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ר Some Worthy Charities. The end of the year is a good time to be thinking about making donations, both for self-discipline and for tax purposes. Here are a few charities I like. [permalink: 03.12.31a.htm .

ת A Special Prosecutor in the Plame-Wilson Affair. Attorney- General Ashcroft has appointed a special prosecutor for the Plame- Wilson Affair. Why? Many people think it because the leak of Plame's identity to the press has turned out to be a serious crime by someone important. I find that hard to believe, from what we know of the affair, as I've discussed before. Two possibilities that I have not seen mentioned are: 1. The leaker has been discovered, but either the leak was not a crime or is too trivial to warrant prosecution; or 2. The investigation has uncovered misbehavior, but by people in the CIA-- perhaps Plame herself-- who are opposed to the Bush Administration. [permalink: 03.12.31c.htm .

ר Judicial Nominee Blockage As a Game of Chicken. On November 12, Professor Bainbridge compared the situation in the U.S. Senate to a game of Chicken. [more, 03.12.30c.htm .

ש Parmalat, Conrad Black, Bainbridge, and Solving the Problem of Corporate Governance. Italy's eighth largest company, Parmalat, has collapsed after a massive accounting fraud and apparent embezzlement by its managers. This has been compared to Enron, but it is really much worse. [more, 03.12.30a.htm .

ת Harry Stein, How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace), Senator Bill Scott, Sulzberger's Anti- Americanism, and Racial Preferences. Mr. Stein's book is very enjoyable. I've excerpted the best parts below, including the confession that Senator Scott's reputation as the dumbest Congressman was a set-up, the desire of the current publisher of the New York Times that American soldiers be killed in Vietnam, Le Monde's endorsement of the theory that Monica Lewinsky was under orders from Israel, and so forth. [more, 03.12.30b.htm .

ש Sodomy Laws in Various Countries. In my December 26 post I wondered in which countries homosexuality is illegal. Mike Morgan points me to Age of Consent which he found via Eugene Volokh's post on a newspaper article on Strom Thurmond. That site also discusses sodomy laws. Someone else pointed me to a map of the world showing sodomy laws. [ 03.12.29b.htm .

ת Planned Parenthood's Abortion and Lobbying Businesses. Via Robert Walker and Carole Canfield, I am pointed to a story about Planned Parenthood's annual report which says that the organization's $766 million budget came about equally from taxpayer funding, donations, and clinic payments and it performed 227,385 abortions in 2002. [permalink: 03.12.29a.htm .

ש Stockdale on Suffering and Life's Meaning; Gray's Elegy; Nietzsche. In a sermon a while back Pastor Whitaker mentioned a story about Admiral Stockdale in Vietnam from the book Good to Great, by Jim Collins. I've boldfaced the key idea: that suffering as a prisoner of war was perhaps the best thing in his life, a source of utility and not disutility. [permalink: 03.12.28b.htm .

ר Some Latin Quotations. I happened upon a good site for Latin quotations. Here are some of them: [permalink: 03.12.28a.htm .

ס A Picture: "Coffee is Life" from Ariel Rubinstein. One part of game theorist Ariel Rubinstein's website is "A Worldwide Guide for Coffee Places where you can not only work but also think!" That's where I found the coffee picture from the Hungarian Cafe. [ 03.12.27d.htm .

ע State Funding of Religion in the United Kingdom and Belgium. In the United Kingdom, the established churches do not receive state funding directly. I know land endowments were traditionally very important--were tithes important too? The state does fund religious schools, but does not discriminate by religion. In Belgium, the government collects a religion tax, but the taxpayer designates his religion, and this can include non-religion. The tax revenues go to the appropriate organizations: 79 percent to the Catholic Church, 13 percent to laic organizations, 3 percent to Muslims and 3 percent to Protestants. [permalink: 03.12.27e.htm .

ע Homosexuality a Crime in Egypt, Amnesty International. The State Department reports that homosexuality is actively prosecuted in Egypt. [permalink: 03.12.26e.htm .

ף CORRECTED, DECEMBER 28. Anton Sherwood and the Ethics Quiz. A friend who's run for office on the Libertarian ticket tried the Ethics Philosophers Quiz. He scored high with Mill (1.00!) Bentham, and the Epicureans. [ 03.12.26d.htm .

פ Michael Shore's Webpage on Game Theory Movies, Atanarjuak. After looking at Professor Ribstein's Business Movie website, I looked for a game theory list and found Professor Michael Shore's game theory and popular culture page, with lists of movies, TV shows, and so forth. If you know of others he omits, please let him know. [permalink: 03.12.26c.htm .

ץ A Good Plaid. I liked this plaid wrapping paper, which Tom and Euna sent to us. Why do I like it? The repeated pattern, the double way to look at it, the mild colors, perhaps. [ 03.12.26b.htm .

צ Immortality: Mark Twain, Bible Verses. Someone asked me to post on the afterlife, writing,

In relation to your post on Assurance of Salvation, perhaps you can set out on your website a justification for believing in an afterlife at all. [permalink: 03.12.26a.htm .

צ The First Christmas Day. On December 14 I discussed the pastoral evidence that the birth of Jesus was not in December-- not that I object to celebrating it on December 25. Bishop Lightfoot has an argument for a different precise day-- the day of the Feast of Tabernacles. [ 03.12.25a.htm .

צ The Economics of Christmas Lights: Postrel. Virginia Postrel has a great article on Christmas lights in Reason magazine (another version was in the Wall Street Journal). The thrust of it is that price is down, quality is up, and the industry illustrates the good trend towards greater production of aesthetic goods and services. [ 03.12.24a.htm .

ק The Church of England: Disbelief Among Clergy. The Telegraph reports of the Church of England that "A recent survey of 2,000 of the Church's 10,000 clerics found that a third doubted or disbelieved in the physical resurrection and that only half were convinced by the truth of the virgin birth." [ 03.12.24b.htm .

ר Christmas Shopping Frustrations. Elizabeth Bortka sent me (or my wife?) this Internet story: [ 03.12.24c.htm .

ש Stigma: Posting the Names of Tax Delinquents. I came across a a proposed Wisconsin law that would result in the names of delinquent taxpayers being posted on the Net. [ 03.12.24d.htm .

ת Religion in Israel and Egypt. The 2003 State Department report on religious freedom is out, I see from Christianity Today's weblog. Here is one place where the State Department does a good job. I read a few of the entries. Here are some excerpts from the part on Israel , the PLO territories, and Egypt. [ 03.12.24e.htm .

ץ Religion in France: Alsace-Lorraine. The 2003 State Department report on religious freedom is out, I see from Christianity Today's weblog. Here is one place where the State Department does a good job. I read a few of the entries. Here are some excerpts from the part on France. [ 03.12.24f.htm .

פ Divorce in the Coptic Church. I learn from the 2003 U.S. State Department report that "The Coptic Orthodox Church permits divorce only in specific circumstances, such as adultery or conversion of one spouse to another religion." Thus, it does not take the Roman Catholic position. [ 03.12.24g.htm .

ק Liberal Religion in Public Schools Struck Down by a Court. Clayton Cramer discusses a new court decision which while not breaking any new legal ground, does come down against liberals-- in this case a public school in Ann Arbor which provided a platform to liberal religious leaders to attack conservative religion and censored a student speech that mildly--very mildly!--- questioned the assertions of the homosexualists. The opinion in "http://www.michbar.org/opinions/district/2003/120503/21290.pdf"> Hansen v. Ann Arbor Public Schools (E.D.Mich. 2003) begins, [ 03.12.23c.htm .

ר Georgetown Law School's Suppression of the Catholic Position on Homosexuality. Eugene Volokh has a good post on Georgetown University's suppress of mild anti- homosexual speech. [ 03.12.23d.htm .

ש New Format. I'm trying a slight change of format. I'll not have headings for each day, though I'll still separate days by horizontal bars. I also recently added my email address to each post, for convenience. The archives would be a good Christmas vacation project. The Hebrew letters, by the way, are just there as topic markers, because they are less distracting and more educational than Roman letters. [ 03.12.23b.htm .

