ProfessorBainbridge.com

Let him eat a po' boy

Remember the Simpson's episode in which Marge derailed Mr Burns' gubernatorial campaign by serving him the three-eyed fish?

I was reminded of that gem when I read a news report that "BP's chief operating officer sought to give the southern US fishing industry a much-need boost Sunday, saying he'd "absolutely" eat Gulf of Mexico seafood after the massive oil spill devastated the region."

Somebody should stick a Gulf oyster po' boy under his nose and see what happens.

Interstellar Travel: Cost Benefit Analysis

A post at io9 evaluates the cost of robotic interstellar probes:

When does it make sense to build a starship? Back in the late 1960s, Freeman Dyson went to work on the question of how much an interstellar probe might cost. Extrapolating from nuclear pulse propulsion and the state of the art in spacecraft design as then understood, Dyson arrived at an estimate of $100 billion to build the craft, which translates into roughly $650 billion today. Though stark, that figure is by no means as eye-popping as one of the estimates drawn up by the original Project Daedalus team: $100 trillion in 1978 dollars. ...

[Richard] Obousy's assumption is that it will become economically feasible (and just as important, politically viable) to construct an interstellar craft when the total cost represents no more than 1% of the Gross Domestic Product of the constructing nation. Now the GDP of the United States, a measure of the country's overall economic output in a given year, is currently $14.6 trillion. The GDP of the entire planet is now $61.1 trillion, and the option of consolidating the larger amount in these calculations is obvious, so Obousy looks at his figures in terms of the US economy and contrasts those results with the global perspective.

The outcome: The US economy becomes able to support a Dyson-class starship costing $650 billion by the year 2085; i.e., in that year, such a cost represents 1% of GDP based on a 2% growth rate per year. A Daedalus-style craft becomes feasible no earlier than 2340. In global terms, the Dyson starship could be built (assuming the global cooperation we at present do not have) within the next few years, whereas the Daedalus class craft would have to wait until 2268.

But what are the benefits? Just because we could afford it, doesn't mean we ought to do it.

Obviously, there will be some benefits from development of new technologies. The infrastructure to support interstellar probes likely could be used to support economic exploitation of our solar system, as well. The biggest benefit, however, would be diversification by diaspora. As long as the human race is confined to one solar system--let alone one planet--we are vulnerable to mass extinction events. The goal of space exploration, it seems to me, is to enable humanity to stop putting all its eggs in one basket.

If I'm right about that, it has implications for current spending. Put simply, every penny of NASA's budget ought to go into reducing the cost of a Dyson-class starship. Sadly, however, I suspect that's way too much in the way of long-range thinking for our government.

Kudos to Obama for Granting Nuke Loan

AP News:

The Obama administration's planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the U.S in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

President Barack Obama called for "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants" in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech and followed that by proposing to triple loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.

Obama in the coming week will announce the loan guarantee to build the nuclear power plant, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan that administration officials hope will draw Republican support.

Loan guarantees for other sites are expected to be announced in the coming months, the official said, who would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of Obama's announcement. The federal guarantees are seen as essential for construction of any new reactor because of the expense involved.

If the GOP really is something more than the nihilistic party of no that our friends Bruce Bartlett and Andrew Sullivan so vigorously accuse it of having become, this is something the GOP ought to back. Nuclear power has proven successful in many countries (see, e.g., France) and, of course, in our own Navy.

Speaking of our Navy, my one complaint is that Obama has opted to go the traditional route of loan subsidies. There's a better route. The federal government ought to be building pebble bed reactors on government land (such as military bases):

The pebble bed reactor (PBR) is a graphite-moderated, gas-cooled, nuclear reactor. It is a type of Very high temperature reactor (VHTR) [formally known as the high temperature gas reactor (HTGR)], one of the six classes of nuclear reactors in the Generation IV initiative. Like other VHTR designs, the PBR uses TRISO fuel particles, which allows for high outlet temperatures and passive safety.

The base of the PBR's unique design is the spherical fuel elements called "pebbles". These tennis ball-sized pebbles are made of pyrolytic graphite (which acts as the moderator), and they contain thousands of micro fuel particles called TRISO particles. These TRISO fuel particles consist of a fissile material (such as U235) surrounded by a coated ceramic layer of SiC for structural integrity and fission product containment. In the PBR, 360,000 pebbles are amassed to create a reactor core, and are cooled by an inert or semi-inert gas such as helium, nitrogen or carbon dioxide.

