly. What's not a good thing is the way this is being reported, using the standard lazy "he said, she said" style. For instance, in the NYT article, we find outright creationists being referred to as "evolution skeptics". This is dishonest, to say the least. Skepticism is a rational position typified principally by a refusal to accept propositions as true without sufficient evidence; when the skeptic finds a proposition that is not supported, he suspends judgement; when the skeptic finds a proposition contradicted by the evidence, he considers it false. There are no evolution skeptics -- there are only evolution deniers. It is not rational to deny evolution. (It may be rational to deny particular evolutionary theories, but to deny biological evolution is to fly in the face of millions of data and decades of sound scientific research. Hence, it is not rational -- unless, I suppose, one's criteria of "sufficient" evidence are so high that one does not believe it is raining even when one is soaked to the skin.)

The NYT article also gives a forum to a spokesman for the nutty creationist Discovery [sic] Institute, and uncritically repeats their central talking point:

Proponents of Kansas' latest standards contend they encourage open discussion.

The problem, of course, is that IDiots have no interest in open discussion. If they were, then they would have realized that their own pet theory has no empirical support, and has no a priori support. Indeed, it is little more than a mishmash of historically discredited notions that have been extensively critiqued throughout the academic literature. (I've blogged on ID already here.)

Furthermore, the article has this little gem (pretty much all that's said about the scientifically-valid side):

Critics of Kansas' science standards worried that if conservatives retained the board's majority, it would lead to attempts in other states to copy the Kansas standards.

This is true, but disingenuous. The issue is not centrally about poor science education standards spreading, but about poor science education standards. Particularly, about teaching non-science as science, and as equivalent (if not superior) to real science.

USA Today (say what you like about it, but it's read by more people than almost any paper in the world) prints the same Associated Press article as the NYT, but edited slightly differently. They include this quote:

"I feel like if you give two sides of something, most people are intelligent enough to make up their own minds," said Ryan Cole, a 26-year-old farmer and horse trainer from Smith County, along the Nebraska line.

I'm not going to say that all or most farmers, horse trainers, or (near-)Nebraskans are idiots. I highly doubt that is true. But this particular one is, in two respects.

First, you can only expect people to sensibly choose between multiple options if they are equipped to tell the difference. On the face of it, evolutionary theory is weird. It goes against many of our initial, intuitive theories by which we navigate through the world. For example, we don't see, in our day-to-day lives, the development of more complex organism from simpler ones: organisms seem to us to be fixed in complexity. Hence, that evolutionary theory suggests complexity has emerged over time, and indeed has emerged through (at least somewhat) random change, looks a little absurd. In short, it's sometimes hard to tell what really makes sense from what doesn't.

Second, this presumption that there are "two sides" to an "evolution debate" is simply wrong. ID is not a competitor to evolutionary theory. ID is not an alternative to evolutionary theory. ID has nothing, really, to do with evolutionary theory. There's only one theory that has the explanatory power of evolution, and that is evolution. (It is, of course, always possible that evolution will be challenged in the future, by a theory with equal or greater explanatory power. But, as more data appears that supports evolution, the likelihood of this becomes vanishingly small.)

USA Today also unthinkingly reports another ID canard, that the NYT omitted:

The standards say that the evolutionary theory that all life had a common origin has been challenged by fossils and molecular biology. And they say there is controversy over whether changes over time in one species can lead to a new species.

The former is simple bullshit. The latter is the old speciation objection, ably rebutted here, at talkorigins.org (also a useful reference to convince one that the former is, indeed, simple bullshit).

The way this whole conflict is portrayed in the corporate media is dishonest, sloppy reporting at its best (or worst, if one prefers). ID is a political movement, intended to undercut good rational science. That's the real story: why being irrational has gained such traction with legislators. (But, I suppose, who'd want to read a newspaper that talked about that?)

There's something wrong with the Democratic Party.

When I see an opening paragraph to an article like this one:

As Senator Joseph I. Lieberman battles to retain his seat in Connecticut, some factions within the national Democratic Party are quietly preparing to campaign against the three-term senator if he loses the primary on Tuesday and runs as an independent in the general election in November, numerous Democrats said yesterday.