ת Lopez Website: Euler's Theorem for Linking Constants, The Erdos Number, 0.9999...=1, The Axiom of Choice. Alex López-Ortiz has a nice math website at Waterloo. I happened on it in checking for Euler's Theorem for Linking Constants, as I've just named the theorem I talked about on my birthday. [ 03.12.23a.htm . "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > Erasmusen@Yahoo.com. ]

[ 03.12.20a.htm . "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > Erasmusen@Yahoo.com. ]

ר Does Yale Law School Discriminate by Religion in Condemning Discrimination by Religion? Yale Law School's placement office discriminates against organizations that discriminate on the basis of religion-- which, in effect, means it discriminates against religious organizations. [ 03.12.19a.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ש Nuttiness on the Net. On the Net, even if only 100 people in the whole world are interested in something, they can get together and discuss it more easily than 100 people in Bloomington can do it live. Hugh Hewitt perceptively points out in the Weekly Standard that as a result, those 100 people on the Net can forget how tiny a minority they are. [ 03.12.19b.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ת Constructive Trusts and Restitution After Theft. A nifty bit of legal artistry in our Law Lunch yesterday. Professor Heidt brought up a nutty Wisconsin case which went something like this: [ 03.12.19c.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ש Ann Coulter on Responding to a Lawless Supreme Court. Ann Coulter's Human Events article, "Supreme Court Opinions Not Private Enough," is very good. It could use some editing (and I've done some below), but it is quite powerful. I've boldfaced a key idea: that constitutional amendments are useless as a solution to a Supreme Court ignoring what the Constitution says. [ 03.12.18b.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ת Assurance of Salvation. Last night in Bible study, we asked how a person can know if he is saved or not. A relevant verse is Romans 10:9. [ 03.12.18a.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ר Leo Strauss and the Aims of Modern and Ancient States. I found this very nice summary in What was Leo Strauss up to? by Steven Lenzner and William Kristol, The Public Interest, Fall 2003.

Having presented the classic natural-right teaching, Strauss turns to the modern doctrine of natural right. His presentation brings forth several points of contrast between the classics and the moderns. First, the classics view moral and political matters "in the light of man’s perfection" or his end, whereas the moderns take their bearings from man’s origin or from man in "the state of nature." Second, according to the classics, "man is by nature a social being" or political animal, while to the moderns, the individual is prior to society. Third, for the classics, political activity is properly directed at the cultivation of virtue; for the moderns, the aim of political life is to replace the insecurity of man’s natural state by a secure liberty. [ 03.12.17b.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ש Amazon.com's Promotion of Child Molesting. Clayton Cramer explains how he dropped his association with Amazon.Com on account of a particularly nasty book that company unapologetically sells called Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers . Here are comments by the author and a reader from the Amazon website: [ 03.12.17c.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ת The Mess in Kosovo. Remember the Kosovo War? The Clinton Administration and many conservatives were saying that the Serbs were killing large numbers of Albanians in Kosovo and so it was necessary to do high- altitude, inaccurate bombing of civilian targets in Serbia to inflict enough pain on that country to withdraw from the ancient homeland of the Serbs (now housing mainly Albanian coming in from the west). Also, the War was a useful distraction from what Clinton was doing in Washington at the time (see my Madeline Albright post ). When the war ended, it turned out that the massacres were lies, [ 03.12.17d.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ק Archbishop Abbot's 260 Sermons on the Book of Jonah. George Abbot, later Archbiship of Canterbury, preached a sermon on some part of the Book of Jonah every Thursday from 1594 to 1599. That comes to 260 sermons on a book four chapters long, with 48 verses--- 5+ sermons per verse! (p. 157, Nicolson, God's Secretaries-- a 2003 Christmas List item). These were published as An exposition vpon the prophet Ionah [electronic resource] : Contained in certaine sermons, preached in S. Maries Church in Oxford. By George Abbot Professor of Diuinitie, and Maister of Vniuersitie Colledge. London: Imprinted by Richard Field, dwelling in the Blacke-friers, 1600. Description: [8], 638, [2] p. [ 03.12.16a.htm . Comments: "mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com" > erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

ר Morten Lauridsen and Choral Music's Importance. My December 14 post discussed Mariolatry in the text of a choir song composed by Morten Lauridsen. A quite separate point is that although we think of classical music composition as being in disastrous decline since 1914, it might be we are just looking at the wrong compositions. True, the symphony and the quartet are in decline, especially since 1950, but other forms of music have done well. [ 03.12.16b.htm ]

ש Two Fun Web Quizzes: Your Ideal Philosopher of Ethics and Your Ideal Presidential Candidate. I found two new fun Selecsmart quizzes from Professor Bainbridge's web- log. One asks you questions to determine your ideal philosopher of ethics and the other to determine your ideal presidential candidate for 2004. The questions are intelligent, and there aren't many of them. Here are my presidential results: [more, 03.12.16c.htm ]

ת Indiana University Tops in Administration Response to Affirmative- Action Bake Sale. Indiana University's temperate response to the affirmative-action bake sale held here contrast well with the response of university administrations everywhere else, apparently. [more, 03.12.16d.htm ]

צ Snow Question for my Exam. I particularly liked one of the questions on my exam today. I'll have to see whether the students responded well to it or not. It is hard to teach, and to learn, how to apply mathematical modelling to questions such as this one, but that is our ultimate aim, and a student who can't do it has not learned what the math is all about. [ 03.12.15e.htm ]

ק More Good Things for Christmas. I finished my one-by-one listing of good things in yesterday's log. The entire 2003 Christmas List is up on the web. At the bottom I list good things that didn't quite make the list: [ 03.12.15d.htm ]

ר France Breaking EU Rules 3 Ways. It is striking how France tries to promote the European Union while not obeying its rules. [ 03.12.15c.htm ]

ש Joe McCarthy and Dogs Chasing Cars. I found a good quotation from "The Cold War Heats Up," Michael J. Ybarra. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Nov 18, 2003. pg. D.7:

...Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy, who attacked alleged communists the way dogs chase cars, and with as much effect.

ת Ethical Lapses at Coca Cola. It is distressing how tolerant major corporations are of dishonest behavior by their executives. We should send a lot of them to jail, but we don't. I just read an article about fraud by Coca Cola that illustrates this, and also illustrates a number of other points in industrial organization. The article is "Into the Fryer: How Coke Officials Beefed Up Results Of Marketing Test; Consultant Gave Kids' Clubs Cash to Buy Value Meals In Burger King Promotion; Wiring $9,000 for Whoppers" Chad Terhune. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Aug 20, 2003. pg. A.1. Mid-level executives at Coca Cola defrauded Burger King, its second biggest fountain drink customer, in a minor but indicative way by buying about 700 meals to bias a test market and induce Burger King to pend $10 million on a joint promotion. [ 03.12.15a.htm ]

ק Choral Singing in Churches. We had a choral service in church today-- no sermon, but a special large choir and orchestra, and lots of reading of Scripture and poems. The music was nicely done, but I have serious doubts about singing in church by choirs and smaller groups without the congregation joining in. It becomes too much like a performance, especially if it is of high quality or by children. [ 03.12.14b.htm ]

ר Mary's Lack of Merit. In church today, the choir sang a song with old words set to music by Morton Lauridsen (Tomas Luis de Victoria and Francis Poulenc also seem to have set this to music). [more, 03.12.14c.htm ]

ש The Shepherds at Bethlehem: Special Passover Sheep? In church today, a poem was read which was based on the idea that the shepherds tending their flock at Christ's birth were taking care of special sheep whose lambs would be used in the Temple sacrifices. Bethlehem is near the Temple, so this has some plausibility. The idea seems to have sprung up as a way to make it plausible that shepherds were tending flocks at night in the middle of the winter, a strange time to be sleeping outside. But it looks like the idea doesn't work. [ 03.12.14d.htm ]

ת Euler and Falsely Proving God's Existence. I just found out from a http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/euler.html Waterloo website that a quotable story I'd heard somewhere is false. See Dirk J. Struik, A Concise History of Mathematics, Third Revised Edition, Dover, 1967, p. 129. I've split its one paragraph into three. [ 03.12.14e.htm ]

צ The Eleventh Day of Christmas: Historical Atlas of Jerusalem. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the eleventh. [ 03.12.13a.htm ]

ק Second Update on Court Hostility to Religion: Volokh. Here are a few more thoughts on two recent posts on the U.S. Supreme Court and religion.

