The new issue of Philosophy and Public Affairs contains a brilliant paper by A.J. Julius on the issue of the site of distributive justice. (Subscribers only I’m afraid). He argues against Cohen’s wide-scope construal of the basic structure, and in favour of a more limited scope construal, but does so in what seems to me a novel way — and also indicates that this construal is consistent with far less inequality than either defenders or opponents of the narrow-scope construal often suppose. Read it.
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Harry
My friend Carrie writes from England to say that her annoyance with the radio play of Wham’s Last Christmas is interfering with her work. Is Last Christmas the most annoying Christmas record? No way.
Via Critical Mass I found this old (by blogosphere standards) news story about racist speech. The Cavalier and the various officials they quote all say that the accused employee used a racist term in the following sentence:
Laura at Apartment 11D has a nice post on the non-voluntariness of having children. Of course, in some non-trivial sense having children is a choice. but it is not a choice like the choice of what career to have, or what breakfast cereal to have. She says:
Since Chris and Kieran have been posting on this I thought I’d weigh in, and perhaps be a little more politically incorrect. (See also the interesting article by Katherine Quarmby in last month’s Prospect, temporarily available to non-subscribers) The left tends to emphasize two things about child-rearing:
1) The desirability of having men and women more-or-less equally involved in the hands-on aspects of rearing from very early on;
2) The desirability of women facing roughly equal prospects in the labor market as men.
Just thought I’d register a Brit’s regret at Waugh’s decision to retire as captain of Australia. It is hard to know whether he is the greatest captain Australia has had, or whether he has just been lucky to have under his command the greatest test team in history. I’m in the ‘Anyone But England’ camp except when England plays Australia, when my principle of supporting the underdog gets the better of my anti-patriotism. But watching Australia the past few years, against just about anyone, has been sheer bliss. And Waugh’s quiet battle against the increasing and grotesque commercialism in the international game, even if it has been carried out in a spirit of patriotism, has made him almost as much of a hero as his captaincy.
The first episode of Dr. Who was broadcast 40 years ago today. Some of you will know that the BBC is planning to bring the series back, after a long hiatus, though the title role has not yet been cast. Sylvester Stallone perhaps? Anyway, congratulations to the Doctor on his birthday, and thanks to the BBC for bringing him, or her, back. (See also cartoon version, watchable if you have broadband, on BBCi here).
The News Quiz is back on BBC Radio 4. This week’s is particularly good (despite the absence of the peer-less Linda Smith) for two reasons: 1) They are all barred by a court injunction from talking about the main news story which isn’t a news story because its only a rumour that no-one has printed (or have they?) but has already been denied and 2) a BBC newsreader had to fill in for Sandi Toksvig at the last minute and is, by terms of her employment, prohibited from expressing an opinions, which she refrains from doing extremely well.
Keith Burgess-Jackson provides an interesting defence of the fairness of tenure over at AnalPhilosopher. (You have to scroll down a bit to get to it) The defence is this: academics are capable people who could have chosen to compete in a variety of fields. Academia provides a particular mix of goods — including the ability to teach, the freedom to research, and tenure, which compensates us for our low (relative to other professions we might have chosen) pay. There’s nothing unfair about people enjoying a benefit which is part of a package which includes countervailing costs. He rightly suggests that if you really abolished tenure you would be raising the costs of competently delivered higher education.
In my role as Adam Swift’s unpaid publicist I want to point out this piece in The Telegraph (you have to register, but its free, quick, and easy, and there’s lots of other good stuff). Swift explains — to Telegraph readers, remember — why the standard arguments in defence of private schools don’t work; either because they appeal to false values, or because they appeal to correct values but are beside the point. A great challenge to private schools — and kudos to John Clare, the Telegraph education editor, for running it. (For Americans who don’t know it the Telegraph is the furthest right of the UK newspapers, so this is a particularly incendiary piece for it).
An update on Dianne Abbott: her choice was the topic of this week’s The Moral Maze which you can hear on the web till next Tuesday. Worth a listen, even if you’re not particularly interested in the topic, for an insight into the workings (or otherwise) of the journalistic mind.
Bert Jansch is the interviewee on this week’s My Life on CD. I’m a big fan of Jansch, and this interview is fantastic because he is vitually monosyllabic — poor Tracey Macloed works for every word she gets out of him. Reminds me of the great Wogan interview with James Bolam in which Bolam sat in complete silence, apparently dumbstruck by the situation (and Wogan, masterfully, filled in all the gaps).
A nice piece in today’s Independent on Sunday (UK) by Adam Swift, defending Dianne Abbott from herself.
Sorry to lower the tone, but Terry Wogan proimised that today he would have a world exclusive of the first radio play of ‘Let It Be’ from the ‘new’ Beatles album on Wake Up To Wogan. You have to listen on the Listen Again feature you’ll find on the page. It is about 38 minutes into the show. My guess is that it’ll be available today only.
It’ll take a better ear than mine to identify precisely how it is superior to the Phil Spector version, but it is only the title track.
It’s health insurance decision time at both my workplace and my wife’s. Like most employers mine is shifting more of the cost of insurance onto employees (though, brilliantly, it is not telling us how much we will have to pay, though we have to choose by today). I usually insure the family through my employer, and will again this year despite the cost, since, although my wife’s insurance would not cost us anything, we could not continue with our current GP on her insurance.
BUT, of course, we are also entitled to insure through her employer, and without any cost to ourselves. This would save us about $200-500 per year, as the co-pays for drugs through her insurer are lower and she gets better dental coverage (and we use a lot of drugs and dental). It would cost her employer about $10,000 per year to provide us with this benefit. (On top of the $12,000 my own employer pays).
So, what should we do? Have her employer pay $10,000 to an HMO so we can save at most $500? Or just lose the $200-500? (Please don’t suggest moving to a civilised country with a sane and efficient arrangement for funding healthcare: that’s not an option).
Three relevant facts:
1. My wife’s employer is the local public school district.
2. For years my employer has been effectively subsidising hers, both because when the kids are sick my job has the flexibility that I can take time off instead of her, and because we have never signed up for health insurance through her employer.
3. She works 30-35 hours a week and is paid on a 50% contract.