Some stuff Ampersand is reading today

Posted on September 3, 2003 by Ampersand
  • First and foremost, go read Nathan Newman on the Minimum Wage: Why the Minimum Wage Beats EITC, the Popularity of Raising the Minimum Wage to $8 an Hour, How the Minimum Wage Increases Employment, Who Pays for the Minimum Wage?, Why Job Losses from the Minimum Wage Don’t Matter, and Politics of the Minimum Wage. Nathan’s one of the best bloggers in the lefty half of blogtopia; reading all these posts will take only a few minutes, and leave you feeling well-armed and ready for your next lunchtable debate about minimum wage laws.
  • In an earlier post, I wondered if George Bush has to consciously restrain himself from sneering and spitting every time he’s introduced to a soldier. Reading this snippet from Greg Palast made me wonder that again: the Bush administration is changing the laws for who is considered a “professional” for purposes of calculating eligibility for overtime. One change: if you learned your job skill in the military, you’re now a “professional.” In practice, what that means is that thousands of veterans will suddenly no longer be paid overtime, no matter how many hours their bosses make them work. Way to support the troops, Republicans!
  • Whiskey Bar has a good – albeit depressing – series of links and posts about the growing oppression of women in Iraq. Here’s one quote, from Iraqi blogger Riverbend:
    Females can no longer leave their homes alone. Each time I go out, E. and either a father, uncle or cousin has to accompany me. It feels like we?ve gone back 50 years ever since the beginning of the occupation …

    We are seeing an increase of fundamentalism in Iraq which is terrifying.

  • Speaking of Riverbend, she’s (or rather her “girl blog from Iraq,” Baghdad Burning) is the newest addition to my blogroll. Go read her blog; she’s a wonderful writer and paints a vivid picture of life in occupied Iraq. For a sample of how good she is, go read Road Trip.
  • And speaking of women’s rights in Iraq, check out this interesting Boston Globe article about Iraqi women’s rights activists. (Via Diotima).
  • An article on “The Dubious Rewards of Consumption” yields this quote (via Rebecca’s Pocket):
    For decades Lewis Lapham, born into an oil fortune, has been asking people how much money they would need to be happy. “No matter what their income,” he reports, “a depressing number of Americans believe that if only they had twice as much, they would inherit the estate of happiness promised them in the Declaration of Independence. The man who receives $15,000 a year is sure that he could relieve his sorrow if he had only $30,000 a year; the man with $1 million a year knows that all would be well if he had $2 million a year….Nobody,” he concludes, “ever has enough.”
  • Mac Diva does a wonderful job attacking neo-Confederate arguments: check out this post defending Lincoln, and then scroll up to this post arguing that the Civil War was too about slavery.
  • I love people who resign in protest, don’t you? Seriously – somehow I’ve always found that sort of thing heroic. Anyhow, Susanna at Cut on the Bias has a story of a small-town restaurant reviewer who wouldn’t compromise journalistic ethics. Cool.
  • The definitive posts on Bustamante and MEChA have been written. Check out this post on Orcinus, which is valuable not just for the discussion of the at-hand issue but for the discussion of racism generally. And then check out this post, by Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber. Excellent, excellent work, folks. (Via Long Story; Short Pier). But you might also want to read this Volokh Conspiracy post, which begs to differ.
  • A couple of months ago, I did a post about my drawing process. Now that post seems embarrassingly primitive, because Jenn Manley Lee has posted a description of her drawing process, which is frankly scary. Jenn’s one of the best cartoonists on the web, and this post makes it clear that a ton of very hard work goes into making her stuff look so good.
  • Body and Soul discusses the latest pro-life efforts to make sure that no one who is working in China to reform China’s forced abortion policy will ever receive funding. I’ve blogged about this before, too: the fact is that UNFPA, the organization that some pro-lifers target, has actually reduced forced abortion in China – something that the hypocrites who attack UNFPA have not done. Apparently the idea of Chinese women having choice so infuriates some pro-lifers, they’d rather see them suffer from forced abortions. I’d really like to know how reasonable pro-life bloggers justify these pro-life attacks on UNFPA’s funding. Any comments, Eve? Or Sara?
  • I suspect that only a former (or current) comic book geek would enjoy this biography of Ant-Man (probably the lamest superhero ever, although I think Skateman comes a close second) as much as I did. But I enjoyed it a hell of a lot (I never realized just how many new costumes – not to mention nervous breakdowns – the poor guy had over the years). (Via Eve Tushnet).
  • Kieran Healy of Crooked Timber writes a terrific post regarding the economics of children and sex. He also discusses what I call the “Father Knows Best” economy – workplaces that assume that employees have a wife at home who will take care of all the necessary family tasks. Even if they don’t discriminate directly against women, workplaces that make this assumption are implicitly designing their jobs around outdated and sexist assumptions. Reforming the “Father Knows Best” workplace – so that all jobs assume that all workers have family responsibilities that must be accommodated – may be the single most important economic issue in the USA, from a feminist point of view.
  • The discussion of the study of rape at Air Force Academy continues at Feministe, with many useful (and distressing) links about rape on campus.
  • Do you desperately need a cigarette lighter, but all you have on-hand is some disposable silverware and some paper clips? Check out this page of prisoners’ inventions. (Via Boing Boing.)
  • An interesting post by an opponent of affirmative action, over at All Facts and Opinions. There’s also a longish post by me in the comments.
  • Eugene Volokh has an excellent post comparing anti-gay laws to hypothetical anti-Hindu laws; why is it that (some folks versions of) Christianity requires the former, but not the latter? It’s a mystery.
  • Mark Klieman has a good post discussing the economic realities that whoever eventually emerges as governor of California will have to address (even if they’re now desperately avoiding doing just that). And while you’re at Mark’s site, also check out this post on prosecutors who resist DNA evidence showing that innocent people have been imprisoned.
  • Playwright Brian Flemming, best known for the musical Bat Boy, has written a new one-act comedy called Fair & Balanced. There are sample pages available to read. Importantly, one of the play’s four characters is named “Ampersand”; it is therefore my opinion that this is the greatest work to hit the American stage since Death of a Salesman had its premiere. (Via Boing Boing.)

