Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

The naked anger at the idea of intelligent design is one of the best signs that it’s plausible. As you can see from the links on Christianity Today’s weblog, the critics typically equate it with creationism and then attack that straw man, or sputter about the credentials of ID people without coming to grips with the argument. It isn’t helped, of course, by the habit of many ID advocates of talking about “Darwinism” as if their own theory weren’t mostly Darwinist. A good example of a critic, because he is smart but make a confused attack anyway, is Daniel Dennett in the New York Times. In coming up with what he thinks is a devastating example against ID, he actually supports it: (more…)

In 2003, French Foreign Minister Villepin personally tried to fly over Brazilian airspace accompanied by armed French intelligence operatives to give medical aid to Columbian rebel forces. Isn’t such a thing a casus belli? (more…)

Jim Lindgren at VC has a post on Professor McGinnis’s forthcoming article on the lack of diversity in law school faculties. (more…)

Todd Zywicki at VC calls for empirical work to figure out why there are few conservative professors in law schools and other university departments. I commented yesterday on Jim Lindgren’s post with a proposal which I’ll elaborate here. The idea is to compare junior with lateral hires. (more…)

I have more info on the Bradford academic freedom case at the Indy Law School, on which I’ve blogged before. I have his affirmative action office complaint, the Roisman-Mitchell academic misconduct complaint against him for saying mean things about them, his response, and his counter-complaint against them for saying mean things about him. I wish we had sworn testimony on things like the statement that at a faculty meeting on hiring, one professor said she “categorically could not vote for any more white men,” and she “would only vote for a woman, and preferably a woman of color,” and that that woman was later appointed to be head of the 2005-2006 recruiting committee.

Also, however, I discovered that Professor Bradford was *not* blocked from going up for tenure early. Rather, he was strongly advised not to because, he was told, there was faculty opposition, and he accepted that advice. I don’t think it was good advice– it wasn’t as if having more publications would reduce opposition to him, and I’d want to have the unpleasantness over sooner rather than later– but others might disagree, and he wasn’t obligated to accept the advice.

James Q. Wilson, I think, proposed some time ago that any woman wanting an abortion be required to view pictures of what a fetus looks like at her particular time of gestation. She could then make a more informed decision as to whether her particular abortion was moral. Here is a webpage with photos of the dead fetuses from abortions ranging from 7 weeks to 24 weeks. I was surprised at how disturbing are the pictures even of the 7-week-old fetuses, small as a dime but recognizably human even when cut into pieces for the abortion. (more…)

Ian Ayres wrote some stimulating, if incorrect, thoughts on God and free will. Here are some thoughts of mine in response, which I posted as comments at his weblog, Balkinization. (more…)

At Balkinization a blogger quotes Henry Ward Beecher as summarizing the conventional synthesis of evolution and Christianity: (more…)

Michael Huemer’s “Why People Are Irrational about Politics” makes the good (though not new) point that a voter’s political position is often driven by his desire to be seen as holding that position rather than by the policies he desires to see in place. (more…)

Professor Volokh at VC does some interesting analysis of the dangers of homosexuality. I’ll quote him and carry his analysis further and compare it to smoking. (more…)

The Telegraph reports that Sunnis in Iraq are blocking the new constitution. This puzzles me, since it seems failure would hurt them most. (more…)

From the newsletter of the Wegeners, missionaries in Zambia, we learn of the interesting hobby of collecting poisonous snakes as pets. (more…)

Professor Atwood points out to me that the the Indiana State Constitution seems to ban all criminal punishment. (more…)

Eugene Volokh at VC has had a couple of good posts on homosexuality recently. One is on attitudes. What I get out of the data to which he points us (though he is silent on half these points) is that (a) Polls indicate about an even split between people who think homosexuality should be criminal and those who do not. (b) About 40% of people think homosexuals should hired as high school teachers and 40% think they should not. (c) In 2002, people thought homosexuality was immoral by a 60% to 33% margin. (d) In 1973, the margin was 80% immoral to 11% moral. (more…)

Richard Baehr has a good article about election fraud in 2000 and 2004 in The American Thinker. Here’s one evidence of fraud I don’t recall hearing about in 2000— double votes for both Bush and Gore in Palm Beach County. (more…)

New information is coming to light on the academic freedom case of Professor William Bradford at the Indiana School of Law in Indianapolis (which is distinct from our own Indiana Law School down here in Bloomington, though in the same state university system). Professor Bradford, a veteran with an excellent record of scholarly publications and who has been popular with students, wanted to go up for tenure early, after 3 years instead of 6. Looking at his publication record , I should think he would get tenure easily now and there is no reason to wait. Another new professor, Robin Craig, has a similar or weaker record, and was allowed to come up early and did get tenure.

The Administration did not allow Professor Bradford to come up early for tenure. ( Update: Wrong– they just advised him not to, and he took the advice. ) Also, there was only a 10-5 vote in spring 2005 for renewing his contract so that he *could* come up for tenure later. (more…)

Stromata Blog points out that Iraq is a strategic nightmare for Al Qaeda: (more…)

Most churches nowadays in America are afraid to speak out against sin. They are also clearly afraid to speack out against blasphemy or any kind of disrespect for God. Some Moslems go to extremes in this, but I admire their concern for their god’s honor, a respect we Christians do not share— and I’m afraid I must include myself with the rest. At any rate, I thought of an interesting experiment to do using a survey of churches. Here is how it would work. (more…)

I’ve started The Last Kingdom, by Bernard Cornwell. It is a historical novel about the conquest by the Danes of the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex, and King Alfred of Wessex’s resistance. It’s good so far, but here I will just recommend the cover art.