This type of reactor is also unique because its passive safety removes the need for redundant, active safety systems. Because the reactor is designed to handle high temperatures, it can cool by natural circulation and still remain intact in accident scenarios, which may raise the temperature of the reactor to 1600°C. Because of its design, its high temperatures allow higher thermal efficiencies than possible in traditional nuclear power plants (up to 50%) and has the additional advantage that the gases do not dissolve contaminants or absorb neutrons as water does, so the core has less in the way of radioactive fluids.

A number of prototypes have been built. Active development is ongoing in South Africa as the PBMR design, and in China whose HTR-10 is the only prototype currently operating.

And, as I have proposed before, we should create a Naval Corps of Nuclear Engineering to run them:

Disclosing Known Uncertainties

In criticizing the SEC's new guidance on climate change-related disclosures, about which I blogged earlier, Megan McArdle argues that:

SEC just voted, 3-2, to offer "interpretive guidance" to companies on making public the threats posed to their business by climate change. ...

... in conditions of radical uncertainty, such disclosures could as easily be misleading as useful.

There's two problems with Megan's critique.

Climategate

In a thoughtful piece on Climategate, John Tierney observes that: "Contempt for critics is evident over and over again in the hacked e-mail messages, as if the scientists were a priesthood protecting the temple from barbarians."

It's a very apt analogy. Just as priests have a vested financial interest in promoting doubt-free belief in their gods, so to do the climate scientists. Bret Stephens WSJ op-ed is a must read on this point:

All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.

None of these outfits is per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.

Please go read the whole thing.

Women Judges

My friends Mitu Hulati and Steve Choi, along with two co-authors, have published a study of the qualifications and performance of male versus women judges. They've also popularized the results in a Slate op-ed:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's elevation to the Supreme Court brought to the surface a long-simmering controversy about the relationship between gender and judging. Are female nominees for judicial positions chosen based on affirmative action? If so, are women on the bench worse judges than men—or do they come with advantages that men lack? ...

The claim that women are worse—or better—than men at judging should be susceptible to empirical investigation. There is no obvious way, however, to measure judicial quality; lawyers dispute endlessly whether cases are rightly or wrongly decided—and, ultimately, a good judge is just a judge who decides cases correctly. Still, we have come up with some indirect measures of judicial quality. These include productivity (how many opinions judges write), influence (how frequently other judges rely on their opinions), and independence (how often judges dissent from opinions written by judges who belong to the same political party). We looked at the performance of hundreds of judges over a number of years and working in different types of courts—state supreme courts, federal trial courts, and federal appellate courts. (Our paper is here.)...

On average, female judges are less qualified, based on traditional metrics, than male judges. They have attended lower-ranked colleges and lower-ranked law schools, they are less likely to have had judicial clerkships (a prestigious job often taken by top law school graduates), and they have less experience in private practice before becoming judges. This suggests that the pool of stellar female candidates for the judiciary is smaller than the pool of stellar male candidates, which provides ammunition for the conservative argument that President Obama's choice of Sotomayor, or another female justice, involves affirmative action in favor of women. If female judges are chosen on the basis of sex rather than ability, they must be less talented than male judges, the theory goes. If they were just as good, it would not be necessary to put a thumb on the scale in their favor when evaluating judicial candidates.

Yet when it comes to performance rather than qualifications, we find no statistically significant differences between the decision-making ability of male and female judges in any of our data sets. Female judges are cited just as often as male judges; they write as many opinions; and they are just as likely to dissent, and to dissent from opinions written by judges who belong to their party.

All of which prompted Usha Rodrigues to observe that:

So the authors say female judges do the same work even if they're less qualified by traditional measures, from which they conclude that 1) women are, innately or by virtue of their experience, better judgers than men, 2) that the legal hierarchy's traditional measures of success don't work, or 3) that the study's empirics are off because it's not measuring judicial quality correctly.

It's obligatory to attack the empirical methodology; I'll leave others to do that. While the first explanation has obvious personal appeal for me, it's the second that I see as potentially more unsettling. Law is a hierarchical world. From the time an aspiring law student applies to a school to the day she retires, she's awash in a sea of rankings: how good a school did you go to? What was your class rank? Did you make law review? Were you on the managing board? Did you make Order of the Coif? How good a clerkship did you get? How prestigious is the law firm? How long did it take you to make partner? How much did you make? How much did you bill? What GS level are you?

