AnalPhilosopher

Steve Rugg has two predictions about the hurricane and its aftermath. See here.

This is the view from the back of the peloton when the riders at the front are hammering. I assure you that the riders at the back are suffering. If they get dropped, they're in trouble, because they might not make the cutoff time. Australian Bradley McGee leads the Vuelta after five stages.

Cindy Sheehan has a blog. Wink, wink. See here.

Kevin Stroup brought this to my attention.

Here. And here. And here.

What should be done about looters in hurricane-stricken areas? I'm tempted to say that they should be shot on sight, but maybe that's a little harsh. Another possibility is the imposition of martial law. See here for a story about looting.

Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery (as it was known) has crossed the Continental Divide into the Pacific watershed. The long ascent of the Missouri River (from its mouth near St Louis) is over. The boats have been sunk into the Beaverhead River for retrieval on the return trip. Horses and at least one mule have been purchased from the friendly Shoshones for the transport of equipment and trade goods. Winter is fast approaching, and game is scarce, so the Corps must find a way through the mountains as soon as possible. William Clark's reconnaissance of the Salmon River showed it to be impassable by either land or water, so the Corps must proceed northward. Luckily, they've secured the services of a Shoshone guide, whom they called Old Toby. The Corps will make its way across Lost Trail Pass and into the Bitterroot Valley. It will cross the Bitterroot Range at Lolo Pass, near present-day Missoula.

I mention the expedition today not because anything remarkable occurred, but because this is the second anniversary of Meriwether Lewis's departure from Pittsburgh, where he had supervised construction of the expedition's 55-foot keelboat. It would be several weeks before Lewis reached his friend Clark in Clarksville, Indiana Territory. As of today, therefore, Lewis has traveled from Pittsburgh to the Continental Divide—first on the Ohio River, then on the Mississippi, then on the Missouri. He would not return to civilization (St Louis) for another 13 months. You might think that three years is not a lot, but Lewis lived only 35 years (1774 to 1809). If you date the onset of his adult life at 20, then he spent three of his 15 adult years—one-fifth of it—on the expedition, devoid of creature comforts. Clark, by contrast, had a long life after the expedition. Here is Lewis's first journal entry. It's dated 30 August 1803, but the editor, Gary E. Moulton, says in a note that it's probably an error for 31 August. You have to wonder whether Lewis thought the incidents of that day were a bad omen!

To the Editor:

"Free Judy Miller" doesn't acknowledge the fundamental point of civil disobedience: in breaking the law for a principle, you accept and even expect the consequences.

You cannot have it both ways. Either you break the law, go to jail and make your point, or you obey the law and try to change it.

William D. Priester
New York, Aug. 29, 2005

To the Editor:

Your stance on Judith Miller is not based on constitutional law, since the courts have long held that a grand jury is entitled to information on the details and substance of a criminal act, even if that information is known by a reporter.

If Judith Miller tells what she knows, newspapers will still get leaks. If the leaker breaks the law, the leaker and the reporter who receives the information will have to obey the law, just like the rest of us.

Michael E. Miller
Dallas, Aug. 29, 2005

Peace, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

O, what's the loud uproar assailing
Mine ears without cease?
'Tis the voice of the hopeful, all-hailing
The horrors of peace.

Ah, Peace Universal; they woo it—
Would marry it, too.
If only they knew how to do it
'Twere easy to do.

They're working by night and by day
On their problem, like moles.
Have mercy, O Heaven, I pray,
On their meddlesome souls!
Ro Amil.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

8-30-85 . . . At work, I notified my client, Richard T., of the state’s dismissal of his D.U.I. charges. He was pleased as punch. “If you weren’t so far away,” he said, “I’d run up and kiss you.” I just laughed. How nice it felt to be able to give good news to a client. Now Richard won’t have the possibility of jail time and a fine hanging over his head. He can resume his normal activities with a clear mind and conscience. I, too, have a clear conscience. The [Arizona] D.U.I. statute is designed to keep intoxicated drivers off the public highways. Richard, however, was sleeping in his truck in the parking lot of a Tucson bar when he was apprehended and arrested. Although he could have gotten up and driven down the road in an intoxicated state, he didn’t. He did not fall within the spirit or letter of the statute. I’m glad to have been of service to him.

. . . After work, I drove to the [Pima County] jail to meet with incarcerated clients. One of them, Donn M., is incarcerated for stealing a twenty-dollar roll of stamps from a post office. He is down and out, living on the streets, and he wanted to get help with his alcohol problem, so he decided to get himself incarcerated in a federal facility. That’s why he stole stamps rather than something else; he thought that stealing stamps was a federal offense. It isn’t. I told Mr. M. that I’d help him get into an alcohol-treatment organization before he gets out of jail. We had a nice, long talk and then parted. It’s the first time that I met someone who wants to stay in jail. There’s something wrong with a society in which help with alcoholism can be gotten only by committing a crime. Mr. M. said that he was rejected by several local alcohol-treatment centers before stealing the stamps. Now, having broken the law, he may get the help that he wants and needs.

There is a man at school, Herb S., with whom I’ve had many interesting conversations over the past two years. Herb is old, maybe fifty-five, but he’s funny and he’s still taking courses in logic and philosophy of biology. Today I learned that Herb’s son recently died of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). I haven’t mentioned AIDS in this journal, but it’s a newly-discovered disease which afflicts mostly homosexuals, Haitians, and individuals who’ve had blood transfusions. As the name suggests, AIDS involves loss of immunity to most common diseases and viruses. Those who contract it catch colds, influenza, and even cancer. The mortality rate is extremely high. Herb’s son, a homosexual and a popular actor in Tucson, came down with AIDS and finally succumbed to it. I expressed my condolences to Herb and then spent a good hour talking about his son’s last days. The son, apparently, went out with dignity, giving speeches and working hard to find a cure for AIDS. Herb and I agree that because of its association with homosexuality, AIDS will not receive the public funding that it deserves. That, in itself, is a tragedy.

Politics, n.pl. 1. The continuation of war by other means. 2. The art and science of misgovernment.

See here for a précis of Richard Swinburne's book Is There a God?

To the Editor:

"In Re Grammar, Roberts's Stance Is Crystal Clear" (front page, Aug. 29) describes John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court nominee, as a "ruthless" editor, "refusing to tolerate the slightest grammatical slip." As proof, the article cites Judge Roberts's insistence on the difference between "affect" and "effect," on agreement between a subject and its relative pronoun, and on the correct spelling of "Namibia."

These judgments are fine, but they hardly explain his alleged reputation for scrupulousness. Instead, they depict a person who demands nothing more than basic literacy.

Judge Roberts may indeed be rigorous and exacting, and I hope he is. But if these examples show "an obsession with rhetorical precision" that places him in the "upper tier" of American justices, then our standards are depressingly low.

Pamela Wynsen
Columbus, Ohio, Aug. 29, 2005

I was talking to a student today about law and politics. He said he’s interested in—even attracted to—both of them, but that he’s repulsed by their unscrupulousness. I pointed out that the unscrupulousness resides in the practitioners of these professions, not in the professions themselves. If good people shy away from law and politics, then law and politics will be enclaves of bad people. I have never understood the complaint that politics is unworthy. Politics is the noblest of professions. It is the means by which we forge a collective identity. I have always been able to separate the profession as it can and should be from the profession as it is. The same is true of baseball. Someone said that baseball is a perfect game played by imperfect people. How can I love the game when all one reads about in the newspaper are performance-enhancing drugs, corked bats, salary negotiations, egotism, criminal mischief, and labor battles? Easy. I ignore them. My love for the game has nothing to do with these accidental properties. I love the game: the pitching, the hitting, the running, the throwing, the statistics. I love the grass, the leather, the wood, the dirt, even the spittle. Everything else gets filtered out. My advice to those who are contemplating a career in law or politics is to ignore the bad aspects of these professions. Bring integrity to them. Transform them. Leave a trace of yourself in them. Subsequent generations will benefit from your magnanimity.

