Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Philosopher Knobe Profiled in Chronicle of Higher Ed

MOVING TO THE FRONT:  see Update.

In its annual "rising stars" issue, about top new assistant professors in different fields, The Chronicle of Higher Education has a warm and well-deserved portrait (subscription required, I'm afraid) of Joshua Knobe, who will be starting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this fall, and who is already a leader in the experimental philosophy movement.

UPDATE:  The Knobe article is now available without subscription, on-line here.  (Thanks to Mark Capustin for the pointer.)

Message for Members of the Austin Law & Philosophy Community

I spoke this morning with our JD/PhD student Michael Sevel, who many of you know went back to Gulfport Sunday to help his family.  He and his family are safe.  The destruction, he reports, is far worse than it even looks in the pictures.  He's not sure just yet when he will make it back to Austin.

The Horrific Hurricane Damage in Mississippi

There is aerial footage here.  How utterly horrible and upsetting.  I would be deeply grateful to hear from friends and students in this area.  Here in Austin we are thinking of you.

UPDATE:  Tony Iannitelli (UT Law Class of 2001) writes from Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

Baton Rouge is physically marked by little other than broken trees, loosened shingles and pockets of the city still without power.  On the other hand, we're now home to thousands of evacuees (the media quit calling them refugees in a half-hearted attempt at political correctness, but refuge is what they need) from New Orleans and other points underwater.  It is difficult to imagine what these folks will do -- they have months in front of them with no idea where their children might go to school, whether their employers will ever reopen for business or whether anything remains of the life they've made.  The staggering scope makes discourse useless.  From our perspective, all one can do is enjoy the presence of those refugees that made it and appreciate the fact it ain't us.

Jonah Goldberg, Moral Monster

It will not be news to regular readers that the know-nothing journalist Jonah Goldberg of the right-wing National Review is morally depraved and deficient in basic human emotive and cognitive capacities--after all, that was obvious when Professor Cole wiped the floor with that pathetic chickenhawk war monger months ago.  But in case any irregular readers had doubts, do check out his joke at the expense of victims of the horrific hurricane in New Orleans. 

There are actually some jokes that people who aren't sociopathic freaks don't make; and sociopathic freaks, lo and behold, turn out to be enthusiasts for criminal and immoral wars.  Who would have guessed?  No doubt the fact that he has "let the cat out of the bag" about the moral depravity of "his kind" accounts for the vigor with which right-wing war mongers are denouncing him.

UPDATE:  More right-wing soulmates of Mr. Goldberg are coming out of the closet.  (Thanks to Keith DeRose for the pointer.)

New International Prize for Work in Legal Theory from the University of Sydney

The Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney has announced a new, and rather lucrative, prize for jurisprudential work in the tradition of Professor Stone:

The prize will go to the author or authors of an outstanding published work in the field of jurisprudence which best reflects an approach combining legal theory with sociological inquiry, in the tradition of the jurisprudence of the late Professor Julius Stone. Stone’s approach, expounded in his seminal work of 1946, The Province and Function of Law and in many other works throughout his life, sought to demonstrate that the law inexorably responds and changes as society changes.

A ‘published work’ need not necessarily be in the form of a traditional book or journal publication. Other types of publication, including reports or papers, are eligible.

The recipient of the prize will receive a cash prize of AU$50,000, with the offer of an invitation to participate in the activities of the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney for a period of up to one semester. He or she may also receive an invitation to deliver the prestigious Julius Stone Address in the year following the award of the prize.

Entries may be directly submitted by the author(s), or on the nomination of a third party. Entrants are required to submit an application form and five copies of the work, plus five copies of their curriculum vitae. Four copies will be returned following judging, and one will be kept in the archive of the Julius Stone Institute.

Applications close on 1 January 2006. The prize winner will be announced in May 2006.

Note that the work(s) need not have been published in the last five years to qualify for consideration.  I don't usually post these kinds of notices, but this is an unusual opportunity for legal philosophers.

What International Law Scholars Outside the U.S. Think of U.S. Conduct

When someone remarked that leading academic figures tend to be cowards when it comes to their own regimes, there was much clucking of blogospheric tongues.  "Oh no," said the children, "everyone knows that leading academics are critical of George W. Bush."  Yes, it was replied, they are (after all, they're not dumb), but, of course, no one said they were all cheerleaders for their regimes; rather, their cowardice is manifest in "a fundamental unwillingness to pursue certain lines of critique, [in] pulling back from certain kinds of challenges to the status quo, [in] being keen to distinguish themselves from 'the lunatic left'....In particular, they tend to offer apologetics for 'inhumanity' and 'illegality':  for example, the criminal and immoral invasion of Iraq."

What do leading academics sound like when they are not being cowards?  Let us listen to this leading Canadian scholar:

This month marked the 60th anniversary of the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, the basic legal document for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals that commenced in November, 1945, wrote Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Michael Mandel in an opinion piece published in the Ottawa Citizen Aug. 26 and disseminated by US-based Knight Ridder news service.

"One of the great innovations of that charter was the charge of ‘Crimes Against Peace,’ defined as the ‘planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances.’ The very minimum legal consequence of the treaties making aggressive war illegal is to strip those who incite or wage them of every defence the law ever gave, and to leave the warmakers subject to judgment by the usually accepted principles of the law of crimes."

"The crime of aggression is nowhere to be seen in modern international criminal codes and leading the charge against including it has been the United States itself. It's easy to see why," wrote the author of How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity.  "The war in Iraq, for one example, constitutes the quintessential war of aggression, falling very far short, rhetoric apart, of any justification in self-defence or authorization by the Security Council of the United Nations, the only two accepted legal grounds for war in international law."

"Nuremberg prosecutor Bernard Meltzer wrote soon after the Nazi trials that, 'a modern war, no matter how chivalrous, involves so much misery that to punish deviations from the conventions without punishing the instigators of an aggressive war seems like a mocking exercise in gentlemanly futility.' Perhaps it is worth pondering, in the midst of the immense suffering unleashed by the Iraq war, whether we are engaged in the same mocking exercise when we prosecute those far down the chain of command for violations of the Geneva Conventions and let the unleashers of illegal wars get away with murder," concluded Mandel.

