mirror site for the right coast--test

 
http://todays.wsj.com/WSJ_-A001-20040304.pdf
posted by thomas at 11:15 AM

 
January 20, 2004

So you'd like to be eaten by a grizzly bear
By Tom Smith

Bear activist Timothy Treadwell, (lately) of Malibu, California has been eaten by a grizzly bear, along with his girlfriend, whose bad judgment apparently extended to both men and bears. This interesting article in the ever entertaining Outside magazine tells the story well, if perhaps too sympathetically. Treadwell took the Walt Disney approach to bears, thinking that he could bond with them, sort of brother to brother, sort of like the Lion King, only with bears. And now he's part of the Circle, the Circle of Life.

His last meal, he being the main course, was captured on videotape, don't ask me why. He died reasonably well it seems, yelling at his soon to be second course companion to save herself. To no avail.

The rangers arrived later, and shot one of the bears feasting, though whether it was the one who killed them, who knows. It only took 11 shots from the rangers probably .40 caliber to bring the 1000 pounds of highly evolved, highly intelligent predator down. When the rangers came back to look at the bear carcass, all that was left was the head. Other bears, thrifty souls that they are when it comes to meat, had eaten him.

I find grizzly bears fascinating. I spent a summer in Alaska almost 20 years ago now and had a couple close encounters with grizzly bears. When I was there, there was this really stupid debate between the tree hugger types who argued that you should never go armed into the bush, because then you would be over-confident, and the bears would sense your arrogance, and thus your chances of getting attacked would be higher. The more sensible view was that you should carry a .45 magnum, which would at least give you a chance if Mrs. Grizzly decided she deserved a break today and you were the closest thing to a Big Mac.

The closest call I had came at the end of a 9 day trek around the Muldrow Glacier I went on with my now wife and a very British fellow I knew slightly at Oxford and ran into quite by accident on a bus coming out of Denali National Park. Walking out along the edge of the glacier, down Gravel Creek, we stumbled across a bear eating something, probably a caribou. The bear was standing up on his or her hind legs, batting away carrion birds trying to get a piece of the action. A wonderful wilderness moment. We decided to give the bear a wide berth, and so climbed up the scree onto the glacier itself, maybe 25 vertical feet to our left. That's when the bear walked away from his kill and climbed up on the glacier too, blocking our planned route of exit. Bears may not be able to talk, but they are very good at what they do, which is kill large mammals and eat them. At this moment, I breathed a silent prayer, which went like this: "Sh@#, F*&%, Sh@#, F*&@, F#@%!!!!!" Just to be clear, this was classic predatory behavior by the bear. Whenever anybody tells you about bears' natural curiosity, their desire to explore their world, etc. etc., remember you are listening to a hamburger with legs. The nose up in the air is not a sign of a bear thinking "Ohhhh, maybe it's a new friend, what a wonderfully diverse universe I live in!" A better translation would be "Mmmmmmm! Meat! Meat!" Think of how you feel when you smell the Weber working on a filet mignon and you haven't eaten since breakfast. Now picture the filet dressed up in a little backpack and booties. That's you.

We decided to get off the glacier. Unfortunately, whether out of sheer panic or my natural clumsiness, I decided stupidly I could glissade down the scree we had just climbed up, my having forgotten that it was frozen solid to the ice. This was remarkably stupid, as I had just climbed up it. Of course I tripped and did a full somersault coming down into the creek bed. I looked up just in time to see Jeanne attempt the same manuveur. She also fell and tumbled. That neither one of us broke anything probably saved our lives. I put down Jeanne's following me to loyalty. She later told me that she was thinking that just because I had fallen did not mean she could not pull the descent off we ease. Richard the Lion-hearted gracefully picked his way down. Then, and this is the important thing, so did the grizzly bear.

