I’ve been engaged in some correspondence which began around the question of whether or not “Mark Steyn rejects Darwin”:http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/mark_steyn_space_dwelling_robot_brain/ , but which has switched into a discussion of the views of philosopher and metaphysician, “Peter van Inwagen”:http://www.nd.edu/~ndphilo/faculty/pva.htm . Specifically, the following passage from Van Inwagen’s essay “Quam Dilecta”:

bq. I remember reading a very amusing response made by David Berlinski to Stephen Jay Gould’s statement that modern science was rapidly removing every excuse that anyone had ever had for thinking that we were much different from our closest primate relatives. Berlinski pointed out that you can always make two things sound similar (or “different only in degree”) if you describe them abstractly enough: “What Canada geese do when they migrate is much like what we do when we jump over a ditch: in each case, an organism’s feet leave the ground, it moves through the air, and it comes down some distance away. The difference between the two accomplishments is only a matter of degree.” I am also put in mind of a cartoon Phillip Johnson once showed me: A hostess is introducing a human being and a chimp at a cocktail party. “You two will have a lot to talk about,” she says, “–you share 99 percent of your DNA.” I’m sorry if I seem to be making a joke of this, but…well, I am making of joke of this. I admit it. Why shouldn’t I? The idea that there isn’t a vast, radical difference, a chasm, between human beings and all other terrestrial species is simply a very funny idea. It’s like the idea that Americans have a fundamental constitutional right to own automatic assault weapons: its consequences apart, it’s simply a very funny idea, and there’s nothing much one can do about it except to make a joke of it. You certainly wouldn’t want to invest much time in an argument with someone who would believe it in the first place.

I’m not a scientist (or a metaphysician for that matter), but I’m not shy to ask the advice of those who are. So comments are open for general observations on the passage. I’d be interested to know, though, whether anything as unvarnished as that can actually be pinned on Gould (van Inwagen provides no reference). I can well imagine him saying that chimpanzees and humans have a great deal in common compared what they share with, say, sharks or spiders (but that’s a different claim). The other thing that occured to me is that it is rather rich for someone to propose a laugh test to rule out counterintuitive scientific generalization when they themselves believe that “only human beings and elementary particles exist”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000189.html . My correspondent has corrected me to say that my characterization of van Inwagen’s view is inexact and that he holds that not only human beings by anything else with a “unified consciousness” can exist. So God and the angels are in too. That doesn’t really diminish my sense that when it comes to claims that are, on the face of it, laughable, van Inwagen may be a man throwing stones in a glasshouse.

My brother was traveling through Toronto airport last week, and was running a little late. But he was also hungry, so he stopped to get a sandwich. The guy in front of him in the queue took a very long time to order. He began counting out his change very slowly. He asked things like “Is this a quarter?” My brother, increasingly impatient and not in a charitable mood, thought maybe it’s the guy’s first time in Canada, or maybe he’s just an idiot. The guy had an odd bag at his feet that was a mixture of leather panels and silver-lined parachute material. He wore an Irish flat-peaked farmer’s cap of the sort which, when seen on someone under the age of sixty, is guaranteed to annoy Irish people everywhere. These facts lent support to the second theory. Finally, the guy finished counting out his money, slowly gathered his food and his silly bag and turned around to leave.

It was Michael Stipe. My brother said hello. Stipe said hello. Off he went. My brother said the only other thing that it occurred to him to say at the time was “Hey, how’s Thom Yorke? When’s the next _Radiohead_ album coming out?” But he felt this might not have been an appropriate question.

Scott Horton has an “indispensable post”:http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/09/shirking-responsibility.html at Balkinization on the armed forces’ response to the torture scandals. One telling paragraph:

bq. Harvey and Schoomaker also claim that the reports reflect that the Army took a “critical look at itself” and that it “investigated every credible allegation of detainee abuse.” But the cumulative evidence shows that, although the investigators and staff took their work seriously, the focus of those higher up was on a whitewash. An excellent example of this can be found in the work of MG Fay, who before being called up was a New Jersey insurance executive best known for his fund-raising activities on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign. As it happens, I was in Germany in the spring of 2004 at roughly the same time that MG Fay was there interviewing soldiers and officers with V Corps MI units. Having some contacts with these units, I took the time to speak to a number of NCOs and officers to get a sense of just how Fay was conducting his investigation. What I heard was consistent and very disturbing. Fay repeatedly warned soldiers that if they were involved in incidents, they would be put up on charges. And if they had seen things and not reported them, they would be up on charges. Then he asked if the soldiers had anything to report. One soldier told me that when he began to describe an incident to Fay, he was stopped and told “Son, you don’t want to go there.” This process was constructed to stop soldiers from coming forward with evidence about what had happened — the opposite of a fair or critical inquiry. But I stress that among the twelve investigations conducted, the Fay/Jones report was one of the best. One wonders what it would have netted had proper investigatory technique been used.

