A man of prodigious fortune, coming to add his opinion to some light discussion that was going on casually at his table, began precisely thus: "It can only be a liar or an ignoramus who will say otherwise than," and so on. Pursue that philosophical point, dagger in hand.

--Michel de Montaigne, Of the art of discussion.



Stab back: cmnewman99-at-yahoo.com


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Despite my warnings, Dennis Prager is still posting on his website my unauthorized translations of Oriana Fallaci's recent articles on 9/11 and European antisemitism. They're under the section called "Articles Cited By Dennis On Radio Show." I'm not providing a link, because I know of one other site that got shut down by its provider for linking to the same translations when they were on my own blog page. So let's see just how far the DMCA stretches. If I don't link, but just tell you where to find it, does blogger get a cease and desist letter? Copyright students want to know. (Interestingly enough, I never got one myself the whole time my Fallaci blog was up, despite the fact that my email was prominently displayed.)
posted by CMN at 12:06 PM
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Some innocent questions/observations about the Sixth Circuit's opinion upholding UM Law School's affirmative action program:

1) The Law School seeks to enroll a “critical mass” of “under-represented minority students.” How does the Law School identify a minority as being “under-represented” in the first place? This would seem to imply some criterion for deciding what level of representation is appropriate for a given racial group. What exactly is that criterion? Does the Law School also worry whether there are there any “over-represented” minorities? If the criterion is a straight comparison of representation in population (of what? Michigan? the U.S.? the world?) to representation in the law school's student body, one could wind up concluding that certain groups who tend to achieve admission to law school in high numbers (like Jewish students) would fall in this latter category.

2) I’m no mathematician, but I do use numbers on a fairly regular basis. I had never noticed it on my own, but apparently not all of these critters are “meaningful.” Some of them are just out there I guess, looking for all the world like regular numbers but actually devoid of all semantic content. It’s pretty unnerving, if you ask me. I mean, I’d heard of “imaginary” numbers like the square root of negative 1 and so forth, but I had no idea that there was a danger of their o’erleaping the bounds of abstract calculation and screwing up the admissions process. I really wish the Law School would publish a list of all the non-meaningful numbers so I can avoid any future dealings with them.

3) Here’s what we know about the elusive concept of “critical mass”:

No portion of the class is set aside for it.

It is not a set number or percentage.

However, the school judges whether it has achieved one or not by looking at the number of target students enrolled, and evaulating whether this number is “meaningful.”

How is this done, one wonders? I have this image of Erica Munzel looking at an admissions chart, brow furrowed. “This number just doesn’t mean anything to me.” There must be deposition testimony on this. “Q: Is 10 a meaningful number? A: No, I’ve never had much use for 10 myself. Q: How about 11?”

But then we get some further clues as to what will cause meaning to shine forth from the barren digits. A number is “meaningful” if
it is sufficient to ensure that the under-represented minority students are able to contribute to class dialogue without:

feeling isolated,

feeling like spokespersons for their race

feeling uncomfortable discussing issues freely based on their personal experience.

So that explains the fluctuations in the size of the “critical mass” from year to year! Obviously, it’s based on the psychological make-up of the under-represented minority applicants in a particular pool, something the Law School evaluates carefully as part of its review of each individual applicant. (They surely would not make any assumptions on this score, as that would be to engage in racial stereotyping.) The more susceptible the under-represented minority candidates for that year are to feelings of racial isolation, the more of them the school needs to admit to counteract these potential feelings. At least, this is the only conceivable explanation for the fluctuation that I can perceive on the face of the majority opinion.

Of course, for this strategy to have the desired effect, the affirmative action really needs to be extended down the level of course enrollment, doesn’t it? I mean, if someone is susceptible to feeling like an isolated spokesperson unless surrounded by a critical mass of racial brethren, the real issue is how many are present in the classroom when issues are being discussed, not how many might be spread throughout the student body. Isolation after all, like power, is contextual.


posted by CMN at 9:33 AM
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Tom and Eugene noticed the breathtaking display of doublethink
over in Ashcroftland, embodied by the simultaneous affirmation that:

Asked whether the change would lead to a rollback of hard-won civil-liberties protections, Ashcroft said the powers would be used only "for the purpose of detecting and preventing terrorism."

and:

The new rules allow agents to conduct "general topical research" and "pure surfing" designed to find Web sites, chat rooms or Internet bulletin boards with information about terror, bomb-making instructions, child pornography or stolen credit cards.

