Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kandel Schwartz's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
1:09 pm	Cardinals acuire Matt Holliday Until that trade, too many Cardinals fans worried that Brett Wallace was supposed to be a replacement for Pujols when his contract ended. Clearly, that is not going to happen now. Part of me still worries a bit about what happened in the last major trade with Billy Beane, though. Remember Dan Haren's days in St. Louis? (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
4:50 am	More on Sotomayor Yesterday, I discussed a talk given by Sonia Sotomayor, our next Supreme Court Justice, and I concluded that she is both brilliant and subtle, a mind capable of parsing difficult arguments about abstract concepts. Today, I will go in the other direction and cover some of the opposition from people who likely consider themselves to be her intellectual peers (at least). The results, though sad, are not really surprising. First, if you have not done so already, please read yesterday's entry on Sotomayor. There, I explain why a particularly poisonous meme circulating is misleading to the point of being maliciously dishonest, and I make what case I can for why I am excited to see her joining the government. My case is based more on what I can see about her ability to reason logically than on anything resembling a judicial philosophy, though the arguments I have heard against her judicial philosophy are not much better than those claiming (falsely, I must emphasize) that she is a racist or sexist, or that she has racist or sexist views. My view of her reasoning ability is only amplified by contrast with the inane, sloppy arguments hurled at her by men who are allegedly qualified to be leaders in the richest country in the world. Newt Gingrich, the second most powerful man in America from about 1995 to 1998, feels entitled to a negative opinion of soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor based on the same superficial reading of her Berkeley speech parroted by so many of Washington's intellectually challenged coalition as well as more news outlets than I care to count. The link here, to a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, propagates the same error, truncating Sotomayor's Berkeley remarks to the point where their meaning becomes almost the opposite of what she actually said. It's sad. Worse, in an article that should only be read by those with very strong stomachs, Pat Buchanan, who apparently commands no small amount of respect in some crowds, pens one of the most outrageous racist screeds since, well, the last time he wrote something dealing with any sort of ethnic minority. See, he doesn't just want to respond to Sotomayor, who, unlike Buchanan, actually holds a position of authority. He wants to "handle" her (his word). Actually, his piece is titled, "How to Handle Sonia." Even in the title, he strives to be as offensive as possible, though I am not sure if the sexist or racist sentiment here is worse (and knowing Buchanan, it could be either). I've always been somewhat annoyed by using common first names to refer to famous people with whom one is not good friends, but in this case, it is clear that Buchanan does so not for the sake of pretending he and Sotomayor are buddies, but rather as a sign of disrespect. It's an attempt to show that he, the great Pat Buchanan, still has some power over her. Now, I do not mean this in a prescriptive way. I can refer to someone I do not know by his or her given name, and that does not mean I am trying to make that person look bad or look as if he or she is below me. My formula here is descriptive, meaning it's what we usually do. Whether we are trying to be polite or not, we address police officers and judges using different language that we use when we address family members or significant others. Buchanan, by choosing to use a register normally reserved for social equals, does not make himself her equal, but he does attempt to declare that he already believes that he is her equal, if not her superior. Of course, it is just a coincidence that he does this to the female Hispanic nominee, without a history of calling Caucasian or male public figures using familiar terms. Right. He then goes on to sling some buzzwords at Sotomayor, including "Affirmative Action baby." Why would Pat Buchanan pass up an attempt to call a woman smarter than he is a baby? (Hint: Even if she described herself as such, she has the right to do so, sort of like how I can call myself an idiot without getting offended, but other people cannot call me that. That's not a perfect analogy, since "Affirmative Action baby" is not a pejorative term when Sotomayor uses it but is when Buchanan uses it, but it gets the point across, I think.) Now, this is one issue where I am not sure I agree with Sotomayor. Note that I do not preface my disagreement by mockingly referring to her as a "wise Latina," for reasons I discussed at great length yesterday. I must reference my older post, since using "wise Latina" without providing context (i.e. without explaining why it's a horrible, horrible meme whose only beneficial side effect might be as a marker for closet racists) would make me at best negligent, though I use it here only in direct reference to the snide yet ignorant insults tossed at soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor. Surf the internet a little, and make a drinking game out of each time you see someone criticizing her calling her a "wise Latina" first, but only do so if you want to get really drunk really quickly. As I explained yesterday, it's appalling that "wise Latina" could so easily turn into an insult when there is nothing inherently insulting about it; even though the intent of the political peanut gallery is to paint her as pompous, it's telling that they all so readily accept the idea that it's absurd to describe a long-serving judge in such a way as to highlight her intelligence and experience (while conveniently ignoring that she nixed any chance of her words actually being pompous by referring to two white male judges as wise in the very next sentence of her speech). But I digress. Sotomayor might refer to herself as an "Affirmative Action baby," but that does not necessarily mean she would not have been just as successful without Affirmative Action. I am not arguing against Affirmative Action here, though. Rather, I just wish to point out that the facts of Buchanan's case--that Sotomayor was handed her career without her earning it--are bogus. Sotomayor was the valedictorian of a pretty good high school, and she continued to be brilliant in college and beyond. In no way was she undeserving of any entrance into university (and I am not saying that applicants are undeserving of being admitted if they are let in under Affirmative Action--that is completely beside the point of my argument, and I do not wish to get sidetracked here). Buchanan wants us to believe that she is some poor unqualified idiot, but a simple examination of her record proves that to be untrue. My disagreement with Sotomayor is, then, not one of substance, but merely one of political pragmatism. While she may have benefited from Affirmative Action policies in her college admission, she was certainly good enough to get in, and I am a little annoyed at how easy it is for guys like Buchanan to use her to further their obsession with casting white people as victims of evil stupid ethnic minorities who are stealing their spots in college. This matter differs from her Berkeley speech, since that was a matter of the Republican attack dogs being dishonest (meaning, in theory, they should be discredited by anyone with the patience and ability to read the actual text of Sotomayor's speech), and here, the Republicans are simply being a bit bigoted. Here, the issue is a moral and potentially ideological one, whereas on Berkeley, the issue was entire one of the facts of Sotomayor's talk differing wildly from the spin put on them by the Republicans. Buchanan displays his utter divorce from reality when he goes on to complain that people respect Sotomayor but not Sarah Palin, with the argument that Sotomayor went to Princeton while Palin went to Idaho State. Now, I do not intend to say that Idaho State is a bad school. It's not a top tier school by any stretch, but there are worse places to get an education. There are better places, too, like Princeton, but those following along must take note that to the conservative base, a popular meme is that elite schools are bad places where students are indoctrinated into Marxism. Some people out there probably even believe that Idaho State is a better school than Princeton because Princeton is considered elite. Remember, Buchanan is an anti-intellectual who actively crusades against science. This sort of thing appears all over the political right wing. It is not hard for Google to show examples of right wing types talking about how awful the nation's best universities are, usually using the epithet "so-called elite schools" or something similar. I think this is partly a matter of sour grapes and partly a matter of uncritically digesting memes passed on by right wing pundits, but above all, it's pretty funny to find somewhere online where someone who went to Podunk Directional Bible College saying, with a straight face, that Harvard is for liberal idiots. More importantly, though, Buchanan's insult (I hesitate to dignify it by calling it criticism) shows a lack of interest in, well, reality. People