Back in the Saddle

Okay, I know it's been a while (19 days, in fact), but I've finally established the new site. www.hammerofjudgement.net The new and improved hammer! I migrated the archives, so it's only as if I took a three-week vacation. Bookmark the new address, because we won't be coming here anymore.

End of the Hammer?

It was inevitable, only a matter of time. Really, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. My office has placed a block on accessing blogs, both for viewing and updating. I guess that my employers want me to actually get some work done while I am being paid by them and using their equipment. I am a little suprised by the suddenness of it, though. Happened between one post and the next. Unfortunately, blogging from home is a logistical impossibility, ditto internet cafes. So, I have one option, and that is to migrate from a hosted blog to one a a site that I own. This way I can circumvent any filters. This is probably something I should have done a while ago. (Is this ethical? Should I even be contemplating this?) So bear with me as I suss this option out. Luckily, I have some good resources at my disposal. Meanwhile, keep checking in.

Science and Religion

Thomas Brewton offers a pair of interesting pieces on the antagonism between science and religion, a false antagonism to his way of thinking. These articles are here and here. The first article notes that "The truth is that all of the greatest groundbreaking scientific work of the seminal period of modern physical science, the 17th and early 18th centuries, was done by devout Christians." I think that saying "all" of the groundbreaking work is probably an exaggeration, and I think that saying all of the scientists were devout is also an exaggeration, but the overall point holds. (However, one should be very careful in interpreting the meaning of this. It certainly doesn't mean that Christians had the monopoly on scientific acumen. Indeed, I suspect that the reason that some much science was done by clergy in those early years was because the clergy were the only ones with time and money on their hands to do science). So, yes, much science was done by Christians in those years. (Of course, much science was done by Muslims in the previous centuries, and by Jews in later centuries.) Science and religion CAN coexist, we're told, because, "Religion looks at the big picture, science at particular natural instances." I support this way of looking at the two. Religion answers the questions, why are we here, what is my purpose, what happens when we die? Science answers the questions, why is a volcano here, what is the purpose of this enzyme, what happens to my body when I die? Two distinct fields. The problem happens when one field intrudes on the other. Of course, readers of this site are familiar with the most obvious of the religious intrusions: intelligent design and the fight against teaching evolution. But there are others. Stressing abstinence education when the data show that it doesn't work and is actually counterproductive, or failing to fund stem cell research, are two examples that come quickly to mind. Does science intrude on religion? I guess you could say it does every time science explains away another of life's mysteries.

Bush's fault

Another unhappy legacy of the Bush Administration: "U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws." The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage. Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers." Hadn't Harris already done enough damage?

People, Not Liquid

Here's a good article on improving airline security from Robert Poole. I normally don't agree with Poole, but his thinking makes sense here. In sum: "We don't need to ban water from planes; we need to keep terrorists off them. To most effectively do so, we need to get over our obsession with "bad" things (laptops, lighters, bottled water) and start looking for bad people. "

Wal-Mart Values

Boy, you can't win for losing. Wal-Mart is under fire again, but this time from the far right, its traditional allies. What did they do now? They "further capitulat[ed] to the powerful homosexual lobby by recently partnering with the 'National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.'" Americans for Truth, "the only National pro-family organization solely dedicated to exposing and opposing the anti-Christian homosexual, bisexual and transgendered agenda," says: "It’s a real shame, and I think people who value traditional marriage and the Biblical model of human sexuality should sit up and take notice of Wal-Mart’s recent support of radical pro-homosexual/anti-Christian groups and policies that seek to destroy the time-honored institutions of marriage and family, and further aim to silence proponents of traditional family values.” But the truth is, Wal-Mart is one of the biggest proponents of the most American of family values, which is to say, the value of "show me the money." I'm not making fun. Wal-Mart only makes decisions that help the bottom line, and that is ultimately what matters in our society. So when Wal-Mart teams up with a homosexual group, people who value traditional marriage and the Biblical model of human sexuality should definitely sit up and take notice, but take notice of the fact that they aren't the powerful economic bloc they once were.