Here.

Decide, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.

A leaf was riven from a tree,
"I mean to fall to earth," said he.

The west wind, rising, made him veer.
"Eastward," said he, "I now shall steer."

The east wind rose with greater force.
Said he: "'Twere wise to change my course."

With equal power they contend.
He said: "My judgment I suspend."

Down died the winds; the leaf, elate,
Cried: "I've decided to fall straight."

"First thoughts are best?" That's not the moral;
Just choose your own and we'll not quarrel.

Howe'er your choice may chance to fall,
You'll have no hand in it at all.
G.J.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

This week's link is to Philosophy Today.

My friend Norm Weatherby (a.k.a. Quantum Thought) had a fast and furious (but safe) Hotter 'n Hell Hundred this past Saturday. See here. Norm's average speed was higher than mine. Damn you all to hell, Norm! But seriously, check out Norm's blog. He managed to take many photographs of the event, even while riding. It will give you a feel for what it was like. I might add one thing. The large number of participants (more than 9,000) leads people to believe that there are long lines for everything. Nope. I've never waited for anything at the Hotter 'n Hell Hundred. It runs like clockwork. If you ride a bike, you need to do this event. It will be the highlight of your year.

Ten years ago this month, I did a week-long bike tour of Colorado with eight friends. We called it the Bike Binge. Mike Pawlowski, who put the thing together, called it a "planned ordeal," and that it was. You'd be amazed how much bonding occurs during a planned ordeal. Incredibly, I remember most of the conversations during that week, both on the bike and off. On the second night, we stayed in a motel in Hot Sulphur Springs. As darkness descended, several of us walked to the hot springs. Mike, who has a great sense of humor, told us about a movie he had seen, My Cousin Vinny (1992). He recounted some of the scenes. I remember thinking, "That sounds like a good movie; I'll have to watch it." But I didn't. Until the other night, that is. I was channel surfing on my 42-inch Dell high-definition plasma television (read it and weep) when I came across the movie on TBS. (I was looking for the Atlanta Braves baseball game; evidently, it was over by then.) The first scene I saw was hilarious. So was the second. Before I knew it, I had tears streaming down my face. I couldn't see! To make a long story short, I watched the rest of the movie. Mike was right: It's hilarious. Now I need to buy it on DVD and watch it from the beginning without editing. I want to hear all the swear words. Maybe I'll learn some new ones.

Taken at face value, the consequentialist conception of responsibility is highly expansionist and thoroughly non-restrictive. It requires individuals always to act in such a way as to produce the optimal state of the world from an impersonal standpoint. In so doing, however, it seems to many people to make wildly excessive demands on the capacity of agents to amass information about the global impact of the different courses of action available to them. Faced with this objection, the most common consequentialist response is to treat it as another reason for arguing back to a more conventional demarcation of individual responsibility, thus abandoning the attempt to provide a non-restrictive conception of responsibility, except at the foundational level. This is, of course, just an instance of consequentialism’s well-known normative schizophrenia: its tendency to alternate between presenting itself as a radically revisionist morality, on the one hand, and as a possibly surprising but basically conservative account of the foundations of ordinary moral thought, on the other. This very schizophrenia testifies to the difficulty of producing a credible alternative to a restrictive conception of individual responsibility.

(Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], 43)

Paul Krugman* is the picture of pessimism. He has to be. If he adopts an optimistic (or even a realistic) attitude toward the economy, he'll be praising President Bush, and that's unthinkable. See here for Krugman's latest pessimistic screed. I don't know about you, but I have more faith in Alan Greenspan than in Paul Krugman. By the way, economics is supposedly a social science, and hence a science. Scientists make testable predictions. Wouldn't it be nice if Krugman—a trained economist—made some testable predictions? Not "X might happen" or "X is going to happen sooner or later," but "X will happen by time T." He won't, of course, because if his predictions aren't realized, he'll lose whatever credibility he still has among leftists. (Nobody but leftists takes the man seriously.)

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

It transpires that Judge John Roberts is a stickler for language. See here. This is good. The more I learn about him, the more I like him. I have a question for my readers. Do you detect a sneering tone in the New York Times story? The reporter seems to be mocking Judge Roberts, as if to say that, by attending to grammar, punctuation, and style, he neglects substance. But that's a horrid fallacy. Michael Dummett is one of the best philosophers in the world, by any standard. He is also a stickler for language. Indeed, most analytic philosophers are sticklers for language. Perspicuity and perspicacity are the twin virtues of analytic philosophy. They should be the twin virtues of law as well.

To the Editor:

What ever happened to that old cliché "the truth shall set you free"? Bob Herbert is right ("Truth-Telling on Race? Not in Bush's Fantasyland," column, Aug. 25).

The Justice Department can run, but it can't hide from unpleasant truths about racial profiling by law enforcement officers. And demoting the messenger, in this case a department official who wanted to highlight the facts about a higher arrest rate for black and Latino drivers than for white drivers, does not change the facts about racial profiling.

As the N.A.A.C.P. found out in its own study several years ago, blacks and Latinos are much more likely to be arrested following a traffic stop than a white driver. The problem of racial profiling cannot be wished away.

The Justice Department should support, and Congress should pass, legislation that will outlaw profiling by law enforcement.

Bruce S. Gordon
President and Chief Executive
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Baltimore, Aug. 25, 2005

The New York Times wants Judith Miller to be released from jail. See here. The only thing keeping Judith Miller in jail is . . . Judith Miller. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she has always had the power to go home. All she has to do is testify before the grand jury. Journalists are not above the law. Unless and until there is a federal law that confers a reportorial privilege, she's a lawbreaker. Lawbreakers belong in jail. What part of this does the Times not understand?

Here.

Pilgrim, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

8-28-85 . . . In the morning I taught my second logic course of the semester. The students are lively and well-motivated, but I suspect that some of them will get bored with the subject pretty soon. There are always some who stay on top of things, while others seem never to understand what’s going on or even to care enough about the course to get involved. My job, as an instructor, is to make the subject interesting, so that attention doesn’t wane and the students are able to master the material. This, as you can imagine, is hard to do in a course like logic, where there are loads of difficult concepts and technical rules of inference to remember. Wait until the topic of fallacies comes up; I’ll dazzle the students with its practicality and amuse them with my many examples of fallacies. That should be fun.

I went immediately from the classroom to the courtroom this morning. Remember the Proposed Stipulation of Facts that I filed with the city prosecutor the other day? It paid off. I got a call from Jan Lahr, one of the prosecutors, telling me that I was right: The case falls squarely within the Arizona Supreme Court’s Zavala ruling. Accordingly, she dismissed the D.U.I. charges pending against my client on her own motion. Great! This is the first time that I’ve made a “black and white” difference for one of my clients, the first time that my own work has resulted in charges being dismissed or a verdict of “not guilty” being rendered. That, as you can imagine, gives me a good feeling inside. I’ll call the client later, when the dismissal is filed with the court. Until then, the prosecutor can change her mind (although morally, it would seem, she is bound by what she said).

