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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, September 13, 2003
Some People Are Too Stupid To Work As Grocery Store Clerks Make sure you click over to the Smoking Gun, to see the "$200" bill that someone passed at a grocery store. Just the fact that it has George Bush on the face? A bill denomination that we have never had? Oh yeah, and the White House on the back of the bill is good for some laughs as well. Can you really call it counterfeiting when no person of normal intelligence would think it was real? More Examples of The Religious Beliefs of the Founders of the Republic From the North Carolina Constitution of 1776: That no person, who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State. Madonna From Ananova: Madonna says she is anxious about protecting her young daughter from her raunchy stage persona.Actress? That's not the word that I would use. How about "hypocrite"? My wife's reaction when Madonna started to be concerned about her own kid's exposure to her trash was, "Why wasn't she that concerned about exposing our kids to it?" This is part of why I can't take liberalism seriously--the enthusiasm for making money polluting the minds of others, but trying their best to protect their own kids from the cesspool. It's Alive! Or Is It? Interesting article about advances in ultrasound imaging: Pioneering scanning techniques have produced astonishing images from inside the womb which show babies apparently smiling and crying.Now, you probably know from reading my blog that I am not comfortable with the rigid pro-life position that a child is human life from conception. You probably also know that I am very uncomfortable with third trimester abortions--especially since a third trimester fetus is viable outside the womb. As long as a large fraction of the population believes that elective second semester abortions are moral, passing a law to prohibit it is likely to be ineffective, and more polarizing than productive. But for those who are completely comfortable with second semester abortions--why don't you go and read the whole article, with the startling image of this fetus--and then ask yourself if you are still comfortable with your position. Any Publishers Reading This? Well, Writers' Representatives rejected the latest revision of my book Armed America: Firearms Ownership, Hunting, and Gun Culture in the Early United States, saying that it didn't appear to them to have any trade publisher potential. I'm still sitting here in some amazement, because it is now every bit as commercial as Bellesiles's Arming America was. I excised almost everything that could be considered critical of Bellesiles; jazzed it up with photographs; reworked the prose to be more popular in tone; summarized what used to be many pages into single paragraphs, often using one colony as a model, and then saying, "There were similar laws in" followed by a list of similar colonies. Now, I see that Arming America is again in print, in a 2nd edition, so I know that there is some market interest in books about this subject. Who next? Gun collector publishers like Stackpole? Before anyone suggests Regnery, "after all, they're a conservative publishing house," I've made repeated attempts to get in there, on my own, and through people that supposedly have some sort of connection to them. That is just not going to happen. The Radiation Detectors Are Working--Maybe Too Well! I just received this from a reader: I live on the border with Mexico in Mission, Texas and my office is in Reynosa, Mexico. I recently underwent an extensive cardiovascular examination. The exam included an echocardiogram (I think that's what they called it.) which involved some sort of radiation marker injected into my arm so as to be able to determine if I had any blocked arteries. Humor A friend sent to this me. I don't care if it's real or not, it's still very funny: These questions about Canada were posted on an International Tourism Website and were answered by a person with deep knowledge of Canadian customs, lore, and geography. Friday, September 12, 2003
Nice To See One Overhead I wondered what that swing-wing jet was overhead as I was heading into class today. It was a B-1, based at Mountain Home Air Force Base. I hope that someone is returning home from an overseas deployment for a well-deserved R&R with family! My Wife Needs A Teaching Job Unfortunately, as lovely as Boise is in some respects, it's a not a particularly good place to go if you are interested in teaching. My wife has an MA in English, and has experience teaching at both the secondary and college level. But Boise is, in many respects, an educational desert. Alas, this may be why it is a pretty nice place to live, with civilized and decent people. Colonial Virginia Governor Berkeley's remarks about the dangers of printing presses leading to universities and all the problems that they create may have some merit, after all. Anyway, my wife is going to be teaching a Shakespeare class at George Fox University here in Boise in the spring, but one class a semester (all that George Fox University has enough students to justify) just won't cut it. Imagine a race horse standing in the stable--but not allowed on the track! Imagine an Australian cattle dog, unable to get over to the field where the cattle need herding! Imagine a liberal, unable to get access to your wallet! There are not a lot of universities in this area, and it appears that this area is either oversupplied with graduate degrees in English, or undersupplied with teaching jobs. If you become aware of any such openings in the Boise area, let me know! Thursday, September 11, 2003
