Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

The Guardian has an article,“Cleft lip abortion done ‘in good faith,” on how a final-trimester baby was killed for having a cleft lip. The eugenics now is bloodier than that of 1900, and more widely practised. (more…)

All IU faculty were recently sent a letter from a number of professors in the humanities about an electronic vote that was taking place, a vote into which race had been obtrusively injected. It was nicely written, and a good sign of the health of our College of Arts and Sciences. Here is an excerpt:

Members of the faculty, individually or collectively, are free to
agitate for or against this resolution. In fact, there would be
something very wrong with our university if such debate did not take
place. But we feel strongly that the debate be conducted with a view to
the merits of the resolution. We are proud to be members of an
institution in which we judge everyone’s contributions by the cogency
of their arguments, the coherence of their evidence, and the
intellectual integrity of their position, rather than by their
membership in a group.

Steve Sailer has some creative comparisons of percentages of blacks and whites imprisoned state by state– and the ratio of them. The results are surprising:

The largest percentages of whites are imprisoned in old Wild West states: Alaska, Oklahoma, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. Whites are least likely to be locked up in the District of Columbia, Minnesota, New Jersey (much to the surprise of Sopranos fans), North Dakota, and New York….

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I just removed the webcounter from my weblog and homepage. It was a free counter, but I think it is the source of the annoying pop-ups that I have been seeing lately. It’s fine for the company to do that, as a price of their formerly free counter, but it’s a price I’m not willing to pay. Looking at one’s hits is like looking at the prices of stocks one owns. It is amusing (or distressing) than useful when done day by day.

The Wayback Machine lets you search for past versions of a webpage. You type in the address, it shows you a page full of dates, and you choose the one you want to look at.

A news story from San Antonio tells of a man who broke down idols in a Roman Catholic cathedral there. (more…)

I wrote earlier this fall on requiring women to view the aborted fetus, and to view a fetus at the same age of development before, as a condition of having an abortion. They could then better judge whether they were doing something wrong or not. That is a crude test for what is being removed, but a good start.

I think most people would agree that it is close to murder to kill a baby in the womb if the baby was so close to term that it could be delivered alive. But why is that such an important thing? Why, if baby A is just as mentally developed as baby B, but is slightly behind in the development of its lungs, should we say that it is okay to kill baby A but not baby B? (more…)

Becks’ Haake Beck NA is the best non-alc beer I have ever had. It gets panned in Gooley’s review of non-alcs though.

Tom Volk has some interesting things to say about the domestication of morel mushrooms. It turns out they have special clumps called sclerotia that form underground before the fruiting bodies. (more…)

Volokh refers us to a a Washington Post article on how Flagstar Bank explicitly discriminated against non-blacks in order not to be charged falsely with discriminating against blacks. This is the natural result of our laws., though most of the time the discrimination against non-blacks is better hidden.

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I didn’t like the sermon at ECC yesterday. Its message was rather inconsistent—did the preacher approve of breaking God’s lesser laws, or not— and it was defensive about Christians in a way I often see. The preacher said that in polls, one thing unbelievers say they really dislike about Christians is their hypocrisy. I can well believe that, but I wouldn’t go on to conclude that Christians are hypocrites. Rather, unbelievers are looking for a defense of their own sinful behavior, and “You do it too!”, while not a logical response (Does that make it right?), is a typical one. Then he said that Christians on TV embarassed him. He didn’t seem to realize that the Christians on TV reality shows are not a random sample. They are picked precisely to illustrate hypocrisy and other bad points— the producers of the shows wouldn’t have as interesting a show if the Christian team actually lived up to their beliefs and shamed the other teams and the listeners. Even this preacher fell into the media bias trap, about his own group.

I would rather see a preacher honestly say, “I believe Christians are better than other people.” A Christian has to believe that. If he doesn’t, he is denying sanctification— he is saying that even genuine Christian belief has no influence on a person’s behavior. Maybe that is true, but should somebody who believes it be a Christian? (more…)

Robin Hanson makes this good point at Marginal Revolution:

Land in populated areas is valuable mostly because other people live nearby; people with whom one can have social, job, and shopping relationships. While our neighbors often hurt us, their net (and marginal) effect is on average positive, and huge.

