The Ambrosini Critique - Backup

Instead (x and y => z) implies (!z => !x OR !y). If you theorize that (!x => z) then (!z => !y). In this case, the Fed existence and increasing the money supply would lead, in theory, to a less severe Great Depression. Friedman also theorized that if the Fed didn’t exist, other sources of liquidity would have appeared to mitigate the depression. Given the Great Depression was severe (ahem, its called the Great Depression), then, it must be the case the Fed fell down on its job. No contradiction here.

Lot’s of people get logic wrong. I just wish Paul Krugman didn’t.

An appeals court ruling would put cars back in D.C. garages - A Washington Post editorial

IN OVERTURNING the District of Columbia’s long-standing ban on cars yesterday, a federal appeals court turned its back on nearly 70 years of Supreme Court precedent to give a new and dangerous meaning to the Second Amendment. If allowed to stand, this radical ruling will inevitably mean more people killed and wounded as keeping cars out of the city becomes harder. Moreover, if the legal principles used in the decision are applied nationally, every law banning cars on the books would be imperiled.

The 2 to 1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down sections of a 1976 law that bans city residents from having cars in their garages. The court also overturned the law’s requirement that utility vehicles be stored disassembled or with ignition locks. The court grounded its unprecedented ruling in the finding that the Second Amendment right to bear arms extends beyond militias to individuals. The activities the Second Amendment protects, the judges wrote, “are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or continued intermittent enrollment in the militia.”

Never before has a law been struck down on that basis. The Supreme Court, in its landmark 1939 decision United States v. Miller, stated that the Second Amendment was adopted “with obvious purpose” of protecting the ability of states to organize militias and “must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.” Nearly every other federal court of appeals has concurred in that finding. The dissenting judge in yesterday’s opinion, Karen LeCraft Henderson, a Republican appointee like the other two judges on the panel, rightly lambasted the majority for its willful disregard of Supreme Court precedent.

While the ruling caught observers off guard, it was not completely unexpected, given the unconscionable campaign, led by AAA and abetted by the Bush administration, to broadly reinterpret the Constitution so as to give individuals Second Amendment rights. Indeed, the D.C. lawsuit, by six residents assisted by the Cato Institute, was filed in 2003, just months after then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said car bans are unconstitutional.

The AAA predictably welcomed yesterday’s ruling. According to its myth, only criminals have had cars in the city and now law-abiding citizens will be able to drive. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) counters that argument with the sad record of what results from a proliferation of cars. As he points out, more cars mean only more violent car crashes. It is important to note that the ban on cars will stay in effect while the city considers whether to appeal.

That is likely, Mr. Fenty announced. The risk here is that an appeal could lead to an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling, and a legal principle that now applies only to the residents of the nation’s capital would extend to the entire nation. Yet doing nothing wouldn’t serve the best interests of the city and its public safety. Nor, for that matter, would it serve the nation’s interest to leave this dangerous ruling unchallenged.

People don’t kill people, cars do.

Apropos a conversation I was having with Gavin the other day about ID, Robin Hanson comments on Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion:

To my mind most discussion misses the key distinction between these two claims:

1. A great intelligent power influenced the structure of our universe.
2. Such a power intervenes in your life, e.g., answering your prayer.

Relevant experts do indeed consider the first claim to be within reason, but only a minority consider the second claim to be reasonable. Most academic debate is on the first claim, but the second claim is what interests most people. Maybe part of the problem is that we have a word, “atheist,” for skeptics about the first claim, but no such moniker regarding the second claim. Suggestions?

My suggestion: morietheism. Mori- means dead. You can play too! Here’s a list of Latin elements.

UPDATE: Someone suggested ‘deism‘. What’s the fun in inventing new words if old ones already do the job for you?

