Month: August 2009

Worse Than Nothing, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Daphne Eviatar is more hopeful about Holder prosecuting CIA interrogators than Andrew was:

A criminal investigation of even low-level CIA interrogators who exceeded the guidelines they were given should, if done thoroughly and honestly, inevitably lead to questions about how those guidelines were communicated down the chain of command, and whether higher-ups approved the more extreme conduct. And that may be the best hope for raising the ultimate questions of how the rules were developed and whether their authors knew they were stretching the limits of the law even as they crafted them.

Where Do Conspiracy Theories Come From?

by Patrick Appel

Ryan Sager explains their storied history and then asks:

The real question, I think, is whether these things are getting better or worse in the modern age. Since we don’t have any public opinion polls from 1775, I’m not sure exactly how one would tackle the question. In a world of far less literacy, a partisan political press with little “fact checking” ability, and most information traveling by word-of-mouth, you’d have to think the conspiracy theories were more prevalent and harder to combat hundreds of years ago. At the same time, when any crazy theory (say, birtherism) can get massive coverage on all the major cable networks, spreading the “infection” to millions of people in a matter of minutes, maybe things are worse today. (And even if the reports are framed as “debunking” the conspiracy theory, we’ve seen that repeating bad information — even to correct it — can still spread the bad information.)

Judging by rumors circulating in places like Iraq, my gut says the past was worse. Paranoia and a dearth of media breed lies.

Striking At The Drop Of A Hat

by Patrick Appel

A reader counters Reihan:

But whenever there's a move to tweak the system in some way—say, to gently nudge patients to get the approval of a general practitioner before seeing a specialist—the French go absolutely mad with rage. Doctors go on strike, massive street protests ensue, the riot police come out: it's a crazy scene.

I would submit that this says more about the nature of French politics rather than the nature of their health care.  Taking to the streets of Paris is, after all, a time-honored tradition.  By contrast, health care disputes in Canada tend to be rather less raucous.

But the essential point of the article is true:  government insurance means that premiums, coverage and so forth largely become political questions.  That's not necessarily a bad thing; political processes are subject to public pressure.Insurance companies, by contrast, are only rarely accountable to anything but the stockholders.

Another:

Striking, rioting, and street protests are pretty much the French response to everything.  Unions, rail workers, education professionals, service employees, bakers, air traffic controllers, journalists, bank tellers, ski lift operators, Princess of Cleves supporters (explain that one to me), hell even Eiffel Tower employees. The people who make Post-It notes have took their managers hostage.  And that's just in the last year.

Sometimes the French strike and protest just for the hell of it.  

Point being, I think French striking health care says less about the relative merits of health care systems than it does about the French.

A Broad Brush

by Patrick Appel

The Economist takes aim at sex offender laws. The article begins with a case in Georgia where a seventeen-year-old girl was forced to register as a sex offender for performing oral sex on a sixteen-year-old boy. Zooming out:

Georgia has more than 17,000 registered sex offenders. Some are highly dangerous. But many are not. And it is fiendishly hard for anyone browsing the registry to tell the one from the other. The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous. The board recommended that the first group be allowed to live and work wherever they liked. The second group could reasonably be barred from living or working in certain places, said the board, and the third group should be subject to tight restrictions and a lifetime of monitoring. A very small number “just over 100” are classified as “predators”, which means they have a compulsion to commit sex offences. When not in jail, predators must wear ankle bracelets that track where they are.

Anytime I try to discuss criminal justice reform, incarceration hawks will use murders and rapists to stereotype the entire prison, parole, and probation population. Grouping together real predators with hormone saturated teenagers, like sex offender registries do, doesn't help the blurring of fairly harmless offenders and truly dangerous criminals.

Biblical Bonding Between Arabs And Jews

by Robert Wright

While guest blogging this week, I’ll again be sharing some excerpts from my book The Evolution of God. Tonight’s excerpt shows how, more than a millennium before Muhammad’s birth, the Bible paved the way for Islam’s inclusion in the Abrahamic family. 

It’s well known that Muhammad claimed that Muslims had descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. What’s less well known is that here he was picking up on the Bible’s own depiction of Arabs as “Ishmaelites”. And what’s almost entirely unknown is that this depiction of Arabs, initially unflattering, was revised upward by a later, more Arab-friendly biblical author, who thus created a narrative that Muhammad could embrace and extend. Here's the story.

Who Owns The Roads?

by Patrick Appel

A reader corrects me:

Your contention about roads not existing for bicycles might be true in rural areas and the west.  It is not in the cities of the east.  The first organization to actively lobby for paved roads in America's cities was The League of American Wheelmen, a cycling organization.  The league's members were a who's who of the elite of the day including  Wright Brothers, Diamond Jim Brady, and John D Rockefeller.  If not for their successful efforts to have the roads paved in our cities the auto would have taken hold much more slowly in its early days.  Just as cars once made use of roads paved for cyclists, cyclist may use roads paved for cars without guilt.  Public accommodations are public.

Health Care Idiocy Watch

by Patrick Appel

This IBD line is pretty great:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Alex Massie, along with the rest of the blogosphere, has some fun at the author's expense. Besides being wrong on the particular, it was pointed out a few days ago that people like Hawking, and Trig Palin, should actually benefit from the reform.

Outing Iran: Mahmoud Farshchian

ForbearencePU

by Chris Bodenner

A reader recommends Mahmoud Farshchian. Wikipedia says:

Farschian is a world renowned master of Persian painting and miniatures. He was born in the city of Isfahan in Iran, a place famed for its art and artists, and it was here where he started to learn art, painting and sculpting. His masterpieces have been hosted by several museums and exhibitions worldwide. He's the most prominent modernizer of the field of miniatures, an art form which was first established in Ancient Persia and later spread to China and Turkey and other Middle eastern countries.

("Forbearance," 2003.  More examples of his work here.)