This afternoon I argued my first motion in which testimony was introduced. I had filed a motion to suppress certain items of evidence (specifically, my client’s incriminating statements to a police officer) on grounds that it was obtained in violation of his Sixth [sic; should be “Fifth”] Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda. In motions to suppress, the state has the burden of showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the evidence in question was lawfully obtained. This meant that the state had to call witnesses. The only witness called was Officer John DeConcini of the Tucson Police Department, whom I had interviewed several times in our office. The prosecutor asked him specific questions about the procedures that he followed in arresting my client, and then I cross-examined him to test his memory and truthfulness and to bring out additional facts that were relevant to my motion. I handled the cross-examination like a professional, even though the courtroom was full of defendants, attorneys, and spectators (maybe twelve, altogether). Judge [Clifford] Hofmann sat on the bench.

At the conclusion of Officer DeConcini’s testimony, the state rested and I told the judge that I had no witnesses to call. He then decided to take the matter under advisement, which means that he’ll render an opinion later. Robb Holmes told me later that this is a good sign—that usually, if defense motions are going to be denied, they are denied right away, in court. But I think that Judge Hofmann simply wanted to get on with other matters. This explains why he didn’t issue an opinion right then. In any event, I learned a good deal about cross-examination and motion practice this afternoon. One day I’ll look back on this and smile, having had countless other court appearances—even trials—under my belt. A person has to start somewhere, and today I got my start arguing motions and cross-examining witnesses.

American George Hincapie, a member of Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel team, won a major race in France today. The French audience, in keeping with the French reputation for classlessness, heckled and booed. See here for the story and results.

Addendum: Here is a beautiful scene from today's second stage of the Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain).

This week's word is "barrel." Please post sayings that contain this word or a cognate. Here are two to get you started:

• Arguing with feminists is like shooting fish in a barrel.

• She's a barrel of laughs.

Don't cheat!

See here for an interesting (but confused) letter about Intelligent Design.

To the Editor:

In "Why This Band Plays On" (Op-Ed, Aug. 24), Mikal Gilmore presents a lyrical and evocative look at the explosive emergence of the Beatles back when he and I were young.

But when he tries to draw lessons for our own time, he jumps the rails of his fine exploration. In lamenting the lack of a similar tumultuous jolt now, he misses two realities.

One is demographics. All that earthshaking screaming and hysteria back in 1964 and '65 constituted the first powerful stirring of the baby boom bulge making its way through the American population like a pig through a python. That force of numbers was to rock America's cultural consciousness with its revolutionary sensibility in a host of ways—many still with us.

Absent such a bulge tied to the exuberance of youth, prospects for a Beatles-like cultural assault remain slim.

The other reality is the nature of today's society in the wake of the great cultural revolution presaged and stirred by the Beatles. The country that was stormed by the Fab Four was reflected in a popular culture so antiseptic as to be utterly lacking in realism.

Today's America is reflected in a popular culture so debauched as to be equally lacking in realism.

It's hard to see what kind of opportunity that leaves for a playful band of singers bent on shocking the nation into taking notice.

Robert W. Merry
Washington, Aug. 24, 2005

Two days ago, in Brussels, Belgium, Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele broke his own world record in the 10,000-meter run. Fourteen months ago, he ran a 26:20.31. Friday, he ran a 26:17.53. The mile pace of the latter is 4:13.86. Think about it. It wasn't long ago that human beings dreamed of a four-minute mile. Bekele can run more than six times that distance at a 4:13.86 pace. I believe there will be a four-minute pace at the 10K distance. Perhaps it won't be in my lifetime, but it will happen. The mile pace of the 5,000-meter record holder—also Bekele—is 4:03.75. It will go under four minutes in the next 10 years; mark my words. The two-mile record has already gone under four minutes (Daniel Komen, 3:59.30). I'm fascinated by world-class athletes (except in soccer, which isn't really a sport). They are pushing the human body to its limits.

Addendum: According to the news report in The Dallas Morning News, Bekele ran almost half of his record-breaking race alone. Had he been pushed, he would have taken even more time off the record.

Quill, n. An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

As strange as it may sound, I read several books at once, slowly and carefully. Right now I'm reading Nicholas Biddle's 1814 narrative of the Lewis and Clark expedition (in real time, 200 years after the fact); Andrew Altman's Arguing About Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy, 2d ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2001); Louis P. Pojman's Justice, Foundations of Philosophy Series, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006); and Russ Shafer-Landau's Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). The book by Altman is excellent. The book by Pojman is incompetent. The book by Shafer-Landau is intellectually dishonest. (I'll support this harsh judgment later, when I finish the book.) Today, in addition to these books, I read a short essay by Marine colonel Dr Keith Pavlischek entitled "Just and Unjust War in the Terrorist Age." Here it is, in PDF format. The essay is superb, both in terms of content and in terms of style. Anyone who wants a summary of just-war theory and its rivals should read it.

Here.

Yesterday, I did my 16th consecutive Hotter ’n Hell Hundred in Wichita Falls, Texas. At least 83 things could have gone wrong, but none of them did. Having gone to bed at nine o’clock the previous evening (to do which, I had to tire myself out by running 3.1 miles in the heat), I rose at four. Everything had been prepared the day before, so, after dressing, perking coffee, and doing the usual morning stuff (including taking the girls out), I jumped in my car and drove off. It was 4:30. For the next hour and 50 minutes, I drove 70 miles per hour—in the dark—in a northwesterly direction, sipping coffee all the way. I reached Wichita Falls (121.8 miles from my house) three minutes behind schedule (6:23), found my favorite parking spot, and leapt into action. It was still dark. I got the wheels out of the trunk and the bike frame out of the back seat, put everything together, loaded up the bottles, put my shoes and helmet on, gathered my gear (toothpicks, handkerchief, PowerBars, flip-up sunglasses, and bike pump), and rolled off to meet my friend Joe Culotta at the flagpoles. I found him, got my ride number from him (he had picked it up for me the night before), and hastily pinned it to my jersey. At 6:40, we were rolling.

Most of the 9,000 or so riders start together, in a pack that stretches for hundreds of yards down the street. I did that a few times before getting wise. Now, I ride ahead of the crowd on side streets and get onto the course early. I’m not racing, so it’s not cheating. It’s a matter of avoiding dangerous conditions. Also, the sooner you get started, the sooner you finish. The weather was superb: dry, warm, and not too windy. It feels drier in Wichita Falls than in Fort Worth, perhaps because it’s farther west. Joe and I cruised out of town, thanking police officers at every intersection. You wouldn’t believe the spectators. Just about every house along the course has people outside, sitting in lawn chairs or on vehicles. They wave, applaud, and yell. It’s festive. I think of it as Great Plains hospitality.

One of the nice things about leaving early is that everyone has to catch and pass us. It’s fun to see how long it takes. First the professionals and category 1 and 2 racers caught us. (They were flying. It was impressive.) Then the category 3 racers caught us. Then, about an hour into the ride, the category 4 racers caught us. Joe and I moved to the right of the road as the category-4 pack flew by (or maybe it was category 5). I was thinking of getting on the back of the pack, but couldn’t move over because of a rider in front of me. Just then I saw and heard a crash to my left. It was the most horrific sound I’ve ever heard. It sounded like metal snapping, although—I hate to say this—it may have been bone. Then more: grinding, crunching, smashing. I heard someone scream. Then more crashing and snapping. Everyone behind the rider who fell was hitting the pavement. Joe later said we were going 28 miles per hour, so you can imagine how much damage was done to bodies and bikes. I instinctively moved to my right to avoid any bikes that came my way. I rode in the grass for a few seconds before getting back on the pavement. Once I was past the carnage, I looked back for Joe. Luckily, he, too, made it through. The two-lane road was completely covered with bodies and bikes. Whew!