This externality, however, mainly comes from the people on nearby land, and not from their gardens. So when we consider how much land to use for our homes or offices, we do not consider the gains to others from our using less land, and so allowing more people to be nearby. We also neglect the benefits we provide others when choosing to live at the edge of the populated area, versus living in an unpopulated area.

These neglects suggest a big market failure, wherein housing and office density, and the size of the populated areas, are too small.

James Taranto comments on William Shotts’s 1997 Cartoon Laws of Physics, e.g., “Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.”

I highly recommend the Bhojanic Restaurant, 1363 Clairmont Road, Decatur, Georgia (next to Atlanta). I was visiting Emory University, and Kaushik M. took me there. Although not formal or expensive, it was one of the best Indian restaurants I can remember, with flavorings that were interesting, subtle, and fresh. It also tries to be attractive to children.

My January 15, 2004 post would not have been understood, I realize, by the typical American, who even if he went to college probably lacks a college education. The art gallery Www.internationalposter.com can help us out. Which of the posters below was painted 50 years after the others?

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I realized something odd about the media reporting of the current activity in Congress. The story is that Republicans are trying to cut taxes and cut social spending. But what actually is the case is that Republicans are trying to keep taxes from rising as much as they would otherwise, and to only moderately increase social spending. When you look at what is actually happening, if the Republicans have their way, it is that tax rates will not rise above the levels of this year. Since income will rise, taxes will rise anyway. Similarly, they want to reduce the growth rate of social spending, but social spending will still be higher in the future than it is now. More accurately, Republicans want to raise taxes and social spending— just not as much as Democrats.

The media reports are based on the following odd thinking. Under current law, social spending will increase by X% and taxes will increase by Y%. The Republicans are proposing that we change the law to make the increases smaller. Thus, relative to the baseline of a big increase, they are proposing cuts.

Charles Colson tells this heart-warming story about a visit by Mr. and Mrs. Bush to an Alexandria church.

I remember from my days with President Nixon what photo opportunities are: Get the picture and leave. So I thought the Bushes would shortly depart, but they didn’t. They stayed long after the cameras were gone to greet every child, to have their picture taken with them, their mothers, and their grandmothers, to talk with them, and to ask questions. Though the press didn’t report it, I noticed that both the president and Mrs. Bush talked to the Hispanic children in Spanish.

Just before the president left, I introduced him to Al Lawrence, a member of our staff. I told the president that I had met Al more than twenty years ago in a prison. Jesus had got hold of Al’s life, and he’s been working for us ever since. Then I told the president that Al’s son was now a freshman at Yale. At that point the president stopped, exclaimed, “We’re both Yale parents,” and threw his arms around Al Lawrence–an African-American ex-offender being embraced by the president of the United States in a church basement. The ground is indeed level at the foot of the cross.

Eugene Volokh reported in 2004 on an incident which shows that an outspoken conservative probably isn’t safe from prosecution not just in Canada, but in England, further narrowing the list of countries in which I am safe taking my next sabbatical (goodbye, British Columbia, Oxford, and Cambridge!). The elderly Pastor Hammond, frail enough to be just a few years from death, concealed a sign saying ‘Stop Homosexuality’ while on the bus because he knew it elicited hostility. When he got out and did display it, he was heckled and had dirt and water thrown at him by a crowd of about 30 or so people. They were not prosecuted, but he was– and vigorously. The court, and an appeals court, decided that he was criminally guilty, because his sign was insulting and his conduct in displaying it unreasonable. (more…)

The complaints in 2004 about “a jobless recovery” (vanished now in 2005, now that the election is done) are a good example of ignorance about economics. They refer to the odd current situation in which measured economic output is rising but measured employment is not. One possibility is that the measurements are wrong— in particular, that employment is actually higher than measured. But let’s suppose it isn’t. Why shouldn’t we be pleased if output can rise without any more people having to work? What’s wrong with higher productivity?

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Richard von Sternberg, the Smithsonian associate who was persecuted by the institution for having merely been the editor of a journal that published a pro-intelligent-design article, has published the result of the official investigation by the Office of Special Counsel into his persecution. It confirms his claims—and more, since he didn’t know how bad it was. A lot of scientists are seriously opposed any open-minded discussion of Intelligent Design. (more…)