Searching CraigsList for apartments just gets more and more exciting. Here's a bit from the latest gem:

"I'm looking for a Straight male or a female she can go anyway I really don't care,with no kids or pets thank you."

Right. Yeah. And then there's this sicko:

"HI ! I HAVE A LARGE ROOM TO SHARE . FEMALE ONLY . TILL YOU GET ON YOUR FEET . PLEASE NO BOYFRIEND DRAMA NEEDED ! LOL . I'M A GUY . PLACE IS SAFE AND CLEAN . NO PETS , NO SMOKING , DRUG FREE . FREE CABLE , FREE LITE AND GAS . JUST BE OPEN MINDED . IF YOU COOK AND DO SOME LITE CLEANIN . LETS MAKE A DEAL . SEND PICTURE AND ### . PLEASE NO CRAZY LADYS . BUSINESS !!! LOL."

Drug free? No crazy ladys [sic]? Well, that kinda rules out the only possible target audience for this ad. Better luck next time, Pimp Daddy. (Also, I'm not really buying the "place is safe" claim. Sounds pretty unsafe to me. Unless you're actually on your feet... and holding a can of mace.

It would be ok to banish these people from the Republic, right? Or from any human society?

Philosophy Student Discovers Platonic Form in Artichoke Heart!

Roman Altshuler was just about to make his usual omelet when he stopped short at slicing open the last of the artichoke hearts slated for its filling. Taking a closer look, he could clearly discern the Platonic Form of the Good in the heart.

"I never thought something like this could happen to me," Altshuler told the New York Times. "I mean, sure, I like Plato and all, but I'm really a Kantian at heart."

While the appearance of a Platonic Form is obviously a momentous ontological discovery, skeptics have been quick to question its a priori authenticity. One anonymous expert noted that Aristotle had decisively ruled out the possibility of a single Platonic Form of the Good. "Surely the artichoke heart is a good," he noted, "but delicious or not, it is hardly a refutation of Nicomachean Ethics bk. i.6."

Others have been quick to accuse the alleged discoverer of committing the naturalistic fallacy in his observations. "It is obviously an error of the worst sort to claim that whatever yumminess could be discerned in this artichoke heart just is the Good," wrote common sense philosopher G. E. Moore by posthumous post. "No doubt we find all sorts of delectable vegetables good, but to think that some feature of a particular vegetable actually is the Good, is as elementary a mistake as the thought that Deep Purple is purple." (Professor Moore was, apparently, referencing Russian President Dmitri Medevedev's recent surprise upon discovering that all members of the iconic band were, in fact, very pink.)

Altshuler remained unfazed. "I think this just goes to show that Reality has a sense of humor. Who would've expected the eternal Form of the Good to pop up in something so ephemeral?" He briefly considered selling the Ideal artichoke heart on E-Bay, but quickly came to the conclusion that consuming the Good is probably Gooder than selling it.

"I know what I saw," he pointed out. "Why should anyone be surprised that Aristotle was wrong? It wouldn't be the first time; he had problems with all sorts of things, like counting teeth. And maybe he just didn't eat enough artichokes over in Macedonia." He noted, further, that if wackos all over the country keep finding imaginary biblical figures in their food, it shouldn't be all that surprising that something as real as the Good would pop up sooner or later.

In any case, he notes stroking his belly, "the proof is in the omelet."

Journalistic Bias and Torture

A few days ago I had an interview for a position that involves teaching journalism, in the course of which my interviewers asked me whether I believe that the media is biased. I, of course, replied that although I respect the media's [overall] attempts to be objective, human beings cannot escape the bias of their respective cultures. Naturally I had failed to consider the fact that I was being interviewed by journalists, who do believe that the media can be unbiased (they are, after all, trained to be unbiased!), and they pointed out that this is a position shared by most of their undergrads. What I should have mentioned, of course, is that my view is not the "anything goes" type of relativism we find in so many undergrads, but more like the hermeneutic view, namely: that we cannot even understand the world without certain prejudices, so that "objective" reporting is only an ideal.