Although we weren’t tired, Joe and I stopped at the 20-mile rest stop to have our pictures taken by rally volunteers. Someone uses a Polaroid camera to take pictures of riders in front of a prop consisting of hay bales and an outhouse (I believe it’s a Lil’ Abner theme). These pictures are given to the riders as souvenirs. Joe has my picture, so I can’t post it, but I will when I get it from him. At this point the course turns northward. That’s when we noticed the changing weather. There was lightning in front of us. It looked like walls of rain on the horizon. I wasn’t worried about the lightning (never have been), and rain actually sounded good at that point, with the heat rising. At about 30 miles, we reached our first real rest stop, in Electra. Dozens of people were milling about the tents, eating, drinking, using the porta-potties, talking, and filling their bottles with water or sport drink. I ate a PowerBar, used a porta-potty, and filled a bottle with cold water. Within minutes, Joe and I were back on the road. My plan was to stop one more time: in Burkburnett.

The rain began shortly after we left Electra. It wasn’t heavy, but it made the road slick. The worst part of riding in the rain is road spray: the plume of water that flies up from a rider’s rear tire. If you’re riding behind someone in the rain, it’s miserable. Think of all the disgusting substances on a roadway—animal parts, tobacco, spittle, dirt, oil—and imagine them in your mouth. Yuck. Luckily for us, we weren’t in a pack. We rode side by side most of the way. A few miles later, with rain falling off and on, we turned east for a long stretch of road into Burkburnett. By this time, all the racers and the faster rally riders had caught and passed us, but packs were still coming by every few minutes. I told Joe that I wanted to ride in a pack on this stretch of road, to keep my speed up. We hopped onto the back of a pack and flew toward Burkburnett. The rain appeared to be off to our left (north of us), but I got soaked at least twice. It felt good—except for the wet feet. The temperature dropped dramatically during this time. Alas, Joe’s group dropped me on a hill, but I rode hard on my own (at 20 to 26 miles per hour) until I caught back up. I was feeling good by this time. My lungs were open and my legs hadn’t begun to tire. My breakfast of oatmeal and a banana appeared to be kicking in.

Once I caught Joe and we fell in with another pack, I hammered. It’s incredible how good I felt. I got into the drops of the handlebars at the head of the pack and powered along the wet road. People behind me—there were dozens—must have been struggling to stay on my wheel. I calculated that I would reach Burkburnett at 9:57 A.M., but I was there at 9:50. As I said, I intended to stop in Burkburnett, but by then I was almost done for the day and still feeling good, so I rode past. By then, Joe had been dropped. I don’t blame him for not trying to stay with me, since he was doing the 100-mile course and I was doing only 74 miles. Let me explain. Four years ago, having done the 100-mile course 12 times (four times at over 20 miles per hour, the fastest at 21.69 miles per hour), I decided to make my own course. I ride the 100-mile course to Burkburnett, then go straight back to Wichita Falls. I intersect with the 100-kilometer course in a couple of miles. By riding only 74 miles, I cut out two hours of suffering and get home two hours earlier. I could have ridden 100 miles yesterday, easily, but I stuck to my plan. I hope Joe and my other friends had a safe and enjoyable ride.

My average speed after three hours was 19.5 miles per hour. My goal for the day had been 18, so you can see how fast I was riding into Burkburnett. When I turned south at Burkburnett, I had a headwind. That slowed my pace, but I was determined to stay over 19 miles per hour for the day. As I pedaled, I calculated that if I averaged 18 miles per hour the rest of the way, I’d make it; and if I did so, I’d finish in 3:51. You guessed it: I finished in 3:51:11. The wind was strange during the final hour. It felt like a headwind at first, which, combined with rough roads, slowed my pace. But then it seemed to shift and become a crosswind. Finally, it began helping me. I flew into Wichita Falls. I passed 50-mile and 100-kilometer riders right and left. Near the end, I rode alongside an older man, who was on the 100-kilometer course. I asked how old he was. He said 58. He didn’t look 58. I told him I’m 48 and would be happy to be riding at his level in 10 years. He said he was a Marine. I thanked him for his service to our country. A minute later, I crossed the finish line to cheers and applause from the spectators. It’s a great feeling to finish a Hotter ’n Hell Hundred, even if one hasn’t ridden the longest course. By riding a shorter course, I’m able to go faster. Like most men, I love speed, dangerous though it may be.

I ended up with 19.27 miles per hour for 74.26 miles. Counting warm-up and cool-down riding (which amounted to riding from my car to the starting line and vice versa), I rode 76 miles yesterday. The Wichita Falls course is one of the flattest of the rally season, so my average speed is usually higher there. For some reason, I’m not a good climber. I get dropped on hills. I’m what Europeans call a “rouleur.” On flat ground, I push a big gear and can go forever (okay, a long way). As evidence of the flatness of the course, my maximum speed for the day was only 30.1 miles per hour. My maximum heart rate was 155. I reached it while pulling the pack into Burkburnett.

As soon as I reached the finish line, I made my way through the crowd and rode to my car. I dismantled the bike, washed up, and jumped in. Within minutes, I was cruising homeward on Highway 287. It’s a divided highway with two lanes in each direction. If you like driving, you’d like this one. The scenery, which I see only on the way home, is beautiful. I usually get tired during the homeward journey, but for some reason I was alert. I listened to the Texas Rangers baseball game and sipped cold water from my Thermos. I stopped in Decatur, 70 miles from Wichita Falls, for bean burritos at Taco Bell (my traditional post-rally repast). I pulled into my driveway in Fort Worth at 1:00, nearly an hour earlier than expected. My girls were happy to see me, and I them. After a shower and a nap, I was up and at ’em. Everything went well yesterday: the driving, the riding, even the weather. As I told Joe, I’d rather have rain during the ride than during the drive to and from Wichita Falls. I’ve now done 19 rallies this year and 363 overall. I expect to have six more rallies this year (through Thanksgiving). Marathon training begins a week from tomorrow with the Labor Day 15K race in Fort Worth. I hope you’re exerting. It’s not only good for you; it’s fun.

Addendum: I’ve done the 74-mile course four times. Yesterday’s average speed of 19.27 miles per hour was just higher than that of two years ago (19.26 miles per hour). But there’s a catch. I have a new (wireless) bicycle computer. Two years ago, I ended up with 73.77 miles. Yesterday, I ended up with 74.26 miles. Two years ago, my elapsed time was 3:49:42. Yesterday, it was 3:51:11. The course was the same (I know every inch of it), so I didn’t do quite as well yesterday as I did two years ago. If the course is really 73.77 miles, then yesterday’s average speed was 19.14 miles per hour, a bit less than the 19.26 of two years ago. If the course is really 74.26 miles, then two years ago I averaged 19.39 miles per hour, a bit more than yesterday’s 19.27. Either way, I did better two years ago. But not much!

Here.

Corsair, n. A politician of the seas.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

To the Editor:

An Aug. 24 letter regarding the connection between Iraq and 9/11 claims that a number of prior terrorist attacks against the United States, like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, created "the perception that the United States was weak and unable to defend itself."

But the perpetrators of the 1993 bombing were found and are in prison, whereas the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, was allowed to slip through our fingers in Afghanistan. He is still at large, while our troops are stuck fighting in Iraq.

