Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

> Increasing Supply, Improving Allocation, And Furthering Justice And Decency In
Organ
Acquisition And Allocation: The Many Virtues Of Markets, 1:3 Graft 122
(July/August
1998)

> The Efficiency/Equity Puzzle And The Race Question In Kidney Allocation: A
Response to UNOS and Ayres et. al., (with
> Melisa Michelsen) 4 Annual Review of Law and Ethics 137 (1996)

"http://146.186.194.36/archive/2004/03/03-18-04tdc/03-18- 04dnews-01.asp">AAUP
and Gerard case

Galatians 1:7-9 [+/-]Galatians 1:7-9 [7]not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. [8]But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. [9]As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (ESV)
.

I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the
grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is not another [gospel]
only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of
Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you
any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be
anathema. As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man
preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him
be anathema.

"http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JJC/is_4_22/ai_82781460">
SaILER

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6679

" http://www.virtuosityonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=667">

part
2

revealing
women’s clothing iva Right Coast and Rapaport

Copyright
discussion from a Christian viewpoint

Confession cleans. It removes one ugly element—deceit or inconsistency. The
unrepentant and admitted sinner is cleaner in this dimension, but uncleaner in
his
contumacy. He is warped inside in a different way.

Working women. How many women’s daily work is supervised by a man now compared
to in
1900? Many many more, I bet. And even with female supervisors, indepdnent has
diminished. Sexual harassment has gone up, of course.

Suppose husbands dominate wives. B efore, they just controlled the money. Now,
they
control th emoney *and* actions.

Rectifying names. Fairness vs. efficiency.

1. Eugenics is evil. Don’t try to breed people with superior genes. Certainly
don’t
sterilize the feeble-minded, or kill babies with bird defects.

How about aborting fetuses with Down’s Syndrome?

2. Racial discrimination.

Affirmative action.

3. Freedom of speech.

Copyright.

4. Don’t make it a crime to do something that doesn’t harm anybody. Wait till
they
actually harm somebody.

Drunk driving laws.

5. Everybody has the right to vote.

How about 17-year-olds?

6. I believe in democracy.

How about Roe v. Wade and abortion?

Daps Lyrics

Tracy Lawrence: Paint
Me A
Birmingham

He was sitting’ there, his brush in hand Painting’ waves as

they

danced, upon the sand With every stroke, he brought to life The deep blue of the

ocean,

against the morning’ sky I asked him if he only painted ocean scenes He said for

twenty

dollars, I’ll paint you anything

Could you Paint Me A Birmingham Make it look just the way I planned A little

house on

the edge of town Porch going’ all the way around Put her there in the front yard

swing

Cotton dress make it, early spring For a while she’ll be, mine again If you can

Paint Me

A Birmingham
He looked at me, with knowing eyes Then took a canvas from a bag there by his

side

Picked up a brush, and said to me Son just where in this picture would you like

to be

And I said if there’s any way you can Could you paint me back into her arms

again?
Could you Paint Me A Birmingham Make it look just the way I planned A little

house on

the edge of town Porch going’ all the way around Put her there in the front yard

swing

Cotton dress make it, early spring For a while she’ll be, mine again If you can

Paint Me

A Birmingham
Paint Me A Birmingham Make it look just the way I planned A little house on the

edge of

town Porch going’ all the way around Put her there in the front yard swing

Cotton dress

make it, early spring For a while she’ll be, mine again If you can Paint Me A

Birmingham
Oh paint me a Birmingham 
  
   
	

God Blessed Texas



by Little Texas (Porter Howell/Brady Seals)
  
    

I’ve seen a lot of places I’ve been around the world I’ve seen some pretty faces

Been

with some beautiful girls But after all I’ve witnessed one thing still amazes me

Just

like a miracle you have to see to believe
‘Cause God blessed Texas with His own hand Brought down angels from the promised

land

Gave ‘em a place where they could dance If you wanna see heaven brother here’s

your

chance I’ve been sent to spread the message God blessed Texas
First He lit sunshine Then He made the waters deep Then He gave us moonlight For

all the

world to see Well everybody knows that the Lord works in mysterious ways He took

a rest

then on the very next day
God blessed Texas with His own hand Brought down angels from the promised land

Gave ‘em

a place where they could dance If you wanna see heaven brother here’s your

chance I’ve

been sent to spread the message God blessed Texas
God blessed Texas with His own hand Brought down angels from the promised land

Gave ‘em

a place where they could dance If you wanna see heaven brother here’s your

chance Well

I’ve been sent to spread the message God blessed Texas
Well I’ve been sent to spread the message God blessed Texas Well I’ve been sent

to

spread the message Mmm…God blessed Texas
    
	

 Apply the Careerist, Professional, Politician mode to law firms and to

university

departments.	And to hospitals and churches, no doubt, also. Schools are not

that

way– they are mostly Careerists nad a few Politicians. Relate this to the 5

P’s.
 The case of Professor David Deming at Oklahoma is in the same league as the

Nona Gerard

case at Oklahoma. Deming has not been fired, but he has been kicked out of his

department and moved to a basement office. The Administration has been tangling

with him

for a long time, for things such as his letters to local newspapers and his

criticism of

an obvious financial conflict of interest in a faculty appointment.
  

      03.18a    The Poor Design of Computer Keyboards;

Remapping

Keys; Icons versus Language.     Once Walter Mossberg wrote a good WSJ

column on the

poor design of computer keyboards. I forget what he said, but let’s think about

that

theme of computer design. 

 First, why is there a Caps Lock key?  I would much prefer no key at all, since

I often

hit the Caps Lock key by accident, and it is practically useless. If someone had

a

weird desire to print everything in capitals,  one of the F-keys could be

programmed for

that.
   Second, why is the default setting to have the NumLk on? I can believe there

are some

people who use the side-numbers as a keypad and don’t use the arrow keys, but

how many?

One percent of users? That is probably an overestimate.
    Third,  what are Scr Lk, PrtSc,  and Break doing? Are these merely vestiges

of

dinosaur ancestors, like the human appendix?
     Fourth, why do computer designers love mysterious icons? The button on this

laptop

for a wireles connection could be labelled “Wireless”. Instead, it has a symbol

which I

think is supposed to be a radio dish, though it is so stylized that it looks

about as

much like a radio dish as an “A” looks like  cow horns (am I right that that is

its

ancestry?).  My laptop has numerous other tiny pictures that are, if you don’t

have the

manual, similarly mysterious.  Is it that engineers, by temperament inclined

more to

diagrams than to words, hope to use this as the opening wedge to replace human

languages? And, by the way, don’t pretend that this is a matter of

internationalization.

This is an Anglo-American, English language keyboard.  And to a Kurd, English

words are

no less mysterious than a picture of two squares separated by a bar. (That’s the

key for

“external monitor”).
     Of course, some of this has an obvious software fix. A feature Windows

should have

had long ago is a keyboard remapper. Then I could just set Cap Locks to have no

effect,

and remap  Prt Sc to do something useful, like put highlighted text in quotes. I

could

even freeze the Ins key so if I hit it by accident, I wouldn’t start wrecking my

text.

But Windows doesn’t seem to do that. There must be a freeware program somewhere,

and at

some point I’ll find it.
  [in full at  
"http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.03.18a.htm"

> 04.03.18a.htm .       
"mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com"

> Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]  
  

      04.02.99a.   John Kerry’s  Divorce and Annulment.



One of the great hypocrisies of the Roman Catholic church is its pretence that

it does

not allow divorce. Instead, says the Church, it only allows “annulment”, on the

grounds

that the people being married did not understand what marriage was all about.