don't pick on Palin because of where she went to school. People pick on Palin because she was unqualified to hold the highest office in the land, and she made herself look silly whenever she tried to talk about anything serious. Her support came mostly from people who vote the way their preachers tell them to, and although it sounds like I'm making that up or stealing it from a bumper sticker, it's true that there are legions of voters out there who will attach themselves to a candidate merely because the candidate professes a pro-life stance, and indeed many of the (very similar) talking points praising Palin that I found circulating during last year's election were centered on her opposition to abortion. I can point to thousands of examples of intellectual labor undertaken by soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor, but what has Palin done to win respect? In particular, what has she done to win the same respect we ought to give to someone qualified to sit on the same court as people like Earl Warren. Buchanan continues his hack job by drawing attention to how Palin is all lovable and white and conservative (and thus, by Buchanan's implication, open to mockery by the PC establishment), whereas criticizing Sotomayor would be a "hate crime" (another buzzword used in conservative circles to draw on negative emotions). Oh, and Buchanan takes the opportunity to mock Sotomayor's wisdom, though by this point I hope I have explained why that is such an awful tactic. Of course, Buchanan does not note that the difference in the levels of respect shown for the two people comes from their perceived competence, not their politics. Why else would Buchanan pick Palin as his example instead of a more directly comparable female public figure, like Justice O'Connor? Clearly, that example would not be as effective, since people respect O'Connor, so it is more useful for Buchanan to cherry pick someone else. Two side notes come to mind here. One is that Buchanan appears to be playing on the resentment some of the far right wing hold at how much of a flop Palin's campaign was. The other is that it's sort of funny that Buchanan refers to speech, even insulting speech, as a hate crime, what with the First Amendment and all. This is even funnier when done in an article about a nominee for the Supreme Court, who would be the first to say that criticizing her is not a crime. She probably learned that in law school. Possibly the most insulting part of the article is where Buchanan advocates completely ignoring Hispanic voters, reasoning that there are about ten times as many white voters as there are Hispanic voters, and therefore it would be more practical to court just the white voters. There are many problems with this. An immediate philosophical and moral problem is that Hispanic people are, as the phrase "Hispanic people" indicates, people. As people living in America, paying taxes, and fueling the economic growth, they deserve representation in government. Oh, and they have some sort of inalienable rights spelled out somewhere, don't they? Another problem is that Buchanan's idea fails even on purely strategic grounds for reasons that are not even difficult to see. If Republicans (not even necessarily all Republicans, but at least that subset who made themselves look stupid during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings) continue to alienate Hispanic voters, they will lose Texas forever. Current demographic trends have Texas turning into a blue state within the next decade at the very latest. It's already one of only a handful of states where white people do not make up a majority of the population, and thus attempting to court only white people in elections is obviously a really bad strategy. Furthermore, it's worth a lot of electoral votes in presidential elections. Buchanan may think that Hispanics only account for 7% of votes or so (and I am not entirely sure I trust Buchanan's figures), but they make up far more than that in Texas, and they are the fastest growing demographic in the state. Not only that, but Texas, contrary to what national Republicans might claim, is a good friend of Mexico. The state is generally friendly to immigrants, and in fact, Mexican immigrants and Mexican trade are important parts of the economy. Most people in Texas have no intention of provoking hostilities with Mexico or with people from Mexico or with other Hispanic people (such as Sotomayor, whose parents are from Puerto Rico). Thus, Buchanan is free to suggest writing off Hispanic voters entirely, but if the GOP takes him up on his offer, they will lose Texas even faster, and losing Texas means losing a huge chunk of the electoral votes needed to win a presidential election. Yet another problem is that it's a little hard to imagine what it could mean to write off the Hispanic vote. How does a political party do that? Is it through making openly hostile remarks with racial angles to them when confronted with a Hispanic person with a position of power? It's pretty hard to point to a single way to appeal specifically to white people, since white people are the largest group in the country, with a wide variety of political views, making it difficult to come up with a positive campaign to appeal just to them. (It's hard to do that with any racial or ethnic group, though it's a least possible in some cases, for instance through gaining the support of black people by opposing segregation back when that was one of the biggest issues of the day.) What worries me is that Buchanan wants to use the tactic of writing off Hispanic voters as an excuse to make racially charged, insensitive, possibly outright racist or bigoted remarks, rationalizing them by assuming that the offended parties aren't important anyway. Buchanan's racial rhetoric heats up when he says that Republicans need to address the children of white parents who get "pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors." This is asinine. As a white male who did not come from a family with a lot of money or clout, I might have had as much reason to complain as anyone had I had my dreams smashed, but the reality is that I got into a good college through working hard. I was not shoved aside. The Sonia Sotomayors of the world were my classmates, not my adversaries. Why is that? Sotomayor was an excellent student! If she pushed anyone aside to get a space in college, that other student was likely someone less qualified. And you know what? Those students who are qualified to go to top schools generally get in at least one of them. It's possible I might have been turned down from my top choice university (where I applied under the Early Decision plan, so I never actually had a chance to hear back from the other stop schools to which I applied), but if that happened, then I probably would have ended up at Stanford or Duke. Believe it or not, that's not something I would have cried over, and it's certainly not something Pat Buchanan can exploit to win votes from me or from my parents. If you get turned down by your first choice university, that's just bad luck. All of the top schools have a wide talent pool of top high school students from which to pick their freshman classes, which is why the test score distributions at most top schools are all pretty much the same. This means, though, that qualified applicants get turned down all of the time. At my alma mater, students with ACT scores of 34 or higher (out of 36, and 34 is well over two standard deviations better than the mean) with astronomical SAT scores still have a less than 50% chance of being accepted. That's just part of life. That's also why qualified students who get turned down from one top school usually just go to another top school, since the smart ones apply at several. Those who are truly pushed aside are those who probably do not deserve to be at a top university anyway, but even they can wind up somewhere in the U.S. News Top 50. Texas public universities, for example, grant automatic admission to students in the top 10% of their high school classes. If you are not even in the top 10% of your high school class, you should probably stop feeling so entitled, since you're not going to get in at Rice anyway without being an athlete or a really, really good musician. More importantly, stop feeling entitled to the point where you blame Hispanic people for stealing your opportunities. Basically, if you do at least as well as Sotomayor did in high school, then you're going to get into a pretty good school somewhere, but don't blame a scapegoat ethnic group if your first choice puts you on the waiting list. Buchanan continues his screed with a few lines about economic populism and then a dishonest take on Republicans' history with judicial nominees (which, after watching the Sotomayor hearings, looks almost comical). "As Republicans have never brutalized a Supreme Court nominee... they need no lectures on decency or decorum," Buchanan claims. How funny that line looks just a few days later. The rest of what Buchanan says is even more tiresome, most of it consisting of worn out complaints about judicial activism (conveniently neither defined nor cited), Affirmative Action, and accusations of a "race-based" system of justice. I must confess that I do not have the patience to work through the remainder of the piece, but it's nothing new or interesting. The only quotable line is where Buchanan, completely without any justification, claims that Sotomayor "is, first and foremost, a Latina," which is one of those sentences designed to be a sound bite more than a decent argument. I expect this sort of juvenile nonsense from talk radio, but Pat Buchanan served in several presidential administrations, and he has tried to become president himself on more than one occasion. Today, though, he sounds no smarter than the senators who have been putting their racism, sexism, and buffoonery out in the open for the sake of trying to bring down one of our country's most impressive legal minds. When Sotomayor is confirmed, I think we should all have a nice, big smile at Pat Buchanan's expense. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