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Posted in Economics and the like, Gender and the Economy, Link farms, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues, UNFPA | 5 Comments

NOW endorses Moseley Braun for President

Posted on September 3, 2003 by Ampersand

Sara at Diotima is criticizing NOW:

So, why did NOW do it? What could they possibly hope to accomplish by endorsing Carol Moseley Braun? She’s polling at zero in New Hampshire. While feminists may try to blame Moseley Braun’s failure as a candidate on the racist and sexist political and media establishment, the fact of the matter is that her campaign is going nowhere. So why, NOW, why?

Sara then asks what my opinion is. (Although she also says something about the “feminist-on-the-street,” and you know, I don’t think I’m really very “street.”)

First, if NOW thinks that sexism and racism are the reason that Moseley Braun’s campaign has been ignored by the press, then that alone is an excellent reason for NOW to endorse Moseley Braun. Resistance to sexism and racism is, I think most feminists would agree, self-evidently a good course of action to take. Some might object that Moseley Braun “can’t win” – to which NOW could justly reply, only resisting sexism and racism when you’re guaranteed to win is called “cowardice.”

Secondly, what harm is done by endorsing Moseley Braun? Again, critics will say that no one should ever endorse a candidate who “can’t win,” but I disagree.

There is a time, I think, for progressives, leftists and liberals – including progressive feminists – to band together and concentrate on knocking Bush out of the White House. That time is later, after a candidate (hopefully one who is at least marginally acceptable to progressives and feminists) has been selected by Democratic voters. Meanwhile, however, it’s perfectly appropriate to vote our dreams and principles. Maybe later it’ll make sense to vote for something else, but if you can’t vote – and endorse – your dreams in a primary, then when on earth can you?

