by Daniel on October 15, 2005
Tim Lambert has done very good work over the years keeping people honest on the John Lott “More Guns, Less Crime” thesis and on the Lancet study. However, his work on the strange subculture of DDT loons also deserves a bit of publicity.
Basically, there are lots of people out there, mainly the same sort of people who are fans of Stephen Milloy’s “junkscience.com”, who believe that “liberals and environmentalists” are responsible for the deaths of over 50 million people in the third world from malaria because they banned DDT in the 1970s, because they read the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. This charge is rubbish from start to finish … as in, DDT wasn’t banned in the 1970s, and using DDT is usually not the best way to prevent malaria. Tim’s DDT archive has the whole damn story.
Why are people so keen on DDT? Don’t know. There’s no compelling economic interest in treating the stuff as if it were a panacea; it’s a commodity chemical which is banned as an agricultural pesticide (in order to avoid creating resistant mosquitoes and compromising its use as an antimalarial) and which has only a niche demand as an antimalarial (because pyrethroid-treated mosquito nets are usually a more cost-effective prevention method). All I can think of is that claiming that environmentalists are responsible for millions of deaths in the third world is a handy way of slagging off environmentalists. One has to say, looking at the calibre of human being pushing the DDT argument in Tim’s archive, for them to cry crocodile tears over the genuine problems of the third world while doing nothing to ameliorate them, simply to fight a domestic political battle, would not exactly be out of character. Nice one Tim for exposing this vile, pernicious rubbish.
by Henry Farrell on October 15, 2005
Q: “‘Why are conservative Republicans, who control the executive and legislative branches of government for the first time in living memory, so vulnerable to the phenomenon of criminalization?'”:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=6211&R=C74716908
A: Because there seems to be prima facie evidence that prominent conservative Republicans were up to their “eyes”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101108.html “in”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/03/AR2005100300190.html “criminal”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/05/AR2005100502030.html “activities”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101402076.html.
Number 1,411 in a series of easy answers to unnecessarily complicated questions (with apologies to “The Poor Man”). Hat tip: “Laura Rozen”:http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002846.html
by Henry Farrell on October 15, 2005
Marty Lederman has another “essential post”:http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/10/beware-augmented-mccain-amendment.html at Balkinization about how Ted Stevens wants to gut the McCain anti-torture bill at conference committee, so that it doesn’t restrict the CIA’s ability to use brutal methods of interrogation.
What this barely veiled statement means is that Senator Stevens will support inclusion of the McCain Amendment in the final bill only once it has been “augmented” to exempt the CIA from the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. (Stevens’s reference to persons who “may not be citizens of the United States, but are working for us” suggests that he also intends to include a carve-out for foreign nationals acting as agents of the CIA, such as the team of the CIA-sponsored Iraqi paramilitary squads code-named Scorpions.) If Stevens (read: Cheney) is successful in this endeavor, and if the Congress enacts the Amendment as so limited, it will be a major step backwards from where the law currently stands. This can’t be overemphasized: If Stevens is successful at adding his seemingly innocuous “augment[ation],” it would make the law worse than it currently is.
… What this means, as a practical matter, is that the Administration has given the CIA the green light to engage in all forms of coercive interrogation short of “torture” proper.
… And that’s apparently why the CIA believed that it was entitled, along with a small team of the CIA-sponsored Iraqi paramilitary squads code-named Scorpions, to assault a detainee with fists, a club, a length of rubber hose, and the handle of a sledgehammer.
… But if Senator Stevens has his way, and successfully exempts the CIA from the McCain Amendment’s otherwise unequivocal ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the Congress will for the first time have ratified the Administration’s view that such cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is not uniformly off-limits, and will have given a green light to the CIA to engage in such conduct.
It’s quite disgusting that the US mainstream press isn’t paying any real attention to what’s happening here. The US is on the verge of a momentous choice, between turning away (at least in part) from some of the vicious abuses of the last couple of years, or giving them the green flag. It shouldn’t be left up to a blogging law professor to tell us what’s going on.
by Brian on October 15, 2005
Two stories from the “Sydney Morning Herald”:http://smh.com.au this morning tell us a lot about the Howard government. The “front page story”:http://smh.com.au/news/national/terrorist-laws-to-lock-up-objectors/2005/10/14/1128796712300.html concerns the government’s new anti-terror laws, and “the main feature”:http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-real-deal/2005/10/14/1128796703087.html is about how to decode the government’s industrial relations policies.