Now here is a question for the children:  how many leading international law scholars in the United States have spoken so clearly on the subject?  I am aware of only one:  Richard Falk, now emeritus at Princeton.  From the rest, we have had shameful rationalizations, obfuscations, or silence.  Am I wrong? 

"The Republican War on Science"

This book needed to be written, and we are fortunate that Chris Mooney, whose fine journalistic work we have noted before, undertook the task.

"For the Record" Blog...

...has come back to life, now that its proprietors, philosophers Jessica Wilson and Benjamin Hellie, have resettled in Toronto.  Check them out!

Philosopher Goldie from King's College/London to Manchester

Peter Goldie (philosophy of mind, ethics, aesthetics), who is perhaps best-known for his important work on the emotions, has moved from King's College, London to the University of Manchester, where he has taken up the Samuel Hall Chair in Philosophy and will also be Head of Department.  Manchester has recently re-established Philosophy as an independent unit as well, with more appointments in the offing.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Misunderstanding Philosophy of Biology: The Case of Professor Lloyd and Female Orgasm

Is the clitoral orgasm in women favored by natural selection?  Apparently not, according to Professor Elisabeth Lloyd, a leading philosopher of biology at Indiana University, Bloomington.  What is revealing about the culture of the blogosphere is the outpouring of ignorant denunciations this has produced.  Professor Lloyd responds generously and patiently here (for more generously than the stupid venality of a number of these comments warrant!).  An interesting question is whether her reply will stop the smears and distortions?  (Do also see Professor Millstein's apt comments at the same site.)

(Thanks to Robert Skipper for the pointer.)

Thus Spoke Robert Lowell

“The crass commercial vulgarity of our country goes beyond belief. Sometimes I think we will all die fighting some terrible Fascist reform movement.”

--from a letter by the poet Robert Lowell several decades ago, precise date not known

Good Wishes for Safety...

...to friends, colleagues, and readers in the parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida who may be affected by the horrific hurricane moving in this evening and tomorrow morning.  You will no doubt have more important things to do than check this blog, but if you do visit in the next few days, please do let us know how you are faring.

Reality Check: Universities are the Most Intellectually Diverse Institutions in American Society

People who should know better, or who have ulterior motives, are spreading the usual tiresome falsehoods about universities not being "intellectually diverse."  Some who spread these lies either aren't in universities or aren't serious scholars, so have no idea what really goes on in genuine intellectual disciplines.  Some have axes to grind because of their own bad experiences.  Some need excuses for their own professional failures.  Some are sufficiently parochial that they think the measure of diversity is exhausted by Democrats and Republicans.  (Everyone in academia knows libertarians who dont' vote for Republicans, because the Republicans have increasingly become the party of theocrats and anti-intellectualism.)  And some, of course, are just liars.  I will repost something I wrote on the last occasion this silliness was making the rounds:

[U]niversities are the most intellectually diverse institutions in American society.  Although there are fairly homogeneous places like George Mason, they are the exception that prove the rule.  What other institution in American society is home to Marxists, democratic socialists, libertarians, and conservatives, as well as wishy-washy Democrats and Wall Street Republicans?  This is all the more striking in light of the fact that in the overwhelming majority of academic disciplines political identification barely matters, as compared to technical skill and ability.  Consider:  classics, philosophy, physical anthropology, chemistry, computer sciences, mathematics, archaeology, physics, astronomy, engineering, linguistics, biology, psychology, sociology, even (in large part) economics.  It is probably true that across all these fields, there are more "liberals" than "conservatives," but given the irrelevance, indeed invisibility, of political identification, the explanation can't be discrimination, conscious or unconscious.  Far more plausible, as we've remarked before, is that it is some combination of self-selection and the simple, and so far undisputed, fact that it's hard to be intelligent and informed and take seriously the world view of, e.g., Bill O'Reilly or Tom DeLay, not to mention the pathological David Horowitz.  Certainly the serious conservatives in the academy find this stuff embarrassing, yet what the political forces mounting an attack on the universities really want is precisely more of their kind of conservativism, as we've seen.  It is true enough, if sad, that some far right academics are consumed with Schadenfreude at the prospect of a political purge of the universities, and so have a vested interest in misrepresenting what actually goes on at institutions of higher education--but that they are forced to do so by joining cause with transparently anti-intellectual right-wing talk show hosts says more about the academics in question than about the actual situation in the universities.  American universities--with occasional exceptions like the law faculty at George Mason--feature an intellectual diversity not to be found in the mass media, in the leading law firms, in the halls of Congress, in the state legislatures, or any other central institution of American life.

That, of course, is why they are under attack.

There are, without doubt, both schools and disciplines where political bias is more prominent.  The University of San Diego School of Law, at least when I was there, had a fairly clear bias against certain candidates on the left; at my own institution (not in quite some time, I might add), I've had to argue against specious opposition, that struck me as politically motivated, to candidates on the libertarian right.  English is a more politicized discipline than, say, Philosophy, where the political views of candidates are invisible in almost all sub-fields of the discipline.  (Those who deny this just betray their astounding ignorance of the substance of the field:  how do you read politics off of a candidate's views about vagueness, mental causation, the metaphysics of quantum mechanics, contextualism in epistemology, Plato's moral psychology, or Frege's philosophy of mathematics?  Answer:  you can't.)  But the existence of some schools and some fields where politics loom large does not change the fact:  universities are the most intellectually diverse institutions in the United States.

UPDATE:  This response is fairly amusing, especially the line on the characteristically empty remarks of Ann Althouse (Law, Wisconsin):  "Ann Althouse doesn't really say anything, in that wonderful Althousian fashion - 'I'm going to make a joke about this without actually challenging it, but I'm talking about it...see?'"

Friday Poem: "Audience"

Audience

The soul is a fiction
The body soon will be
And all of remembrance
Is sorrow’s invention

Existence betrays us
Before we begin
Our lives premonition
Of void and negation

This to my grandson
Lying chin to chin
Who listens intently
Then grins his toothless grin

4/17-4/19, 7/12/97, 7/5/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Reprinted with permission.

