Prescribing Freedom

McArdle weighs in on the health care "conscience laws" debate:

I think pharmacists have a perfect right of conscience to refuse to dispense birth control, but the pharmacy has a perfect right of conscience to fire him for not doing his job. What's next? A first amendment right for Christian scientists to become surgeons without performing procedures? A legal obligation for doctors to preside over executions?

In my opinion, we need to jettison
lots of laws we've made about medicine.

Abduction

Usually when I see 'abduction' I visualize extraterrestrial kidnappings. Then I imagine squeezing my legs together.

Last but not least, I think about epistemology:

Abduction, or inference to the best explanation, is a method of reasoning in which one chooses the hypothesis that would, if true, best explain the relevant evidence. Abductive reasoning starts from a set of accepted facts and infers their most likely, or best, explanations.

I do have a question. Isn't this usually considered as one of the steps of induction?

Not that I object to analyzing it as a separate step! But couldn't they have made up a new word to avoid confusion?

Philosophers love to distinguish
each little step
and they steal from normal English
with frightening pep.

Scribbling As Memory Aid

I often doodle while listening to lectures. 

My wife has taken this to mean that I am not paying attention. But now I am vindicated:

Researchers in the United Kingdom found that test subjects who doodled while listening to a recorded message had a 29 percent better recall of the message's details than those who didn't doodle.

Now we need a follow-up study, on people who write verse while listening to lectures.

If doodling's
a good thing,
can verse
be worse?

Eight Arms, No Spine

They had more water than usual at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, due to a bit of octopus sabotage:

The female California two-spotted octopus swam to the top of her tank, disassembled a valve with her powerful arm, and released at least 200 gallons (757 liters) of seawater into nearby exhibits and offices.

Scientists don't know what to make of it.

Such high jinks are typical of the invertebrates' still unexplained smarts, experts say.

I fear they're underrated
because we're not closely related.

The Great and Powerful

Here the stands the Tin Man, in need of oil and a heart. 

Behind him you can glimpse the yellow brick road.

Tonight's live theater adventure was a production of The Wizard of Oz, as performed by elementary and preschool children.

Beware the words of the wizard -
booming but thin.

Your brains, your heart, your courage,
wait within.

Chicago Tea Party

I was on my way to a meeting for work, but I did see people starting to gather at Daley Plaza for the Chicago Tea Party. 

Here's a news report and a bunch of photos. A couple of the photos feature home-made signs which refer to a certain titan shrugging off his burdens. Some of the signs are rather rude. One cute photo shows a lady wearing teabags for earrings. 

But apparently nothing was tossed in the Chicago River, even though they marched across it.

Besides, what would they toss?

Please don't offer copies of the stimulus bill as a solution.
Tossing those into the river would be pollution.

Atlas Selling Like Hot Cakes

I wonder why sales of Atlas Shrugged are way up?

The Economist reports:

On January 13th the book’s ranking was 33, briefly besting President Barack Obama’s popular tome, “The Audacity of Hope”.

The story's energetic
and eerily prophetic.

The Fountainhead Through A Glass, Darkly

Courtesy of Stephen Hicks, here's a peculiar essay on The Fountainhead. I've been trying to make sense of it. 

There's this:

In spite of being in love with Howard Roark, Dominique Francon marries first B. Peter Keating and then C. Gail Wynand.

Did the essayist imagine that Gail and Peter are middle names? I think this was meant:

In spite of being in love with A) Howard Roark, Dominique Francon marries first B) Peter Keating and then C) Gail Wynand.

Then there's this, also about Dominique:

Karen Horney says,

By various experiences with men, she strives to humiliate herself in order to experience some of the pain she believes Roark is feeling. Sex for her is a degrading experience, a subduing one because carried on with inferior men. . . . The obtaining of satisfaction by submersion in misery is an expression of the general principle of finding satisfaction by losing the self in something greater, by dissolving the individuality, by getting rid of the self with its doubts, conflicts, pains, limitations, and isolation. (Horney Karen, Qtd. in Deane, Paul, "Ayn Rand's Neurotic Personalities of Our Times." Revue des langues, vivantes, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, 1970, pp. 125-99)

The first funny here is "Horney Karen". But the essayist clearly means "Horney, Karen". 

What's more, that quote is improperly sourced somehow. The article by Paul Deane is real, but he was the one discussing Rand, based on Horney's theories.

Finally, there's this closing sentence:

Rand is offering her view of an altruistic utopian society, a society that is best for all, not the few.

An altruistic utopian society,
of a Randian variety?
I question the writer's sobriety!

(Or can it be agreed
he simply failed to read
Roark's lengthy courtroom creed?)

Hijacked

I see we're going to have a discussion Saturday at my house about how to keep your emotions from hijacking your brain and disrupting your ability to stay objective.

If a wild flood
of feeling
has you reeling
and you think you're losing your grip...

is there a way to nip
it in the bud?