Status Quo

The Center for the American Dream published an article talking about the evils of transit-oriented development, or TOD, today. TOD is the name for urban development that supports the use of mass transit. How does it do that? Well, it focuses on walking and walkability and it minimizes the amount of required parking. To focus on walking, TOD is relatively high density and it has mixed land uses (thus minimizing the total distance that must be walked). I support TOD, but I understand that it has its criticisms. But I'm always suspicious when a group called something like the Center for the American Dream critiques something like TOD. And as it turns out, I am right to be. The center's true name is The Center for the American Dream of Mobility and Home Ownership. What they should call it is the Center for the American Dream of Automobile-Dependence and Single Family Home Sprawl. Nothing in TOD prevents mobility or home ownership and indeed some studies show that TOD increases mobility and home ownership for low-income groups for whom owning a car is a huge burden (owning a car can cost over $10,000 a year when you consider insurance, maintenance, gas, licencing, and taxes). So the Center is really talking about auto-based mobility and single-family detached house ownership. But my real beef isn't really with this particular analysis of TOD. It's with the Center's whole attitude of the retrenched status quo. For instance, we've already learned that TOD is bad and our current model of auto-based, high-land-consumption housing is better. Okay. However, no one will argue that our current model is very energy-intensive. All that driving, of course, uses energy, but single-family housing can use almost twice as much energy as, say, an apartment per square foot because it has so many exposed surfaces, much more interior volume to heat or cool, less protection from the sun or the cold wind, etc. Okay, well, we'll accept that. But let's work for energy efficiency and using renewable energy sources. Nope, sorry, because now the Center tells us that renewable energy sources are bad, too. So I guess we're just stuck with the present situation. We'll just keep importing oil and burning fossil fuels and penalizing the poor. I'm not saying that TOD or renewable energy is the solution to our problems. But I am saying that at least they are attempts to solve them. The Center for the American Dream is contrarian, needlessly so.

Flat tax Smlat tax

To respond to the comments from my recent flat tax post: I agree that spending reform is more important than tax reform, if for no other reason than spending reform would likely engender tax reform. The truth is, the federal government wastes money. But worse than that, the federal government spends too much money, by which I mean the federal government has its fingers in too many pies. Education is a good example. Education has been the responsibility of the state government since, well, since the passage of the Constitution. Gradually, the federal government absorbed authority, notably with the creation of the Department of Education (1980) and more importantly with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Many of us may agree with the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, but with the authority the law gives Uncle Sam comes budgetary and spending requirements. Boom, bigger federal budget. Now couple that with a legislative system such as the one we have, one that creates budgets in the way it does (which is to say, one that, for instance, incentivizes pork barrel projects), and you have a recipe for abuse. I recently read an article that unfortunately I can’t get my hands on now in which the author suggested that the best way to argue for federal fiscal reform is to adopt the platform of states’ rights. This platform returns power to the states; state governments are more accountable and have smaller budgets, so the potential for fiscal abuse and misuse is smaller. Meanwhile Anonymous 2 deploys the rhetorical device of hyperbole to drive his point home. I guess it would have been effective if his point had been on target. But he took my anti-flat tax stance as a pro-high tax stance. Regardless of what one thinks of taxes, one must agree with the statements I made: that the flat tax doesn’t actually reform what needs to be reformed (unless what needs to be reformed in the progressiveness of the tax rates), and that the flat tax will increase taxes on the poor. Those two facts are always left out of the discussion of the flat tax and its purported benefits. Furthermore, if you believe, as I do, in the theory of the declining marginal utility of the dollar, then you support, as I do, a progressive tax rate structure. Nowhere did I talk about raising taxes or about the creation of a utopia or even about the evils of capitalism. Indeed, I love the free market. But the sad fact is that we do not live in the free market that Anonymous 2 thinks that we do. Or how can he explain the massive subsidies that farmers and ranchers and steel companies and airlines and the auto industry receive?