(1a) Doesn't the government unequal treatment of religion and unreligion apply only to speech? [ 03.12.13b.htm ]

ר Interrogation: The Atlantic Monthly. Via the Curmudgeonly Clerk, a Mr. Bowden has a long and interesting article on interrogation techniques in The Atlantic. Here is one example, from Israel: [ 03.12.13c.htm ]

ש "Let One Hundred Mothers Cry...". Via the Curmudgeonly Clerk, I found Mr. Bowden's long and interesting article on interrogation techniques in The Atlantic, with this good if cynical quotation:

"There's an old Arab saying," Koubi says. "'Let one hundred mothers cry, but not my mother--but better my mother than me.'" [ 03.12.13d.htm ]

ת The Indiana Search Engine. I put a search engine on this weblog a little while back. Indiana University requires use of their search engine rather than the good freeware ones that exist, probably for some security reason. [ 03.12.13e.htm ]

צ Update on Court Hostility to Religion: Volokh/Cramer. Eugene Volokh has replied to my earlier comments on why the Supreme Court's move to neutrality in religion since 1940 shows hostility to Christianity. He makes some good objections, but I can answer them. He says, [ 03.12.12b.htm ]

ק The Supreme Court on McCain Feingold: Jonah Goldberg. Jonah Goldberg has the best commentary I've seen on the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding pretty much everything in McCain Feingold. I'm surprised. I was telling my students last year that the important part of the law was the rules on the limits on contributions, because forbidding organizations from posting advertisements on political issues close to election time was clearly unconstitutional. [ 03.12.12c.htm ]

ר Existence of Nash Equilibrium. I wrote up a new Section 3.7 for the 4th edition of Games and Information today, after a good discussion with some students yesterday. It talks about four reasons why a pure strategy Nash equilibrium might not exist. If any economists are reading this, your comments are welcomed. [ 03.12.12d.htm ]

ש The Rasmusen Weblog Controversy. There was a panel discussion on my weblog a few weeks ago, the IDS tells us: [ 03.12.12e.htm ]

ת Update on Convoluted Court Opinions. The Volokh Conspiracy had posts on other convoluted split-opinion court cases, following up on the McCain-Feingold one. Eugene Volokh says [ 03.12.12f.htm ]

ר Our Disordered Supreme Court: Multiple, Criss-Crossed Opinions. Via Volokh Conspiracy, I learn that the very long Supreme Court opinion just announced for McConnell v. FEC, has, according to the official opinion, the following line-up of Justices: [ 03.12.11d.htm ]

ש Dean and Kerry, Conspiracy Theorists. Jay Nordlinger at National Review says, [ 03.12.11c.htm ]

ת Howard Dean's Bikepath Religion. Jay Nordlinger at National Review also contributed this bizarrity:

[more, 03.12.11b.htm ]

צ The Eighth Day of Christmas: The Electric Toothbrush. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the eighth.

8. Electric toothbrushes are really a great idea. I have the Crest Spinbrush Pro, $8. [ 03.12.10e.htm ]

ק Andy Stone's Book. My Uni High classmate has a book out as of May 2003, Investment Climate Around the World: Voices of the Firms from the World Business Environment Survey. [ 03.12.10d.htm ]

ר Bernstein on the McDonald's Coffee Spill Case. On Volokh, http://volokh.com/2003_12_07_volokh_archive.html#107093681112071607 David Bernstein has a good post on the McDonald's Coffee Spill Case-- a refutation of the common claim that McDonald's served its coffee at an unduly hot temperature. [more, 03.12.10c.htm ]

ש Alfred Marshall on Mathematics in Economics. Marshall wrote a famous letter on economics and mathematics that doesn't seem to have been on the web yet. I just posted it for my PhD IO class, and mention it here in case others are interested. The famous bit is this: [ 03.12.10b.htm ]

ת A Real Book Contract: Game Theory Anthology Royalties from Films and Book Clubs. I mentioned on December 5 that my game theory book contract has a movie rights clause. I've scanned in one of my other contracts, which seems to have the same clause-- the publisher-editor contract for Readings in Games and Information (May 2001), up in MS-Word and html. It's up so I'll have an example of a real-world complex contract to discuss with my students, but others might find it interesting too. Here is the boilerplate on movies and such: [ 03.12.10a.htm ]

ק The Seventh Day of Christmas-- Cornwell's Sharpe War Novels. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the seventh. [ 03.12.09a.htm ]

ר Update: Eugenic Abortions and Homosexuality. A previous post reported the case in England of late-term abortion because the baby had a cleft palate. Most often, the reason for therapeutic abortions is probably that the baby is a girl (that is how I interpret the growing imbalance in the sexes in Asia), or, in America, that the baby has Down's Syndrome and would have done poorly in school. My Friend the Battery Man has a brilliant thought on how a different kind of eugenic abortion will cause a crisis in the courts in a few years: [ 03.12.09b.htm ]

ש Update: The Metric System's Deficiencies. On December 2 I talked about how bad the metric system is. My Friend the Battery Man has, as usual, cogent things to say: [ 03.12.09c.htm ]

ת Eugene Volokh on Church and State Rulings As Not Anti-Christian. Eugene Volokh has a post today responding to Clayton Cramer's comment that the Supreme Court is anti-religious and uses the 1st Amendment to restrict religion rather than promoting it. Mr. Cramer's comment is a broad one, but Professor Volokh, while admitting that much of what the courts do actively discourages religion (e.g. by forbidding the government to aid religious groups in the same way as it aids nonreligious groups), does not think judges are being hostile to religion when they forbid governments to encourage religion. Professor Volokh's point is worth discussing, but it is wrong. Here is his full post (the whole thing really needs to be read to get an accurate view): [ 03.12.09d.htm ]

ק The Sixth Day of Christmas-- God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the sixth.

6. Adam Nicholson, God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, 304 pages, $17.47. Nicholson does an amazing job of making the religious politics of 1605 fascinating. [ 03.12.08a.htm ]

ר Bush Hating--Examples and Theory. Here are some more examples of Bush Hating, and my theory-- that people hate him because he doesn't care what they think of him. Also, a bit of comparison with Clinton Hating. ... [more, 03.12.08b.htm ]

ש Evolution Gaps--New Species. The argument between Biologists, Intelligent Design people, and Creationists is a curious one, sociologically. I won't go into it now. But one feature I would like cleared up is whether there is direct evidence of the appearance of new species. By this I don't mean new types of animals that cannot breed with the old types for behavioral or physiological reasons--- the Chihuahua and the Great Dane, say-- but a new type whose DNA is different enough to be a new species. Creationists say there is no evidence, and a strongly anti-creationist article from Scientific American seems to grant their point, if you read between the lines and see what the article does *not* say. Is there a better account than this one? ... [ 03.12.08c.htm ]

ת Evite Web Party Invitations. Jim O'Neill sent me a web invitation to a Christmas party in his Virginia home recently. The idea is a good one. This free (ad- funded) software seems to be able to show you the list of guests invited and who have already accepted too, a neat feature one doesn't get with regular invitations, though the feature was turned off on the actual invitation I was sent. The site is here at Evite. ... [ 03.12.08d.htm ]

ק The Fifth Day of Christmas-- Ucluelet, Vancouver Island. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the fifth.

5. Ucluelet on Vancouver Island is a wonderful place-- clams and sea cucumbers, rain forest and seals. We stayed at The Cabins.

ר Publilius Syrus on Carrot Incentives. A quotation website tells us that Publilius Syrus says in his Maxims,

Beneficium accipere, libertatem est vendere.

I'll have to find out more about Syrus, who seems to have other good maxims too, though I'd never heard of him before. Also, I will repeat a plea I often make to quotation listers such as Bartlett's: please give us specific citations. I'd really like to know where to check that you've got the quotation right. It isn't quite that "If you don't have a citation, he didn't say it", but for scholarly work it's nice to have some evidence that the supposed quotation really is a quotation. ... [ 03.12.07b.htm ]

ש Cost-Benefit Analysis for Anti-Spam Software. Indiana University has decided to pay about $300,000 for anti-spam software. I am on the Bloomington Faculty Council Technology Policy Committee. I was skeptical about the cost, wondering whether the same amount of spam might be stopped at lower cost. I was told that actually the software would do other good things besides stop spam, and am satisfied that this is so. Here, though, let me show why the benefit of anti-spam software far exceeds $300,000. ... [ 03.12.07c.htm ]

ת Homosexuality and The Church. The essential thing about churches and homosexuality is that they should deal with it just as they do other sins. This raises the issue of what they do with other sins.

