Ryan McReynolds

The Asymmetry of Bailouts

2008-09-19T10:37:00.003-05:00

Why is it that we socialize failure but privatize success?

Oh, I know the reason given: these failures are so significant that they would destroy our economy if we didn't collectively take on the burden. But I say that if we're responsible when they go down, we ought to benefit when they go up. This should be an either-or proposition. Either the corporations are socialized as public goods, or they are not but we let them die. And if they are so significant that we can't live with out them, and therefore can't let them die, then they ought to not be privately owned and operated in the first place. Only market fundamentalist nutjobs would think privatizing other essential services such as fire and police is a good idea. Health care and financial services are just as essential, and ought to therefore be matters of mutual aid rather than left to the fickle hand and invisible jackboot of the market.

Market Fundamentalism

2008-09-18T13:15:00.002-05:00

Can we all just admit now that the libertarians and fiscal conservatives and other market fundamentalists are just plain wrong about the magical hand of the "free" market? Have the failed and flailing deregulation experiments of the "Washington Consensus" given us enough data to say, collectively, "The market isn't always the answer?"

I am a socialist, but I am also a market agnostic and a pragmatist. I don't think that we need to automagically abolish all market activity in favor of strict central planning -- my socialism is based primarily on a moral argument for extending democracy to economics, not on any particular system. When we're subject to totalitarian politics we fight it and call it a dictatorship; when we're subject to totalitarian workplaces we acquiesce, do as we're told, and call our rulers "management." Whether economic democracy entails a decentralized planning scheme or merely democratic control of investment and workplaces embedded in a market for goods and services is an empirical question: which will be the best for those involved?

What is clear, however, is that the "free" market strips from most people the freedom to live the kinds of lives they want to live by denying them a voice as well as denying them their fair share of the wealth they create. When you create a system designed for cutthroat brutality in the pursuit of profit, you can't be surprised when the results are brutal.

Disqus commenting

2008-09-18T10:50:00.000-05:00

I installed Disqus commenting here. I realize, of course, that my readership has dropped to essentially nil, but I hope to be more active soon and it would be nice to have some social aspect to the ol' blog.

Social Justice Quiz 2008

2008-09-11T11:05:00.000-05:00

From Bill Quigley at Dissident Voice:

1. How many deaths are there world-wide each year due to acts of terrorism?

Answer (highlight): 22,000. The U.S. State Department reported there were more than 22,000 deaths from terrorism last year. Over half of those killed or injured were Muslims. Source: Voice of America, May 2, 2008. “Terrorism Deaths Rose in 2007.”

2. How many deaths are there world-wide each day due to poverty and malnutrition?

Answer: About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. Poverty.com – Hunger and World Poverty. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes – one child every five seconds. Bread for the World. Hunger Facts: International.

3. 1n 1965, CEOs in major companies made 24 times more than the average worker. In 1980, CEOs made 40 times more than the average worker. In 2007, CEOs earned how many times more than the average worker?

Answer: Today’s average CEO from a Fortune 500 company makes 364 times an average worker’s pay and over 70 times the pay of a four-star Army general. Executive Excess 2007, page 7, jointly published by Institute for Policy Studies and United for Fair Economy, August 29, 2007. 1965 numbers from State of Working America 2004-2005, Economic Policy Institute.

4. In how many of the over 3000 cities and counties in the US can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford to pay rent and utilities on a one-bedroom apartment?

Answer: In no city or county in the entire USA can a full-time worker who earns minimum wage afford even a one bedroom rental. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) urges renters not to pay more than 30% of their income in rent. HUD also reports the fair market rent for each of the counties and cities in the US. Nationally, in order to rent a 2 bedroom apartment, one full-time worker in 2008 must earn $17.32 per hour. In fact, 81% of renters live in cities where the Fair Market Rent for a two bedroom rental is not even affordable with two minimum wage jobs. Source: Out of Reach 2007-2008, April 7, 2008, National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

5. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.65 per hour. How much would the minimum wage be today if it had kept pace with inflation since 1968?

Answer: Calculated in real (inflation adjusted) dollars, the 1968 minimum wage would have been worth $9.83 in 2007 dollars. Andrew Tobias, January 16, 2008. The federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008 and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009.

6. True or false? People in the United States spend nearly twice as much on pet food as the US government spends on aid to help foreign countries.

Answer: True. The USA spends $43.4 billion on pet food annually. Source: American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, Inc. The USA spent $23.5 billion in official foreign aid in 2006. The government of the USA gave the most of any country in the world in actual dollars. As a percentage of gross national income, the USA came in second to last among OECD donor countries and ranked number 20 at 0.18 percent behind Sweden at 1.02 percent and other countries such as Norway, Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and others. This does not count private donations which, if included, may move the USA up as high as 6th. The Index of Global Philanthropy 2008, page 15, 19.

7. How many people in the world live on $2 a day or less?

Answer: The World Bank reported in August 2008 that 2.6 billion people consume less than $2 a day.

8. How many people in the world do not have electricity?

Answer: World-wide, 1.6 billion people do not have electricity. 2.5 billion people use wood, charcoal or animal dung for cooking. United Nations Human Development Report 2007/2008, pages 44-45.

9. People in the US consume 42 kilograms of meat per person per year. How much meat and grain do people in India and China eat?

Answer: People in the US lead the world in meat consumption at 42 kg per person per year compared to 1.6 kg in India and 5.9 kg in China. People in the US consume five times the grain (wheat, rice, rye, barley, etc.) as people in India, three times as much as people in China, and twice as much as people in Europe. “THE BLAME GAME: Who is behind the world food price crisis,” Oakland Institute, July 2008.

10. How many cars does China have for every 1000 drivers? India? The U.S.?

Answer: China has 9 cars for every 1000 drivers. India has 11 cars for every 1000 drivers. The US has 1114 cars for every 1000 drivers. Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (2007).

11. How much grain is needed to fill a SUV tank with ethanol?

Answer: The grain needed to fill up a SUV tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year. Lester Brown, CNN.Money.com, August 16, 2006

12. According to the Wall Street Journal, the richest 1% of Americans earns what percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income? 5%? 10%? 15%? 20%?

Answer: “According to the figures, the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation’s total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2%. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1% was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult.” Jesse Drucker, “Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow,” Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2008, page A3.

13. How many people does our government say are homeless in the US on any given day?

Answer: 754,000 are homeless. About 338,000 homeless people are not in shelters (live on the streets, in cars, or in abandoned buildings) and 415,000 are in shelters on any given night. 2007 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Annual Homeless Report to Congress, page iii and 23. The population of San Francisco is about 739,000.

14. What percentage of people in homeless shelters are children?

Answer: HUD reports nearly 1 in 4 people in homeless shelters are children 17 or younger. Page iv – 2007 HUD Annual Homeless Report to Congress.