I'm not sure
that there's a universal cure.

Tao of Dow

ABC News:

President Obama spoke twice in the last 24 hours about the country's economy, and a jittery Wall Street responded both times with sharp downturns.

Leaders pluck and play
the strings of the state,

the money hurries away,
unwilling to wait

to see if they get in tune
sometime soon.

Quee Nelson Looks at the Matrix

Last night I had a fun conversation with Quee Nelson, author of The Slightest Philosophy.  She was worried I was missing the boat on one aspect of her theory.

When considering the brain-in-the-vat problem, she wouldn't say there is "no evidence" for the thesis, since the typical vat-hypothesist does offer some kind of argument.

For instance, in The Matrix, there's specific evidence offered - we are told that déjà vuis a glitch in the matrix program. (And then, if you want a boatload of evidence, there's The Red Pill.)

So she would rather say the brain-in-the-vat hypothesis is not the best fit for the evidence we have.

Perhaps we disagree a bit on this!

I'd say the evidence is thin
for those vats we're allegedly in,
so thin I think it's fair
to say it's barely there.

Dogging the Slumdog

We watched some of the Oscars last night - DVRing through the highlights. We're visiting with good friends from India, and they were very happy with all the wins for Slumdog. I haven't seen it yet, but they told me it was being dismissed as "poverty porn" by some critics.

I must admit, I had no idea.

Today another friend posted about the ridiculousness of rejecting works like Slumdog merely because they are set among the poor. 

I had missed this critical trend altogether.

I knew that lots of serious lit today
is written by profs about life in college towns, 
but I hadn't known that tours among the poor 
had taken a turn toward the big thumbs down.

Reframe the Game

In case you were concerned about government taking over private businesses:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports efforts of the federal government to dramatically expand its stake in Citigroup, but wants people to back off from the dramatic rhetoric. 

“It’s not nationalization, it’s protecting the taxpayers’ interests,” Reid (D-Nev.) told MSNBC’s Morning Joe program on Monday.

Don't worry - we're not nationalizing.
Just listen to our rationalizing.

Gloom, Doom, Bye Bye Boom

MSNBC headline:

Gloom persists despite audacious plans 
Stimulus spending rivals the New Deal, but the bad news keeps coming

This shouldn't be surprising. The New Deal worked out the same way. FDR spent and spent and the Depression lingered and lingered. But his popularity remained high. He gave great speeches.

To paraphrase:

History doesn't repeat itself every time,
but it has a scary tendency to rhyme.

Trouble In The Family Tree

Remember Travis, the berserker chimp who had to be gunned down? 

Well, the NY Daily News reports that his mother met a similar fate:

Travis' mom, Suzy, was gunned down in 2001 by a teenager after she and two other primates escaped their Missouri ranch and wreaked havoc, sources and experts told The News.

I don't know whether the mom 
or the son was scarier...
but I sure hope they have no kin 
residing in my area.

No Such Thing As A Free Party

The Obama campaign owes Chicago some cash
for hosting his giant victory bash.

Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park -- despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.

"The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,'' Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city's Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. "We're reaching out to them this week."

It's not funny.
Send us the money!

Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

Out the plane window, under the wing:

A river makes
its way like a snake.

Marauding Ape

You may not have followed the story about the pet chimp in Connecticut who mauled a woman.

The chimp got outdoors and wouldn't come in. The owner, a woman, called a friend, another woman, for assistance.

The chimp attacked the friend horribly. Her nose and eyes are gone.  Last I heard, she was still in critical condition.

The owner then stabbed the chimp with a knife.

The chimp then cornered a cop, who shot it. The chimp wandered off and died.

The owner is mourning the chimp:

He was my life. I raised him from 3-and-a-half weeks old... He slept with me every night, he combed my hair. Everything in the house is for him....

Chimpanzees are awful cute.

But when you've got one in hot pursuit
of you and yours -  it's time to shoot.

Lydia Diamond's "Stick Fly"

I just read Stick Fly by Lydia Diamond, a play about an elite African American family getting together at their summer home in Martha's Vineyard. She has an exquisite ear for dialogue. These lines are from a scene where they're talking about a young man's new girlfriend, who has not yet arrived:

Kent: Yeah, Flip's girl is a little melanin challenged.

Cheryl: Melanin challenged? ... [just getting it]  Oh, she white?

Kent and Flip: She's Italian.

The joke is that is that the olive-skinned are seen
as somehow in-between,
not black, but a bit off-white.

And the young men hope that will make it all right
with their mother
who will be upset if the girl is too... other. 

Blenderman Gets The Laughs

The Alleged Adventures of Blenderman had its first Chicago performance tonight, and the audience loved it. It was put on by the talented ensemble of Hobo Junction.

It was billed as a reading, but it was acted out, costumed, and - most importantly - sung.

Even when it's 10 minutes long,
you can't have a musical without song!