Category: Uncategorized

Hey, everyone, I’m aqua: my ‘dominant hues are green and blue’. Find out what colour you are. (Via allseasons.)

A report by Jonathan Franklin, on the arrest of a retired military intelligence officer in Chile ‘for his role in the execution of the American film-maker Charles Horman, whose death during the 1973 military coup became the focus of the film Missing’, contains the following detail:

Recently unearthed papers in the Chilean military archives show that Horman’s arrest was closely monitored by the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, whose responses to questions about his knowledge of the affairs have failed to satisfy the victim’s lawyers.

Gen Pinochet’s part in Horman’s death is also being re-examined: the courts are considering a human rights lawyer’s request to interview him about it.

Mr Corvalán [the lawyer acting for Horman’s widow] said Horman’s death had been “completely avoidable”. He said the newly discovered memoranda showed that US officials could have saved his life.

According to the report, Horman had been researching the role of the US government in fomenting a coup in Chile.

Email from a reader about the market-for-organs proposal:

The reason why organ selling (when you’re alive) is different from either working at the University of Manchester or prostitution is that you can always stop doing either of these things if your financial situation improves. You can’t get back a kidney once you’ve sold it, and life with one kidney is considerably worse and more risky than life with two. It’s irreversible. To me it’s a bit more like (though obviously it’s not exactly like) people being allowed to sell themselves into slavery.

(Update at 2.05PM.) Steve Glover has a suggestion here: ‘A quick check on whether this would work without exploiting the poor would be to make organ sales possible only to people earning over $50k a year, current on their payments, and with good credit. Just watch them line up at the door…’

That’s the draw for the Champions League:Stuttgart v Chelsea
Porto v Manchester United
Real Sociedad v Lyon
Celta Vigo v Arsenal
Bayern Munich v Real Madrid
Sparta Prague v Milan
Deportivo la Coruna v Juventus
Lokomotiv Moscow v Monaco

As you can see, I’ve started adding links to my sidebar. It may take me a while to complete the job, but for the time being I’d like to say a great big thank you to Jackie D for the help she’s been giving me in getting set up here. I still have a way to go, but I’ll get there. Light blogging in the last couple of days is partly due to the move, partly for other reasons; but it is, I hope, about to change.

Brian Weatherson was born in Melbourne, Australia. He grew up in the Melbourne suburbs, and studied at Monash University for nearly 8 years. After his PhD he was a post-doc at Syracuse University for two years and currently has a tenure-track post at Brown University in Providence, RI. He writes on many different areas of philosophy, with his primary focus being on topics concerning language and/or probability. He contributes to three blogs – Crooked Timber, Thoughts Arguments and Rants (his personal/philosophical blog) and Online Papers in Philosophy, a daily summary of new philosophical material on the web.

Why do you blog? > I do much better work when I’m constantly writing. Before blogging I could go months without having a new philosophical idea. Now there’s constant pressure to produce new ideas, and I work better that way.

What has been your best blogging experience? > The threads that have led to writing actual papers. Hopefully the recent discussions on cloning will eventually fall into that category – I’ve learned a lot from them.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > When a senior philosopher (Achille Varzi) found some less than polite things I’d said on the blog about one of his papers.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Don’t drink and blog. Everything will look less amusing, and more embarrassing, in the morning.

What are your favourite blogs? > Language Log, Calpundit and John Quiggin.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > Jack Smart, David Lewis and Frank Jackson.

What are you reading at the moment? > The Prince of Providence, by Mike Stanton – a biography of Buddy Cianci the much loved, and very corrupt, ex-mayor of Providence.

What is the best novel you’ve ever read? > Ulysses.

What is your favourite movie? > Pulp Fiction.

What is your favourite song? > ‘Purple Sneakers’, by You am I.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you’ve ever changed your mind? > I used to be a protectionist; I’m now a somewhat extreme free-trader. More locally, I used to oppose the HECS (graduate tax) policy Labor brought in in the mid-80s, but I now think it was one of our better policy moves.

Who are your political heroes? > Whitlam, Keating, Mandela – not necessarily in that order.

What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > ‘Given a choice between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, choose the stuff-up.’

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > In America, bringing in a national health insurance scheme. In Australia, introducing a humane treatment of refugees.

What would you do with the UN? > Expand its powers. I’d like to see a way to reform the UN to give more weight to the voices of democratic states, but I’m not sure what the best way to do that is. (Maybe we need an association of democratic nations.)

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Unwillingness to consider new ideas.

Do you have any prejudices you’re willing to acknowledge? > I tend to give Australians and/or Catholics a larger benefit of the doubt than I give others.

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > By the beach in Melbourne.

What would your ideal holiday be? > I’ve never been to most of Europe, so right now city-hopping and sight-seeing around the big cities would be perfect.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > Blogging!

What talent would you most like to have? > Being able to bowl decent leg-breaks.

What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job? > Political advisor – preferably to the Prime Minister.