8:20 am	A wiser Latina woman than you think This really needs to be said. It's long, but it's a point with which everyone interested in Justice Sotomayor ought to be familiar. I have a problem with about 90% of the popular discourse on Sotomayor. I used to be somewhat indifferent to her, but since certain parties have made it a mission to make her into a talking point, I have taken an interest, and the result of my interest in her past has turned me in the opposite direction from what certain people grilling Sotomayor for what they claim are past errors want me to think about her, even to the point of berating her until she had to apologize for perfectly innocent remarks, presumably because it is, in the minds of some, a moral deficiency to say something that a high-ranking Republican can misconstrue. I'll tell you what's tiresome about the Sotomayor hearings, and it's not just the moronic questioning by predictable GOP senators (with some notable exceptions like Olympia Snowe and Richard Lugar). What bugs me is not just that the opposition party is taking every opportunity to insult and demean the soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice nominated by their mortal enemies. No, it's how they're doing it, and it's also how the media coverage, whether consciously or not, supports their case by being absolutely unfair to Sotomayor. More than that, it's how they're being unfair that makes me somewhat ashamed of the people we've elected. I shall explain. Much of the Republican ire stems from some opportunist hack who stumbled upon something Sotomayor said in a speech at Berkeley a few years back, and unfortunately for Sotomayor (though perhaps even more unfortunately for the Republicans who have used these hearings to make themselves look like a joke), one line in her speech gives off a very different impression when read by itself than when read in the context of the entire speech. To give an analogy that sums up my thoughts on this, what some of the Republicans have said about Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark is pretty much the same thing as looking at a mathematical proof where the mathematician used a proof by contradiction, seeing a line that says something like "1 = 0," and then declaring the mathematician an idiot for failing at first grade math. For those not familiar with proofs by contradiction, those are where you assume a hypothetical case that is the logical opposite of what you are trying to prove (so if you are trying to prove A, you assume ~A), and then you show that there is a contradiction inherent in this. Often this contradiction takes the form of something like "1 = 0," for example. That level of superficial analysis, slamming the mathematician for saying "1 = 0" without taking into account what that means in that context and why it was stated, is just what someone did to Sotomayor, and now senators, who are supposed to be educated people capable of understanding subtle arguments about abstract concepts, are poisoning the national discourse over Sotomayor. Staunch Republicans, some centrists, and even some people left of center are quick to label her a racist (often following with a pejorative reference to her gender reminiscent of the sorts of things I heard often about Hillary Clinton during the primaries last year) based on a talking point delivered either by someone who does not know why it is a silly accusation or, worse, someone who knows what Sotomayor said at Berkeley but who wants to shut her down anyway. This needs to stop before the "Sotomayor is a racist" meme gets out of control. The last thing the country needs is some baggage hanging around the neck of a potentially wonderful role model for young women and young Hispanics (and everyone else, really--I'll explain later in this post why I find Sotomayor impressive). It's tempting to give credit to the scaremongers who thought up this anti-Sotomayor campaign for cleverly allowing them to oppose a Hispanic woman by making people believe that she is racist, but only in the sense that you have to sort of admire the skill that goes into forming a well-crafted, harmful, evil lie. The line that has caused an uproar among the political peanut gallery is this: "Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases... I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Now, if I stopped my post here, I would be guilty of dishonesty. Lying, really. See, there are many ways to be dishonest, but some of the best are stating something that is outright false, omitting something important that is true and thereby misrepresenting something, and using clever but in appropriate emphasis on the qualities of the thing you are talking about to make it seem either more or less impressive in a desired way. Attempting to let that fraction of Sotomayor's Berkeley speech speak for itself is a bit of all three, yet that is precisely what most people talking about Sotomayor have brought up, and that is what gets quoted in news articles about her, and those that truncate her statement further (e.g. just mentioning the very line that says, somewhat provocatively, "wise Latina") simply sensationalize even more. In some way, all three of the types of lies I mentioned show up in the reporting on Sotomayor's statement. The first type of lie, the one where what is said is immediately false, comes more from the Republican talking point version of the story, which claims, falsely, that Sotomayor said that a Latina judge would get right answers more often than a white judge. This is a horrible abuse on many levels, but the simplest way to respond to it is to point out that it is not at all what Sotomayor said, though if the extreme truncation of the line is the one chosen by the senator or talk show host looking to score points with people who might not like Sotomayor for whatever reason (and I have heard from a reliable source that the anti-abortion campaigns hate her and have been attacking her viciously), it sort of looks like it's what she said. Why is this wrong? It should be obvious. She is not talking about a direct comparison between a Latina judge and a white judge; she makes a point of saying that the Latina judge is just as qualified as the white guy, and then she points out a specific flaw in the white judge ("who hasn't lived that life"). So far, my argument is weak, but it gets better, and the fact that the type of dishonesty employed in the anti-Sotomayor campaign is of the more sophisticated variety makes it all the more dangerous. A minor side note is that popular accounts of her remark often have her referring to herself (instead of the hypothetical Latina judge) as a "wise Latina" instead of a "wise Latina woman," when she said the latter, no the former. It is worth noting that using an ethnic marker word as a noun instead of an adjective is often considered at least tacky if not downright offensive, so this lie (a sort of combination between types one and two, since omitting the noun forces the adjective to turn into a noun) may even have some racist overtones to it. I will still refer to the remark as the "wise Latina" remark, since that is an accurate depiction of how it has been characterized, and I do not think anyone could misconstrue my words as offensive, intentionally so or not. The second kind of lie is that where something important is omitted from the discussion, and this is the heart of the matter. Read, for example, the very next paragraph in Sotomayor's speech, which, of course, has not shown up in any of the character assassination articles that I have found, or even in any of the articles that have tried to appear even-handed: "Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown." There are several points in this paragraph that make it important for understanding the speech as a whole, but for now we'll focus on the line, "I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences and backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group." Right here, we see that Sotomayor, in the previous paragraph, had no intention of claiming that the white men discussed were white men in the general case; they were, rather, a subset of all white men, specifically the subset who might render an inferior verdict in cases like Dred Scott! If you claim that she put all white men into the broad category of unfeeling jerks who could never render a verdict as well as an empathetic Latina woman, then you are claiming that she holds a view that she, a few seconds after you finish reducing her to a sound bite, calls myopic! I will repeat this for emphasis. Sotomayor said that the current popular version of her view on race is myopic, and she did so mere seconds after the line that so many would like to brand as infamous. It is myopic, she said, to assume that white men must necessarily be worse than Latina judges at rendering verdicts. There is more, though. She then goes on to mention