In Quest of a Paper

I just sent this note to the folks over at American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).

I'm looking for a paper that was part of AIER's 2003 "Dewey, Hayek and Embodied Cognition: Experience, Beliefs and Rules" Symposium entitled "Consciousness: An Objectivist Approach" by Harry Binswanger.

It was available at:

http://www.brc-aier.org/Conferences/2003/Papers/Binswanger.pdf

But now that page gives a 403 (access forbidden) error. I can't find it anywhere else.

Might you be able to send me a copy? I'm a grad student in philosophy at University of Colorado at Boulder in need of this paper for a work that I'm presently editing for publication.

Much thanks, diana.

If any of you happened to have downloaded the paper, might you be able to send a copy to me? I'm quite desperate.

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Trust Issues

You know, if this happened to me, I'd have trust issues with my acupuncturist too... although I doubt I'd be able to write such a hysterical story about it.

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The Chris Isaak Show

One of the wittiest shows on television (Showtime, actually), The Chris Isaak Show will be starting up its third season on January 8th. I was worried that it had been cancelled, as no new episodes were aired for a while (about a year and a half, actually). But hooray, it's back!

I've missed a bunch of episodes... too bad the show hasn't put out a DVD yet. It would have made for a lovely Christmas present!

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Cultural Comparison

Okay, so maybe I'm just a bit punchy tonight, but I found this comparison of German and American toilets quite funny.

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Stacking the Deck for the Kick-Ass Chick

Okay, so I admit that I was aiming for this result:


If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Eowyn, Woman of Rohan, niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer. In the movie, I am played by Miranda Otto.

Who would you be? Take the Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test to find out.

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Kitty Man

My husband just freaked me out by sending me this link tonight. Soon he's going to be wanting to take ballet lessons and wear cute little barettes in his hair. Okay, well, maybe he just wants a kitten. But still.

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Local Lunacy

Discriminations blogs on an implausible accusation of discrimination against Glenelg High School of Howard County, Maryland. Here's what happened, according to the WaPo article: A student refused to change seats according to his teacher's new seating chart because "he wanted to sit next to his friends." When he also refused to accompany an assistant principal to the office, the on-site police offer was called in. The student was then arrested because he still refused to leave the classroom.

I'm no fan of seating charts. Students ought to be allowed the small liberty of choosing their seats in class unless they demonstrate an unwillingness to do so wisely. Of course, a student adamant about sitting with his friends in class is likely paying far more attention to his friends than the subject and thus disrupting the class. As such, separation is a reasonable response.

The legal overreaction to the student's misbehavior is a predictable reaction to the lawsuits filed against schools for physical contact with students. The teacher should have dragged the student out by his ear... or the cop should have forcibly removed him without the arrest. But such is not possible in today's legal climate, nor perhaps should it be, given the compulsory nature of government schooling.

But were the school's actions discriminatory? The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says yes for one simple reason: The student is Muslim. But as the very word implies, discrimination would require the unequal treatment of students based upon irrelevancies, e.g. punishing a Muslim student more harshly than a Christian. But this incident merely shows overreaction, not overreaction for some religions and not for others.

Unfortunately, Glenelg High School responded to the charge by appeasement:

Howard County school officials said yesterday that they will consider implementing a program of diversity and sensitivity training for staff members after meeting with parents and advocates for a 15-year-old Muslim youth who was arrested in school last week after he refused a teacher's order to switch seats.

How about some insensitivity training for the folks at CAIR instead? They need to turn down their discriminat-o-meters, as they are getting too many false positives.

Oddly enough, Glenelg High School is the public high school that I would have attended if my parents hadn't saved me from the hell of the public middle school. After a hellish 7th grade, they sent me to Garrison Forest School, a private, all-girls school outside of Baltimore, for 8th grade onward. It was incomparably better, both socially and academically.

People don't believe me when I tell them that I would not now be opinionated intellectual if I had continued in public school. But it's absolutely 100% true. The hatred and resentment of intelligence in public school would have killed my mind dead in just a few more years.

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A Worthy Cause

OxBlog reports that Lawyers Without Borders is looking for monetary donations so that they can send copies of the U.S. Constitution and The Federalist Papers to Iraq for teaching to Iraqi law students. How about Arabic versions of Ayn Rand and Aristotle?

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Oh No!

Oh no!

Luc Bovens (epistemology, decision theory, philospohy of science, ethics/political) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted a senior post at the London School of Economics, where he is currently visiting. He does still have a counter-offer outstanding from Colorado until next fall, and so there is some prospect he might return to Boulder.

I took Luc's ethics class last semester -- and thoroughly enjoyed it. I do very very very much hope that he returns to Boulder. But granted, LSE is would be cool.

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Post-Rome Inventions

Eugene asked his readers about fairly obvious and useful inventions developed after ancient Rome. He blogged:

Here again is the query: I am looking for items that match all of the following conditions, and I'd love some help, if any of you would be kind enough to provide. Which items (products or processes) satisfy all these criteria:

1. They were unknown to people in ancient Rome circa 150 B.C.
   
2. They could be manufactured with then-existing technology and then-available raw materials.
   
3. They would be at least modestly useful in that era.
   
4. Even a nontechnically minded person today -- say, a smart 12-year-old -- would know how to make and use them. This is particularly important, and one on which many suggestions seem to founder.
   