15. How many veterans are homeless on any given night?

Answer: Over 100,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. About 18 percent of the adult homeless population is veterans. Page 32, 2007 HUD Homeless Report. This is about the same population as Green Bay Wisconsin.

16. The military budget of the United States in 2008 is the largest in the world at $623 billion per year. How much larger is the US military budget than that of China, the second largest in the world?

Answer: Ten times. China’s military budget is $65 billion. The US military budget is nearly 10 times larger than the second leading military spender. GlobalSecurity.org

17. The US military budget is larger than how many of the countries of the rest of the world combined?

Answer: The US military budget of $623 billion is larger than the budgets of all the countries in the rest of the world put together. The total global military budget of the rest of the world is $500 billion. Russia’s military budget is $50 billion, South Korea’s is $21 billion, and Iran’s is $4.3 billion. GlobalSecurity.org

18. Over the 28 year history of the Berlin Wall, 287 people perished trying to cross it. How many people have died in the last 4 years trying to cross the border between Arizona and Mexico?

Answer: 1268. At least 1268 people have died along the border of Arizona and Mexico since 2004. The Arizona Daily Star keeps track of the reported deaths along the state border and reports 214 died in 2004, 241 in 2005, 216 in 2006, 237 in 2007, and 116 as of July 31, 2008. These numbers do not include the deaths along the California or Texas border. The Border Patrol reported that 400 people died in fiscal 2206-2007, 453 died in 2004-2005, and 494 died in 2004-2005. Source Associated Press, November 8, 2007.

19. India is ranked second in the world in gun ownership with 4 guns per 100 people. China is third with 3 firearms per 100 people. Which country is first and how many guns do they own?

Answer: The US is first in gun ownership world-wide with 90 guns for every 100 citizens. Laura MacInnis, “US most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people.” Reuters, August 28, 2007.

20. What country leads the world in the incarceration of its citizens?

Answer: The US jails 751 inmates per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world. Russia is second with 627 per 100,000. England’s rate is 151, Germany is 88, and Japan is 63. The US has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any country in the world. Adam Liptak, “Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations,” NYT, April 23, 2008.

How many did you get?

Fat

2008-09-09T10:54:00.000-05:00

Among people whose weight is considered "normal," only 1 in 4 people have unhealthy levels of cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose, and other risks for heart disease. While possible in anyone, these risk factors are correlated with older age, low levels of physical activity, and proportionately larger waist circumference.

Among those considered "overweight," the incidence of cardiovascular risk factors doubles to 1 in 2. Among those considered "obese," the risk factor increases even more dramatically to 7 in 10.

These are the results of a study hailed by the fat acceptance movement, which traditionally dismisses such research. The reason? Unlike similar papers, the study's results were worded the opposite way, emphasizing the number of "normal" people who are unhealthy, and the number of "overweight" and "obese" people who are healthy. But if the fat acceptance advocates who praise this study do the math, the numbers are clear: being "overweight" makes you twice as likely to be unhealthy, and being "obese" makes you almost three times as likely to be unhealthy. In fact, the study clearly shows that an "obese" person is very likely to have risk factors for heart disease.

Fat acceptance is a difficult subject to deal with, because it is truly one of those situations where both sides are right in some sense. The fat advocates are absolutely correct when they say that the often-used body mass index (BMI) is a rather ridiculous measure of whether or not one is "overweight" or "obese." BMI tells people virtually nothing about their actual physical health. People have different proportions of fat and muscle, which weigh different amounts, and so to use a simple formula to calculate any sort of consistent "weight class" is absurd, except in the extremes. Kate Harding's BMI Project makes this abundantly clear.

Fat advocates (and feminists more broadly) are also absolutely correct in their critique of body image as it is promoted in Western culture, and through mass media. As the ongoing Human Variation Project shows, average people almost never resemble the ideals thrust upon them through advertising and celebrity culture. The size and shape considered "normal" varies throughout time and across cultures, with very few universals. Fat advocates certainly take the right course in their suggestion that people love their bodies, regardless of any perceived flaws. Size, shape, and even health do not make one who one is, they are simply attributes that are as positive or negative as we make them. There are a wide-range of aspects outside one's volitional control (from heredity to opportunity) that influence one's size.

Finally, as we can see from the study cited above, fat advocates are also absolutely correct that it is possible to be classified as overweight and even obese without suffering from cardiovascular risk factors and other health problems.

But the most important thing the fat acceptance movement has correct is that one's size ought never be cause for discrimination or hatred. Fat people, regardless of why they are fat and regardless of whether or not they are healthy, are still people. Even if being fat were the direct result of people's choices and made them extremely ill, it would be no cause for discrimination or hatred. It would be (again, at worst) a medical condition like any other. That being fat is often not entirely in one's control, and it does not mean that one is automatically unhealthy, is even more reason not to engage in fat-shaming and discrimination.

On the other hand, the fat acceptance movement is like any other movement in that it resists holding its ideology up to scrutiny. From the valid premise that we should love the bodies we have combined with the accurate evidence that one can be "fat but fit," the fat acceptance movement has unfortunately built an uncritical belief that there is a vast diet-industry conspiracy controlling scientific research to promote an obesity epidemic. Some books written by people outside medicine, such as The Obesity Myth, go so far as to say there is little or no evidence that obesity is associated with health risks at all by cherry-picking a handful out of the tens of thousands of studies carried out on the topic, or, as exemplified in the beginning of this post, rephrasing others to accentuate the positive while ignoring the negative. The overwhelming tide of evidence points to obesity indeed being associated with many health problems.

The line that must be tread is clear enough: variation in size is a part of the human condition, and should be celebrated rather than suppressed. Nevertheless, all people should be aware of the factual information regarding weight and health, for better or worse, and should be empowered to make their own choices regarding diet, exercise, or medical treatment, choices that ought to be respected. Size is not a character flaw.

Apropos

2008-08-31T11:24:00.001-05:00

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time

REALLY Computing in the Cloud

2008-08-14T20:20:00.002-05:00

This is actually what inspired me to try my little experiment. Needless to say, it's not quite this slick in real life...

Aurora (complete video without commentary) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Computing in the Cloud

2008-08-14T13:01:00.000-05:00

I am going to try an experiment. I'm already most of the way there, so it's really just a matter of taking the last step. The mission: do everything I do on the computer in Firefox, using only web apps and extensions.

Gmail has my email. Google Reader has my RSS feeds. Google Calendar can handle scheduling and reminders. Word processing through Google Docs. Meebo (and, to some extent, Twitter) will do messaging. I've come to listen to Pandora more than my own music in iTunes, anyway. Photos are on Flickr.

There's very little I absolutely need to do outside of Firefox, really. My personal needs and job don't require much in the way of "power using." So let's see how this goes. Dock set to autohide; Firefox zoomed to fill the screen.

