From the Superior Moral Compass Department (2)

• The Rev. Kenneth James Flowers of the Michigan Progressive Baptist Convention believes that “Our Muslim brothers and sisters are being crucified by one Pastor Terry Jones.” Which might be taking hyperbole to a new level. It might also be worth noting that Jones, while a very good candidate for Asswipe of the Year, never laid a finger on a single person; he destroyed a book. Those who were slaughtered in response to his nutty Koran-burning lost their lives to some of the “Muslim brothers and sisters” that Mr. Flowers, in general, seems to want to celebrate. Let’s keep it straight.

• This is how you respond to vandalism of your sacred texts. Seriously, I doff my cap to these people. Talk about grace under fire.

Members of the Jewish community of Corfu gathered at the local synagogue on Wednesday around a pile of ashen prayer books set on fire by vandals the day before and wept. “It’s very difficult for us,” said Rabbi Shlomo Naftali, an Israeli rabbi who was flown over to Greece to conduct Passover ceremonies. “We stood around the books and cried. Now we’ll have to bury them.”

So, note to Muslims: Please reflect on how someone can be a horrible dick and even a criminal for burning your favorite books — not just a generic copy out of a billion, but centuries-old irreplaceable manuscripts — and how you can then congregate to express your sorrow and anger without firing a single bullet into another human being. Worth a try?

• In Egypt, “Two Muslims were killed, and five others injured when a fight between Muslims and Christians broke out over a speed bump. The fight began over the speed bump placed by a Christian family in front of their house, and when a Muslim family objected to this, the violence ensued.” [link]

• On the other hand, interfaith harmony was on display in Texas this week as Christians, at the urgent behest of Gov. Rick Perry, prayed for rain, and were soon joined by American Muslims who likewise thought it useful to beseech The Great Skyman to make the water fall. Which is all perfectly adorable, except for the part where the governor of a U.S. state makes it his official business to tell people to pray.

• Americans who believe in God “are better citizens than their secular counterparts,” claims Gary Bauer. I may have to send him some of these here links.

• Onion-worthy, but a true story:

Pro [sports] teams are promoting more fan days involving religious groups because they help drive group ticket sales in a recession. … On April 17, [Major-League Baseball team] the Oakland Athletics, for example, will hold their first Jewish Heritage Night, in which attendees will receive an A’s yarmulke.

• Mothers of marrying-age Orthodox-Jewish men insist on finding their sons a svelte wife.  The self-styled matchmakers have no problem “calling up to ask a girl’s dress size in the same breath as asking what her level of Torah observance is.” In fact, mindful of genetic factors, these moms will inquire about the dress size of the girls’ mothers, too. Size zero to four for marriageable ladies is deemed perfect to acceptable. Over four? Sorry, no husband for you. Anorexia is now said to be rampant in the large and growing Orthodox-Jewish communities around New York and elsewhere.  The suitors’ “superficiality and pickiness [is starting] to literally kill our young women,” says rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

• “A Tennessee pastor who allegedly helped a woman abscond to Central America with her 9-year-old daughter has been charged with aiding a kidnapping, the latest twist in a long-running custody dispute between former lesbian partners.” [link]

• How far must secular authorities go to accommodate citizens’ chosen faiths? How much money may such accommodations cost other taxpayers? At what point should the law no longer apply to believers, yet apply fully to those outside that particular religion? I don’t profess to know the answers. But consider that in the heavily Jewish enclave of Williamsburg, New York, “alternate-side parking rules were suspended Tuesday and Wednesday for the first two days of Passover — when observant Jews do not work or drive.” Not sure I have a problem with that. It is perhaps a little much for community leaders to demand that, during certain religious holidays, no parking rules may be enforced at all if you’re one of God’s Chosen People.

The Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg was furious yesterday over the NYPD’s Passover ticket and tow blitz, in which more than 100 tickets were written and about 30 vehicles hooked [towed]. “We have a lot of respect for the Police Department, but we’re looking for just a little sensitivity,” complained Isaac Abraham, a community leader. “You’re towing a guy’s car when you know he can’t move it.”

You see, although alternate-side rules had been lifted, cops still issued tickets for other offenses. It’s an outrage, I tell you!

Zev Deutsch, a father of eight, shelled out $205 for towing and storage to get his minivan from the pound, and faces two tickets, at $115 each, for parking in a no-standing zone. “It ruined my holiday,” he fumed.

Messrs. Abraham and Deutsch could of course have parked their vehicle in a legal spot — perhaps even a commercial parking garage. Surely, loyalty to one’s deity of choice is worth a little bit of your own money, rather than other people’s.