We were in what long-time outdoorsmen call "a pickle." I had no idea how to get past the bear. Then Richard came up with the following idea. He said he had read somewhere that grizzly bears hated rock and roll. He suggested that he lead us out, marching style, as we all followed his lead singing Elvis Presley's classic "Blue Suede Shoes." I am not making any of this up. Still dazed from my fall, and naturally curious as to whether I was soon to die a horrible death, and that before or after I watched my best friend get devoured alive, what could I say, but what the hell. I didn't have any better ideas. Richard started singing the tune in a surprisingly credible Elvis imitation. The boy could sing! We joined along as best as we could, marching right at the 1000 pound monster. The bear stared at us for a moment, as if to say 'WTF is this?!' then scampered back to his caribou or whatever it was. We marched all the way into the valley of the river, and saw no more bears until we were safely on the bus back to the ranger station. Richard went on to be a master at one of England's great public schools. You can see why they had an empire.

posted by thomas at 1/20/2004 09:43:27 AM



Depravity
By Michael Rappaport

It is hard to fathom just how depraved many of the Palestinians are. It now turns out that the "Palestinian mother of two small children, who killed four Israelis by blowing herself up at a border crossing, carried out the suicide bombing to atone for having committed adultery." The Associated Press "reported yesterday that Raiyshi was an adulteress forced to carry out the attack to restore her family's honor. It is not uncommon for Palestinian women accused of adultery, or of having sex before marriage, to be killed by their families trying to rid themselves of perceived disgrace."

Of course, the depravity does not end there. People who witness such depravity and refuse to make the appropriate moral judgements are also depraved. To be a Nazi or Palestinian sympathisizer is to be depraved. This is, of course, not to say that one cannot genuinely feel bad for those Palestinians who have suffered and who also oppose the evil that their leaders commit (all five of them). One can feel bad for Germans who opposed the Nazis and who were forced to serve in the German Army. But this sentiment as to those Germans is generally an afterthought, and that is how it should be as to the innocent Palestinians. The main point is that we are witnessing the depraved acts of a depraved people who have the sympathy of much of the world. It is not too pretty.
posted by Michael at 1/20/2004 09:15:05 AM


January 19, 2004

Times Book Review of Frum and Perle’s “An End to Evil”
By Michael Rappaport

The New York Times unfavorably reviewed David Frum and Richard Perle’s, "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror" – not exactly a surprise. For Frum’s response, see here.

As an illustration of the problems with the book, the review states:
Discussing rulers like Fidel Castro and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they declare that "when it is in our power and our interest, we should toss dictators aside with no more compunction than a police sharpshooter feels when he downs a hostage-taker." Of the United Nations, another one of their nemeses, they write, "The U.N. regularly broadcasts a spectacle as dishonest and morally deadening as a Stalinist show trial, a televised ritual of condemnation that inflames hatreds and sustains quarrels that might otherwise fade away."
To me, though, these are powerful points. Indeed, the police sharpshooter analogy is, er, right on target.

For a more balanced review of the book, take a look at – where else? – the internet. At Amazon, the comment section for the book contains 57 customer comments. While not all are thoughtful, many of them are and they give a variety of viewpoints on the book.
posted by Michael at 1/19/2004 11:44:31 PM



Originalism
By Michael Rappaport

Three good posts on originalism. Larry Solum discusses it as part of his legal theory lexicon series here, and Randy Barnett and Larry respond to a philosopher's critique here and here.
posted by Michael at 1/19/2004 08:56:06 PM



Legacy of Favoritism
By Gail Heriot

Last week's announcement by President Robert Gates that Texas A&M University would abolish its so-called "legacy policy" was good news--great news in fact--though some haved complained that his timing could have been better. Back in December, Gates earned my respect and admiration by deciding that A&M would continue to shun race-based admissions despite the Supreme Court's recent decision "authorizing" such policies in pursuit of diversity. Not surprisingly, Gates' decision to retain colorblind admissions brought down upon him the wrath of Texas legislators, who attempted to bully him into adopting preferences for Blacks and Hispanics. The arguments they made, insofar as they made any, were mainly the same old stuff--we must destroy equality in order to achieve equality--but on one of the aspects of the issue they had a point. It is also wrong to give preferential treatment of the sons, daughters and grandchildren of A&M alumni. Gates says that his had been planning to abolish the legacy program even before he came under pressure and I believe him. For the life of me, I can't understand how these relics of an earlier (and more corrupt) time have survived at state universities more than six minutes into the modern era. It's not that it's wrong to abolish race preferences until one has also abolished legacy preferences; they are independent wrongs. But it would have been a nice gesture to abolish both back in December--not crucial but nice.

