Horse sex blogging

Not that I've been having sex with horses (or humans, for that matter). But in the course of berating a crazy right-wing horsefucker, dadahead approvingly cites Kant's injunctions against bestiality. If the disease and animal-welfare considerations can be handled, bestiality is far more comical than morally outrageous. I've linked to Bentham's writings on sexual morality before, and I reproduce them here:

Bestiality

An abomination which meets with as little quarter as any of the preceding is that where a human creature makes use in this way of a beast or other sensitive creature of a different species. A legislator who should take Sanchez for his guide might / here repeat the same string of distinctions about the vas proprium and improprium, the imaginations and the simultaneity and so forth. Accidents of this sort will sometimes happen; for distress will force a man upon strange expedients. But one might venture to affirm that if all the sovereigns in Europe were to join in issuing proclamations inviting their subjects to this exercise in the warmest terms, it would never get to such a heighth as to be productive of the smallest degree of political mischief. The more of these sorts of prosecutions are permitted the more scope there is given for malice or extortion to make use of them to effect its purpose upon the innocent, and the more public they are the more of that mischief is incurred which consists in shocking the imaginations of persons of delicacy with a very painful sentiment.

Burning the animal

Some persons have been for burning the poor animal with great ceremony under the notion of burning the remembrance of the affair. (See Puffendorf, Bks. 2, Ch. 3, 5. 3. Bacon's Abridg. Title Sodomy. J.B.) A more simple and as it should seem a more effectual course to take would be not to meddle or make smoke about the matter.

It's good sensible utilitarianism, and I love it.

Dog preserve us

From the happy story about the dog that rescued the baby:

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said authorities were investigating the rescue story.

"This is a very interesting development and the government is looking into it because if it happened the way it has been relayed, it is one of those amazing things that happens in life that defies human explanation," he said. "It indicates that there is somebody out there watching over us."

He's right! Here's a picture of that somebody.

Curse you Jeff Mangum!

My love of two Neutral Milk Hotel songs -- "Holland, 1945" and "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" -- has reached the level of addiction. I've played them each at least a dozen times each since Monday morning. When I listen to other music, I do so restlessly and without enjoyment. After Nadia closed her computer yesterday, taking them out of the shared music pool, I stole things to get my fix. Is there a rehab program or something for this? The songs are truly wonderful, but I can't live the rest of my life this way.

How fun can golf be?

Via Matt comes strange news of House GOP scandal:

In February 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon signed up the tribe as a client, trading in part on their close ties to DeLay and on Abramoff's claim that he would work for free to win the tribe's business later. By March, Abramoff had enlisted the Ohio congressman. As he told Scanlon in an e-mail: "Just met with Ney!!! We're f'ing gold!!! He's going to do Tigua." A week later, Abramoff wrote to Texas-based lobbyist Marc Schwartz, explaining that the tribe needed to contribute to Ney's campaign and political action committees -- and tribal leaders soon forked over $32,000. By April, Scanlon indicated to Schwartz that Dodd was on board, too.

Soon, however, the congressman required still more favors. In June, Abramoff wrote to Schwartz again: "Our friend [Ney] asked if we could … cover a Scotland golf trip for him and some staff … and members in August," just like the trip DeLay had taken two years earlier.

Maybe golf is way, way more fun than I ever imagined. But I just can't wrap my mind around a representative asking for such a frivolous favor as payment for supporting legislation. Campaign contributions, sure. But golf money?

I guess that's why I'm in philosophy grad school, and other people are chasing the dollars on Wall Street.

31 flavors of sweet liberalism

Ezra has noticed that there are more books tracing the intellectual evolution of conservatism than that of liberalism, and he's curious why "conservative ideology is treated as a topic more worthy of study than its liberal counterpart." He then asks liberal philosophers in the blogosphere to explain why! This clearly justifies putting off my other ways of putting off dissertation work.

There really isn't a unified liberal tradition of political philosophy, in any sense that connects with the way 'liberal' is used in politics today. There have been Marxists, feminists, social critics from various ethnic groups, libertarians when they aren't talking economics, Rawlsians, my utilitarian homeys, pacifists, sexual nonconformists, environmental mystics, and people who have mixed a bunch of these views together. Writing an intellectual history of liberals would be like writing about the history of purple things. The topic is too diverse for a unified characterization.

So how did all of us get lumped together under one term? Well, we all want some deep changes in the cultural practices around here -- in particular, we generally want to fight prejudice and help poor people. (Who are our greatest heroes of the 20th century? I'd say MLK and FDR. Civil Rights and the New Deal are what we're all about.) But despite the fact that we all want to go in the same direction right now, our views about the best possible society and our ways of arguing for it are different, which again is why writing the intellectual history is so hard. While Rawls and I would probably agree about everything in contemporary politics, we're radically opposed in our views about why those conclusions are justified, and given a very different world, we'd be political opponents.