Flat tax won't die

I hate to sound like a broken record (how much longer before the roots of that expression are unknown to those who use it?) but I'm merely responding to flat-tax supporters' own repetitive mantras. Today, Ed Fuelner at the Heritage Foundation once again trumpets the ease and simplicity of the flat tax. We're told once again that with a flat tax, "We could file our returns on the back of a postcard." We're told once again that with a flat tax, we "could collect all the revenue the government needs and save Americans time and worry." But as I've said here and here and here, the problem with our tax code is not calculating the amount of tax owed, which is all that a flat tax reforms. Currently, once one determines one's taxable income, one consults a chart to find one's tax burden. Under a flat tax, once one determines one's taxable income, one multiplies it by the flat tax rate to find the tax burden. Not much of reform, is it? No, because the real problem with our tax code is the first step, the determination of taxable income. Real tax reform can only come when we simplify this step, which, strictly speaking, a flat tax won't do. Therefore, when people speak of the flat tax as tax reform, they are implicitly including a host of other things that have nothing to do with the actual tax rate's flatness. These other things are probably needed. So what's the big deal? Well, think about it. Under our current tax system, called a progressive system, the rich pay a higher percentage of tax than the poor do. So if we introduce a flat tax, that means that rich people will end up paying less tax and poor people will end up paying more tax. And if we make the flat tax revenue-neutral, which is to say that it will raise the same amount of revenue as the current system, the poor will have to pay much, much more to make up for the taxes that the rich are no longer paying. So, my point, again, is that the flat tax is a double-whammy. It doesn't actually reform anything, but it will harm low-income people and probably result in less government revenue to boot.

AIDS and dying

Here's an interesting recap of the AIDS epidemic after 25 years. "In the United States, an estimated 1.1 million people are infected with HIV and more than half a million Americans have died of AIDS. The bad news is that the rate of HIV infection remains steady at about 40,000 per year and the good news is that number Americans dying from AIDS has dropped for 52,000 in 1995 to 15,800 in 2004." How does this compare with other "epidemics"? According to the Centers for Disease Control statistics, AIDS would be probably be 20th or so as a leading cause of death in the US. (see the top ten causes of death in the United States here). Even at its height, it would have been about 8th or 9th. That's bad, but diabetes kills 74,000 people a year (#6 on the chart), and 1.4 million new cases are diagnosed a year, adding to the estimated 21 million people who already have it. You never hear about the diabetes epidemic. Why is that? Where is the diabetes quilt? Is it because AIDS is much more politically loaded (the "gay disease")? AIDS seems more random? Is uncurable? Or is it that AIDS has a larger and more active advocacy group?

Gay marriage

We haven't talked about gay marriage in a while, so I was glad to see Thomas Sowell write something today. He's against it, of course. I'm not sure about his reasoning, though. He first says that the current marriage laws discriminate against actions, not people, and that's okay because that's what laws are supposed to do. Some actions are good and some actions are bad. By this logic, gay people are perfectly free to do whatever they want with their personal lives. The law doesn't care. But the law does care about certain actions. He likens it to the bicyclist that wants to use the highway. Bikes aren't allowed on the highway. What's the cyclist to do? Well, according to Sowell, he can just give up his bike and get in a car. But what if the cyclist is not allowed in cars? Is that discriminatory? I think so, and I think that it is the better analogy. The GAO has famously identified 1138 ways in which the federal government treats [legally] married people differently from single people. Now obviously not every of the 1138 ways will benefit every married couple, but clearly some sort of discrimination against people rather than actions is at work here. Sowell then goes to argue that gay marriage should be illegal because, well, it's always been illegal. His facts are right, I suppose, but so what? Finally, he pulls out the old standby. Gay marriage should be banned because marriage is about procreation, and same-sex couples can't procreate. This argument has been thoroughly fisked by others so I won't address it here. But it certainly dies a hard death. I think same-sex marriage should be legal, and I predict that in 20 or 30 years, we will look back on today's debates the same way today we look back on previous debates of abolition, women's franchise, Prohibition, and civil rights, which is to say with wonder and sympathy.