The legacy program has tended to benefit White students disproportionately at A&M, though not as strongly as one might have thought. Blacks and Hispanics have benefited too; their proportions among those admitted under the legacy program have not been wildly different from their proportions among those admitted under the regular program. But racial "disparate impact" is not what makes the policy wrongheaded. It's wrong because it injects irrelevant matters into a decision that ought to be based on the student's academic and personal record, not on his pedigree. And it would be wrong even if it had had no racially disparate impact.

Why do universities do it? It's said that it fosters school spirit among alumni. But my suspicion is that its real function is to insulate administrators from fielding endless phone calls from individual alumni hoping to use whatever clout they have. It routinizes that task.("Yes, Mr. Throckmorton, your son did receive special consideration, but unfortunately even with that special consideration, he didn't quite make it. Our admissions policies are just so competitive these days. It has been wonderful talking to you ...") Such a benefit may loom large in the minds of administrators because it affects them directly--larger than the cost in terms of academic standards, which does not affect them except quite indirectly.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial a few days ago was kinder to legacy programs than I would have been. It stated simply:

"There is a genuine debate to be had about whether legacy admissions, particularly at public universities using tax dollars, are good pulic policy. Should the children of some taxpayers be treated more favorably than the children of others? We tend to let the institutions decide what's in their own best interests."

I'm not so sure how genuine the debate is. Yes, yes, yes, I do believe that discrimination on the basis of race is the more serious wrong, since discrimination on the basis of race and not discrimination on the basis of parents' alumni status has long been the poisonous issue in this country's history. There's even a law against race discrimnation (though the Supreme Court seems to have forgotten this). But both of them stink. And if a state university ought to be able to favor the offspring of its old boys over other applicants in order to foster school spirit, what other forms of pedigree favoritism ought to be permitted? What shouldn't state taxing authorities be permitted to give tax breaks to the children of long-time state residents in order to foster state spirit? It's probably true that people whose families have lived in the state for generations are more apt to remain in the state, feel themselves to be part of the state and its culture, and promote the state than transient residents. Transient residents are ... well ... transient. But who cares? Such a policy would be impossible to justify.

The one redeeming aspect of the issue is that legacy preferences are an extremely minor factor in college admssions today. At the University of Michigan, for example, legacy applicants received one point (as opposed to Black and Hispanic applciants who got 20 points) on a 100 point scale. It functioned literally as a tie-breaker. Racial preferences, on the other hand, leap-frogged less-qualified students over much more-qualified students. Minority students admitted frequently found themselves over their head academically. That is much less likely to be the case with legacy students.


posted by Gail at 1/19/2004 04:36:21 PM



More on Originalism and Precedent
By Michael Rappaport

In discussing various posts on originalism and precedent, Stuart Buck recommends an article by Caleb Nelson, Stare Decisis and Demonstrably Erroneous Precedents. I quite agree with Stuart’s recommendation, having relied on Nelson’s piece in developing my intermediate approach to precedent. Nelson argues in favor of a rule where there is a presumption in favor of following decisions that are merely erroneous, but there is presumption against following decisions that are demonstrably erroneous. His article also shows that this was historically the rule in the early years of the nation. I understand Nelson to be arguing for a rule that places some weight on precedent, although a limited amount of weight.

Nelson has another article that is relevant to originalism and precedent as well, Originalism and Interpretive Conventions, 70 U. Chi. L. Rev. 519 (2003). This piece is quite interesting in general, and makes reference to some ideas that can be used to develop another argument why an originalist might favor precedent. The Framers of the Constitution might have thought that the meaning of the Constitution was not entirely clear and therefore would need clarification. They might have thought that it would be best to clarify it through precedent. Since the early precedents would have been reached by people who would have had more knowledge (and perhaps more sympathy) with the original meaning, adhering to those precedents (especially those precedents that were not demonstrably erroneous) would further the original meaning.
posted by Michael at 1/19/2004 03:26:39 PM



Epstein on Patents
By Michael Rappaport

Another interesting essay by Richard Epstein, this one on patents. Those not familar with the academic literature on patents might be amazed to discover that the great majority of acadmics seem exceedingly hostile to patents. Once again, Epstein swims against the current, arguing in favor of patents, but also advocating increased funding to the patent office.

posted by Michael at 1/19/2004 12:01:34 AM

posted by thomas at 9:27 AM

 
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posted by thomas at 9:22 AM

 
This is a test
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This is a test
posted by thomas at 9:15 AM