Some factions? Perhaps I'm not understanding the system here, but I thought that primaries were the US equivalent to the Canadian internal party nomination process: that is, they are the mechanism by which candidates are selected by the parties for particular districts/ridings/what have you. So, what this paragraph is saying is that, if one candidate (who, it must be said, has been a Senator for the Democratic party for many years) loses the primary, some members of the party will campaign against him? I'll put this simply: in a party system, whoever gets the party nomination deserves the support of the party. That's the point of nominating a candidate. If members of the party aren't going to line up behind their candidate, then, really, what's the point of having parties? (Something that I question here.)

Frankly, if this threat comes to fruition...

A small core of Democrats, including Senators Ken Salazar of Colorado, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, have pledged to remain with Mr. Lieberman regardless of the primary outcome. But even those people say they expect many other Democrats, including people who feel affection for Mr. Lieberman, to be torn about helping him in the general election.

... then the party should probably think seriously about ejecting these three Senators. In a party system, you are loyal to the party; if you get the benefits of being in a party (lots of money to draw from, a pool of voters who will vote for you because of your membership), you have to bear the burdens (line up behind your candidate, sit down and shut up when votes are whipped). What I see here are a group of Senators who want the benefits, but are unwilling to take on the burdens. Personal loyalty is a good thing, but if they're choosing that over party loyalty, then they need to withdraw from the party -- or be thrown out.

I also note that the article mentions that DNC Chairman, Howard Dean, has been neutral leading up to the primary, but that's really as it should be. He doesn't know who the candidate will be, so he's not saying which one he'll support. (It's not clear from the article if Dean has actually refused to say he'll support the candidate that wins the primary. If that were the case, then he's just as bad as Senators Salazar, Pryor and Inouye.)

While it would be no tragedy for the big American parties to implode and form smaller, more focussed parties, I'm really not sure that this election (and the '08 presidential election) are the time for it.

Are bloggers and journalists obligated to cooperate with the authorities?

This article discusses an American blogger who was jailed for refusing to turn over to the authorities video footage he shot of G-8 protests. There's actually two different questions raised by the article that I find interesting: (1) whether bloggers are obligated to cooperate with the authorities, and (2) whether journalists are obligated to cooperate with the authorities. I take it as given that the ordinary citizen is so obligated, and am looking for reasons to distinguish bloggers and/or journalists from the rabble, much as physicians and lawyers already have. Also, I'm not talking about legal obligation.

The first is easy. Yes, they are. Blogging doesn't give you a special status, either one recognized by law or by society in general. Moreover, blogging is little more than a technologically-sophisticated version of running your mouth in a bar. On occasion, interesting topics can develop and some really good discussions can be had. More often, though, bloggers are simply venting. I'm not knocking venting, but an activity which largely consists of venting doesn't on the face of it deserve any special protection.

The second is a little less easy. At least in theory, journalists are supposed to act as a check on government power. Problematically, they lack legal status for doing so -- unlike the checks courts can have on the legislature, or an upper house on the lower, or citizens on the government. It's not clear if journalists have some sort of special social status -- that seems to depend on who you talk to.

If we're going to address the moral case, it needs to be a little clearer what defines a journalist. I'd suggest, as a working definition, that a journalist researches current events and publishes that research in a timely fashion for general public consumption. (This means, of course, that many of those who work for the media corporations are not journalists. Shockingly, I'm okay with that.) That gives us three differentiae: researching current events, publishing research in a timely fashion, and publishing for general public consumption. Journalists are thus not historians (unless the history is directly relevant to current events). They are also not scholars, who can take years to publish their research. And they are not a select professional group: their audience is the general public (or some reasonable segment thereof). I don't see anything in that which would accord journalists a special status, allowing them to refuse to cooperate with the authorities.

Indeed, it seems that the usual reason advanced for giving journalists a special moral status which would allow them to resist the authorities is that what they are concealing is in the "public interest". But this is not a special status for journalists. Indeed, anyone who is (and I will suppose that this claim is true, as dealing with the false claims will take me too far afield) protecting the public interest by concealing information from the authorities is generally permitted (morally) to do so.

Thus, there is no special status for either bloggers or journalists that permits them to withhold information from the authorities. Moreover, a justification for general civil disobedience -- that it serves the public interest -- will cover the cases in which journalists are usually claimed to be justified in non-cooperation.

More than crazy.

This article has to be read to be believed. I mean... barbecued?