Here is something along the lines of an example, found in an AP article:

the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

It is specifically that last part I want to point to. On the one hand, it seeks to be unbiased: since there is controversy over whether or not waterboarding (one of the interrogation tacts in question, as the article mentions), the unbiased reporter, one might think, should mention only that critics call such tactics torture, not that they really are torture. But this is obviously not unbiased, because one could say the exact opposite, and have it look equally unbiased, namely:

the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation techniques that constitute torture, though administration officials deny this.

We would get the same appearance of objectivity, but what would be different would be the framing effect: in this second case, the reader is naturally drawn to think of waterboarding as torture, and to make a prima facie supposition that the administration is doing something shady by denying that fact. One might say: But that's exactly what would make such wording biased! Well, sure, but it also brings out exactly why the wording in the first version is biased: The wording naturally leads the reader to think that waterboarding is just an "interrogation tactic," and there are certain naysayers who, because they are critics, insist on calling it "torture."

If the wording leads one naturally to that reading, then, it is biased by virtue of its framing of the issue. After all, it isn't like there are these critics out there who, because they are critics, insist on slandering the perfectly acceptable practice of waterboarding. Rather, they are critics precisely because waterboarding is torture. Obviously one could rephrase this and say, instead, that "they are critics because they believe that waterboarding is torture." But if you phrase it in this way, you've taken a stance, because you are now suggesting once again that whether or not waterboarding is torture is a completely subjective claim, one about which different people have different beliefs, so that there can be nothing prima facie objectionable about defending it.

My point is not that one of these phrasings is more objective than the other. My point, rather, is obviously that there is no objective way of making this point. The journalist is forced to take a stand here, and either way she goes will look biased. The journalist who wrote the AP piece has already framed the issue in precisely the terms in which the administration has framed them. So what is the journalist who wants to be unbiased to do? I would think that the less biased way of framing the issue would be the one I have suggested, even though--really because--it goes exactly contrary to the admin's position. Why is this less biased? Because almost nobody with any experience or knowledge of torture, aside from Bush's yes-men, seems to have any doubts about whether waterboarding is torture. So one is less likely to show bias if one takes the view shared by a majority of experts, particularly experts who do not seem to be pushing their own agendas.

There is no real argument about whether or not waterboarding is torture; or, at least, it is no more an argument than the one over whether or not ID is a legitimate scientific theory. The argument, rather, is about whether or not the US should sanction torture. And here there is a fairly unbiased way of putting it:

The administration believes that the interests of national security require that we condone torture carried out in our name. Critics disagree.

Home Schooling

Thanks to the California ruling, the home schooling debate is in full swing... well, sort of. So far, I haven't seen much of a debate, because I haven't seen anyone opposing home schooling. I'll try my hand at that when I have some time. For now, though, I'm curious about the frequently cited claims that home schooled kids are better educated. For example, this bit of self-promotion insists that home schooled kids routinely perform slightly (they don't say "slightly") better than the national average. Their conclusion: Homeschooling works!

Well, uhm, ok. I'm not going to debate the statistics. Home schooled kids do a little better than the national average on standardized tests. What does this tell us about the benefits of home schooling? Nothing whatsoever. Duh.

I'll have to look into the statistics later, but it's fairly obvious that families that home school their kids are not a random sample of the population. And it's well known by now that home environment is a major factor in academic performance. So it should not be overly surprising if families capable of home schooling should end up providing a better academic environment for children than the average family. Does this show that home schooling is likely to lead to more educated kids? No. It shows what we already know: that having parents who care about education (and have it) is likely to lead to more educated kids.

How that's a defense of home schooling is anybody's guess.

David Mamet comes out of the closet about liberalism:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/full

I couldn't get past the first page. But I'd say this about that first page:

1. Sure, Kennedy is guilty of many of the same things that Bush is guilty of (though I'd question taking this too far: violations of principles can be distinguished according to the ends those violations aim to achieve). But isn't this just further evidence that the only reason JFK was so revered is that he was charismatic, young, and hot? I mean, seriously, I'm pretty sure I would not have been a JFK supporter back in the day.