Third, on what I’d consider mainstream feminist issues – pro-choice, pro-child-care, pro-helping-poor-mothers-and-children, etc etc – Moseley Braun is as good or better than any of the other candidates running. Purely on the issues, she’s a reasonable choice. (Personally, I prefer Kucinich – who is all that, plus stronger on labor issues – but Kucinich’s recent flip-flop into the pro-choice camp is a legitimate reason for NOW and other feminist orgs to resist his campaign).

Finally, I think that it’s fine if NOW prefers Moseley-Braun in part because she’s a woman and because she’s black.

Isn’t that racist and sexist?

No, it isn’t. Having a preference for women of color without regard to their political views would be sexist and racist, but it’s clear that NOW wouldn’t have endorsed Moseley Braun if NOW didn’t agree with Braun’s politics.

But why should NOW consider Moseley Bruan’s race and sex at all? Because a non-racist, non-sexist government should include all sexes and races at every level. To date, 0% of American presidents have been women and 0% have been non-white. All else being more-or-less equal among the candidates, I’d prefer the non-white, non-male candidate – simply because we’d be a better country if the presidency wasn’t a white-male-only office.

As Moseley Braun has said, it’s time to rip the “men only” sign off the oval office’s door. She’s the only candidate whose election will accomplish that. If NOW wants to endorse her for that reason (as well as for her stands on the issues), that seems fine to me.

Which is why (despite what I’ve said in the past) I’m now leaning towards voting for Moseley Braun, rather than for Kucinich, in the primaries..

Posted in Elections and politics | 39 Comments

No more "2-D" Disney Animations

Posted on September 1, 2003 by Ampersand

Sadly, the Walt Disney company is gradually shutting down it’s 2-D animation department. They’ve decided that the reason Treasure Planet failed and Finding Nemo succeeded is that Finding Nemo was animated in 3-D. That Finding Nemo featured a fresh, funny script and brilliant voicework by Ellen DeGeneres, while Disney’s 2-D features lately have had mediocre scripts or worse, apparently has nothing to do with it.

All Disney really needed to do was hire some great writers and then (and this is the crucial part, the part that executives generally mess up) get out of the way. Instead, they’re shutting down one of the best hand-drawn animation studios in the world.

This is the kind of thinking that Michael Eisner is paid millions for.

More details over at MousePlanet..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 27 Comments

The risk of rape is higher at the Air Force Academy than at most colleges

Posted on September 1, 2003 by Ampersand

Both TalkLeft and Atrios link to this post on Conclusive Evidence, in which journalist David Cullen, discussing the Air Force survey (see my previous post), writes:

Send your daughter–or yourself–to another university, and your chances for rape are probably even worse. Much worse. […]

…college women are in much greater danger than this new story suggests. Check out this Department of Justice study published in Dec 2000, The Sexual Victimization of College Women. Figures on reported rapes are notoriously unreliable, because (according to the same study), fewer than 5 percent of rape victims report to the police. That makes for one hell of an extrapolation. The most reliable data comes from anonymous surveying. The Justice Dept study used a similar methodology to the IG report; a random phone survey of 4,400 women attending 2- or 4-year colleges or universities across the country. Key finding: it estimated that nearly 20% of women would be raped during a 4-year college career. (The report indicates the total is probably higher because five years is more common now, but it’s not at the Academy. Most cadets graduate in four years, so we’ll stick to a four-year comparison).

[…]We’ll see how much that gets reported. Watch the press on this story. Watch them fixate on the Air Force Academy, ignoring Harvard, Princeton and everywhere else. Just watch.

So Dave’s point is that women are in more danger of being raped in four years of a regular college (20%) than at the Air Force Academy (12%).

Goodness knows I don’t want to slag on Dave Cullen, a good journalist whose heart is obviously in the right place. He’s absolutely right to think that the dangers of rape even at mainstream colleges is terribly underreported by the press. But he’s mistaken about these particular statistics.