Of course, it's not really "mission creep," you know. The feds are perfectly justified in using their expanded power to look for kiddie porn--because we all know that Islamic fundamentalists regard it as emblematic of the depravity of western culture and are likely to make its purveyors the target of the next terrorist attack. And surely you see that stolen credit cards can be used (like the proceeds of drug transactions, or prostitution, or legitimate business dealings, or ...heck, any money in general) to fund terrorist activities?

In a world where growing wheat for personal consumption qualifies as "interstate commerce," do you really think there's anything the government can do that doesn't qualify as "detecting and preventing terrorism"?


posted by CMN at 8:39 AM
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How to begin? At random, I suppose.

I came across the following quote from an interview with Calista Flockhart:

"When I have a baby, I want to be there with it. I want to watch it grow up." Right now, she says, that's the hard choice she's had to make, a choice, she adds with emphasis, that men never have to make.

Of course, Calista's not the first or only one to say this; she's just echoing the party line. A party line that is, I add with emphasis, BULLSHIT.


I'm a man. And a father. And a professional. And I have to make that hard choice every hour of every day of my life. Every hour that I spend at my job is an hour I'm not spending watching my child grow up. I can either have the kind of professional success that comes only from putting work above all else, or I can have the kind of relationship with my child that comes only from being there to share all the random spontaneous events of which lives and personalities are built. Or else, like most people, I can try, never satisfactorily, to somehow balance the two through a never-ending process of give and take and wrenching choices and attempted compensations. My wife, who also works, is in the same boat. We try to help each other, we juggle time slots, we make compromises. We certainly don't assume that she is more suited or more eager or more duty-bound to be at home than I. In fact, between the two of us I am the one with by far the stronger preference for being at home if my work allows it.


So what exactly is this choice that Calista thinks men never have to make? Perhaps what she means is that men, in some broad sense, are advantaged in being able to enjoy both a career and a family, because men of course have wives who will stay home and tend to the family so that the men can emerge from a satisfying day spent wielding power in their smoke-filled boardrooms and then cap it off with a few leisurely moments of paternal joy. You know, the whole George Banks "pat them on the head and send them off to bed" routine. Ah, lordly is the life we lead.


But then, those lordly men aren't really there to watch their children grow up, are they? If they don't value that, then I suppose it's true that they never have to make the choice. Is that what you mean, Calista? That because of the different kinds of socialization to which we've been subjected, men don't really feel bad about the fact that they don't get to see their kids grow up, whereas women are made to feel that they are betraying their roles as mothers? I'll grant you that there's at least a grain of truth in this. My wife and I both went through grad school at the same time, while our son was in kindergarten. We each took turns caring for him while the other was out working or studying. And she was the only one who ever had to deal with comments from people questioning how she could spend all night at studio working on an architectural project while her family was at home. It didn't happen much to me in law school, but now when I have to work all night preparing a court filing no-one worries whether this will detract from my role as a husband or parent. (Of course, I now work with plenty of woman lawyers who are treated exactly the same way.)


But do you really believe that just because society doesn't tell men we have to be there all the time for our children, we really don't want to be? That men wouldn't take the jobs with more flexible schedules and lower pay that would let them spend more time at home if society (including many if not most women) didn't make such men feel inadequate for failing to be mega-providers? So look Calista, I sympathize with your dilemma: it's hard to have a career and a family both. But the fact, my dear, is that you have if anything far more choices than most men in this regard. You make enough money to pay for all the domestic help and child care that men have ever received from their wives, and more than any man who has a working spouse will ever get. I don't doubt that your job is demanding work, but I suspect it leaves you with rather more free time during the course of a year than most men in this country have. And trust me, there are many men out there who yearn to watch their children grow up every bit as much as you do. Your emphatic categorical assertion that they never have to make hard choices in this regard is unwarranted, unjustified, false, sexist.

Think about it.

posted by CMN at 9:45 PM
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