Ciceronian Review

Families of Rome

I am finding The Families Who Built Rome to be fun (see list to right).  There are two parts to each chapter -- a history of the family followed by a tour of locations associated with the family.  For those enamored of walking tours (count me in), it is an interesting way to do history.  As it happens (and lucky me), I've seen a fair portion of the places discussed in the first couple of chapters (Cenci, Colonna, della Rovere).  The information is right on, albeit a bit brief.  Thinking about the city in terms of the families is a different take for me, and is sparking some rethinking about how some of the places fit together.  It is also helpful for getting me to think about Rome's renaissance and the physical transformations that went with the great sculpture and painting.  (The Bernini architecture book was also enlightening on that score for me.)  I do tend to think of the city in moments, not as it has been and is.  That is a blind spot, and fairly obvious one.  Which is part of why the book is fun -- a not overly pointed self-inflicted poke.

My next  trip will be influenced.  Also, as it happens, and also lucky for me, on the last visit to Rome I did a walking tour with the author.  He is a delightful guy.  More entertaining than the book.  The tour covered various bits of the book, no surprise, and happy to recall the locales.  (On another tour, the guide insisted that Bernini was calmer and more restrained than Borromini -- quite that tour halfway through and went to dinner at Ingenues - another great restaurant.)  We had a great lunch at a restaurant I believe is called Mazzeratta (I could look it up, but it is Sunday morning and I am lazy) which was stupendous. 

Carpaccio of octopus I believe.

Things to add to the list of occupations after winning a giant lottery -- a year studying the history  of Rome in Rome.

Green for Torture

The Spring issue of Green Bag includes a review of S. Levinson's Torture.  Torture is a collection of essays by various liberals with big names, lots of various serious folk, writing about the now-proverbial ticking bomb case.  The book has gotten generally positive and sympathetic reviews.  The Green Bag review, by Rosa Brooks, takes a somewhat different tack.  After noting the credentials of the contributors and praising the quality of the essays, Prof. Brooks gets to the real issues -- the fundamental mistakes in the hypothetical, its uninformative relation to reality, and the historical mindlessness of the project.  Not that she puts any of it in these terms.  Brooks is far more polite and respectful, and she lays out the arguments in more detail. 

Hubble

I've started my book on the Hubble Telescope images.  The images, of course, are grand and astonishing.  The book includes basic physics, or should I say astrophysics!  I know it is basic because I understand it.

The Hubble is one of those lovely science instruments that, in addition to doing its job, feeds the imagination of the populace, or that part like me which likes images of the out there.  You can get some of the same from NASA's daily space picture -- here -- which I do.

Something Like Notice

There is a new review of Jaegwon Kim's recently published Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. 

I have been tempted to buy the book just for the title. 

Lederman on JAG

At Balkinization, Marty Lederman has a (long) discussion of the impressive work done by JAG lawyers.  They did what lawyers are supposed to do.  I am still reading through the memos -- it is good work. 

John Yoo should be ashamed of himself.

Dr. Doom

Yesterday's Science Times carried a small piece on "alternative" therapies for heart patients.  A study tested the efficacy of prayer (from a distance), bedside music, imagery, and MIT therapy (a touching therapy).  Tested not only Christian prayers, but Buddhist and Muslim prayers as well.  Sorry, no effect.  Prayer, once again, is shown not to be effective.  Why does it keep being tested?  How could prayer possibly work?  Who funds this sort of stuff?  Will we next get studies on curses, hexes, and sacrifices?

Notwithstanding the absence of any demonstrable effect, the lead researcher says the results did not mean prayer failed.  (No effect does not mean failure?  What would show prayer failed?)  No, for him, "the most important point may be that this is an exploration coming the mainstream."  Wait wait, more:  "We definitely think there are important reasons to believe that what a community does at a distance or what a loved one does at the bedside prior to a procedure may belong in the systemic armamentarium of high-tech medical care."  Oh, I see, the doctor (Krucoff) thinks there are good reasons (which he is keeping to himself) to believe stuff for which he not only has no evidence supporting but does have evidence falsifying.  His own study shows that remote community activities do not affect procedure outcome (surgery) but there are still "good reasons" to believe otherwise.  This is nonsense.

Oh, the only therapy tested which had a noticeable effect was the MIT therapy.  Patients were shown to have less emotional distress before surgery and a slightly lower mortality rate six months later.  Of course, you may recall reports from a about a year ago about a high school student who did a lovely double blind study on touching therapy and found it had no effect at all.  She received a Westinghouse award as I recall.

Robert's Ruse

The Senate Intelligence Committee, under the leadership of Sen. Roberts of Kansas, will hold a long series of hearings and extensive investigation into the depth of the  "cover" of CIA employees.  The problem is that some undercover agents are not sufficiently under cover, which might lead some poor innocent into disclosing the identify of an undercover agent who is not really undercover.  It is gratifying to see that the Committee which has had no time at all to undertake an investigation into illegal (and immoral) disclosures of covert agents has time to look at whether all under cover agents are under cover. 