a specific counterexample to what so many have claimed is her view. That is, so many claim that she thinks Latina judges are inherently better, but then she cites the white men who made the correct judgment in Brown. Not only did she call the political straw man view (though at the time no one using her sound bite as a straw man since she had not yet been nominated for the Supreme Court) myopic, she gave a counterexample to demonstrate why! The third type of lie that crops up in all of this is that of carefully chosen emphasis to distort something. A good example of this in the anti-Sotomayor crowd's arguments is when they reduce even the sound bite to a shorter blurb, the "wise Latina" bit. This is dishonest, and it has seemed to me, in what I've read on the internet, to have some pretty blatant racist and sexist overtones to it, as if we're supposed to be shocked at the idea of a Latina judge being wise, or even at a female judge being wise, the implication being that Sotomayor was talking about herself in her comment eight years before her nomination for the Supreme Court. Before I go on, I must say that, yes, my title for this entry plays on this, but I tried to make it intentionally provocative, and I tried to put a positive spin on it, so please forgive me if it sounds insensitive in an environment where "wise Latina" has turned into a pejorative. And how sad is it that the idea of a "wise Latina" is so outrageous to some people that it was easy to turn it pejorative? Emphasizing that phrase, of course, makes her look self-aggrandizing, which she absolutely was not in her original speech. She merely wanted to present a hypothetical comparison between two qualified individuals, and to do so, she borrowed language from a quote popularly attributed to Sandra Day O'Connor. (Note that O'Connor does not get much mention as the source of the adjective wise in Sotomayor's remarks, since mentioning her takes the sting out of the implicit self-aggrandizement charge by making it obvious that Sotomayor was going for some witty wordplay.) Emphasizing that phrase also has the effect of making it look as if Sotomayor intended only for the hypothetical Latina judge to be wise, and this, too, is false. Again, in the original O'Connor quote, the two sides of the hypothetical were both wise, and Sotomayor attempts to recall that symmetry in her version. She then emphasizes this by pointing in her next sentence to two white men whom she labels "wise," apparently just as wise as the hypothetical Latina judge. Her point is not whether or not any of the judges in question (real or hypothetical) are wise (since they all are). No, her point is more subtle and interesting than that, and I'll get to her point in a bit. Another problem is that the unfair emphasis on just the words carefully selected to try to make Sotomayor look bad also implies that the cases under consideration where a Latina judge might render a better verdict than a randomly chosen white judge (and would likely render a better verdict than a certain subset of white judges) are just some of the cases likely to come before a court, Supreme or not. In particular, the mention in the following paragraph of cases involving discrimination seems to indicate that these cases are the ones in which one might be particularly likely to see a better verdict rendered by a Latina judge than by some white judges. Yes, I am being pedantic in emphasizing that she means certain white judges have in the past and probably still today lack a certain empathy for those on the painful end of, for example, discrimination, but I adopt this pedantic attitude to make sure I do not give off the same impression as those who want to paint Sotomayor as a racist. However, I also take pains to be pedantic to emphasize that Sotomayor's speech contains nuance and subtlety, an overall ability to process complex abstract thoughts that seems to elude certain legislators talking about the same subject. For now, though, we see that Sotomayor did not say that a Latina judge would necessarily come to a better verdict than a white judge in just any ol' case, and she did not even attempt to paint Latina judges as wise and white judges as less so. Those who claim that she is a simple-minded racist based on the content of her speech at Berkeley must either be ignorant of what she actually said or else must tell lies. Or, I suppose, they could be too stupid to follow her line of thought. Given the tone of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings and the discussion among the rabid right wing in reaction to her nomination, I have to conclude that all three phenomena are going on. Something about these attacks on her feels a little too calculated to be the product of some talk radio bullethead, but clearly there are those like the far-right talking heads and bloggers who simply take what they are fed without critically examining it (the ignorant faction) and those who would not be able to tell why the "Sotomayor is a racist" meme is wrong even if it were explained to them (the stupid faction). There might also be a group dedicated to the idea that she is a racist with no openness to being wrong, simply because they want her to be a racist so they can insult a prominent Latina judge. We've seen, then, one of the things Sotomayor's critics are doing wrong (and there are others, but the "wise Latina" lie is one of the most dangerous, and it's one I see repeated uncritically, so I felt compelled to write up a rebuttal here, if only so I can organize my thoughts on the matter for future reference--I know no one actually reads my blog anymore). What is so great about her? Why do I find her impressive? I promised I'd get to that, so here we go. I like people who are good at dealing with abstract concepts, and I have little patience for people who think that anything that requires a non-trivial mental model to comprehend is not worth considering. For example, I dislike political arguments based on wedge issues, bumper sticker logic, and name-calling. For a healthy dose of this, just watch the Sotomayor confirmation hearings again, and listen to Jeff Sessions. Then, look around the internet for people who agree with Jeff Sessions. Any discussion of Sotomayor will, after a while, likely include someone whose entire opinion of her is little more than "Sotomayor is a racist [insert pejorative term for a female and/or Hispanic person]." By contrast, Sotomayor has shown herself to be a deep thinker who can make arguments rooted not just in clear, everyday concepts referring to concrete entities, but in more abstract concepts dealing with relations between entities and sometimes even with the dynamics of these relations. Sotomayor's whole point in her speech, then, was not about Hispanic judges or white judges. It was not about this case or that case. It was not about simple-minded claims that someone of one background is better or worse than someone from another background in any way. Rather, her argument covered not just a different entity, but a completely different type of entity. To sort of paraphrase her argument, we'll take two example cases: Dred Scott and Brown v. the Board of Education. Both cases dealt with subjects that would profoundly affect the civil rights of American ethnic minorities. Both cases were decided by white judges who were, to use Sotomayor's word, wise. And yet, these cases had completely different outcomes. One case set civil rights back, and one advanced them. Sotomayor's discussion is on a possible reason why, and what that reason might have to do with a young, aspiring lawyer or judge with a background as an American ethnic minority, as well as why that reason might be even more important for a young, aspiring white male lawyer or judge. In both cases, the judges were white, and thus in both cases, the judges did not have a background steeped in the hard side of discriminatory law. The difference, as Sotomayor points out, between white men making decisions that help minorities and decisions that hurt them, is that the white men deciding Brown had a sort of enlightenment that set their judgment in that case above the judgment of the equally wise men who made worse decisions in the past. "For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach?" Sotomayor asks later in her Berkeley speech. Contrary to what some these days are saying about Sotomayor, she does not believe that white people are incapable of this enlightenment that served the Brown judges so well, though she does not by any means say that it was only white people who were wise enough to be enlightened in this sense (obviously). No, she emphasizes that white people have a responsibility to develop understanding for those of different backgrounds, particularly when they are in a position such that their thoughts and actions will have an impact, direct or indirect, intended or unintended, on these people from different backgrounds, especially when those backgrounds often work again them. Further, Sotomayor is interested in how this sort of understanding is acquired differently in different people. For many white males, it takes an active effort, and neglecting this effort can have disastrous consequences. For someone from a different background, however, at least some degree of understanding comes for free. That is, someone from a Latina background with the competence to become a federal judge will likely not lack the understanding of issues affecting other Latina people that will be needed to keep harm from being done to