• There are many reports of religiously-inspired death threats, assaults, and actual killings where the victim was a former Muslim who’d converted to Christianity or who’d turned atheist. This news story (to be corroborated), from Egypt, is a sad reversal of that well-worn tale:

Three Coptic brothers have been arrested on suspicion of murdering their sister, her husband and five year-old son in what seems to be a sectarian hate crime. The couple’s six year-old daughter, Nada, was the only survivor, even though she sustained neck wounds. The outrageous murder took place in the Cairo district of Boulaq Al-Dakrour. Salwa Atallah, 33, converted to Islam over six years ago and reportedly that’s the reason why her siblings decided to finish her off, according to initial investigations.

We call them “consumers” because they are

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman may have a Nobel prize in economics, but in his recent commentary on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, he sure doesn’t sound like an economist.

(I don’t know what to think about the Board itself. On the one hand, price controls are pretty much always a bad idea. Probably the only worse policy for American healthcare would be to start shooting doctors. On the other hand, the board is supposed to determine how much the government is willing to pay for healthcare, and someone has to do that.)

Where Krugman goes off the rails is in his writing about the doctor-patient relationship (emphasis mine):

But something else struck me as I looked at Republican arguments against the board, which hinge on the notion that what we really need to do, as the House budget proposal put it, is to “make government health care programs more responsive to consumer choice.”

Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.

What has gone wrong with us?

What has gone wrong with us? Dude! What has gone wrong with you?

I first got interested in economics after reading a few of Krugman’s early popular books on the subject, before he was nearly so well known. I’d actually had some economics classes in college, but I’d forgotten most of what I learned. The only economic thinking I encountered on any regular basis was in newspaper editorials and on talk shows, and it was all kind of a confusing mess. Reading Krugman’s books reminded me that economics is a real discipline with a respectable body of knowledge.

So why are people referring to medical patients as “consumers”? Because that’s what they are. Because that’s what economists call them. Because that’s what economists call the end-users of every good or service: Consumers.

It’s kind of like if you ask a physicist what will happen if you bounce a superball in an airplane while it is doing an upside-down loop. In his answer, he’s going to talk about the mass of the ball, the mass of the airplane, and maybe even your mass, because for purposes of certain physics problems, a ball, an airplane, and a person can all be treated as objects that have mass. (In fact, it’s common to say the are masses.) It is this ability to recognize and use common aspects of different parts of different problems that makes it possible to reliably use the same simple physics equations in so many different situations.

Economics works the same way. Consumers everywhere have certain behaviors in common, regardless of what they’re consuming. It is because we recognize this fact that we can reason about different economic situations without having to learn all about each one from scratch.

Refusing to recognize that patients are consumers is refusing to admit that patients will be subject to all the same economic incentives as every other consumer. Unless you have damned good evidence to support that claim, it is probably a recipe for an economic policy disaster.

Or a sign that someone is trying to trick you.

(Hat tip: Peter Suderman)

Keep cops honest? Hit the record button.

The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf takes a brief look at the latest scandal rocking the NYPD, where four hundred officers are facing possible larceny and bribery charges. The extent of the shamelessness came to light

…when a police officer discussed taking care of a [traffic] ticket on a phone line being tapped by internal affairs in an unrelated investigation.

Most cops seem to hate being taped, not just in an Internal Affairs probe but on the street, by regular citizens. Short of those citizens doing something to impede the officer in carrying out his or her duty, I utterly fail to see what the big deal is. It’s a different story if the cop is simply not on the up-and-up. Show me a lawman who is aggressively camera-shy, and I’ll show you a guy who’s got something to hide. As Friedersdorf notes, a camera can be an officer’s best friend — actually, either party pressing the record button ought to be a win for police and public alike.

Were it up to me, the cops of America would have a dashboard camera on every cruiser, a digital audio recorder in every pocket, a camcorder running during every interrogation, and secret internal affairs officers operating in every precinct. The exoneration of wrongfully accused police officers would please me as much as the bad cops who were punished for breaking the law or acting unprofessionally. I’d also pass a federal law permitting United States citizens to record the activity of on duty cops without fear of being prosecuted (nope, you don’t necessarily have that right already, depending on where you live). Reason magazine’s Radley Balko wrote a great how-to guide on the subject here.

Over the years, law enforcement has used ever more sophisticated surveillance equipment to monitor citizens. As every police scandal reminds us, the ticket-fixing story included, there is good reason for citizens to become far more sophisticated in our monitoring of on duty police, and the law ought to permit our doing so.

Triple amen to that.

The law is an ass. And so is Hakeem Jeffries.

The ire of little men in search of a big balcony:

Mr. Jeffries’s outrage was set off by reports that real estate agents were using the name ProCro to peddle properties on the border of the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights. He also said the name “sounded silly.”

Since the gentleman in question is state assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, he didn’t just get annoyed, he got busy. Mr. Jeffries, via a bill he’s writing, pronounces himself prepared to punish people who make up names for neighborhoods without prior City Hall approval — a plan that, had such a law existed a hundred years ago, would have put the kibosh on now-established names like Nolita and Soho.