Back in January, 2004, Nicholas Kristof wrote that the condition of Cambodian sex slaves had improved compared to the 1990s (it’s here, behind the wall):

“These days the girls are 17 rather than 13, fewer are beaten or physically imprisoned, and Cambodia’s success in fighting AIDS with condoms means that sexual slavery is not necessarily a death sentence.

“The progress in Cambodia is mirrored by strides elsewhere, from South Korea to Romania and the Dominican Republic. And most of the credit goes to the courageous members of grass-roots organizations – mostly women – who often put themselves on the line to defend the weak and powerless against overwhelming economic and political interests.”

Just kidding, of course! Actually, he wrote: “most of the credit goes to the Bush administration.”

Despite their, um, reluctance to promote the use of condoms, Kristof zeroed in on the most effective tool that the Bush administration used in its battle: “The new director of the trafficking office, John Miller, has bludgeoned foreign governments, telling them to curb trafficking or face sanctions.”

Now, according to the Washington Post:

President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington’s closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers.

In fact, back in June, the State Department listed 14 countries that failed to adequately address trafficking problems, but President Bush ruled that only Myanmar, Cuba, and North Korea were “barred completely from receiving certain kinds of foreign aid.” (Trade assistance and humanitarian aid, apparently, are excluded.) “The White House statement offered no explanation of why countries were regarded differently. [The State Dept. spokeswoman] also could not provide one.”

A year ago, when confronted with documentary evidence that the United Arab Emirates had lied about cracking down on the kidnapping and enslavement of young boys as young as 3 to be camel jockeys, John Miller reacted angrily: “I will tell you this. From what I know of the president and the secretary of state’s feelings about the slavery issue, the fact that a government is a friend or an ally is not gonna keep this government from speaking out.”

Naturally, President Bush struck the UAE from the State Department’s list. We’ll see whether Mr. Miller attempts to regain some of his credibility – by returning to his position as board chairman of the Discovery Institute.

I was trying to think of ways to legitimately work this photograph of Judge into a post, but there aren’t any, really. So here he is anyway, to remind us all of the virtues of carefully weighing your options and making wise choices. Suffice to say that Judge would not approve of torturing prisoners, invading other countries with a minimum of long-term planning, selling stock in insider deals, laggardly hanging about when people need urgent help, or crossing the road without first looking for a safe place and then letting all the traffic pass you. Pay attention to Judge. He knows whereof he speaks. Normal programming will resume shortly.

The “NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/politics/24abuse.html?ex=1285214400&en=e5b2cfd4ee611c93&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss has another story on what seems to have been deliberate and systematic abuse of prisoners in Iraq. At this stage, anyone who’s sticking to the “few bad apples” story is delusional, lying or both. The “Human Rights Watch report”:http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/ on which the NYT story is based has first person accounts from two sergeants and an officer.
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In my “post”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/09/22/latte-ordoliberals/ on Germany a couple of days ago, I coined what I thought was a neologism, “Frummagem.” It was supposed to be a “portmanteau word”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau, combining the name of David Frum, “notorious”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/dead_right.html for his pseudo-argument that the poor need a bit of Donner Party style privation to stiffen their moral backbones, with the word “brummagem”:http://www.brainydictionary.com/words/br/brummagem139356.html, which means something shoddy, second-rate or counterfeit. Therefore, Frummagem: a shoddy and brutal argument for immiserating the poor, after the style of David Frum. To my surprise and delight, I discovered through Google that ‘frummagem’ is actually a real word in eighteenth century thieves’ cant. It “features”:http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/lang/2001/00000036/00000001/art00009 in Richard Head’s contemporary compendium of canting slang, _The English Rogue_, which informs the reader that “frummagem” means to “choake.” Walter Scott uses ‘frummagem’d’ in his novel “Guy Mannering”:http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/scott/walter/guy/chapter28.html to “mean”:http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/scott/walter/guy/glossary.html throttled or hanged. In short, a bit of thievish language with violent connotations. Sounds as though I wasn’t far off the mark.

For any Australian readers who aren’t already aware of it, the AFL Grand Final was won by Sydney Swans, defeating West Coast Eagles in a thriller. A brilliant defensive mark by Leo Barry in the last seconds kept them ahead by 4 points. The Irish contingent will be pleased to know that import Tadhg Kennelly, a convert from Gaelic football, played a solid part in the win.

As Brian said, Ted is in Washington DC; to keep Jim “Partyboy”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/09/22/houston/#comment-102083 Henley happy, there’ll be an impromptu gathering downstairs in the “Brickskeller”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=entertainment/profile&id=792636&typeId=5 tomorrow evening (Saturday) from 8pm on. All CT readers are welcome to come along.

Before the Iraq war began, Yale economist William Nordhaus estimated the likely cost at between $100 billion and $2 trillion. At the time most of the interest lay in the fact that the bottom end of the range was twice as much as the $50 billion estimate being pushed by the Administration. But with a couple of years’ experience to go on, Nordhaus’ upper range is looking pretty accurate. Assuming that Bush ‘stays the course’, it’s safe to estimate that the war will cost the US at least $1 trillion by the time all the bills come in, and it could easily be closer to $2 trillion.