Who is your favourite comedian or humorist? > Roy & HG, if I’m allowed to count two!

Who are your sporting heroes? > George Gregan, Barry Bonds, Pedro Martinez, Steve Waugh.

Which English Premiership football team do you support, and which baseball team? > Liverpool in the Premiership, Boston Red Sox in baseball, Geelong in the AFL and the ACT Brumbies in Super 12. And Australia at anything at all.

If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? > A Red Sox World Series win. Oh wait, you said realistic. Well, we all can dream.

[Previous profiles: Ophelia Benson (Nov 7); Chris Bertram (Sep 26); Alan Brain (Oct 10); Francois Brutsch (Dec 5); Jackie D (Oct 17); Harry Hatchet (Oct 24); Saddam Hussein (Nov 14); Oliver Kamm (Nov 21); Natalie Solent (Nov 28); Roger L. Simon (Oct 31); Michael J. Totten (Oct 3). The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature.]

A week ago in the Guardian, John Harris – of my own university – put forward the argument for ‘a strictly regulated and highly ethical market in live donor organs and tissue’. It isn’t my purpose, in this post, to arrive at a conclusion on what is a difficult question. I just want to highlight one problem, as I see it, with the case as made by John.

The most powerful features of his argument are that the proposal is a life-saving one and that the donors choosing to sell would be choosing freely. The strongest argument against, I think, is the worry, which John tries to meet, that such a market would be exploitative. Here is what he says about that:

Some people say such a market would exploit the poor. First, it is hypocritical to think that denying poor people an opportunity to sell one of their few saleable assets is doing them any favours, at least so long as no attempt is made to alleviate their poverty in other ways. No one is exploited by an offer of money simply because they do something for pay which they would not otherwise do. I am sure I am not the only Guardian reader who would be unlikely to go to work if I was not paid for what I do! But I am not exploited by the University of Manchester (at least not in that way). The reason is that I freely choose my part in the purposes of the university as one of my own projects. So long as would-be organ vendors freely choose to provide an organ, knowing the risks and aware of the benefits, then they are not exploited, even if they would not provide the organ but for the money.

The problem I have with this is that the claim in the middle of the paragraph, ‘No one is exploited… etc.’ is supported only by the example which follows it and I think the example is problematic in the circumstances. For it contains not only the element of working for the University of Manchester by free choice and for payment, but also the element ‘as one of my own projects’ – something suggesting that the choice may also be rewarding to the chooser in other than financial ways. If one were to take a different example – say, prostitution, as chosen by a single mother in dire economic circumstances and not because it was seen by her as rewarding in other than financial ways, but despite the fact that it wasn’t – then the picture doesn’t look so clear to me. It’s going to depend, obviously, on how one defines exploitation, a rather large question which I don’t intend to embark on here.

The other consideration, raised in a Guardian leader the same day, is how far the alternative proposal – that is, ‘”presumed consent”, under which it would be assumed that individuals wished to donate organs after their death, unless they registered an objection during their lifetime’ – would go towards meeting the relevant need.

I’ve been known occasionally to criticize my dnoc for something said in a report or opinion piece. Starting afresh here on the new site, I want to be different. I want to criticize it for something not said, by which I mean not reported. I can find nothing in the whole paper – though I’m happy to accept correction on this – about the anti-terror demos in Iraq yesterday. Why not? If it’s simply news values rather than a political reason, what kind of news values dictate that the death of every American soldier or Iraqi through violence should be lovingly marked up, but these protests against the bombers not be covered? It baffles me. Here, in any event, is one report I’ve managed to turn up:

Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Wednesday in boisterous, but peaceful rallies calling for the end of terrorism and the return of order to the war-torn country.
…..
Carrying banners denouncing violence, and calling for Iraqi unity, demonstrators wound their way through the Iraqi capital before ending up at the so-called Freedom Square in the city centre.
…..
Baghdad wasn’t the only place where protesters rallied Wednesday. Demonstrators in the northern town of Baqouba – a frequent scene of terror attacks – also marched through the centre of town to denounce terrorism.

And in the restive western Iraq town of Ramadi – in the heart of an area dominated by formerly pro-Hussein Sunni Muslims – protesters staged their own anti-terror march.

These are brave people. Surely they merit the support of everyone looking for a decent outcome in Iraq. Reporting their protests is a first step.

While I’m on Iraq I direct you, also, to this post – on the reconstruction contracts issue – by Anthony across at Black Triangle.

I want to record my thanks here to the large number of bloggers – 30 that I know about – who signalled my move over to the new site. Thanks, everybody, in C major. The consequence is that, instead of dipping, visits to normblog (mark 2) have been well over double my daily average, and it’s not yet 24 hours since I started here.

As I said yesterday, I will be organizing blogrolling links at this site as soon as I can get to it. I’d be grateful if everyone who has normblog on their blogroll could update the link.

Thanks again – this time in whatever key you fancy.

It’s Michael Totten I’m talking about, and he’d like people to know he’s back from his hols.