First of all, the particular statistic Dave is relying on from “The Sexual Victimization of College Women” (SVCW) is very dubious. SVCW basically measured the rape incidence for college women for a seven-month period (which was 2.8%, including both completed and attempted rape). To extrapolate from that to four years, the authors multiplied 2.8% by seven (because seven months is approximately one-seventh of four years).

As DCH writes in the comments, “You can’t just multiply probabilities like that. If you do, then you predict, for example, that if a woman attended the Air Force Academy for 36 years, she’d have a 108% chance of being raped.”

Indeed, even the authors of SVCW say this procedure is “problematic for a number of reasons.” As the authors explain in a footnote, it would take a different kind of study “to assess accurately the victimization risk for women throughout a college career.” So it’s doubtful that the authors of SVCW would agree with the emphasis Dave is placing on this statistic.

Secondly, even if we ignore all that, David is still using the wrong statistic for his comparison. As I explain in the post prior to this one, the Air Force study used an outdated survey method – in which very few, non-detailed screening questions are asked – which is widely believed to underestimate rape incidence. As it happens, the SVCW study included a comparison componant, which – like the Air Force study – used a small number of non-detailed screening questions. Since this is the portion of the SVCW study with a methodology closest in design to the Air Force study, the results from this portion of the SVCW are the most appropriate to use for a comparison.

So what are the results? Using the outdated methodology, the SVCW found that 0.34% of college women experience completed or attempted rape in a seven-month period. Multiplying by seven to cover four years worth of college yields 2.4% (I know, this is bad methodology, but I’m ignoring that for the sake of the argument). So – using the closest comparison possible, given the datasets – it turns out that about 2.4% of women at ordinary colleges are raped (including attempted rapes) in a four-year college career, compared to about 12% at the Air Force Academy.

(Just to be clear – the 2.4% number is the best number to use for comparison to the deeply flawed Air Force survey, because it shares similar flaws. However, both numbers are almost certainly underestimates.)

I’m pointing this out because I don’t want Dave – or other progressives and feminists – to attach themselves to an easily-refuted mistake. However, let me emphasize again that although Dave’s mistaken about this one statistical comparison, he’s correct overall: the problem of rape in college – and, I’d add, in high school – is horribly underreported by the mainstream press.

UPDATE: Edited to add quote from DCH..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 21 Comments

Rape survey at Air Force Academy shows big problem – which it probably underestimates

Posted on September 1, 2003 by Ampersand

The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 — Nearly 12 percent of the women who graduated from the United States Air Force Academy this year were the victims of rape or attempted rape in their four years at the academy in Colorado Springs, with the vast majority never reporting the incidents to the authorities, according to a survey by the inspector general of the Defense Department.

It’s good news that the Defense Department is finally beginning to take this issue seriously. I can’t say I’m surprised by the results – any time groups of young men are brought together and taught to be “masculine” (whether it’s in the army, a frat house, or a football team), chances are that some of the men will rape. Unfortunately, the DOD survey is very badly designed and so almost certainly underestimates the problem.

Why? Well, there are two basic approaches to surveying people about rape: either you just ask if a respondent has been raped, or you ask a whole bunch of very graphic “behaviorally specific questions,” such as “has anyone ever made you have sexual intercourse by using force or threatening to harm you… by intercourse I mean putting a penis in your vagina…,” with similar-but-not-identical questions asked to elicit reports of other kinds of rape (anal rape or oral rape, for example). Years of experience has taught social scientists that many rape victims will only report their experience in a survey when the latter approach is used.

As far as I can tell, the Air Force survey – described in unfortunately sparse detail in this pdf file – uses the earlier, outdated method of designing their rape survey. Instead of using behaviorally specific questions, they instead just asked respondents if they had been raped (the survey defined rape as “an act of sexual intercourse with a female, by force and/or without her consent [conscious or unconscious]”).