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Ted Barlow has just sent along word that he’s gotten out of Houston safely, and is now with his fiancee and dog in Washington, D.C.

I’m very pleased to hear that Ted is OK, and I hope everyone that everyone here knows will be just as safe in the days ahead.

Hey up everyone, it’s the Prospect Magazine Intellectual of the Year contest!! I’m afraid that everyone at CT forgot to put our forms in (again!) although I see that bloody Yusuf al-Qaradawi did (and Airmiles too). This is a real shame, since I recently became The Most Important Thinker In The World. As Tyler Cowen pointed out in a post on Ray Kurzweil, the previous holder of that title, the secret to being the Most Important Thinker In The World is a mastery of the expected utility rule.

No matter how ludicrous your predictions, if they are sufficiently wildly utopian, then your thinking has a greater expected value than anyone else’s (see here for the general idea). Thus, if Kurzweil reckons that we will upload our consciousness onto software and live for ever as pure energy on the internet, then I say all that and a pony too! Not just any old pony by the way, but a super technonanopony! Which eats racism and shits pure gasoline … on the internet! Oh yeh and we will constantly be having multiple orgasms … and not just the normal kind either (more details to come). You might say that it’s pretty unlikely and I’ve failed to spell out important details, but as long as there is at least some probability that I’m right, then I am more important than Ray Kurzweil to the tune nU^(-rT), where U is the utility of a magic pony, n is the probability I’m right, r is the discount rate and T is the time it will take to sort us all out with one. Keep reading CT folks, because in expected value terms, it is only going to become more important!!
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“Matt Yglesias”:http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/18/222052/918 a couple of days ago:

bq. The other thing to say, though, is that even if you accept the main premise of [English language coverage of the German election results] — that Germany’s welfare spending and labor market rules are responsible for an inordinately high unemployment rate and low level of economic growth — the tone of indignation at the voters’ persistent refusal to vote for the dismantling of this situation is odd. After all, it’s not as if Germany is some sort of desperately impoverished country whose citizens are going to be doomed to misery unless they achieve rapid growth. It’s not Chad or China or even Chile.

“Jeffrey Gedmin”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/29c1cfac-2a10-11da-b890-00000e2511c8.html, director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, writes a quite jawdropping _reductio ad absurdum_ of this trope for the _Financial Times_ (sub required).

bq. Germans know [that they face a fundamental choice over their economy]. But they still love their “social-market” economy and have not yet decided whether allowing more market forces can be in tune with their values. Until now, it has been too easy for Germans to defer painful choices. The country has been doing – simply put – too well. In Berlin, a city with 19 per cent unemployment, the cafes are packed with people ­drinking over-priced café lattes, the employed and unemployed alike happily indulging themselves. Will economic circumstances soon hurt enough to give people the swift kick they apparently need?

I had to read this paragraph twice to be sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me. The problem with the German economy is that it’s _doing too well_ for people to, like, actually want the cleansing winds of free-market reforms? That the unemployed can sip their café lattes too? I dunno whether this sort of Frummagem smacks more of Jonathan Swift or the Medium Lobster – but it speaks volumes about the motives of some of continental Europe’s would be ‘reformers.’

Update: non-paywalled version of link available “here”:http://www.aspenberlin.org/jeffgedmin.php?iGedminId=185&sShowMedia=0 (thanks to ‘luc’ in comments).

Sounds as though Bill Frist isn’t the only prominent Republican in trouble over stock-market shenanigans. “P O’Neill”:http://bestofbothworlds.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_bestofbothworlds_archive.html#112736156774172634 links to an interesting story in the “Irish Times”:http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2005/0922/1702575727HM9USAMBASSADOR.html (behind their paywall) that deserves more attention. Richard Egan, former US ambassador to Ireland and major Republican fundraiser is in very hot water with the IRS for tax avoidance.

bq. Following an investigation, the IRS claims that Mr Egan set up an “economic sham” whose principal use was to reduce his tax payments. The IRS said that Mr Egan, the billionaire co-founder of Massachusetts’ most valuable technology company, EMC Corp, used two companies to set up the scheme using a European-style options scheme as soon as he resigned as the head of EMC to become ambassador. Mr Egan and his family were the most successful fundraisers for President Bush’s re-election campaign and have long been major contributors to the Republican Party.

Like Mr. Frist, Egan seems to have set up this scheme in order to repackage the proceeds from selling shares in his family company. The Irish Times has been following Mr. Egan’s progress for a while; it ran a story last year on his and his family’s “selfless contributions”:http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2004/0708/3003256094HM1AMBASSADOR.html to the campaign of their ideological opponent, Ralph Nader. From that story:

bq. The Egans, now known in the Republican Party as the “First Family of Fundraising”, are reportedly the only US family that has three members who have raised more than $200,000 (€161,767) each for Bush’s re-election campaign.