My Hero . . . Does Science!

Don't Worry, He's Nuanced.

It's a Trap!

So from what I can tell from his article, Linker thinks it desperately unfair for those diabolical conservatives to pass laws highlighting the contradictions of supporting abortion. If only they wouldn't be so uppity.

Still the Man

GKC on pride and humility, from Orthodoxy:

In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny -- all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of one's self, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go -- as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, qua man, can be valueless. Here, again in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

My quandry

A few weekends ago, Mrs. Rico was walking out of Starbucks when a 16-year-old kid scraped the rear corner of our car. He was totally cooperative and gave her his contact and insurance information.

I brought the car into the body shop a few days ago for an estimate, and it came in at slightly over $400. According to the shop, my car's totally masculine and heterosexual color is quite difficult to match.

This brings me to my dilemma. The kid's dad promised to cut me a check for $410. That's a pretty big chunk of change for two students with an infant son. Should we use the money to get the car fixed? Let's look at this from a few angles.

Economic: From a pure economic analysis, it would be foolish to spend the money this way. In other words, getting the car fixed simply isn't "worth" that much money to me. Were the scratches caused by some unknown driver in the Marquette parking lot, there's virtually no chance that I would be spending $400 to get them fixed, even if I found the money lying on the street. So, cost-benefit analysis points to "no."

Legal: As a law student, it behooves me to know and follow the law. However, I have no clue whether I'm required to use the money to get the repairs done. Even better, I'm not sure where to look. However, I suppose that when I'm not sure what the law is, I should steer the unquestionably legal course. This would point to "yes."

Ethical: Here's where I'm stumped. Is there some sort of moral imperative to use the money for the purpose which it was intended? Personally, I'm leaning against the idea, but that could just be because I want the freedom to spend the money on a Nintendo Wii. Where's an ethicist when I need one?

I suppose it's a moot point, given that the wife will make the decision anyway.

If I Were a Heathen . . .

Not the best fit anymore (The world has changed a bit since GK was in his heyday), but I think the poem is at the very least applicable to Al Gore and Co. The third illustration is my favorite.

Krauthammer Is Always Right

Deal with it. From NRO:

Amid these conflicting claims, one issue is not in dispute. When The New Republic did its initial investigation, it admitted that Beauchamp had erred on one “significant detail.” The disfigured woman incident happened not in Iraq, but in Kuwait.

That means it all happened before Beauchamp arrived in Iraq. But the whole point of that story was to demonstrate how the war had turned an otherwise sensitive soul into a monster. Indeed, in the precious, highly self-conscious literary style of an aspiring writer trying out for a New Yorker gig, Beauchamp follows the terrible tale of his cruelty to the disfigured woman by asking, “Am I a monster?” And answering with satisfaction that the very fact that he could ask this question after (the reader has been led to believe) having been so hardened and brutalized by war, shows that there is a kernel of humanity left in him.

But oh, how much was lost. In the past, you see, he was a sensitive soul with “compassion for those with disabilities.” In a particularly treacly passage, he tells us he once worked in a summer camp with disabled children and in college helped a colleague with cerebral palsy. Then this delicate compassionate youth is transformed into an unfeeling animal by war.

Except that it is now revealed that the mess hall incident happened before he even got to the war. On which point, the whole story — and the whole morality tale it was meant to suggest — collapses.

The rest is good too, of course.

God Is Great

Harvey Mansfield has a good column in the Weekly Standard where he takes on those (Hitchens, Dawkins, et al.) who insist that religion is the bane of human society. The conclusion:

Is there an atheist alternative to tyranny? Is there such a thing as a non religious principle, replacing God, that is truly transcendent and not a tool of our passions? One can think of such a principle, something like Kant's categorical imperative that requires each person, without appealing to God, to act only on a universal idea, not one that favors himself or promotes his own interest over others. But how does this work in practice? Has Germany, the country of Kant, been a paragon of justice in the world since Kant fashioned his theory? More pointedly, has not the atheist totalitarianism of the twentieth century, with its universal pretensions, proved to be the worst tyranny mankind has ever seen?

There was an Epicurean atheism in the ancient world quite different from ours today. That atheism also uncovered tyranny behind the mask of religion, but it was content to point out the power of injustice. Injustice in this view was the way of the world, and there was no remedy for it. The only recourse for a reasonable person was to stay out of politics and live a life of pleasure, seeking calm, watching storms of the sea from ashore, and suppressing one's indignation at injustice.