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by Eszter Hargittai on October 14, 2005
I am so glad that somebody finally wrote this piece regarding press fascination with iEverything. (The author does acknowledge Slate’s history with Microsoft.) The article also links to this great spoof ad, which summarizes much of the point quite well.
There is absolutely no need to educate me about the merits of Mac products. I used to and still do own several. That’s not the point here, which you’ll understand if you read the article for what it is.
by John Q on October 14, 2005
Discussion of game theory inevitably brings up the question of whether game theory relies on an assumption of rational behavior, and, if so, whether this is a weakness or a strength. Rather than respond, I thought I’d dig up this old post from my long-abandoned (but still planned-to-be-revived-one-day) Word for Wednesday series. I’ve added a couple of links and made some minor changes.
Shorter JQ: the word ‘rational’ has no meaning that cannot better be conveyed by some alternative term. Avoid it.
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by Chris Bertram on October 14, 2005
The excellent “Equality Exchange”:http://mora.rente.nhh.no/projects/EqualityExchange/ — a repository for papers about the theory and practice of equality from philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, lawyers and economists — has moved. Adjust your bookmarks for the new site, and take the opportunity to have a look around one of the most valuable resources for political theorists and philosophers.
by Chris Bertram on October 14, 2005
The last time Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam was discussed on this blog, he was “being deported from the US as a threat to national security”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/09/22/cat-stevens-banned-from-the-us/ . Now, via “Amanda”:http://flopearedmule.blogspot.com/2005/10/crossposted-at-hickorywind_11.html , I see that he’s been busy recording with Dolly Parton. As Amanda puts it:
bq. call me profane, but the idea of a noted religious ascetic picking with the Texas Whorehouse lady herself really appeals to me.
by Chris Bertram on October 13, 2005
MEG: Have you got your paper?
PETEY: Yes thanks.
MEG: That’s nice? Anything interesting?
PETEY: Not really.
MEG: That’s nice.
PETEY: “Someone won a prize”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4338082.stm .
MEG: That’s nice. Who?
PETEY: I don’t think you’d know him.
MEG: What’s his name?
PETEY: Harold.
MEG: I don’t know him.
PETEY: No.
by Henry Farrell on October 13, 2005
“Kevin Drum”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007319.php poses a challenge to Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, who are guest-blogging with him this week.
bq. it’s true that the activist base of the Republican party is pretty far distant from the middle of American politics, and George Bush recognized this in his first term, mostly steering a center-right course. However, in his second term it’s all falling apart, just the way conventional political science suggests it should. The more that Bush panders to the Republican base (Social Security, Terri Schiavo), the more he loses the support of Middle America. At the same time, the more he tries to tack to the center (Katrina, Harriet Miers), the angrier his base gets. Centripetal forces are tearing the Republican coalition apart, and suddenly Beltway buzz suggests that Republicans might actually lose Congress in 2006. This suggests two possibilities to me. The first is that conventional political science still has it right. It took a few years, but the radicalism of the Republican base is finally putting a stake through the heart of the party, just as you’d expect. The second possibility is that we wouldn’t even be talking about this if it weren’t for 9/11: Bush would have long ago lost control of his coalition and would have gotten clobbered in 2004. What we’re seeing today really is a special case, not a permanent realignment.
There’s an important point here – as I mentioned in my “review”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/04/off-center/ of their book, I think that Hacker and Pierson overestimate the internal cohesiveness of the Republican coalition. And as Ed Kilgore “notes”:http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/13/01151/941 today, many of the important “New Power Brokers” that hold the coalition together have been sorely damaged by the various scandals swirling around the Republican party. But there’s also an important part of Hacker and Pierson’s account that I didn’t really talk about in my review – the way in which the Republicans have successfully changed the rules of the electoral game through redistricting, and the more general way in which both Republicans and Democrats have shored up incumbent advantage and limited the number of genuinely competitive races. As this “NYT article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/politics/13dems.html?ex=1286856000&en=e112abf0873e39be&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss acknowledges, winning back the House is at best going to be an uphill battle for Democrats, and winning back the Senate is going to be harder still, even if the public are unhappy with the Republican party. This seems to me to provide a partial answer to Kevin’s point – even if the Republicans start to squabble among themselves, and even if the public aren’t happy with them, this won’t necessarily translate into the political sea-change that would be necessary to see them removed from power, precisely because of the kind of backlash insurance mechanisms that Hacker and Pierson talk about.