The

logical consequence, one might think, would be that the marriage was not truly a

marriage, and the children bastards. But apparently the Church does allow that

the

children are legitimate (I suppose by analogy to the children of marriages

between non-

Catholics). Thus, all the Church claims is that the marriage was not a

sacrament. Since

Protestants deny that marriage is ever a sacrament– that is, that it is a

fundamentally

religious rather than secular ceremony, and one  at which God is present or

signified in

a special way— what it boils down to is that the Roman Catholic Church agrees

that

even the typical Roman Catholic marriage is not a sacrament. The marriages that

are

annulled would, on the wedding day, look exactly like any other Roman Catholic

marriage,

so we can assume that even those which the Church does not investigate woudl be

annulled

on request.
Here is  a story



talking about the particular case of John Kerry.
 

US Sen. John Kerry joins US Rep. Joseph Kennedy in seeking the annulment with

both cases

bearing striking similarities. Both men’s ex-wives are not Catholic and both

women have

opposed the annulments, calling the process hypocritical.
Julia Thorne said on Wednesday she does not recognize the validity of the

annulment

process. She said that while she supports her ex-husband politically and wishes

him

well, she said the annulment process “was disrespectful to me … and devoid of

any

sense of the humanity of what this means to me and the children.”
News reports and assertions by Thorne, as well as Kennedy’s ex-wife, Sheila

Rauch

Kennedy, have misrepresented the Church’s teaching on annulments. Thorne said

she wrote

to Church officials that she considered its “ecclesiastical investigation as

hypocritical, anti-family, and dishonest,” as well hurtful to her children.

Thorne and

Kerry, who wed in 1970 and divorced in 1988, have two daughters.
The Church teaches that annulments do not invalidate the legitimacy of children

and only

recognizes that the couple was incapable of validly performing the sacrament of

marriage.
  
	

 On a separate issue: Kerry’s first wife was extremely wealthy. Did he benefit

financially from the marriage?
  

Posted by: Dennis Patterson at March 17, 2004 01:38 PM
small> 
   
	         


"98.ER.jpg" width="200"   align= left >
  
 
width=

"200"   align= left >
The bookstore you mention in the triangle block sounds like Starr; a few years

ago they

were told by the Harvard Lampoon, which owns the entire building, that their

lease would

not be renewed and they chose to close down.  A cousin, Norm Starr, had a used

bookstore

on the other side of Harvard Square, on Mass. Ave going toward Arlington, which

he

closed down at about the same time.
Howard Feldstein, owner of Arlington Books (which moved from Arlington to a

store on the

back of Beacon Hill a few years ago) opened a store in the Square, over near the

Charles

Hotel, for a short time, but it is closed now also. Harvard Square-area rents

are just

too high for general used bookstores, although the specialty and high-end shops

are

hanging in.
Rodney’s, in Central Square, is bursting at the seams and the owner has opened a

second

location in Coolidge Corner.  There is also a new small shop, run by a retired

professor

from Vermont, on Mass. Ave about halfway between Harvard Square and Central

Square; he

does not have much space, but has a nice selection of lower-priced hardcovers in

good

non-fiction subjects.
     03.18b       
"http://volokh.com/2004_03_07_volokh_archive.html#107885509518736989"> Volokh
>

 

 When  a student says, “I’m trying to think of how to solve the problem,” he

really

means “I’m trying to remember the answer.” “Thinking” means “remembering”, and

tools

such as logic are out of their ken.
 When a professor says, “I think Smith is a good teacher,”  he means, “I think

Smith

gets high student evaluations,” which in turn means, “I think Smith keeps the

students

content.”  The professor does not even conceive that there might be anything

else to

good teaching than keeping the students content.
 Procedural protection is a bad method. It requires extra work for 99% of cases,

and

doesn’t stop the really bad 1%.  Louis Kaplow has something to say about this. I

seem to

remember the theme as a dinner conversation. Let’s think about incentives

generally.

Here are some dimensions:
 1. Discouraging bad behavior or encouraging good behavior.
 2. Incentives that have real costs, penalties that are just transfers, and

penalties

that have real benefits. In this last category goes the benefit of utility from

retribution.
 3.  Whether we use an absolute standard or a relative one (reward everyone who

sells

over 100 cars, or reward the top 40% of salesmen).
 4. The expected coverage of the incentive in equilibrium (we expect that 30% of

people

will sell over 100 cars and get the reward).
 Louis heavily pushes the Atkinson-Stiglitz (1976) optimal tax model. I am

convinced I

should read AS carefully on that. Or, perhaps I should just read Kaplow’s

Handbook of

Law and Economics chapter. I’ll wait till I do to pursue this.
Martha Stewart and Nona Gerard and U. SOuth. Miss are all examples. The problems

there

are substnce, not procedure.
I still don’t understand how a dishonest, far-left, uncharismatic Massachusetts

senator

with a long record of votes on controversial subjects, a past including adultery

and

lies about American war crimes,   and no administrative  or foreign-policy

experience

worth mentioning could  be elected president.  On the “far-left” point, From 
HREF=

"http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200403080845.asp"> National Review



tells us
Via Volokh

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8907485%255E 28 62,

00.html Sword ban in Australia
 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=497650 What they

mean is:

if the Idnpenndent coudl cast a ballot. For the Wrold, we have to ask about

India and

China, and nobody else would matter much.
http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi/purity.cgi  I score a 43.
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/dailytimes/8128725.htm
 You’ve hit on one of the profound things that people miss in that debate: the

question

of free will vs. determinism comes up in all its subtlety. I was just thinking

of that

in church today, because the sermon was on confession, and I had a party at my

house

last night where I was talking with my research assistant, who is from India,

about

Karma. From what I understood, the idea of Karma is not Fate, which is how we

usually

hear about it here, but more something like “The Way You’re Set Up”, which in

turn

largely  determines your fate. I think it might  be getting at the same thing as

the

Christian idea of human nature– that God created people to be a certain way,

but we are

warped, first by the Fall, and then by our own individual bad choices, so the

world is

not following its true nature. Confession of our sins helps, because it at least

removes

one blot on our nature— that we deny or ignore the sin that warps us— even

if it

doesn’t get rid of the underlying sin.
These are hard but important things to think about.
Joseph de Maistre: What my good friend Davey Hume is saying, although he is too

polite

to put it this way, is that behind everything good, peaceful, and prosperous in

human

society is the shadow of the Public Executioner…
rorodenker@ mindspring.com
 nas@nas.org
      04.03.06a.   Why I’m Not a Member of the AAUP;

Paige

Terrorist Remark Letter;   Gerard  and Deming  Cases at Penn State and Oklahoma.

  I

know of two cases of tenured professors  at research universities   apparently

being

heavily punished by administrators for criticizing  university policies on

academic

grounds. At Penn State  ( 
"http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.03.02a.htm">

March 2  and 

March

5), Professor Gerard was stripped of tenure and fired. At Oklahoma ( 
HREF=

"http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1070959/posts ">Deming  and  
"http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12003">Frontp age),

Professor Deming has been expelled from his department and moved to a basement

office.

Now, this is the kind of thing I  think of as a serious threat  to academic

freedom.
The  American Association of University

Professors 

website says,
 

 AAUP’s purpose is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define

fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to

ensure higher

education’s contribution to the common good.
  
	

 I quite agree. But where is its attention these days? The main web page lists

various

things. One item is
 

Humanities Advocacy Day 
         … If you cannot be in Washington, please contact your senators and

representatives on March 16 to emphasize the importance of humanities funding.

