Ciceronian Review

All the News

One of the options offered by Directv is an international package.  The basic deal is $10 a month, for a set of four channels.  The spouse wanted to improve her Italian, so we got Italian news.  With it came three other general interest channels.  So now I can watch Indian tv, Korean and Filipino Christian shows -- which make no sense as I know neither language.  (It is not hard to figure out what the point of the show is when there are pictures of Jesus and talk about christ.)  But there is also plenty for the monolingual me -- news in English from German tv and news from South Asia.  Quite interesting -- the news shows are much better than the US  equivalents.  It is weird to get news from tv news.  The stories and analysis are refreshing.  Plus, the translations demonstrate amusing cultural difference.  Last night there was an interview with a French choreographer, who talked about that mysterious art called dance.  Exactly, precisely here, as they say in Italy.  So, I find myself looking for German news shows.  For $10, it is a deal.    

St. Rodham

This cartoon about Clinton is very funny, and a bit mean.  Bagley is quite good.  I expect not known well-know outside Zion, as many of his subjects are quite local. 

Michael Clayton

I watched Michael Clayton recently (pay per view - which is not quite accurate anymore with dvrs).  It has one of the usual silly plots, which most movies have.  I wish practicing law was half as much fun as it looks to be in movies -- bombs and murders, million dollar bribes.  Clayton has that stuff.  But what I liked about the movies was the success in capturing the stress and insecurity of practice.  The collection of junior associates in a hotel room with no idea what they are doing or why, was a nice little touch.  But more to the point, the GC of Bad Guy, rehearsing every word she says, throwing up from anxiety, that conveyed the pressures better.  The whole set of relations in the law firm was nicely structured.  It projected fairly well the stress and sense of being trapped in a series of pointless small plays.  Clooney did a good job, as usual.  His role did convey what a pretty good portion of law is about -- well, you have certainly made yourself a mess; here is how you can reduce the damage.

A bit more action than The Unnameable, which remains my favorite fictional presentation of life in the law.

McCain Gets It Right

It has been a while, but it happens from time to time.  McCain has the right general idea on the mortgage/housing mess.  It does look to me like Clinton and Obama are not particularly interested in the moral hazard of their positions.  The lenders certainly were well-positioned to understand the risks of their lending policies.  I do not see much reason to help them or their owners.  (The big babies at Bear Stearns should get next to nothing -- happy enough to take the upside of the risky bets, they should be happy to take the downside.  On which, I recommend Ben Stein (an old line conservative Republican) in the NYT last Sunday.) It seems to me a mistake to be rushing out with billions of dollars in tax money to make sure that gamblers don't have to pay for gambling.  I have some sympathy for borrowers, but the plans I've seen don't do much at all for the folks who have some claim to aid -- those to poorly educated to understand the risks, for example -- but offer plenty for aid for the upper income folk.  Why anyone wants to help out someone who can float a half million dollar loan is beyond me.  People who qualified for that should know what the risks were, and take their lumps. 
Which is to say, on this one, McCain is right and not the demon twins. 

Noonan Again in the Light

Peggy Noonan's column in the WSJ today (here if you have a subscription) is the best analysis of Obama speech earlier this week on race.  By far, the most interesting and intelligent and attentive discussion I have come across.  I think her reservations about the speech are provocative.  She perceives a speech which address its audience on the assumption that they are intelligent and thoughtful, does not preach to them or yield to the short slogan.  That seems right to me.  It is a speech which assumes those listening are awake, and will listen.  It assumes they are not illiterate.  It is a style not heard or seen much these days, or for a long time.

She is not all praise.  She sees error in the later parts of the speech in what she perceived as a dismal portrait of America over the last 25 years.  It was a better place than painted by Obama.  That she ties to a kind of self-delusion:

This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has -- the fear one has, actually -- that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. They are bright, accomplished, decent, they know all about the yuppie experience, the buppie experience, Ivy League ways, networking. But they bring along with all this -- perhaps defensively, to keep their ideological views from being refuted by the evidence of their own lives, or so as not to be embarrassed about how nice fame, success, and power are -- habitual reversions to how tough it is to be in America, and to be black in America, and how everyone since the Reagan days has been dying of nothing to eat, and of exploding untreated diseases. America is always coming to them on crutches.

At least a portion of that is right I think.  There is a curious refusal to appraise matter realistically.  Whatever group is or was most affected by HIV/AIDS, there still would not be a cure.  And so on. 

Here is her conclusion:

Still, it was a good speech, and a serious one. I don't know if it will help him. We're in uncharted territory. We've never had a major-party presidential front-runner who is black, or rather black and white, who has given such an address. We don't know if more voters will be alienated by Mr. Wright than will be impressed by the speech about Mr. Wright. We don't know if voters will welcome a meditation on race. My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former.

Noonan's analysis is fair-minded.  I admit that almost every week I face the discomfort of finding her column interesting, intelligent, thoughtful and thought-provoking, and, worst of all, well-written.  She keeps wrecking the inclination to demonize.  It is the only column I anticipate, in any of the papers I read.

A Painful Loss

Ms. Hong has had a bad day:

At the start of a 20-minute court session, Robertson appeared prepared to rule in favor of the archives because no court precedent exists for Judicial Watch's request.

Judicial Watch, the judge observed, is trying to "jump to the head of the line" to get its request handled first. The judge said court papers filed by the private group are "hyperbolic" in tone.

