"I’m not clever at all. I have a certain insight into philosophy, I think. But I’m not clever, I don’t find complicated arguments easy to follow."

Said the philosopher Philippa Foot, who has just died at the age of 90. (She's one of those people, like, supposedly, Shakespeare, who died on their birthday.)

Foot originated the famous trolley problem (in an essay called "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect"). In the hypothetical, a runaway trolley continuing along the rails will hit 5 people who are working on the track. Should you actively divert the trolley onto a track where it will proceed to hit just one person? If you say yes, then should we favor killing a person to get 5 organs that can be used to save 5 lives?

Here's a PDF of the essay.

A casual, autumn observation about gender difference.

At the Farmers' Market today in Madison... I don't know why but...



... women seem to be delighted by pumpkins...



... and men could not care less...

Do you read to find amazing facts?

"Bryson is especially good at dropping in 'amazing facts.' David Douglas, discoverer of the Douglas fir, died after falling into an animal trap that already contained a wild bull. Louis XIII didn't wash until he was nearly 7 years old. The term 'middle class' wasn't coined until 1745, in a book on the Irish wool trade. This is great stuff."

Russ Feingold and his GOP challenger Ron Johnson answer a question about how close they are to the beliefs of the Tea Party.

Watch Russ Feingold confidently assert that he represents Tea Party values. Marvel at the importance of reading the Constitution at an early age and carrying it around all the time. Consider the question whether we should want a millionaire in the Senate. Feingold says it's good to have a nonmillionaire, like him, in the Senate, because the Senate is so full of millionaires and it provides some balance. On the other hand, a businessman who's made millions, like Johnson, has proven something about his ability and his knowledge of how the world works.

ADDED: You can watch the whole debate here. I thought it was interesting to see how well the new guy, Johnson, was able to look polished and competent alongside Russ Feingold.

AND: Instapundit links, saying:

Gee, it wasn’t long ago that Tea Partiers were a fringe group of astroturf bigots or something. Now it seems like everyone wants to be a Tea Partier! Who on earth could have seen this coming?

The answer, of course, is: Instapundit. I must say, when those tea parties began, I thought they were kind of embarrassing. I didn't get Instapundit promoting them all the time.

"The robes acknowledge that the justices have shed distractions in favor of objectivity, fairness and a common, high-minded purpose."

Opines WaPo fashion critic Robin Givhan:

The law is their religion. That's where they place their faith. Their piousness may be imperfect -- they are human, after all. But true devotion is worth striving for.

The robe helps to ward off hubris and self-importance. Indeed, wouldn't we be perturbed if a justice decided that a little rhinestone trim along the sleeves would be quite nice? Or what if a justice decided that a mink collar would be quite lovely in the winter?

"He would still read picture books now if we let him, because he doesn’t want to work to read."

In a story about how "picture books" don't sell anymore, Amanda Gignac, "a stay-at-home mother in San Antonio who writes The Zen Leaf, a book blog," is quoted saying that about her  6 ½-year-old son, Laurence, who "started reading chapter books when he was 4... regularly tackles 80-page chapter books, [but] is still a 'reluctant reader.'"

***

Remember when progressives fought against child labor?

This is the most egregious example of wilful misunderstanding I've seen in a long time.

John Amato must really think his readers are stupid. Shameless.

Rush Limbaugh says there will never be equality because:"some people are just born to be slaves"

How dare you say there's racism in the Teabircher movement? I'm so offended by that notion. Isn't what Rush Limbaugh says just soooooo true?

Amato pretends to wring his hands over the slavery in American history, as if he doesn't know the ways in which we who are free behave as if we were slaves. I can't make myself read the comments over there, but, please, somebody tell me if anyone is smart and honest enough to understand Limbaugh's point.

After all of this politics...

... don't you feel you need a bath?

UPDATE: I'm back. Not from a bath. From a long bike ride. Over 20 miles. Glad to see the Badgers crushed Minnesota.

Did Slate's collection of essays inspire anyone to engage with the hoary question "Who Gets to Be a Feminist?"

I mean, anyone other than the women — the writers were all women — who wrote the essays.

I pointed you toward my essay here. Did you even go over there and read what I wrote? I know I got almost no visitors coming here from over there. Did you click back to page 1 of the 4 pages of essays and read through them all and spend time cogitating about what "feminist" means?

I'm seeing zero discussion of this essay collection elsewhere on the web. It got a few links, but not with any engagement in the question. I'm not sad about this, mind you. The lack of response kind of proved the point I made in my essay.