Missouri Legislature Overrides Governor's Veto on Concealed Weapon Permit Law Missouri's governor had vetoed a non-discretionary concealed weapon permit law; both houses of the legislature overrode his veto--with one state senator flying back from his military duty at Guantanamo Bay to vote for the override. It's been a long struggle for Missourians, but am I happy! UPDATE: I haven't found the official text yet, but it looks like I get to add another state to my map of places that I am allowed to carry concealed; it appears that Missouri will recognize permits issued by other states for non-residents. For Those Who Missed the Results of the Iraqi Public Opinion Survey... It's here. The signs are actually quite encouraging. There is not a wild majority in support of a theocratic government; only 33% want that, and 60% said no. The model of government that the largest number of Iraqis picked (37%) was the U.S., "more than Syria, Iran and Egypt put together." The area of most concern is that only about 40% of Iraqis believe that democracy will work well in Iraq. Unsurprisingly, Shiites (the majority religion) are most confident in democracy, and Sunnis (a minority) are about evenly split between those who think it will work well, and those who don't. Read the whole article; it's a reminder of how much deception most of the mass media are giving you about the state of things in Iraq. It's Nice To Be Noticed James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal referenced one of my law review articles yesterday. I Wasn't Going To Blog Anything Specifically About The Anniversary There comes a certain point where remembering becomes maudlin sentimentalism; we (and I'll explain who "we" are, shortly) have a job to do. Besides, James Lileks has written a very touching piece about The End of the World that says what needs to be said about the past. Who are "we"? We are everyone who is committed to an end to terrorism. Some of "we" are members of the armed forces. Some, like my niece's husband Byron (does that make him a nephew-in-law?), are not directly in harm's way. Others are patrolling the streets of Baghdad, fighting thugs in Afghanistan, looking for Saddam Hussein around Tikrit, under miserable conditions. By comparison, those of us who are paying for this with higher taxes than would otherwise be necessary are getting off easy. No one is trying to kill us. For the first time in my lifetime, the money that goes from my paychecks to the Pentagon isn't being spent on a "what if" or an abstract matter; it's being spent on a forward, aggressive campaign to find and stop the monsters who, if they had their way, would kill me and millions of other Americans simply because we are Americans. Americans have become rather comfortable with short and simple wars because of Gulf War I and II. Even Vietnam, which involved significant U.S. combat fatalities for nine years, was, relative to the really big struggles of civilization vs. barbarism, pretty short--and make no mistake about this, we are involved in a struggle against barbarians. They are barbarian not because they are Muslims, and not because they are Arabs, but because this peculiarly offensive brand of savagery delights in murdering people simply because of where they live. The crimes of 9/11, the bombings a year later in Bali, were indiscriminate weapons used against people whose views, religion, and political beliefs were completely unknown to Osama bin Laden. As a method of persuasion, it is singularly ineffective. It is closer to how a cat plays with a bird or mouse, before finally killing and eating it, than to anything that can be considered civilized or humane behavior. Ways To Tell You've Been Out of California For a While My wife was on a kick to move to a quieter, less traffic busy neighborhood. We looked at a five bedroom, two bath, 2500 square foot home that had an asking price of $185,000 and I found myself saying, "That's a lot of money for a house that needs a bit of work, isn't it?" If you don't live in California, such a statement may not seem particularly bizarre. Those who still live in California, as soon as you get up off the floor from your laughing spasm: I am not responsible for any injuries you suffered from reading this. "So Help Me God": How Far Does This Go Back? Jacob Levy over at the Volokh Conspiracy has been talking about a proposed change to the citizenship oath, and especially those four little words at the end: "so help me God." Just in case anyone decides to make a First Amendment argument against those words as an expression of religious belief in a governmental activity, let's take a look at what the First Congress--the same people that approved the First Amendment, and sent it out to the states for ratification--thought about the subject: Resolve, That the form of the oath to be taken by the members of this Houses, as required by the third clause of the sixth article of the Constitution of Government of the United States, be as followeth, to wit: "I, A B a Representative of the United "States in the Congress thereof, do solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) in "the presence of Almighty GOD, that I will support the Constitution of the United "States. So help me GOD." [April 6, 1789, Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 1789-1793, p. 7] States Rights & the Federal Marriage Amendment Professor Volokh (among others), has signed a letter that opens with: We are legal scholars who believe in states’ rights and in limits on federal power. We therefore want to convey our criticisms of H.J. Res. 56, which would amend the U.S. Constitution to (among other things) provide that "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman."A little later, the letters tells us, States already actively regulate marriage; for