them. This, then, is one of the benefits of diversity. While it's possible for a court of nine white men to avoid any given decision that might do great harm to a large segment of the population out of a lack of consideration for that segment's perspective, it's also possible for a court of nine white men not to avoid such decisions. We know for a fact that both are possible because we can point to examples of both, as Sotomayor does. Thus, Sotomayor's Berkeley speech works as an inspirational talk to young law students eager who might take from it a reason to use what backgrounds and experiences they have to make them into better lawyers, though for different reasons depending on who they are. A Latina lawyer might benefit from being reminded that her heritage gives her a perspective that at times might be very useful, while a young white lawyer might benefit from being reminded to consider others' perspectives. (The reverse, of course, also applies, though it has less practical relevance, as widespread discrimination against white males has never been an issue in this country. It's good for a Latina judge to be sympathetic to a white male, but it's not likely that anything will hurt white males as a group to the extent that Dred Scott hurt black people.) So, her talk discusses something sort of concrete in the sort of enlightenment had by some judges and not by others, and it also touches on the origin and distribution of understanding and empathy, its distribution, and how its prevalence can have an effect on the law. There, we have a concrete entity as well as a discussion of relations between incidents of that entity, their distribution, their dynamics, and their importance, both in theory and in practice. Overall, Sotomayor's speech is an impressive display of a sharp intellect with a deep capacity for understanding difficult concepts. And you know what? I like to think of one of the most powerful people in the country being capable of thinking complex thoughts like that. I also like to think of such a powerful person being comfortable enough with this level of abstraction to give thoughtful speeches in public, even when the anti-intellectual crowd treats public displays of intellect as a vulnerability. I also happen to like that she, despite proving in her speech (as elsewhere) that she is most likely an intellectual giant, takes a humble, scholarly, academic tone, whereby she distances herself from her ideas just enough to let us all know that, while she has put a lot of thought into her views, she is open to the possibility of being wrong, and she is respectful of those who have reasonable disagreements with her. This adds up to intellectual honesty of a very powerful, compelling sort. Truly, she is a wiser Latina woman than some would have you think. (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 9th, 2008
6:20 am	#10 -- Prokofiev Violin Concerto #1 in D Hear the Prokofiev Violin Concerto #1 in D played here by Anne Akiko Meyers. The tenth spot was the most difficult to fill, and it could have gone to any of several worthy pieces. Prokofiev won out partly because I decided not to get too controversial this early by letting Richard Strauss onto the list. Without Strauss, though, I had a gap begging to be filled by something somewhat modern, lest the list end up with too many Romantic indulgences. Although the premier of Prokofiev's first violin concerto went relatively poorly for multiple reasons, one people cite is the fickleness of the Parisian audience, who thought it was not shocking enough. Contrast this with Stravisky's Rite of Spring, which famously flopped because Paris found it too ahead of its time. Unlike some composers of the day, Prokofiev made an effort at a sound that was at least somewhat fresh, without filling the entire piece with passages ripped wholesale from Beethoven and Brahms. The piece opens with a nice, pretty melody and some energy, but the first movement is more intersting for its ability to make the listener feel as if he or she is sitting on a cloud, gently supported by some of the lightest notes in the violin repertoire. The real fire comes only when the second movement takes its turn, with the soloist running all over the place, sliding notes around, dodging blasts from the brass section of the orchestra, and playfully (or ironically) dipping into the forbidden world of harmoics. The third movement begins with some rhythmic notes that remind the listener that this is Prokofiev, not Shostakovich, and then the violin takes a bit of a backseat to some loud orchestration. Things get interesting again a few minutes later, with the violin doing a dizzying rising and falling routine, and with a few variations and a cameo of the airiness of the end of the first movement, this carries most of the rest of the concerto; the listener sits on the same cloud, but this time it moves up and down and up and down, and then it finally settles on a soft climb up into the sky, where it disappears. This is not the most accessible concerto ever written, and the range of the dynamics makes it unsuitable for listening to while driving unless you enjoy either missing the pianissimo parts entirely or having your ears blown out by the forte segments, but it is an excellent piece for home or for work. Its somewhat short length makes it easy to fit onto an mp3 player, and concentrating on the notes makes for a good, medium-length excercise to get the brain in gear in the morning. Especially imporant for the latter function is that the concerto never lapses into a stale middle like so many others do; it covers wide enough ground to hold the attention of even the attentive listener from start to finish, and then it sends the listener away giddy. Current Music: Prokofiev Violin Concerto #1 in D (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
8:25 am	Countdown And so, I remain a graduate student for at least one more semester (and probably more). This is good, even if it took forever for me to see my grades to confirm everything. True, the chances of actually failing out of the program were slim, but I like seeing things in writing. Not only did I not fail overall, but I managed to do well even in my horribly difficult class on differentiable manifolds. Clearly, the final exam went better than I thought it might. Next up is a standard slate of second year courses on analysis, topology, and algebra, followed by the most important January in ages. I'll take the preliminary examinations for the doctoral program at the beginning of next year, and those basically determine if I'm get to force everyone to call me 'doctor' or not. Obviously, I'll be studying quite a bit between now and then. In the meantime, I realize I haven't posted much in a while, so I thought I'd liven things with a list of something that means a lot to me. Those who know me best know that a prime candidate for "something that means a lot to me" is the violin concerto. I still have a bit of figuring to do around the bottom of the list (four candidates fighting for two spots), so I'll have to post the first entry a bit later today. I'll try to have links to recordings of each so you, the reader, can experience some of the greatest music of all time for free from the safety of your computer. A couple of my choices are definitely at odds with the general consensus on this matter, as most readers will notice by the time I finish the entire list, but this project is a matter of my opinion. Discussion is welcome, however. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
10:52 am	This is why I don't like political books After all the good things I have heard about John Allen Paulos and his book Innumeracy, why is it that when I sift through the book in the bookstore, the first thing I see is a blatant instance of terrible mathematical reasoning, violating pretty much the same rules the guy sets out to establish? The issue at hand is Paulos's baseball example, where he claims that Pete Rose's 44 game hitting streak was "a slightly more unlikely accomplishment" than Joe DiMaggio's 56 game streak, since DiMaggio was a better hitter. This, in the middle of a chapter talking about the Law of Large Numbers, where the point is that things unlikely in individuals are likely when looked for in large groups of individuals, sometimes faster that one might think. For instance, assuming you were not born on February 29, think of your birthday. Pick a random person and ask their birthday. The odds of sharing a birthday are 1/365, so 364 in 365 times you do not. Now pick 23 random people and get their birthdays. The odds of two of them sharing a birtday are 1 - 364!/(341!