The Iraq war does not show that we can defend ourselves. It shows that we are easily distracted.

Tom Hitchner
Berkeley, Calif., Aug. 25, 2005

Bill Keezer brought this blog to my attention. Thanks, Bill!

More than 9,000 people are expected to participate in tomorrow's Hotter 'n Hell Hundred bike races and rally in Wichita Falls, Texas. I'll be there for the 16th consecutive year. Rain is expected—and, given the heat we've experienced this month, welcome. See here for images from the 2004 event.

Paul Krugman* can't find anything positive about the economy. It's bad, bad, bad. See here. And if people don't agree with him that it's bad, either they're stupid or they're not paying attention or they've been hoodwinked by the Bush administration. Krugman's relentless pessimism has grown timesome. If his friend won $1,000,000 in the lottery, Krugman would point out that (1) taxes must be paid on the winnings, (2) the money will have to be managed, and (3) friends and relatives will come out of the woodwork to beg. Perhaps one reason Krugman hates President Bush is that President Bush is an optimist. Krugman is an inveterate pessimist. He finds a cloud in every silver lining.

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Moral philosophy no longer needs to present itself as the spectator sport it was in the heyday of analytic ethics. Philosophy departments have not completely caught up with this development. If our universities and colleges were more interested in preparing students for leadership positions than they now seem to be, they might ask more of ethics courses and of courses on the history of moral philosophy than they now do. Philosophy departments themselves might even take the lead in bringing back this ancient and honorable function of their institutions. If they do, they will find that courses on the history of moral philosophy will need to occupy a far more central place than they do now.

(J. B. Schneewind, “Teaching the History of Moral Philosophy,” in Teaching New Histories of Philosophy, ed. J. B. Schneewind [Princeton: The University Center for Human Values, 2004], 177-96, at 194)

To the Editor:

Re "Bob Costas Says No to Hour on Aruba" (Arts pages, Aug. 24):

Here's to Bob Costas. Since cable TV has created more and more competition among stations, news programs have repeatedly taken the low road and appealed to viewers' base curiosity for the stories that one critic in your article calls "emotional pornography": the Natalee Holloway missing-person case, the Laci Peterson murder and the "Runaway Bride" Jennifer Wilbanks.

Finally, a well-known host stands up to the flaunting of human tragedy for ratings and its replacing more profound issues of the day. Thank you for taking the high road, Mr. Costas. It is a start.

Gary Hurewitz
Chappaqua, N.Y., Aug. 24, 2005

Here.

Commonwealth, n. An administrative entity operated by an incalculable multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously efficient.

This commonwealth's capitol's corridors view,
So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew
Of clerks, pages, porters and all attachés
Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays
That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins
Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.
On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all,
Misfortune attend and disaster befall!
May life be to them a succession of hurts;
May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts;
May aches and diseases encamp in their bones,
Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones;
May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest,
And tapeworms securely their bowels digest;
May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair,
And frequent impalement their pleasure impair.
Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse
Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse,
By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors—
The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores!
Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin!
Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin,
Avenging the friend whom I couldn't work in.
K.Q.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

8-25-85 . . . Speaking of summer, I rode my bike to Colossal Cave (or to some other location in town) for the fourteenth consecutive Sunday this afternoon. I began my streak on 26 May, shortly after school ended for the spring semester, and have gone out in heat, humidity, rain, and mental depression. The fact that I didn’t miss one week during the summer makes me feel good, as if I accomplished something. Today, my gross average speed wasn’t remarkable (10.81 miles per hour), but the heat was. When I left the apartment, the temperature was ninety-nine degrees [Fahrenheit] (officially, it reached 106 degrees). This was the hottest “outbound” temperature that I’ve experienced this year. By the time I got back, however, it had started to rain and the temperature had fallen to eighty-two degrees. This was the third lowest “inbound” temperature of the year (in eighteen rides). What an odd day! I also set another goal for myself this afternoon. I’ve decided to try to ride every Sunday for fifty-two consecutive weeks—a whole year. That would be significant, for it gets pretty chilly on some winter days. But I’m going to give it a shot. I love setting unreasonable goals and then trying to reach them.

Two great philosophers died on this date: David Hume in 1776 (at the age of 65) and Friedrich Nietzsche in 1900 (at the age of 55). Both were atheists. Hume had a healthy, happy life. Nietzsche's life was one of unrelenting suffering.

Peg Kaplan has an interesting post about sex differences in IQ. Peg is rapidly approaching 50,000 site visits. Keep up the good work, Peg!

While I'm at it, here are some of my favorite bloggers (in no particular order):

Dr John J. Ray (Dissecting Leftism)
Steve Rugg (JusTalkin)
Peg Kaplan (what if?)
Jeff Percifield (Beautiful Atrocities)
Ally Eskin (Who Moved My Truth?)
Dr Bill Keezer (Bill's Comments)
Dr Bill Vallicella (Maverick Philosopher)
Michelle Malkin (Michelle Malkin)
Donald L. Luskin (The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid)
Norm Weatherby (Quantum Thought)
Kim du Toit (A Nation of Riflemen)
Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit)

If you think I'm missing a good blogger, let me know.

I have some shocking statistics to report. Between 1952 and 2004, inclusive, there have been 14 presidential elections. The Democrat candidate received at least 50% of the votes in only two of them: 1964 (61.1%) and 1976 (50.1%). During that same period, the Republican candidate received at least 50% of the votes in seven elections: 1952 (55.2%), 1956 (57.4%), 1972 (60.7%), 1980 (50.7%), 1984 (58.8%), 1988 (53.4%), and 2004 (50.7%). Republicans have won nine of the past 14 presidential elections. (Each party won an election with fewer popular votes than the other party: the Democrats in 1960 and the Republicans in 2000.)

Democrats are in trouble. Their coalition may seem large, since it’s composed of many distinct groups (labor unions, abortionists, teachers, trial lawyers, blacks, homosexuals), but in terms of overall appeal, it’s failing. Repeatedly. Embarrassingly. A party that can’t recruit at least half the American people has the wrong principles and policies for this country. Could that be why the intelligentsia has gone berserk? Even the Democrats who won the presidency haven’t done well. John F. Kennedy received only 49.3% of the popular vote in 1960. Bill Clinton never received half the popular vote. His percentages were 43.0 (the lowest for a winning president during this period) and 49.2. By contrast, seven of the nine Republican winners received at least half the popular vote.

It’s a great time to be a Republican and a terrible time to be a Democrat. Unless and until the Democrat party changes its message, without seeming to do so insincerely, it will be powerless. Here, in case you’re wondering, are the Democrat percentages (from Wikipedia):

1952: 44.3
1956: 42.0
1960: 49.3 (elected)
1964: 61.1 (elected)
1968: 42.7
1972: 37.5
1976: 50.1 (elected)
1980: 41.0
1984: 40.6
1988: 45.6
1992: 43.0 (elected)
1996: 49.2 (elected)
2000: 48.4
2004: 48.3

One more thing. You hear talk these days that there’s nothing wrong with the Democrat platform. The problem, Democrats say, is either the personality of the candidate (think Al Gore) or the inability to articulate what the party stands for (think John Kerry). But there have been many different Democrat candidates in the past 14 elections. Have all of them had bad personalities? Have all of them failed to articulate what the party stands for? It’s the platform, stupid. The American people don’t like it.

