Student howlers and more laughs

Philosophy professor Stephen Hicks has posted What I Have Learned About the History of Philosophy from My Students. These are all funny (so go read all of them!), but some of my favorites:

• For Aristotle, the virtuous person can be known as temperature, someone who is under complete control. Aristotle thinks the Principle of Noncontradiction is an axiom is because it is one.
• In feudal times, jobs were passed on from fathers to sons. For example, if your father was a priest, you would probably become a priest too.
• Marx says the broughers who employ the workers can and do enslave the proliterate workers. So Marx promoted socialism which operates the production of products produced by the society. Social­ism is an ideal, but come on now! Let's be realistic!
• Against Marx, Rand advocates free enterprise and selfishness, but her philosophy is sort of controversial, in a sense. She commits the fallacy of hoc poc der doc.

"Hoc poc der doc"? Not sure what that is.

Perhaps the best one, because unlike the others Stephen reports this one kinda made me think a little, is this: "Mysticism is the direct and immediate experience of the scared." That actually sounds like one of Nietzsche's aphorisms.

I've added a link to this page at the list of Philosophy Fun and Humor at EpistemeLinks. Here you will find hours of philosophy-related laughs. Some great stuff here! One link included there is another listing of student howlers like the above.

And for less than $8 you can get more laughs by purchasing Non Campus Mentis: World History According to College Students. This had both Susan and I laughing throughout!

Government mandated exercise coming next?

I've seen an increase in commercials recently reminding people to buckle-up or else they'll get a ticket. Some even try to make you laugh by using cartoon cars from a current children's movie. Walter Williams had a nice op-ed on this recently: Click It or Ticket. He asks whether government-mandated exercise will be coming next. I think this slippery slope logic makes sense, and might just lead to some pretty outragious government decisions in the next decade or two. We've already got requirements on things like seatbelts and helmets, and a ban on smoking almost everywhere. I predict this trend will continue: more and more smoking bans, increasing regulations on ingredients at restaurants, and various other regulations aimed at lowering sky-rocketing healthcare costs, which are increasingly paid by the government through entitlement programs (read: paid for by all of us as taxpayers). On this, Williams notes:

As to your statement 'Lack of safety belt use is a growing public health issue that... also costs us all billions of dollars every year,' that's not a problem of liberty. It's a problem of socialism. No human should be coerced by the state to bear the medical expense, or any other expense, for his fellow man. In other words, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another is morally offensive.

Well said Walter.

So will government-mandated exercise be next? How would that work? Would it just be a weight-numbers game, where we all have weekly checkins with schedules as to how much weight we must lose and by when? Kind of like voluntary weight watchers programs, except without the pesky "voluntary" part of it.

Or will it take the form of business regulation, where businesses are forced to provide 30-minutes a day to all employees for "exercise time"? (In that scenario, the unemployed and homeless could be required to exercise as a condition of receiving unemployment checks or room at a shelter. So just about everyone would get their exercise it seems.)

I'm just trying to think along the lines of other government programs, like public education, where kids are herded into gym classes on a regular schedule each week, where (based on my childhood experience at a public school) they tend to get either very little exercise at all or they play chaotic deathmatches of dodgeball, floor hockey, etc. Some days we'd get safe, effective exercise, but that was a minority of the time.

Or even better than a numbers game or exercise at work, how about government-run gyms? Your SS number gets you in the door, your exercise is monitored and recorded, then a monthly review is done and you are penalized (ticket?) if you didn't exercise enough -- or the right mix of routines. And given the government's track record on... well... just about everything, I'm sure those gyms would remain top-notch, clean, safe, and effective operations. No doubt.

Cardinals, Mariners, Nationals/Expos All-Time Teams

Today I posted my draft chapter on the St. Louis Cardinals.

I also recently posted the draft chapters for the Nationals/Expos and Seattle Mariners.

For the book introduction and several other team chapters posted so far, see the book project index page.

Committee Reports on Ward Churchill

A nice post by Diana Hsieh, a graduate student at Univ. of Colorado, on the recent university investigative committee's report on Ward Churchill. Her post includes the excellent op-ed written by the chairman of the UC philosophy department, Robert Pasnau.

Read the Legislation first?

George Reisman has a nice post, The Sorry State of Our Union, on the need for members of Congress to actually read the legislation they are voting on. Alas, all too often, they do not. I also like the suggestion to have new rules from regulatory bodies go through a vote in the relevant committee before becoming law.

On this issue, see also the proposed bill that would require exactly that.

Who Pays the Taxes in the USA

Here is a clear, two-page report (PDF) from the congressional Joint Economic Committee that nicely summarizes the basic facts about who pays federal income tax in the USA (and who does not). This information should already be known to anyone who is serious about tax policy in this country, but it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves now and then -- and to have the latest figures at our fingertips too. So with the recent extending of the "Bush tax cuts", I thought it was a good time to blog about this. The numbers:

• The top 50% of income earners pay a whopping 96.5% of federal income taxes, while the lower 50% pay just 3.5%.
• The top 25% pay 83.88% of federal income taxes
• The top 10% pay 65.8% (these are people with an adjusted cross income of about $95,000 or higher)
• The top 5% pay 54.4%
• The top 1% pay 34.3% (these are people with an adjusted gross income of about $300,000 or higher)

So keep these numbers in mind the next time a politician (or anyone else) bemoans the lack of "progressivity" of the Federal Income Tax. Ask them what percentage of federal income taxes they want the top 1/5/10% of earners to pay, what is their ideal amount? Should the top 1% pay over 50% of the total collected? Should only the top 10% of earners pay any federal income tax at all? Is that what they want to see? Nail them down on their numbers.