What if none of it really means anything? Where are we then?

All good questions, to be sure. Especially because the science of gender differences tells us that:

Some differences between the minds of men and women exist. But in most areas, they are small and dwarfed by the variability within each gender.

I'd like to focus on the first hypothesis anyway, however.

If women are better at the tasks required by the judicial role, why? Do they have skills hard-wired by evolution in this area? Do the ways work was divided by gender and women interacted in early hunter-gather societies (or even pre-Homo Sapiens species) still matter today?

Unfortunately, the authors fail to explore the role evolutionary psychology plays in their story.

Of course, if you believe (as I do) that what's going on here is the third hypothesis--namely, that they haven't found valid metrics--it's all much ado about naught.

Revising the Outer Space Treaty

My friend and official PB.com international law adviser Tony Arend asks if the time is ripe for a new Outer Space Treaty:

Forty years ago–on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Excursion Module, The Eagle, touched down on the moon. The following day, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface, uttering one of the most famous phrases in history– ““That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”

As a 10-year old child, I watched this momentous event on our little black-and-white television set. And at some time during the coverage, I remember might have been the first reference to international law that I can recall. One of the commentators noted that when the American flag was placed on the moon that did not indicate that the United States was claiming sovereignty over the moon. Rather, the commentator noted, there was a treaty that prohibited states from making territorial claims to the moon.Indeed, there was- the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

Forty years later, the Outer Space Treaty has generally served the international community well. No state has claimed sovereignty over the moon or other celestial bodies. States have not placed nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on the moon or anywhere else in outer space as prohibited by Article IV.

Nonetheless, in the wake of a sea-change of events since 1967, one might argue that it is time for a revision to the Treaty. Steve Freeland and Donna Lawyer write in the July 20, 2009 Sydney Morning Herald:

The development of space-related technology has grown exponentially since those pioneering steps by Armstrong. Not only has the use of outer space become strategically vital for the major powers, but space-based technologies have become an essential part of daily life. All of us benefit from this when we watch direct satellite broadcasts of the Ashes, use GPS systems in our cars, listen to weather forecasts derived from remote sensing satellites and fly in aircraft that rely on satellite navigation.

Not surprisingly, the international law of outer space has struggled to keep up with this breathtaking advance in technology. This is a big challenge, more so in view of the strategic and military potential of outer space. While the UN is anxious to avoid a “weaponisation” of outer space, it is clear the conflicts of the 21st century are likely to involve extensive use of space technologies.

True enough. This then leads one to question whether efforts should be made to adapt the Outer Space Treaty in light of new technologies and military strategies. What do you think?

I think that human space exploration in the West increasingly will be privatized. Budget constraints in an era of burgeoning deficits likely mean that massively costly human space exploration will not be funded in the near term. Obama is already shifting NASA priorities from planetary to earth science and, moreover, has ordered a blue ribbon review of the whole agency's purpose and goals.

At the same time, we see a host of private space endeavors, including Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and the like.

It's not at all clear that the Outer Space Treaty as currently fashioned is adequate to deal with private exploitation of space. The ABA Journal explains that:

In viewing space as the province of mankind, the Outer Space Treaty borrows principles from customary maritime law, which guarantees peaceful passage through navigable waters by ships of all nations. But in application, the Outer Space Treaty is more similar to the Antarctic Treaty System, a series of international agreements that call for cooperative management of Antarctica as a nonmilitarized environment and put off claims of sovereignty for an indefinite period.

But as the prospects for commercial ventures in space increase, it will be necessary to address the issue of who will be allowed to profit from the fruits of those ventures, say lawyers in the field.

“The current system works if nations accept a détente in space and all the resources are only used for the benefit of all mankind,” Keefe says. “If that’s the case, then there will never be commercialization of space and there will be little benefit for mankind. I know that’s a cynical capitalist viewpoint, but I think if everyone is afraid to launch a venture because they might not be allowed to profit from it, then nothing will happen.”

