The US is not the only place where political dissent is considered a reasonable basis to prevent individuals from travelling freely. If the Italians have their way, all of Europe will be a no-go zone for anti-globalisation protesters, anti-war demo organisers, and a whole slew of objectors to the current soft-authoritarian right that prevails around the Mediterranean.

[click to continue…]

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein has a problem. Recently he’s smelled stale urine in three different hotel rooms. “Has anyone else had the same experience,” he asks, “or know of some explanation for this phenomenon?” But the Volokh Conspiracy does not have comments enabled, so enterprising readers cannot make the appropriate rejoinder.

About a month ago, there was a press release from Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club. They had filed a FOI act claim against Dick Cheney’s secretive energy task force. Among the documents that they had obtained were maps of Iraq’s oilfields and a document entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” Some people took this as proof that the war on Iraq had been planned before September 11, 2001, in order to transfer control of Iraqi oilfields to American companies. After a few small mentions in the mainstream media, the story died, except on left-wing blogs.

I don’t know why the story didn’t hit the national news. Maybe it was because Dick Cheney’s office stonewalled, and the press couldn’t get enough information to make it a worthwhile story. Maybe the media is so cowed by right-wing carping that they won’t pursue stories about right-wing malfeasance without either airtight evidence or a lot of momentum from the press pack.

But I’d like to believe that the story died because honest reporters looked into the allegations and saw that it was a bullshit story. There is nothing suspicious about an energy task force gathering information about major oil wells, no matter where they are. Oil is a commodity, Iraqi oil was on the market under the oil-for-food program, and it would have been very strange if Cheney’s group had neglected this. Furthermore, when you read the “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts” document, it seems to be all about non-US companies who began working with the Iraqi oil company under the oil-for-food progam. There are no American companies on the list.

I bring this up because the same news outlets whose commitment to truth and honesty brought you such bullshit stories as “Paul Wellstone’s memorial was nothing but a political rally,” “Bill Clinton’s staff vandalized the White House on the way out,” and “Gen. Wesley Clark is a deranged liar” are proud to bring you a new one:

“Cruz Bustamante is refusing to repudiate his association as a student with the racist group MEChA. Why is the media ignoring this story?”

Now, the MEChA question actually seems to come up quite a bit in stories about Bustamante. But I can’t deny that major media haven’t given the question the prime-time treatment. Why is that? Again, I don’t know. I’d like to think that it’s because the media have examined the charges, called some members of MEChA, and decided that a full-court press is inappropriate.

You see, this is a bullshit story.

Let’s look a little closer.

[click to continue…]

Welcome to a new co-blogger: “Ted Barlow”:http://tedbarlow.blogspot.com/ has very nicely agreed to come on board. Ted doesn’t need much in the way of an introduction – he’s been a voice of reason in the blogosphere for a long, long time. We’re glad to have him.

I went to see Joel Schumacher’s Veronica Guerin on Saturday night, and left the cinema with mixed feeings. On the one hand I’d spent a reasonably enjoyable evening watching a moderately exciting film; on the other, I felt that justice really hadn’t been done to an important true story. The characterization was pretty weak and the whole thing had a made-for-TV feel about it (it wasn’t). Cate Blanchett as Guerin was all gloss and pressure and her portrayal of the journalist was very one-dimensional (driven obsessive with a side interest in football to give the appearance of depth). Ciaran Hinds as gangster-informer was a bit better, but most of the gangster characters were straight from central casting. The key moral dilemma of the story, Guerin’s choice to put her child at risk for the sake of her cause, was far too quickly and easily dealt with. There’s another film covering the same material – When the Sky Falls – I hope it is more convincing.

In some quarters, using the word “quagmire” to describe the emerging position of the U.S. in Iraq provokes yells of rage, snarklets of glibness, or even reasoned objections. It’s fair to say that optimists like the OxBloggers have convincingly rebutted the main comparisons that have been made to Vietnam. The United States isn’t going to be losing about a hundred troops a week in an ongoing war of attrition against a dug-in enemy with strong local support. But there are other ways to get stuck in the mud.

[click to continue…]

I’ve been selected to serve on a federal grand jury. It meets every other Wednesday for an entire year. I thought it would make for some interesting blogging, until we got to the part about swearing to keep the proceedings secret. Federal prosecutors bring cases to the 23 of us, and we decide whether to issue indictments. Basically, they can’t prosecute any serious crime without our saying so (and most federal crimes count as serious). The impression I get is that they will be mostly drug distribution cases (and related), immigration cases, and the occasional white-collar crime. Unfortunately, as I say, I won’t be able to tell you whether this impression turns out to be right. Right now it seems like it will be interesting – especially since we have so much power, including the ability to question witnesses ourselves – but I have the feeling come next summer, I’m going to be counting down the scheduled meetings.