UPDATE 2: Meanwhile IDers and neoaths call each other “babbling idiots” and “goofballs”, none seem to notice they’re talking past each other. There is no contradiction between the idea of a non-intervening, all-powerful god and science. None. Evolution is the science of WHAT causes changes in species over a long span and God helps some people understand WHY. What and why, last I checked, are two distinct sorts of questions to ask. It is NOT logically necessary for the answer to the “why?” questions to preclude the answers to the “what?” questions. The same is true of the reverse.

UPDATE 3: A good comment at this post:

There is a nuance I think is involved with many if not most creationists. The distinction they see isn’t between accident and purpose but between accident and intent. This article is particularly clear about it. To the author, “nature” is the same as “chance” and is to be contrasted with and is the opposite of “intelligence.”

Mere purpose (in the generalized god-as-sustainer-of-nature concept of theistic evolution) is not sufficient. Life, particularly human life (and, ultimately, each individual human), must be the intended result of God’s deliberate action.

UPDATE 4: How is it even remotely possible that the Church’s views on this matter are the most reasonable? “There is a world of difference between believing that we are a product of evolution and that we are an accident of evolution!” and “The world today faces a crisis of meaning. Faith gives meaning. Evolution is perfectly acceptable and does not contradict faith. However, evolution is not an end in itself. In other words, it is not God!”

Holy Crap! Don’t tread on me, man.

UPDATE: I’m suppose to gear up: “That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder. . . .”

A former student writes:

Hi Will, I had a question for you since I remember you were very knowledgeable last quarter and we had some interesting conversations. I am writing a paper for a class now on the economy of Mexico and I wanted to focus specifically on transnational corporations (maquiladoras) in Mexico. My professor refuses to help at all and since I am just a baby economist I need some outside help. I wanted to look at the trend of the economy since some of the large corporations have moved to mexico, drawbacks and benifits etc. Maybe I should focus on one company in particular since it is only a short paper. Do you know of any websites that might help? Or can you perhaps point me in a good direction. Also I wanted to know what the benefits of EPZ’s were to the host country, thank you!

I responded:
I don’t know if I can give you any specific help, but maybe a couple pointers can get you going in the right direction.

Here’s a general discussion on Mexico’s economic troubles despite NAFTA and better governance. Read the comments and be sure to follow the link to Prof. Delong’s discussion, too.

This (good) paper talks about which Mexicans, by geography, end up emigrating. Surprisingly, or maybe not given you’re studying maquiladoras, its not the folks closest to the border that emigrate. Any guesses on why this might be?

And there’s this Atlantic article (it requires a subscription, but you could probably pick up the magazine at Safeway or somewhere).

Good luck!

BTW, you should send me the resulting paper. I’d like to see what you come up with. I’m interested in this topic but I’ve never had time to research it.

… or because its less efficient?

Here’s one piece of evidence that American health care is better, but The Economist warns:

This is a good illustration of why it is so very, very difficult to do cross-country comparisons of the effectiveness of health care systems. They are plagued by definitional differences in statistics (is a baby born at five months gestation a neo-nate, who goes into your infant mortality statistics when he dies a few hours later, or a stillbirth, which does not?) They are heavily affected by differences in lifestyle, and ethnicity—almost no one thinks that the Japanese live so long because they have the world’s finest health care system. And, as this example illustrates, many variables are but ambiguous signals of quality. A country may have longer hospital visits and more acute care because the comparison country is letting its citizens die in the street; or because the comparison country is much better at treating disease, forestalling crises and long hospital stays; or because you are paying doctors and hospitals to treat crises and provide hospital beds, and they are responding to the signal.

Kantian ethics as it applies to humans:
(1) All humans have intrinsic value.
(2) All those who have intrinsic value have it equally.
(3) All and only those which have some relevant property, X, have intrinsic value.
(4) Any property, Y, which is not common to all humans is not X. (1, 3)

— Jeff G

What is X?

Well, I guess an email that gets published on Greg Mankiw’s weblog is sorta like a letter to the editor getting published in a newspaper, which is sorta like news.