Philosopher Hurley from Warwick to Bristol

Susan Hurley (philosophy of mind, psychology and cognitive science; political philosophy; philosophy of social science and decision theory) at the University of Warwick has accepted a Chair at the University of Bristol (for 2006), and has, in consequence, turned down the offer from the Australian National University.  That's a major appointment for Bristol, and may even be enough to push the department into the top ten in the U.K.

Hey, Democrats Can be Mass-Murderers and Criminal War Mongers Too!

The people of the world may rest easy.

What Happens When Your Government Has No Shame

This.  Imagine having a lie inscribed on your child's tombstone at the behest of the government?

Move over Darwin: Supernatural Selection is...

...here in words and pictures.

(Thanks to Gary Kemp for the pointer.)

Target of Pat Robertson Assassination Threat Offers to Give the Poor Cheap Gasoline, Free Health Care

Pat Robertson must be livid.  Apparently Venezuelan President Chavez, fresh from being targetted for assassination by Mullah Pat, asked himself, "What would Jesus do?"  And he answered:  turn the other cheek and help the poor:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, offered on Tuesday to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline.

"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," the populist leader told reporters at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba....

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, which has 14,000 gas stations in the United States....

Gasoline is cheaper than mineral water in oil-producing Venezuela, where consumers can fill their tanks for less than $2. Average gas prices have risen to $2.61 a gallon in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration....

Chavez said Venezuela could supply gasoline to Americans at half the price they now pay if intermediaries who "speculated ... and exploited consumers" were cut out.

Venezuela supplies Cuba with generously financed oil and plans to help Caribbean nations foot their oil bills....

Chavez and [Cuban President Fidel] Castro offered to give poor Americans free health care and train doctors free of charge.

The fast, easy, and enjoyable way to learn about great philosophers...

...is here.  The new term is about to start, isn't it time to learn about a philosopher you've always wondered about from an internationally renowned expert? 

And more great books to come in 2006 (Guyer on Kant, Della Rocca on Spinoza, and others)...

The Oxford Professor of Jurisprudence is Also a Terrorist Under English Law!

So it appears.  We are still glad he will visit with us next Spring semester (does this make me an aider and abettor of terrorism?).  Perhaps a workshop with him and Pat Robertson (and maybe an actual terrorist?) would be interesting...

All the News That's Fit to Print...

...in India, at least:

The Iraq war has now acquired two faces: in Iraq and Crawford, Texas. President Bush may have been able to spin his way through two elections but now American democracy seems to be catching up with him in the form of Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq. She is drawing full houses picketing outside the Bush ranch. In Iraq, the war gets more nasty. The deadline for the new Constitution has been extended because there is disagreement on whether ‘‘Islam’’ will be one of the sources for laws or the only source.

Ahmad Chalabi carried the interim Constitution, drawn up under Paul Bremer’s auspices, for Ayatullah Sistani’s approval in Najaf, in March 2003. Sistani rejected ‘‘one-of-the-sources’’ concept. That constitution also suggested two languages for Iraq — Arabic and Kurdish. If Sistani rejected a formulation over two years ago, why will he accept it now?

Meanwhile the Shias have upped the ante. They have called for a separate southern area within a federal arrangement. To balance the Kurdish language, Farsi is being sought to be inserted as one of the languages. As if this was not troubling enough, Iran is being brought into focus as a bigger trouble spot under President Ahmedinejad.

‘‘All options are on the table’’, said President Bush, if Iran does not comply on the nuclear issue. Scott Ritter, former UN Inspector, has been citing ‘‘high sources’’ for the past few months for some sort of US action.

Precipitate action on Iran seemed out of the question until the other day because Washington was overstretched in Iraq. In fact, a dual policy on Teheran has been in operation: public outrage on the nuclear issue but private gratitude for Iran not ‘‘messing’’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Baluchistan (Pakistan), Hizbullah (Lebanon). Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafri travelled to Teheran; Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi travelled from Baghdad to Najaf. Neither of these trips was possible without American help.

But there are new, tentative signals in the air. Suddenly an item appears that Iranian arms are reaching Iraqi insurgents. Why this switch on Iran? Because Iraq will be an electoral liability in the spring mid-term elections in the US. An air attack on Iran, according to administration hawks, will go down well with an electorate which, by that time, will have been fed on demonised images of President Ahmedinejad.

Sharon, having shown ‘‘reasonableness’’ on Gaza, may be tempted or encouraged for a pre-emptive strike. An Anglo-American action would then be projected as more ‘‘responsible’’. Of course, the whole region will be ablaze and oil prices will go beyond the ceiling. But will this blaze not be preferable to a nuclear armed Iran?

Look how reversals in Iraq are encouraging leaders like Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to close down a key US base in Khanabad. And all of this is coinciding with the US President’s lowest ever ratings.

There is confusion in Washington — just the sort of atmosphere when illogical acts are presented as the emergency escape route. Historically, the US has been capable of both Hiroshima and Vietnam. Which one will it be this time? The third more attractive option will evolve if Washington pushes Sharon on the path of peace. Many situations will change then, even in Iraq. Meanwhile, the media’s focus on Cindy Sheehan will keep recklessness in check in Washington.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

ID Peddler Dembski Replies to Machery on Evolution

Here.  In brief:  scientific illiteracy in the U.S. is a model for the world!

UPDATE:  Professor Machery writes:  "Thanks for your reply to Dembski’s comment. I note that this comment makes even more salient the similarities between ID and Lysenkism: politically-driven rubbish, zero evidence, rampant nationalism, etc."

Library of Congress Cataloguing Web Sites Related to Supreme Court?

Got this via e-mail yesterday; it looked legit, but I'm wondering whether anyone else has gotten this or knows more about it:

To Whom It May Concern:

The United States Library of Congress has selected your Web site for inclusion in the historic collection of Internet materials related to the Supreme Court, and we request your permission to collect and display your Web site.

The Library of Congress preserves the Nation's cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library's traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the Congress and the American people to foster education and scholarship, extend to digital materials, including Web sites.

The following URL has been selected:

leiterreports.typepad.com

The Library of Congress or its agent will engage in the collection of content from your Web site at regular intervals. The Library will make this collection available to researchers onsite at Library facilities.