There is a rhetorical switch-game here. Take racial hatred and homosexuality. With homosexuality, people take the theologically correct position that you should hate the sin and love the sinner, and that we are all sinners, and must remember to be compassionate. All quite true. But when it comes to racism, people condemn it unthinkingly and somehow all the caveats about loving the sinner never get mentioned. Why the difference? I think it is because people don't like to offend the world. [ 03.12.07d.htm ]

ר The Fourth Day of Christmas-- The Movie, Luther. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the fourth. ... [ 03.12.06a.htm ]

ש Official Anti-Semitism in Egypt. Via Taranto and the Wall Street Journal and the Middle East Media Research Institute we learn that the director of the Alexandria Library museum in Egypt considers The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be not only genuine, but a Jewish holy book on the level of the Talmud. He also is skeptical of the Holocaust, believing that Hitler could easily have killed all the Jews in Europe if he'd wanted to, but he didn't, and the West is deceived on this point. Here are the details. ... [ 03.12.06b.htm ]

ת The Wal-Mart Trampling Incident Tells us More About American Court Abuse than About American Shoppers. I forget my source, but I noted down the web address for this interesting report on the woman who was supposedly trampled by selfish Wal-Mart shoppers. It turns out she has filed 16 previous injury claims at places where she has shopped or worked, all of them dubious. And yet she walks free. This is injustice as much as when a court turns down an obviously meritorious claim (does any court ever do that?). Here are the details from WKMG-Local 6 News. [ 03.12.06c.htm ]

ק The Third Day of Christmas-- Ayres and Nalebuff. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the third. ... [ 03.12.05a.htm ]

ר Cost-Benefit Analysis for Anti-Spam Software. This will have to come tomorrow! I am finding the Berube discussion too stimulating.  

ש Update on Professor Berube's Article: More from Erin O'Connor's Weblog. Professor's Berube's article in The Chronicle of Higher Education inspired some more good thoughts by Erin O'Connor and her correspondents and links. ... [ 03.12.05c.htm ]

ת Update on Professor Berube's Article: Novels for a Literature Course. I commented yesterday on Professor's Berube's article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on how to deal with obnoxious conservative (or perhaps I should say "obnoxious/conservative" or "conservative, i.e. obnoxious"?) students. I emailed him to let him know, as one ought to especially in the case of hard-hitting criticism. He very impressively and politely emailed me back quickly, and at least paid me the compliment of saying, implicitly, that I was not " without qualification the most unscrupulous one I've seen", since he said that about somebody else. After a bit more thought, though, he did say he wanted to comment on one particular part of my entry, which I'll repeat here. ... [more, 03.12.05d.htm ]

ש The Second Day of Christmas--Weblogs. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the second (which is perhaps unnecessary for this audience!) ... [more, 03.12.04b.htm ]

ת O'Connor on Berube on Conservative Students as Loonies. Erin O'Connor writes interesting commentary on an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Michael Berube, an English professor at Penn State. Here is an excerpt that shows the tone of his article. [ 03.12.04a.htm ]

צ The First Day of Christmas-- AVI-MPG Movies. It has long been my custom to send out lists of good things of the year with my Christmas cards. I thought it might be nice to set this out one by one in my weblog. They are not in any particular order. Here is the first. ... [permalink, 03.12.03a.htm ]

ק Ronald Reagan's Divorce from Jane Wyman--Whose Fault? When my father was down for Thanksgiving, we discussed Ronald Reagan's divorce, and why nobody made much of a deal about it. I wondered if it was because the divorce was not the fault of Reagan but of his first wife. Such seems to be the case, from what I read about Jane Wyman's total of four failed marriages and five divorces (she remarried one man for a few extra years). ... [ permalink, 03.12.03b.htm ]

ר The Abolition of Marriage. Nicole Gelinas makes one of my pet points about marriage in her New York Post op-ed, A TATTERED PRIZE: that we have changed the legal definition of marriage to where it doesn't mean much nowadays. Queer marriage is thus not a big deal-- the institution is not threatened-- it is already destroyed, legally. ... [ permalink, 03.12.03c.htm ]

ש Aborting a Baby with a Cleft Palate. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of abortion is how the scariest kind of eugenics-- killing the handicapped-- has become routine and, apparently, uncontroversial. In Britain, a cleft palate is enough of a defect to allow your elimination. From The Guardian: ... [ permalink, 03.12.03d.htm ]

ת Britain's Rise in Prestige. Not all the news is bad today. A lot of people have been saying that America's unilateral actions would hurt its prestige worldwide. Britain, bucking the U.N. just like America and the E.U. much seems not to have lost but to have gained a remarkable amount of prestige and influence, at least in the eyes of the Germans. The Telegraph reports on the result of a survey: ... [ permalink, 03.12.03e.htm ]

ת Against the Metric System: Levy, Drum. The metric system is a bad idea. Jacob Levy notes in a post responding to Kevin Drum that it is emblematic of a bigger debate: The French Revolution vs. Classic Liberalism, Robespierre and Napoleon versus Montesquieu and De Tocqueville. ... [ permalink, 03.12.02a.htm ]

ת Russell Kirk's Six Canons of Conservatism. James Pinkerton, in lamenting in National Review modern conservatism's unwillingness to oppose things such as social security and medicare, gives us the six Canons of Conservatism of Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind (1953): ... [ permalink, 03.12.01a.htm ]

ת Jonah and Hezekiah. Today Pastor Whitaker's sermon was on patience until the Second Coming. He read from several places in Isaiah, and I was struck by how similar Hezekiah's prayer in Isaiah 38 is to Jonah's in Jonah 2. Here they are, for comparison. Jonah 2:1-9 says

Then Jonah prayed unto Jehovah his God out of the fish's belly. And he said,

I called by reason of mine affliction unto Jehovah,
And he answered me;
Out of the belly of Sheol cried I,
Thou heardest my voice.
... [more, permalink, 03.11.30a.htm ]

ק Aristotle on Homosexuality as Brutishness Akin to Cannibalism. I still have to sort out what the Greeks and Romans thought of homosexuality. Sometimes it seems accepted as normal and good; other times it is called perverse or is punishable by death. Even a single author can illustrate both (e.g. Plato in The Symposium and The Laws). Here is what Aristotle has to say in Book VII, Section 5, of The Ethics. ... [ permalink, 03.11.29d.htm ]

ר Volokh on Islamic Law in Contracts. Eugene Volokh has some interesting comments on Islamic law in contracts. He notes one problem for judges: if a wedding ceremony has been conducted in an Islamic setting, does it incorporate standard default Islamic rules of marriage? ... [permalink, 03.11.29c.htm ]

ש Steyn on Terrorism: "These five regimes must go". Via Volokh conspiracy, I see a superlative Mark Steyn article, "These five regimes must go". The five regimes are Syria's, North Korea's, Persia's, Sudan's, and Saudi Arabia's. He forget to include Palestine, I think. Libya is properly omitted. Sudan is a bit of a question mark, hateful though I find its domestic policy. Steyn's general point is the good one that civilized people will not be safe unless those regimes are overthrown, and there is no reason-- not even prudential--not to overthrow them. I'd agree. Certainly, if it's worth spending great effort building Iraq (not "rebuilding"--it never was in good shape) then that effort would be better spent overthrowing other regimes. ... [more, permalink, 03.11.29b.htm ]

ת Saudi Strategy to the U.S.A. as Jugurthan Foreign Policy. Via the Volokh conspiracy, I found the superlative Mark Steyn article, "These five regimes must go". One particular paragraph reminded me of the clever strategy of Jugurtha, king of Numidia, in dealing with Rome, a country with overwhelming military superiority but certain moral weaknesses. Here's the paragraph: ... [ permalink, 03.11.29a.htm ]

ר Islamic Law in the United States. The Volokh Conspiracy had a couple of posts today on the application of Islamic law in Canada, based on a WorldnetDaily article. Jacob Levy and Eugene Volokh note that it is nothing special, or unjust, to allow private parties to incorporate by reference any legal code they want into their private contracts. I noticed this because Jeffrey Stake and I came across some examples of this in American courts, where it is nothing new, even in connection with marriage (so long as the marriage included a prenuptial agreement). ... [ permalink, 03.11.28c.htm ]