How big a difference could this make? A recent US department of Justice study directly compared the two methods, and found that 11 times as many rape victims reported their experiences when surveyors used behaviorally specific questions.

The Department of Defense says it intends to do further, more thorough surveys. Let’s hope they update their survey methodology to the present tense – the survey method they’re using now has been obsolete for at least a decade. Until their methodology catches up, however, the DOD’s 12% figure – shocking as it is – should be taken as an extremely low estimate of the problem.

Links via TalkLeft and Conclusive Evidence..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 23 Comments

Clinton, Clinton-haters and Juanita Broaddrick

Posted on August 31, 2003 by Ampersand

Over at Orcinus, David Neiwert is busily ripping apart the “Bush haters are even more kookoo than Clinton haters” idea that the righties have been echo-chambering lately. David – a former MSNBC writer/producer – argues, persuasively, that the two things are not comparable; the right-wing ownership of cable news and talk radio guarantees that “Clinton-hatred,” no matter how insane it got, was treated with far more respect – and broadcasted far more widely – than it deserved.

I do have a couple of nits to pick with David’s argument, however.

First, David’s list of Clinton-hater charges against Clinton omits the whole Monica thing. But the Monicatastrophe is a major part of the anti-Clinton canon, and really can’t be skipped.

(Digression: Conservatives – in a transparent bit of partisan special-pleading – often say that they don’t object to Clinton having sex with an intern; what they object to is his lying under oath. Personally, I think just the opposite is true. That Clinton would break his marriage vows – and break them, furthermore, with an intern half his age, in a situation in which the power dynamics were so ridiculously unequal – speaks poorly of his character. (What kind of an asshole betrays his wife with an intern? Jesus.)

On the other hand, given the context, I think Clinton’s lie under oath is pretty understandable. First, the lie came up in the context of attempted, blatantly partisan, entrapment, which rather undermines the prosecution’s moral standing to ask questions at all. (It’s hard to feel that lying to a corrupt justice system is that big a sin). Second of all, attempting to cover up a tawdry, assholish affair seems like a reasonable thing to do, given that the alternative was to cause enormous damage to the well-being of the entire Democratic party, not to mention Clinton’s wife and child. End of digression.)

Secondly, regarding Juanita Broaddrick (the woman who claims that Clinton raped her in 1977), David writes:

This accusation was raised in 1999, after the impeachment fiasco, by an account of a woman named Juanita Broaddrick who said she had been sexually assaulted by Clinton in 1978. She told her account for a writer on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page (after NBC News, which originally interviewed her, sat on the story — for good reason). The charges gradually evaporated as it became clear that Broaddrick (who had previously filed an affidavit denying any sexual contact with Clinton) was not a reliable witness, and may have had a profit motive for changing her story. The facts of their encounter have never been definitively established, but there is no sound evidence to suggest that any encounter he may have had with Broaddrick was not entirely consensual.

The charges didn’t “gradually evaporate” – they simply had nowhere to go. From her first interview, it was clear that Broaddrick’s story could not be proven or disproven, and it was years too late for a trial. That’s where Broaddrick’s story stood in 1999, and that’s where it stands now.

Nevertheless, Broaddrick’s claim is stronger than David’s account admits. NBC interviewed several people who saw Broaddrick’s facial bruises in 1977, and who remember Broaddrick telling them that Clinton (who was at the time the Attorney General of Arkansas) had raped her. And NBC’s investigation was able to verify several other aspects of Broaddrick’s story.

It is true that Broaddrick had filed an affidavit denying any sexual contact with Clinton; what David doesn’t mention is that she filed the affidavit to avoid being used as a weapon against Clinton by Paula Jones’ lawyers. Under the circumstances, I think it’s perfectly understandable that Broaddrick chose not to cooperate with Jones’ lawyers, and that hardly proves that she’s “not a reliable witness” in general. (And if having told a lie once – even in understandable circumstances – does make one permanently unreliable as a witness, then why is David so willing to take Bill Clinton’s word?)

