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June 29, 2005
Statuary Law
I see the Supreme Court has made yet another decision on the 10 commandments. I haven’t read it, I can’t really comment on it per se. But my training (so far) has been political theory, not legal scholarship. If you want that, take a look at Terminus, or The Talking Dog...
I admit to being of mixed mind about public displays of the Big 10. In the strictly philosophical sense, I am outraged, but in the actual personal sense, I don’t care a bit. Let me explain...
On the one hand
We have the government displaying religious iconography. Not only is it religious iconography, but it is iconography which is personally significant to a large segment of the population. Indeed, by and large it is being displayed precisely because it is significant to many people. This seems like an issue where the State is taking sides in a religious dispute-- something which is a big no-no...
On occasion, these icons try to sneak onto public grounds under the idea that they are an important part of our legal tradition, said legal tradition deriving from Judeo-Christian believes. This is utter nonsense. We do not have a Judeo-Christian-derived legal system; indeed, I am not sure that “Judeo-Christian” has any meaning whatsoever...
Every sect of both Judaism and Christianity have wildly different interpretations of what their book(s)(!) mean, with the Jews at least having the grace to admit that god will have to sort it all out when he gets around to it. Both groups have internal disputes over which basic Laws are still in effect-- they even differ as to which of Laws comprise the 10 commandments-- some Christians going so far as to say that Jesus replaced the 10 commandments with a mere 2...
Leaving the Judeo-Christian world, there is the fact that a good 10-20% of America simply doesn’t believe that these commandments are from God, or even that they are a good idea intrinsically. Not having graven images is kind of a big thing, though the meaning of this term is up for grabs: Islam takes this to mean that there can be no non-holy art; Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that a graven image is anything holy. Another commandment that may not be such a good idea is being forced to take a day off to worship god-- difficult for the atheists and football fans among us...
When the State allows statues of the 10 commandments, it takes sides on these disputes. If the 30 years war taught us anything, it taught us that religion is far too powerful for the state to take sides on. People will kill-- and die-- for their religious believes. Killing and dying over matters of politics are inimical to rational discussion of the Public Good...
On the other hand...
It’s just a statue. You know? I have more than likely walked past dozens of such and never noticed them. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed the Supreme Court building’s picture of Moses receiving the tablets had the tour guide not pointed it out to me. When all is said and done the statues are only important to those who make a big deal about them as long as they are ignorable, they should be ignored...
Posted by Andrew at 12:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
Google Goodies
Ever wonder what your house looks like from space? How about the City of San Francisco? There’s a new Google Toy which covers, near as I can tell, every part of planet Earth...
For the US, Canada, and England, it will give data on such things as coffee shops, movie rentals, and gas stations. In the US, it will give Zip Codes, and even congressional districts!
It’s a 10 meg download, and requires a decent Internet connection (data is streamed in rather than cached locally) they recommend a fairly modern computer (say newer than 2 years). It’s not available for Mac or Linux...
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June 27, 2005
Want!
I can’t imagine when I would ever use such a thing. Which doesn’t stop me from having intense technolust...
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June 25, 2005
Off the tourist-book pleasures:
One of the great pleasures of Maui (and all of Hawaii) is ASPCA shelters. You see; all animals going into Hawaii are quarantined. This means that there is no real danger to animals actually on the islands; rabies is unknown there. This allows the ASPCA to put all their cats into a single room...
Can you imagine the simple joys of being in a room full of kittens? If not, you probably need a vacation! Yes, I damned near took a little one home...
Posted by Andrew at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 24, 2005
The umpire rules it:
Safe at home!
Maui was warm...
It also has some of the best food I’ve ever had. We Bay-Areans think we have food from all over the world. And we do. But Maui actually seems able to blend everything into one cultural phenomenon. This might have something to do with the fact that the native food (Taro) is a testimony to the human will to live...
Posted by Andrew at 11:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2005
Vacation Alert!
So, I am going off to Hawaii for the week. I should be back next Saturday. What this means for you is that I won’t be posting anything. Also, if you know me personally, you get to think about me in a bathing suite...
Yes, I said “suite”, I meant “suite”. Had I meant “suit”, I would have typed it...
Posted by Andrew at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2005
Class Warfare!
Pandagon: Random thought on another class difference
I am reading the book Perfectly Legal right now. Amanda’s comments dovetail nicely with the thesis of the book, which is business owners and CEOs have ways of hiding money from the IRS that simply aren’t available to everyone else. Furthermore, the IRS is much more likely to actually audit someone who has little to get than they are to audit someone who has lots to take. Furthermore, the book argues, this is by congressional design...
Posted by Andrew at 07:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Da Vinci Code = my store�s bottom line
But this guy hates America:
Why? Well, it'd go against one of the two rules by which my mother taught me to live life: Always Wait for the Paperback. (The other rule, in case you're curious, is: If There's Ever a TV Channel Called E!, Ignore It.) So I'm not about to sacrifice my principles and disappoint my mother now because of one lousy book that, from what I can tell from reading over the shoulders of people on the subway, is full of holes!
What do you mean, America = not the bottom line? Hrumph...
Posted by Andrew at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 15, 2005
Why Self-Proclaimed "Fundamentalists" Scare Me:
"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one to two years off the average life span, yet we 'celebrate' a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span according to the 2005 issue of the revered scientific journal Psychological Reports," Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York Christian Coalition told the Mid Hudson News.
Even if we take him metaphorically (IE, assume that he doesn't actually want to employ the same labeling system pioneered by the German NAZI party), we are still left with a fairy silly statement...