Not that that's going to stop Richard Branson:

Branson and other space entrepreneurs plan to launch their space ventures whether the law is ready for them or not, says Heidi Keefe, a partner in the Palo Alto, Calif., office of White & Case who chairs the Special Committee on Space Law in the ABA Section of Science and Technology Law. “Branson’s approach has been that he’d rather beg for forgiveness later than ask for permission now, and that is what may be needed to give space law a kick,” she says.

The obvious risk is that space will become the next arena in which the tragedy of the commons plays out. Indeed, we are already getting there, as The Economist observed:

The tragedy of the commons meets the final frontier

THE Earth’s orbit is getting crowded. The past few years have witnessed huge growth in the number of satellites. Unfortunately, wherever civilization ventures it leaves a trail of rubbish. Of the 18,000 tracked objects travelling around the Earth that are larger than 10cm (4 inches), only about 900 are active satellites. The rest is debris—everything from fragments of paint to entire dead satellites and bits of old rockets. Smashed bits of space equipment orbit along with items dropped by astronauts, including tools and the odd glove.

As the pile of rubbish grows, so does the risk of collisions. In the 1970s one NASA scientist pointed out that debris from one collision could go on to create a second, which would create still more debris and more collisions, and so on. Eventually, an entire orbit would be rendered useless for generations.

The orbits around the Earth are too valuable to let this happen. Space is a public common and humanity needs to value it.

In order to encourage private exploration and exploitation of space and to address tragedy of the commons, I propose that a new Outer Space Treaty create a regime for creating and enforcing private property rights in space. After all, private property rights are a recognized solution both for providing incentives for commercial activity and for preventing the tragedy of the commons:

Why was the American buffalo nearly exterminated but not the Hereford, the Angus, or the Jersey cow? Why are salmon and trout habitually overfished in the nation's lakes, rivers, and streams, often to the point of endangering the species, while the same species thrive in fish farms and privately owned lakes and ponds? Why do cattle and sheep ranchers overgraze the public lands but maintain lush pastures on their own property? Why are rare birds and mammals taken from the wild in a manner that often harms them and depletes the population, but carefully raised and nurtured in aviaries, game ranches, and hunting preserves? Which would be picked at the optimum ripeness, blackberries along a roadside or blackberries in a farmer's garden? In all of these cases, it is clear that the problem of overexploitation or overharvesting is a result of the resource's being under public rather than private ownership. The difference in their management is a direct result of two totally different forms of property rights and ownership: public, communal, or common property vs. private property. Wherever we have public ownership we find overuse, waste, and extinction; but private ownership results in sustained-yield use and preservation. Although it may be philosophically or emotionally pleasing to environmentalists to persist in maintaining that wildlife, the oceans, and natural resources belong to mankind, the inevitable result of such thinking is the opposite of what they desire.  ...

Some experts recognize that "In order to facilitate commercialization and colonization, there needs to be a property rights regime established," but argue that a system of pseudo-property rights could be jerry-rigged under the current treaty. But wouldn't it make more sense to have a treaty that was designed from the ground up to promote private property rights? As that same expert observed:

If we do nothing, space will look a lot more like Antarctica than Alaska. Without property rights there will not be adequate investment and space resources will be underutilized. Establishing property rights in space will cost millions, not billions, and can be done decades ahead of any commercialization or colonization. It’s time to set the stage to break out of the exploration mode of Columbus and get on with establishing the regulatory regime to lay the foundation for the next Plymouth Rock.

From the Case Files of the EARI

Remember Dave Barry's Exploding Animal Research Institute? Add toads to the list.

Animal welfare workers and veterinarians had reported that as many as 1,000 toads had swelled to bursting point and exploded in recent days, propelling their entrails up to a metre (three feet) into the air. (Link)

Three feet?!? I know I'm being politically incorrect, inhumane, immoral, immature, and just plain wrong, but I really want to see a video of one blowing up. Don't you?

Well, this isn't exactly what we're looking for, but watch it anyway:

Watch for the coming flood of global warming litigation

My Examiner column:

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the climate change phenomenon commonly called "global warming" exists and is being caused, at least in part, by human activity. Who is responsible? The only sensible answer is, everybody. We all contribute to the release of greenhouse gasses, as did our ancestors going back at least to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

One would therefore think litigation is no more an appropriate response to global warming than litigation would be to any so-called "act of god." One would be wrong.