How animal rights advocates should handle PETA

2008-07-24T16:49:00.004-05:00

Following up on my post about the PETA situation (namely, that they're an ambiguous ally, at best, to supporters of animal rights):

I'd like to make a few suggestions on how those who don't like a lot of what that organization does (but also don't want to write off 2 million potential AR supporters merely because they're mistaken about PETA's efficacy at achieving their goals) ought to engage the situation. I've just read Saul Alinsky's infamous Rules for Radicals, so naturally I'm quite inspired with ideas. It occurs to me that the same sorts of practices that an advocacy group must use to engage and change systems they oppose can be used by members of a movement to engage and change advocacy groups within that movement. I don't expect this post will be met with adulation from all AR advocates opposed to PETA, but, hey, it's my blog.

PETA's major strategy for large-scale efforts has been to gather as much media attention as possible about specific topics. They choose specific targets and hit them repeatedly until they agree to negotiate some gains—typically not entirely significant ones. The point is that PETA works, as any advocacy group should, through pressure. What AR advocates ought to do with PETA is to also pick a specific target and apply continuous pressure until the group either admits their error or halts the practice.

This is the real world we live in. We can't shut our eyes and pretend that PETA, if vegans just ignore it, will stop being "the" animal rights organization. We can't pretend that they aren't the largest, most well-known group out there and that they are what the average person associates with animal rights. We cannot imagine that, magically, PETA's members are going to stop supporting them. Some vegans and AR advocates suggest we ought to simply write them off, start a new grassroots vegan abolitionist movement that is diametrically opposed to PETA's "new welfarism." I am highly sympathetic to this position, but I'm afraid it reeks of the factionalism that historically tears every broad-based leftist movement apart. We should not all go join PETA, to be sure, and we need not support them either, but our position toward them should be one of constant and positive criticism. We can, through the same pressuring efforts that this abolitionist movement would use to end the exploitation of animals, simultaneously pressure PETA to drift ever abolition-ward. Even if they are never "our" organization, they can become ever less an impediment to true animal rights, and in many cases, an actual expedient.

Here's how:

Assume good intentions from individuals associated with PETA unless they prove otherwise. If we are to convince anyone that they are mistaken, we must assume that they want the right thing in the end, even if they're wrong about how to get there. And in my experience, this is almost always the case. I can't speak for everyone, but all PETA members and supporters I've ever talked to about this issue have fully agreed with me on what the ultimate goal is. They even fully agree that the strategies and methods I support (extensive vegan activism and campaigning for the actual halting of exploitative practices rather than modifications to them) will achieve it. The only thing they disagree on is whether or not PETA ought to also be doing the sorts of things it has become infamous for in the meantime. I have met PETA members who are highly critical of PETA's national tactics. PETA is not a monolith.
Apply continuous pressure to specific issues. I read (and often even enjoy) the PETA Files blog. I also leave comments every occasion I see them congratulating animal exploiters or calling for vegetarianism rather than veganism and I have a minute to write one. To me, these are the two biggest mistakes PETA makes, and so I make an effort to call them out every time I can. I don't know what the blog's readership is, and it doesn't matter—this isn't an attempt to convince outsiders, but an attempt to engage people at, in, or sympathetic to PETA already. I want PETA members who read the blog to also read, every time their group gives an award to someone for their choice of veal or their method of slaughter, a criticism of the practice. I want the bloggers themselves to feel the need to justify every misuse of the word vegetarian and every "victory." This isn't because I'm a pedantic ass, it's because blogs are a discursive medium that ask for two-way interaction.
When discussing PETA with people entirely unsympathetic to animal rights (or already hostile to PETA) only highlight the problems if you can explain the solution. Since the mainstream views PETA as "the" animal rights organization, and PETA members as the prototypical AR activists, there is something of a fine line to tread here. We must make it clear that PETA has problems. We don't want to make it seem as if we're bickering over trivial issues, or that PETA's sizable (and largely agreeable to our ends) membership are all fools, or that (god forbid) we're just jealous of their success, such as it is. I encourage AR people to frame PETA's difficulties as regrettable and avoidable, as though we really wish we could be on the same page with these things, and that maybe PETA can come around. Now, for me, this is the honest truth. I do feel a certain pang of regret that I can't approve of everything the group does. I want to be able to like PETA, because they have such potential and such support. For others, this may be putting things far more diplomatically than they would otherwise, but I think it is the smart strategic move to make. If, as I suggest, we want to use pressure to shift PETA's policies in line with our own, we have to leave that door open in the minds of both PETA supporters and critics—and ourselves.
Don't lie. This is not entryism. This is not covert action. Those of us in the abolitionist core of the animal rights movement are overtly attempting to make more and more people see things our way. One element of this is vegan outreach. One element of this is pressure on PETA. This is the direct corollary of 3 above: we can leave the door open to future alliance with reformed PETA members without stepping through it before we're ready.

In summary, true AR advocates who hope to grow our ranks should see a flawed PETA as an opportunity, not an obstacle. Some PETA members may "convert" and leave. We may get the attention of those in positions of power within the organization. We can't know the future. But we can rest assured that PETA will be around for a long time, and we have to find a way of dealing with them that goes beyond ignoring them and hoping to be heard in their shadow, because the people we're trying to reach will always hear PETA's voice first.

The PETA situation

2008-07-16T14:01:00.004-05:00

I've got a bit of a problem. See, I can't help but pay attention to PETA. As the most recognizable and infamous animal advocacy group, PETA has an obligation to advocate for animals, one would think. And as someone who is very concerned about animal rights—concerned enough to be vegan—I feel it is my duty to keep up on such things. So I've posted about PETA here and on The Red Scare many times before, but I wanted to make a post where I fully laid out my case, both for and against them.

Good

I am generally impressed with actual PETA members, employees, and volunteers on a personal level. I mean, it is clear that, as individuals, the majority of PETA supporters do genuinely care about animals and want to see the best case scenario play out in the end. They're committed enough that I've never really come across a "closeted" PETA member—they're generally out and proud, and visibility never hurt a cause. It takes some fortitude to stand up for animals in the social climate of the world today, and to declare oneself a member of a group that many laypersons actually think sponsors radical animal-rights terrorists (!) is at least a measure of one's devotion.

PETA's web presence is comprehensive and fairly useful content-wise. They have pages and pages of information about animal cruelty, and the sites are updated frequently. I've heard anecdotally that PETA's website alone has greatly influenced several people to become interested in animal issues, along with their video collection. I even enjoy reading the PETA Files blog, even though I don't always agree with everything they post there.

PETA's core message is a good one. Their stated motto, that "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any way" is absolutely correct. PETA has notoriety and occasionally highlights issues of importance, and even runs many campaigns that directly target the use of animals and call for the abolition thereof.