“If you don’t like the TSA, don’t fly.”

“Flying is a privilege, not a right. If you don’t like it, don’t fly.” Sound familiar?

I always offer people who use that argument a hundred dollars if they can kindly point me to the rail or bus schedule that will let me plan my overland trip to Berlin or Mumbai.

Obviously, that hundred-dollar bill is still crisp and still mine.

But maybe a reference to this story (and others like it) is the better response.

[The] Transportation Security Administration conducted what it calls  a random “Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response Operation” [VIPR] on Thursday morning at the West Palm Beach Tri-Rail station. … TSA has partnered with local law enforcement to conduct thousands of VIPR missions from coast to coast across the U.S.

For civil-liberties sticklers like me, not all is lost. Travelers who don’t want  to subject themselves and their families to radiation machines and/or assorted crotch gropings by rubber-gloved government agents may still walk, possibly even bike. If I’m not mistaken, that’s still a right, not a privilege. Enjoy.

If I lived in Iran, I’d let my dog grow a mullet

Dogs may soon be outlawed in Iran.

The widening acceptability of dog ownership, and its popularity among a specific slice of Iran’s population — young, urban, educated and frustrated with the Islamic government — partly explains why dogs are now generating more official hostility. In 2007, two years into the tenure of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, security forces targeted dog owners alongside a crackdown on women’s attire and men’s “Westernized” hairstyles. In the regime’s eyes, owning a dog had become on par with wearing capri pants or sporting a mullet — a rebellious act.

I wonder what the Iranian police will do with the thousands of dogs they’ll soon be expected to confiscate.

Don’t answer that.

Just a tad short on self-awareness?

A church north of Melbourne, Australia, is trying to broaden its appeal with a special service for fans of science fiction. The Reverend Avril Hannah-Jones said the service would “explore parallels between fantasy and Christianity, taking inspiration from Dr Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars.” In response, conservative Christians have been expressing their disapproval.

“I don’t have a problem with people enjoying sci-fi, but church isn’t the place to encourage escapism and fancy dress,” Mentone Baptist minister Murray Campbell said. … Catholic priest Gerald O’Collins said: “There should be no need to dress it up.”

Father O’Collins is right. There really should be no need to dress it up. That would just be, you know — ludicrous-like. So not at all like these guys, great religious leaders decked out in dresses and purty hats.

An uncertain libertarian

Some time back, Mark approached me about joining him and Rogier to start a new blog. Although surprised that anyone would ask me to join them in blogging, I was glad for the opportunity. Though I don’t get to do it as often as I wish, I enjoy blogging. So I agreed, with an understanding that I might not be as prolific as Mark and Rogier. Thereafter followed a flurry of emails, mostly focused on the choice of a name. I favored “Negative Liberty” for reasons I’ll get into below, but it took me too long to acquire the domain name and I demonstrated that even libertarians of my sort can function within a democracy when I acquiesced to being outvoted.

That phrase, “libertarians of my sort” probably needs some explanation, so in this, my first post, I finally get around to doing what Mark and Rogier did in each of their first posts: I’ll tell you a little about me, why I’m here, and what I expect to accomplish.

Continue reading “An uncertain libertarian”

Beware the danger that is the flat bedsheet!

Not very many people realize what dangers lurk in the quietly terrifying tool of death that is the flat bedsheet. Luckily, they have California Senator Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) to set them straight. The good Senator, in his concern for hotel housekeeping staffers across his great state, wishes to make mandatory, via his latest bill,

…the use of a fitted sheet, instead of a flat sheet, as the bottom sheet on all beds within a lodging establishment.

Bonus side effect: The KKK is gonna be pissed.

[hat tip: Virginia Postrel]

Pissed-off Christians destroy mediocre photograph

In France, the Christians are apparently jealous of all the cool extremism the Muslims have been getting away with — fatwas against novelists and comic artists, for example — so some of them decided to raid an art gallery and destroy Andres Serrano’s infamous Piss Christ photograph.

I’ve never been that impressed with Serrano, and Piss Christ seems to exist on the same artistic level as Stuff On My Cat (with, admittedly, better lighting), all of which makes it even more bizarre that people would get upset enough about it to destroy it.

I mean, really, this is a photograph of a piece of sculpture. That’s not Jesus in the urine, it’s an artist’s depiction of Jesus. And the fact that the reddish-yellow fluid is urine doesn’t appear anywhere in the picture. It’s something the photographer has said about the picture. (Which is, again, part of the reason I don’t find it very impressive as art.)

Look, no matter what your religious views, other people with other views are going to think you’re wrong and that your religion is evil and/or stupid. In fact, “all other religions are evil and/or stupid” is pretty much the one philosophical stance that all religions share.

Other people don’t love your religion. Suck it up.