When the lawyer for Judicial Watch noted that Wednesday's release of Clinton's appointment calendars had received widespread media attention, Robertson said, "Do we want to support that feeding frenzy?"

Then Justice Department lawyer Helen Hong described the archives' use of "rotating queues," "multirequest queues," and "queue structure" to handle requests.

When she finished, the judge looked at Judicial Watch lawyer Paul Orfanedes and announced, "You can have your discovery," the legal process by which one side gathers evidence through questions submitted to the other early in a court case.

She has the judge on her side before she stands up and manages to persuade him to rule against her without even the bother of a reply argument.  I think there is a large bruise on her forehead. 

Your Uncle and Mine

The reaction of reactionaries -- okay, reaction of some conservatives to Obama's speech this week on race is interesting, and some of it curious.  Tom Smith, for instance, raises questions about tolerance of pernicious views.  Bainbridge thinks Obama's grandmother won't be happy come Thanksgiving.  Smith's general subject is interesting -- what is one to do in the face of pernicious beliefs?  Smith clearly thinks that Obama should have left his church long ago, and that the speech was sort of in and out of bad faith.  I don't think so, but that is not what interests me here.  What is one to do when one admires someone some of whose views are repulsive?  And does the standard change with one's status?  Is it that Obama is to meet one standard, and other, less public persons, meet another?  So, make this a little more concrete.  Does one have a duty to shun people whose beliefs are pernicious?  Is it Smith's view that he must repudiate and excise from his life all those who are racist, for example?  Or pro-choice I suppose.  (I do not understand from his post what the standard is - it is short post after all and not a book.)  One could go on about consistency -- Romney spend a long time in a church which held as doctrine the inferiority of Blacks.  Smith did not think that was to be held against Romney (other things, but not that).   I wonder how it works.  If Smith's brother turned out to be a racist, say, would he act as though the man was dead?

I have to say that the approach is difficult to sort through.  There are the beliefs that fall into the despicable category, that will be a bit of task.  Then there is the more difficult and interesting problem of what it is to dissociate in this context.  Does one have to leave the Party?  (Well, no, or Smith and his friends would not be Republicans; post-9/11 there was a fair amount of tripe out of the likes of Hagee and his ilk about God hating American - no party repudiation followed.)  Is it the institution as a whole, or just the local branch?  When do you sever friendship?  I think this is much more difficult to sort out.

And a last thing, it is a pretty un-Christian attitude.  I would have thought engagement and an effort at changing the views would have been in order. 

I'm A Believer.

Believer is an entertaining lit magazine I've been reading for a couple of years.  One of the regular features is interviews, but not limited to the usual writers and pop personalities.  Believer includes all sorts of odd academic folk.  In the current issue is an interview with Mary Midgely.  Midgely writes on a variety of topics which are accessible to those not interested in formal expression or limited mathematical skills.   The interview includes a very nice and sharply expressed , that is concise and persuasive, explanation of what goes wrong in Dawkins-like approaches to evolutionary theory: one too easily forgets cooperation.  (A perfect place for her to have talked a bit about Hume, but, unfortunately, not done.)  One area where I wonder if the interview did justice is the discussion of religion.  Surely Midgley does not believe there is sense to talking about human beings have deep or long belief in God.  It would be very bad history and very bad anthropology.  Maybe she meant belief in divinities. 

Previous interviews include Frans de Waal, Michael Pollan, Galen Strawson, and others.

The End of Martha

We now have the official end of Prof. Nussbaum.  It does not matter that we can expect that she will continue to write and teach, or that the quality of work remains remarkable.  Sunstein has left, and there is no better indicator of academic fashion than Sunstein.  His little surfboard is always on the latest wave, and, like a good surfer, on the top of the wave.  Never one for the depths of anything. 

Susskind's Dream of A Divine

Some time ago I finished Susskind' book, The Cosmic Landscape.  I was trying to get some limited understanding of what the ideas were in String Theory and to understand what the chatter about Anthropic Principle was about.  Obviously, limited, because I can't do the physics and have to rely on popularizations.  Susskind's book is well-written, has a clear exposition and presents the material is very accessible fashion.  Quite an interesting read.  The Anthropic Principle portion, however, was a mystery however.  Not in the sense that I could not make it out. Rather, the mystery was why this was seen as a compelling idea.  Assuming I understood Susskind, it is hard to see what there is to it beyond the notion that, of the variety of possible universes, this is one of the few or perhaps the only one, in which such as us could be.  If the universe were other than it is, there would be no human beings.  (From which we assume there would be nothing conscious, which is not really the same thing, but never mind that for now.)  So there is a sense in which this universe was made for you and me.  But the pieces do not seem to fit into that whole (of course, I could be missing something significant).  Assume a multiverse, all the many possible universes defined by the possibilities of different physics.  Only this one (or some very close) could be home for intelligent beings.  That is evidence of a design, of the universe being designed in order to bring about intelligent life.  But I don't see that conclusion.  If there is a multiverse, then some will and most will not.  There is nothing designed about any of it.  It is just there.  I can't say if it is just a continuing and almost overwhelming need for stories and heroic self-concern, or what it is.  But it is seem a lot like the mistake of higher and lower animals, and distinguishing between human beings and animals.  I have a few other books on the general topics.  Maybe I will get a better understanding after reading them.