Remove your shoes

In the spirit of Friday's post about the risk of terrorism, I offer today's article about the Transportation Security Administration's (which, by the way, is a needless bureaucracy) new, "tweaked" list of items allowed in carry-ons. "Due to enhanced security measures most liquids, gels, lotions and other items of similar consistency will not be permitted in carry-on baggage." We are entering a new kind of arms race. The bad guys will come up with ever-more creative ways of packaging explosives, and the TSA will implement ever-more stringent restrictions on allowable items. First it was tweezers, then shoes, now it's jellos and puddings. I rue the day when the terrorists figure out how to make cotton or polyester explosive.

Risk

The thwarted terrorist plot in Britian is going to fan the flames of hysteria: how much more intrusive and painful can airport security become? We'll soon find out. But this article in Reason tells us that terrorism, as awful as it is, is actually a very remote danger, at least for us as individuals. The article calculates the odds of dying from such quotidian things as driving a car, crossing the street, or being struck by lightning, and then compares them to the odds of dying in a terrorist event. "What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they've gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more." Meanwhile, "if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000." This reminds me of a aspect of human decision-making called the conjunctive fallacy. When human beings evaluate risk, if the risk scenario is more vivid to them, they instinctively consider it more likely. So, for instance, if you tell someone that they have a chance of dying in a car accident, he will mentally assign it some [low] probability. But if you tell someone that he has a chance of dying because his left front tire will blow out on the freeway and the car will roll three times before bursting into flames, he will assign it a much higher probability. Clearly the first situation (dying in a car accident in general) is more likely than the second (dying in a very specific accident), but the average person will consider the second more likely simply because it is more vivid in his mind. This is one reason that people fear terrorism so much. They have a very clear picture of being on a highjacked plane or being trapped in the London Subway. They don't have a clear picture of slipping in the shower and breaking their neck.

New job, less blog

I've just assumed a new position that means, unfortunately, more scrutiny of computer activity and less time for things like this blog. (Yes, I know you are aghast to learn that I've been posting on my employer's time). I will try to continue to have one post a day, but indulge me if that doesn't always occur.

Inner city decline

Policy makers, city planners, and poverty fighters have been trying to address the problem of the declining inner city for at least 50 years. (Though some people, such as Robert Bruegmann, would say that the declining inner city is not actually a problem at all.) Things like redevelopment districts, urban renewal, infrastructure investment, special tax treatments have all been tried, and I think most would say only marginally successfully. But here's a new idea. According to Pat Fagan, head of a group called BOND (Brotherhood for a New Destiny): "America must create a "Culture of Belonging,” he says. And the formula for that is "work, wedlock and worship." According to the social science data, if these three fundamentals are in place, government social policy is virtually unnecessary." I dislike the moralizing overtones of the delivery, but the message, which is that inner city residents have to take some responsibility for their condition, is spot-on. This is the sort of message the city planners may not like to hear, because it suggests that their remedies may not be needed after all.

BioLogos

Here's a new twist on the intelligent design/evolution theme. Dr. Francis S. Collins, the scientist who led the Human Genome Project, has a theory called BioLogos that he calls a theistic view of evolution. According to BioLogos, evolutionary theory as we understand it is correct. Good. But here's the twist: God designed it! Collins says: "If God decided to create the universe and his purpose was to populate it with creatures in his image, with whom he could have fellowship and to whom he would give the knowledge of right and wrong, an ability to make decisions on their own free will and an immortal soul, and if he chose to use evolution to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that's not how he would have done it? It's an incredibly elegant means of creation. And because God is outside of time and space -- at least, I think that would make sense, given that he's not part of the natural world -- he could, at the very moment of creation, at the instant of the Big Bang, have this entire plan completely designed right down to our having this conversation. And it would seem perhaps a bit random and long and drawn out to us, but not to him." Isn't that a neat trick? BioLogos bridges the science-religion gap by saying that however random or materialistic or, dare I say, atheistic current theory appears, it doesn't matter, because God MADE it appear random or materialistic or atheistic. His purpose in doing so? Well, humans just aren't qualified to know. Yawn. Another false start. My problem with BioLogos is the same one I have with intelligent design. It has no explanatory power. It just adds an extraneous layer, a needless complication, to our thinking.