Conservatives, on the other hand, commit themselves to defending the status quo or something close to it. While we're all over the map in terms of our social goals, they're clustered pretty close together. As a result, their range of possible views is smaller and admits of a more unified characterization. And to come from the other side on the point I made before, they're committed to defending a wacky set of prejudices and institutions from which all of us are pulling away in the same direction. So it's no wonder that it's all of our views against theirs.

The take-home message for anyone worried about the lack of a unified liberal political philosophy is this: don't worry. We've got plenty of flavors for you to choose from, and lots of them are yummier than anything conservatives can hope for.

Good dog!

After reading about the stray dog that rescued the abandoned baby, I was reminded of one of my many odd philosophical views -- the view that animals can be morally praiseworthy. In my view, what makes one an appropriate object for moral praise is an intrinsic desire to help others. (Intrinsic desires are to be contrasted with instrumental desires. If you want to help others only because someone promises you a bone for helping others, you have an instrumental desire and that's not morally praiseworthy.) So any creature that can be motivated by feelings of sympathy or benevolence is a candidate for moral praise.

As it often happens, my big enemy here is Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that motivations rooted in our desires and not in reason itself couldn't be moral. I agree that animals don't have the capacity that's necessary for moral esteem on Kant's view -- they can't consider their reasons for acting, look for reasons why those are good reasons, and discover the foundation of all their reasons in their own nature as free and rational agents. Kant expressed a common belief that some kind of reflection or deliberation which animals probably can't do is necessary for moral praise, and that's the belief I don't have.

Earth to GM

I've been following GM stock for a while now, and I occasionally came close to buying it, but a mix of social concerns about their contribution to SUV madness and financial worries about their sensitivity to rising oil costs kept me away. (I also tend to stay away from companies with gigantic debt.) Reading this story where they dismiss rumors that they're going to buy Toyota's hybrid-vehicle technology certainly didn't get me any more excited. I'm staying away from the stock, even with the 6.5% dividend, until I see them getting serious about hybrid vehicles.

They claim that they're only making cars the public wants. Maybe this is a ploy to sell more Chevy S-10 pickups -- you'll need a big truck to haul that much bullshit. The Japanese hybrids have been selling very well in this country, and the hybrid market would only grow larger if any significant chunk of GM's advertising budget were spent on them. (How big do you think the market for the Hummer is? And how many dozen times have you seen a Hummer ad? I think I've seen more Hummer ads than Hummers.) It's hard for me to figure out what GM is thinking here. Do they think that promoting and selling hybrids will make everyone more fuel-conscious and damage their beloved SUV market? Do they think oil will go back to $20/barrel? Are they afraid to expand a market where the Japanese have a head start? Are they just so used to selling gas guzzlers that they don't know how to do anything else?

You won't believe what I just saw

As I was walking down Guadalupe Street, I was passed by a car flying American flags and pulling this float in which a papier-mache Uncle Sam was bending Tom DeLay over his knee and spanking him. It was a reasonably big float -- Uncle Sam was about as tall as a car is long, and it was motorized so that Uncle Sam's hand had real spanking action. Large posters listing DeLay's ethics violations were also attached to the float. Good to see this stuff around.

I've got your populism right here

Despite having given over my soul to Matt Yglesias evangelism, I have to take issue with his assertion that left-populism doesn't have a serious constituency within the Democratic Party. His view of the Edwards campaign differs sharply from mine:

Dean eventually collapsed basically over "electability" concerns, and we wound up with Kerry versus Edwards. Here Edwards tried to play the populist card against Kerry a bit, but didn't go too hard at it (because he wanted to be Vice President), and his own DLC associations made this a rather unlikely move anyway.

Certainly, Edwards didn't hit Kerry or any other Democrat too hard, but there was very good reason not to do that. If you use your massive populist cred to obliterate your eventual nominee's populist cred, you've given the election to the Republicans. I can't think of an Presidential election in my lifetime when the candidate coded by the media as the more populist choice lost. As it turned out, Kerry was no good at looking all populist anyway, but Edwards was right to not shoot him in the ass from the beginning. Don't attribute a weird desire for second-bananahood to Edwards when you can attribute the much more reasonable belief that gigantic risks are involved in playing hardball.

Edwards spent the late months of his primary campaign playing the hell out of the populist card -- he just didn't target any Democrats. I know you've read this before, but since people are forgetting it, I'm putting it out there again:

“Today, under George W. Bush, there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America that will do anything to leave its children a better life, another America that never has to do a thing because its children are already set for life. One America -- middle-class America - whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America - narrow-interest America - whose every wish is Washington's command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a President.”