Earlier this year, Texas trial lawyer Stephen Susman told the Dallas Morning News that "You're going to see some really serious exposure on the part of companies that are emitting CO2." He added, for good measure, that "I can't say for sure it's going to be as big as the tobacco settlements, but then again it may even be bigger."

Indeed, trial lawyers are gearing up to turn global warming into their next pot of gold. A coalition of environmental groups and cities are suing the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank of the United States for making loans to finance oil pipelines, oil drilling, and similar projects that supposedly result in a net emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans trial lawyers Gerald Mapes and Timothy Porter sued dozens of energy companies, claiming they had contributed to global warming.

Last year, Business Week reported that there were 16 pending global warming cases of these sorts pending around the country. More are surely in the pipeline, so to speak.

Indeed, the prospect of a boom in global warming litigation is prompting law firms to begin setting up units specializing in climate change issues. According to the Dallas Morning News, for example, Dallas law firms Vinson & Elkins and Thompson & Knight have set up global warming units with 41 and 26 lawyers, respectively.

If it weren't for the precedents set by tobacco, alcohol, and obesity lawsuits, one might be tempted to dismiss climate change litigation out of hand. After all, the law typically requires a showing of causation. Before you can hold me liable, you must show that but for my conduct you would not have been injured. Typically, you also must show that my conduct was the proximate cause of your injury.

How can one firm—or even one industry—be blamed for a global phenomenon that took decades to arise? Making causality findings and apportioning responsibility in this context is ludicrous. Yet, what might a New Orleans jury still smarting over Katrina do if they got the chance to decide Mapes and Porter's suit?

This is a classic example of why tort reform is a pressing need. The Institute for Legal Reform offers some chilling statistics: "America's civil justice system is the world's most expensive, with a direct cost in 2005 of $261 billion, or 2.09 percent of GDP.

"Tort costs were $880 per U.S. citizen in 2005, meaning the average American family of four paid a 'litigation tax' of more than $3,500 due to increased costs from lawsuits and other liability expenses that force businesses to raise the price of products and services. That cost is equivalent to nearly an 8 percent tax on wages."

These costs are having a dramatic impact on the US economy. A nonpartisan report prepared for New York Senator Charles Schumer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, found that the "propensity toward litigation" in the United States is "driving growing international concerns about participating in US financial markets."

Along with regulatory excesses like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the litigation industry in this country is making our capital markets and our economy as a whole less competitive.

It's time for Congress and the president to step up with legislation that take the question of global warming out of the arena of ad hoc judicial decision making and put it into the hands of our elected officials. Both fairness and efficiency demand it.

Global Warming Lawsuits

Overlawyered reports on the potential for mass tort litigation against US (and, I suppose, foreign) corporations based on global warming claims. The post concludes:

All of which proves nothing at all about the actual causes or dangers of global warming. It’s just more evidence of a climate of greed and opportunism in the trial bar. And that’s one climate that never changes.

These sort of attacks on US business have a strongly negative impact on the US economy, especially the competitiveness of our capital markets. The bipartisam Schumer-Bloomberg report stated:

Survey respondents said that a fair and predictable legal environment was the second most important criterion determining a financial center’s competitiveness. In this regard, they felt that the United States was at a competitive disadvantage to the United Kingdom. They attribute this US disadvantage to a propensity toward litigation and concerns that the US legal environment is less fair and less predictable than the UK environment. Empirical evidence certainly suggests that litigation has become an important issue: 2005 set a new high for the number of securities class-action settlements in the US, and for the overall value of these settlements. Of course, many of these cases addressed the legitimate claims of investors and consumers in situations of notable corporate wrongdoing. However, in aggregate, some of the unique characteristics of the US legal environment are driving growing international concerns about participating in US financial markets – concerns heightened by recent cases of perceived extraterritorial application of US law.

Space Colonization

John Tierney in the NY Times:

In 1993, J. Richard Gott III computed with scientific certainty that humanity would survive at least 5,100 more years. At the time, I took that as reason to relax, but Dr. Gott has now convinced me I was wrong. He has issued a wake-up call: To ensure our long-term survival, we need to get a colony up and running on Mars within 46 years. ...

