Compelling argument:

A child a man agrees to have is one thing, but should a man have to pay child support when he makes it clear to a woman that he does not want one?

Jennifer Spenner for the Saginaw News and Kathy Barks Hoffman for the AP wrote about a Michigan man who recently challenged being forced to pay child support for his girlfriend’s baby — despite what he alleges were her assurances that she couldn’t get pregnant because of a medical condition, and her knowledge that he didn’t want a child.

He made the point to the court that if a woman can choose whether to abort, adopt out, or raise the child, a man should have the same right, and argued that Michigan’s paternity law violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Matt Dubay lost the case, which he previously acknowledged was a long shot — but should it have been?

Since reproductive rights grants woman the right to arbitrarily determine when life begins its seems fair that men are granted that same right. Of course this lead to the perverse outcome that a biological father who discovers he has a ten year old child has the right to deny that his child is a living being. Once more, given the supreme court’s argumentation this father’s rights is constitutionally guaranteed. Oh the wisdom of Roe vs Wade. What were they thinking?

Before i get lambasted by Jamie as a closest conservative pro lifer I wish to make clear my argument. My problem with Row vs Wade is that it found a constitutional right that by definition was only applicable to a subset of citizens. Woman were giving the extra constitutional right that, in a particular context, allows them to determine how the state defines life. Give additional rights to some citizens seems to work against the liberal value of the state treating everyone equally. It leads to state discrimination which we the state forcing fathers to support children they never wanted to have.

My solution to the problem of abortion is rather simple and if the Supreme court had not over step its constitutional bounds and forced legislation from the bench, then it probably would of been implemented. There should be a constitutional amendment defining when life begins. Abortions prior to this point are permissible because the people have determined that a fetus at that point is not living while abortions after that point are forbidden.

Its hard to see how this makes me either pro life or pro choice.

Michael sends me this link to a Zogby survey showing the viewing preferences of different political groups. Its an interesting read.

Advertisers may be surprised to discover that a great place to capture moderates is on Fox News, where over 27% of moderates tune in daily. Unlike conservatives, though, moderates watch all the broadcast networks, and, like the liberals, NBC is their favorite, with 37% watching daily.

Alan Krueger, a professor of economics, makes an observation about terrorism.

One set of factors that I examined did consis­tently raise the likelihood that people from a given country will participate in terrorism—namely, the suppression of civil liberties and political rights, including freedom of the press, the freedom to assemble, and democratic rights. Using data from the Freedom House Index, for example, I found that countries with low levels of civil liberties are more likely to be the countries of origin of the perpetra­tors of terrorist attacks. In addition, terrorists tend to attack nearby targets. Even international terror­ism tends to be motivated by local concerns.

So let me get this straight. Those willing to shed other’s blood are less likely to do so when the state they find themselves in respects liberal values. Some of my readers have led me to believe that liberal values hold the same propensity for violence as do other values. Huh. So it turns out that liberal values reduce a citizens willingness to commit violence.

Incidentally this piece is about how poverty is not a very good predictor of terrorism. Even though he has much empirical data, you can color me skeptical. I would like to see how poverty and terrorism was calculated in the studies showing no correlation.

The author notes:

Additional support for these conclusions comes from research I conducted on the nationalities of foreign insurgents in Iraq. Specifically, I studied 311 combatants, representing 27 countries, who were captured in Iraq. Although the vast majority of insurgents are native Iraqis, motivated by domestic issues, foreigners are alleged to have been involved in several significant attacks. I looked at the char­acteristics of the countries insurgents came from, and, importantly, of the countries with no citizens captured in Iraq. It turned out that countries with a higher GDP per capita were actually more likely to have their citizens involved in the insurgency than were poorer countries.

While it’s true that Saudi Arabia has high GDP it not entirely clear how well distributed that wealth is among the citizens. If I had to guess, given that Saudi Arabia is a Monarchy (The old fashion term for socialism) wealth distribution must not be very great. If the other studies that show no correlation between terrorism and poverty are based on GDP I would argue thats the reason.

The author embraces the notion that liberal values reduces terrorism. However, invariably, liberal values lead to wealthier nations which should have improved wealth distribution. I wonder if studies have been done to see if there is a correlation between wealth and liberal values. The data would probably show a relationship giving indirect evidence for poverty at least partly playing a role in terrorism.

One final thing of interest. The author states:

Support turned out to be stronger among those with a higher level of education. For exam­ple, while 26 percent of illiterates and 18 per­cent of those with only an elementary education opposed or strongly opposed armed attacks, the figure for those with a high school education was just 12 percent. The least supportive group turned out to be the unemployed, 74 percent of whom said they support or strongly back armed attacks. By comparison, the support level for merchants and professionals was 87 percent.