From one to the next … having just gotten back from the annual American Political Science Association meeting, I attended one day of the science fiction Worldcon in Toronto, stopping only to go listen to my “cousin’s band”:http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=2157, who were playing in a small club here last night. Caught up with “Patrick Nielsen Hayden”:http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ and “Cory Doctorow”:http://www.boingboing.net/, as well as “China Mieville”:http://www.panmacmillan.com/Features/China/index.htm, who apparently sometimes reads CT. Indeed, I’ve met people who know the blog at both conferences; it’s a little unnerving for me to find out that we actually have readers, and to meet them in a non blogging context.

Early, banal impressions of the differences and similarities between the two conferences …

[click to continue…]

Donald Davidson, one of the foremost philosophers of mind and language of recent decades, died yesterday in Berkeley. Davidson was the author of many papers that defined the terms of subsequent debate, such as “Actions, Reasons and Causes” and “How is Weakness of the Will Possible?” The last couple of years have seen a succession of philosophical giant die (Lewis, Rawls, Nozick, Williams) and it is sad to see Davidson joining their number. An account of his life and importance can be found at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I’ll add links to obituaries to this post as they become available. (News via Brian Leiter’s site). Obituaries: New York Times, UC Berkeley News, Guardian, The Times, Daily Californian, Independent.

My gradual progress through the multi-volume Latham and Matthews transcription of The Diary of Samuel Pepys continues. Here we are on February 1st 1664:

bq. Thence to White-Hall, where in the Dukes chamber the King came and stayed an hour or two, laughing at Sir W. Petty, who was there about his boat, and at Gresham College in general … Gresham College he mightily laughed at for spending its time only in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since they sat.

William Petty was a fascinating character who is remembered variously as a pioneer in demography and political economy, the man responsible for the first really good map of Ireland and, as we see him here, the designer of a novel “double-bottomed boat” (i.e., a catamaran). Pepys’ editors — who have a great line in dry commentary — chime in with a footnote:

bq. The gibe was of course untrue, and in any case this laughable weighing of air did in fact lead (by way of Newcomen’s steam-engine in Anne’s reign) to the development of steam power. Cf. the similar complaint of a pamphleteer in 1680: “We prize our selves in fruitless Curiosities; we turn our lice and Fleas into Bulls and Pigs by our Magnifying-glasses; we are searching for the World in the Moon with our Telescopes; we send to weigh the Air on the top of Teneriffe … which are voted ingenuities, whilst the Notions of Trade are turned into Ridicule or much out of fashion”.

We also learn that the French Ambassador, “in a despatch to Louis XIV of 25 January/4 February, referred to Petty’s double-bottomed ship as ‘la plus ridicule et inutile machine que l’esprit de l’homme puisse concevoir.'”

In Newspaper Land, Summer is the season of fake lifestyle trends. There’s nothing like a bit of pop sociology to fill the feature pages on those long, hot days. The New York Times has been doing quite well on this front recently. A couple of months ago it was telling us about metrosexuals, the allegedly new breed of straight male who uses Neutrogena products and so on. They also had a story about the rise of the thirtieth birthday party. Today we read about rejuveniles, who are grown-ups with “busy lives with adult responsibilities, respectable jobs and children of their own” but who nevertheless like to play with children’s toys, sing children’s songs and generally make well-functioning adults and children alike feel rather uncomfortable. Here’s the pitch:

bq. From childless fans of kiddie music to the grown-up readers of “Harry Potter,” inner children are having fun all over. Whether they are buying cars marketed to consumers half their age, dressing in baby-doll fashions or bonding over games like Twister and kickball, a new breed of quasi adult is co-opting the culture of children as never before.

[click to continue…]

It’s well known that our intuitive approaches to probabilistic reasoning lead to fairly bizarre beliefs and behaviour in some circumstances. It can also lead to fairly odd attitudes and emotions in the right circumstances. Consider, for example, how it would feel being a fan of the various teams in the American League playoff race.

[click to continue…]

While many other CT bloggers muse about conference etiquette, I find myself daydreaming about just getting into a PhD programme. Tacitus posted a question on how to get into a US grad school (poli sci or thereabouts) with a low GPA.

As someone who spends far too much time surfing through admissions and advice pages, and wondering what’s behind all the rhetoric, I think there is more good sense concentrated in Tacitus’ comments than I’ve seen anywhere else. Good luck T.

A staple of intro philosophy courses is the ethics of runaway trolleys. There’s probably an interesting sociological study as to why this is so, but rather than delve into that I thought I’d share a new-sounding version of the trolley problem due to Carolina Sartorio posted on Philosophy from the (617).

[click to continue…]