The Library also wishes to make the collection available to offsite researchers by hosting the collection on the Library's public access Web site.  The Library hopes that you share its vision of preserving Web materials about the Supreme Court and permitting researchers from across the world to access them.

If you agree to permit the Library to collect your Web site, please click the following link to signify your consent. This link also includes a separate consent for permitting the Library to provide offsite access to your materials through the Library's Web site.

Of course, since there's more on the criminal war monger Bush than the Supreme Court on this site, perhaps this is really a front for F.B.I. surveillance?  Doubtful...why would they write?

What War Really Looks Like

These photos from Iraq are not for those of tender sensibilities, though anyone who voted for the criminal war monger Bush in 2004 has a moral obligation to view every one of them.  Perhaps someone could remind certain blogospheric war mongers too what war really looks like.

(Thanks to Michael Cholbi for the pointer.)

It Appears Pat Robertson is a "Terrorist" Under U.S. Law

A propos Pat Robertson, Robin Payne calls this to my attention:

Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use [emphasis added], of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or its territories without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

Mr. Robertson is no terrorist:  he is, to be sure, an aspiring fascist theocrat, a delusional idiot, and an evil man.  Yet his comments--comments!--might qualify as "domestic terrorism" (according to the FBI, and incorporated, I take it, within an Executive Order) which is one indication of how far this country has gone off the deep end. 

Speaking (yet again) of Fascist Theocrats...

...one of America's leading ones has just called for the assassination of the President of a foreign nation.  At least he hasn't singled out any liberals for elimination...yet...

I do agree, in a way, with one thing he said:  "this man is a terrific danger."  Indeed, the speaker is.

UPDATE:  Reader Ruchira Paul observes:

Muslim clerics accused of inciting violence are being thrown out of the UK, Australia and possibly France for not subscribing to the "values" of those nations.  I have no problem with that.  Where can we deport Pat Robertson for hostile speech not commensurate with our "democratic and peaceful values" which we are fighting a war to preserve?  Or does he in fact speak for many among us who find nothing wrong with hateful speech when uttered by their own (un)holy men?

ANOTHER:  A useful catalogue of the Venezuelan President's "crimes."  Jesus Christ himself would have been appalled, no doubt.

AND ONE MORE:  The Venezuelan Vice-President has responded, noting that Pat Roberton's comments "reveal that religious fundamentalism is one of the great problems facing humanity in these times."  Indeed, it is, as RAWA mentioned quite some time ago.

The NY Times's Gift to the Discovery [sic] Institute

Yesterday and today, the New York Times ran stories about the "Intelligent Design" scam and the Discovery [sic] Institute--except they failed to describe it correctly as a scam and they failed to insert the "[sic]" in the name of the Institute, thus leaving readers with the impression that it is an Institute devoted to "discovery" as opposed to proseltyzing.  Pharyngula was generous in his assessment of the first article, but he's certainly right that the second one is a disgrace.  I leave you to his good offices for an assessment (and his links to other discussions are useful too).

Let us be clear about the lesson to be drawn from this coverage in the nation's "most serious" newspaper.  Any religious zealots with millions of dollars and some committed pathological liars on staff can, without producing any credible scientific research or any scientific evidence, convince the "newspaper of record" for the educated public to present its quackery as raising doubts about matters on which there is no scientific dispute.  As with Nazi "racial science," which also had the backing of the nation's leader, "Intelligent Design" has now entered the public culture as a "serious" topic for discussion, as opposed to what it really is:  creationist nonsense for those who've consulted a lawyer and a public relations expert.

UPDATE:  Edouard Machery (History & Philosophy of Science, Pittsburgh) tells me has sent the following letter to The New York Times:

Like many readers, I am painfully aware that the journalism standards have steadily been lowered at The New York Times. Recent scandals, including your endorsement of the White House’s propaganda on Iraq, illustrate this fact. Your recent article in Sunday’s Times, “Politicized scholars put evolution on defensive” (08/21/2005), suggests, alas, that you may have dropped these standards altogether.

This article is no less than an endorsement of the allegations of the Discovery Institute. Intelligent design is said to be “a scientific hypothesis” (notice that this claim is not attributed to a proponent of intelligent design, but asserted by your journalist, Jodi Wilgoren); we are told that “evolution is on defensive;” that “intelligent design challenges Darwin's theory of natural selection,” and so on. This is nonsense. This is an insult to the intelligence of your readers.

The agit-prop of the Discovery Institute has been refuted again and again by biologists and philosophers of science. Maybe, it could have been useful to mention this fact, instead of reproducing unchallenged Dr. Meyer’s assertion that critics of intelligent design avoid discussing the evidence. Maybe, instead of gasping in admiration at the academic titles of some proponents of intelligent design, the Times could have fruitfully interviewed one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of PhDs or one of the dozens of Nobel Prize winners who take evolution for granted. Maybe, it could have been fruitful to repeat that evolution is a fact, supported by an overwhelming body of evidence. 

It is a fact that the earth rotates around the sun, even if some lunatics believe that the contrary is true. It is a fact that there are no Martians, even if some lunatics believe that the contrary is true. It is a fact that species, including the human species, have evolved from a common origin, even if the Discovery Institute believes that the contrary is true.

In no other industrialized country is evolution a controversial fact. I assume that the mission of the Times is not to further the scientific illiteracy in the United States of America.

A PhD Admissions Dilemma: An Update

Several months ago, we ran a thread on an admissions dilemma faced by a student considering admissions offers from programs in the US and UK, complicated by the fact that the funding decisions in the UK are on a different timetable than the US.

That student now writes with an update on his situation and thanks for the helpful advice he received from readers:

I first wrote to you several months ago with a Ph.D. admissions dilemma. Since the contributions to your blog helped me a lot, I thought it appropriate to update.

To recap, I was faced with two Ph.D. offers: one from a world-leading department in the UK, and the other from the leading US department in my field. The US department had offered me a five year scholarship upfront but wanted a quick answer. I wanted to remain in the UK, but the lack of financial guarantees here made that a difficult decision to take. I considered the possiblity of accepting both offers, in order to pull out of the US one if/when AHRB funding came through, but the ethics of this upset me.