example, 37 states specifically prohibit marriage between same-sex couples. That is a choice that they are now free to make. The Amendment will wrongly deny those states -- which is to say, the states’ citizens and their representatives -- this choice.And yet, at least one of the professors on the list seems to have supported the Lawrence decision--which denied "the states' citizens and their representatives" the choice of prohibiting sodomy. I look foward to seeing Professor Barnett, in particular, explaining why his support for states' rights includes protecting the right of states to allow homosexual marriage (which has no precedent in American history), but doesn't include protecting the right of states to prohibit sodomy (laws which we have always had). You see, I think there's some merit to their federalist concern about the effects of the Federal Marriage Amendment. However, anyone who talks about the merits of federalism and wasn't fiercely upset about the Lawrence decision--which wiped out the traditional authority of the states to pass laws regulating sodomy--has some explaining to do. To me, this just looks like more pro-homosexual lobbying under the false flag of concern about federalism. Wednesday, September 10, 2003
ABC News Claims Homeland Security is Falling Down on the Job They base that claim on the fact that they were able to smuggle in a container of depleted uranium, and Customs didn't catch it--and should have. They specifically claim: The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium, a harmless substance that is legal to import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment.No, that's incorrect. Highly enriched uranium is largely U-235, which has a different radiation signature from U-238 (which is what is left after depleting uranium of U-235). You can see that U-235 has gamma rays coming off of it, with distinctive gamma ray energies, quite different from U-238, which decays by alpha particles. Furthermore, some of U-235's decay is by spontaneous fission, which produces lots of neutrons and gamma rays (which is why if you get a big enough chunk in one place, and do so quickly enough, you get an explosion). I think the statement of Homeland Security in the article: The container arrived at the Port of Los Angeles on Aug. 23 and, given its origination in Jakarta, was targeted for screening by homeland security agents.is correct. UPDATE: Michael Williams' blog claims that I am wrong about this, because a sufficiently shielded U235 component can look like U238, but when you read what he has to say, you see that he has misread what I said. Clayton Cramer disagrees, based on U238's greater emission of gamma radiation. That's fine, as far as it goes, but as Tom Cochran claims that shielded U238 would "look" very similar to depleted uranium to the various radiation detection devices. I am not a nuclear physicist, but my dad is and he confirms that lead-shielded enriched uranium would look pretty much the same as lead-shielded depleted uranium -- that is, it would look like lead.Of course, the point of what I said above is that U238 doesn't have a significant gamma ray output, while U235 does, and it is distinctive. As for the claim that shielded U238 would "look" similar to depleted uranium--I think Mr. Williams meant shielded U235. Even then, it's not correct. All shielding mechanisms for gamma ray radiation (including putting a lot of mass between you and the radiation source) attenuate the radiation--they don't put up a 100% barrier. We don't worry about the radiation getting through the lead shielding, because it's quite small, but even the tiny fractions of a percent of gamma rays from a U235 source getting through lead shielding will have distinctive energy levels--and depleted uranium will not. UPDATE: Here's a link to a bit more technical explanation of why the claims of ABC News's "expert" are wrong. Another Shocker: A Government Agency Actually Following the Law Springfield, Oregon, had prohibited concealed handgun licensees from being armed on school property, but: The policy had been an outright ban on guns. But that apparently violated state law specifically exempting concealed handguns.Fine. I can't imagine any reason why I would be carrying a gun onto school grounds in Oregon anyway, and I don't mind complying with their request, but they at least know that they have to obey Oregon law. This is real progress. UPDATE: Let me clarify. I can't imagine any reason why I would be carrying a gun on school grounds in Oregon, because I have no kids in Oregon schools. I certainly am not discouraging others from doing so. One person reminded of this incident in Los Angeles, where they have lots of gun control laws, and they don't seem to solve the problem very well. Finally: Fair Coverage of the Concealed Weapon Debate in a Newspaper What is the world coming to? From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Madison - Teresa Sweet came to the state Capitol on Tuesday to describe her rape by three men in 1992 and to implore Wisconsin lawmakers to give her a chance to legally carry a concealed weapon by junking the state's 130-year-old prohibition on the practice.The rest of the article carries the usual arguments by police chiefs (who don't need a permit to carry concealed)--but not by rank and file police officers, who appear to support the change in the law--but it's still nice to have a newspaper actually cover this topic seriously and honestly. Correcting the Biggest Problem of the Industrial Revolution Instapundit has a nice column about how large numbers of the unemployed have become self-employed, and the social changes that will result from this. It reminds of a paper that I started writing some years back, when