I lectured today on Plato's theory of justice in my Social and Political Philosophy course. To Plato, a just person is one whose parts—reason, spirit, and appetite—are integrated and under the control of reason. Justice is the rationally coordinated functioning of the soul (or self). It requires that appetites, urges, and temptations be controlled and channeled. I could have used this story (please register; it's free) to illustrate injustice (disintegration, unruliness). The woman in question sickens me.

Addendum: Here is the "university" from which the woman purchased her "degree." (All she really purchased was a piece of paper.) I assume the woman is not so stupid as to believe that the "degree" she "earned" was legitimate. So she was trying to deceive her employer and rip off the taxpayers. Is there nothing that people won't do for money? And it's not like this woman was starving, which might constitute an excuse. She already earned a substantial salary. Can you say "greed"?

To the Editor:

My niece's husband, age 22, is making plans to enlist in the Army. The family, to no avail, is trying to talk him out of it. He will be taking 15 college credits before he enlists—he has none at this point—because his recruiter told him that he will get paid at a higher scale once he enlists. He says it's no big deal.

He and my niece need the extra money. He has been told that he will be out in two years. Obviously, he's not being told about stop-loss, the policy that can extend soldiers' tours beyond their enlistment contracts.

I shudder when I think of my niece and their 3-month-old son: will her husband see his son grow up?

These young men and women grow up playing video games. Someone has to tell them that war is not a game, and unfortunately, the Army is manipulating them into believing that it is.

Margaret Pfranger
Hillsdale, N.J., Aug. 22, 2005

Soccer is communist football. See here (last item).

In order to prevent differential wear, you rotate your towels, washcloths, socks, and underwear.

Here.

Washingtonian, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.

They took away his vote and gave instead
The right, when he had earned, to eat his bread.
In vain—he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
To come again and part him from his roll.
Offenbach Stutz.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Does anybody remember the mimeograph? You know, the machine with a roller that produced blue-inked copies? The smell was delicious. The sheets would come out of the machine moist and floppy. The print quality was terrible, but back then, we didn’t know any better. We were just glad to have a way to make copies of our syllabi, handouts, and exams.

The word “mimeograph” comes from the Greek “mimeomai,” which means imitate. “Graph,” of course, comes from the Greek “graphē,” which means writing. So a mimeograph is literally a writing imitation. My dictionary defines “mimeograph” as “a duplicating machine that produces copies from a stencil.”

I thought about the mimeograph this past Tuesday as I distributed copies of my syllabus to my students. The copies made by my office copier are fabulous. The letters are sharp and distinct; the black print contrasts beautifully with the white paper; and the sheets come out of the copier dry and “hard” rather than moist and floppy. What a world! Isn’t technological progress interesting? It’s ratcheted. We could never go back to the days of the mimeograph. We’ve been tainted. But back then, mimeographed handouts seemed perfectly fine. Imagine going back to black-and-white television or film. And how the hell did people survive in Texas without air conditioning? It’s mind-boggling. Nobody who’s had air conditioning could ever live without it—at least in this state.

I'm a bibliophile. I love the heft of books, their smell, appearance, and solidity. I love turning pages slowly and carefully, savoring the thoughts and feelings conveyed, imagining the author writing, engaging the arguments and analyses. I love the serendipity of books, their wonder, their joy, their invitation to other worlds. I love writing in books—leaving traces of myself. I love collecting, organizing, shelving, and retrieving books. I love the idea of books. I love books. See here.

Originality in philosophy often consists not in having new thoughts, but in making clear what was not clear before.

(R. M. Hare, Plato, Past Masters, ed. Keith Thomas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982], 9)

If obesity is a disease and this country socializes health care, there will be a massive transfer of wealth from those who have enough sense to keep their weight down to those who don't. I hope I'm dead and gone before this comes to pass. See here. Sometimes I think humans are incorrigibly stupid.

To the Editor:

Re "Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science" ("A Debate Over Darwin" series, front page, Aug. 23):

You quote Steven Weinberg, a physicist and Nobel laureate, as saying, "I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion."

This statement is yet another example of how modern scientists hurt their cause of rational exploration into natural phenomena by their unequivocal attacks on belief in God.

Dr. Weinberg and his fellow scientists would find that if they did not strive to push an agenda of unfettered atheism into all aspects of education, believers would feel less need to combat reasonable instruction of generally accepted scientific theory.

The overriding attempt by scientists to surmount human beings' deeply felt and perhaps wholly rational devotion to God could have the unintended consequence of weakening science's aura in our society, much to the detriment of believers and nonbelievers alike.

Theodore Oberman
Brooklyn, Aug. 23, 2005

One of the most common confusions in moral discourse is that between intrinsic and absolute value. The confusion conflates two questions:

1. How is X valued?
2. How much value does X have?

There are two ways to value something: intrinsically (because of the kind of thing it is) and extrinsically (because of its relation to something else of value). The most common sort of extrinsic value is instrumental value. The currency in my wallet has no intrinsic value. Its value (to me) lies in what it can get me. It is an instrument with which I attain other things I value. A given object, such as friendship or knowledge, can be valued both intrinsically and extrinsically. We say that we value these things for their own sakes (even if they aren’t related to anything else we value) and because they do, in fact, lead to other things we value, such as assistance in time of need (in the case of friendship) and useful technology (in the case of knowledge).

Suppose I value X intrinsically. The next question is how much I value it. One possibility is that I value it infinitely. If I value something infinitely, then no other value can outweigh or override it. Let us call this “absolute intrinsic value.” Another possibility is that I value it finitely. If I value something finitely, then, in principle, some other value can outweigh or override it. When this happens, it would be false to say that I didn’t value X intrinsically, for I did. I value it for its own sake. But that doesn’t mean I value nothing else, or that X must always prevail when there is a clash of values. Let us call this “nonabsolute intrinsic value.”

To illustrate, let us apply these distinctions to the case of innocent human life. (I omit the qualifier “innocent” in what follows. It is to be understood that I’m talking about innocent rather than guilty human lives.) There are three positions one might take on the value of human life. First, one might hold that human life has no intrinsic value. Human life is valuable only if, and only to the extent that, it is related to other valuable things, such as subjective experience, pleasure, self-awareness, happiness, and so forth. This is the position of consequentialists, and this is what they mean when they deny “the sanctity of human life.”

Second, one might hold that human life has absolute intrinsic value. This is the position of the Roman Catholic Church. Evil may not be done that good may come. The end, however good, does not justify the destruction of human life. One problem with absolute doctrines is that they lead to conflicts. The Catholic Church has developed sub-doctrines, such as the doctrine of the double effect, to avoid conflicts. It purchases absolutism at the price of ad hocness.

Third, one might hold that human life has nonabsolute intrinsic value. This is midway between the first and second positions. It’s like absolute intrinsic valuation in holding that human life has intrinsic value, but it’s like consequentialism in denying that human life has absolute value. We might think of it as an attempt to incorporate the best of the other two (implausible) positions. A proponent of the third position is willing to allow the destruction of human life if enough evil will be prevented thereby (or enough good produced). How much evil or good is necessary? That depends on how close the valuation is to absolute. The difference between absolute intrinsic valuation and nonabsolute intrinsic valuation is one of degree rather than kind. A weak nonabsolutist might say that a human life may be destroyed if that is the only way to save five other human lives. A stronger nonabsolutist might require that 100 or 1,000 lives be saved. An absolutist would reject killing even if it were necessary to save 1,000,000,000 lives. See the difference?