Since there?s a 50 percent chance that we?re already in the second half of the space program?s total lifespan, Dr. Gott figures there is a 50 percent chance it will not last more than another 46 years. Maybe the reason civilizations don?t get around to colonizing other planets is that there?s a narrow window when they have the tools, population and will to do so, and the window usually closes on them. ?In 1970 everyone figured we?d have humans on Mars by now, but we haven?t taken the opportunity,? Dr. Gott says. ?We should it do soon, because colonizing other worlds is our best chance to hedge our bets and improve the survival prospects of our species. Sooner or later something will get us if we stay on one planet. By the time we?re in trouble and wish we had that colony on Mars, it may be too late.?

Glenn Reynolds writes:

Read the whole thing. And worry a bit.

Unfortunately, science fiction writer Charles Stross - who presumably has a vocational interest in coming up with plausible space colonization scenarios - is dubious.

Mars is ... well, the phrase "tourist resort" springs to mind, and is promptly filed in the same corner as "Gobi desert". As Bruce Sterling has < span style="color: #8b0000;">puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach." In other words, going there to explore is fine and dandy ? our robots are all over it already. But as a desirable residential neighbourhood it has some shortcomings, starting with the slight lack of breathable air and the sub-Antarctic nighttime temperatures and the Mach 0.5 dust storms, and working down from there.

Actually, there probably is a good reason for sending human explorers to Mars. And that's the distance: at up to 30 minutes, the speed of light delay means that remote control of robots on the Martian surface is extremely tedious. Either we need autonomous roots that can be assigned tasks and carry them out without direct human supervision, or we need astronauts in orbit or on the ground to boss the robot work gangs around.

On the other hand, Mars is a good way further away than the moon, and has a deeper gravity well. All of which drive up the cost per kilogram delivered to the Martian surface. Maybe FedEx could cut it as low as $20,000 per kilogram, but I'm not holding my breath.

In the post from which I've excrpted the Mars discussion, Stross also tackles lunar and even interstellar colonization. It's a provocative read, which I recommend highly.

Reality versus Fantasy: What Effect Would Holosex Have on Population?

Here are PB.com, we don't bog about sex much, but the sci fi geek in me can't help commenting on Jane Galt's criticism of Naomi Wolf:

Naomi Wolf continues giving feminism a bad name by confusing offhand conversations with data:

The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

I would venture to say that all of us have, from time to time, been a little disappointed when comparing our fantasy partners--whether they be from film, television, or novel--with what is actually available in the real world. Why, those people don't always have something snappy and/or wise to say. They generally have fat in at least a few unsightly spots. Their clothes don't send a coherent statement carefully managed by the wardrobe people. Sometimes they don't pay attention to you, and worse, sometimes you don't really feel like paying attention to them. Few of them can fell an army of rogue ninjas with a series of well-placed kicks. And most annoying of all, you have no idea how it's all going to end.

But I can't say that this has ever stopped me, or anyone I know who is not actually mentally ill, from dating. ... This indicates that actual women have benefits that pornography can't offer, just as actual men are in most ways preferable to Rhett Butler. Online pornography has been pretty freely available for ten years now, and yet marriage and dating still seem to be pretty much de rigeur for most of the country. ...

I have no dog in that argument. Instead, I want to use it a springboard for mentioning an interesting hypothesis I ran across a while back while browsing SF Site.com (on my off time, of course, and definitely not at work):

... actions have consequences, and I think we need to consider the consequences of sex with holograms. Who could resist the temptation? And yet, not to put too fine a point on it, what is going to happen to the human race? Who will risk the ups and downs of a real relationship when they can be in complete control and act out their every fantasy on the holodeck? Also, sex isn't the only thing you can use the holodeck for. You want children? I bet holo-children are a lot better behaved than real children. Computer, delete dirty diapers. Once you accept holo-sex, you open the door to a lot of other holo-options.

Maybe this explains why the Federation is so peaceful, rich, and uncrowded. I've never seen a slum on a Federation planet. Maybe all the work is done by holo-slaves, who don't eat or sleep, and the entire real human population has decreased to just a few million, as fewer and fewer people have children. That would explain all those empty parklands we see on the future Earth. Instead of overpopulation, we have underpopulation. It also explains why, in seven years, only one child has been born aboard Voyager.

