Meta and Meta

On the Road Again...

I'll be on tour for the next 12 days, so posting here will be sparse.

Real quick, though, I thought I'd leave you with a pair of "quotes of the tour" from tours past:

We're on the road for shows in [towns and event names deleted]. You catch grub as you can when you are out here, and foreigners like us inevitably have questions. A couple of recent colloquies of this sort ran as follows:

BAND MEMBER: Why is it that every one of the waitresses in here is so pretty?

WAITRESS: Well, Bobby don't hire no ugly girls here.

. . .

BAND MEMBER: What's the difference between collard greens and green beans?

WAITRESS: Difference is, we ain't got no collard greens.

Gotta run, but y'all come back now, y'hear?

Post Hack Ergo Propter Hack

At the Washington Post Charles Krauthammer quotes himself:

[The invasion of Iraq] made other dictators think twice about the price of acquiring nuclear weapons, as evidenced by the fact that Moammar Gaddafi had turned over his secret nuclear program for dismantling just months after Hussein's fall. [Emphasis mine.]

Or as "evidenced" by the fact that North Korea showed no signs after the invasion of relenting in their nuclear weapons ambitions? Or as "evidenced" by the fact (or at least Krauthammer's team contends it is a fact) that the Iranians are hastening a nuclear weapons programme while the American occupiers are right next door?

As for Libya, Krauthammer must think Gaddafi has a time machine, since he began adopting a cooperative posture on nukes a decade before we invaded Iraq.

Other than that, of course, Krauthammer's inference is totally sound.

The Ruse Is Up

Apparently, Michael Ruse is trying to extinguish his philosophical career, since he persists in arguments like this:

If Darwinism equals [charitably, he means "entails"] atheism then it can't be taught in US schools because of the constitutional separation of church and state."

This is a profoundly ignorant argument, tantamount to saying that teaching that Jesus or Muhammad are historical figures makes history equivalent to Christianity or Islam. History is certainly consistent with some version of Christianity or Islam (and also consistent with atheism). But it is also inconsistent with other versions of Christianity or Islam. The same goes with mathematics, economics, sociology, psychology, medicine, etc. But none of these subject areas implicates church-state separation, and Ruse knows it. So why on earth is he pretending that evolution is somehow peculiar in this respect?

Ruse had better start acting like he has a "reputation to preserve," or else, well, he won't.

Shorter Ed Whalen

Shorter Ed Whalen: "Hey, it's not like Scalia actually named the case he was talking about."

Loose Canons

Let me get this straight. Scalia's remarks (recounted here) "would or might have some bearing on Hamdan," but, since they "were not directed at the ruling below in Hamdan," there is no ground to demand he recuse himself. To wit, Scalia's public comments on issues directly implicated in a case more or less definitely to come before him could not "reasonably be expected to affect [the] outcome or impair [the] fairness" of that case.

And yet judicial nominees, we are told, can appropriately (not to mention selectively) decline to answer even the most generic questions about precedent or constitutional theory, on the theory that, well, doing so could reasonably be expected to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of cases merely "likely" to come before the nominee.

Makes complete sense to me.

(Via Orin Kerr.)

UPDATE: Decided to move the "Shorter Ed Whalen" to its own post.

Scalia's Model Conduct

To answer Hilzoy's question, there's no real ethical problem with Scalia's behavior (as described here)--so long as we provide something like this simple addendum to Canon 3 of the Model Code of Judicial Conduct:

Canons 3B(9) and (10) are purely discretionary. In any case, their scope shall extend only to purely symbolic or defensive invocations by judicial nominees in testimony given during their own confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Hope that helps.

Tax, Man

Mike Kinsley argues in the Washington Post that billionaires are driven not by the prospects of amassing more wealth (and/or buying lots and lots of cool stuff with it), but (in Carl Icahn's words) by "winning and making money," and that therefore the standard incentivist arguments against higher marginal tax rates on the megarich are overstated.

Gates' Tell

I'm not an experienced poker player, but I'm pretty sure I could beat Bill Gates.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Q & A on Kitzmiller

Philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga has three questions regarding the Kitzmiller intelligent design decision (numbering is mine):

(1) [I]sn’t this question — whether ID is just rewarmed creation science — a question for philosophical or logical analysis? (2) Can one settle a question of that sort by a judicial ruling? (3) Isn’t that like legislating that the value of pi is 1/3 rather than that inconvenient and hard to remember 3.14?

Answers:
(1) Yes.
(2) As a matter of metaphysics, no; as a matter of constitutional administration, well, of course.
(3) No; but it would be like ruling (not "legislating") that the "pi-ous" value of .333 is not mathematical.

This concludes my criticism of Plantinga. (Note that it was not meant to be exhaustive.) For credit due him, see Taner Edis' charitable post here. (Thanks to Taner for the pointer.)

Domenech's Requiem?

This sort of thing'll just give the Washington Post an easy out on the Domenech fiasco.

Oh well, grant him rest.