*365^23), which is over 50%. Simple explanation, right? Paulos, however, wants to have his cake and eat it, too. By focusing on the less impressive Rose streak, he is able to argue that such a streak is more amazing yet still likely given the Law of Large Numbers. I think he even calculates how often such a streak can be expected. What he does not take into account, possibly because it sort of hurts his argument, is that DiMaggio's streak is more amazing in part because the Law of Large Numbers cannot be applied to players of DiMaggio's caliber, since those players hardly ever exist! Oops! Given Player X with skillset A and Player Y with skillset B, the likelihood of Player X hitting in some number of games might be lower than player Y hitting a longer streak because A is worse than B, but the probability that there exists a player Z with skillset close to A achieving a feat is CONSIDERABLY GREATER than the probability that there exists a player Z' with skillset B achieving a harder feat, since players with skillset B are far, far more uncommon. What is amusing is that this is the very same error Paulos points out elsewhere in the book when discussing Bayesian reasoning. Think of people going in to be tested for cancer. The test is accurate 98% of the time, meaning 2% of the time the result is wrong. Assume .5% of people actually have cancer. This means that of 100,000 people tested, 500 will have cancer. Of those, 490 will have positive tests. Of the other 99,500 people, 97,510 will get negative tests, BUT that means 1990 will get positive tests. (These are rough, probabilistic numbers, of course.) This means that even given a test that is accurate 98% of the time, false positives outnumber real positives by a factor of about 4:1, since actual cancer rates are so low. This is a fairly commonly cited example, but it is also a common error. The same problem applies to lionizing Pete Rose, because even though it is less likely for one Pete Rose to hit as well as DiMaggio (or, actually, not as well, but at least close enough for people to notice), it is far, far more likely for a Pete Rose to hit in 44 games than it is for there to be anyone hitting in 56, just because there are so many players like Pete Rose. Thus, handicapping DiMaggio is entirely unfair. There are plenty of things to complain about regarding how we view DiMaggio's hitting streak, with the most serious argument being that we are cherry picking an even for its rarity rather than for its value, but I think those arguments fall flat, as well, since we did NOT pick DiMaggio's streak merely by doing a Stephen Jay Gould sort of analysis to find how unlikely it was and then declare it to be epic. Rather, the hitting streak has been with baseball for a long, long time, even if it is only a record of something interesting rather than a record of something useful to a team. What is unlikely is that something we picked more or less arbitrarily ended up with such an unlikely result, rather than combing through all possible baseball happenings and looking for the one that happened that we would expect to be rarest. Looking at hitting streaks is, then, sort of akin to picking a somewhat arbitrary player and then seeing if the player accomplishes some unlikely feat, rather than digging through all the players to see how likely it would be for at least one of them to accomplish the same feat. It may not be meaningful that our chosen player (like our chosen statistical category) happens to be the one with the anomaly, but it is at least fun to see that we got lucky on that one. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 31st, 2008
8:56 am	Sometimes I actually use the internet for things I tried looking at the website for my manifolds course last Saturday to see if my exam was today, and all it said was to expect an exam this week. So, naturally, I have been doing little other than studying for the last couple of days, including an all-nighter last night leaving me with just enough left in my proverbial tank to last through class period. Of course, this means that when I checked the website for the class today, it said the exam is next week, and I just spent all night reading clear through the first six chapters of my textbook for nothing. I think I'm going to go sleep now. On the bright side, this means two things: 1) I am totally going to ace my midterm, since I am more than ready for it now. I actually have a decent intuitive understanding of vector bundles on smooth manifolds now, and that's something I couldn't say a couple of weeks ago. 2) Instead of wearing myself out over exams this week, I am going to go home and enjoy what Netflix has sent me. Sure, I have another exam tomorrow, but that is one I thought was going to be last Thursday, so I pretty much did the same thing with it. It was more my fault that time, though, as I missed class on Tuesday, when there was supposed to be a review session, only to have the professor miss class as well, postponing the review and the exam. I have another exam on Wednesday, but that's for a class I find easy as pie, I already know the material on it, the professor drops one exam score in that class, and I got strong A's on the first two midterms. This is a good day. Instead of feeling like an utter failure (as can be caused by exams), I feel like I belong in grad school, and I have a real chance at a 4.0. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 21st, 2008
2:45 pm	See, had I done my draft today instead of weeks ago Now Rasmus is at AAA and Lackey is on the DL. Way to ruin my Friday, John Lackey. (Comment on this)
10:50 am	BASEBALL 2008 Faster than a speeding Juan Pierre, more powerful than Ryan Howard after an offseason at the weight room, it's FANTASY BASEBALL 2008!!! Edit: I think I mistyped my LJ-Cut ( More under this cut ) (Comment on this)
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
1:33 pm	I know the rest of you agree You know what I hate most about grad school? Classes. My research is starting to get really exciting, but I don't get to think about it this weekend. No, I just get to think about two sets of homework and a midterm next week. In the back of my mind, I'm going to be imagining the joys of studying the topology of an energy landscape I'm studying, but I have to keep less revolutionary material at the front of my mind, just to avoid failing out. I haven't yet internalized the Piled Higher and Deeper comic about how you don't need to worry about grades as long as you do well enough to pass. (Comment on this)
12:31 pm	Voting day! (sort of) I participated in "early voting" this morning before class, so I have officially performed my civic duty with respect to primary season. I voted for McCain, primarily because I do not want to see Huckabee win any more states. Recent polls show McCain with a large lead over Huckabee in Texas, which is nice, but I wanted to be sure. The biggest issue I am now trying to sort out is where the different candidates stand on freedom in labor and capital markets, i.e. immigration and trade. The elephant in the room for the Republicans this year is that most of them have been scrambling to be more silly and xenophobic than the rest, completely ignoring reality in favor of trying to scare up votes from people who just plain don't like Mexico for some reason. I've mentioned this before, but I now find it sort of funny (funny sad, not funny ha-ha) that the Republican party line actually appears worse on immigration than the Democratic party line on trade (ignoring the "New Democrats," whom I generally love). From what I can tell, Tom Tancredo appears to hate McCain's stance on immigration, so that's a point in McCain's favor. The Democrats, of course, have the opposite problem, and they seem to be even tougher to sort out (especially Obama). Lately they seem to be falling all over themselves to bash trade. Clinton, in particular, made a huge gaffe in opposing a trade agreement with key U.S. ally Colombia. If she ever became President, I'd hope she would see the error of her ways. Some say Obama is a much better trade ticket, indeed the only candidate with decent positions on both trade and immigration, but others disagree. I, in particular, find fault with him for opposing the pending U.S.-Korea trade agreement, which is just about my favorite piece of legislation since NAFTA. Oh, and both Clinton and Obama have been critical of NAFTA lately, which makes me worry that perhaps a Hillary administration would use something other than traditional Clintonomics as its policy. So while Clinton appears bent on alienating Colombia, Obama appears to be married to home state pork (surprising that an Illinois senator would be all for subsidies for corn-based ethanol?) to the point where he hurts foreign farmers. Not good on either of them. And both of them have been quick on the draw with predictable populist spew since the Wisconsin primary or so. Is this what to expect from either of them? Or, is this just pandering to the Left while scrambling for the party's nomination? I certainly hope that's the case. (Edwards has never been a factor in competing for my vote. One of the articles linked mentions him "behaving like the love child of Huey Long and Pat Buchanan," which is a sure way to get me not to like you.) Some people certainly think that Obama, in particular, is straying toward populism, but the timing of this move is a little too suspicious for me to completely believe it. I don't think we'll really know where he stands on this until later in the campaign, if then. He has some of the same rhetoric of everyone else on his side of the political table, but he at least seems to have more respect for markets than Clinton, who has been parroting the Loony Left idea of putting a freeze on trade agreements altogether. The more I read about these two, the more I think I'd probably support Obama over Clinton just on issues alone. However, I am not yet ready to endorse a candidate for President yet, and I am not sure when I will be able to do so. When I do endorse someone, however, expect it to be McCain or Obama. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 4th, 2008