2. "Waiting for Godot" is "the greatest play of the 20th century"? Even though this does seem to be the default view among academics, I just think it just shows that academics have no taste. "Waiting for Godot" is juvenile crap. I mean, mixing theology with fart jokes doesn't elevate fart jokes; it degrades theology. I miss Clement Greenberg.

3. As far as I can tell, Mamet's point is something like this: brain-dead liberalism (what I call knee-jerk liberalism) is stupid. Well, uh, yeah. So?

RALPH NADER: CAN'T THE "LEFT" MAKE THIS GUY DISAPPEAR?

Announcing his presidential candidacy once again, the most evil (supposed) leftist in the US--when questioned about whether he's worried that his candidacy might help the Republicans--had the following, now widely-cited answer:

If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form. You think the American people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain who almost gives an indication that he's the candidate of perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas?

Context matters. So it's worth noting that the context here--overlooked by a lot of commenters--seems to involve Nader expressing his absolute faith in the Democrats' ability to win this election. On the other hand, it also seems that Nader is saying more than that--something about what the democrats deserve.

1. Nader seems to be assuming that, if the Democrats are too incompetent to win this election even with small competition from him, then they don't deserve to be in power anyway. Here's the problem: Nader seems to be assuming that, if the Democrats lose, this will just be bad for the Democrats. In other words, if they lose, that will be fair punishment for them. One problem: as we (not Nader, but many others) might have learned by now, in the current political climate, having Republicans in the White House isn't just bad for Democrats. It's bad for the country and it's bad for the world. The "lesser of two evils" refrain is perfectly legitimate here. Whatever anyone on the left may think of the Democrats, undermining them within the current political situation is more evil than supporting them.

2. Why the hell does this guy need to run? As far as I can tell, he seems to think that running is the best way to get a leftist voice into the political system. Now hell, I'm all for more left thinking in American politics. And I'm all for having more than two parties. But the above considerations might give one pause. It is also worth nothing two points. First, one can run within either of the existing parties without pushing the party line (Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul). Second, one can have a rather loud leftist voice without running for President. Howard Zinn is one example. A more obvious one, and one who is probably louder than Nader in any case, is Noam Chomsky.

So, seriously, can't Nader just apologize to the left, to the country, and to the world, and go work for Chomsky clipping bits about our foreign policy from newspapers?

WHY PUTIN REALLY IS THE RATIONAL CHOICE

A friend referred me to an article on the Russian elections in NYT, noting that the comments were more interesting than the article itself.

It's great that they translated many of the Russian comments, but too bad that they didn't translate the numerous responses from other readers to each comment--they're somewhat interesting in their own right (i.e., the strongly pro-Kremlin comment writers DO get people disagreeing with them, but usually not on the issues that Americans disagree on). None of this is strange, though, or new. Today I heard the following, for example, on NPR: Putin has decided that Russians need to stop being ashamed of their history. The new manuals for teachers, then, instruct them to teach their students that Stalin was an incredibly efficient leader, and while sure, he committed some atrocities, much worse atrocities were committed by other nations (e.g., the US in Hiroshima/Nagasaki). Stalin revival: scary. Interesting point: the counter-example is not the Germans (who were of course for decades the feared and horrible enemy), but the US.

My favorite--because most absurd of the ones I've read--comment on the article:
"For the whole history of Russia (and then the USSR) we’ve lacked freedoms, and nothing bad has come of it."

Well, the "nothing bad" part must come from the new history lessons. But I think overall the comments are interesting, and I wish the NYT were the sort of newspaper that could write intelligent articles about this sort of thing. The major point I'd note:

Many of the Russian commenters, to Americans, look like sheep blindly buying into propaganda. Of course this article--like the American reception of such things--looks to the Russians like sheep buying in to American propaganda. Of course, as usual, both sides are partly right. The Russian side is, I think, perfectly rational. Here's why: Especially under the current US administration, "democracy" and "freedom" really have become propaganda words. This is what happens to any concept--however noble--the moment it is used to justify aggression. Whatever one might think of Bush, it is simply an undeniable fact that, to the rest of the world, the American claim to championing democracy is nothing but empty ideology.