Today's atheism rejects this serene attitude and goes on the attack. In its criticisms of God it claims to be more moral than religion. But it cannot do this without becoming just as heated, thus just as susceptible to fanaticism, as religion. Today's atheism shows the power of our desire for justice, a fact underestimated by the Epicurean pleasure-lovers. But it ignores the power of injustice, which was the Epicurean insight. Atheists today angrily hold religion to a standard of justice that the most advanced thinkers of our time, the postmoderns, have declared to be impossible. Some of those postmoderns, indeed, are so disgusted with the optimism of atheism that, with a shrug of their shoulders, they propose returning to the relative sanity of religion.

It is not religion that makes men fanatics; it is the power of the human desire for justice, so often partisan and perverted. That fanatical desire can be found in both religion and atheism. In the contest between religion and atheism, the strength of religion is to recognize two apparently contrary forces in the human soul: the power of injustice and the power, nonetheless, of our desire for justice. The stubborn existence of injustice reminds us that man is not God, while the demand for justice reminds us that we wish for the divine. Religion tries to join these two forces together.

The weakness of atheism, however, is to take account of only one of them, the fact of injustice in the case of Epicurean atheism or the desire for justice in our Enlightenment atheism. I conclude that philosophy today--and science too--need not only to tolerate and respect religion, but also to learn from it.

It's a bit funny to hear Mansfield call on postmoderns for support. Other than that, I like the division of Atheists into Crusaders and Epicurans. A damn good polemic, if I may say so myself. Also true.

A Depressing Note on Human Nature

"Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth in strange eruptions . . ."
--William Shakespeare

The announcement of the $660-million settlement between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and 500 victims of sexual abuse got me thinking again about a topic that has confused me for a long time. Why do people of a certain profession feel a need to protect the absolute worst of their coworkers? In this case, why would the religious establishment ignore the blatant, violent sins and crimes of these pedophile priests? Their actions have created a potentially irreparable breach of trust between the clergy and the congregation.

To be sure, it is a phenomenon seen in many professions. And it confuses me just as much in those cases as it does here. For example, if you are an honest police officer, why would you go out of your way to potentially protect a dirty coworker? Not only does the clean cop not get anything tangible from his obstructions, he threatens his own credibility and that of the entire force.

Similarly, in professional sports, players' associations fought for years against policies of random drug testing. If I were a clean athlete, I would demand an aggressive steroid testing policy.

This list could go on nearly forever. What is it about human nature that leads us to protect slackers, sinners, cheaters, and criminals-just because we happen to be in the same line of work?

The suburbs rule

The complaints Penalver raises against suburban living apply just as much, if not more so, to rural living. Living on a farm makes one even more dependent on the car and "isolates" people even more from one another. Surely we don't all need to live in squalid cities to observe Catholic Social Teaching?

While I agree with his environmental criticism, the communitarian and justice aspects are just silly. The poor are unquestionably more burdened in the city, where the cost of living is usually significantly higher. As for separating people from one another, I'd rather wave to my neighbor living 500 feet away than be afraid to make eye contact with the guy in the apartment next door.

At this point in my life, I can't even imagine trying to raise a family in urban Milwaukee.

Living in Sin

I find myself reflexively disagreeing with the Eduardo Penalver (at the very least in spirit if not in fact); however, there's little to disagree with in his condemnation of suburban living:

But, aside from perceptions of authenticity, I also think there's a moral case to be made against suburban living on grounds of justice, community, and the environment. I think all three objections revolve around the car-dependence that suburban patterns of development literally mandate. Car-dependence separates people from one another, isolates the very young and very old, burdens the poor and harms the environment. The justice and communitarian objections to the suburban lifestyle resonate strongly with traditional themes of CST. The environment, on the other hand, has been something of an ugly stepchild within CST. The Church has had things to say about the environment from time to time, though, and I think (or at least hope) it will have much more to say about it in the future.

CST = Catholic Social Teaching.

Yes, I live in the suburbs both at home and at school.

Quick hits

This is my first post in almost three weeks, so I figured I should at least explain why. The short answer is that I'm working like crazy. In addition to my regular job, I've started working nights, teaching and tutoring students in preparation for the LSAT. Consequently, both my free time and my desire to blog have dropped.

My LSAT class run until June 9th, and Lauren's due date is June 17th. It seems weird that my baby's birth may actually lead to my schedule slowing down.