Your contributors gave me two pieces of much appreciated advice: (i) to go to the States ("a bird in the hand is worth a phoenix in the bush"); but (ii) if I was intent on staying in the UK, to reject the US department straight away - rather than string them along until I had a UK funding offer.

I took the second piece of advice: I didn't want to betray the good faith shown in me by the US department, so I rejected their offer by the deadline set. In the end, I also rejected the first UK offer.

Career suicide, quite possibly - but in the end I thought my research interests would be best served elsewhere. I accepted an offer from a resurgent UK department conducting some outstanding research and with a great supervisor.

The gamble didn't quite pay off: I didn't get AHRB funding. (My MA research had been done on the continent, perhaps making me something of an unknown quantity.)

I'll be financially insolvent for a long time, but I'm still confident that I made the right decision and that time will prove me right.

Other prospective students, though, might want to take my example as one to avoid. On paper I looked a good bet for funding - but, as many of your contributors pointed out, there are no guarantees re: the AHRB.

I'd like to take the opportunity once more to thank your contributors: their advice about rejecting the US department immediately made a very difficult decision much easier.

More Thoughts on James Taranto and "Brutal Polemics"

Charles Schuyler, an attorney in Chicago, writes:

Professor, you've brought your ammunition to bear on a completely deserving target, and it's a joy to watch.  There's nothing left but rubble.

It's beginning to appear that the closest thing to a substantive case against Cindy Sheehan consists of the following:

1) inconsistencies between her reports (a year apart) of her meeting with that grinning little Texas troll; and

2)  her espousal of a series of left of center talking points. 

As you've pointed out, the talking points are never, or hardly ever addressed on their merits; it's just assumed she must be loopy, or dishonest, or under undue influence to be expressing these opinions.  It should be added, I think, that it is the height of effrontery for Bill O'Reilly, or James Taranto, who never utter anything but predigested right wing bromides, to be
attacking her for following an ideological dance card.  I have no idea  how well-considered her thoughts on, say, Israel are (urging Israel "to get out of Palestine" certainly cries out for a clarification of terms); but it really is neither here nor there.

I guess that everything else is just undiluted slime.  Quite sickening.

Anyway, as someone who's expressed misgivings about your forthrightly brutal polemics, I say now:  keep hammering the bastards.

It is my intention to do so.

Thus Spoke Heinrich Heine

As memorably quoted by Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents:

Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before their death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies -- but not before they have been hanged.

Sheehan Slams the War-Mongers and Crypto-Fascists Again

All we need now is for Eugene Volokh (well-known fan of slime artist James Taranto) to reprimand her for not being polite; she writes:

The media are wrong. The people who have come out to Camp Casey to help coordinate the press and events with me are not putting words in my mouth, they are taking words out of my mouth. I have been known for sometime as a person who speaks the truth and speaks it strongly. I have always called a liar a liar and a hypocrite a hypocrite. Now I am urged to use softer language to appeal to a wider audience....

[I was] reminded...of something I said at the Veteran's for Peace Convention the night before I set out to Bush's ranch in my probable futile quest for the truth. This is what I said:

I got an email the other day and it said, "Cindy if you didn't use so much profanity ... there's people on the fence that get offended.

And you know what I said? "You know what? You know what, god damn it? How in the world is anybody still sitting on that fence?

If you fall on the side that is pro-George and pro-war, you get your ass over to Iraq, and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand up and speak out....

Contrary to what the main stream media thinks, I did not just fall off a pumpkin truck in Crawford, Tx. on that scorchingly hot day two weeks ago. I have been writing, speaking, testifying in front of Congressional committees, lobbying Congress, and doing interviews for over a year now. I have been pretty well known in the progressive, peace community and I had many, many supporters before I even left California. The people who supported me did so because they know that I uncompromisingly tell the truth about this war. I have stood up and said: "My son died for NOTHING, and George Bush and his evil cabal and their reckless policies killed him. My son was sent to fight in a war that had no basis in reality and was killed for it." I have never said "pretty please" or "thank you." I have never said anything wishy-washy like he uses "Patriotic Rhetoric." I say my son died for LIES. George Bush LIED to us and he knew he was LYING. The Downing Street Memos dated 23 July, 2002 prove that he knew that Saddam didn't have WMD's or any ties to Al Qaeda. I believe that George lied and he knew he was lying. He didn't use patriotic rhetoric. He lied and made us afraid of ghosts that weren't there. Now he is using patriotic rhetoric to keep the US military presence in Iraq: Patriotic rhetoric that is based on greed and nothing else.

Now I am being vilified and dragged through the mud by the righties and so-called "fair and balanced" main stream media who are afraid of the truth and can't face someone who tells it by telling any truth of their own. Now they have to twist, distort, lie, and scrutinize anything I have ever said when they never scrutinize anything that George Bush said or is saying. Instead of asking George or Scotty McClellan if he will meet with me, why aren't they asking the questions they should have been asking all along: "Why are our young people fighting, dying, and killing in Iraq? What is this noble cause you are sending our young people to Iraq for? What do you hope to accomplish there? Why did you tell us there were WMD's and ties to Al Qaeda when you knew there weren't? Why did you lie to us? Why did you lie to the American people? Why did you lie to the world? Why are our nation's children still in harm's way and dying everyday when we all know you lied? Why do you continually say we have to "complete the mission" when you know damn well you have no idea what that mission is and you can change it at will like you change your cowboy shirts?"

On Getting Your News from Brian Leiter

This is easily the most charming item I've read about my blog since someone (now a law professor) coined the "no bullshit approach" label:

You should pay attention to Brian Leiter, he's a one-man two-fisted justice parade on a worldwide hostility tour, cracking Republican heads together like coconuts while kicking a creationist in the face. It's wonderful catharsis, but it doesn't make me feel too cozy or optimistic about the future. It's sort of like listening to the couple in the next apartment get drunk and scream at each other every Saturday night: a perverse voyeuristic thrill tempered with the realization that no one is ever likely to win the argument.

Indeed, winning arguments is a tricky business!  But at least there's some catharsis for folks in Vancouver.

"Your atheist, secular, socialist petticoat is showing"

Details here.  One really couldn't make this stuff up.