Bad

PETA can't bring itself to say vegan. OK, fine, if you poke around for long enough on their site, you'll find the word here and there. But go to a food-related PETA demonstration and what will you see? "Go vegetarian." "Go veg." "Get a free vegetarian starter kit." Look at their main site pages, where you'll see stories about vegans with headlines referring to vegetarianism instead. A blog post about vegan athlete Carl Lewis refers to him as vegetarian. The example of Oprah's very public vegan experiment encourages readers to "go vegetarian." Even the vegetarian starter kit mentioned above is actually a vegan starter kit, deliberately mislabeled.

But isn't veganism just a type of vegetarianism? Well, no. The words have lives of their own, and it is an unavoidable fact that "vegetarian" means "eats eggs and dairy (and to some idiots, fish)." It is logically incoherent to say that you believe in animal rights, such as the basic right not to be property, while consuming animal products that require animals to be property. Combined with the fact that even free-range, cage-free, organic eggs and dairy are complicit in the torture and slaughter of animals for meat (a fact PETA's own sites proclaim), it is simply absurd to claim to be opposed to the abuse of animals while encouraging vegetarianism. Vegetarianism directly contributes to the use and abuse of animals. Veganism does not, except in unavoidable ways. An animal rights organization need not require its members be vegan, but veganism has to be the official position of the organization if it claims to be in favor of substantive animal rights at all.

Right now, PETA Files has a post about a "Vegetarianism in a Nutshell" podcast episode, with a link to "the impact of vegetarianism"...on a "GoVeg.com" site, the actual name of which is "veganism.asp." It's total doublethink. Veganism is not vegetarianism.

Related to PETA's avoidance of actually asking people to stop exploiting animals is their routine celebration, promotion, and award-giving to animal exploiters. PETA proclaims victory when KFC Canada starts only using chickens that were gassed to death after their shortened, tortured lives. PETA gives awards to Wolfgang Puck for choosing less cruelly raised veal. They make animal exploiters feel better about getting signed off on by "the animal rights organization." PETA runs Sexiest Vegetarian contests when, as we see above, vegetarians exploit animals.

PETA's campaigns are often narrowly-focused and advance trivial issues of welfare improvement at the expense of the actual exploitation involved. While their "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign clearly targets the use of fur animals entirely, they then go on to protest the treatment of chickens in fast food chains that must use chickens even to exist. It's not that the treatment of these chickens is not abhorrent, it is. But the real problem is the use of chickens in the first place. There is no practical "endgame" to a protest at a KFC short of a multibillion-dollar corporation actually shutting down entirely. "Winning" cages an inch wider is not a meaningful victory for animal rights any more than convincing a wife-beater to use an open palm rather than a closed fist is a great victory against domestic violence. It is a PR boon for the exploiting corporations, however, who can now sell PETA-approved slaughter to their customers and increase profit.

Finally, PETA undeniably uses sexist imagery in some of its campaigns. I've waffled on this, and ultimately I come down on the side that I don't mind their naked activities. I don't mind using the body as an attention-grabber and a form of protest. I think the World Naked Bike Ride is groovy. I think Spencer Tunick's glacier photos for Greenpeace are rad. So it's not that PETA "uses" naked women (and men) that is sexist. I don't even think some of the most commonly cited examples—the women with beef cut diagrams drawn on them, the women in cellophane as meat, and the pregnant woman in a cage like a sow—are actually sexist. They are satire; we're meant to think, "Ugh, treating a woman that way is sick." That's the whole point. Whether they effectively carry over to thoughts of animal treatment is another story.

But PETA does have sexist undertones to several campaigns. For one thing, they don't shy away from not using mere nudity, but specifically female sexuality as their hook. They encourage people to think of their female models as "bikini babes" and "hot chicks," in contexts that have nothing to do with comparisons to animals. There is a big difference between saying, "Hey, we're naked because animal rights are important enough for us to throw caution and shame to the wind," and saying, "Hey, come ogle some sexy broads! (also, go 'veg')." Their notorious "Fur trim. Unattractive." ad didn't exactly promote a positive female body image, either.

Conclusion

So PETA is a mixed bag for me. I have no real hope that they will ever embrace genuine vegan outreach and abolitionist campaigning, but they are—for better or worse—the face of animal rights activism to the general public. I can't help but think of many individuals involved with PETA as allies, even as their organization uses its platform to indirectly aid those who we mutually oppose. But such is the inevitable result when a radical group achieves some level of mainstream success. Once you start to taste victory, victory soon becomes more important than values. PETA is willing to ask for things it doesn't want simply because it can win them, and that's unfortunate. So I'll continue to think of the PETA folks as misguided comrades, and keep asking for the things I actually want... even if I never get them.

Big Brother is watching

2008-07-10T10:16:00.000-05:00

[via WWdN]

Daniel Dennett on religion

2008-07-05T10:07:00.001-05:00

I happened to come across this brief interview with philosopher Daniel Dennett, and I found his answer to a question on the relationship between science and religion to be so exactly congruent with my own beliefs that I am compelled to quote it here.

The problem with any proposed detente in which science and religion are ceded separate bailiwicks or "magisteria" is that, as some wag has put it, this amounts to rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which Caesar says God can have. The most recent attempt, by Gould, has not found much favor among the religious precisely because he proposes to leave them so little. Of course, I’m certainly not suggesting that he should have left them more.

There are no factual assertions that religion can reasonably claim as its own, off limits to science. Many who readily grant this have not considered its implications. It means, for instance, that there are no factual assertions about the origin of the universe or its future trajectory, or about historical events (floods, the parting of seas, burning bushes, etc.), about the goal or purpose of life, or about the existence of an afterlife and so on, that are off limits to science. After all, assertions about the purpose or function of organs, the lack of purpose or function of, say, pebbles or galaxies, and assertions about the physical impossibility of psychokinesis, clairvoyance, poltergeists, trance channeling, etc. are all within the purview of science; so are the parallel assertions that strike closer to the traditionally exempt dogmas of long-established religions. You can’t consistently accept that expert scientific testimony can convict a charlatan of faking miracle cures and then deny that the same testimony counts just as conclusively—"beyond a reasonable doubt"—against any factual claims of violations of physical law to be found in the Bible or other religious texts or traditions.

What does that leave for religion to talk about? Moral injunctions and declarations of love (and hate, unfortunately), and other ceremonial speech acts. The moral codes of all the major religions are a treasury of ethical wisdom, agreeing on core precepts, and disagreeing on others that are intuitively less compelling, both to those who honor them and those who don’t. The very fact that we agree that there are moral limits that trump any claim of religious freedom—we wouldn’t accept a religion that engaged in human sacrifice or slavery, for instance—shows that we do not cede to religion, to any religion, the final authority on moral injunctions.

Centuries of ethical research and reflection, by philosophers, political theorists, economists, and other secular thinkers have not yet achieved a consensus on any Grand Unified Theory of ethics, but there is a broad, stable consensus on how to conduct such an inquiry, how to resolve ethical quandaries, and how to deal with as-yet unresolved differences. Religion plays a major role as a source of possible injunctions and precepts, and as a rallying point for public appeal and organization, but it does not set the ground rules of ethical agreement and disagreement, and hence cannot claim ethics or morality as its particular province.

That leaves ceremonial speech acts as religion’s surviving domain. These play a huge role in stabilizing the attitudes and policies of those who participate in them, but the trouble is that ceremony without power does not appear to be a stable arrangement—and appearances here are all important. Once a monarch is stripped of all political power, as in Great Britain, the traditions and trappings tend to lose some of their psychological force, so that their sole surviving function—focusing the solidarity of the citizenry—is somewhat undercut. Whether or not to abolish the monarchy becomes an ever less momentous decision, rather like whether or not to celebrate a national holiday always on a Monday, instead of on its traditional calendar date. Recognizing this threat of erosion, religious people will seldom acknowledge in public that their God has been reduced to something like a figurehead, a mere constitutional monarch, even while their practices and decisions presuppose that this is so.

It is seldom remarked (though often observed in private, I daresay) that many, many people who profess belief in God do not really act the way people who believed in God would act; they act the way people would act who believed in believing in God. That is, they manifestly think that believing in God is—would be—a good thing, a state of mind to be encouraged, by example if possible, so they defend belief-in-God with whatever rhetorical and political tools they can muster. They ask for God’s help, but do not risk anything on receiving it, for instance. They thank God for their blessings, but, following the principle that God helps those who help themselves, they proceed with the major decisions of their lives as if they were going it alone.

Those few individuals who clearly do act as if they believed in God, really believed in God, are in striking contrast: the Christian Scientists who opt for divine intervention over medical attention, for instance, or those who give all their goods to one church or another in expectation of the Apocalypse, or those who eagerly seek martyrdom.

Not wanting the contrast to be so stark, the believers in belief-in-God respond with the doctrine that it is a sin (or at least a doctrinal error) to count on God’s existence to have any particular effect. This has the nice effect of making the behavior of a believer in belief-in-God and the behavior of a believer in God so similar as to be all but indistinguishable.

Once nothing follows from a belief in God that doesn’t equally follow from the presumably weaker creed that it would be good if I believed in God—a doctrine that is readily available to the atheist, after all—religion has been so laundered of content that it is quite possibly consistent with science. Peter de Vries, a genuine believer in God and probably the funniest writer on religion ever, has his hyper-liberal Reverend Mackerel (in his book The Mackerel Plaza) preach the following line: "It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us."

The Reverend Mackerel’s God can co-exist peacefully with science. So can Santa Claus, who need not exist in order to make our yuletide season more jolly.

America's holiday

2008-07-04T08:49:00.003-05:00

Today is Independence Day, a day that celebrates our declaration of freedom from the King of Great Britain's authority.

In 1776, the United States began to take the first steps towards liberal democracy, a political system in which (it is claimed) decisions that affect the citizens are made by representatives held accountable to the citizens themselves. The experiment was never intended to actually give power to the people, of course. Most of the framers of the Constitution had such great contempt for the decision-making competency of the common man that they did everything they could to concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy landowners without just coming out and saying so. This isn't even mentioning the issue of slavery, both the chattel slavery of black men and women and the social slavery of white women.

Even with these significant caveats, the liberal democracy established by the revolutionaries of that time has grown and matured. It is far from perfect. The process of electing our leaders has evolved into an independent being, dependent far more on corporate money than on the consent of the governed. Our business-minded masters are free to do as they please for as many years as they can get away with it, before they must spend some months pandering to the people that might reelect them. But the idea of our democracy is still a good one, one worth strengthening and defending in ways well beyond the narrow focus of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

The first tentative step in expanding the scope of the democratic experiment was taken through the New Deal, which essentially established for the first time in the United States a system of social democracy. To the Declaration's liberty the New Deal added some measure of solidarity. We began to recognize that it is not enough to be free from arbitrary rule, that if we are a society bound together by geography and history, each of us owes our lives and well being to the actions of every other. We owe it to them, and they to us, the opportunity to make it through hard times that none should have to endure alone.

As with the political freedom of the liberal democracy, the social democratic experiment has both grown and eroded since it was established. The basic provisions of universal education, health care, and pensions are in the modern United States a farce, beholden as our elections are to the interests of businesses in lowering costs and raising prices. And as with the liberal democracy, the social democracy must be strengthened to live up to the idea behind it, rather than to the practice it has become.

The only way to build upon our liberal and social democracies is to add equality to the values of liberty and solidarity we stand for. We must have economic democracy as well. Most everyone believes that we are competent to elect our political leaders... but we demure away from the idea that we ought to elect our bosses. We think that decisions that affect a town, or a state, or the nation as a whole should be made by that town, that state, or the nation as a whole... except when those decisions involve our economy. We believe that all people should be equal in the eyes of the law, but we allow a fraction of the population to claim the bulk of our resources, and have far greater access to the pursuit of happiness our Declaration of Independene proclaimed. Their claim is justified not by their having done more to earn their share, but because they had access to the means of producing that great wealth, and were able to buy the effort of others to make it. Rather than owning the product of their labor, these others have to turn it over to their economic betters to dole out as they see fit: which is always as little as possible.

It should come as no surprise that this class of parasites and their great ideology of capitalism, this class who claim great wealth and prosperity by taking from the effort of others, is precisely the same group that prohibits our liberal and social democracies from meeting their promise. Private ownership of capital insures that profits make the rich far richer while making the poor only slightly less poor, if at all. A labor market that relies on the threat of unemployment as a stick to keep the exploited from simply leaving to find better opportunities ensures that the cycle continues. These same forces are also behind the need to continuously expand our markets, which requires global presence, interference, and often warfare to "spread democracy," which merely means "areas we can do business in."

Capitalism must end for true democracy—liberal, social, and economic—to have any hope of being more than a footnote in the histories of our future. The United States, and indeed the world, deserves better than this.

From the "How People Find Me" files

2008-07-02T08:46:00.001-05:00

Some Google searches that have led people to my blogs lately:

nude women on harleys
prostitution in little
proper way to eat chicken
r rated ninja turtles
gay hairstyles
first response commercial woman
who is commercial woman

I think those last two must be from the same person...

How to democratize the UN

2008-06-30T17:29:00.001-05:00

The United Nations is fundamentally flawed. It is unresponsive to the views and opinions of people around the world. The Security Council, with its permanent membership and veto powers, privileges the policies of some countries while allowing vested interests to completely block legitimate action. The General Assembly, rather than serving as a global legislature, is merely a place for appointed ambassadors to mechanically regurgitate their home government's current policies.