In other news, poor Brady Quinn. Not only did the guy drop to #22, he fell to the Browns! I think it might just be best if he hang up his cleats now. Sisyphus never had it so bad.

I've been doing some thinking about abortion, and the more I think about it, the harder I find it to justify. Unless one is a devoted atheist, doesn't it stand to reason that there is at least a chance that some form of humanity - defined as a soul, or human rights, or whatever - begins upon conception? If one believes in God, how can one rule out this possibility? And if this possibility can't be dismissed, how can one support abortion? I agree that individual rights generally shouldn't be abridged without a compelling reason, but it seems to me that even the slightest possibility of ending a human life is as compelling as it gets. (I'm aware this is a staple of intro to philosophy classes, including my own. But is there a coherent argument against this reasoning?)

Keep your laws off my body!

I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but of course, I am. I was browsing The Daily Cardinal, a student-run newspaper at UW-Madison. I should make it clear that I was only looking at it because I was interviewed for a story and I wanted to see if my words were twisted (they weren't).

Anyway, I came across today's main news story: Rising "Price of Pill Hard to Swallow for Students." It's about a federal law which recently went into effect that prevents UW's University Health Services from charging discounted rates for birth control.

As a policy matter, I'm not quite sure how I feel. On one hand, I really don't want my tax dollars being spent to subsidize college students' ability to have multiple sex partners with no repercussions. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of federalism and this seems like a possibly unnecessary intrusion of the federal government. Ideally, I'd like the state to pass a law like this. The bottom line is that I really don't know enough about it to make an informed opinion.

The policy is beside the point. What I found somewhat surprising - and more disappointing - was the cavalier way the girls quoted in this story talked about birth control. One called the pill "Something you have to have" and the increase "another monthly bill I don't need." Another girl, a freshman, said "This is another way for the government to legislate my body."

Really? You NEED birth control? And I should pay for your significant discounts? If I don't give you heavily discounted birth control, I'm "legislating your body," whatever that means? Have you ever considered that these discounts are just "legislating my morality"?

Maybe, just maybe, you could reconsider your sexual habits. If sex has been so commoditized to the point that birth control is just another bill you have to pay each month-no different than rent or utilities-your priorities might be in need of reevaluation.

Good work if you can get it

According to an article in The Economist on the latest trends in artificial conception, a California sperm bank, one of the most respected institutions in the field, pays $75 for a male sample, with premiums for things like high test scores and advanced degrees. (For what it's worth, they turn around and sell the samples for $240 to $400, depending on sperm count.)

If I didn't have ethical objections, I would be there in a heartbeat. As part-time jobs go, that one would have to be at or near the top of my list.

I considered creating a label for "sperm donation," but ultimately decided against it.

Babies! Everywhere!

500 of them.

In my quest to find something worth watching during the day (still unfulfilled), I've seen this promo a number of times:

Pretty cool stuff.

It reminded me, however, of a pretty uncool 2004 op-ed from the NY Times. Amy Richards wrote about the expirence Amy Barret told to her. There are so many gems, so I've restrained myself to quoting just a few of the paragraphs.

Having felt physically fine up to this point, I got on the subway afterward, and all of a sudden, I felt ill. I didn't want to eat anything. What I was going through seemed like a very unnatural experience. On the subway, Peter asked, ''Shouldn't we consider having triplets?'' And I had this adverse reaction: ''This is why they say it's the woman's choice, because you think I could just carry triplets. That's easy for you to say, but I'd have to give up my life.'' Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn't be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It's not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it.

The specialist called me back at 10 p.m. I had just finished watching a Boston Pops concert at Symphony Hall. As everybody burst into applause, I watched my cellphone vibrating, grabbed it and ran into the lobby. He told me that he does a detailed sonogram before doing a selective reduction to see if one fetus appears to be struggling. The procedure involves a shot of potassium chloride to the heart of the fetus. There are a lot more complications when a woman carries multiples. And so, from the doctor's perspective, it's a matter of trying to save the woman this trauma. After I talked to the specialist, I told Peter, ''That's what I'm going to do.'' He replied, ''What we're going to do.'' He respected what I was going through, but at a certain point, he felt that this was a decision we were making. I agreed.

When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one.

Oh, make sure to check out the correction at the end of the article. Don't worry though. I'm sure bias didn't enter into it at all.