Almost every negative Megan mentions about real partners would not exist in a holodeck partner:

• "something snappy and/or wise to say" - so write a program with Churchillian wit
• "They generally have fat in at least a few unsightly spots" -- Lara Croft doesn't and I bet Minuet didn't either
• "Their clothes don't send a coherent statement carefully managed by the wardrobe people" -- Minuet's did
• "Sometimes they don't pay attention to you, and worse, sometimes you don't really feel like paying attention to them." You can always turn off a holodeck (unless you've created another Moriarty)
• "Few of them can fell an army of rogue ninjas with a series of well-placed kicks" -- Worf's holodeck opponents could. So turn one to, shall we say, peaceful pursuits.
• "And most annoying of all, you have no idea how it's all going to end." Sure you do, you wrote the holodeck program.

Megan is undoubtedly correct that "actual women have benefits that pornography can't offer, just as actual men are in most ways preferable to Rhett Butler," but is that merely conditional on our current state of technology?

We now return you to your usual non-salacious programming.

Should Gore Take the Pledge? Do Carbon Off-sets Work?

Washington Times:

A leading skeptic of global-warming science is challenging celebrity activists such as Al Gore and Sheryl Crow to lower their "carbon footprint" to the same level as the average American by Earth Day in April 2008. "I simply believe that former Vice President Al Gore and his Hollywood friends who demand we change the way we live to avert this over-hyped 'crisis' not only talk the talk, but walk the walk," said Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican. "How hard is it for these elitists to become as frugal in their energy consumption as the average American? I think the American public has a right to know they are being had."

A so-called "Gore Pledge" was introduced last month when the former vice president appeared before a Senate committee to discuss his views on climate change. Mr. Inhofe asked Mr. Gore to sign the pledge to reduce his use of products that produce greenhouse gases, but he declined, instead citing alternative carbon trade-offs. Mr. Gore says he pays a self-imposed "carbon tax" to offset the environmental impact of his large home and global travels.

Do these so-called carbon off-sets really work? Over at SSRN, I found a paper that uses formal models to conclude that:

Carbon offsets can be purchased by consumers who wish to mitigate their emissions. In a model where the demand for such offsets is driven by consumers who feel guilt about their emissions, it is show that the introduction of offsets are complements to existing "dirty‟ consumption and can cause such consumption to increase. Net emissions are shown to decline, however, regardless of whether prices are regulated, chosen strategically or offset prices are endogenous.

The paper concludes that "voluntary purchases of offsets would likely reduce environmental harm." As the purchasers of off-sets feel less guilt, they increase their consumption (explaining Al Gore's huge electric bills and Laurie David's private jets?), but that effect is more than offset by a decrease in net emissions.

I have to admit that the math in the paper is way over my head; the narrative analysis, however, seems very plausible. So maybe the answer is not to demand that Hollywood elites cut their consumption, but simply to insist that they document their purchase of carbon off-sets before hectoring the rest of us?

Rove versus Crow and David

So Sheryl (one piece of TP per potty trip) Crow and Laurie David had a dust-up with Karl Rove in re global warming. I gather they arrived in DC via a biodiesel-powered bus. It must be tough for Laurie David to be roughing it. After all, this is the activist of whom Gregg Easterbrook has written:

In the new Atlantic Monthly, Eric Alterman notes that Laurie David, wife of Larry David--among Hollywood's wealth elite owing to "Seinfeld" royalties--has become an influential environmental crusader, but herself travels in chartered Gulfstream jets. Laurie David has organized numerous celebrity save-the-environment events and "reviles the owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable," a private jet, Alterman writes. I did a few quick calculations. The mid-sized Gulfstream G200 model can carry about 2,100 gallons of jet fuel, which is made from petroleum, and would burn around 1,200 to 1,500 gallons flying from New York to Los Angeles, depending on wind speed and how many passengers were aboard. A Hummer driven 15,000 miles, the average put on a car per year, would burn around 1,250 gallons of gasoline. So for Laurie David to take one cross-country flight in a Gulfstream is the same, in terms of Persian-Gulf dependence and greenhouse-gas emissions, as if she drove a Hummer for an entire year. But then, conservation is what other people should do.