(3/4/04)

  
	

I guess that’s “ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good,” but

mixing

“More money for professors, please!” with efforts to ensure academic freedom

have the

effect of making it look just like an effort to make the life of professors as

luxurious

and free from oversight as possible, for the purpose of making them happy,  and

who

cares about anyone else.
 But let’s go on: most of the items are concerned with academic freedom  as

defined by

the AAUP:
 


AAUP Challenges Solomon Amendment

as a

Violation of Academic Freedom
 On February 20,

2004,

AAUP filed an amicus brief challenging the Solomon Amendment, which

denies

federal funds to schools and colleges that exclude military recruiters. …
Controversy in the Classroom

The

AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has adopted a statement

responding to

the invitation of "Students for Academic Freedom" calling on students

to

report professors who try to "impose their political opinions" in the

classroom. "The advertised call," Committee A says, "rests on a

right,

claimed in the name of academic freedom, not to be confronted with controversy

in the

classroom." For the full statement, click 
"/statements/SpchState/comaclass.htm">here.(3/4/04)

>
 AAUP President Responds to Secretary

Paige’s

"Terrorist" Remark…
AAUP Issues Statement on the Subpoenas issued to Drake

University


 …The committee welcomes the decision of the U.S. Attorney to withdraw

the

subpoenas issued last week by a federal grand jury to gather information from

Drake

University, but continues to have concerns about the original incident. To read

the

Special Committee statement, click 
>here
>. (2/11/04)
AAUP Condemns Academic Bill of Rights

as

Threat to Academic Freedom

                The AAUP

’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure released 
"/statements/SpchState/billofrights.htm">a statement condemning as a threat

to

academic freedom "academic bills of rights" that would require

colleges and

universities to maintain political pluralism and diversity. Click 
"/newsroom/press/2003/billrights.htm">here to read the press release or 
href=

"/statements/SpchState/billofrights.htm">here to read the statement. 
AAUP Decries Secrecy in Nation’s

Response to

National Security: Calls for Increased Freedom of Inquiry and Open Exchange of

Ideas

 
 In a new report, a

special

committee of the American Association of University Professors calls for more

freedom of

inquiry and openness in academic settings. Click 
"/newsroom/press/2003/9-11.htm">here to read the press release or 
"/Issues/Homeland%20Security/Exec911.pdf">here to read the executive

summary.


 
	

The Secretary Paige item is particularly informative. He said something about

the NEA

being a bunch of terrorists on  
"http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/23/161153.shtml"> February 23. 

He  
HREF= "http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/03/02/paige.apology.reut/">apologiz ed

the

next day.   But not well enough for President Buck of the AAUP! She responded

on 
HREF="http://www.aaup.org/newsroom/News-Archive.htm">February 24 with this

letter,

prominently posted on the AAUP site:
 

Dear Secretary Paige:
You have admitted that you referred to the

National

Education Association, an organization dedicated to furthering the cause of

education in

the United States, as a "terrorist organization." Your words were, at

best,

intemperate and, at worst, malicious. Such disregard for appropriate language

demeans

both your office and civil discourse. The flimsy simulacrum of an apology that

you gave

to the NEA membership, but from which you pointedly excluded the national

leadership, is

insufficient and fails to repair the damage you have inflicted on educators and

their

profession.
Sincerely,
Jane Buck, Ph.D.
 President
  
	

  Whether she is accurate about the adequacy of the apology is not clear– take

a look

at the new

s story

  and you can decide, but such subtleties are not at issue here. Rather,

note the

following:

 When the AAUP does care   about something, it can respond  almost

instantly. 

 The AAUP cares    about the Secretary of Education’s remarks about a labor

union in

an industry outside higher education.

  The AAUP is not willing  to let things go with an admission of mistake–

they use

strong language and attempt to publicly embarass an official for not phrasing

his

apology correctly.

 The item is listed under the heading (omitted above) of “Academic Freedom

and

National Security in a Time of Crisis”.  Thus, it is a matter of *defending*

academic

freedom to condemn  someone for  using strong language critical of a powerful

organization to discuss  the politics of high school education. This is not the

attitude

of an organization with a   high regard for the marketplace of ideas and a high

value

for free speech.

 The AAUP is willing to criticize a Republican politician for language that

it

tolerates in Democratic politicians.


There doesn’t seem to be any Penn State chapters and the  
"http://www.pa-aaup.org/">Pennsylvania AAUP doesn’t have anything on the

case, which

has been winding along for a long time.
 
  

 How do we know when we believe ?
 Willingness to be martyred is not sufficient, and perhaps not necessary. I’m

just

stubborn, and don’t think death is so bad.
I’ve never felt assurance of faith. “as Macaulay is about everything… ”
 Changes in behavior must be it–secret ones. Also, perhaps, unintentional

ones–that

you notice afterwards.
 
  

weblog: Bernard Saffran, bsaffra1@swarthmore.edu,
Wordsworth, SOnnet’s scanty plot of ground.Decsiontheory.
 
  

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5021a4.htm  Young men– about 8% 15-

22.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats/hasr1402/table1.htm
Yaer of diagnosis with HIV. Nine times as much  3118 24 and under. 26464 total.

So those

24 and under are only 11.7%.  Let’s look at the biggst category.
Age 35-44: 9,450. Nine years.  So I suppose at least 7/9*3*8=19% are infected,

if the

number of homosexuals in this  age bracket is the same as in 15-22 and the

infection

rate is no greater. Those are  bad assumptions, though. THe homlsexual

population

increases with age, and so does infection likelihood.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hip/BLOOD/hivpersonnel.htm  1792 doctors have had

AIDS, most

have died.
MSM’s are 42%, it is claimed.  850,000 people total.  So 357,000 are MSMs.
 Suppose there are 130 million American males, of whom 3% are MSM’s, for 3.9

million.

Then about 10% of them are HIV infected. But maybe we need to look at age too.

What are

the estimated number of people infected by age category?
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats/hasrsupp92/table10.htm
 
  

Deming $
D eming

at

Oklahoma
Demi ng

"http://www.oudaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/04/29/3fd757d62e460?i

n_archive=1">
 

Provost Nancy Mergler has sent a new e-mail to clarify one sent two weeks ago

stating

that faculty and staff needed to immediately alert OU press officials when

contacted by

a reporter.
Mergler’s new e-mail, sent Friday, came on the same day The Oklahoma Daily

published a

story about the original e-mail, which directed all university directors, deans

and

chairs: “if a reporter (local or national), calls a staff member or a faculty

member,

they need to IMMEDIATELY alert either (Vice President for Public Affairs)

Catherine

(Bishop) or (OU Press Secretary) Jeff (Hickman).”
The new e-mail, released by Hickman, said that Mergler did not mean to cause any

confusion for faculty and staff and that “there is absolutely no requirement

that any

faculty or staff member contact the Vice President for Public Affairs or the

University

Press Secretary prior to expressing personal or professional opinions.”
    
	


"http://www.oudaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/04/29/3fd757dbc335a?i

n_archive=1">
 

Second, shifting messages from OU Public Affairs and the President’s Office have

had the

effect of causing faculty and staff to fear talking to members of the press in

general.

Faculty have declined comment in stories, saying they were afraid expressing

their

personal beliefs could affect their careers. This mood has almost drifted into

the

ludicrous. Recently, an assistant director of the Center for Student Life had a

reporter

wait four hours while she contacted OU Press Secretary Jeff Hickman. Was the

topic of

the story sexual harassment on campus or questions about minority

discrimination? No,

the reporter merely wanted the official to provide a few study tips for the

upcoming

finals.
    
	

 
  

Via Wagener. See p. 6.  Elaine Jones to be disbarred?
 
  

Here are some article on turbochargers: 
"http://www.johanson.com.au/automotive/turbo_basics.html">Turbo basics and


"http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=15&article_id =

6569&page_number=3">

Car and Driver and 
"http://www.msprotege.com/vbb225/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31763 ">Protege

Discussion

thread 1 and 
"http://www.protegemp3.com/vbb230/showthread.php?s=

2dd7eebf5981f4275309da6c2fdd288b&threadid=37983">   2 and 
"http://www.mazdamp3.com/vbb225/showthread.php?s=

8baf39efe4dc1513ab9697cbd5422061&threadid=3231">3. The MSP turbo is a

water-cooled

turbo. So the 45 seconds given by manufacturing is about right. Give a little

more for

quick starts and fast acceleration. Though it won’t hurt to let it cool down

even more.
   
  

David Frum 

writes
 

It is illegal to post an English-language sign in the province of Quebec. A

Quebecker

has held the prime ministership of Canada for all but 18 months of the past 36

years.

And over those same 36 years, Quebec has received C$201 billion more from the

federal

Treasury than it has paid in. (Over those same years, the province of Alberta

paid in

$167 billion more than it received back.)
  
	

This sounds like the AmericanSouth befor ethe Cvil War.

" http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=30&sid=

e7152f75bba41dc642b33a719d1ce119 "> Ideas for Thunderbird improvements
  I think we’d actually expect more unequal states to have more clamors for

income

redistribution. If there are rich people, then it’s worth agitating to grab

their money;

if they’re very rich, they won’t resist as much either, and will give up some of

their

money to salve their consciences.   Manhattan is thus full of happy people– the

poor

get subsidies from the rich, and the rich feel happy doing it. The only problem

comes

when they try extending the system to Queens.
 
  

 I always thought I was a Legalist in the Legalist-Confucian debate. But I

realize now

that there is an interesting split. Some people like precision and rigor and

objectivity, but they are not the Constrained Vision people of Sowell, but

Unconstrained. Bentham and bad lawyers are an example.
So we have:
 

 Unconstrained, Imprecise.  Utopian socialists. Mothers.
Unconstrained, Precise. Bentham. Fairness-minded lawyers.
Constrained, Precise. Economists. Han Fei.
Constrained, Imprecise. Confucians.
 
	

 
  

WSJ Armstrong op-

ed–

slashing

 



 

Recently, Kerry became extremely defensive when David Warsh, an economics

columnist for

The Boston Globe, questioned the circumstances for which Kerry was awarded the

Silver

Star. Kerry, who was in a close re-election battle with Gov. William F. Weld, a

Republican, quickly gathered his former crew from his Swift boat days to rebuff

the

“assault on his integrity.”
According to the official citation accompanying the Silver Star for Kerry’s

actions on

the waters of the Mekong Delta on February 28, 1969: “Kerry’s craft received a

B-40

rocket close aboard. Once again Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry ordered his units to

charge the

enemy positions. . . Patrol Craft Fast 94 then beached in the center of the

enemy

positions and an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not ten feet from

Patrol

Craft 94 and fled. Without hesitation Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry leaped ashore,

pursued the

man behind a hootch and killed him, capturing a B-40 rocket launcher with a

round in the

chamber.” In an article printed in the October 21st and 28th 1996 edition of The

New

Yorker, Kerry was asked about the man he had killed.
“It was either going to be him or it was going to be us. It was that simple. I

don’t

know why it wasn’t us–I mean, to this day. He had a rocket pointed right at our

boat.

He stood up out of the hole, and none of us saw him until he was standing in

front of

us, aiming a rocket right at us, and, for whatever reason, he didn’t pull the

trigger–

he turned and ran. He was shocked to see our boat right in front of him. If he’d

pulled

the trigger, we’d all be dead . . . I just won’t talk about all of it. I don’t

and I

can’t. The things that probably really turn me I’ve never told anybody. Nobody

would

understand,” Kerry said. In the column, Warsh quoted the Swift boat’s former

gunner, Tom

Belodeau, as saying the Viet Cong soldier who Kerry chased “behind a hootch” and

“finished off” actually had already been wounded by the gunner.
Warsh wrote that such a “coup de grace” would have been considered a war crime.

Belodeau

stood beside Kerry and said he’d been misquoted. He conceded that he had fired

at and

wounded the Viet Cong, but denied Kerry had simply executed the wounded Viet

Cong. Dan

Carr, a former Marine from Massachusetts, who served 14 months as a rifleman

sloshing

around in the humid jungles of I Corps, South Vietnam, questioned whether or not

Kerry

deserved a Silver Star for chasing and killing a lone, wounded, retreating Viet

Cong.

“Kerry is certainly showing some sensitivity there. Most people I knew in

Vietnam were

just trying to pull their time there and get the hell out. There were some,

though, who

actually used Vietnam to get their tickets punched. You know, to build their

resumes for

future endeavors,” Carr said.
  
	

My conclusion: Kerry and Bush did much the same thing.
Kerry refuses to release his military records. Especially about his wounds.
 Harmon

remembers

a half-dozen Texas Air National Guard fliers who died in accidents over the

years, in

cluding one during the time Bush was flying. “This was not an endeavor without

risk,”

Harmon notes.
 

 >>>> Return-Path: X-Originating-IP: [4.76.97.49] X-Originating-Email:

[jasland@msn.com]

X-Sender: jasland@msn.com From: “JAMES LANDRUM” Bcc: Subject: COL. WILLIAM

CAMPENNI

(retired) about George Bush as a pilot Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 16:01:12 -0500 X-

OriginalArrivalTime: 14 Feb 2004 21:01:14.0654 (UTC) FILETIME=[AEBAD3E0:

01C3F33D]
A USAF pilot sent this to me.
JFL
Washington Times Feb 11, 2004 Letters to the Editor
‘Bush and I were lieutenants’
George Bush and I were lieutenants and pilots in the 111th Fighter Interceptor

Squadron

(FIS), Texas Air National Guard (ANG) from 1970 to 1971. We had the same flight

and

squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris and Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, both now

deceased).

While we were not part of the same social circle outside the base, we were in

the same

fraternity of fighter pilots, and proudly wore the same squadron patch. It is

quite

frustrating to hear the daily cacophony from the left and Sen. John Kerry,

Massachusetts

Democrat, et al., about Lt. Bush escaping his military responsibilities by

hiding in the

Texas ANG. In the Air Guard during the Vietnam War, you were always subject to

call-up,

as many Air National Guardsmen are finding out today. If the 111th FIS and Lt.

Bush did

not go to Vietnam, blame President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S.

McNamara,

not lowly Lt. Bush. They deliberately avoided use of the Guard and Reserves for

domestic

political calculations, knowing that a draftee only stirred up the concerns of

one

family, while a call-up got a whole community’s attention.
The mission of the 147th Fighter Group and its subordinate 111th FIS, Texas ANG,

and the

airplane it possessed, the F-102, was air defense. It was focused on defending

the

continental United States from Soviet nuclear bombers. The F-102 could not drop

bombs

and would have been useless in Vietnam. A pilot program using ANG volunteer

pilots in F-

102s (called Palace Alert) was scrapped quickly after the airplane proved to be

unsuitable to the war effort. Ironically, Lt. Bush did inquire about this

program but

was advised by an ANG supervisor (Maj. Maurice Udell, retired) that he did not

have the

desired experience (500 hours) at the time and that the program was winding down

and not

accepting more volunteers. If you check the 111th FIS records of 1970-72 and any

other

ANG squadron, you will find other pilots excused for career
Jim and Betty Landrum JASLAND@msn.com Book:I Remember Korea/Jim’s Story/photos
  
	

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/10/222651.shtml
 	 Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004 10:25 p.m. EST
Gen. Giap: Kerry’s Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S.
The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally

drove the

U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic

presidential front-

runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory.
In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren’t

for

organizations like Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have

surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver

North.
That’s why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam War issue “is going to blow up

in

Kerry’s face.”
“People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren’t for these guys

[Kerry’s

group], we would have lost,” North told radio host Sean Hannity.
“The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged

people to

mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers,” noted the

former

Marine lieutenant colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam.
“John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands,” North said.
 
