Month: June 2013

“I cultivate this beard not for the usual given reasons of skin trouble or pain of shaving, nor for the secret purpose of covering a weak chin, but as pure unblushing decoration, much as a peacock finds pleasure in his tail.  And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus,” – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley.

Joseph Daniel Ura reviews research showing how “the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is not dependent on agreement on individual questions of policy between the Court and the public” but upon “the public’s perception that the Court uses fair procedures to make principled decisions—as compared to the strategic behavior of elected legislators.” Furthermore:

Though much of the public may sharply disagree with a decision of the Supreme Court—producing an initial backlash against the policy implications of a particular ruling or set of rulings—the decisions of the Court tend to lead public opinion over the long run. In a recent analysis of more than 50 years of data on Americans’ collective responses to Supreme Court decisions, I find that public responses to important Supreme Court decisions were typically marked by a negative response in public opinion in the short-term that decays and is replaced by a long-run movement in public opinion toward the positions adopted by the Court.

A recent book on the Tea Party by Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto suggests that hate of Obama unifies the group. This prompts Michael O’Donnell to ask, “If Obama-bashing sustains the Tea Party, will it go away without him?”

According to Parker and Barreto, 91 percent of Tea Party supporters hold negative opinions of Obama. (This beats the 82 percent who hold negative views of illegal immigrants, and, even more tellingly, the 85 percent who report a preference for limited government.) Sixty-seven percent of Tea Party supporters believe that Obama is a socialist, and 71 percent think he will destroy the country. Destroy the country! In contravention of basic, established facts, solid majorities do not believe that he is a Christian (71 percent) or that he was born in the United States (59 percent). Parker and Barreto take pains to distinguish these views from those of non-Tea Party conservatives, and to ensure—by means of regression analysis—that Tea Party affinity, and not some other factor like support for the Republican Party, accounts for the figures.

Here we go again:

The United States, Britain and France have supplied the United Nations with a trove of evidence, including multiple blood, tissue and soil samples, that U.S. officials say proves that Syrian troops used the nerve agent sarin on the battlefield. But the nature of the physical evidence — as well as the secrecy over how it was collected and analyzed — has opened the administration to criticism by independent experts, who say there is no reliable way to assess its authenticity… Jean Pascal Zanders, who until recently was a research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, said he has scoured the Internet for photographs, video and news reports documenting alleged nerve agent attacks in Syria. What he has seen has made him a skeptic.

Few of the photographs, Zanders said, have borne the trademark symptoms of a chemical weapons attack.

Let’s do a quick check-list against Iraq? Hateful dictator? Check. Sectarian civil divisions now in full-out civil war? Check. Middle Eastern Muslim country? Check. Saudis and Jordanians on board? Check. Massive emotional and moral appeal for getting rid of a dictator? Check. No idea who the opposition really is? Check.

Seriously, how can anyone – anyone – back getting involved in such a war only a decade after the worst foreign policy catastrophe since Vietnam? Especially all those, like Bill Clinton and John McCain, who were wrong about Iraq having assured us they were so very, very right.

Michael Todd wonders if we’ve passed “peak car”:

A new study from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute looking at cars and car ownership data between 1984 and 2011 argues that while the total number of cars and other light vehicles in the U.S. is almost certainly going to rise from its pre-recessionary peak of 236.4 million in 2008, the rate of ownership among individuals has stalled and likely will remain in a lower gear down the road. … [Study author Michael] Sivak expects that as the economy perks up and the population grows that the absolute number of vehicles will drive past that 2008 peak. But a raft of societal changes, not to mention expensive fuel, are likely to depress individual ownership rates. Among those are growing rates of telecommuting and use of public transportation and the aging out of getting a license or indeed, a car itself.

Jordan Weissman is skeptical:

It’s an interesting theory. But were Americans really rethinking their gas guzzling ways before the economy went south? I’m not quite sure. Remember, before we had a recession, we had a housing bust. Home values peaked in 2006, and families that had bet on infinitely rising prices by taking out second mortgages to finance their lifestyles started getting whacked. That marked the beginning of the end for the over-consuming oughts. And, given that housing values and spending tend to move in tandem, it’s no surprise that vehicle registrations went into retreat around then, just as they retreated after the dotcom collapse.

PZ Myers is disappointed by the results of the Tampa Bay Times‘ recent investigation into how charities are spending the money they collect:

The worst are the cancer charities, and the article singles out the Reynolds family and their nepotistic mill for turning dying people into salaries. Cancer is so easy for these crooks: everyone hates it, there’s no plus side to the disease, and there’s a wealth of tragic heart-string-tugging tales to be mined from it. And you can’t tell from the names what they’re doing! “Breast Cancer Society,” for instance…how can you refuse to support that? “Children’s Cancer Fund of America” — OMG, children with cancer? Here’s $50. And then the members of the family doing the bilking make 6 figure salaries for shipping boxes of surplus junk to cancer patients. It reinforces my opinion that most people are good, but that there are always parasites who know what buttons to push to exploit them.

The Times’ list of the 50 worst charities here.