Populism? Check. Revived a moribund candidacy? Check. It's this populist message that made him the last to fall. And when he fell, it was to the same electability considerations that took out Dean. As Will Saletan couldn't stop telling us, the Kerry campaign achieved victory on the backs of fools who thought the muddlemouthed Yankee who'd done something in a long-ago war was more electable than the poor boy with the best stump speech Carville had ever seen:

In Oklahoma, both Clark and Edwards beat Kerry by 13 points among "agrees with you" voters, but Kerry got away with a competitive finish by thumping them among "can defeat Bush" voters. In South Carolina, Kerry lost "agrees with you" voters to Edwards by a 2-to-1 margin but escaped with a respectable second thanks to "can defeat Bush" voters.

This isn't a rejection of populism. Even the most committed populist could vote against the populist candidate, given sufficient confusion about the electability situation. That's what took out the Edwards campaign.

When you look at the story of the Edwards run, it's a story about how left-populism remains healthy and strong.

Erectile duplication

Ezra tells us what ails the drug industry:

drug company R&D is rarely spent on the life-saving, critical medicines that we imagine.

So assume one company brings out a new, powerful, statin drug. The others will rush it back to the labs, figure out how to change a few [functional groups] in order to call it to evade the patent while retaining the effect, put it in for testing and, so long as it works better than the placebo, the FDA will approve it. That, of course, is where the marketing comes in. Since they've all got the same drugs -- and if R&D were truly on such shaky grounds, this would be the problem, not drug reimportation -- they have to use advertising strategies to get a leg up in the market.

Viagra, Levitra, Cialis. It was fun to giggle at the ad about the 4-hour erection that requires immediate medical attention, but resources spent slicing a piece of the ED market are not being used in the socially optimal way. I'm reminded of a rueful comment from someone at Glaxo Wellcome back when I interned there -- "We're a second-to-market company." Somebody else proves that you can make the drug, our chemists reinvent the wheel, and we get our piece of the pie.

I don't know if this duplication results in price cuts, but even if it does, it'd be better to achieve those price cuts through reimportation or collective bargaining in a universal health care system than through a process where companies spend big money fighting out zero-sum games.

Lots of other good stuff in Ezra's post, too, so go read it.

"Do you want it to be a rule?"

Read how Bitch, Ph.D negotiated her open marriage. One big thing that comes through here for me is the maturity of both parties. And I'd tell my conservative readers that marriage is a flexible institution, not a brittle one that will somehow shatter when gay people or polyamorous folk engage in it.

The people's money

I never bought into the Lakoff framing mysticism (he doesn't offer nearly enough empirical data, the whole strict father / nurturant marsupial thing is way overplayed, and he isn't that good at frame development himself), but I'll recognize the value of having useful phrases that efficiently express our points. And I think it'd be good to refer to federal funds as "the people's money." This contains an implicit response to anyone who has the libertarian taxation-is-theft intuition, reminding them that money in the federal kitty is money that is going to be spent on making you better off. And since we're the party of fiscal responsibility nowadays, we can criticize the Republicans for giving away the people's money in big corporate subsidies. It also has a nice proletarian feel, which Edwardsfolk like myself can appreciate.

Liveblogging: Steel Reserve

There's this new beer at the gas station called Steel Reserve. It's pretty cheap ($1.19 for 24 oz.), and it has an 8.1% alcohol content, which you usually only find in exotic Belgian ales brewed by monks. I've heard nothing about it before, so I'm going to pop it open and see whether it's any good. I am just a guinea pig, dear reader, for your cheap beer edification.
[opens beer, pours into glass]
It smells and looks like a standard American cheap lager. Maybe the tiniest bit darker, though that could be the lighting. Head goes away pretty fast.
[drinks]
Okay, not too bad. It mostly has the flavorlessness of cheap American lager, except that you can feel some of the extra alcohol content, and it's a bit... sweet? Yeah, sweet. Well.
[10 minutes later]
Did I just get tired or something? This is coming on fast. The sweetness is somewhat cloying, but it's fairly drinkable.
[25 minutes later]
Sometimes when I sip this stuff, it seems to have an oddly meaty taste. Meaty? that can't be right, but I've tasted it twice. Now I'm listening to Liz Phair's "Dance of the Seven Veils" and liking it even more than usual. At this point I read the ratings and discover that it's a malt liquor. Can someone explain to me what differentiates malt liquor from other beers?
[40 minutes later]
I'm looking for the meaty, which I can't find again, but that's good because it distracts me from the sweet. My final verdict: this would be a fine beer for when it's been a bad day and you just want to drink something cheap and put everything behind you. If I did the numbers right, one 24 oz can of this is like more than 3 regular beers. For $1.19, not a bad deal. Neil out.