  

 A nice point about judicial salaries:




“…judicial salaries provide for a substantial lifetime income (as judges with

sufficient service can take senior status or retire at full pay)”. The point is

not that

this results in a high income. It does, but so does the base salary. Rather, we

must

compare it with a partner in a law firm. The partner’s base salary is much much

higher–

say, 4 times as high, for comparable people. But the partner does not get his

salary for

life. I don’t know when retirement is forced.  Let’s do some numbers, though.
Suppose we have a 55-year-old law partner. If he  becomes a judge, he gets a

salary of

one unit per year, for 35 years, even if he retires from all the non-

entertaining parts

of being a judge  at age 70   (I bet retired  federal judges routinely live till

90–

they are upper-class people with relaxed lifestyle and relatively few vices  1

unit

represent whatever the judicial salary is— about $150,000, I think. )  That

has  a

present discounted value of 1/r + 1/(1+r)^35 [1/r], which is jkljk if r=.02 and

jkljk if

r = .05.
 If he stays as a partner, suppose he retires at 70, but is paid an average of 4

units

per year till then.  That has  a present discounted value of 4/r + 4/(1+r)^15

[1/r],

which is jkljk if r=.02 and jkljk if r = .05.
  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 





Bernstein story of racism.Eileen Duggan
  

Napoleon was once asked whether he preferred courageous generals or brilliant

generals.

Neither, replied the Emperor. He preferred lucky generals.
  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 


" http: //appellateblog.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_appellateblog_archive.html#107

56

9800273532853">
 

I am regularly required by law, for example, to affirm deportation orders and

deny

petitions for writ of habeas corpus in instances in which it appears to me that

the

result is unjust and in which I believe the individuals are being deprived of

due

process of law. However, the federal statutes involved, or an applicable

precedent from

this court or the Supreme Court, often leave me no choice.
9. You and other highly intelligent liberals have not hesitated to criticize the

U.S.

Supreme Court when you believe that it has unfairly curtailed the rights of

convicted

criminals or individuals seeking to enforce federal rights against the States.

On the

other hand, in recent years the Supreme Court has issued many decisions that

have

enraged conservatives, such as Lawrence v. Texas, Grutter v. Bollinger, and

decisions

upholding a constitutional right to abortion. Instead of depicting the Supreme

Court as

monolithically conservative or liberal, isn’t that Court more accurately viewed

as

moderate in an overall sense?
No. Even the Supreme Court’s harshest critics have not asserted that the Supreme

Court

is wrong in every case. So in that sense, I suppose it is correct to say that

the Court

is not “monolithically conservative.” But the fact that this Court has reached

the

plainly right result in some cases involving highly controversial social issues,

as it

did in Lawrence, and has crafted compromise solutions in others, as it did in

Casey, and

by reaching an obvious middle ground in the two recent affirmative action cases,

is not

evidence that this is a “moderate” Court. In fact, what has usually happened in

the few

cases in which the current Court has departed from its customary strict

conservative

views is that one member of the five judge conservative bloc has for one

particular

reason or another decided to agree in that particular instance with the four

judge

moderate minority. Such occasional individual switches do not mean that the

Court as a

whole is not deeply conservative, nor that it is not just one vacancy away from

becoming

“monolithically conservative” by any standard.
The fact that conservatives have been upset with one or two decisions in the

past

several terms says nothing about the overall ideological composition of the

Court. The

Supreme Court has moved far to the right in numerous areas of law — federalism,

habeas

corpus, the interpretation of federal civil rights statutes, the power of

Congress to

enact such statutes, Indian law, and criminal justice generally are only a few

examples.

Simply put, the conservative view is unquestionably dominant in today’s Supreme

Court,

as exemplified by the ever-shrinking Fourth Amendment (notwithstanding Justice

Scalia’s

property-oriented, but still surprising, decision in Kyllo). I think most people

who say

otherwise either aren’t being honest or are being disingenuous. I doubt that

many

conservatives would advocate a return to the Court on which Justices Brennan and

Marshall sat in the 1970’s and 1980’s, to say nothing of how they would feel

about a

return to the Warren Court of the 1950’s and 1960’s. And just as the handful of

examples

of “conservative” decisions from the heyday of the Warren Court does not

transform the

ideological preferences of that Court, the occasional occurrence of a

reasonable, or a

compromise, decision does not make the current Court “moderate,” or anything

other than

a straight, unabashed, highly conservative institution.
…
Perhaps fortunately, I have not yet been compelled to cast a vote in a case in

which I

believed that a proper application of the controlling law would require me to

affirm a

death penalty. If I were to confront such a case, I would have no choice but to

so vote.
With respect to the flaws in our current system, a fundamental problem is the

impossibility of arriving at objective standards for separating those society

chooses to

execute from those it decides to punish by lifetime incarceration. A regrettably

large

number of individuals commit crimes that make them eligible for death sentences

under

the various state laws. Yet few of them ever receive the ultimate penalty, and

those who

do are not in any objective sense more deserving of execution than those who do

not. A

multitude of subjective decisions are made along the way, by prosecutors,

defense

lawyers, judges and jurors. Standards are applied inconsistently and unequally

from

case-to-case. Frequently, geography determines whether a capital defendant lives

or

dies. Two crimes identical in every respect except the counties in which they

were

committed will result in a death sentence in one case and a sentence of life-

without-

parole in another.
The result of all these disparities and arbitrary inequalities is that those who

are

ultimately designated for execution are frequently society’s most vulnerable

rather than

its most culpable. Poverty, race, histories of family troubles, sexual abuse,

and mental

disabilities all end up playing unacceptably large roles in determining who

lives or

dies. In almost every case of which I am aware in which an individual has been

executed,

he had been a victim of serious and persistent sexual abuse as a child, usually

at the

hands of a close relative, and in addition possessed a severely limited mental

capacity.

An example is Rickey Ray Rector, who was missing half his brain at the time of

his

trial. Rector put aside his dinner on the evening of his execution so that he

could

enjoy it later; earlier that afternoon he watched television and saw Governor

William

Jefferson Clinton, who had rushed back to Arkansas on the eve of the New

Hampshire

primary to be present in the state capital to avoid any hitches in the execution

(and,

some believe, to get his picture in the next day’s national press as a tough on

crime,

law and order kind of a guy). On seeing Clinton’s familiar face, Rector

commented

enthusiastically, “I like that man. I voted for him.” Finally, as if all of this

were

not enough, many capital defendants receive wholly inadequate defenses,

resulting in

death sentences for those whose offenses warrant only life imprisonment, and

dramatically increasing the risk that the state will kill innocent defendants.

In short,

choosing those to be executed is not a science. It is an extremely subjective

process,

and thus an arbitrary one; the decision is all too often determined by the

biases and

prejudices of the decision-maker, and is, in the end, one that may be beyond the

capacity of ordinary mortals to make.
When you have reviewed death sentences for over twenty years, you begin to see

how

irrational the line between state-ordered life and death is in our criminal

justice

system. Human life is too precious to have its continued existence depend on

fortuities

such as the geographical location of the crime, the individual proclivities of

prosecutors, jurists, and other decision-makers, and the luck of the draw in the

assignment of judges and of counsel who may or may not be sufficiently dedicated

and

experienced to do one of the most difficult jobs in the legal profession at

considerable

personal sacrifice in terms of time and money. If the Constitution does not

tolerate

inequalities in the standards used to recount ballots in a presidential

election, it

certainly should not tolerate disparities in the administration of the capital

system

that are far more troubling and consequential. It was a recognition of these

truths that

led Justice Blackmun to shun forever “tinker[ing] with the machinery of death.”
  
	

  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 

E

ugene

Volokh says,
 

     Not long ago, that homosexuality was a perversion was the orthodox view.