Friday Poem: "Belated Poem for My Birthday"

Belated Poem for My Birthday

                 1

Though life is short
I continue to have birthdays
(Pardon please this vain defiance)

My children are now the age of my dreams
My grandchildren defy gravity

The lives I have assisted into being
Do not belong to me

The irretrievable is unforgiving
But memory remains fragrant nevertheless
Keeping lost pleasure fresh

What I no longer possess I can spare
I will learn to spare what remains

The future a narrowing pavement
The past an endless twine
Each night my last my only

Two lives for each of us
The one perceived by others
The other one you know
Which do you call your own
Which face the mirror in your hand

Evil is always prosaic
Truth is made precious by lies

                   2

Now on the cusp of my ultimate deprivation
Death ready to bear witness
I assemble my armies of words

I take credit for nothing
I thrive on the natural
Hypocrisy of my race

I am the inhabitant of echoes
My conversation a halo round a wound
I beat the bushes for my youth
Stolen while I napped

Speak to me from among the living
From a childhood grown thin and faint
Let me hear its whiny plaint
Across my Bay’s long nave
Where the smooth-faced sailors played
And innocence awash in sunlight
Thought wit brave

I have been a knave

The rest has been repentance

4/24/00, 5/19-5/23/00
Copyright 2000 by Maurice Leiter

Reprinted with permission.

The Right's Response to Sheehan's Anti-War Campaign: The Case of James Taranto

The reactions on the right to Cindy Sheehan are shining a quite revealing light on the sheer depravity, shamelessness, and vulgarity of the diehard Bush loyalists.  James Taranto, a particularly visible right-wing slime artist at the Wall Street Journal, had a telling column, which deserves some scrutiny.  He writes:

Cindy Sheehan suffered a grievous loss for a noble cause: Her 24-year-old son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, died in combat in Iraq. Because of this, it seems churlish to criticize her. But enough is enough.

Notice how this shill for war slips in the key lie right at the start:  she "suffered a grievous loss for a noble cause."  But this is exactly what Ms. Sheehan denies:  there is nothing noble about lying the nation into war, dropping bombs on a decimated country half of whose population are children, killing and maiming tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of innocents, and sowing death, destruction, and chaos.  And in disputing that it is a "noble cause," Ms. Sheehan is correct.  It is not, then, simply "churlish" to attack her under these circumstances:  it betrays venal stupidity and the "moral vacancy" of which Mr. Doctorow spoke.

Sheehan has been camping out a few miles from President Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch, staging a protest that has received extensive media attention. Her demand: a meeting with President Bush. "I want to ask George Bush, 'Why did my son die? What was the noble cause that he died for?' "

In fact, Sheehan has met with President Bush, as her hometown paper, the Reporter of Vacaville, Calif., reported in June 2004. At the time, although she clearly held antiwar views, she pronounced herself pleased with the meeting:

Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.

"I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis," Cindy said after their meeting. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith." . . .

The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.

For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.

For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.

"That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said.

That gift seems not to have lasted.

Translation:  she changed her mind and came to a clearer view of the matter. 

The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald reports that Sheehan and her husband, Pat, have separated and that "family members of Sheehan denounced her actions Thursday in an e-mail":

What could be the relevance of the fact that she and her husband have separated?  For those keeping track, this appears to be an actual ad hominem argument.  And although we have no evidence--as in none--about the ex-husband's view of the matter, Mr. Taranto, being a skilled slime artist, slides, in the same sentence, from the fact of the separation to the fact that others in her extended family do disagree with Ms. Sheehan:

Sent to a San Francisco radio station Thursday, the first public acknowledgment of a family rift came from Cherie Quartarolo, sister-in-law to Cindy Sheehan and godmother to her son, Casey.

Reached by phone Thursday, Quartarolo said she consulted with other family members before releasing the brief statement, but she declined to elaborate. She signed the memo on behalf of Casey's paternal grandparents, as well as "aunts, uncles and numerous cousins."

Noting that her family is still grieving the loss of Casey, Quartarolo wrote: "We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation."

So Ms. Sheehan has the misfortune to be related to a Bush loyalist:  so what?  How does that have any bearing on the content of her message?  (Hint:  it doesn't.)  But the pathetic Ms. Quartarolo is not just a Bush loyalist; she's also schooled at the Rovian art of the smear:  hence the allegation, out of whole cloth, that Ms. Sheehan "appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety." 

Her own personal agenda? 

Her agenda (ending the Iraq War and holding the war criminals accountable) is not personal to her (it is shared by hundreds of millions of people around the globe), indeed, it has nothing to do with her:  her son is dead, he will not be helped by ending the Iraq War.  If there is any personal component to her agenda, it is a purely fantastical one, namely, a distraught parent exacting "just revenge" upon at least some of those responsible for her misery.

Casey's father, Patrick, of Vacaville, was not mentioned. He has acknowledged that he and his wife are separated, but he has avoided the spotlight that surrounds his wife's high-profile protest.

That's right, Mr. Slime, the father "was not mentioned," so mentioning him in this context is obviously intended to smear by innuendo.

What are we to make of Mrs. Sheehan's demand for a second meeting with President Bush? She claims she wants an explanation of why her son died, but she acknowledges that her mind is already made up.

Actually, she has stated quite clearly what she wants from a meeting with the alleged President, and Mr. Taranto, quite predictably, ignores just about all of it.  She wants to challenge the War-Monger-in-Chief's claim that this criminal and immoral war was a "noble cause"; she wants to press him to explain why, if it is a "noble cause," his children are not serving in the military in Iraq; and, most importantly, she wants to press him to change his mind, and end the horror.  Those are all fine reasons for a citizen to want to meet with her elected representative, and it makes it clear, of course, why Bush can not afford such a meeting.

This is an excerpt of a speech she gave Monday, as transcribed on the Web site of an outfit called Veterans for Peace, describing how she conceived of her protest (quoting verbatim):

I'm gonna tell them, "You get that evil maniac [the president] out here, cuz a Gold Star Mother, somebody who's blood is on his hands, has some questions for him."