To whit: Rev. Banuchi is claiming that we "celebrate" gay sex, rather than try to forget that gays actually have sex. He further postulates that gay men and gay women are equally likely to suffer all sorts of diseases-- something which is patently untrue. Indeed, I think Girl on Girl sex is* probably the single safest sex 2 or more humans can engage in. Men, on the other hand, can transmit germs around quite nicely...
Also, why are Psychological Reports being revered? And why exactly is a Psychological Journal making points about life expectancy and STD rates? Shouldn�t it be concentrating on the, um, psychology?
Anyway, this man seriously needs to loose some followers. Alas, he'll probably be able to determine the direction of at least one congressional seat...
*no, not going there. Get your mind out of the gutter!
Posted by Andrew at 04:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 14, 2005
No need for me to say anything further:
[I want to work for ever] I want to greet my many young colleagues, make old Jewish guy jokes as I wind my way to my desk, sit down at my holographic laptop (which will now be a hopeless relic compared to the Cornea Computers others will use), and blog for a bit. Then I'll work the phones for awhile, trying to figure out what my next column will be. Then I'll blog a bit more. Work phones. Have lunch with somebody interesting. Go out with my wife to dinner. Etc.Yes, I want to work forever because what I want to do sounds like it'll be fun forever. Maybe it won't be, of course, but David Broder is nearing 130 and he's still at it, so there seems to be a chance. Now. I would really not like to work forever if I was a tailor. I wouldn't not enjoy trudging into the office each morning and, at 93, bending down to hem pants. I would not enjoy standing up all day to adjust the merchandise. I would much rather be sitting at home, acting the dirty old man towards my wife.
[...]Prioritizing the repeal of the estate tax above letting the working class escape little-liked occupations while they still have healthy years to enjoy the time off wouldn't just be bad policy, it'd be wholly immoral.
Now, the weird thing is: Ezra and I are both in finals week, yet he is able to blog several times a day, while I am silent for a week and a half. Perhaps Ezra doesn’t have a job?
Posted by Andrew at 08:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 12, 2005
Evolution Refuted!
The American Street » Blog Archive » How stupid can creationism get?
Or, rather, evolution’s refutation refuted. "rerefutation"?
Posted by Andrew at 02:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2005
Healthcare: busses, Chevrolets, and Cadillacs.
The British healthcare system is (rightly) the whipping boy of socialized medicinal. It is a truly terrible example of how not to run a healthcare system. There is a good reason Americans wedded to the private system we have now overlook the French system, or the Canadian one, or the Japanese one, or just about anyone else’s: they work better...
In the comments to this post Hale Adams says:
The American system sucks, too, but only in the sense that it "sucks" that most of us want "Cadillac" care when we have only "Chevrolet" budgets. If you're willing to accept "Chevrolet" care-- that is, what you can actually afford-- you can get good service.
The problem Hale overlooks, that advocates of free market medicine often overlook, is that a good many people don’t even have "Chevrolet" budgets-- they have budgets only for bus fare...
Indeed, going one step further; almost no one has a "Chevrolet" budget; by and large employers are left to negotiate with insurance companies to drive prices down to “Chevrolet” levels, which are then affordable (after the employer also subsidizes much of the health transition)...
This is perhaps the most damming part of our system: by attaching healthcare availability to specific employers, people get locked into jobs which they otherwise might leave. On top of that, American employers are having to carry a cost of doing business (paying for their employees health) that simply no other post-industrialized nation on Earth has to pay for! If the American government were to pay for the health of (say) GM’s employees, they wouldn’t be in bankruptcy right now...
Posted by Andrew at 01:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 04, 2005
Newsweek reported news...
Remember when the Right bloviated about Newsweek "causing" riots? Well, it turns out that we were Doing naughty things to holy books after all. So, if we don’t want to be detested, we should try not to do detestable things...
Posted by Andrew at 01:28 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 03, 2005
In case you�re interested:
I got an 85 on my latest statistics midterm!
Given the number of times I’ve not-passes this class, that’s a pretty big thing. Of course, I have a few more days until the final, and then we’ll know...
Posted by Andrew at 11:49 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 02, 2005
Malpractice: to practice badly
As we all know, the trial lawyers are putting doctors out of business. If only people who have the wrong arm/kidney/testicle removed would get less cash, doctors’ insurance rates would go down. Except, that’s not true:
Researchers found that payments grew an average of 4 percent annually during the years covered by the study, or 52 percent overall since 1991, but only 1.6 percent a year since 2000. The increases are roughly equivalent to the overall rise in healthcare costs, said Amitabh Chandra, lead author and an assistant professor of economics at the New Hampshire college.Boston Globe
[...]
Meanwhile, malpractice insurance premiums for internists, general surgeons, and obstetricians have skyrocketed since 2000, jumping 20 to 25 percent in 2002 alone. In Massachusetts, ProMutual Group, which covers about one-third of the state's doctors, raised rates an average of 11 percent last year, 20 percent in 2003, and 12.5 percent in 2002.
Insurance of all sorts is a necessary part of our entire economy. It is simply impossible to live and do business without it. And, of course, given the utter necessity of insurance, providers are jacking up their rates just as fast as possible. As a result people are going out of business...
It’s time, I think, to start applying revenue caps to insurance providers. Let ‘em keep (say) 10% more than what they pay out, and give the rest back as a rebate to those they insure. Indeed, perhaps the safer/better you are, the bigger the rebate. Just a thought...
(Thanks to Jesse Taylor)
Posted by Andrew at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 01, 2005
Bill Baby!
Posted by Andrew at 12:47 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack