Women at war

Posted on August 16, 2009 by David Hume

The New York Times has a piece up, G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier as War Evolves, which details the shift over the past 8 year of women into combat roles. I’ve read and heard about this dynamic for years, with two simultaneous wars and an economy until 2008 which had copious private sector opportunities, female labor was simply necessary to “get the job done.” Integration into combat roles is now a fait accompli. What I find ironic about this is that the proximate decisions were made by, and supported by, individuals who were purportedly conservative. Those decisions being both foreign wars, and, taking conscription off the table.

Posted in culture | Tagged , | 20 Comments

Much Ado

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Bradlaugh

I have responded to some of the comments on my Friday post "There Ain’t No Nothin’," putting the responses in a comment (#29).

I’m never quite sure what should be a comment and what should be a posting and will cheerfully take instruction on the point. This one, when I see it on-screen, looks too long for a comment, and probably should have been a posting. In any case, thanks to all commenters for taking the trouble.

Posted in science, Science & Faith | 4 Comments

Death panels

Posted on August 15, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

On the question of whether health care is a market commodity or a human right, conservatives tend to come out on the commodity side, when they address the issue at all.  Not so in reacting to Obama’s tentative application of cost-benefit analysis to publicly-funded end-of-life care, however: 

I don’t know how much that hip replacement [for my terminally ill grandmother] cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life—that would be pretty upsetting.

This statement has produced a firestorm of criticism, to say the least.  If I am understanding that criticism correctly, and I may not be, the right is arguing that raising the issue of cost in relationship to government-funded health care is a sign of a vicious, Nazi agenda.  If so, then it seems to me that those critics do in fact believe that access to today’s state-of-the-art medical technology is an entitlement that the government cannot withhold on a cost or any other basis.  This is a perfectly defensible position.  It is just contrary to the right’s usual pronouncements and should be made explicit.

Likewise, when Limbaugh et al. use the term “rationing” as a self-evidently fatal rebuttal to any health care reform proposals, they also implicitly embrace the idea of health care as an entitlement. 

Of course, the issue would not come up if health care were fully private—a solution that we are unlikely to achieve.  And I do not mean to defend any of the emerging Democratic health proposals, none of which I purport to understand.  Obama’s demonization of insurance companies is typical Democratic demagoguery; his notion that the government can act as a fair competitor to private providers is ludicrous; and his failure to call forcefully for deregulation of the health insurance market makes a mockery of his goal of offering consumers greater choice at lower cost.  But I don’t think that raising the question of what health care is owed when taxpayers are footing the bill should be off limits; the question does not require any particular answer.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 20 Comments

Are secular conservatives more libertarian? Yes

Posted on August 15, 2009 by David Hume

There were some comments below to the effect that secular conservatives tend to be more “libertarian” than religious conservatives. Anyone who has moved in libertarian circles knows that atheists & agnostics are well represented; after all, many libertarians are strongly influenced by the aggressively atheistic Objectivist philosophy, even if few become full-blown Objectivists. I have posted data before which do suggest that conservative seculars tend to be libertarian, but I thought I would do something a bit more systematic. Below the fold are a list of GSS results where the top half are more “social” and the bottom more “economic.” Because of the small number of secular conservatives I used the GSS sample spanning 1988-2008. This is important to keep in mind for questions relating to homosexuality, since those views have shifted a great deal over that time, though others such as abortion have remained static.
Continue reading →

Posted in data | Tagged | 12 Comments

There Ain’t No Nothin’

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Bradlaugh

This is very striking. It is a curious thing that we find ourself saying similar things about the material world at both its largest and its smallest scales. The thing we find ourself saying here is: “There is no such thing as Nothing.” At the very smallest sub-microscopic scales. what used to be thought of as empty space (all right, spacetime) turns out to be a “quantum foam,” with particles fizzing in and out of existence. At the very largest scales, as this video clip illustrates, what looks like an empty patch of sky is chock-full of remote galaxies when stared at hard enough.

I have heard Heather say that she has never been afflicted with any musings about the significance of human consciousness, or the place of humanity in the universe. (I hope I am not misquoting her.) I can’t say the same. Images like this fill me with wonder, with something quite close to terror, and with something considerably closer to despair.

They also of course make the notion of a loving god with a particular interest in humanity, seem pretty darn ridiculous.

Posted in science, Science & Faith | 35 Comments

Oh Dear

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

News From Tulsa:

Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets. “It’s first,” she said to calls of “hallelujah” at a rally outside the zoo. “If we can’t come to the foundation of faith in this community, those other answers will never come. We need to first of all recognize the fact that God needs to be honored in this city.” Falling, who has founded several Christian nonprofits and is a former city councilor, also said the next mayor needs to appoint people to city boards, authorities and commissions who will “honor God.” “We will also look for people who want to characterize the origins of both man and animals in a way that honors Judeo-Christian science that proves God as the creator,” she said.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 15 Comments

Self-help in Harlem

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

I’m no fan of the death penalty, having concluded that its massive costs outweigh its obvious justice and that its deterrent effect is next to nothing, given the decades-long due process gauntlet that the courts have imposed on its exercise.  I also have tended to defer to police chiefs on gun control: every chief I know wants fewer guns, illegal and legal, not more, in the public domain. Being a sissified urban dweller with no instinctive urge to own a gun or visceral identification with NRA-types, I have been happy to follow their lead.  The idea of a greater number of periodically irrational human beings walking around armed to the teeth has not filled me with a sense of security.

But this heart-warming story of a 72-year-old restaurant supply store owner in Harlem who blasted away four armed thugs who tried to rob his business yesterday, killing two and wounding the other two, has me reconsidering.  Some delicious details: After one of the primeval-scum robbers started pistol-whipping an employee of proprietor Charles Augusto, Jr., Mr. Augusto “rose from a chair 20 to 30 feet away and took out a loaded Winchester 12-gauge pump-action shotgun .. . and fired three blasts in rapid succession,” according to the New York Times.  Mr. Augusto had bought the rifle after being robbed 30 years ago.  “The first shot took down the gunman at the front,” who died almost immediately; the second two shots hit all three accomplices, who stumbled bleeding out of the store.  One died after having been taken to a local hospital (at whose expense?); the other two were picked up on the basis of their blood trail and witness descriptions and also treated at the hospital.  

(The Times of course supplies us with what it must intend as heart-wrenching images of friends and relatives of the robbers wailing and slamming their fists into light poles in despair, and notes that a bystander “sympathized with Mr. Augusto, but not with the would-be robbers.”  How odd!) 

Mr.  Augusto has not been arrested, and I would hope that the Manhattan DA would not dare to bring criminal charges against him. 

As I say, I have not heretofore been persuaded by the argument that the solution to crime is ubiquitous civilian gun-carrying.  But I readily concede that this triumph of good over evil could arguably do as much to deter commerical robberies in Harlem, at least for a while, as the NYPD’s brilliant Compstat tactics. 

(More good crime and police news today: A grand jury has declined to indict NYPD Officer Andrew Dunton in the tragic fatal shooting of fellow Officer Omar Edwards this May.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 11 Comments

Regional differences in voting for Barack Obama

Posted on August 12, 2009 by David Hume

I’ve been playing with quantitative data and mapping recently (numbers & maps are two things I’m rather preoccupied with). I was curious as to geographic variation in support for Barack Obama as a function of the % of a county that was white, and how expectations were shifted based on geography. In plainer language, some very white regions such as Vermont were much more pro-Obama than whites nationally, while others, such as the Upland South, were more anti-Obama. Below the fold is a map where I shaded pro-Obama counties (but the criterion above) blue and anti-Obama counties red. A more detailed methodology can be found at Gene Expression (along with more maps and a scatterplot).
Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Magical thinking watch: the social engineering strain

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

Westchester County in New York just settled a lawsuit charging it with not building enough subsidized housing for minorities.  Announcing the settlement, HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims observed that studies show that zip codes can predict life expectancy and illness, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s time to remove zip codes as a factor in the quality of life in America, he said. 

In other words, it’s the geographical plots themselves, not the behavior of the people living in them, that affect life expectancy and illness.  This is a new twist on the “morality by osmosis” theory that underlies the Section 8 housing voucher program.  Section 8 holds that by catapulting people who have embraced an underclass lifestyle into close proximity to people with bourgeois habits, you can magically endow those voucher recipients with the same capacity to defer gratification and exercise personal responsibility that allowed the unsubsidized homeowners to move up the housing ladder by their own efforts. 

(Of course, Westchester County has no real grounds for complaint, having accepted Community Development Block Grant money, a prime federal boondoggle, in the first place.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 16 Comments