If the UN has any hope of being of service to humanity, it must be democratized. This obviously involves ending the permanent membership and veto powers of the Security Council, but it also means transforming the General Assembly into a World Parliament.

The first component of this transformation is variable delegation sizes based on population. As much respect as I have for the fine people of Nauru, the fact that they have the same number of votes (one) as China, a country with over 100,000 times the population, is profoundly undemocratic. Now, we have to strike a balance when choosing delegation sizes. We don't want the World Parliament to grow to monstrous proportions, of course. We can't have Nauru with one Member of the World Parliament and therefore China gets 100,000.

We might arbitrarily state that each nation gets one MWP, and any nation with more than 25 million citizens gets additional members for each 25-million person bracket they fit into. So Chile with 16 million people gets one MWP. Iraq with 29 million people gets 2 MWPs. The United States has 304 million people and gets 13 MWPs.

China, at 1.3 billion people, gets 53 MWPs. Wait, so China, a single-party authoritarian state with a sketchy human rights record gets to dominate the United Nations? Isn't the point of democratizing the General Assembly to make a fair and democratic Parliament? I propose two mechanisms to deal with this.

First, we want the members of the World Parliament to be chosen by the people. I submit that any nation that does not elect its MWPs through some democratic means (national or regional elections) gets only half votes. If China appoints 53 loyal MWPs by decree, they can only get 26.5 votes rather than 53.

Second, we want the World Parliament to be a democracy of democracies. We might assign different vote weights to the level of democratic freedom in different countries. For the purposes of illustration, if we chose to use the Freedom in the World survey, we might give full votes to all nations that qualify as Free, half votes to those who qualify as Partly Free, and quarter-votes to those that qualify as not Free. China is rated Not Free, and if it appointed its 53 MWPs, they would only get 6.625 votes in the Parliament, 0.125 votes for each MWP. In contrast, India gets 45 MWPs; it is ranked as Free and if its MWPs are chosen through elections, it gets 45 full votes.

These are just examples of ways in which the size of some countries can be counterbalanced with democratic policies. In actual practice, the World Parliament might use entirely different criteria and vote weights. However it is done, a democratic, responsive World Parliament could be a positive force to counterbalance the capitalist globalization, militarization, and imperialism of the United States and other powers.

The Red Scare (and why I'm back)

2008-06-30T09:20:00.006-05:00

For those of you who may have stumbled across this site during the last year and a half, or those of you who never deleted it from your feed reader, I can assure you that I have not dropped off the face of the Earth. I had recently been hired as a public school teacher and, desiring anonymity, started blogging at The Red Scare rather than my eponymous blog here. I quickly learned that once you've established a presence on the internet, anonymity is impossible and frankly, it was never desirable. My views and statements are my own, they neither hinder nor harm my work as a teacher, and they are protected by law as long as they violate no ethical norms and are outside the workplace. By the end, The Red Scare was easily found by Googling my real name, so I made no effort to continue dissociating myself from it.

As to why I decided to return here, rather than continuing to blog at The Red Scare, well, that's a bit more complicated. I think I dug myself into a corner when I created the Red Scare persona. Granted, I could have treated the blog like this one and done whatever I want, but I started early on using that blog as an almost exclusively political forum, where I would launch into diatribes regularly. And while you wouldn't know it from the deficit of comments, I had quite a few regular readers and feed subscribers. I started feeling like if I wanted to post, I had to make it something Big and Important, rather than just whatever was on my mind. And the name itself implied a certain sort of Communist sensibility, not entirely unfounded, but one that I felt restricted the expectations readers might have for my opinions and views. The Red Scare was me, but it was a small part of me, and it was a lot like wearing clothes that fit really well but aren't quite your style.

So now I'm back here. If you never read me at The Red Scare, feel free to head over and look at the archives, though I warn you I no longer agree with everything I ever said there. If you followed me here from The Red Scare, I hope you'll stick around despite the fact that the polemics may be held in check by a good healthy dose of random shit that I'm into. I'll continue to say all the same things here, but I'll also say the things I wouldn't have said there. I think it's better this way.

Seriously, yo

2006-11-17T21:34:00.001-06:00

What do we have to do to get an unmarried, civilly-united, socialist mother-of-two to be a front-runner in our country's presidential race? Not that Ségolène Royal is my dream candidate, but the idea is nice.

Another quick thought about Buddhism

2006-11-13T13:23:00.001-06:00

My views on the subject of this post have changed since the post was written. I am leaving the post up, but please note that it is no longer consistent with my opinion.

After some more consideration, I think I can better articulate how I use "Buddhism" in my life (it must be in quotes since I have never actually practiced it per se). I definitely consider myself a preference utilitarian in that I think that good is defined as "that which satisfies the preferences of the most people the most often" and bad is that which doesn't. Where the "Buddhism" comes in is in determining for myself what preferences I really have, and which are trivial. Which is to say, accepting that pain is a part of life and letting go of needless desires. Or something like that.

My head exploded and this post is being typed by a decapitated corpse

2006-11-12T12:33:00.001-06:00

George W. Bush at the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps:

"Years from now, when America looks out on a democratic Middle East growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima."

Ryanism, or: I'm an accidental Buddhist

2006-11-11T21:55:00.001-06:00

I've been reading a lot about Buddhism in the last week or so. This in itself is not particularly noteworthy; I read a lot about a lot of things. I usually get something stuck in my head for a couple weeks and study it as intensely as my schedule will allow. A few weeks ago, I learned about as much as a lay person can know about designing nuclear fusion rockets for interstellar spacecraft propulsion. Now it's Buddhism.

Of course, I came into this already knowing the barest of basics of Buddhism. I knew the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. But I had never really thought about it in any serious, analytical way since a humanities class in high school. Not only was that a decade ago, but it was high school, so how serious could it have really been?

What I discovered is that, independent of Buddhism to the best of my knowledge, I already live my life pretty much according to the practices of Buddhism. I certainly and absolutely reject the entire spiritual component of Buddhism. But I still find myself using what is apparently the "Buddhist method" when it comes to ethics and how I deal with problems.

Now, different schools of Buddhism will phrase things slightly differently, or disagree on specifics, but I'd like to go through this generally as I understand it. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are: life is suffering; the cause of suffering is selfish desire; there is a way to ease suffering; the way to ease suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path.

I. Life is suffering. I think this should be self-evident to anyone who lives. But for me, I think the most significant element of this truth is exemplified in the folk wisdom that sometimes bad things happen to good people. We are not in control, and we never will be. The universe is utterly indifferent to the affairs of people. You can never have everything you want; as you climb Maslow's hierarchy of needs you simply want the next -- and when you reach the top, you will still want things like world peace or an end to hunger or not to be vaporized when an asteroid hits the planet.

