I’ve received lots of useful feedback on my earlier cloning post, and on at least one point, the risks involved in cloning, it’s clear I need to revise and expand my remarks. But first another little defence of cloning that popped into my mind.
Posts by author:
Brian
I just got some voting slips for participant proposals for the TIAA-CREF accounts that I have. I assume many readers of this blog have similar accounts, which is why this might be interesting.
One of the proposals was to stop investing in all companies that support gun control. It almost goes without saying that this is a Very Bad Idea, and one that I’d strongly recommend people vote against. I doubt the proposal has much chance, but just in case a few gun-lovers with college jobs get behind it, it is worth taking the time to vote it down.
For a little project I’m working on I have to write something on cloning, and in particular debates about whether reproductive cloning should be legalised. It isn’t really my area of expertise, so I don’t want to form sweeping judgments too quickly. But at first glance at the literature all of the arguments for banning reproductive cloning look absolutely awful. (With perhaps one exception, which is merely an unsound argument rather than an awful one.) If anyone knows of any good arguments, I’d be rather happy to see them.
Matt Yglesias links to an appallingly boring list of the top 10 albums of all time, courtesy of (who else) Rolling Stone. Because I so love lists, and because I like flame wars, I decided to commemorate the occasion by pulling out my top 10 list, tinkering with it, and posting it.
From Jeb “Compassionate Conservative” Bush:
bq. It looks like the people of San Francisco are an endangered species, which may not be a bad thing. That’s probably good news for the country. (AP Nov 12: link via Atrios)
As the old cliche goes, some of my best friends are San Franciscans, so I’d be a little disappointed if someone wished them to be endangered. Fortunately that wasn’t what Jeb really meant.
bq. Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre later explained the governor’s thinking: “The Cabinet was talking about endangered species and everyone knows that Republicans are an endangered species in California.”
So Jeb thinks it’s a good thing that Republicans are endangered in California. Well that’s OK then. I certainly don’t have any Republican friends out there. I suspect the only thing in danger though is Mr DiPietre’s credibility.
Who knew such a thing existed? And who would have guessed that if it did exist, it would exist in Belgium?
Josh Parsons has found a hangover cure hidden in Zeno’s writings. It’s a rather clever variant on the “drink more suffer later” cure. If anyone actually tries it I’d be interested to see the results. As a rule taking medical advice from a philosopher is about as wise as getting involved in a land war in Asia, so I have my doubts about this ‘cure’, but I’d be very happy if it was to work.
Apparently it’s easier on your hands to type like a pirate. (Hat tip: Mark Liberman.)
From Martin Schönfeld’s entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Kant’s philosophical development:
Modern thought begins with Kant. The appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 marks the start of modern philosophy, and Kant’s ideas have helped to shape global civilization. Today his texts are read on all continents. Although Kant is in the same league as Confucius or Aristotle…
I’ve got some relatives who have spent time in Antarctica, but I’ve never heard them talk about the Kant scholars down there. More seriously, there’s more than a few Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley, Reid and Rousseau scholars who might dispute that modern philosophy begins with CPR, and a few million Americans who would probably dispute that there was no modern thought before Kant.
Chris’s post generated such an interesting comments thread that I feel I have to hop on the bandwagon. The following is a theologically revised version of a puzzle that’s been doing the rounds the past decade or so.
Language Hat objects to the sentence “Stephenson, who is sixty, is tall and deprecating.” by Field Malony appearing in the New Yorker. He says it should have been “self-deprecating”. But this seems excessive, since it’s clear from the context that the thing Stephenson deprecates is himself. If an author had written that Stephenson is “tall and charming” we wouldn’t be calling them out because the things Stephenson habitually charms are other people, rather than his pot plants, or his own temporal parts. I don’t see why deprecating should be any different.
(Bonus question for philosophers and linguists. If context is as clear as clear as I say it is, but Stephenson is a pot-plant-deprecator rather than a self-deprecator, is the proposition expressed by Maloney’s utterance true or false?)
Over on Volokh, Cori Dauber writes:
bq. THE ECHO CHAMBER IN PLAY … Study and after study has shown that Americans accept casualties if they believe they were in support of a necessary mission. The idea, promulgated again here, that public opinion is linked causally to the number of casualties and falls in predictable algorithms based on casualties taken is a canard, based on interpretations of the data from Vietnam detached from all context.
If you actually click through that link, you’ll see three things. First, all that is being claimed is that for a given war, higher casualties result in less support, so the need for context (i.e. cross-war comparisons) is not ever so clear. Second, the evidence for this is not just from Vietnam, but also from Korea. Third, the source isn’t just the echo chamber repeating itself (like Dauber’s unsourced ‘studies after studies’) but is credited to Dr William Hammond, from the US Army’s Center for Military History. The liberal media conspiracy has really long tentacles if it’s reached into the Army’s own historical division. (Why does the US Army hate America so much?)
You’ve probably all seen the news that Donald Luskin is now legally stalking Atrios. Through his lawyer (who I’m sad to say is a Brown grad) Luskin wants Atrios to go through his comments board and delete all the posts that could be considered defamatory. I’m not sure it’s possible to defame Luskin, and I’m pretty sure being forced to trawl through Atrios’s comments section is not something anyone should be legally obliged to do. (Isn’t that a cruel, or at least unusual, punishment?)
This looks little better than a nuisance suit, and the most just outcome is that it turns out to be a costly one for Luskin. (Luskin conspiring to keep himself poor and stupid does have a certain artistic quality to it, so maybe the suit isn’t all bad.)
The original legal demand is here, Atrios’s response is here and there’s a list of well-wishers here. I’m pleased to see some conservatives living up to their oft-quoted line about disagreeing with what you say but agreeing with your right to say it. The best comment so far (unsurprisingly) is from Andrew Northrup, with Brad DeLong not far behind.
The SF Chronicle reports that two UCSF scientists are leading a boycott of six journals published by Cell Press, a division of Reed-Elsevier. The immediate cause of the boycott is that Cell wants the UC system to pay $90,000 for electronic subscriptions to the six journals, and the scientists regard that as exorbitant.
The third line of the latest Powderfinger album is:
You’re swollen like a lexicon.
If that’s the best they can come up with it seems to imply not swollen at all.
By the way, the album isn’t particularly good. If you were going to buy it because you’re still hoping they can recapture the quality of their early work, save your dollars and be spared some disappointment.