Campus conservative crybabies.

Why is it that when some departments are staffed by people who self-identify as "liberal" (regardless of whether they bring these views into the classroom as dogma), conservatives have big student gatherings about how it's oh, so unfair. And yet, when some departments are staffed by people who self-identify as "conservative" (by the same token, regardless of whether they bring these views into the classroom as dogma) -- such as business, for one -- it's suddenly not a problem? I would really appreciate it if these conservative groups would simply stop lying. They don't want to "counter liberal bias", they want to introduce indoctrination towards the conservative point of view.

I've had left-leaning profs, and right-leaning ones. On the whole, their views are far too nuanced and complex to be wholly grouped one way or the other. Moreover, they've never suggested that their views are beyond question. That's what made them good profs: they had their views, they could (and would) defend them, but were always willing to hold their views up to scrutiny. That's the ideal that should be defended; trying to "balance" every professor who voted one way with a professor who voted another is asinine.

Addendum on the Seattle shootings.

According to this, the Seattle shooter, although Palestinian in ethnic origin, was a baptized Christian. Reading the rest of the article, it seems that the guy wasn't driven so much by religious or ethnic hatred as being more than a little nuts.

Ontario's power woes.

If these comments are to be believed (and are representative), Ontarians are already pretty thrifty when it comes to personal hydro use. So, when are the hydro companies going to go after business and industrial consumers? And when will the government slow down development until infrastructure can catch up? (If you guessed "never" and "never", please send mailing details for your great big invisible bag o' nothing.)

Residential conservation is nice, but the load residences play on the system throughout the day is miniscule compared to that put on the system by commercial and industrial properties; moreover, part of the problem is that infrastructure development died a quick death in the Mike Harris/Ernie Eves years in Ontario, while residential building continued. The combination of these two factors, plus McGuinty's inability to actually make decisions that might benefit Ontario (if possibly annoy some Ontarians), is leading to the current power problems.

McGuinty's new big plan, for those who don't know, is to install so-called "smart meters" on all buildings. The meters are "smart" in that they can store information on electricity usage by the hour (indeed, by the minute) instead of a simple cumulative total. (They will also not have to be manually read, as the data will be sent, encrypted, to a collector mounted on a nearby hydro pole. This data can then be read via a PDA held by a meter-reader walking down the street; it can also be sent remotely to a central database that automatically collates the data and bills the consumer.) Thus, consumers can be billed not only for how much electricity they use, but also differentially by when they use it. This wonderful plan will (1) disproportionately affect those who have no choice about when they use power (e.g., families with two working parents), (2) be of no significant effect on those who use huge amounts of electricity (e.g., big industries who have enough money to cover the price change), and (3) do nothing to solve the infrastructure problem. All in all, it's a wonderful solution that puts more money in the pockets of the utilities are will do little to actually solve Ontario's power problems.

Greying the suburbs -- is this a surprise?

I don't quite follow why the "greying" of Montreal's suburbs is supposed to be news. People on a retirement income cannot, in all likelihood, afford the rising property taxes on homes in the city -- so, where else are they going to live? Moreover, as families move out of the cities into the suburbs, it's quite likely that the parents will stay right where they are after the kids are gone (after all, once you've lived for fifteen-plus years in a place, it's kinda hard to leave).

Stevie's on the ropes over the Middle East.

These polling results are crazy. Stevie's support on the Middle East issue is dropping like a stone, and a significant majority are convinced that he's taking his marching orders from Dubya. The man is in very dangerous territory here. If he changes his mind, he'll contradict his own "moral clarity" bullshit -- apparently, if you take a stand, even a wrong one, you demonstrate "moral clarity", which is better than "waffling" by refusing to reach a snap decision. On the other hand, if he tries to stick it out, he may take the party down with him -- indeed, polls are already showing that it's happening, as the Cons (who had been gaining ground) are now pretty much where they were after the last federal election. He's got to either change his mind or stick it out. Hence, it seems he can't win. His only hope, then, of even retaining a minority next time around will have to be to develop some domestic issues after this crisis evaporates from public consciousness -- and then campaign on those. It's a risky move, as if those domestic issues blow up in his face as well, the Cons will have nowhere to turn. But it's the only thing I can see him doing.