9:59 am	Countdown One day until Super Tuesday. Ten Days until pitchers and catchers report. I tried something a little different on the way to work/school last Friday, and I was disappointed. Normally I spend my commute listening to a CD or to NRP, but I switched over to an AM station for a lark. I found a show called "Walton and Johnson." I won't be making that mistake again. In my eight years since moving to Houston, I have never heard such filth from any actual live person. I mean, this wasn't just a South Park style "including toilet humor to spice up relatively intelligent debate" sort of thing. It was pure, mindless redneck racist filth. On an average day, I hear approximately zero racial slurs. That number might go up slightly if I watch an episode of South Park, where the horribly racist Eric Cartman comes off as a complete dolt for being such a jerk. These radio jocks, however, actually appeared to buy into their idiocy. At issue was immigration. Not just immigration in general (which NO ONE cares about), but immigration from a particular country to the south of us, which is allegedly full of scary people who will, uh, who will do something or other to you. I never quite figured out why Mexicans are supposed to be so scary. They're just like any other people I've ever met. I suspect Mexico is like most foreign countries in that it's pretty much just like home once you find a job, learn the local language, and learn to enjoy the local cuisine. These radio jocks, however, hate them, and they never seem to tire of reminding their listeners of this fact. At one point, they even subjected the audience to a horribly unfunny song, to the tune of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," about a Mexican immigrant. In itself, that's pretty lame, but the song--played ON THE RADIO during the day, making the offense actionable according to FCC regulations, by the way--included a handful of vile racial slurs. I won't say which ones, but they were there. Thoroughly disgusting, and not at all representative of the city. Do these idiots not realize how scum like them hurts the image of everyone else here? There are enough people up North who think we're all a bunch of redneck morons, and hearing these jerks probably reinforces their (incorrect) perception. Most people I run into on a daily basis are not inbred racist redneck morons, but you'd never know it from the stupidity that pretends to represent us on the airwaves. Sadly, more people are going to hear the morons like "Walton and Johnson" than the real Houstonian heroes, like Mayor Bill White, a target on the show for mentioning that most of us here do not want to "kick all the [immigrants] out." I love my city, and I love my state, and I realize it's impossible to have a large population without having some idiots somewhere, but why do people like these radio jerks still have jobs? If I said anything at all like they said, I'd be out on the street in a minute, probably because in my profession I'm expected to be a decent human being who knows how to show compassion for my fellow humans, as well as how to formulate a rational argument. These guys don't have to do any of that. They're essentially paid to be stupid. When starting up my radio again this morning, with the dial still switched to the AM station, partly because I was listening to Dennis Miller last Friday (Miller is a class act, by the way--he even resisted the urge to insult a woman who called the show to inform him that "God said the Rudy Giuliani will be the next President") and partly because I didn't drive anywhere over the weekend and therefore hadn't put in a CD, I heard these same morons ranting about two things. First, they claimed that America should do away with the Fifth Amendment. They didn't actually say it that way, since I doubt either of them has ever read the Bill of Rights far enough down to know that the Fifth Amendment states that no one should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." No, they just said that the government should execute people without trials if the crimes they are accused of are particularly heinous, as long as they confess to something. There are many reasons why this is stupid, not the least of which is because we don't want police beating confessions out of people, and also we don't want to execute crazy people who might confess to crimes they didn't commit. There's a reason, a darn good reason, why that particular Ammendment made it into the Bill of Rights. But to the redneck radio crowd, this might as well not exist. Second, can you guess which Presidential candidates they support? One of them, not surprisingly, supports Ron Paul (while claiming Paul needs to be tougher on immigration, and that pretty much all of the candiates are evil for not wanting to kick millions of people out of the country). The other? Huckabee, though he claimed he doesn't actually know what Huckabee stands for and doesn't plan to bother finding out. The Huckabee thing is hilariously dumb on its own. The immigrant thing reveals, basically, racism, as everyone who has heard these idiots drop racial slurs on Mexicans already knows. I mean, if you're opposed to finding ways to make the current immigration system work, while claiming at the same time that the problem is with the law (basically, you claim to hate these people because they are breaking the law rather than because they are not white, but then you say you would hate them even if they weren't breaking the law), you sort of give away the fact that you dislike them just because they are from Mexico. Disliking people just because they are Mexicans is classic racist behavior. --- Enough about radio jocks who probably don't deserve the space I've wasted on them already. I'd prefer to share my own views on immigration. I'll admit I don't know enough about the issue to say whether I'm overlooking something that might change the field entirely, but my gut feeling is that it's a NONISSUE. I'm a capitalist. I'm a globalist. I support the free flow of capital as much as is possible, since when everyone agrees to that, it leads to everyone winning. This is one reason why the world became so prosperous after World War II. We all decided to get along, and we lifted lots of trade barriers. But, why should labor and human capital be treated as someone completely different from widgets and dollars? For instance, if someone wants to immigrate to take on work in America, why not let them? It's not like the country has an unemployment problem, and it's not like an unskilled immigrant is going to take middle class jobs away (as if a little competition is a bad thing all of a sudden--if someone else wants your job, you just prove you can do it better, whether that other person looks like you or not). The biggest problem is that a lot of immigrants don't get paid what their work is worth, since their work ends up off the books. Other immigrants or people here on work or school visas have to go through ridiculous amounts of red tape to keep their spots. I have seen this, and I don't see much good about it. These people are here because they are contributing to our economy, and by extension the global economy, in the way that seems best. (Disclaimer: I do a lot of work with people on work or student visas, mostly visiting scientists. I even watched a couple of them forced to fight so they could stick around and advance the cause of science.) Kicking them out accomplishes... what, exactly? Of course, we don't see calls to kick out all the visiting European workers, whose main difference from visiting Mexican workers is that they look different and work in different fields. Grant immediate amnesty to all immigrants, and require them to get Social Security Numbers. Require companies to properly document their workers. Suddenly, they're just another pool of Americans going after comparable jobs, rather than some sort of underclass suffering through starvation wage jobs just because they're a step better than they were back home. Force companies to treat them like any other employees, and then everybody wins. The workers and their kids gain better jobs, which leads to better education. The improvement in worker skills from education leads to more human capital for American companies. Plus, they get all that labor. Will any of this happen? No, not while Mexico is villified the way it appears to be in current political discourse. (Republicans, you suck for contributing to this.) I'm just not convinced that the cause is anything more than politicians trying to score points by drumming up fear, particularly fear of darker-skinned people. They can't do that with black people anymore, since everyone wised up to that scam, so they have to find someone else. You even see this from the Democrats to some degree. (Remember the Obama campaign report that tried to mock Clinton by implying she was from India? It said something like, "Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)," as if India is somehow bad or something. Whatever point the brief was trying to make, it made it by trying to drum up fear of Indian people. Here in the 21st century, that sort of thing just shouldn't happen.) So, next time you're thinking about immigration, examine your reasons for holding your position. If your reasoning jumps out a little too quickly, like a talking point or political bumper sticker might, try rethinking things. A lot of these talking points are rooted in little more than xenophobia. In fact, that's a good rule for any political position. Don't just accept it because you might have some rationalization for the position. Don't accept it because it's cool or because some smart guy gave an argument for it once (since there are smart people who hold positions all over the political compass). Find out just what assumptions you have to make to support your position. Critique even your fundamental assumptions, like the idea that certain types of immigration are bad "just because it's illegal" or whatever. Don't jump on bandwagons just because they sound good. (Example: "Fair trade"? I like trade and I like fairness, so why not "fair trade"?) Don't stick to party lines. Always question everything. After all, Socrates was right. The unexamined life is not worth living. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 1st, 2008