by Chris Bertram on October 13, 2005
Reading Ronald Dworkin’s chapter “Political Equality” from “Sovereign Virtue”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674008103/junius-20 and James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385503865/junius-20 back to back was a rather odd experience. I first read Dworkin as saying something like the following.
bq. Leaving things up to the electors is all very well for issues where what the right answer is actually depends on what people want. But lots of issues, especially one’s of basic justice, aren’t like that. There’s not special reason to think that ordinary people are much good at those questions, so better to put them in the hands of people like me the justices of the US Supreme Court.
Aha! I thought, after reading Surowiecki. Maybe Dworkin goes too quickly in assuming that a panel of experts is better than the electorate is at deciding such questions. Let’s go back and see what he says. But apart from a bit of handwaving in the direction of Condorcet (inconclusive according to Dworkin, and mentioned by name by neither D nor S) there isn’t really any argument. And Dworkin’s positive claims end up looking really elusive. Like this:
bq. For some matters where the right answer is independent of what citizens want it might , sometimes be better to have judges decide (though “it would be outrageous to suggest that only lawyers and moral philosophers should be allowed a vote on choice-insensitive matters” (p.207). And, by the way, judicial review doesn’t impugn equality of the vote “because it is a form of districting” (p. 209).
So I’d be grateful if someone out there can formulate a nice crisp thesis about these matters that I can pin on Dworkin with confidence and which doesn’t contain so many qualifications and get-outs as to be nearly worthless. I also wonder, insofar as my first attempt at a summary is an accurate rendition of what Dworkin really thinks, whether the impending Republican majority on the Supreme Court will give him cause to regret and retract his view.
by John Q on October 13, 2005
The latest Nobel Prize award to Aumann and Schelling has generated a bit of discussion about the value or otherwise of game theory. Generally speaking, economists are enthusiastic about game theory and other social scientists less so. Although I admire the work of Aumann and (even more) Schelling, as economists go, I’m a game-theory sceptic, for a fundamental reason I’ll try, probably unsuccessfully, to explain.
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by Chris Bertram on October 13, 2005
Robert Winston “writing in the Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1590776,00.html :
bq. While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter which we know plays a powerful role in our feelings of well-being; it may also be involved in the sense of peace that humans feel during some spiritual experiences. One particular gene involved in dopamine action – incidentally, by no means the only one that has been studied in this way – is the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4). In some people, because of slight changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a so-called polymorphism) making up this gene, the gene may be more biologically active, and this could be partly responsible for a religious bent.
Well I’m quite open to the idea that those specially drawn to religion have a chemical imbalance in their brains, but this thesis surely has to contend with the startling temporal fluctuations in religiosity that different societies undergo. The Irish and Italians, two name but two, don’t seem especially religious at the moment, but go back a generation or three …. I doubt very much that their genetic stock has changed that much.
by John Q on October 12, 2005
The issue of how (if at all) to regulate political comment and advertising on blogs (and the Internet in general) has been coming up in many countries as the electoral cycle catches up with the blog explosion. In Australia, the last election produced threats to regulate blogs and other Internet comment on political matters, in particular by requiring identifying details to be posted[1].
This was one of the subjects addressed by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Inquiry into the Conduct of the 2004 Federal Election and Matters Related Thereto. I made a submission attacking the idea, and arguing that only paid advertisements should be subject to this requirement. Amazingly enough[2], the Committee agreed.
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by Henry Farrell on October 12, 2005
The Chronicle has a very interesting (if long) “article”:http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i08/08a01201.htm on the ISI citation impact index, which seeks to measure the importance of academic journals through calculating the number of citations that each article in the journal gets. Like all indices, it creates skewed incentives for people to game the system. Authors tailor their pieces to get into the top journals, while journal editors’ choice of which articles to publish may be influenced by whether or not it will get lots of citations (and bump up the impact factor of the journal). [click to continue…]