Free

speech changed that; the gay rights movement, like the racial and sexual

equality

movements, was a triumph of free speech and public persuasion. Now some people

in that

movement are trying to restrict others’ free speech, to lock in their gains and

to

silence dissenters from the new orthodoxy. Understandable, as a matter of human

politics

and psychology — but still improper.
     In 1984, Irving Kristol said, “I don’t think the advocacy of homosexuality

really

falls under the First Amendment any more than the advocacy or publication of

pornography

does.” (Quoted in Sex and God in American Politics; What Conservatives Really

Think,

Pol’y Rev., Summer 1984, at 12, 24.) That was wrong then (and I hope he no

longer

believes it). Its flip side is wrong now.
  
	

 At first I was surprised and shocked at Kristol’s statement, but now I realize

that

what he meant is probably just that ads for homosexual sex could  be illegal.
 I  had never heard of anyone, past or present, advocating the suppression of

advocacy

of homosexuality. I wonder if there are other examples? I expect there are, from

back in

the 1920’s. And I don’t recall every  hearing of actual anti-advocacy laws,  or

prosecutions of advocates of homosexuality  even then.    But one of the

interesting

features of the current debate on homosexuality is that there is not a hint,

nowadays,

at least, from anti-homosexuals that pro-homosexuals advocacy should be made

illegal,

while it is commonplace for pro-homosexuals to  urge stridently that anti-

homosexual

advocacy should be illegal. And, as I’ve noted before, that is what has happened

in some

countries, and anti-homosexual advocates have indeed been prosecuted.
Does anybody know of other examples besides Kristol of anyone saying that

advocacy of
  


 

 The NIV, which is written at a seventh-grade reading level, has become the most

read,

most trusted Bible translation in the English language and represents half of

all Bibles

sold today. Building on the success of the NIV, the New International Reader’s

Version

(NIrV) from Zonderkidz, the children’s publishing group of Zondervan, is an

accurate

translation for children ages six-10 that delivers God’s message in a relevant,

easy-to-

read format. Both the NIV and NIrV (the NIV for kids) were created directly from

the

original Biblical manuscripts. 
	

 
HREF=

"http://www.gospelcom.net/ibs/niv/background.php"> 
"http://www.desiringgod.org/library/topics/word_god/esv.html">

  

Theology and Pedagogy. In both, I don’ know what I’m doing, despite lots of

thought.

Solow– too slick?  My PhD student complaints–too much like an MBA course.
  

 On liberals lying, and conservatives not: ADD: Thrasymachus from the Republic.

He

retreated from his arguemnt that justice is the will of the stronger.

  


 

 My policy on quoting emails is opt-out: Unless you tell me not to do so, I will

quote

your email. My policy on identifying the emailer is opt-in: Unless you tell me

to name

you, I will refer to you as “a reader.”
  
	

  



polls
  


  

WEB PUNCTUATION.
Long web pages should have table of contents’s at regular intervals, to jump

ahead and

back.
 Very important really. Capitalization rules. Footnotes should redirect back up

to text.

Where should a link start? Get Glen Reynold inputs. Margins: On PDF documentrs,

they

should be small, so you can read more on one page. THere should be NO top and

bottome

margins. Do punctuation and style for Web-logs. Think hard about it. Include

Capitalization Rules for titles too.
A weblog posting with details of  the charge of securities fraud against 
HREF=

"http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.01.23a.htm">Martha Stewart. 

 Link  on the proper noun, even if it is not the subject of the sentence.
Do NOT do as Slate, etc. do and break an article up into pages.
SLATE DID IT RIGHT HERE: 

"http://www.in.gov/apps/lsa/session/billwatch/billinfo?year=2004&sessi on=1&

request=

getBill&docno=458#latest_info">
small>  [in full  at  
"http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.02.99a.htm"

> 04.02.99a.htm .       
"mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com"

> Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]  
  

Collecto Good, quotable  Hymn verses and post ofn the weblog.
small>  [in full  at  
"http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.02.99a.htm"

> 04.02.99a.htm .       
"mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com"

> Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]  
  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 


"http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=

0000D8&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e ">Bad softtware
  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 

 Powers Prisoner’s Dilemma. I skimmed it. See p. 69. The exposition is confused.

On page

71, Pop says the dilemma arises only when the prisoners make their decisions in

separate

rooms, and they don’t have a problem if they can make eye contact. Wrong.  If

they can

make eye contact, they still will both Squeal,  so long as they cannot retract

their

choice. Think of whatever mechanics you like, e.g., they both write down their

decisions

simultaneously while in the same room, or Prisoner 1 makes his decision first,

then

Prisoner 2. The result will be different only if, for example, Prisoner 1 goes

first,

then Prisoner 2, but Prisoner 1 can then retract his decision if it was to Keep

Quiet.
 On page 72, Lily says that the problem is that a prisoner’s problem is that he

isn’t

sure the other prisoner can be trusted. That’s false. First, he *can* be  sure

the

other prisoner *can’t* be trusted. Second, even if Prisoner 1 thinks Prisoner 2

can be

trusted to pick Keep Quiet, Prisoner 1 will still choose Squeal.
 On page 72, Pop gives a bunch of two word names of examples of prisoners’

dilemmas.  He

includes Food Hoarding and Bank Runs, which is wrong. Those are coordination

games. I do

not want to bother to Hoard Food or Run to the Bank  if I think nobody else

will.
p. 131. 90% of all Americans of Japanese extraction are rounded up (that is, 90%

of

citizens and non-citizens of Japanese extraction). That is wrong, I think. I saw

this

figure in one of the Supreme Court opinions, which is probably where Mr. Powers

got it.

But it excludes Hawaii, where  most Americans of Japanese extraction lived.

Hawaii was

not   a State then, but it was a Territory, so people born there would be U.S.

citizens.

US

Census

 says there were 157,000 people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii in 1940.
p. 282. “Do those two guys in the bind ever get it together?” …”…the fact

that

evolution favors the nasty and brutish, that success is always at the other

guy’s

expense.”  WRONG.
  

Second Bank of the United States: Do a political economy analysis. Which is

better:

governmetn owned (patronage,loans to friends), private banks (patronage in who

gets

deposits) or private monopoly (Biddle, slack). PRivate monpooly, probably. That

is sort

of what we have now, except no shareholders. The Indpeendetn Treasury is best.

Itjust

puts the money in the govt. treasury with no loans made. But macro effects ?
  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 

 Car things; 1. A digital gas gauge. The ONLY thing I want digital. 2. A radio

with big

punch keys. 3. A radio with analog tuning AND digital tuning. 4.  Turbo timers
Weblog: Shape of telephones point. Corded ones are the classic shape–why not

cordless?
  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 

  The Chronicle Review Volume 50, Issue 19, Page B16 
" http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i19/19b01601.htm"> From the issue

dated

January 16, 2004 Controversial Weblogs and Academic Freedom ROBERT O’NEIL
 

Although Rasmusen’s critics have plausibly argued that the juxtaposition of

anti-gay

personal views and instructional material on the Web page may pose a risk of

confusion

or a sense that the instructional material reflected those personal views, it

seems

unlikely that anyone could seriously infer university sponsorship or attribution

from

such digital proximity. Nonetheless, it might be wise for a university to

consider

creating a clearer separation between the intensely personal blog and the

pedagogical

portion of the Web page. Building such walls — or requiring the person posting

the

material to build and respect them — seems reasonable not only for anti-gay

statements

but for any personal views, no matter how bland they might seem.
  
	

He dithers on Chancellor Brehm. He is right that her “action” response was

appropriate— a general review of web policies rather than going after one

professor.