11:35 am	One of the sure things in life Taxes: DONE! While it's sort of nice that I am getting a four-digit sum of money directly deposited into my bank account in the next week or so, I need to learn to fill out my W-4 form correctly so I don't end up giving an interest free loan of money that I could better spend/invest myself. My grad school costs considerably less than my undergrad, so I don't get as much of a lifetime learning credit anymore. On the bright side, am not going deeper in debt. In fact, as soon as I pay my electric bill for January and my rent for Febrary (both due by Monday) I will have no outstanding financial obligations. It's been a while since that was the case. Time to go back to reading, then. Current book: Introduction to Smooth Manifolds by Jack Lee. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 18th, 2008
2:29 pm	Interesting twist Out of nowhere, I was offered a teaching fellowship, and I was able to negotiate a half teaching, half research fellowship. So now I'm fully-funded, I have a salary, and for the first time in a while I have health insurance. Nifty. Financial woes are officially over. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
8:49 pm	Life update Registration this semester was surprisingly hard. I had to pay off last semester's debt, and then I almost didn't get a loan to cover this semester. Next Fall, I get funding, so none of this will be such a bother anymore. The graduate program director here pretty much confirmed that a teaching fellowship is there for me if I want it (starting in August). It comes with free tuition, so it's tempting, but I don't want to have to give up my research projects just to teach undergrads, so I'm going to have to wait until this summer to decide. Research is nice and rewarding right now, and while it doesn't exactly pay enough for me to live like a king. Speaking of rewards, by the way, it looks like I'm going to have another paper published this Spring. This new lab has paid off nicely. I was told I can either write the paper and be listed as first author or else let someone else write the paper with my data and then settle for second author. I'll decide which when I learn how much work my geometry of manifolds class is going to be. I have a bit of a dilemma to work out, though. I spoke to a guy who is considering hiring me on as a research assistant in the mathematics department (since I could use the extra money). This might be a good idea from a financial standpoint, but when I spoke to him, he tried to pressure me into taking more applied math classes, possibly because his specialty is in applied math. (At my undergrad school, applied math had a separate department, so I never encountered this, but apparently that's not the case here.) I want to work in applied math, specifically in mathematical biology. However, this is largely because I can actually get work in that area (and I'm really good at it, to boot). For now, while I'm still in school, I'd rather pursue pure math. The biological applications of the sorts of abstract theoretical fields I like studying are a little harder to imagine, at least at the moment. While I could argue that I could bring a more theoretical approach to biology with a more pure mathematical thesis or two on my way to my doctorate, more than one person has told me that I should diversify a bit more. I like to think that my diverse CV comes from the fact that I do biology in my spare time, but sooner or later I'm going to have to choose between making my biology work my thesis or letting that be something in topology or geometric group theory or whatever. And that's not going to be an easy choice. At least I have a while to think about it. (Comment on this)
8:40 pm	Another simple analogy that shows what is wrong with "intelligent design" Stolen from a post by LiveJournal user "saint_gasoline." "Say you left some cake out on the counter, and notice it is gone in the morning. Someone must have taken it or eaten it. You notice paw prints on the counter. This leads you to suspect the cat. But the paw prints match the dog's. Later, you find chocolate icing on the dog's face, and after analyzing its stool you find traces of chocolate cake. Now, any normal person would come to the conclusion that the dog ate the cake. What an 'IDT' proponent would do is argue that some aspect of this scenario is impossible. An IDT proponent would argue that his mathematical models show that it is impossible for the dog in question to leap to the top of the counter and get at the cake. The reason this is not a criticism is because, obviously, we already KNOW the dog was on the counter from the substantial evidence, so clearly the model is wrong." I would add that they then conclude that a magical being must have given the dog wings. Basically, the ID crowd wants so badly for their religious beliefs to be validated that they look desperately for reasons why FACTS we can observe are wrong. Evolutionary biologists argue about how the dog did what we know the dog did. They might disagree strongly about whether the dog climbed up on this or that chair to reach the table, or whether someone came by and lifted the dog up, or whatever. ID says that the problem is impossible to solve, despite the fact that several solutions might have been proposed, and therefore magic a designer is needed. And yet, if you question their methodology, they won't quite grasp why they are not exactly using the scientific method. What makes them dense is not their questioning of a particular theory about how the dog got on the table. The real scientists out there question their own findings on this all the time. No, what makes the IDiots dense is that they insist on denying FACTS simply because they make their own, clumsy models specifically intended to show why these OBSERVED FACTS ought to be impossible to observe (and yet, they are observed). (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 7th, 2008
8:43 am	New semester, new goals Several things of interest, for those following my life. First, I'm officially attempting a qualifying exam after this semester. This one will be over my "geometry of manifolds" class, which I am signing up for now. My schedule for next semester includes one course in real analysis, one course in linear algebra (yuck), and my manifolds class. All look to be fun. I'm also officially preparing for the topology qualifying exam, as well, which the director of the program here told me I should take soon. This pleases me, if only because it means the director thinks I should be ready for an exam soon. This will probably please me less on the night before the exam, but let's take one thing at a time. My biolab research is going okay, but it could be better. I didn't get as much done over Christmas as I should have, what with all the celebrating and everything. However, I have just learned that there is an opening for a research assistant in the math department, this one with one of my biolab's collaborators, so I will be competing for both a teaching assistantship (starting next spring, and I was told I'm pretty much a shoe-in with my grades and GRE scores) as well as a research assistant job. On top of my other research, and maybe with some tutoring on the side, I think I can actually stop drowning in red ink this year. This is shaping up to be the best year of my life, ever. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 5th, 2008
5:00 am	(meme) Sounds fair to me.... I Am A: True Neutral Elf Wizard (4th Level) Ability Scores: Strength-18 Dexterity-20 Constitution-20 Intelligence-20 Wisdom-20 Charisma-19 Alignment: True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction. Race: Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful. Class: Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells. Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail) (Comment on this)
3:37 am	Of all the comparisons According to some comedian or news outlet or other, several of the candidates have compared this year's elections to the movie Seabiscuit. This makes no sense. Were the Iowa caucus really a modern version of Seabiscuit, then Kucinich would have won. Yes, that's a "short" joke. That's all I've got today. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
3:14 am	For those who haven't noticed yet Mike Huckabee is a nut. The story referenced describes how he has affirmed, in public, the belief that women are to be submissive to men. And this is the same guy who once said gay people should be put in concentration camps (or so I'm told--his actual statement was for quarantine, but that's still pretty bad). How this medieval cretin is even getting consideration is one reason I refuse to identify as a Republican, despite the fact that my personal views on issues I consider important better reflect the Republican platform (but remember, my hot-button issue is free trade). It's no wonder I've voted Libertarian in the last two elections, despite not really liking them, either. (1 Comment |Comment on this)