As for Broaddrick’s “profit motive,” I have no idea what David’s referring to – and since David doesn’t provide any links or evidence to support his claim, I can’t take it seriously.

* * *

There’s a big difference between a court of law and a personal opinion.

For all legal purposes, Bill Clinton is not a rapist. He has never been found guilty of rape in a court of law – he’s never even been charged.

My personal opinion? There’s no way to know for certain. Reading Broaddrick’s NBC interview, I think she tells a credible and realistic story. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth – but in my heart, I suspect she is. Sorry, Clinton-lovers.

UPDATE: Links to the Broaddrick transcript keep on dying, so in case the above link dies, here’s an alternate link.

SECOND UPDATE: Okay, with the help of the discussion in the comments, I’ve figured out what’s bothering me about the inclusion of Broaddrick in David’s post.

You might or might not believe Broaddrick’s story – it’s a question that reasonable people can disagree on. You might even say that it’s impossible to know for certain either way, and I’d agree with you.

But Broaddricks’ story does not belong on a list – to use David’s words – of “afactual rhetorical turds.” To put it on such a list – right after a piece of genuine paranoid nonsense like the “Clinton body count” – implies that taking a woman’s accusation of rape seriously is the equivilent of believing in utter nonsense like the “Clinton body count.”

Needless to say, the two are not at all equivilent. A woman’s story of being raped is not beyond skepticism; but neither should it be dismissed as an “afactual rhetorical turd.” Everyone – and in particular, progressives and liberals – should take accusations of rape seriously. I’m not saying that David doesn’t take rape seriously. I am, however, saying that David was mistaken to lump Broaddrick’s story along with the nonsense that comprised the rest of his “rhetorical turds” list..

UPDATE, January 2016: Vox has a good summary of the Brodderick story.

Posted in Rape, intimate violence, & related issues | 76 Comments

Words fail me

Posted on August 29, 2003 by Ampersand

Maureen Enns and Charlie Russell are a couple of naturalists who have been living with grizzley bears in Siberia, in order to demonstrate that grizzlies and humans can live together without violence. (They’ve got a website – be sure to check out the photo gallery).

Unfortunately, by protecting the bears, Enns and Russell pissed off some Russian gangsters who had been making money off of poaching grizzlies and salmon. This year, the gangsters decided to “send a message” to Enns and Russell by killing the dozens of bears the naturalists had been studying.

“I taught these bears to trust humans and it backfired,” Mr. Russell said.

Link via Metafilter..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 15 Comments

If you read just one Blog this week…

Posted on August 23, 2003 by Ampersand

I don’t expect to be blogging a lot until I return to Portland – even aside from the I’ve-gotten-too-used-to-a-fast-connection-to-go-back-to-using-a-modem issue, and aside from the there’s-only-one-computer- and-I-get-kicked-off-it- too-often-to-get-any-writing-momentum-started issue, there’s also the it’s-kinda-fun-to-take-some- time-off-from-blogging issue to consider.

But in the meanwhile, I did want to put in a pointer to the best thing I’ve read in ages, which is a series of posts on Pedantry on “language policy.”

Part one is a chapter-by-chapter summary of a scholarly anthology book on language rights and political theory, winningly entitled Language Rights and Political Theory. If that makes your eyes glaze over, you can go ahead and skip this part (like I did at first) – but you may want to go back and reread it after parts two and three have captured your attention.

Part 2 is a discussion of linguistic diversity and language education, which spreads out into a consideration of minority language rights and the economics of second-language fluency. (Or maybe it’s a discussion of those latter items which digresses into a discussion of the former? Whatever). Anyhow, it’s fascinating.

