Momentary Language

Cleansing Sullivan's Carnivore Cleansing

In one of the best contributions yet to the NYTimes's nod to philosophy, The Stone, Rutgers's Jeff McMahan provides an excellent example of how philosophy is done, carefully teasing out the implications of the moral imperative to reduce the unnecessary suffering of innocents -- including innocent non-human animals.

In his essay, "The Meat Eaters," McMahan suggests:

There is therefore ... reason to think that it would be instrumentally good if  predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation.

The responses have been predictable -- predictably awful and misdirected, that is.  It is especially disappointing, however, that the often thoughtful Andrew Sullivan has responded to McMahan's essay with one of the most common -- and abjectly bad -- rejoinders, namely:

How about starting with ourselves?

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Anyone actually paying McMahan's essay the compliment of reading it with the attention it deserves would have noted, however, that McMahan begins by granting that his bold suggestion is one that assumes that we have already recognized that,

to be entitled to regard ourselves as civilized, we must, like Isaiah’s morally reformed lion, eat straw like the ox, or at least the moral equivalent of straw.

The trustworthiness of beards

This is awesome:
After seeing this, I was gratified I decided not to try combine the pencil-thin chinstrap and the pencil-thin moustache when I grew my beard.

A Periodic Table of Awesomeness

It's here, and it's .... awesome.

One initial quibble: if the analogy is to hold, group 18 on the table should correspond to the noble inert gases -- i.e., items in column 18 should not really combine easily with other items on the table. 

But #2, Ninjas, the top item in column 18, naturally combines with #23 (throwing stars), #41 (nunchucks), and #42 (daggers) -- plus, I could easily imagine there being video games (#77) out there in which there are ninjas with boobs (#13).

A fatal flaw in the table?  Doubtful.  But clearly there are still some kinks that need working out.

Develop outside interests - travel, art, science

This is excellent: Dignan's notebook transcribed (from Bottle Rocket).

I particularly like these goals, under the 2nd Five Years:

E. Develop outside interests

        a. Travel
        b. Art
        c. Science

Proof that the USA in the '70's was another country ...

The profound differences between Europe and the United States are, as Tony Judt has put it, "nowadays asserted with increased frequency and not a little acrimony on both sides of the Atlantic."  I've often thought that we in the US squandered an opportunity, most particularly in the 1970's, to become a different country -- one more like Europe (or Canada).

Musical proof of that thought is this performance by Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street in 1972.  It seems so alien to what could be produced now -- particularly on children's television -- that it's like the breathtaking, brilliant, but utterly foreign product of some lost civilization.

Out of my e-mail, quietly mocking ...

Obviously moved by my memorial to Rorty, one of my colleagues, Jen Talarico, sent me the following e-mail:

When I began watching TV seriously in the early 1980's, my introduction to contemporary science was Mr. Wizard -- particularly Mr. Wizard's World on Nickelodeon.

His breezy, seemingly superficial conversational style ... and, perhaps more significantly, his low-key excitement about what he perceived to be the magic and mystery of science ... made Herbert, in many ways, well-suited to be a popularizer of basic principles in science, especially the physical sciences like chemistry and meteorology. Furthermore, those very traits made for work that was always engaging, unfailingly provocative, and often brilliant.

As reported by the Mr. Wizard Studios Home Page, Herbert died on Tuesday, June 12, 2007. His voice will be missed.

A radical House cleaning?

So Dr. House loses all of his Baker Street Irregulars with one fell swoop? Thank goodness, I say! The show was hemorrhaging interest; an extreme move like this might be just what it needs to bring its dead heart back to life.

P.S. Did you notice House's address? 221? Remind you of anyone else?

Up-to-the-minute review of the special 2-hour episode of Grey's Anatomy

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

This just in: NY Times should take stats lessons from Mark Cuban

Tuesday's Times contains a story that reports on the work of two researchers, a Penn professor and a Cornell grad student, in demonstrating through statistical analyses a pervasive racial bias in the calling of fouls by officials in NBA games. The story contains passages that do a good job of explaining the strategy of the study to lay readers, such as the following one:

With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white; that veteran players and All-Stars tended to draw foul calls at different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise; particular coaches on the sidelines; the players’ assertiveness on the court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals, turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some substitute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.

Furthermore, the Times submitted the study to a panel of three experts, all of whom found the research to be sound.
Why, then, did the authors of the Times story pad it with !@#%ing irrelevancies?
They cite two current players, both African American, noting that

each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated them differently.

The authors also note that

Two African-American coaches, Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics and Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers, declined to comment on the paper’s claims.

Hello?!? The point of the study -- as one of the experts solicited by the Times, Ian Ayres of the Yale Law School, notes -- is that it is reflective of

a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.

Given this fact, it's little wonder that such trends would be invisible to casual observers ... and it should be obvious to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with critical thinking skills that such trends could only be established through sound statistical analysis. Furthermore, it should be equally obvious that the anecdotal reports of a few players or coaches in the NBA, whether African American or not, is not probative in the slightest. Indeed, such reports have no informational value at all.
The level of innumeracy and absence of critical acuity demonstrated by the Times in including this sort of irrelevant information in such stories is appalling -- almost as appalling as the fact that they were out-thought by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who displayed eminent good sense in noting that

We’re all human. We all have our own prejudice. That’s the point of doing statistical analysis. It bears it out in this application, as in a thousand others.

Bible History #1

In keeping with the theme of yesterday's blog on Hitchens on religion, I thought it worthwhile to provide a link to the Professor Brothers' hilarious take on biblical history, a lecture on the Sodom and Gomorrah tale.