II. The cause of suffering is selfish desire. This one is a bit less immediately obvious. At least, it isn't intuitive to me. But when I think of it, this is essentially true. Every act of suffering can be framed as a frustration of a desire. Simple unhappiness may result from the frustration of one's desire for a given material possession, or for the acceptance of peers, or something of that nature. The suffering of hunger is the frustration of the innate desire (and indeed, necessity) to eat. The suffering of torture is the frustration of the desire to avoid pain. So long as a person desires something, anything, there will be suffering.

III. There is a way to ease suffering. I depart from the Buddha himself, and from Buddhists in general, in that I pretty firmly believe that it is impossible to reach Nirvana, if my understanding that one who has attained this enlightenment is completely free from desire and therefore suffering. If I ever lived a life in which the death of a loved one did not cause me suffering, I am not sure that would be desirable. But I steadfastly agree that it is possible to ease and to minimize suffering, and that an extremely large amount of the pain and grief people endure is avoidable.

IV. The way to ease suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path. Obviously, my acceptance of this truth is dependent upon just what that path is. So let's look at it:

1. Right understanding. This simply means understanding the Four Noble Truths.

2. Right thought. This refers to having good aspirations and intentions, good will, and non-violence. Have you met me? The part of this that pertains to one's commitment to Buddhism itself I cannot say I follow, but my will towards others is pretty unfailingly good. The Three Poisons are greed, hatred, and ignorance. I feel that I do a good job of avoiding them.

3. Right speech. Abstaining from lying, divisive and abusive speech, and idle chatter. I don't really have a huge problem with idle chatter, but I would say I ascribe to this idea.

4. Right action. This is essentially the ethical code of Buddhism, most typically listed as the Five Precepts: don't kill (I'm a vegan), don't steal (I don't), don't rape or commit adultery (usually understood as "sexual misconduct" rather than the prudish moralism of the Abrahamic religions), don't lie (I don't often), and don't abuse intoxicants (I do drink, but I can honestly say I have never been, nor do I have any desire to be, so drunk or high that I seriously lost function or control).

5. Right livelihood. Don't engage in occupations that involve any of the bad things above. So no weapons dealing, warfare, slaughtering animals, slave-trafficking, cheating, and the like. I'm a teacher and wannabe writer, so I think I've got this one covered.

6. Right effort. This would be the daily effort to follow all of the elements of the Eightfold Path. I do consciously try to do most of the things I've said I do. Anyone who has seen me calmly ignore being cut off in traffic or something similar knows that I'm a level-headed person, but this is actually a conscious decision on my part. When something starts to upset me, I just make it stop and it goes away.

7. Right mindfulness. Being "in the moment," detached and aware of what is happening. I think for me this is related to the above. I try to be conscious of my consciousness, if that makes any sense, and I started doing this at a young age completely apart from Buddhism. When I have a bad feeling, I am aware that it is just a feeling and with a bit of effort I can make it go away.

8. Right concentration. Meditation. I don't do it, but I am interested in it. I completely reject the supernatural element some would have, but I do believe that it is probably a good way to focus one's thoughts and maintain calm. So learning to meditate is not out of the realm of possibility for me.

So, in a way, I think I am an accidental Buddhist. But I don't think I could ever describe myself as a Buddhist, because I reject the entire metaphysical underpinnings of the religion. It is currently considered hip for Americans to look at Buddhism as "a philosophy" rather "a religion," but I think this is simply because they can't conceive of a religion that doesn't feature a God to pray to. I'm not entirely sure that Buddhism (and Taoism, and Confucianism, for that matter) aren't a distinguishable class of beliefs from Western religions, but if they are, they are certainly not as secular as "philosophies." If Buddhism were a philosophy rather than a religion there would simply not be any talk of spirituality and certainly not of reincarnation. That there are fairly large numbers of Buddhists who ignore these aspects of the religion is rather irrelevant, and only a reflection of Buddhism's avoidance of doctrine.

But Buddhism without the Buddha, and without a supernatural conception of karma and enlightenment, is just a way of living life to minimize suffering. To continue to call it "Buddhism" is like calling science "Christianity" or algebra "Islam." At most, it could be called a Buddhism-based philosophy. But my experience, to me at least, proves that arriving at this philosophy does not require being "Buddhism-based."

Pragmatically, however, I am interested in the spread and continued popularity in the West. Because there are plenty of people who do believe in supernatural hocus-pocus, and who could not conceive of a worldview in which reality was all that existed, it would be preferable to people who believe in moral concepts described above that that those who need a spiritual component to their lives fill that need with a religion that follows those concepts rather than one that does not.

I have said that politically I would rather live in a world in which the borders of the debate fell between the socialists and the anarchists and the liberals than between the liberals and the conservatives. Likewise, I would love a world in which the great religious divide was between the Buddhists and the humanists and the atheists -- a world in which we all agree on what is good, and merely disagree on why.

What's wrong with Kinky Friedman

2006-10-02T23:04:00.001-05:00

It was cute, for a while, liberals and independents. Yeah, Kinky Friedman, the big middle finger to politics as usual. Jewish cowboy, silly name, catchy slogans. "Why not Kinky?"

Well...

Kinky likes invading and occupying and warmongering

When asked about his opinion of George W. Bush, Friedman said, "I agree with most of his political positions overseas, his foreign policy.... What he’s been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think." To think that our current imperial adventurism is anything but a clusterfuck of epic proportions requires ignorance, stupidity, or insanity. Any of the three would tend to make Friedman an unattractive gubernatorial candidate, I should think.

Kinky wants kids talking to themselves instead of learning

"I'll tell you right now. I'm for prayer in school." Well, that was simple, wasn't it? Friedman is opposed to the separation of church and state, and in favor of state organizations engaging in religious activities. "I say what's wrong with a kid believing in something?" How about the kids believe in things that are actually real, like getting an education. That is the point of school, is it not? What does school have to do with whether or not a child believes in God or the Tooth Fairy on her own time? Is there something about learning stuff that makes it impossible for a kid to believe in "something?" If only.

Of course, Friedman isn't content with simple prayer. "The Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments being taken out of the public schools. I want them back.... They were taken out, not by separation of church and state, but by political correctness gone awry. One atheist stands up and says, 'I don't like the Ten Commandments,' and suddenly out they go. And, of course, we all know what happens to an atheist when he dies. His tombstone usually reads, 'All dressed up and no place to go.'"

Kinky doesn't like brown people

"Good fences make good neighbors." Yes, Friedman is yet another xenophobe, trying to keep out the hard-working immigrants forced to enter the country illegally due to our own pathetic immigration policies and "free trade" agreements that make it desirable to move to avoid things like, you know, dying. After all, in Friedman's expert opinion, "Mexico is not a poor country."