Part three, released today, is actually a continuation of a Pedantry post I linked to back in June, discussing the difference between a collection and a collective. (Scott was at that point arguing that Palestinians and Israel are not morally equivalent, since “Palestinians” – like “Israelis” – are a collection, and collections cannot make centralized decisions, whereas “Israel” is a collective which can make (and be held responsible for) its centralized decisions).

In today’s post, Scott argues that even a single individual can be conceptualized as “a collective,” and develops his argument that collectives can sensibly be seen as morally responsible for their choices and actions. As an illustration, Scott uses this approach to justify affirmative action.

This, to me, is the most troublesome part of Scott’s discussion. I have disagreements with almost every detail of Scott’s discussion of black-white inequality in the USA. (For example, Scott puts too much weight on the economic value of skills, while seemingly ignoring the essential importance of inter-generational wealth transfers – a formulation of the problem that is, I’m sure unintentionally, more flattering to white people than we deserve.) However, although I will probably discuss Scott’s (imo) errors in a future post, nonetheless it’s important to note that my disagreements with Scott do not undermine his central argument:

America is a collective, but it is also a culturally constructed tool – one that is both symbolic and more substantial – through which Americans as individuals interact with the world. To accept the benefits of this tool – to make it a part of yourself – means accepting the costs associated with it. That means paying taxes, but it also means accepting the liability for its past injustices. Cultural artefacts have histories, they do not come into the world as they are, and the artefact and its history are not readily separable things. No individual is liable for slavery because of their ancestors, even those whose ancestors did own slaves. Everyone is liable for America’s past because of their acceptance of America’s present instrumental value, even those with no history in America until recently.

(Scott’s approach here isn’t unique – I’ve read people who have more-or-less taken the same approach to justifying reparations.)

Scott also argues for “self-development” as the central goal we should be seeking in our policy choices:

I want to advance self-development as the core idea of a sort of humanism. I assert that people have the right to develop themselves as they wish and that enhancing people’s ability to do so should be identified as the good thing on which utilitarian discussions of policy should focus. That means that people should be able to become what they want to be; that their thoughts, desires and choices should be able to evolve in as unrestricted a manner as possible. […]

Naturally, self-development is not an absolute standard which exists independently of time, place and social context; nor can all developmental efforts be treated equally. If someone wants to develop into a serial murder, they can’t assert the freedom to go around killing people in the name of self-development. Furthermore, what policies specifically enhance or block self-development are always conditioned by the historical circumstances people find themselves in. To someone who is starving, food insecurity is an enormous barrier to self-development even when they have nominal political liberties like freedom of speech. It is possible, under this scheme, to come to the conclusion that a dictatorial regime which grants none of those political rights but which is able to keep people fed may actually be the juster regime. Of course, this is not to say that a regime that offers food security and political rights isn’t juster still.

Naturally, my post here doesn’t even scratch the surface of Scott’s discussion. I’m looking forward to reading part four of this series. Meanwhile, I highly recommend y’all go check out what Scott’s writing – for my tastes, there is nothing more interesting going on in the blogoverse..

Posted in Race, racism and related issues | 6 Comments

Report from New York

Posted on August 23, 2003 by Ampersand

Well, I’m in New York (state). The weather is gorgeous, albeit rather too hot for my tastes. Out the large windows to my right, the trees sway in the breeze. Out the large windows to my left, sun sparkles on blue lake. My father is observing the shabbatz by snoring on a couch nearby, and at his feet the dog lies snoreless but napping on a fake but soft bearskin rug. (When I say “fake,” I mean it’s not even attempting to pass for the real thing; it’s more like a gigantic, flat teddy bear). On another couch, Mom is sprawled out working her way though today’s Times.

Things could certainly be worse..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 1 Comment

Off to the East coast!

Posted on August 21, 2003 by Ampersand

I’m off to spend a week in lovely Duchess County, New York. I have no idea how much access to the internet – if any – I’ll have in New York. So I may or may not be posting in the next week.

Of course, Bean might post. Then again, she might not. She’s very mysterious.

Anyhow, have a nice week..

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | 14 Comments