So, can we please hold all the talk about how Stevie knows what he's doing? The man is flailing badly; only an idiot would have embroiled himself in a situation like this without carefully planning an escape route.

Another airline fighting its union.

Canadians know all too well the dissension between Air Canada and its unions, and the consequent destruction of the merest semblance of decent customer service. So, it's saddening to see it happening again, this time with Northwest Airlines.

The whole concept of using bankruptcy protection to force concessions on a union is bizarre. Bankruptcy is supposed to protect a company from its creditors, not its employees. Indeed, companies are supposed to be obligated to fulfill their contracts with their employees, not look for a quick way out. I wonder if Northwest really understands the nuclear effect this will have on employee morale and loyalty? Think about it: would you be loyal to your employer if he/she/it suddenly cut your compensation by 40% -- and didn't care what you had to say about it?

Moreover, the idea that the only way to keep the airline afloat is to slash employee compensation is bizarre. For example, Sega President Isao Okawa gave shares worth almost $1 billion to the company in order to keep it running. While this is clearly an extreme case, I don't see why the Northwest Airlines execs can't give some of their millions back to the company before hacking into the wages and benefits of ordinary working people.

The rejoinder at this point is usually that losing 40% of one's compensation is better than losing 100% if the company closes. This is true, but it misses the point. First, the executives, I am sure, are not at risk of losing anything -- even if the company goes under, I'm reasonably confident that they will still be paid some significant portion of their contracts. Second, one could use this kind of argument to justify nearly anything. It's better to lose 90% of one's compensation than 100%. It's better to be poked in the eye with a stick than to be poked in both eyes with two sticks. It's better to be a paraplegic than a quadraplegic. The issue, in short, is that you can't draw conclusions about what is good from an argument that only considers what is better. Goodness is (prima facie, at least) non-relative; betterness is relative. So, it's consistent to say that it's better to take the compensation cut than lose one's job, and also to say that it's bad to take the compensation cut. The latter clause is the point I'm defending.

WTC workers may have developed serious respiratory problems.

According to this article, those who worked in the wreckage of the World Trade Center may have developed significant enough damage to their lungs to permanently impair their respiratory function. So, Bush lied -- he said that the wreckage was safe to work in. That's not surprising. What is surprising is that he would expose the US government -- and possibly himself -- to civil action. If I deceive someone, putting them at risk of developing health problems, and they then develop permanent limitations on their functional abilities, then I can be sued for the damage they have suffered as well as for compensation due to their reduced function. Given the number of WTC workers who may be affected, this could go well into the millions.

Alternative fuels.

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting chart and article about potential alternative fuels. It's sort of fun to speculate -- and, at this point, it is pure speculation -- about how we're going to power our cars (and the like) in the future. Ideally, there would be a mix of multiple types, in order to reduce the chance of a future problem on the scale of our developing oil dependency. (That is, if we, say, all switched to ethanol, and then there were some future problem with the ethanol supply, we'd all just have to switch again.)

Of greater concern, of course, is how we are going to produce enough electricity to match our growing power needs. Again, though, it's starting to look like some sort of combination of the alternatives -- wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, gas, coal -- is the best option. Then, as some fuels run out, and the infrastructure gets built up for the others, the power-grid's dependence can be shifted around without producing brown- or blackouts.

It's not yet entirely hopeful, but at least there are signs that humanity may not have completely fucked itself over yet.

Academic freedom and controversial views.

Once again, we find an academic with controversial views who is exposed to political attacks from opportunistic Republicans (this time, in the government of the state of Wisconsin). I haven't blogged the academic freedom issue yet, so let me take the opportunity.

First point: legislators have no business telling universities how they should be run, particularly when it comes to exclusively academic matters. I might concede some degree of oversight with regard to economic matters (which is why Boards of Governors exist), but academic matters are best decided by those who actually know something about academics: namely, academics. (Shocker!) I find it particularly interesting, incidentally, that the so-called "conservative" party, which decries legislative "interference" in the affairs of businesses, will gladly condone legislative interference in academic matters.

Second point: the academy must allow a certain number of cranks and crackpots. As long as there's no outright academic dishonesty going on (such as was, ultimately, the case with Ward Churchill), then there cannot be any limitations on which views are permissible. This is for several reasons. Anyone who has survived a PhD program has earned the right to be heard -- that's the point, after all; doctoral programs serve a gatekeeping function to keep genuine nuts out of serious academic discourse.

Furthermore, there is no possibility of foreknowledge as to which avenues of academic research will be fruitful, or, indeed, in which ways they could be fruitful. There seems to be a nice fantasy floating around in some people's minds to the effect that research monies can be "directed" towards "useful" research with a significant degree of confidence that something worthwhile will result. (Frankly, I wish it were that easy. It'd make my role a lot easier to fulfill.) Hence, this line would go, if we lack this confidence, then we should not fund the research. This is nuts. I've never met a researcher in any field who thought like this. At best, researchers think that the avenue they are pursuing may be interesting -- at worst, researchers think that the avenue they are pursuing may keep them busy. Practical benefit and clear worth is the exception, not the rule. (So why, then, even have universities? Because sometimes the results are doozies.)

So, then, given that we can't know what will and will not be a fruitful avenue of research in advance, we should not limit what avenues can be researched (except in the minimal way of requiring an advanced degree -- i.e., if you want to participate in the discussion, you have to put some work in to show you deserve to be taken seriously). And, given that legislators don't know enough about academics to interfere in academic matters, legislators should not be trying to compel universities to fire controversial academics. That, really, is (my sense of) the nutshell case explaining why academics get really angry when legislators try to tell them what to do. It implies knowledge that doesn't exist, and expertise that isn't there.

The usual rejoinder at this point is that "dangerous" views should be barred from the classroom. I tend to think that this rejoinder is itself a dangerous view, the first step on the slippery slope to full-blown fascist censorship, but let's put that aside. Suppose we know a view is dangerous (which we can't). Suppose legislators do know enough to interfere in academic matters (which they don't). Should dangerous views then be censored? The answer is a simple "no". Even if I add in the assumption that there are some clear and uncontroversial criteria about what counts as a "dangerous" view, the answer is still "no".

I'm always surprised that the reason for this is unclear to some people: namely that the best way to defuse dangerous ideas is to expose them to vigorous critique. Driving a dangerous idea "underground" is one of the surest ways I can see to turn it into a dogma and breed a fanatic loyalty to the idea. Take the one in discussion in the NYT article I linked to: the 9-11 conspiracy theories. There is a thriving underground discussion on whether 9-11 actually happened the way the 9-11 Commission claimed it did. (I'm willing to bet, incidentally, that the Commission was either a whitewash or was deliberately misled by the Bush administration. It would be simply unbelievable that this was the one time the Bush administration did something honest and sincere.) If this discussion is not exposed to the light, and consequently critiqued and scrutinized, there is a danger (although, I will accept, a small one) that the view will become inculcated in a small minority of the population. That is, there will be people who sincerely believe the most bizarre and unsupported claims about one of the worst terrorist attacks in my lifetime. (Just as there are people who sincerely believe the most bizarre and unsupported claims about one of the most vile acts of genocide in modern history, namely the Holocaust.)

That, on the face of it, is a bad outcome; and, worse, it was a bad outcome that came about when a good outcome was sought; and, worst of all, the bad outcome is exactly what the good outcome was trying to avoid! That is, by trying to censor dangerous views (and prevent people from believing them), people ended up believing the dangerous views. The only sure way I know to prevent people from believing things that it is actually dangerous for them to believe is by (1) repeatedly demonstrating that the views are wrong and/or ill-founded and (2) equipping people with the tools necessary to critically evaluate claims themselves. Both require exposure to dangerous views: the views cannot be refuted if they are not adequately understood, and critical evaluation skills cannot be fully developed if they have no targets. Hence, finally, we arrive at John Stuart Mill's claim (probably the only thing I really agree with Mill about):

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Sri Lanka again.

I blogged on this yesterday. Sri Lanka is sliding closer to open civil war again: this time, the Tamil Tigers attacked a Sri Lankan navy ship. Or, possibly, the navy attacked some rebel boats. Someone attacked someone, at any rate. For those keeping score, that's warfare or near-warfare in: Lebanon; Somalia; Sri Lanka; and Iraq. The first could easily spill into Israel and/or Syria, the second Ethiopia, and the fourth Iran (or Syria again, for that matter -- actually, you sort of have to feel for the Syrians, who have war brewing on their western and eastern borders). I don't have any solutions or trite observations, but I thought it worth noting how much of the world is about to start killing how much of the rest of the world.