I worked in Technical Marketing for a company developing DSL access multiplexer (since bought out by Nokia). In that paper, I described how the wide distribution of broadband services (defined as data rates of 1.544 megabits per second and up) would change American society. Right now, a fair number of workers telecommute--defined as working one or more days a week from home. As broadband becomes widely distributed, we will probably see what I call radical telecommuting--people that work from home nearly all the time, and may not "go to the office" more than once a month or so. Where I currently work in Boise, we have a few employees like that. One member of my group telecommutes from North Carolina. Employees in other groups telecommute from Texas and Wyoming. This is still somewhat exceptional, however, and it is something of a bonus. Those who are eligible are long-time employees whose skills are sufficiently specialized that our employer is willing to pay the expense of flying them back here for a week every couple of months for in person meetings. What happens when this becomes the norm, instead of the exception? Right now, changing jobs for most knowledge workers is a pretty complicated process. You find a new employer--and for both employer and employee, there's a big risk. The employee may not work out in the new job; the employee may find the employer or the new home location unpleasant. Either way, a lot of money has been spent on relocation--and if the mismatch is severe enough, the employee quits, after finding a new job, or the employer terminates the employee--and he is now out of work, a long ways from the network of friends and potential employers that he used to know. Radical telecommuting changes the rules completely. Changing jobs would be largely a matter of changing networking parameters--not changing homes. The same person might work for five employers over ten years--and never move his physical residence. The consequences of this are dramatic, not just in the narrow sense that Instapundit's column observes (more parents at home, providing direction and supervision for kids, less commuting), but in the larger sense of community stability. I used to have a T-shirt that said "Migrant Software Worker," left over from a period when I moved from Los Angeles, to Sonoma County, to Orange County, to Santa Clara County, and back to Sonoma County--all in a period of five years, and with three changes of employer. Not surprisingly, I never developed any deep roots in Orange County, or Santa Clara County (and the deep roots that I developed in Sonoma County were like the roots of a plantar's wart). I wasn't there long enough. Radical telecommuting means that if you find an area where you fit in, where your values are in sufficient alignment with the rest of the population, you don't need to move, regardless of the vagaries of the economy. You just reconfigure your network connection, and instead of flying to Los Angeles for face-to-face meetings every couple of months, you fly to Seattle or Omaha instead. Big cities are also likely to become obsolete. Keep in mind that big cities are largely an Industrial Revolution artifact. Yes, Rome at its heights had perhaps 700,000 people, and London was a big city even before the Industrial Revolution--but throughout human history, we have lived in towns of a few thousand people at most, and often in villages of a few dozen or a few hundred. There are people that really like the bright lights of big cities, but my impression is that if you gave the average American the chance to live in a cabin in the wilderness, a small town like West Yellowstone, Montana, a medium-sized city such as Boise, or a megalopois like Los Angeles without the constraint of "Where do I work?", perhaps 10% would pick Los Angeles, 10% would pick that cabin in the wilderness, 20% would pick somewhere like West Yellowstone, and the rest would pick the medium-sized city. Radical telecommuting thus has the potential to redistribute knowledge workers (those for whom working remotely is possible) out of the current concentrations. "Carrying capacity" is one of the important concepts of ecology: how many creatures can live in an area without damaging the environment? The Indians who lived in what is now the United States didn't exceed three million when the Europeans arrived; they may have been as few as one million. Unsurprisingly, they lived in harmony with nature, because there weren't enough of them do any real damage (except to the creatures that they seem to have exterminated when they arrived). This wasn't because the Indians respected Mother Earth so much (a largely modern reimagining of environmentalists and "noble savage" fantasizers), but because they were few enough to not exceed the environment's carrying capacity. In places like Los Angeles, you can see (quite literally) the conflict between "carrying capacity," modern population densities, and modern technologies: the air is visible. Los Angeles could probably get by without any vehicular air pollution controls at all if the population was 50,000 people--instead of eight million. (Not that I expect radical telecommuting to empty the Los Angeles Basin out that dramatically--someone has to work in the sweatshops making clothes, and factories making auto parts, and that can't be done over a broadband connection.) Redistributing knowledge workers has the potential to correct some of the worst aspects of modern urban society--excessive burdens on carrying capacity. Jayson Blair: Victim This New York Post report tells us that Jayson Blair, pseudo-journalist at what has become a pseudo-newspaper, has signed a six figure book contract to tell his story of cocaine addiction, lying, and his time