Month: June 2012

Jason Brennan wonders:

From my perspective as an outsider, the entire field of constitutional law seems intellectually corrupt. It seems that almost everybody does the following:

1. Start with a political philosophy–a view of what you want the government to be able to do and what you want to the government to to be forbidden from doing.

2. Take the Constitution as a given.

3. Reverse engineer a theory of constitutional interpretation such that it turns out–happily!–that the Constitution forbids what you want it to forbid and allows what you want it to allow… for the most part, people of every ideology tend to argue that the Constitution allows or forbids exactly what they would want it to allow or forbid. Isn’t the most plausible explanation of this that most legal theorists are intellectually corrupt? (They may be sincere, but they are suffering from terrible confirmation bias.)

Frank Viviano was robbed at gunpoint by Guatemalan gang members. He largely blames the drug trade for the violence in the country:

In 2010, only a handful of the world’s countries registered more than 40 homicides per 100,000 people. Guatemala is one of them; neighboring Honduras and El Salvador are two of the others. By comparison, the United States averages around 5 per 100,000 each year.

Behind this homicidal nightmare lies a 3,000-mile chain of narcotics supply and demand, anchored by pitiless Colombian and Mexican drug cartels on the one hand and the affluent U.S. market on the other. Central America’s remote jungle trails have become the principal transit route for an estimated 350 tons of cocaine shipped north annually by the cartels. Add in a burgeoning market in methamphetamines, and the total value of narcotics transported across Guatemala exceeds $100 billion, almost three times its entire legitimate GDP.

(Photo: Relatives and friends carry the coffin of 12-year-old Nery Pineda, who was allegedly killed by gang members for his refusal to join the gang, at the General Cementery of Guatemala City on April 20, 2012. Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in Latin America, with an average of 18 homicides per day. By Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images)

It's hard to say:

Many Americans probably don't understand the healthcare bill as well as many in the media might assume. Only 51% of adults in an April 2012 Kaiser poll responded that they had enough information to understand how the law would impact them personally. A March CBS poll gave pretty much the same result. How can Americans judge a healthcare law that will make a difference in lives, if they don't comprehend how it will?

Even when you broaden it out to the healthcare law as whole (without taking into account its personal impact), only 18% of Americans in a Pew poll felt they understood the law very well, while 31% said not too well or not very well at all. Who is to say, then, that Americans' opinions wouldn't change were they to gain a better grasp of what the law entails?

Jonathan Bernstein seconds this argument.

Seville, Spain, 5.03 pm

A reader disagrees with Jacob Williamson:

If force feeding anorexics is wrong, then so is forcibly committing someone who is suicidal to an institution to protect them from themselves. To say it is wrong is to assume the person is capable of rational decision-making. In talking with a friend over the years about her eating disorder, I've come to think that such rationalism is just not the case.  Severe malnutrition affects decision-making as much as the skewed self-image that drives the behavior in the first place. Add the fact that the person may not have eaten in so long that doing so leads to severe nausea, creating a further aversion to eating, plus years of severe depression and hopelessness that can ultimately manifest as a death wish, and you've got an out-of-control situation that requires serious intervention.

Dear European Commission – this isn't the best way to encourage more women to become scientists:

Erin Digitale balks:

The video is so over-the-top bad that it’s actually kind of hilarious: "Girls" are represented by young women twirling about in decidedly lab-inappropriate skimpy outfits and open-toed shoes, and by close-up shots of exploding cosmetics. (Eyeshadow, incoming!) "Science" is represented by a lot of dry ice fog coming out of some beakers and by a studly dude brooding over a microscope. None of it bears even the vaguest resemblance to the labs where I earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and a PhD in nutrition. (Where was the shot of a frustrated grad student hunting through the recesses of the -80 freezer wearing giant orange gloves that made her hands look like Big Bird’s feet?)

A doozy from Jindal.

NASA astronauts are learning how to cook:

One of the primary concerns about a human mission to Mars is: We simply don't know how the human mind responds to spending months or years in an alien environment millions of miles from the other members of your species. "In space, you're in a form of sensory deprivation," says Kim Binsted, one of the HI-SEAS project leaders. "You don't see the colors you're used to. There's no real-time communication." So how can long-duration astronauts maintain a sanity-shielding link with humanity? Delicious, familiar food is crucial.

Many skills in one long take:

A must-read from William Finnegan reports on the country's organized crime epidemic, fueled by the Drug War:

Ninety-eight per cent of serious crimes in Mexico go unpunished, according to a recent report by the Monterrey Institute of Technology. For kidnapping, which is rarely reported, the figure might be even higher. Kidnapping is the horror lapping at the edge of nearly everyone’s mind, and it’s known that kidnapping is one of the Zetas’ favorite crimes. Corrupt police are often involved—one of the reasons it’s rarely reported. Private security companies seek to capitalize on the public’s panic. When you read a crime story online, the advertisement blinking alongside the text is often an offer of private protection for you and your family against secuestro—kidnapping. If someone disappears and no ransom call comes, should it even be called kidnapping? Human-rights groups estimate that more than five thousand people have disappeared in Mexico in the past five years.

Recent Dish on the drug cartels here.