And I'm gonna say, "OK, listen here, George. #1, you quit, and I demand, every time you get out there and say you're going to continue the killing in Iraq to honor the fallen heroes by continuing the mission; you say, except Casey Sheehan.' "

"And you say except for all the members of Goldstar Families for Peace' cuz we think not one drop of blood should be spilled in our families' names. You quit doing that. You don't have my permission."

And I'm gonna say, "And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for." And if he even starts to say freedom and democracy' I'm gonna say, bullshit.

You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that, you don't tell me my son died for freedom and democracy.

Cuz, we're not freer. You're taking away our freedoms. The Iraqi people aren't freer, they're much worse off than before you meddled in their country.

You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine

(massive round of applause)

And if you think I won't say bullshit to the President, I say move on, cuz I'll say what's on my mind.

Mr. Taranto, our right-wing shill for war, doesn't deign to dispute or even discuss any of these claims on the merits; how could he?  He takes it for granted that his brainwashed readership will share his sense that this is all beyond the pale of "reasonable" opinion.

According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

Fortunately, cosmopolitan opinion is not beholden to the childish bromides of Ms. Dowd, and since Ms. Dowd is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, we may move right along.

[W]e are now starting to see stories like this one, from the Gloucester County (N.J.) Times:

Marine Cpl. Marc T. Ryan, of Gloucester City, was killed in an explosion in Ramadi, Iraq in November.

"I would tell Cindy Sheehan that, as one mother to another, I do realize your loss is your loss and there's nothing you can do to heal from it," said the corporal's mother, Linda Ryan.

"George Bush didn't kill her son, it's the evildoers who have no value of life who killed her son. Her son made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country, knowing that, at any time, war could come about," Ryan said. . . .

Here's proof, contrary to Ms. Dowd, that mothers of the dead don't have absolute moral authority:  some, like Ms. Ryan, are delusional victims, like millions of others.  George Bush is certainly a "but for" cause of Casey Sheehan's death; he is even (as the neoHumeans-a-la-Mackie would say) an INUS cause of his death (that is, and without belaboring details, a responsible cause):  his decision to launch an illegal and unwarranted invasion of a foreign nation resulted in Casey Sheehan's death.  Mr. Sheehan made a decision to join the Armed Forces, but like almost all who did so, we may surmise that he did so on the supposition that he would be sent to war when it was really necessary for the welfare of the homeland (not that war might come "at any time":  rather, that war might come at a necessary time).  No one, not even George W. Bush anymore, believes that was the case in this instance.

"George Bush was my son's commander-in-chief. My son, Marc, totally believed in what he was doing," she said.

Sheehan, she believes, is doing what she's doing because of the agony over losing her son.

Whereas Ms. Ryan is merely expressing her sober diagnosis of the global-political situation based on her years of research?

"She's going about this not realizing how many people she's hurting. When she refers to anyone killed in Iraq, she's referring to my son. She doesn't have anything to say about what happened to my son," said Ryan.

That really is the crux of the matter:  many grieving parents are consoling themselves with the idea that their children were killed for a reason.  As Nietzsche observed, in one of the truly profound books of recent centuries (On the Genealogy of Morality), it is not suffering per se that is unbearable, it is suffering without any meaning that is intolerable.  One reason, I surmise, that Ms. Sheehan provokes the wrath of other grieving parents of the victims of George W. Bush's criminal war is that many of them are trying to come to terms with their grief by believing it has a meaning.  Part of Ms. Sheehan's extraordinary courage--apart from her fortitude in carrying on against the right-wing slime-and-smear machine--is that she has gone public with the terrible truth (is there a truth more terrible?) that her child's death had no meaning at all, that it was nothing more than the grotesquely stupid and pointless outcome of horrors concocted by the craven moral lepers who rule this nation.   To stand face-to-face with that abyss of human depravity and carry on as Ms. Sheehan does is one reason she has earned the admiration of many.

Losing a child is probably the saddest thing that can happen to anyone. Unlike the death of a parent or a spouse, it is not part of the ordinary course of life. Yet somehow the vast majority of parents who suffer such a loss are able to maintain some perspective while coping with the experience.  That Cindy Sheehan has been unable to do so makes her story all the sadder.

I do wonder how Mr. Taranto is able to suppress his gag reflex when serving up condescending pablum like this.  Mr. Taranto simply takes for granted the whole issue in dispute, namely, what constitutes the right "perspective."  There is nothing "sad" about Ms. Sheehan unless you assume she is wrong on the merits.  The entire column is predicated on this unstated, and indefensible, assumption!

But it does not validate the hateful views she is espousing, nor does it make her pain more important than that of Linda Ryan or the thousands of others who have lost a child but maintained their dignity.

Opposition to the war and the President is now "hateful"?  "Dignity" requires that one support unconditionally the War-Monger-in-Chief?  The Third Reich probably did not have shills as loyal or brazen as Mr. Taranto.

If you want to be reminded of the moral and intellectual debilitation that afflicts so many of your fellow citizens, take a look at most of the commentary on this disgraceful column.  There are a few sensible items, but many more that express fawning admiration for Mr. Taranto's slime and indignation at Ms. Sheehan's honesty and courage.  What a depressing spectacle it is.

UPDATE:  Tad Brennan (Philosophy, Northwestern) rebuts the newest right-wing smear on Ms. Sheehan here; it, too, is traceable to Mr. Taranto.

"How to Rank Law Schools"

I discuss the topic (and include a downloadable paper) at the new law school site.  Some of the issues are specific to the legal academy, but the topic may nonetheless interest those in other fields.

UPDATE:  There are two special challenges that one faces in the evaluation of law schools, in contrast to philosophy departments.  First, whereas faculty quality is clearly paramount in the latter instance, it is not necessarily so in the former case.  Second, law, unlike philosophy, is not a coherent intellectual discipline, so that reputational results are less cohesive and more sensitive to sub-field.

Are You Being Stalked by Martha Stewart?

Find out here.  (If you have even a vague notion who Martha Stewart is, you'll be amused.)

Pro-Sheehan Piece in the Right-Wing NY Daily News!

It's a hopeful sign of a shift in the culture when pieces like this appear in generally conservative rags:

George Bush has met his match. He has twice vanquished Democratic opponents, brought down Saddam Hussein and is the straw that stirs the world's drink.