As I say, intrinsic and absolute value are commonly confused, even by intelligent and well-meaning moral philosophers. They are very different. Intrinsic value is qualitative; it has to do with how a thing is valued. Absolute value is quantitative; it has to do with how much a thing is valued. If we conflate intrinsic and absolute value, we impoverish our moral vocabulary and deprive ourselves of useful analytical tools.

I had a friend—a grown man with lots of money—who could not balance his checkbook. He told me it never came out right, so he just took the bank's word that his account was accurate. This blew my mind, since nothing is easier than balancing a checkbook. First, write every expenditure and deposit in the checkbook. Do it immediately, or you'll forget it. Second, when the bank statement arrives, use a yellow marker to match what's written in the checkbook with what appears on the bank statement. When all items on the bank statement are yellowed out, add the current checkbook balance to the outstanding items. It should match the bank balance. Shouldn't a grown man be able to do this?

Addendum: My bank no longer sends canceled checks to me. At first, I didn't like it. But really, there's no need for me to receive canceled checks. It makes balancing my checkbook even faster. I do it in five minutes instead of eight or ten.

Here.

Rash, adj. Insensible to the value of our advice.

"Now lay your bet with mine, nor let
These gamblers take your cash."
"Nay, this child makes no bet." "Great snakes!
How can you be so rash?"
Bootle P. Gish.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Federal appellate judge Richard A. Posner gives a partial defense of affirmative-action programs (i.e., preferential treatment on the basis of race) here.

8-23-85 . . . This morning, for the first time, I attending [sic; should be “attended”] a video review hearing in [Pima County] Superior Court. Let me describe this strange experience. I entered the appropriate courtroom, which was no different than [sic; should be “from”] any other courtroom except that it contains two large video screens and some microphones, and took my place at the defense table. The judge sat in his chair toward the back, while the bailiff and the prosecutor sat on either side of him. At the appointed hour, a defendant appeared on the video screen from the Pima County Jail, which is located several miles from the courthouse, and spoke into the microphone. I introduced myself as the man’s attorney (we had just been appointed and I had never met him), and proceeded to explain the nature of the proceedings to him. Everything went smoothly. The client pleaded “no contest” to a charge of indecent exposure and thanked the judge and me for our time. Throughout the proceeding, the defendant, the judge, and I spoke into microphones. Everything happened instantaneously. I could see the defendant as he spoke, and he could see me as I spoke. For all intents and purposes, we were present in the same courtroom! We do live in a sophisticated age, don’t we? Who would have thought, when television was invented, that it would serve justice as well as entertain people?

My 14-week summer break is over. As always, I enjoyed it. Today I began my 17th year of teaching at The University of Texas at Arlington. If you count my year at Texas A&M University, it's my 18th year. I began my teaching career in August 1983 at The University of Arizona, where I was a teaching assistant. Where does the time go? One of the students in my Logic course this morning asked me whether I'm still practicing law. I said no; I gave it up for academia 20 years ago. It doesn't seem possible that that much time has passed. I have no regrets about any major decision I've made, including the decision not to be a practicing lawyer. I can't imagine a profession that would make me as happy as college professor. Some people are born to run businesses, others to practice law or medicine, others to teach and write. I'm one of the latter. My courses this semester, in case you're wondering, are Logic (at 8:00) and Social and Political Philosophy (at 9:30). I like to teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays (instead of Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays); I like to teach first thing in the morning; and I like my courses to be consecutive, so I can get back home quicker. I'm a homebody.

Addendum: If you want to stay abreast of what my students and I are discussing, see here. I intend to post all of my course handouts on KBJ Course Blog.

Maybe I'm hopelessly retrograde, but I don't understand the practice of dogs' days at Major League ballparks. My Texas Rangers are having one tomorrow. What's next? Taking dogs to church? They'll get as much out of that as they will going to the ballpark.

American Levi Leipheimer has won the Tour of Germany, besting German Jan Ullrich by 31 seconds. See here for the story. Congratulations, Levi! Keep it up and the French, in their bitterness toward all things American, will begin circulating rumors of drug usage.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, who has no discernible scientific or philosophical credentials (his doctoral degree is in English literature), is the latest person to express his ignorance of Intelligent Design. See here. The insistence that ID is not science reeks of desperation. A desperate person tries to define away uncomfortable aspects of reality. Many moral philosophers, for example, define "moral theory" in such a way that egoism is not a moral theory. How convenient! If it's not a moral theory, then it doesn't have to be taken seriously, much less refuted. If ID isn't science, then scientists don't have to show that it's inferior science. If scientists were at all confident in their own theories, methods, and argumentative skills, they would not hesitate to engage ID—to do the painstaking work involved in showing that it suffers in comparison to its theoretical rivals. Instead, they try to define it out of existence.

Theism, n. The doctrine that God exists. Nothing that exists or occurs being incompatible with it, it asserts nothing.

This week's link is to an interview with political philosopher Michael Walzer. (Walzer's advanced degree is in political science and history, but he's considered a philosopher by most credentialed philosophers.)

If you think religion and science are incompatible, then either you don't understand religion or you have a cramped understanding of science. See here.

To the Editor:

It seems more logical to believe that men are greater consumers of golf than women not because they have inherited a hunter's fascination with hitting targets in the outdoors [see here], but rather because someone else cooks their meals, washes their laundry, cleans their homes, chauffeurs and nurtures their children, supports their job advancement and on occasion says to them: "You've had a tense week. Why don't you play golf this weekend?"

As I watched the end of the P.G.A. Championship with my golfer husband, I yearned for that moment when I can relax, erase my thoughts and swing the club. I looked at my calendar for a six-hour opening: fall 2015, after I drop the youngest at college.

K. Louise Francis
Berkeley, Calif., Aug. 20, 2005

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Why did K. Louise Francis marry a man who won't do housework to her specifications? And if she didn't know this fact about him at the time of their marriage, why did she not divorce him as soon as it became clear? I am sick to death of women bitching about their husbands not doing housework. If you want a man who does housework, find one and marry him!

I’ve just been named commissioner of Major League Baseball. Here’s my first initiative. Starting on 1 January 2007, a little over a year from now, every player on a Major or Minor League roster will be tested for every banned substance four times a year. A list of banned substances will be made available to every player. Any player who tests positive for any banned substance is immediately suspended for one year, without pay, with return conditional on testing negative. The idea is to make the players strictly liable. No inquiry is made into what the player thought, knew, believed, hoped, assumed, or expected. “I didn’t know X contained a banned substance” or “My doctor prescribed X for me” are not excuses. This strict-liability regime will make players (the rational ones, anyway) take responsibility for their diets. They will have to ensure that everything they ingest is licit. As new substances are banned, there will be a one-year “cleaning-out” period. This will put players on notice that they have one year to get the substance out of their systems.

Do I really want to be commissioner of Major League Baseball? No. I already have the best job in the world.

Divination, n. The art of nosing out the occult. Divination is of as many kinds as there are fruit-bearing varieties of the flowering dunce and the early fool.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Everyone should read this essay. Here's an excerpt:

The fashionable assaults on patriotism, in the end, are failures of character. They are made by privileged individuals who enjoy the full benefits offered by the country they deride and detest—its opportunities, its freedom, its riches—but who lack the basic decency to pay their country the allegiance and respect that honor demands. (page 7)

Amen.

Here.