ש The Texas List of Unbalanced Professors. A student organization at the University of Texas has had the good idea of posting a weblist of professors who politicize their classrooms. We faculty never monitor this kind of misbehavior by instructors, and sometimes we even glorify our laziness by calling it devotion to "academic freedom". But it is much more important to look into what a professor teaches and how he teaches it than to monitor student happiness or unhappiness via end-of- semester surveys as we do. Here are a couple of items from the list. ... [ permalink, 03.11.28b.htm ]

ת The Gollin Case of Weblog Suppression at Illinois. I've discussed the Gollin case before. From the Chronicle of Higher Education, November 21, 2003:

ש What Seems Bad May Be Good: Aquinas. It seems Thomas Aquinas thought this is the best of all possible worlds, not an unreasonable position to take. He has a nice analogy for why I should not think things would be better if I were in charge and changed them to fit my way of thinking: ... [ permalink, 03.11.27b.htm ]

ת Physics and Mathematics: Gollin. These slides (in pdf) of Professor Gollin of Illinois on a lecture on particle physics titled "It's not Like Colliding Watermelons," really make me wish I knew enough of the subject to follow them. That an outsider can be so intrigued is a tribute to the lecture. ... [permalink, 03.11.27a.htm ]

ר Gays, Homosexuals, Homosexualists, and Queers. Homosexuality creates difficult problems of terminology. "Homosexual" is a well-established term that conveys meaning pretty well,but it has the huge disadvantage of being five syllables long. "Gay" is one syllable--which is why it has been so successful-- but it is a propaganda term that still has weird resonances with its old meaning of "happy"; e.g. in "gay cancer" (AIDS), or "gay leaders disturbed by weblog". My father, visiting me for Thanksgiving, suggests wisely that "queer" is the best term. This has one syllable, combines its original meaning with the new meaning of sexual deviant well (and without damaging the old meaning), and is even used proudly by many homosexuals. ... [permalink, 03.11.26c.htm ]

ש The History of the Thanksgiving Holiday. I've prepared a Thanksgiving Webpage with history of the holiday, excerpts from public proclamations of it, and links to those public proclamations. It is interesting to see how deeply religious the presidential proclamations have been, and that even Bill Clinton did not excise God from the holiday. Lincoln's is one of the most eloquent: ... [permalink, 03.11.26b.htm ]

ת Mistakes in a Keegan Book. History News Network has a shocking article on factual mistakes in John Keegan's Fields of Battle:The Wars for North America. Mr. Keegan is one of my favorite authors, and one of his great talents is an eye for the interesting little- known fact. Yet this book contains errors that would be obvious to anyone with a moderate knowledge of history-- it has Jefferson alive in the 1830's, General Johnston (who was killed in the battle) ordering a Confederate withdrawal from Shiloh, the Old Northwest including Tennessee, and the American Revolutionary War lasting from 1776 to 1781, and so forth. Either Keegan has fallen to pieces or he did not write (or read) most of the book. ... [permalink, 03.11.26a.htm ]

ת Churches and Nonprofit Disclosure Regulation. The Washington Post has an interesting article (via Christianity Today's Weblog) on church finances. The following paragraph made me wonder about disclosure regulation. There ought to be a rule requiring churches, and other tax-exempt nonprofits, to report their income and the salaries of the five highest-paid employees, similar to rules for public corporations. Good organizations do this anyway; bad organizations do not. For example: ... [ permalink, 03.11.25a.htm ]

ש Weblog Controversy Items: Amazon Review, Vaughan Weblog on Pedophiles. My brother pointed out to me that someone gave my book, Games and Information, a one-star customer review rating on Amazon because he objects to my views on homosexuality. Be assured, game theory fans-- there is very little sex in the book, and no homosexuality that I can recall, so any ignorance I may have on the subject isn't really reflected in its quality. Here's the review. ... [ permalink, 03.11.24b.htm ]

ת Acts Between Consenting Adults: The German Homosexual Cannibal. While we're on unpleasant topics, I just came across a singularly disgusting example of an act between consenting adults that I would like to ban even if both parties consent. Armin Meiwes advertised for "young, well-built men aged 18 to 30 to slaughter" and did just that. His defense is that the young man consented, and joined him in auto- cannibalism before he died. Don't read this if you don't want to be disturbed. I'm not sure I was wise to. But, J.S. Mill liberals, if the young man did consent, do you object to this? If you do, what is the difference between allowing this and allowing simple sodomy, except that you personally find cannibalism offensive, while other people find both sodomy and cannibalism offensive? ... [permalink, 03.11.24a.htm ]

ר Worry and Prayer. Pastor Whitaker's sermon at ECC today made a good point: Worry is good. It is good as raw material, because it can be turned into prayer. Whenever you worry, rememember to pray. And then you will view your worries not as problems but as opportunities, and instead of complaining that you worry all the time, you will feel blessed by all the provocations to prayer. ... [permalink, 03.11.23c.htm ]

ש The Novels of Evelyn Waugh and C.P. Snow. I recently finished C.P. Snow's The Light and the Dark (1947, 344 pp), which is the story of Roy Calvert, one of the fellows in The Masters. It was perhaps worth reading-- but just barely. Calvert's problem is a sort of melancholy or depression, and Snow just can't get the reader to appreciate it. It does not have the ring of truth. In fact, Snow has written only one first-rate book, as far as I can tell: The Masters, which is about the election for the master of a college. Corridors of Power, about a rising young government minister, is pretty good too, but not in the same class as The Masters. In this respect, Snow is like Evelyn Waugh, who has also apparently written one first-rate book (Brideshead Revisited) and one second- rate one (Decline and Fall) , but no others that are clearly worth reading. I was disappointed to find this out. After reading each author's good book, I dipped into a number of his other books, only to be disappointed. ... [ permalink, 03.11.23b.htm ]

ת Condemning Homosexuality: An Indication of the Critic's Hidden Desires? It is often said by pro-homosexuals that people who oppose homosexuality do so because they are latently homosexual themselves. I've never understood the logic of this. Some time ago Brian Leiter posted the following, which he thinks highly enoughly to have expanded and reposted more recently: ... [ permalink, 03.11.23a.htm ]

צ Phenomenology. I've long been puzzled by what this means. I'm slightly closer because Professor Leiter pointed me to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Phenomenology. [ permalink, 03.11.22e.htm ]

ק Staten Island Democrats Honor Al Qaeda Terrorist. Incredibly, the Staten Island Democratic Association has honored Lynne Stewart, a lawyer under indictment for aiding the "blind sheik" terrorist plot. As Taranto of the Wall Street Journal reports, ... [ permalink, 03.11.22d.htm ]

ר Medical Care. Here are some more facts on medical care for the poor in America. According to the Statistical Abstract, Table 516, health public assistance was $225 billion, out of total welfare spending of $436 billion (Note that this excludes Medicare and Social Security; we are not talking about poor old people). ... [ permalink,(go to bottom) 03.11.21a.htm ]

ש Marriage Law. Jacob Levy on Volokh has a posting on whether it is constitutional for a state to ban non-procreative marriage. Of course it is. Here's an email I sent Professor Levy, commenting on how states have actually done this, with wide public support. ... [ permalink, 03.11.22b.htm ]

ת Bush-Hating. I'm collecting weirdly excessive quotes as examples of Bush hatred. Readers are welcome to submit entries. Here are a few: ... [ permalink, 03.11.22a.htm ]

ר HEALTH CARE IN THE USA AND OTHER COUNTRIES. Thought Arguments and Rants, via Professor Leiter gives a table of data on a subject I'd been thinking of writing on sometime. I've excerpted some key numbers below and added a last column:

Country 		Pub%  $/capita  GDP%   Doctors/capita	  Public $/capita

Canada 			70.4% 	$2,433 	 9.1% 	  	2.1				$1,713

France 			76% 	$2,211 	 9.3% 	  	3.3				$1,680

Germany 		74.8% 	$2,615 	10.6% 	 	3.2				$2,000

Japan 			78.1% 	$1,852 	 7.5% 	  	1.9				$1,446

Korea 			43.1% 	  $762 	 5.6% 	 	1.3				  $328

United Kingdom 		80.5% 	$1,704 	 7.2% 	 	2.0				$1,371

United States 		44.2% 	$4,287 	13%   		2.7				$1,894

Pub%	 - Public Expenditure on Health as a Percentage of Total Expenditure on Health
$/capita - Total Expenditure on Health per capita in US$ GDP% 	 - Total Expenditure on
Health as a % of GDP Doctors/capita - Practicing Physicians per 1000 population

The figures  are from   1999, the last year for which complete statistics are available.

ש WEBLOG IMPROVEMENTS: SEARCH ENGINE AND PHOTO. I did figure out how to incorporate a search engine and photo today, thanks to discovering I ought to skip a seminar I'd been thinking of attending. What I learned about the law school colloquium was: ... [ permalink, 03.11.21b.htm ]

ת TWO WELL-CONDUCTED HERESY TRIALS OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY SOCIETY. From Christianity Today we hear of the Evangelical Theology Society coming close to expelling two members, one of them (Clark Pinnock) very well known, for failing to believe in the principles of the Society. Though I think that "Openness Theism" is dead wrong, I don't believe in inerrancy myself and so would deserve to be expelled if I belonged, but I admire how well they seem to have managed things. ... [ permalink, 03.11.21c.htm ]

ש Items to Add to the Weblog: Search Engine, Photo of Me. I'd like to add a search engine, but tonight I find that the Pico engine does not work because the entry point fails, probably because of some Indiana University security feature, since an entry point in Geocities does work. Maybe a workaround would be to post a duplicate of this file in Geocities and use it as the entry point, but it is too late to do that tonight.

ת Revolutions and Reputation. My experience with Chancellor Brehm made me think of a new reason why revolutions might be so sudden and unanimous. The best- known idea currently is the one that, I think, Timur Kuran uses in his book: that it is so dangerous to be the only person to start a revolution that nobody will do so until it is obvious that the revolution will be successful--at which point it usually will have massive support. Very similar is if you hope to get a reward from the new regime (rather than fearing a punishment from the old). The new reason I've thought of is not fear, but the desire to look powerful. If you know that the revolution is going to succeed, you should back it, so people will increase their estimate of your power. [ permalink, http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/03.11.20a.htm ]

ת Descriptive Jurisprudence. I took a quick look at a paper of Brian Leiter's that he mentions in his web-log. The paper is "Beyond the Hart/Dworkin Debate: The Methodology Problem in Jurisprudence" here, appearing this fall in the American Journal of Jurisprudence as part of a symposium on "Law's Moral Foundations: Has It Any?" with papers by Joseph Raz, Timothy Endicott, Matthew Kramer, and John Finnis. I have a hard time getting motivated to read work in this style, but Professor Leiter's paper is a good one to file away for a summary of it (I suppose I should really look at Posner's Problems of Jurisprudence again too). Two of the questions in jurisprudence are (1) How do judges decide cases? and (2) How should judges decide cases?. I found this difficult to follow without examples, and decided that I'd start over with my own example rather than try to figure out what Dworkin and Hart are saying (even Leiter's article couldn't, with a quick read, convince me that those two big names have anything useful to say).

The Hornpipe Hypothetical: Jones sues Smith in a civil case, claiming that Smith burned down Jones's house on behalf of the terrorist Al Quaeda organization. The judge in the bench trial can see that Smith did burn down the house, and he must decide on a remedy. He has four alternatives: enjoin Smith to leave America; make Smith pay money damages; make Smith dance a hornpipe naked in a shopping mall; or impose no penalty on Smith, but make Jones pay Smith's court costs. ... [more, permalink, 03.11.19a.htm ]

ק The Nigerian Scam. I keep getting spam with the Nigerian Scam. It's actually the most interesting spam that I get, so I've read it a few times. I saved three recent messages as a memento of our times. ... [permalink, 03.11.18d.htm ]

ר Senator Moseley Braun. The group of Democratic contenders for the Presidency is truly pitiful. The only one with any kind of national stature is Representative Gephardt; the only one with a live mind is Governor Dean; we must wonder whether any of them (except General Clark, maybe?) can manage a government of any size, and then we have the amazing Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun. The two of them make Jesse Jackson look like a statesman. They are useful for purposes of humor, though, as a passage from a Moseley-Braun speech reported by The American Spectator shows:

We're gonna show the American people that George Orwell wrote fiction, not prophecy. And we will get our civil liberties back. We will repeal the Patriot Act. We will make certain that you have privacy in your home, you will have privacy with what you read, you will be able to think again.

[ permalink, 03.11.18c.htm ]

ש Rasmusen Weblog Controversy. Albert Mohler wrote a nice article on the controversy recently. ... [ permalink, 03.11.18b.htm ]

ת Bush Hating. I don't have time to give this interesting subject the attention it deserves right now, but I want to note a fact from The Public Interest that is relevant:

In a recent paper delivered at Princeton University, political scientist Gary Jacobson noted that, before the terrorist attacks of September 11, the gap between Democratic and Republican support of President Bush was wider than it has been for any prior president, including Bill Clinton. Before September 11, 88 percent of self-identified Republicans supported Bush; only 31 percent of self-identified Democrats did. This 57-point gap was the largest Jacobson had ever found.

ת Alfred Kinsey. National Review recently had an article on Alfred Kinsey. Kinsey was a professor here at Indiana University, and we still have a sex research institute named after him, to our shame. For it turns out that despite the facade of scientific objectivity that Kinsey displayed, of a staid entomologist who had decided to apply boringly rigorous statistical techniques to an important but taboo subject, Kinsey's research was laughable in its absence of rigor and he himself was a secret adulterer, homosexual, and masochist. The lack of rigor was obvious, and commented on, " even at the time. The opposition to sexual morality has come out only recently. But see how similar, despite their different spins, are articles in the conservative National Review and the liberal Nation on Kinsey. First, the National Review. ... [ permalink, 03.11.17d.htm ]

ק The High Priest. I've been trying to find a source for the claim that the high priest of Israel would enter the Holy of Holies room in the Temple alone on the Day of Atonement to sacrifice for the nation. That is surprisingly hard to pin down reliably, but the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter 9, is a source. I've added my own boldface, as usual.

... [ permalink, 03.11.16d.htm ]

ר Churchill versus the BBC. Andrew Sullivan quotes Churchill, always a worthwhile thing to do, on the interesting proposition that an entirely partisan politicized public agency is better than a nonpartisan politicized public agency. That makes sense, once you think about it. And it implies that if we are to have politicized judges, we should not have independent ones. Here's the quote: ... [ permalink, 03.11.16c.htm ]

ש The Democrat Intelligence Memo Leak and the Liberal Press. Hugh Hewitt has a good story in the Weekly Standard on a reason, besides liberal bias directly, why the mainstream press has not picked up on the Senate Intelligence Memo Leak Scandal that I've posted on previously. ... [ permalink, 03.11.16b.htm ]

ת Political Makeup of Congress in the 20th Century: Graphics. My high school classmate, Mr. Sherwood, brought to my attention a wonderful site by Poole and Rosenthal on the Democrat-Republican and Economic-Social Conservative-Liberal dimensions, a site that includes mesmerizing animated gifs over time. If you want to see how real scholars do this, as opposed to the fun but amateur Political Compass, go here. You can tell these professor love political statistics the way sports fans love baseball statistics. Professor Poole's course webpage has an even greater treasury of graphs and statistics. I'll have to tell my industrial organization class, G601, since we've recently been doing location models. ... [permalink, 03.11.16a.htm ]

ת Notes for my Christmas List. Each year I send out with our Christmas cards a list of a dozen good things I discovered that year. I encourage others to take up this custom-- information makes a good gift, being disposable, personal, and space-saving. Here are some candidate items. *Mazdaspeed Protege. *Web-logs. *Terra Yukon Gold Yogurt and Green Onion potato chips. Luther, movie. Tablet PC's. Ucluelet, Vancouver Island. God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, Adam Nicholson. Dictators book. Bernard Cornwell, Waterloo, Sharpe's Tiger. Contact cement. Electric toothbrushes. Spirited Away, movie. *AVI-MPG Movies with digital cameras. Don Van Natta, FIRST OFF THE TEE, 2003. Cordless mouses. James Hogg: Confessions of a justified sinner. Greaves: Cancer the Evolutionary Legacy. Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, Patrick Kavanaugh. David Frum, THE RIGHT MAN: The Surprise Presidency of George Bush. 2003, 303 pages. ... [permalink, 03.11.15a.htm ]

ר When is War Justified? A recent article in The Public Interest says

And in yet another public-opinion survey conducted in March 2003, almost one-fifth said that war is "never morally justified."

ש Canadian Suppression of Civil Liberties: The Hugh Owen Case. What is "hate speech", as a specialized legal term? A Canadian politician defending laws against hate speech as not really infringing on freedom of speech quotes the Canadian supreme court as saying " 'hatred' connotes emotion of an intense and extreme nature that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation". Thus, in Canada, someone like Mr. Chait who publicly admits that he detests George Bush apparently would be liable to criminal penalties (or would be if Bush were gay or black or female, at least). ... [ permalink, 03.11.14b.htm ]

ת JUDGE MOORE'S REMOVAL. I've used up my time and indignation on the Hugh Owens case, so I will merely link to the Alabama decision removing Judge Moore from office for upholding his oath of office against the caprice of a federal judge. Here it is. [ permalink, 03.11.14c.htm ]

ת Lillian Rasmusen. Can the Volokh Conspiracy beat this?

ר Oppression in Canada. David Bernstein said on Volokh that Canada was unfree, even quoting someone calling it a "totalitarian theocracy", and Crooked Timber has a response with lots of comments. Neither mentions specific cases, but there's already been one prosecution, conviction, and failed appeal. WORLD magazine reported in March on Hugh Owens in Saskatoon, who was fined $4500 (by a one- woman panel-- no jury right here) for quoting Leviticus in a newspaper ad. The newspaper was fined the same amount. He appealed to a federal court, which confirmed his guilt and said he deserved to be punished. ... [ permalink, 03.11.10c.htm ]

ש Microsoft. Sherwood's Ogre Blog has this wonderful quote:

Remember, the truly evil thing about Microsoft is that because of them, we think of unix as the good stuff. ---Jon Callas

ת Anglican Churches in Various Nations. The Independent had a useful list of national Anglican churches, their sizes, and what they think about homosexuality: ... [ permalink, 03.11.10a.htm ]

ק Abortion and the First 14 Days. Via the Christianity Today weblog, I learn that the head of the Australian Anglican Church, which is relatively conservative, takes an intermediate position on abortion which I am surprised is not more common: that abortion is permissible very early (the first two weeks) but not later. [ permalink, 03.11.09d.htm ]

ר Conservative Catholics and Church Authority: McCloskey. John McCloskey shows what can happen when a smart Wall Streeter turns pastor. Via the Christianity Today weblog, the Boston Globe tells us: ... [ permalink, 03.11.09c.htm ]

ש Luther, Purity and Salvation. My wife and I saw the movie Luther a few days ago. It is a good movie--quite moving, without my quite knowing why, and with superlative acting by Peter Ustinov as Duke Frederick the Wise. It seemed historically and theologically accurate, too, which is remarkable. (I do wonder about the treatment of Carlstadt, and I did find the Peasants' War section completely confusing, but then, it was a confusing war.) The movie stimulated me to think about Purity and that gave me a new angle on the perplexing doctrine of Total Depravity-- the orthodox doctrine of Luther and Calvin (and perhaps Augustine?) that all men, even the apparently virtuous and or saintly, are sinful and do not deserve eternity with God. The proximate cause of my seeing this angle was a passage from Luther's Table Talk that I read after seeing the movie: ... [ permalink, 03.11.09b.htm ]

ת The NMR Nobel Prize. I posted on this some time ago. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a long good article that persuades me that the Prize was properly given just to Professors Lauterbur and Mansfield, and not to Dr. Damadian. [ permalink, 03.11.09a.htm ]

ר Update: Treason in the Senate Intelligence Committee? On November 5 I commented on the treacherous Democratic Intelligence Committee memo. Via Taranto, we learn that at least one Democrat, Zell Miller, is outraged too, and uses words stronger than mine: [ permalink, 03.11.08b.htm ]

ש Supporting Evil: UNICEF and Public Radio. UNICEF has been given as patronage to an American liberal, who has ruined it, National Review tells us. For example: ... [ permalink, 03.11.08c.htm ]

ת Rules For Dealing with Bureaucrats. I just thought of a new rule: be sure and give them some piece of writing, even if it isn't the one they requested. For example, if they want you to write down the day you first heard the word "Africa", don't leave that entry blank. Instead, write down something like "Probably around May 3, 1961, but I don't remember." That way, the blank is filled-- and remember, Bureaucracy Abhors a Vacuum. A corollary is that if the rules demand a particular document, give the bureaucracy some document, even if it isn't the same one they asked for. ... [ permalink, 03.11.08a.htm ]

ש Conservative Environmentalism. A recent American Spectator article reminds me that it is a bit odd that conservationism and conservatism are not more closely linked. This would not quite be the liberal's conservationism, of course, since the conservative's objectives would tend more to beauty and less to a view of natural objects as gods, and the conservative would, I hope, be less fearful of poor health and more trustful of science. Yet it could be more extreme: the conservative might be less reluctant to say that he'd prefer saving Sequoias to saving starving children. The article is on the Montana landscape: ... [ permalink, 03.11.07b.htm ]

ת Blackjack Behavior. Professor Lloyd Cohen, of George Mason University, posted some of his observations on gambling psychology on the Econlaw discussion list. I asked if I could post them, and he not only did, but sent me lengthier notes on blackjack. Here are paragraphs making three good points, on the choice of house percentages, on moral flaws that make people lose, and on the practical application of the Gambler's Ruin paradox: ... [ permalink, 03.11.07a.htm ]

ק School Choice. Clint Bolick and others debated inner city school voucher programs at the law school today, and our law-and-econ lunch bunch decided to go there and eat the free pizza. Bolick was very good. Listening to his opponents disparage the motives of school choice advocates, though, I wished the discussion had focussed on the basic question:

Why should a parent not be able to transfer his child and the government spending on education from an expensive school that teaches badly to a cheaper school that teaches well? ... [ permalink, 03.11.06a.htm ]

ר IU's Affirmative Action Bake Sale. I am proud that when students at Indiana University held one of the anti- affirmative-action bake sales that have been popular lately, our Administration did not suppress it, nor did other students try to disrupt it. As the Indiana Daily Student says, the idea of the sale was that: ... [more, permalink, 03.11.06b.htm ]

ש Civil Arrest Warrants and Debt Collection. The Wall Street Journal had a long article titled "Hospitals Try Extreme Measures To Collect Their Overdue Debts" on October 30. It describes an interesting legal practice akin to debtor's prison and to criminal contempt: ... [ permalink, 03.11.06c.htm ]

ת Volokh Conspiracy on Leszek Kolakowski's Prize. Jacob Levy has a very well crafted post at the Volokh Conspiracy demolishing Brian Leiter's criticism of the award to Leszek Kolakowski, a Chicago professor, of the John W. Kluge Prize. I like reading Professor Leiter, because he is willing to take strong stands, despite the fact that his stands are wrong more often than not. He is specific enough that it is possible to refute him, something I can't say for everyone, and, after all, a web-log is not supposed to be as careful as a journal article. I don't know much about Kolakowski except he wrote a moderately good book with the wonderfully direct title, God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism. Jonathan Edwards couldn't have said it better! ... [permalink, 03.11.06d.htm ]

ש Laws on Children Drinking Wine with Parents. Here is an issue that illustrates several interesting conflicts within conservatism: the morality of drinking wine, the role of the family versus the state, the role of the federal versus state government, and whether the ends justify the means. In brief: should people under age 21 be allowed to drink wine with their parents or spouses at restaurants? This is reported in The American Spectator. ... [ permalink, 03.11.05b.htm ]

ת Democrat Partisanship on the Intelligence Committee. Intelligence committees don't work well unless their members put country above party to a greater degree than in, say, a tax committee. Leaks are harmful, and open discussion especially useful. And it is desirable that the majority party and the Administration feel safe in sharing information with the minority party, since we want the minority party involved. Here is the story: ... [ permalink, 03.11.05a.htm ]

ש Games and Information: New Chinese Translation. My book, Games and Information, has a new simplified characters mainland Chinese translation, to join the complex characters one from Free China.

... [permalink, 03.11.04a.htm ]

ת Linda Tripp Privacy Violation. Linda Tripp just settled her privacy lawsuit against the Defense Department for many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is the court document for the settlement. This is of some interest because it is a case of apparent actual government violation of privacy for nefarious political purposes, as opposed to the hypothetical invasions that people fear under the Patriot Act. [ permalink, 03.11.04b.htm ]

צ State Department Incompetence. Michael Ledeen has a very good,if angry, article in National Review, "Who got fired for sending Paul Wolfowitz to sleep in a deathtrap?" That is a question I always ask when the government makes a stupid mistake (I hope in this case that no American actually intended for Wolfowitz to die in an attack). ... [ permalink, 03.10.03a.htm]

ק France as an Enemy. Via Instapundit, Belgravia tells us,

Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council. Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first, as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow.