Of course, Sheryl's roughing it too. I wonder, for example, whether she gets her bottle of Marker's Mark every Monday? (Check out Smoking Gun's list of Crow's backstage requirements)

Glenn Reynolds has more:

MORE CELEBRITY GREENHOUSE HYPOCRISY:

Laurie David, the producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" and global warming activist, told Texas A&M students to change their "individual behavior" in order to consume fewer resources and to help battle global warming. As an employee of Easterwood Airport, I would like to point out that Mrs. David flew to our campus in a luxurious private jet, which could be seen from 10 miles away due to the thick plume of smog it left in its wake. I am neither denying nor confirming the epidemic of global warming, I am simply pointing out that hypocrites such as Mrs. David don't care about the environment, only their own political agendas. This is proven time and again by these celebrities' and lobbyist's "do as I say, not as I do" attitude.

We need a database of private-jet-flying celebrities. Can that be created from publicly available information?

But wait, there's more:

Even worse is David's chic but hypocritical environmentalism at her summer home in Martha's Vineyard. She was issued a "notice of apparent violations" for building a 26-foot-long barbecue station, stone-and-concrete bonfire pit, and outdoor theater on an environmentally sensitive patch of their 14-acre North Road property without the proper permits. They were also cited for tearing up protected vegetation to make way for a lush, sodded lawn, among other crimes against nature.

The commission has since ordered her to remove the offending structures and restore the area to its previous state. All these violations were allegedly done to prepare for a political fundraiser hosted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (another faux Green). Alas, there's no such thing as cheap environmentalism on the Vineyard.

Laurie David has been labeled a "Gulfstream liberal" by Eric Alterman, himself a proud member of the Left and a regular columnist for the Nation. He recognizes that Ms. David's brand of environmentalism is nothing more than a facade, a distraction from the financially secure yet intellectually boring life of the fabulously wealthy. But this hobby has dire consequences for the rest of us.

Well, some of them are dire. The rest provide a good, hearty laugh.

Organ Harvesting: On the Necessity of Consent

"Jane Galt" blogs:

This morning as I got ready for work, I watched Fox News talking about this case, in which a California doctor apparently administered fatal doses of drugs to a dying man, so that he would die within the window that would allow his organs to be harvested. The guy didn't die, though; he lingered until the next day, apparently rendering his organs useless.

The doctor on television was indignant, saying you can't hasten anyone's death even by a matter of hours just to save someone else. Apparently this struck the interviewer as good moral sense. It struck me as horrifying. Keep me alive for another two hours in some sort of twilight state, when killing me just a little bit sooner could allow someone else to enjoy a rich, full life for years or even decades? Note to next of kin: don't be shy. If I'm really a no-hoper, in a coma, and bound to die in a few hours or days, pump me full of morphine and give away my organs to anyone who can use them.

In the first place, wasn't this the exact plot of a law and Order episode a few years ago? if memory serves, the doctor was convicted (or pled guilty).

I think it's important to avoid mixing apples and oranges here. If Megan is willing to have the plug pulled and her organs harvested, under the conditions posited, I see no basis for the law preventing her from doing so. (Although I believe voluntary euthanasia is gravely illicit in a moral sense, I see no basis for overturning the harm principle in this seeting with morals legislation.)

Assume, however, that the patient in question had made no such advance directive. I would begin the analysis with Kant's categorical imperative. "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means." By hurrying the death of an individual, even with the intent of aiding others, we turn that individual into a means rather than an end. The imperative demands respect for the bodily integrity of the dying patient and mandates that medical intervention be directed solely at helping the patient.

As such, respect for the dignity of the individual requires that the individual consent to the ending of his or her life being manipulated for the benefit of others. Indeed, is this not one explanation for why organ donation laws require advance consent?

The same result would seem to follow from a purely liberal perspective. If the autonomy of the individual is paramount, the individual must be allowed to choose, even if that choice is "wrong." Choosing on behalf of another, even when that other is incapable of choice, is an infringement on the sovereign autonomy of the individual.

Likewise, the same result follows from Catholic social teaching. As John Paul II observed, "to use the body as an 'object' is to violate the dignity of the human person."  The late Pope further argued that this "point has an immediate consequence of great ethical import: the need for informed consent.  The human 'authenticity' of such a decisive gesture requires that individuals be properly informed about the processes involved, in order to be in a position to consent or decline in a free and conscientious manner. The consent of relatives has its own ethical validity in the absence of a decision on the part of the donor."

A prohibition on accelerating death in order to harvest organs, absent clear consent of the dying individual, thus strikes me as eminently "good moral sense."