So now we know -- it was the CIA's fault.  (It is a well-known bastion of left-wing demoncrat politics, after all.)

Update:

The numbers (via The Carpetbagger Report):

Number of days after the article outing Ambassador Wilson’s wife appeared until the White House required its staff to turn over evidence relating to the leak: 85

Rough number of hours between when Alberto Gonzles gave Andy Card a heads-up about the investigation and when he formally told the staff to save their files: 12

Number of questions the Department of Justice asked the CIA to answer in detail before opening an investigation:  11

Number of D.C. Circuit Court judges who thought the issues involved in the Plame leak were serious enough to warrant jailing a reporter: 3

Number of D.C. Circuit Court Judges and Supreme Court Justices who disagreed: 0

Number of redacted pages in Judge Tatel's opinion: 8

Minimum number of hearings held by Senate Republicans to investigate accusations against President Clinton involving the “Whitewater” case: 20

Total hearings held by Senate Republicans to investigate the leak of the covert identity of Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife: 0

Total briefings requested by Senate Republicans on the damage assessment conducted by the CIA after the Plame leak: 0

 

Fish Out of Water

In yesterday's NYT, Stanley Fish published an op-ed piece defending a version of original intent as the proper theory of Constitutional interpretation.  This morning Solum at Legal Theory refers with approval to some brief comments at AnalPhilosopher (which is not really a joke).  Burgess-Jackson notes that Fish has ignored the difference between sentence meaning and speaker's meaning.  Fine, and true, and not really terribly helpful.  It really does not get us anywhere in these discussions to make that distinction.

First of all, the distinction is one that is built around single author expressions. The Constitution does not have an author.  There is no author intention there.  Groups just don't and can't have the right kind of internal relations to have an intention of this sort.  (At least not human beings as we know them.)  Thinking in this way involves one in a reification of the Founders, a weird sort of idolatry. 

Second, it would not matter if there were a single author to the Constitution.  That distinction has no grip here because it is a mistake to think that the task of interpreting a documents like the Constitution is to arrive at some canonical account of it.  It mistakes the nature of the document.  The Constitution is not a record of internal meanings and beliefs; it is not a record of anything when you get to thinking about it.  The document is a different sort of thing, a (set of) norm(s).  It creates things, in particular political obligations and responsibilities.  Who made it does not matter unless the answer to that query aids in understanding the nature of the obligations flowing from or created by the document.  It doesn't.
How is it we are under an obligation of any kind as a result of what Jefferson or Adams may have thought?  Or any set of the Ratifiers?

Third, as given to us by B-J, the distinction is far too little.  Words have meanings, yes they do.  But as given to us by B-J, words in a script one cannot translate have no meaning.  Don't have any until someone "translates".  But that does not happen because there is nothing to translate.  Which is a somewhat flip way of pointing out that social context plays a number of roles in these endeavors and that the endeavors are predicated on views about stability and change in meaning which are not remotely close to being captured by distinguishing between speaker and sentence. 

Fourth, speaker's meaning is not private and subjective while sentence meaning is public and objective.  That is not how language does or could work.  More aptly for the current topic, there just is no sense to the idea that authors or ratifiers (or Authors or Ratifiers) could have intentions at all (in substantive sense) that set, determine, or condition the meaning of the Constitution.

It is not surprising that Fish says things which are, ultimately, silly. His entire career consists of doing that.  It is not surprising the Burgess-Jackson says things that are wrong and almost incoherent.  It is disturbing that Solum endorses such a shallow and misguided approach, because Solum is a good deal smarter than that. 

Davey the Fat Boy Does Good

Britain's Top Ten Philosophers can be found here.
(Via Crooked Timber.)

An interesting group.  I am pleased to see that Hume near his proper place, and properly located relative to Kant.

Religious Tolerance

Interesting weekend of news on the continuing tolerance of the religious.  There is the national story of the adoption agency receiving state funds which refuses to place children with Catholic families.  No one seems to have asked about non-Christians, agnostics, or atheists.  But it is discrimination against Christians that is rampant.

Here in Zion, we have high school teachers fired because they are not members of the local cult.  LDS affiliation is a qualification because, after all, schools should only teach what the community believes.

The legislature in Zion has taken aim at evolution.  According to the local paper, a key legislator had a meeting with the State Superintendent of Schools.  Teachers will be given the message to dump evolution or "balance it" it with creationism, or they will be "dealt with."  I suppose that means fired, but you never know -- could be a terrorist threat.

An Assistant Attorney General has likened the BLM to the Chinese Communist Party, the Kane County Commissioners practice of destroying federal property is like standing up to tanks in Tienanmen Square.  But respectful communications with environmentalists is still on the table.  (Mind you, the United States Attorney has been sitting on the case for almost two years.)

And stop wearing those blended fabrics -- God doesn't like it.