But there is more: what, exactly, is so great about democracy? Now there are, in theory, many wonderful things. But let's assume that most people are not theoreticians. Let's assume that most people judge the value of a concept on pragmatic grounds. Well, as one commenter notes, the reason that the West has gained ground in places like Ukraine and Georgia is that Americans are good at making business proposals: that is, they "sell" democracy to other countries the way one sells a business deal. And it is perfectly rational for a Russian to believe this: What advantage of democracy can the US or the EU legitimately point to? Economic success. (Sure, there's the issue of greater personal freedom. But most Russians don't seem to feel like their freedom is that limited; and, in any case, as many of the commenters point out, freedom isn't all that important to most people compared to more basic quality-of-life issues). So money is the main thing to be said in favor of democracy. It is, in other words, a business proposal.

Why are most of the former Soviet satellites desperate to get into the EU? For the economy. And the various reforms in democracy and freedom that occur in these countries are often the result of a desire to join the EU to make money. So, of course, from the perspective of someone who already believes that democracy and freedom are a good thing, it looks like the EU is a positive agent of change: it appeals to governments' self-interest in order to spread democracy. But to someone not already convinced of those values, the pictures is far more sinister: money is used as an incentive to buy into Western propaganda (much the same way that the US threatened to withhold monetary aid to countries that refused to join the "coalition of the willing"). And the consequence is that, to someone not already convinced of the value of democracy, democracy looks like a sham ideology that Russia's neighbors are paid to accept or even threatened into accepting (seriously, the incredibly insane plan to put a missile defense system in Poland can only reasonably be interpreted as a threat to Russia). And, of course, most Russians are not convinced of the value of democracy. Why would they be? Their experiment with democracy was a disaster. Their economy is doing much better under autocratic rule. And if the incentive to accept democracy is economic, then for the typical Russian the economic incentive points firmly away from democracy and toward Putin.

So, from a Russian perspective:
1. Democracy looks like an ideology.
2. The only clear reason to accept that ideology is economic (in fact, many seem to accept it cynically, just in order to profit from it)
3. Putin promises economic success without capitulating to Western ideology.
Therefore,
4. Putin is the rational leader to support.

Cooking: A Phenomenological Variation

I haven't cooked much lately, but today I rolled up my sleeves and made my first New England clam chowder. The results are pretty damn tasty, if I say so myself. Sure, it took me three hours, and I managed to overcook the potatoes the first time and had to boil new ones, but soooo worth it.

I can't help wondering, though, whether my way of cooking new things has to do with my philosophical orientation, or just with my general inability to follow instructions. The standard advice on how to cook is this: the first time you make a dish, you should follow the recipe to the letter. Once you've mastered that, you can make variations.

But I don't do that. Partly, sure, it's because I hate directions that are too complicated, or that call for weird ingredients, or that require standing next to the stove the entire time, or that make you use five different pans, or that call on you to keep track of details (I'm not good with details). But I think there's some philosophical influence, particularly my recognition of the problem of relativism: I don't know what it means to "follow the recipe to the letter." Which recipe? A simple Google search will reveal hundreds or more recipes for any single dish. Some will be weird as hell, some very simple. If I follow just one recipe, I'll miss out on the even tastier suggestions offered by another. And, in any case, settling on any one recipe without a good reason would obviously compromise my autonomy.

Instead of picking a recipe arbitrarily and following it, then, I try to seek out the essence of the dish. The method is this: Do a Google search. Pick the first 20 or so recipes. Read them. Trash the ones that are either redundant or way too difficult. Figure out the common element. Now look for the variations, and try to figure out which ones will be improvements and which ones not. Ignoring specific measurements of each ingredient, let the kinesthetic system take over, choosing the correct quantities. Enjoy.