All that was before Cindy Sheehan showed up on his doorstep.

Sheehan lost her son Casey in Iraq and now the President is paying the piper. He is a hostage to Sheehan's little band of protesters camped near his ranch in Crawford, Tex. This is not how the President wanted to spend his vacation. He has only himself to blame. Bush's decision to spend a full month in Texas was stunningly stupid. With Americans turning solidly against the war - a Newsweek poll reported a mere 34% now approve of his handling of Iraq - the President looks callous when the nation needs reassuring. And he could be losing his last bit of leverage over public opinion. Put it this way: no support, no war.

Now he's stuck in Texas with Sheehan. If he meets with her, as she demands, she wins. If he cuts his visit short and scurries back to Washington, she wins. If he stays, she also wins, as she did yesterday.

The phone press conference she held was more proof Sheehan has become the face of the anti-war cause. As I listened, reporters dialed an 800 number to ask about her son, the husband who's divorcing her, Bush, the Iraqi constitution and military recruiters. Some questions were foolish, some betrayed a bias. One woman who said she was from The Kansas City Star gave an anti-war speech.

Sheehan seemed like a pro, concise and clear. She stayed on message as she sprinkled in references to the candelight anti-war vigils scheduled for tonight....

The reasons [for the power of her message] are simple. First, because she is living every parent's nightmare, Sheehan is ultimately a sympathetic figure, even if you don't agree with her. Second, the woman gives good quotes. Here are a few of the things she said yesterday:

"My son was killed by the policies of George Bush." She called the Iraq war "illegal and immoral" and a "war of imperialism." She said "we're not going to stop until our troops come home."

"I am not going to pay taxes to people who murdered my son."

Bush can't win against a grieving, articulate, angry mother who's willing to spend August in a roadside ditch publicizing her cause. Each new casualty in Iraq adds to her power and subtracts from his.

There is a chance that Sheehan is just the media flavor of the month. But I wouldn't bet on it. This feels like a turning point. It's happened before.

All the civilized world shares the hope that this is the "turning point," and that Bush & his bestiary of madmen will go down in political flames and eternal disgrace.

Will Cindy Sheehan Inspire Journalists to Have Some Courage Too?

Interesting thoughts here:

George W. Bush decrees again and again that every American killed in Iraq was killed for a noble cause. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Melanie Morgan fill the airwaves with bellicose testimonials to the righteousness of the war. Tom Delay, Donald Rumsfeld, Rick Santorum, Elizabeth Dole and Kay Bailey Hutchison profess that the war is necessary for the safety and strength of America, and freedom and democracy in Iraq. Chickenhawk after chickenhawk forcefully proclaim the legitimacy of this war. Yet in appearance after appearance on NBC, NPR, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, CSPAN, PBS, et al, I have yet to hear a media host or reporter ask any one of them the most relevant question of all: 'Who in YOUR family is fighting in this war?' If this question were mandatory for those who tout the war, then its most vocal defenders would be silenced. For aloft in the bloggesphere, one can't fabricate for long.

And so, in the never-ending quest for truth, justice and the anti-war way, I launch this challenge to all media hosts and reporters. From this point forward everyone interviewed who supports the war must answer the question: 'Who in YOUR family has fought it?' If it's noble for one, then it's noble for all!

I know this is a lot to ask of hosts and journalists who've been spineless for five years, but allow me to offer an inspiration for their renewed attempt at courage: Cindy Sheehan. Thanks to Cindy and the whirlwind that surrounds her, the wimpy political press has been rescued from the customary news abyss of August, and awarded the biggest 'he said/she said' of our most recent time. Indeed, were I the political press, I would drop to my knees, kiss the hallowed ground of Camp Casey, and gratefully salute Cindy Sheehan. Then in her honor, and in honor of all men and women in service in this war, pose Cindy's poignant question to those who deploy them and to those who destroy them: 'Who in YOUR family is fighting and dying for YOUR war?'

True, Cindy has her detractors, but regardless of their disagreement with her 'tactics,' even her critics agree she has guts. Cindy's an inspiration, and a reminder to journalists that fierce independence, courage, and dedication to one's principles are not only admirable, but attainable. Cindy's individualism should remind today's reporters of the gumshoe days of old, when members of the press had guts, integrity and balls.

A Nice Round-Up of Recent Fascist Exhortations...

...by nice "freedom-loving" (and, of course, "patriotic") Americans, courtesy of the indefatigable Paul Myers.

Those who get a bit uneasy with the word "fascist," what alternative word would you suggest to describe these outbursts?

Dembski in Denmark

Clever "Intelligent Design" peddler William Dembski is here caught engaging in the typical misleading puffery of credentials and accomplishments that are de rigeur for this whole crowd.  This one is really priceless!

First "Intelligent Design," now "Intelligent Falling"

So much for the theory of gravity.

(Thanks to Chris Anstett for the pointer.)

Financial Return on University Degree Declining in the U.K.

Do any readers from the U.K. or elsewhere have any idea what explains this:

According to the [British] Government's Department of Education and Skills, today's graduates can expect to earn a modest £120,000 more across their entire lifetime, than those with two A-levels who go straight into employment. A similar piece of research, conducted just 10 years ago, suggested this premium used to be in excess of £400,000.

Once you've taken the expense of university into account - which, according to NatWest, will average around £28,600 for each student for a three-year degree course in England - the decision to go to university is no longer a no-brainer. Furthermore, if you add on the extra £2,000 a year in tuition fees that most students will have to pay from next autumn (in addition to the £1,000 a year they already pay), the cost of a degree rockets to almost £35,000.

Comments are open.

The Cartoonists on Bush v. Sheehan

And Sheehan wins with a knock-out.  If this is any indication of the popular mood, then Bush is finished. 

Changes in Philosophy of Science at Oxford: Butterfield, Newton-Smith, Wallace

Jeremy Butterfield (philosophy of physics) at Oxford University will take up a post at Cambridge University, effective fall 2006--that's a major addition for philosophy of science at Cambridge.  In addition, the Oxford philosopher of science William Newton-Smith has retired from Balliol College, and the Oxford faculty has appointed a well-regarded young philosopher of physics David Wallace as his replacement.