What he seems to miss is that it is wrong for the chairman of a meeting to use

his

privileged position to  attack an individual member by name, especially without

notice

to the member. In this case, the attack was in the customary opening remarks of

the

Chancellor, which are supposed to be for announcements and information rather

than

debate on matters of controversy.
The object of the attack–myself–and his supporters did have an opportunity to

respond

to the attack, but that hardly improves the situation. I responded simply by

asking for

a copy of her speech. Being unprepared, and rather embarassed by the attention,

I spent

the five or so minute of her attack trying to simultaneously do the following:

(a)

Understand what she was saying, (b) Record what she was saying, so I’d not

misquote her

if I replied, (c) Estimate the response of other members of the Council, (d)

Formulate a

reply, (e) Decide whether I ought to make a reply at all,  and (f) Decide what

would

follow if I made a reply or did not make a reply. My experience with game theory

helped,

I think,  by making me realize that all six of these things were important–one

has to

figure out the players, actions, information, and payoffs for the game tree

before

figuring out best strategies– but it also helped me realize my cognitive

limitations

(including an allowance for effects of  outrage and embarassment on my

judgement).
 I made what was in retrospect the correct decision. I
small>  [in full  at  
"http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.02.99a.htm"

> 04.02.99a.htm .       
"mailto:erasmusen@yahoo.com"

> Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]  
  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 


  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 


  

      04.02.99a.   sdfdsf 





David Bernstein
 
  
 
"byline">[

David Bernstein, 
"2004_01_04_volokh_archive.html#107375072554292736">1/10/2004 08:05:25 AM]


> Supporting Ethnic-Religion Based

States:

 I occasionally get email from readers suggesting that Israel is unworthy

of

support, or even existence, because it is an ethnic/religion-based state.  So

what about

Poland?  After World War II, Poland expelled its Germans and Ukrainians,

absorbed Poles

tossed out of Russia, and tolerated pogroms against the remaining Jewish

population (for

one source on all this, 
"http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/cleansing.htm">see

here). A state that was ethnically and religiously diverse before WWII

became

homogenously ethnic Polish and Roman Catholic, and by design.  No one talks

about this

much anymore, because there are no irredentist elements within and near Poland

demanding

that Poland either has no right to exist or must otherwise accommodate their

corporate

identities.  (As an aside, this, I believe, is why Benny Morris 
"http://volokh.com/2004_01_04_volokh_archive.html#107369937964832061"> argues
> that

Ben-Gurion was too moderate in his War of Independence policies–I should also

note that

Morris, to his own surprise, came across evidence that the Arab powers ordered

the Arab

women and children of Palestine to evacuate the area, a point likely to be lost

in the

furor over his interview.)  

I would add that no one after WWII, when

Poland

engaged in “ethnic cleansing,” claimed Poland had no right to exist, and that at

the

time of the expulsions from Poland, the local minorities were not allied with

hostile

outside powers surrounding Poland and seeking to liquidate Poland and massacre

its

population.  So how about it–does Poland have the right to exist?
Oh, and if

Israel has no right to exist, what should replace it?  Certainly not an

ethnically-based

Palestinian state with officially Islamist policies.  Perhaps the land should be

turned

into a Biblically-themed amusement park? 

 
 

  

 COllege courses
I should have taken Russian in the summer, if at all. In retrospect, it was a

waste.

Other courses that I ought not to have taken are:
???, grad student,  The Economy of India
???,  grad student, Integral Calculus, pass/fail
Michael Montias, Senior Essay on the Economics of Broadway (my fault, of course,

for

being a bad course)
Gustav Ranis,  Development Economics
Richard Nelson, Economics of Technical Change
 Courses that I can see were worthwhile and unique to Yale were:
John Hollander, Daily Themes
Paul Rahe, History and Politics I, II (Thucydides, Livy,  Plato, Tocqueville,

Pascal,

Hume,   etc.)
Lloyd Reynolds, Eight Great Economists
???, grad student—Faust, Emerson, and Nietzsche
Andrei Rapacynski, Conservative Political Philosophy
Coe, Chinese Political Intellectual History
John Blum, American History, 1880-1940.
It is striking that most of these courses were valuable regardless of what the

instructor did in class— it was the choice of assignments that mattered.

Indeed, only

Paul Rahe, of this list, really made a difference as an in-class instructor. All

the

rest should be given credit as superb teachers, though–just for the syllabi

they drew

up.
Courses that were good but probably as well taught lots of places besides Yale:
Robert Litan,  Freshman Macro
Richard Levin, Intermediate Micro (he’s president of Yale now)
Randall Olsen, PhD Statistics, Econometrics
These are  *not* my best courses, in the sense of being best taught. That list

is:
Jonathan Spence on modern Chinese history
Paul Rahe, History and Politics I, II
Donald Kagan, Greek History
Herbert Scarf,  PhD Mathematical Economics II
Glamorous Courses, but merely OK:
Jaroslav Pelikan and A. Bartlett Giamatti, Dante and Aquinas (the Grad School

Dean and

University President taught it)
 Frank Logue, Being a Mayor (he had just stepped down from being Mayor of New

Haven)
Courses I should have taken:
Kakutani, Real Analysis (I started to audit it, but dropped)
  

Beer. American India Pale Ale is not an everyday drink. It is too flavorful. For

everyday, German lager or English ale is better. That is why the other countries

idd not

invent the IPA, really. small>  [in full  at  
"http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.02.99a.htm"> 04.02.99a.htm .  

 

    Erasmusen@yahoo.com.


>]  
  

Via Volokh:

  

Via Cramer: 
"http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=curren t&issue=

2003-12-13&id=1&searchText= Africa">   AIDS fraud.
  

 Do older mothers miscarry less? No. 
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=

PubMed&list_uids=6228139&dopt=Abstract">
South Australia study. No parity effect. 
"http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/317/7163/923">
Israeli study.  Parity effect. No abortions? 
"http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/314/7082/720#T1">
Down Syndrome probabilities. 
"http://www.altonweb.com/cs/downsyndrome/index.htm?page=risk.html ">
Description of the syndrome: 
"http://anthro.palomar.edu/abnormal/abnormal_4.htm"

>
 For women

aged 35-

39, 108 per 100,000. That is about 1 in 1000. For women aged 40-54, 377 per 100,

000.

That is about  1 in 300. It does not differ much between black and white.
 
"http://www.doh.gov.uk/public/sb0323.pdf"> 
" http://www.abortiontv.com/GeorgeTiller.htm"> 
"http://www.kdhe.state.ks.us/hci/01itop1.pdf">
  

 Messy desks
  

 	

 via





Curmudegeonly CLrk
  



Via Volokh, on Unix vs. Windows 
"http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html">
 
"http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/099253-1186-009.html"> persecution of

Christians.
Via Midwest Conservative: 




coffee
The Vast Leftwing Conspiracy, Satan, and the Walrasian Auctioneer. How would you

subvert

a society, in 1960 if you were the radical left? Where would you put your people

and

what would you have them do? You could not win a politicl fight. Easier to put

them in

as judges, professors, teachers, writers. But there is no real conspiracy–just

a sort

of invisible hand. Like Satan, the conspiracy may be  a useful fiction.(Or, the

Walrasian auctioneer in

Dear Mr. Wilson,
Thank you for the comment. That may be the way out of the puzzle. That’s

interesting,

because maybe I should avoid socializing with a supposed Christian who sins, but

if he

lapses into open apostasy, I might resume close links. As you say, there’s some

sense to

that— once he is a full apostate, he is no longer misrepresenting

Christianity.
 I’ll have to think further, though, because if he’s still a professed

Christian, then I

ought to go to church people first, to try to work on his sins, rather than

taking

excommunication on myself. But if he’s excommunicated, then this theory says I

needn’t

shun him. So the implication seems to be that nobody should be shunned.
Yours truly,
— enwilson@indiana.edu wrote: > Prof. Rasmusen, > > I think that the way to

reconcile

the 3 passages you mentioned with > Jesus > dining with sinners is to note that

the

quoted passages all dealt > with > professing believers.  (If your brother sins,

if any

man that is > named a > brother . . . , there are some which walk among you . .