5. Their absence would be pretty clearly visible.

Eugene notes the common suggestions include stirrups, whipped cream, cowpox as a vaccine for smallpox, penicillin, Arabic numerals, sterile technique, distillation, the printing press, the scientific method, pasteurization, the horseshoe, the toothbrush, the compass, the wheelbarrow, glass lenses, gunpowder, soap, and horse plow collars.

So here's my proposal:

My suggestion for your query about Ancient Rome is the chimney. I thought of this invention due to the historical/time travel fiction novel Household Gods by Harry Turtledove and Judith Tarr. In it, the protagonist (a liberal LA lawyer) travels back in time to Ancient Rome, where she slips into the body and life of a proprietor of a restaurant. When she first arrives, surveys her cooking implements, noticing:

There didn't seem to be a chimney. There was a hole in the roof above each fireplace... and the window was open, unglazed and unscreened. That was all the venting there seemed to be. Soot stained the roofbeams and the plaster of the walls.

"You would think," she said to the nearer fireplace, "someone here would have thought of the chimney."

-- Page 70, found thanks to Amazon's "search inside the book" feature

Although certainly chimneys could have been built in Ancient Rome, apparently no one really thought of them until about 1000 A.D. (See here.) Apparently, they weren't common until a few centuries later. (See here.) From what I've read, it is somewhat tricky to build chimneys that don't smoke, but I suspect that a smart 12 year old could, with some trial and error, figure out how to do it.

I love these little historical puzzles!

P.S. On a totally unrelated note, don't miss this interesting commentary on the Democrats by Orson Scott Card.

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New Deal Wishes

Does the Medicare bill undo the New Deal? I wish! It's quite distressing to see Bush's taxcut-and-spend ways detailed in a single article.

I often wish that Joe Lieberman were a viable candidate. He's not left-wing and he's a hawk. Mostly importantly, because he's a Democrat, the Republican majority in Congress would oppose most of his big spending projects. As it stands, I don't think I can vote for anyone. If only I could vote "None of the above." *sigh*

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Goodbye Diet, Hello Pounds!

The Rules for the Holidays:

1. About carrot sticks. Avoid them. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls.

2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it's rare. In fact, it's even rarer than single-malt scotch. You can't find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an egg-nogaholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you think. It's Christmas!

3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4. And as for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it. Hello? Remember college?

6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Years. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the month for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying that 10-pound plate of food and the quart mug of eggnog.

7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a beautiful pair of shoes. You can't leave them behind. If you do, you're not going to see them again.

8. Ditto for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or, if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?

9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandated celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards, mate.

10. And one final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention. Reread tips. Start over. But hurry! Cookieless January is just around the corner.

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Expensive Education

Do you wonder why college is so expensive -- despite the fact that many professors earn so little? This article, written by an anthropology professor who looked up his public university's salaries, sheds some light:

The first thing I realized upon scanning the amounts in the compensation column was that my salary was very much in line with my fellow junior faculty members in the humanities and social sciences. Colleagues in the sciences and engineering earned significantly more.

Secondly, I saw that none of the anthropologists even approached the average salary figure quoted by the president. In my department, the two highest salaries, by far, belonged to the current chairwoman and the previous chairwoman. This pattern seemed to hold true across disciplines. The best-paid faculty members, even taking into consideration their 12-month administrative appointments, were the department heads. The deans earned nearly four times my salary. Despite the university's emphasis on research and publication, it seemed that the largest financial rewards lay in administration.

Most surprising was a phenomenon known as compression. This refers to the process that shrinks the difference between pay for newly hired faculty members and pay for those who have been at the university for several years and have seen only incremental raises from their starting salaries. Longevity is no guarantee of higher compensation. I had heard senior colleagues grumble about that, but did not appreciate their complaints until I saw the figures.

One tenured member of the department, with 25 years of university employment, earned only $2,000 more a year than I. Another associate professor, who had performed important service roles in the department, earned even less than I did in my second year as a junior faculty member!

He concludes by noting that "no executive-pay scandal exists" in universities -- but perhaps we need one.

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Marine Biologist or Smart Person Needed

Terry has a burning question: What the hell is that?. If you know some marine biology, you might be able to help him out.

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Modern Art

Heh. Now anyone can make crappy modern art, even me.

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Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam

This essay argues that Islam does not need a Protestant Reformation, but instead a structure and tradition like the Catholic Chuch that will allow it to adapt to modernity. It's a compelling and fascinating argument--and not one that I've seen elsewhere.

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Dave Barry Was Right...

...this telemarketing counterscript does make me wish I hadn't added our number to the Do Not Call list!

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Just Posted to OWL

I just posted this inquiry on OWL:

Anyone else here planning on attending the Eastern APA meeting this year (Dec 27th-30th in DC)? It might be helpful to coordinate some plans in advance.

Obviously, I'll be there... and I might be interested in sharing my room (at the cheaper and roomier Churchill Hotel next door) with a female roommate.

Let me know if you'll be there!

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