ר Environmentalist Deceit. National Review's report on the unreliability of a major article on global warming provides more evidence for why environmentalist claims need to be regarded skeptically, not just even if they are claimed to be factual but especially when they are claimed to be factual. [ permalink, 03.10.03c.htm]

ש Media Bias: San Francisco Chronicle. The Volokh Conspiracy has a good analysis of the San Francisco Chronicle's article lauding Robert Fisk, the notoriously mendacious and anti-American reporter who gave rise to the weblog term "fisking". ... [ permalink, 03.10.03d.htm]

ת Weblog Controversy--Chronicle of Higher Education. My web-log has made it to the front page of the November 7 Chronicle of Higher Education. I'm glad the photos turned out okay. ... [permalink, 03.10.03e.htm]

ת An Eye for an Eye. Pastor Whitaker gave one of his best sermons ever today at ECC on self-defence and dealing with one's enemies. Oddly enough, there was a bit of connection to the paper I've been working on this past few days, "Buyer-Option Contracts Restored: Renegotiation, Inefficient Threats, and the Hold-Up Problem," which Professor Lyon and I recently had accepted at The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization. ... [ permalink, 03.10.02a.htm]

ר De mortuis nil nisi bonum. I was just thinking about the Latin maxim, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," (About the Dead, Say Nothing but Good). I think that maxim very pernicious. If a dead person was vile, we should say so, as a deterrent to other evildoers and as an education to the young. ... [more, permalink, 03.10.01a.htm]

ש: Schumpeter, Ayres, and Nalebuff. We were talking about the Ayres and Nalebuff Why Not column and website at my law- and-econ lunch last Thursday. The old columns are here and the website is there. I realize that some quotes I'd been teaching from Schumpeter's 1912 book, The Theory of Economic Development, were relevant: ... [ permalink, 03.10.01b.htm]

ת The Political Compass Conservatism Index. Steve Bainbridge and Brian Leiter have enjoyed the Political Compass survey and index of political beliefs. I tried it too, but am not as enthusiastic as Professor Leiter. My rating is ... [ permalink, 03.10.01c.htm]

ק Discounting in Bargaining Games. Ariel Rubinstein was kind enough to alert me that when I say that the only interesting sorts of discounting in bargaining games are a constant discount rate per period and a constant bargaining cost per period, I am missing an important case---that of concave utility. So I've revised my entry notes on Rubinstein (1982) for Readings in Games and Information (May 2001). Professor Rubinstein hasn't seen my revision yet, but I hope I've got the idea of what we talked about by phone. ... [permalink, 03.10.30d.htm ]

ר Chancellor Brehm Resigns. Chancellor Brehm, who so publicly deplored this web-log a month ago, has resigned as Chancellor, effective December 31, not for an outside job, but just remaining in some kind of advisory position as described in the press release. Rumor has it that the Trustees decided this last spring, and that the previous chancellor, Professor Gros-Louis, will replace her. The former Law School Dean, Professor Aman, is another contender. We'll see. ... [permalink, 03.10.30a.htm ]

ש: The Courts vs. Democracy. In the October 24, 2003 Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger writes eloquently of how judicial activism has led to increasingly bitter feelings that may end in violence ... [more, permalink, 03.10.30b.htm ]

ת American Moslems: Imam Wahhaj. From the October 24, 2003 Wall Street Journal we learn about one of the most prominent Moslem clerics in America: ... [ permalink, 03.10.30c.htm ]

ת The Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is widely unpopular among intellectuals, and condemned by the very Congressmen and Senators who voted for it, but it's not obvious why. The amazing thing is how feeble the criticisms are. They seem to amount to moaning about the bad things an evil Justice Department *could* do under the Act, with a complete absence of examples of anything it actually *did* do or any discussion of the myriad bad things an evil Justice Department could do and has done (under Clinton) even without the Act. The Weekly Standard has a good article on this (boldface mine). ... [ permalink, 03.10.29a.htm ]

ת: The Value of Liberty. What is wrong with government regulations? Well, first, of course, they are likely to be the result of special interests, and inefficient. But even good regulations have a cost that I don't see mentioned: the cost of having to act carefully so as to avoid breaking the rules. In a society with numerous regulations, people spend a lot of time learning about the regulations. How can I build a model of this? ... [ permalink, 03.10.28a.htm ]

ש: Italian Politician Umberto Bossi. National Review tells us about an Italian politician to watch:

Umberto Bossi, Berlusconi's controversial reform minister, ended his boss's day in Strasbourg colorfully enough. According to the Daily Telegraph, Bossi told reporters that the EU elite were "filthy pigs" whose ambition was to "make paedophilia as easy as possible." And the euro? A "total flop." But then he came to his senses and explained that the EU was actually only "transforming vices into virtues" and "advancing the cause of atheism every day." [permalink, 03.10.27a.htm ]

ת: Logical Symbols. Professor Mark Kaplan talked about bayesianism in a workshop today. Before the workshop, he helped me with a couple of logical symbols. I'd been looking for a symbol for " X is not necessarily equal to, but maybe equal to Y". He suggested I write:

~ x=y ... [ permalink, 03.10.27b.htm ]

ר: Aquinas on Creationism and Biblical Interpretation. Thomas Aquinas talks about how to interpret Scripture in his Summa, 68:1, "Whether the firmament was made on the second day? ... [ permalink, 03.10.26a.htm ]

ש: The Muslim Chaplains Scandal. I just read the best description of this I've seen so far, in a World magazine story. My first thought was how odd it is that the Democrats, while attacking Bush so unfairly and weakly on lots of issues, have neglected a real scandal such as why the military, very likely under political pressure, recruited chaplains who were obviously possible traitors, and then didn't even watch them very carefully. Then I realized that the reason President Bush made this bad decision was no doubt as a favor to American Muslim voters, and that is the same reason why the Democrats won't criticize him for it. Anyway, here are some excerpts: ... [ permalink, 03.10.26b.htm ]

ת: GOLLIN AFFAIR UPDATE: LEGAL ANGLE. Professor Gollin's website about diploma mills was moved under pressure from his university, as I reported yesterday and as Erin O'Connor reports both more elegantly and more forcefully today. Eugene Volokh says ... [ permalink, 03.10.26c.htm ]

ר: GOLLIN ACADEMIC FREEDOM AFFAIR: FACTS. I've just come across a case of a very good university, the University of Illinois, apparently suppressing a professor's academic freedom to avoid offending diploma mills. A tenured physics professor, George Gollin, set up a website on the subject of diploma mills-- low-quality schools that sell unaccredited degrees-- on the computer used by his high energy physics group. (This computer contained other pages, including a a recipe for stir-fried kangaroo, which apparently the University thinks is appropriate for such a computer.) On July 25, CBS News did a story about his website. The university started getting complaints and threats of lawsuits from the diploma mills.

What happened next is a little unclear, but by October, Professor Gollin had moved his materials to the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization. It is linked to there prominently from the George Gollin homepage, so, as usual with university attempts to suppress information, the information didn't really get suppressed, but the university was able to demonstrate its strong desire that it be suppressed. What is unclear is why the website was moved. ... [ permalink, 03.10.25a.htm ]

ש: GOLLIN ACADEMIC FREEDOM AFFAIR: COMMENTARY. (For the facts, go to 03.10.25a.htm ) It sure looks to me as if the University pressured Professor Gollin to remove his webpage. ... [more, permalink, 03.10.25b.htm ]

ת: I SKIPPED A DAY: OPTIONS. I missed making an entry yesterday because I was up for the BLISS conference (Bloomington-Indianapolis-Purdue) in Indianapolis, my fifth conference of the past month. I was the first presenter, at 8:30 a.m., and was commentor on an afternoon paper. I hadn't finished the paper yet, and didn't start making my overheads and handouts till 8:30 pm the night before. The presentation, on "When Does Extra Risk Strictly Increase the Value of Options?", went well, though, and I slept almost 11 hours last night. ... [permalink, 03.10.25c.htm ]