While you're at it, ask them what they think rich people do when they get a tax cut. Do they reinvest that money into their businesses, hire more employees, purchase goods and services that keep poor- and middle-class people employed, or give more money to charity? From the debate on tax cuts for the rich -- from those against them -- one gets the sense they never do these things... they instead hoard this money in a sack under their bed, or burn it, or put it in an offshore account that in no way helps the US economy. In reality of course, the opposite is true almost 100% of the time.

All-Time Reds Book Chapter Posted

Today I posted my draft chapter on the Cincinnati Reds.

For the book introduction and four other team chapters posted so far, see the book project index page.

Market for Organs

Thanks to Virginia Postrel for this brief blog post about Sally Satel's op-ed in the New York Times on the increasing crisis in organ donation (kidneys, etc.). The current numbers, and the trend, are not encouraging. But conferences that consider alternative approaches, and some major institutions seeming to (slowly) open up to them, are hopeful signs.

All-Time Royals Book Chapter Posted

Today I posted my draft chapter on the Kansas City Royals.

For the book introduction and three other team chapters posted so far (Astros, Mets, Pirates), see the book project index page.

All-Time Astros Book Chapter Posted

Today I posted my draft chapter on the Houston Astros.

For the book introduction and two other team chapters posted so far (Mets, Pirates), see the book project index page.

Introducing EpistemeLinks, Inc. - A Not-for-Profit Corporation

Just a brief blog entry to announce the creation of EpistemeLinks, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation that exists to support the maintenance and growth of the EpistemeLinks website project. I started the project in 1997, and since then it has grown a great deal: it currently has a database of over 19,000 well-categorized links to philosophy resources on the Internet, and receives over 7,000 unique visits per day. The site is widely used by professors, students, and those in the broader philosophical community.

The corporation was officially created earlier this year, but this past week I finally made this news public on the site with this brief announcement page.

Louis Rukeyser: 1933 - 2006

When I was a kid, say ages 12-16, I was a fan of The McGlaughlin Group on the local PBS channel. I was interested in politics and current events, an early sign of my inclination towards philosophy, economics, and other subjects.

After a little while I grew to enjoy Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser, which came on right before the MG. Although some of the discussions on that show went over my head at that age, over time I learned many important concepts about economics, the financial world, and more (none of which has translated into my growing rich mind you, as I'm not interested in the world of big money and risk-taking). The format of his show was enjoyable: an opening monologue usually about the past week's events, predictions from "the elves", and then an extended discussion and Q&A with a "special guest" and his collection of experts. And throughout the show Rukeyser himself was a joy to listen to, whether reading his no-doubt prepared opening monologue or ad-libbing with the guests.

He had a way of making technical or complicated economic concepts understandable -- even to an untrained middle- or high-schooler. He was generally speaking pro-capitalism, pro-free-markets. He was also an optimist, not just about the markets, but it seemed about life in general. He seemed to have a benevolent sense of life about him, which was one of the things I enjoyed about his program.

Louis Rukeyser died on May 2, after battling multiple myeloma. His website is located here, and here is the brief Wikipedia entry on him.

Mr. Wake, social security is doing fine

Susan didn't change her name to Stone when we got married. Nonetheless, she sometimes gets junkmail addressed to Susan Stone (instead of Susan Wake). Even funnier is when I get things addressed to Tom Wake.

I got one recently, from something called The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicine (they have a website, but I don't want to link to it). This must have been a mass mailing, or I'm on a random list of US citizens who got it, because nothing I am affiliated with could lead them to believe I'd support their views.

Not only was it mistakenly sent to a "Tom Wake", but the contents of it really made me laugh. The basic position of this organization is that radical changes to the Social Security (and Medicare) system are not needed. In particular, they are against any "privatization" schemes, including the one proposed by Bush, but no doubt including any such idea. Included was a letter that I can just sign my name to and send directly to my representative, telling him how much I want to keep SS the same and that he should listen to the views of this committee organization.

The laughable thing here is that in a 6-page letter they don't once discuss any financial difficulties that SS and Medicare are facing. They attack privatization, but don't offer any other ideas or solutions to the looming problems. It would be one thing to be against a particular idea, and instead propose others. But they don't propose anything, because they don't even mention the problems in the 6-page letter at all! One must assume that they favor raising taxes to cover the future shortfall, but of course they don't want to say that in their fundraising letter! Instead, we get howlers like this:

"But I do know that Social Security was put in place by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935 as a kind of "chain of trust" between generations to keep older Americans from experiencing devastating poverty. And I am confident that it is in that spirit that you and/or your spouse undoubtedly contributed to Social Security for many, many years..."

Umm... I wouldn't be so confident if I were you. In fact, I doubt very many people -- besides members of this committee perhaps -- contributed to SS "in that spirit".