I spent a year of my life—the summer of 1974 to the summer of 1975—bagging and stocking groceries in my hometown of Vassar, Michigan. It was a good job. It got me out among people, taught me manners and good work habits, and made me feel productive. I was earning the grand sum of $2.50 per hour. The owners of the store—Central Shop-Rite Grocery—would not tolerate slipshod work. We were taught how to fill a bag properly, with heavy items on the bottom and lighter, more fragile items on top. I was fast and good. I took pride in my work. These days, people don't know how to bag groceries, or, if they do know, they don't care. First of all, you don't use plastic bags. They have no shape. Second, you don't throw things in the bag, whether it's paper or plastic. You place them in, taking care to arrange them. This can be done quickly. The more you do it, the quicker you get. I always consider it a good day when I get home with uncrushed bread. Today was a good day.

All we now know is that the West, still with all its flaws the major complex of reasonably free and democratic governments, has become, irreversibly, one would guess, the object of disdain, contempt, and hostility in the greater part of the world. The West is envied for its material wealth but is no longer either feared or respected, much less regarded as model, in the communist and most of the Third World countries. . . .

What is in all ways most devastating, however, is the signal decline in America and Europe themselves of faith in the value and promise of Western civilization. What has succeeded faith is, on the vivid and continually enlarging record, guilt, alienation, and indifference. An attitude—that we as a nation and as a Western civilization can in retrospect see ourselves as having contaminated, corrupted, and despoiled other peoples in the world, and that for having done this we should feel guilty, ashamed, and remorseful—grows and widens among Americans especially, and even more especially among young Americans of the middle class. For good reason or bad, the lay clerisy of the West—the intelligentsia that began in the eighteenth century to succeed the clergy as the dominant class so far as citizen’s beliefs are concerned—devotes a great deal of its time to lament, self-flagellation, and harsh judgment upon an entire history: Western history. Inevitably, the media, television leading the way, reflect the clerisy’s mood and attitudes. With excellent reason, therefore, a widening sector of the population finds itself adopting the same view of American and Western guilt. Clearly, any idea of progress must be precariously based indeed in such an environment.

(Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress [New York: Basic Books, 1980], 331-2 [italics in original])

It can't reasonably be doubted that Paul Krugman* hates President Bush. Now we're starting to see why. Krugman thinks the 2000 presidential election was "stolen." See here. But nothing he says in this column matters. We can argue until the cows come home about what would have happened if X, Y, or Z were the case. The fact is, the rule of law was complied with. President Bush may not have deserved to win, but he was entitled to assume the office of the presidency. He got more electoral votes than any of his rivals, including Al Gore. What more is there to say? What's interesting is that liberals such as Krugman usually downplay desert. They say it's irrelevant whether the poor deserve their plight. All we should care about, they say, is need—the fact of need. But when it suits their purposes, liberals are more than happy to haul out the concept of desert. To repeat, the powers of the presidency are conferred on the person who gets the most electoral votes, not on the person who gets the most popular votes. Unless Krugman thinks there were violations of the law in Florida (and how would he know? is he a lawyer?), he should move on.

Addendum: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the 2000 election were stolen in some interesting sense. So what? The American people had every opportunity to throw President Bush out on his ear in 2004, and they didn't. He won handily. Why Krugman keeps bringing up the 2000 election is a mystery. It suggests that he has an unresolved emotional conflict. May I suggest therapy? Then again, perhaps he's already been to a therapist and been told to "let it all out" in his columns.

Addendum 2: Here is Richard Baehr's critique of Krugman's column.

Addendum 3: My friend Peg Kaplan can't believe that The New York Times hasn't fired Krugman. Ha! The Times loves him. He sells newspapers. Krugman's column is the most e-mailed of all op-ed columns, which suggests that it generates discussion. Controversy sells. Truth, civility, and justice be damned.

Addendum 4: In thinking about Krugman's bitterness about the 2000 election, it occurs to me that he may have been promised (or that he may have expected) a position in the Gore administration. Remember: Liberals without power are like fish out of water. Krugman may look at President Bush and see the man who kept him out of power.

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

To the Editor:

Re "Feeding More for Less in Niger" (Op-Ed, Aug. 19): While I'm sympathetic to staving people in Niger and other poor countries, it's overpopulation that is the problem. As long as women, through custom, tradition, religion or lack of effective birth control, have too many children to support, the problem will continue.

The path to food sufficiency is paved with effective birth control so that no family has more children than it can feed, clothe, house and educate. The "developed world" cannot keep feeding ever-increasing numbers of the world's poor; the poor countries must embrace birth control and encourage it.

S. R. Richardson
San Angelo, Tex., Aug. 19, 2005

There are two ways to register for a bike rally: by mail (i.e., in advance) and at the site (on the day of the rally). When you enter the registration area on rally day to pick up your packet, you see two signs: “Registration” and “Preregistration.” Those riders who paid by mail are said to have “preregistered.” I used to think this was improper English, and some people still do. Paula LaRocque was once the “writing coach” for The Dallas Morning News. She is now a columnist. In her column yesterday, she wrote:

Doesn’t “pre-register” simply mean registering early? Once you’ve registered, you’re registered.

LaRocque is correct that once a person is registered, he or she is registered. (That’s a tautology.) But there are two ways to register (or two types of registration): by mail and at the site. Rally organizers prefer that people register in advance. It helps them estimate attendance, and therefore helps them order the proper amounts of food, water, and other supplies. It also gives them a guaranteed money supply. People who don’t pay in advance are less likely than those who do pay in advance to show up if the weather is inclement. The more people who pay in advance, the more secure is the rally’s income. To encourage people to pay in advance, various privileges are conferred. First, it’s cheaper—for example, $20 instead of $25. Second, T-shirts and water bottles are guaranteed. Third, there are special lines to obviate waiting. I almost always pay in advance. When I reach the registration area, I go directly to the preregistration line. The line for those who are paying at the site is almost always longer, and sometimes much longer. It’s a quid pro quo. I commit myself to riding in inclement weather; the rally organizers treat me well.

My point is that there needs to be a distinction drawn between those who pay in advance and those who pay at the site. The term “preregister” accomplishes this purpose. And what’s wrong with it? It means previously register. Preregistered riders are those who previously registered, i.e., who paid in advance. Pre-owned vehicles are previously owned vehicles. There’s nothing wrong with that term, either. “Pre” is short for “previously.”

Even “preplan” makes sense on this understanding. If I planned next year’s trip a month ago, then my trip is preplanned in the sense that it’s previously (already) planned. Planning, like registering, is an activity. It takes time. I can plan today or I can plan next week. If I plan next year’s trip today, then a week from today it will make perfectly good sense for me to say that my trip is preplanned, for all I mean by that is that the planning is done. Of course, I could also say that my trip is planned, but that doesn’t inform my interlocutor of the time at which the planning occurred. “Preplanned” conveys more information than “planned.” Sometimes this information is useful.

I'm not sure whether I linked to this. If I did, I'm sorry for the duplication.

Ever heard that expression? Law, by its nature, is general. It concerns classes of people rather than individuals. There’s no law that says Keith Burgess-Jackson may not drive more than 65 miles per hour on I-30 in Arlington, but there is a law that says that no person may drive that fast on that stretch of road, and that law applies to me, since I’m a person. An easy case is one that the law was meant to apply to—a run-of-the-mill case, a typical case. A hard case is one the law was not meant to apply to. The traffic law is meant to apply to me as I drive to and from bike rallies. But what if I’m rushing my pregnant wife to the hospital? That’s a hard case. We’re inclined to say that the law was not meant to apply to people in that situation. When legislators write laws, they should do so for the typical case, not the atypical case.

Cindy Sheehan is demanding that th