The dangers of drugs.

This is an interesting study, purporting to trace the dangers of drugs and calculate a "danger rating" for each type. Given that there's no information on how the ratings were calculated, the results have to be taken with a grain of salt, but the ranking is interesting. Here's a summary:

Ranking by Dangers: Over 2/3: Heroin Cocaine Barbiturates Over 1.5/3: Street Methadone Alcohol Ketamine Benzodiazopines Amphetamines Tobacco Buprenorphine Over 1/3: Cannabis Solvents 4-MTA LSD Methylphenidate Anabolic Steroids GHB Ecstasy Less than .5/3: Alkyl Nitrites Khat

UK Legal Ranking by Classes: Class A: Heroin Cocaine Street Methadone 4-MTA LSD Ecstasy Class B: Barbiturates Amphetamines Methylphenidate Class C: Ketamine Benzodiazopines Buprenorphine Cannabis Anabolic Steroids GHB (Class C) Legal: Alcohol Tobacco Solvents Alkyl Nitrites Khat

As can be seen, the classification of drugs as illegal is all over the place in comparison to the dangers of the drugs. Which then prompts a straightforward question: so what the hell justifies the illegal list?

There would be some obvious problems with trying to make the illegal list match the danger list. Alcohol is on the left at #5, but on the right at #15. Trying to make alcohol illegal has never worked terribly well -- there's too many social factors in play. So, one could argue that any drug that is less dangerous than alcohol should be made legal. But this would legalize the street use of BZPs, amphetamines, solvents, LSD, and ecstasy, just to name a few. So, that won't fly.

Perhaps instead we should make illegal any drug more dangerous than some threshold. But, ecstasy is, on the left, all the way down at #18. If we want to keep ecstasy illegal, then we would have to make tobacco and alcohol illegal, keep cannabis illegal -- and, basically, only legalize alkyl nitrites and khat (which, I should note, already are legal). So, that doesn't work.

What we have here, I think, is what's technically called a "grain problem". (No, it doesn't have something to do with alcohol.) That is, the filter "danger" is insufficiently fine-grained to filter these drugs into their current legal/illegal categories; but, the filter "illegal" is insufficiently fine-grained to filter these drugs into their current dangerous/not dangerous categories; and, the filter "danger" is insufficiently fine-grained to filter these drugs into a prima facie desirable legal/illegal categories. In other words, even if we accept that the current legal/illegal ratings are not right, just looking at danger isn't going to get us a socially desirable result. The mere fact that some very dangerous drugs are currently legal does not justify making legal more dangerous drugs.

Hence, I would argue that we should stop looking at "danger" as a way to solve the problem, and instead look towards "acceptable risk". For some reason, we consider the use of alcohol and tobacco to be "acceptable risks", but the use of LSD or ecstasy not. We need to get straight why the former are acceptable, and the latter not. It can't be just that the former are less dangerous -- as this list shows, they are not. But: what is it?

Multinational corporations and union-busting: not just for North America!

According to this, Kraft in South Africa is currently engaged in trying to break a union at one of their plants. By description, it seems everything started out sanely enough: union proposed something they didn't seriously think they would get, Kraft refused to make a counter-offer, union called a strike, Kraft locked them out. So far, so good. Unfortunately, then Kraft imported scabs, which is really beyond the pale.

For those not convinced: every move that a union makes can be countered with an equal move on the part of the employer, and vice versa. Union makes an offer, employer has a counter-offer. Union strikes, employer locks them out. Union members have to live on strike pay (which is usually quite poor), employers watch their profits dry up. The only move an employer can make which union members have no equivalent move against is the hiring of scabs. The equivalent would be if unions could hire different managers who would pay them everything they're asking for. Since that's impossible, what, exactly, is the justification for scabs? It gives employers more power than the unions, which tips the scales inequitably against labour.

However, note that Kraft is also refusing to try to increase the workers' conditions to better than those already experienced in the country. That is, Kraft is trying to get away with giving a minimal level of benefits and pay. Now, at least one of the reasons offered for allowing multinationals to expand into other countries is that, by providing jobs, they help stimulate the economies and improve standards of living. Although this is only one example, it's a striking case of how inept this reasoning really is. Kraft has no intention of helping to improve South Africa's economy. Kra