This has been my experience working in Academy. So called educated people are really good at apologizing for human butchers. It’s even present on my blog when the most educated of my readers refuse to agree to the proposition that on the whole killing innocent people is a bad thing. Its interesting that the more educated one becomes the less able they are to discern between good and bad. No doubt this is because such thinking is heavily vilified for its lack of nuance. This leads to perverse outcomes like supporting those that intentionally kill innocent civilians and advocating for presidents of oppressive regimes killing our soldiers be allowed to speak.

There is wisdom in good and bad. One must be wise in how it’s used.

Im sure most of you are aware of the current writers strike. For those on the left that complain about the perils of corporations having monopolies on certain industries it elucidating to see your lack of concern when unions flex their monopolistic muscle. Markets find the fair price for all things including the value a writer’s skill. The writers union is unhappy with its market value and instead of finding legitimate ways to increases it’s value it aims to increase its value by forcibly taking other groups market value. The rhetorical story, in which the left buys into, is that the little man, in this case the writer, is sticking it to the rich fat cat producers which are taking inordinate amount of the profits by forcing the producers to pay more.

If unions or people on the left had even vague understanding of economics they would realize that that the cost of any of the concessions a production companies makes to the writers will have to be managed usually by being passed on to the consumer. Of course this is not always the case and as this post notes, another cost to the writers selfishly demanding more than their market value is that other jobs vital to producing entertainment are suffering.

“I respect the WGA’s position. They probably do deserve a larger percentage of profit participation, but a lengthy strike will affect more than just the writers and studios. On my show we had 14 writers. There were also 2 cameramen, 2 camera assistants, 4 hair stylists, 4 makeup artists, 7 wardrobe people, 4 grips, 4 electricians, 2 craft service, 4 props people, 6 construction, 1 medic, 3 art department, 5 set dressers, 3 sound men, 3 stand-ins, 2 set PAs, 4 assistant directors, 1 DGA trainee, 1 unit manager, 6 production office personnel, 3 casting people, 4 writers assistants, 1 script supervisor, 2 editors, 2 editors assistants, 3 post production personnel, 1 facilities manager, 8 drivers, 2 location managers, 3 accountants, 4 caterers and a producer who’s not a writer. All 102 of us are now out of work.

One possible way producers will get around the problem of having to pay more than the market value of writers is to reduce costs with these employees. Be it thorough the elimination of positions to reduction in wages, it’s quite likely producers will reduce the standard of living for some of these workers. Note that the producers will not be able to pay less than the value of these workers because he is not allowed the power of monopoly. Using force to artificially inflate market value is apparently a right only reserved for certain groups of people.

This quote reminds me of the countless arguments I dealt with when I would ask a ‘on the whole’ question.

Before anyone waxes stupid, please don’t tell me that all generalizations are invalid because not every member of the given group will conform to a generalization. Intelligent people understand that legitimate generalizations are statements about a group’s general characteristics, not individuals’ specific ones. For example, if I say that men are taller than women, I don’t mean that every man towers over every woman; nevertheless, it is an accurate relation of a general difference between the groups.

One can make generalizations with the implied assumption that not all applicable entities necessarily fall into that generalization. It nice to see others struggling to make such an elementary point to those on the left.

The bulk of the post is looking at police profiling. Clearly this is an example of using summary judgment. The poster makes this astute observation.

Modern dogma holds that diversity is one of the greatest qualities a society can enjoy, that it bestows many advantages. But what does this imply? Well, by definition “diversity” refers to differences among groups. Now, not only is it illogical to assume that every one of these differences will be flattering, the supposition that diversity is beneficial implies otherwise. After all, if diversity is beneficial, it is only because certain groups bring qualities or strengths to the table that others do not. And, if a given group possesses a certain unique strength, then other groups are wanting in that area relative to it.

Any which way you care to slice it, this is a corollary of diversity dogma.

So, ironically, despite the fact that the diversity dogmatists would eschew stereotyping, a version of it imbues their ideology. So it’s not that they don’t have biases relating to generalizations, only that their understanding of group differences is clumsy and primitive, sort of like Archie Bunker but with advanced degrees, the illusion of intellectualism and the inability to be honest with themselves and others. So let’s be honest now.

Check it out here.

I know I was born and I know that I’ll die
The in between is mine
I am mine

Even this extremely lame flash animation understands that socialism revolutions must destroy.

Check out this guys work. Extremely good.

How annoying. Looks like my fellow cognitive neuroscientists are following the path of some global warming scientists.

IN anticipation of the 2008 presidential election, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to watch the brains of a group of swing voters as they responded to the leading presidential candidates. Our results reveal some voter impressions on which this election may well turn.

A set of scientists have really decided that they want to make science vulnerable to being displaced as society’s grand arbiter of truth. I’m torn. It nice that science enjoys a reputation as being the arbiter of truth, but it’s also dangerous for studies like these can lead people to believe that there is an absolute truth. As science creeps towards religion hopefully society in general will figure out that science is best left as being amoral. Most likely its will only happen after moral decision with huge implications are made using poor science. Top candidate today would have to be global warming.