. ) > >

I don’t know that believers are ever asked to avoid contact with > pagans, but >

God’s

reputation is at stake when we act as though the open sins of > those >

professing faith

are not important.  Related to this, we see that > Jesus saved > his harshest

words for

the Pharisees. > > Eric Wilson
John the disruptive student. It turns out he is conservative. The we get 5

paragraphs

starting with
Oh well. “It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By

definition, there are already enough people to do that.” (G H Hardy)
"http://www.ogre.nu/blog/2003_12_04_d.htm#107060148243426065">
 Blindness. We do not think of improving our cars, as Hoosiers do. We take them

as they

are.
 Do Proteins cause cancer? Look at well-fed aristocrats of the past.
Is Cholestorol digested? 
"http: //arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/liver/bile.html ">

 
HREF=

"http: //arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/smallgut/absorb_l ip

ids.html">

"http: //arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/liver/eateggs.htm l"

>
  Undercover work at the CIA
"http: //www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/271lmbuj. as

p">



Post the Tucker letter on the web.
BLog on the PD.
Consumption smoothing. Here is a model.  Fraction theta of people  are poor and

have

labor income of Lp and no stocks,  so Xp=0.  and fraction (1-theta) are rich and

have

labor income of Lr and amount Xr of stocks. Labor income is nonstochastic, but

stock

wealth has a probability distribution f(Xr). People choose  either to consume or

to

bequeath.  Thus, C+ B = L+X. Everyone has the same utility function U(C) + V(B).

U’(C)

begins at C0 and then declines in C. V

‘(B) begins at V0 < C0 and then declines. Let us

assume that for any Z,  |U''(Z)| > |V”(Z)|– that is, consumption utility falls

at a

faster rate than bequest utility.
What will happen if we set the parameters right, I think, is that poor people

will

consume all their income and leave no bequests; rich people will consume quite a

bit,

but    put any extra  money into bequests; and rich people’s consumption will

hardly

vary with labor income.
Compare NAMBLA with Al Qaeda–what repudiatoin do we get? Is it sincere?
Mark 9:24 [+/-]Mark 9:24
   [24]Immediately the father of the child cried out and 
said, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (ESV)
–help my unbelief.
EQUALITY. Its best defense as a goal is the family idea–to avoid quarreling,

even at

hte expense of efficiency.

"http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vidino-stakelbeck200312030 840.asp">
 

In Italy, mainstream Muslim groups have asked for the introduction of Islamic

marriages

with no legal effects under Italian law, a de facto subtraction of the wedlock

from the

control of authorities. This request is aimed at creating a situation where two

different legal systems regulate the lives of two different groups of citizens

within

the same state. In European legal history, it would represent a jump back to the

Middle

Ages, when different laws applied to different ethnicities. In practical terms,

it would

mean that Italian citizens of Muslim faith would be subtracted from the

guarantees that

the Italian legal system provides to its citizens. Therefore, while Christian

Italian

women would have the same rights as Italian men, Muslim Italian women would have

very

few rights. While a Christian woman would have the right to obtain a divorce

simply by

filing papers, a Muslim woman would have to go to great lengths to prove ill

treatment

at the hands of her husband.
  
	


"http: //lsolum.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_lsolum_archive.html#10702122585021125 9

">



 San

Francisco State
Weblog: an arbitration paradox. Suppose every marriage has the husband promise

the wife

alimony. Why can’;t we make that standard policy, without running afoul of

discirmination statutes?






Englishmen learned Greek, not Hindi. I might go live in China. It is Chrisitans

who will

emigrate–like the Pilgrims.

Albertus Magnus gay priest scandal 
"http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/00jf/JF00AlbM.htm">
 Death

rates from

AIDS. Tablw 109.  6000 out of 90,000, for ages 35-44. Suppose 4 of the 6 are

homosexuals. Of the 90, 3% are homosexuals, which is 3. So AIDS  more than

doubles the

death rate.
For more detailed data, see tBle 1 of: 
"http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_09.pdf"> It looks like AIDS

doubles

the death rate over ages 25 to 54.
, table

92. At

age 20, a male can expect to live till 75.2.
Thus, a death at age 30 cuts off 45.2 years from life expectancy. If we increase

your

death rate at age 30 from 250 per 100,000 to 500, what happens to years lost?

That is

(250/100000)45.2 years lost from 75.2, .113 years lost. Multiply that by 30, and

we get

3 years lost.
   About 1 million males die each year. AIDS is not even 1.5% of this. An AIDS

death

rate of 400 per 100,000 is still only 4 per thousand. Over 30 years, that is

just 120

per 1000. Just 1/10 of homosexuals die an untimely death. That is a lot,

actually, but

it doesn’t affect life expectancy much. Here it is, crudely: if some sexual

practice

takes away 30 years of lifespan from 1 person in 10, then it only takes away 3

years of

lifespan on average.
 table

176.

Transmission categories. For men, 666,000 total, of which 368 are clearly by

homosexual

contact, 185 clearly not. THat makes 2/3 of cases from konwn causes from

homosexuality.
 The Bloomington Faculty Council can teach me about the English Parliament

before 1790.

The members are mostly from rotten boroughs or pocket boroughs. THe deans are

like the

House of Lords. The CHancellor is like the king, who has th eonly official army,

but who

doe snot have all the power. (Except teh Chancellor does have formal authority

over

everything, including the budget.) Most members are in teh Court party, because

of

either a temperamental respect for authority, a philosophical respect for

authority,   a

desire for patronage, or a fear of retribution.  Most members are also

uninterested,

serving because someone asked them to.  A few members are gadflies, and they do

most of

the talking.  The rest are often amazed at how willing the gadflies are to say

things

critical of the administration. Administrators come and report to the body, and

answer

questions, even if they are not happy about doing so.
 Seattle

Senators and

the newspaper there.
Weblog: photos of recyclying bins. Liberal ugliness.
Controls–analog better.
< /A>

Section 6. No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any

religious

or theological institution.
 Pat

Robertson. Much of it is true.
How many people have died violent deaths in the Bush years, 2001-2003? Someone

who was

nominated for Secy. of the Army, I think. Compare with Clinton.
h 


"http://globalresearch.ca.myforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=148">
Melzer v. New York City Board of Education, judge Cardamone, federal. NAMBLA.

2nd

circuit. World: Adree Seu, Robert J. THomas beheading. Sept 6 issue. Bogdanos
  That NAMBLA schoolteacher case. Find out who helped with an amicus brief.
צ
A group with very low child molestng is convicted child molesters currently in

prison.

It’s zero for them. Opportunity is a lot of it.
 One coudl say that heterosexuals do not rape women–because anybody who rapes

is not

normal, an dmight be a homosexual.
צ Vance quote from MOon Moth on differing ideas of morality.
צ Mississippi discrimination over time idea.
 צ
 EVIDENCE There seems to be two ways you can look at the molestation data:
 1. It strongly supports the claim that male homosexuals molest more often.  xx%

of

victims are boys molested by men.
 2. It is not relevant data, and we have no other data that is relevant. We

don’t know

whether the males who molest boys are homosexuals, defined as males attracted to

post-

pubescent males; or heterosexuals, defined as males attracted to post-pubescent

females;

or neither, defined as males unattracted to any post-pubescent human (but

presumably

attracted to little children).
 Blog: Should only  people with college degrees  be allowed to vote for judges,

but

anybody be free to be a judge?
 Make voting a decision process. Only let people with SS numbers starting with 4

vote.

SF story about that–the one voter.
WEBSTYLE: indent paragraphs, but not in the first paragraph or the first

paragraph after

an indented quote or a lits.
 This Yale guide is very good: http://www.webstyleguide.com/page/length.html
References: think about how to do books nowadays.
________________________________