at the New York Times. Okay, maybe there's a place for a book like this, especially if he explains why he did what he did, and why it took so long for the New York Times to do something about an obvious fraud in their midst. (Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd still work for the Times, so it's obvious the wheels grind very slowly there.) What really irritates me, however, is the title for Blair's book: Burning Down My Master's House: My Life and the New York Times. It's a cute title. The two great fears that slave owners had was that their slaves would either burn the house down around them, or poison their food--the two weapons always in the slave's arsenal. But it says quite a bit about Jayson Blair that he thinks it is an appropriate comparison between his status as a favored, highly paid journalist at America's highest reputation (with least good reason) newspaper, and being a slave. UPDATE: This would serve those sanctimonious antigunners at the New York Times right! Instapundit points to an article in the Village Voice (at the bottom of the page) about a paper "that will appear in the fall 2003 edition of the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal." The paper suggests that readers of the Times could sue them for "journalistic malpractice." Yeah! Let the lawyer feeding frenzy begin! Tuesday, September 09, 2003
The New $20 Bills They're changing our money again--not quite Monopoly money, but it will certainly cause a start the first time you see it, I expect. Interesting piece of history: one of my co-workers tells me that his grandfather, a Cherokee, absolutely refused to carry $20 bills, because they had Andrew Jackson on them. As you no doubt know, the Cherokee were forced off their lands in Georgia even thoug h the Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 1832. Jackson is reputed to have said, "The Supreme Court has made their decision; let them enforce it." Monday, September 08, 2003
McDonald's August Sales Up They're claiming it's the new line of salads and "efforts to improve flagging service."Gee, do you suppose the fact that tens of millions of Americans have enjoyed a bit more money after taxes the last few months--and the nice government checks to those of us with dependents under 16 (those most likely to eat at McDonald's to satisfy the little ones)--might have something to do with it, too? I have sources inside McDonald's, so I am attempting to see if there's any truth to the salad claims, but I'll have to wait until she gets done assembling Big Macs before I can give you the inside story. Oh yes: when the anorexic sorority girls wander in for lunch, the word in the back is, "Get that girl a Quarter Pounder w/cheese, quick, and Supersize it!" I don't like deficits, but it does appear, not just from this McDonald's story, but a lot of other indicators the last month or two, that Bush's Keynesian jump-start of the economy with a "budget-busting" tax cut might be just the thing to make the economy recover. It's also entertaining watching the nominally Keynesian Democrats trying to sound like conservative Republicans about deficits. UPDATE: My sources inside suggest that the August sales increase may have a bit more to do with the large number of stores that they closed a while back because of poor sales. UPDATE 2: I am hearing from people that yes, they are seeing signs of economic recovery. One software developer wrote me: I have other anecdotal evidence of an upturn. I do contract tech work. My current gig, offered as "at least 4 to 6 weeks" at the end of February, is still going strong, and I've been contacted three times since by staffing firms. Last time I talked to my regular handler, he told me they are starting to get inquiries for applications programmers. This is in the noted high tech hotbead of Milwaukee.By the way, this is about how recessions often end--employers are reluctant to hire permanent replacements, so they use temps and contractors as long as they can before biting the bullet. James Lileks' Wit Instapundit is a big fan of Lileks, and I am becoming one. Lileks was making a good point about why conservatives need to accept that Bush's "compassionate conservativism" is an election-winning strategy, while the more flinty form preferred in more pure circles really isn't. As part of that discussion, Lileks points out: It is more likely that a true unalloyed Democrat will be elected than a brass-tacks Republican. Get used to it. The number of people who want a particular Government program exceeds the number who want none. You want the NEA abolished? That will require two nuclear attacks on American soil. After the first the NEA will be more important than ever, as we sort out our feelings about the event through a nationally coordinated series of interpretive dances. After the second, the economy will be so far down the crapper-pipes that someone will point out that we shouldn’t fund the Mimes-for-the-Blind symposium when we really need the money for anti-radiation drugs.Let me point out something, while I am at it: the case for the skin flint model of conservativism is largely based on what an utter mess the left has made of the welfare state for the last forty years--not the welfare state itself. I assigned a section from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England on the absolute rights of individuals to my Constitutional History students to read. As part of Blackstone's discussion of the right to life, he also tells us: The law not only regards life and member, and protects every man in the enjoyment of them, but also furnishes him with every thing necessary for their support. For there is no man so indigent or wretched, but he may demand a supply sufficient for all the