Talking about feminism is a sidetrack, and the women writers — they're pretty much all women — who occupy themselves writing about the meaning of feminism are willingly confining themselves to an echo chamber. Liberate yourselves!

Suddenly, I feel that the day will come when I will quit paying attention to politics at all.

After writing that last post, I feel such revulsion toward people who are immersed in politics. The lying. The distortion. The inhumanity. Before blogging, I was never politically active, never interested in politics as a partisan. (From a scholarly perspective, I've been interested in how politics influence law and how law expresses politics.)

I started blogging because I love writing quickly and openly and because I'd spent too much time reading the newspaper passively and without making myself decide what I really thought about various things. I wanted to force myself to take one more step and say something about the stories of the day. I'm not a partisan or an ideologue, so I didn't know automatically. It was only by making myself write a sentence or 2 that I found out what I really thought.

As a passive reader, I'd tended to absorb information and to respond with a tolerance for the diversity of human opinion and a sympathy for the different characters whose stories surfaced in the daily news. As a blogger, I've sharpened my thinking and applied much more judgment, but I'm still more interested in understanding what makes different people think and behave the way they do. And, for me, the problem with following politics is that I'm observing human beings who are not interesting characters. They're so thin and predictable!

I can picture myself snapping and saying enough!

Witch! Whore!... Nazi!

A (Republican) Senate candidate has been called a witch. A (Republican) gubernatorial candidate has been called a whore. And now... a — guess which party? — House candidate is tarred with Nazi.

"Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi?" You may click to see Rich Iott — posing and smiling in 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking uniform with 3 of his closest Nazi friends... I mean... with 3 of his fellow WW2 reenacters.  "It's purely historical interest in World War II." Hmm. Yeah. The high-profile article — by Joshua Green in The Atlantic — goes on, stoking your suspicion that a guy who dresses up and plays the part of Nazi has got to feel some affinity for Nazis. Sample:

Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias "Reinhard Pferdmann," which has also been removed, and which Iott described as being his German alter ego. "Part of the reenactor's [experience]," Iott said, "is the living-history part, of really trying to get into the persona of the time period. In many, not just in our unit, but in many units what individuals do is create this person largely based on a Germanized version of their name, and a history kind of based around your own real experiences. 'Reinhard' of course is 'Richard' in German. And 'Pferdmann,' 'pferd' is a horse. So it's literally 'horse man.'"

I was very far into the position of thinking man, this guy should not have been the candidate, what a screw-up for the Republicans when I got to this information — buried at the end of the 13th paragraph of the 15-paragraph article:

[Iott] added that he has participated in re-enactments as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I dough boy and World War II American infantryman and paratrooper.

What?! Green should be ashamed of himself for minimizing this. The 13th paragraph is about follow-up email with Iott. Did Green have the whole damning article written when he encountered this crucial piece of information? And then he decided — what? — to stick it where it's least likely to be read? A decent journalist would have ascertained how many war reenactments Iott has done and which roles Iott played in them. What is the proportion of Nazi roles he assumed compared to the number of times he played WW2 American infantrymen or paratroopers? Who decides, when war reenactments are done, which side somebody plays? Give me a realistic picture of what participation in war reenactments is really like so I can assess what Iott did.

Instead, Green's article is filled out with the well-known information that the Nazis were bad and that Jews and others are offended by signs that a person is sympathetic to Nazis. It's pretty obvious that Green is hot to smear Iott and help the Democrat in the race. And, unsurprisingly, the Democratic blogosphere welcomes Green's hearty slab of biased reporting.

TPM's Josh Marshall types up "Marcy Kaptur's Good Night's Sleep" ("whatever worry she may have had about reelection, I think that's over now that her opponent Rich Iott has been revealed as an avid Nazi reenactor"). Also at TPM ,Evan McMorris-Santoro has a long piece that looks like a rewrite of Green's piece, except that it leaves out the crucial information about other reenactments altogether. How incredibly slimy!

Look! Over there! Nazis! They're eeeevil! Sorry, but I'm looking over here, at journalists who should be ashamed of their shoddy political hackery.

"Oh! I understand why it's such a small piece of steak."

"Meade is making steak pizza again!"



"It smells delightful!"



Mmmmmmm.... Beautiful!

The Russ Feingold vs. Ron Johnson Debate.

Are you watching with me?

The "irreplaceable" Usman is dead.

Killed by a drone strike. "Al-Qaeda takes a big hit." And "American intelligence was unaware that he was in the area; he was collateral damage."

Random deskscape.

How we spent $100 at Whole Foods...

... for just a small bag of things....


(Enlarge.)

So, there was the chocolate. The steak was only $7.58. But — oh! — those pine nuts.