The view from a Go Big Red state

In a post whose title I greatly appreciate, Ezra links to stand-up comic John Rogers, who gives advice to our presidential candidates about the kind of style that will win in the South and Midwest. I think John and Ezra have it right, and I want to repost some interesting stuff that Nebraskan ex-roommate Justin Tiehen wrote shortly after the November elections:

Look, here's what I think that style really needs to address. Red-staters (myself included) have a serious inferiority complex with respect to people on the coasts. Whether easterners consider themselves elite or not is really besides the point. The fact is people in the Midwest (I don't know the South) suspect that easterners think we're just a bunch of ass backwards hicks, and we worry and worry about showing that (i) we're not, and (ii) we don't care what they think anyway. Part of the reason Bush goes over so well in the Midwest is that he's one of "us" -- yeah, yeah, he's privilleged, but he speaks naturally in religious terms, which counts for a lot. Voting for Bush is actually a sort of populist move for many red-staters: it's a way of saying fuck you to the elite easterners who think they know everything and put us down. I actually think the gay marriage results are partly (though certainly not entirely) a reflection of this sentiment.

Somehow, the Democrats have to cut off this push for the Republicans. Maybe the simple fact that Bush won't be running in 2008 will do it. If the Democrats put up any decent candidate, it would be amazing, utterly amazing, if Guiliani, for instance, could keep all the Bush states in 2008 (though he might win previously blue states).

Faithful readers will know who I'm thinking of.

Update: Justin's comment can be read here. And if it's not obvious, he's on our team.

Dispatches from Tar Valon

When I saw this picture, I was like, "They look awesome!" But the conservatives in the comments section were all freaked out. Where I saw the Aes Sedai or maybe the Bene Gesserit, they saw... well, I don't really know what they saw. I guess it's one of those cultural things, but I'll stand by the view that robes like that look a lot better on 60-year-old women than on similarly aged men.

Maybe this is why people on the right were so freaked out by Dungeons & Dragons. It wasn't that demons would tempt kids into Satanism -- it was that priestesses would tempt them into feminism!

For PC and sexy talk

Max does the conservative thing where you criticize politically correct language reforms. Really, I think a lot of the terms he rejects are better than the ones he likes. Take, for instance, "Christian name" versus "given name." If I hadn't heard the terms before, I wouldn't say that anyone in my family ever had a "Christian name," but I'd know what a "given name" was. And then there's his preference for "cleaning lady" over "housecleaner." The specifically feminine connotations of "cleaning lady" are unnecessary. Unless she cleans in a particularly exciting fashion, her gender is irrelevant to the job. Does Max want the notion that cleaning is women's work to gain sanction from our most ready expressions? (If he thinks so, Liz had better do something about that.) Furthermore, I see no reason to prefer "man-made" to "synthetic".

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the trade society has made over the past few decades. I have no desire to use language that perpetuates unwholesome stereotypes. I do, however, like to talk about sex. My sense is that the norms for casual conversation have shifted so that it's more generally permitted to say fun raunchy things. (In particular, the permissions have expanded for women, and both my feminist side and my horny single guy side rejoice at that.) Despite all the occasional excesses of political correctness, we've got a better deal now.

Onward fat girl

Despite the fact that I'm generally freaked out by beauty pagaents, I can see some value in a beauty pagaent for heavy women. But this line just struck me as weird:

The annual contest, which aims to raise awareness and money for Thailand's dwindling elephant population, allows full-sized women weighing over 176 pounds to show weight-conscious Thais that big is beautiful.

Emphasis mine.

For the tireless

If you're still hungering for more of the relativism debate, Majikthise has a nice big post on why relativism isn't all it's cracked up to be. Of course, I think she's right: There's a lot better ways to go than speaker-relativism, and the distinctions between these positions matter.

When you fight dumb wars,

here's what happens:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Army missed its goals for signing up recruits in April and expects to do so again in May, and the Marines also fell short, officials said on Monday, as the Iraq war further strained the all-volunteer U.S. military.

In the past, kids could sign up for the military with a reasonable chance of avoiding any serious danger, and get some money for college. But now they know that they'll be sent off to clean up a bloody mess in Iraq. It's no wonder they're not interested.

Brian thinks there's going to be a draft. After watching Social Security privatization crash and burn, I'm pretty sure Bush won't be able to get anything like that through Congress. More likely we'll just have a weakened military for a while. While this prevents us from doing any of the Bosnia-style interventions that liberals like (Sudan, perhaps?), the silver lining is that Bush won't be able to launch any new dumb wars.

Race and football

In the NFL, the quarterback position is usually played by a white guy, while almost all the running backs are black. My guess at explaining this involves subtle racism at early levels. When a highschool coach sees a good young black athlete, he thinks "running back", while a comparably good white kid is more likely to be put in the more mind-intensive quarterback position. Perhaps the kids themselves have different aspirations for which position to play, though I didn't see any evidence for that on the playground in high school.

It seems to me that there's a less-explicable difference among linemen. I have no real data here, I think I've seen way more blacks on the defensive line and more whites on the offensive line.