necessities of life, from the more opulent part of the community, by means of several statutes enacted for the relief of the poor, of which in their proper places.A Christian society has an obligation to care for the poor; it doesn't have to be a destructive and insane method, nor need it be hideously expensive. The other example of Lileks' wit is in that same blog entry: As for the Iraq situation? I’m stunned that a country whose face was held mouth-down in the mud for 30 years hasn’t spontaneously produced a civil society in six months. I don’t think they’ve even started thinking about a new national anthem. Let’s give it all to the French. Finally! Affirmative Action For Conservatives! I've suggested for some time, half-seriously, that the same problems that caused government to set up affirmative action programs based on race and sex should exist for political ideology in public universities. Affirmative action programs were originally created back in the 1960s because a simple ban on racial discrimination hadn't worked. Some of the problem was traditional racism--employers who simply wouldn't consider a black or Hispanic applicant. (When I was an employment agent in the 1970s, I was aware of such cases--and did my best to encourage the Human Resources Director at one government contractor to raise a fuss about this.) The biggest problem, however, wasn't intentional racism, but subconscious racism. Applicants that "look like us" were more likely to be taken seriously. There were (and even still are) some cultural differences that employers had to be aware of, to think about, and to consciously move beyond, to make EEO actually work. Affirmative action, originally, was intended to correct these sort of problems; it was not supposed to be a quota system. (By the late 1970s, however, it was a quota system; I received job requisitions from government contractors that said, quite explicitly, "Because this position is currently filled with an EEO double-pointer [female racial minority] it must be filled with same.") Now, Colorado legislators are talking about creating, effectively, an affirmative action program for conservatives in college hiring. Professor Volokh's blog acknowledges some of the legitimacy of the concerns that are provoking this: I sympathize with the criticism of the way universities do things: I do suspect that there's a good deal of discrimination against conservatives in hiring, especially outside the sciences. Some of it may be deliberate, and some may be subconscious -- when one is judging the quality of a person's work, it's very hard to set aside one's disagreement with the political disagreement that one may have with the work, even if one is consciously trying to do so.But Professor Volokh is concerned that the practical difficulties of implementing such a program--much like the similar problems implementing racial and sexual affirmative action--make this a bad idea: Some, I suspect, might support this proposal because it seems like payback to the Left for the Left's championing of race preferences -- but, if implemented, it will only add to the problems caused by race preferences, and, whether or not it's implemented, I think it will only weaken the moral and political force of the campaign against such preferences.I agree with Professor Volokh that is going to be very difficult to implement. Ex-Professor Michael Bellesiles pretended to be a conservative, a Republican, and an NRA member at one time. Unlike race or sex, it's pretty easy to pretend to be politically something that you aren't, and I'm sure that an awful lot of liberals will suddenly re-register Republican, and get on the Focus on the Family mailing list if this measure becomes law. Nonetheless, I think that there is some merit to at least discussing this proposed law--because I would like to think that it will raise some awareness among professors nation-wide of the extent to which their departments are politically monocultural. One of my professors back when I was a graduate student told me that she had started to attend church--and when this came up in casual conversation with colleagues, she began to get razzed about it. As she explained it to me, even though she was a liberal, and the department was entirely liberal--they weren't liberal enough to be very tolerant of that. As near as I can tell, this sort of narrow-mindedness is typical of university faculties across America, especially at the top schools. (The second and third tier schools seem to be a bit more tolerant of political diversity, perhaps because they aren't trying to impress anyone with their "more leftist than thou" approach.) At some schools that I have attended, they only hired PhDs--unless the applicant was black, in which case a master's was sufficient--and in one absurd case, a friend of mine's professor didn't even have a bachelor's degree. His qualification to teach was having been Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, once upon a time. Mars Mars was finally high enough enough in the sky Saturday night (at least at an hour when I am still awake) to justify dragging out the telescope. (When Mars is low, turbulence just makes it into a bouncing fuzzball.) It's still low enough that our atmosphere substantially reduces detail, but at least I could see the ice cap and Syrtis Major. Maybe I will get enough ambition to stay up late this weekend, and go for more detail. The first opposition at which I looked at Mars was 1971--and I had the advantage of observing from Los Angeles. Yes, there's a lot of skylight, but Mars is a bright object--skylight isn't really a big problem. Los Angeles has one great advantage--fairly calm air. I could even see the canals that aren't there at the 1971 opposition! |