But Friedman doesn't even hide his contempt for these people. "All of these politicians are afraid of offending Hispanics... I want the border off the evening news until we get something resolved." And he's willing to resolve it the old-fashioned way, too. "My immigration policy is 'Remember the Alamo'," he said. He'd use the "National Guard, the Texas Rangers, the entire Polish army, whatever it takes." Because it's better these people die than feed their families, or at the very least they'd better keep away from us so we can pretend we're blameless.

His actual plan is only slightly less ridiculous than his bluster: "I will divide the border into five jurisdictions, assigning one Mexican general to each and providing a trust fund for that general. Every time a person crosses illegally, we subtract $5,000 from the trust fund." No, really.

Kinky wants to keep killing people

Friedman supports the death penalty and opposes gun control. Enough said.

Friedman has a handful of issues that liberals really like and he makes some jokes. That is the extent of his qualifications for governor, and in light of the above, I am frankly disgusted that so many people have it in their heads that Texas would be better with him in charge. He's a clown -- let's laugh at him and find someone who has something worthwhile to say when we're looking for, oh, I don't know, the executive branch of our state government.

Well, it's official

2006-08-08T00:22:00.000-05:00

I am now being paid by the State of Texas to corrupt the supple young minds of youth professionally rather than simply doing it for fun. In other words, I am an English teacher. Fear for the future of the nation, and indeed, the world.

"I pledge allegiance..."

2006-07-19T00:51:00.000-05:00

Why I support affirmative action

2006-07-15T13:28:00.000-05:00

On Essembly (my favorite time-waster), the perennial hot-button topic of affirmative action arose yet again. And as always, I threw myself into the thick of it. One person asked:

Ryan do you recommend forcing the NBA to have its players reflect the percentage of qualified applicants from each race so that 70% or so of them are white? You're going to answer that the best applicants happen to be black. To that I'll respond this way: who's to say the best applicants for any given medical school won't be overwhelmingly white or Asian? Would you rather have the best possible basketball player or the best possible surgeon? Which is more important? By forcing quotas you are going to end up with less quality (though perfectly qualified) doctors, lawyers, cops etc. and that's exactly what's happening.

My response follows, and I essentially laid out my full case... which means it's pretty long.

Why do college admissions departments care if you've done community service? Why do they ask about extracurricular activities? Does it make any difference in your ability to be an engineer, a doctor, an architect, if you played varsity tennis for two years in high school? It doesn't. None of these things matter, but all of them are considered for admissions to universities, in addition to more mundane factors such as GPA and test scores. The reason is that there is not some magical measurement of "qualification" for college, and schools want what you always hear they want: a well-rounded student.

In the NBA, it's fairly straightforward what qualifications will get an athlete hired. They're either good at scoring a lot of points, or at helping someone else score a lot of points, or at stopping other people from scoring a lot of points. While there is some room for subjectivity in which emphasis is most important, it would be fairly easy to rank all potential players on the basis of their records and simply pick the best. You ask if there should be affirmative action for white NBA players. The answer, of course, is no, because there is neither evidence nor even accusation that the selection process for NBA players is biased by race. If there were, the NBA should be held to the same equal employment opportunity rules as any other organization.

But colleges are different. Your statement about qualifications presupposes two things, or seems to. One: that colleges are a reward for good prior performance, and therefore admission should be based on this prior performance. And two: that there is some objective measure of what makes a good, qualified student. While you may want the system to work that way, in reality, it doesn't.

On the first point, colleges are not a reward, they are an opportunity. Colleges exist to educate the population, not to educate some of the population. But clearly there are logistical limits, and so there must be some criteria for admission. But this criteria is arbitrary, and is only a means of choosing for limited space. I'll get back to that in response to point two momentarily. But the question here is "what is the purpose of college?" I have argued that it is an opportunity for higher education, but for whom? If there are groups that are underrepresented in a field, this isn't in and of itself bad. As you point out, cultural factors influence career paths and choices all the time, and certainly anecdotal experience suggests that, for example, Asian families are inclined to push towards medicine.

But college, and education in general, is an instrument of society. It exists for a purpose, and that is the purpose of improving the intellectual resources available to society. Greater minority representation in "higher" professions that college makes accessible is desirable to society, because for those groups which have economic disadvantages, bringing members up and out to the middle and upper classes can end these cycles of poverty. Doctors and lawyers from these groups have a better understanding of the problems the groups face, and can bring their services to people who wouldn't have otherwise had them. It is not a matter of simply saying, "Johnny went to a decent school and got decent grades, so he should be fast-tracked for medical school." It is a matter of asking, "What would be best for everyone in the long run?" And a well-educated populace, of all races, is preferable to a de facto caste system, regardless of how and why is arose.

Regarding point two, there is no particular admissions criteria that is "superior." The courts have held that race cannot be the sole basis for admission, as in quota systems, and this is as it should be. But there is no reason, in light of the above, that race can't be one factor among many. Recall my opening paragraph. Why should extracurricular activity, or athletic ability, or community service matter in admissions? Some people are good at memorizing things for tests, some people are good at writing long, winding essays (guess which of the two I preferred?), some people get the gist of things and are murky on the details. Some people, as silly adolescents, just screwed around more than they should have. Does any of this matter, when it comes to their potential for being a social worker, or a dentist, or a biologist? A little, probably, but how do you know in advance?

There is already "discrimination" against people that has nothing to do with race. If I have a 4.0 GPA, and you have a 3.99, but I didn't do anything outside of school, while you were in the Honor Society and volunteered at the nursing home, you may well get accepted to a college while I am turned down. Is this fair? Of course it is. GPA is a measure of how well you performed on certain metrics, but it doesn't say anything meaningful about your potential as a well-rounded, useful member of the educated class.

Here is the crux of the matter: people don't have a "right" to be admitted to any particular university. Universities set their admissions criteria on those factors which they believe will further their goals of educating society. If one of those goals is, say, diversity, or helping those who have been disadvantaged, there is no reason why race should not be one of the many factors that influence decisions. Since people with high academic performance do not have a "right" to be accepted, there is not violation of their rights if they are rejected in favor of someone else who brings a non-academic factor to the campus such as athletic ability, leadership potential, or even simple diversity. These are all valid things for society to desire in its instruments of learning.

Bits and pieces

2006-06-30T14:02:00.000-05:00

I saw Superman Returns on Wednesday, and it was quite good. Just the right mix of homage to the Richard Donner vision while pushing the mythos forward in a direction that the comics haven't, but that seems natural. And as he did with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Bryan Singer nailed the casting of an unknown in Brandon Routh. It almost pains me to say it, but I think he played a better Clark Kent/Superman than Christopher Reeve...

As John Scalzi put it, SCOTUS to POTUS: RTFM!

The new moons of Pluto have names, Nix and Hydra. Well, it would be Nyx and Hydra, but Nyx is already taken by asteroid 3908 Nyx, so the name was reverted from the Greek to the Egyptian form, Nix. I'm rather surprised there isn't a Hydra already.

That's it, for now.