The Story we Know, by Martha Collins:

The way to begin is always the same. Hello,
Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, Just fine,
and Good-bye at the end. That's every story we know,

and why pretend? But lunch tomorrow? No?
Yes? An omelette, salad, chilled white wine?
The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello,

and then it's Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow
day by the fire, dinner at eight or nine
and Good-bye. In the end, this is a story we know

so well we don't turn the page, or look below
the picture, or follow the words to the next line:
The way to begin is always the same Hello.

But one night, through the latticed window, snow
begins to whiten the air, and the tall white pine.
Good-bye is the end of every story we know

that night, and when we close the curtains, oh,
we hold each other against that cold white sign
of the way we all begin and end. Hello,
Good-bye is the only story. We know, we know.

Booker T. Noe, Jim Beam's great-great-great-grandson and a master distiller, died yesterday. The bourbon world mourns the passing of a great man. I drank a glass of Booker's in his honor with my father-- if you have the chance, do the same. Note that Booker's whiskey is bottled at "barrel-proof" (that is, it isn't diluted, so it's around 130 proof), so it's best taken with a bit of ice. Sip it slowly, and note how it changes from potent poison to ethereal medicine over the course of the glass.

Andersonblog and The New York Times have more.

This is from my blog but I think a worthy Crescat Sententia post.

Maybe you're playing poker and not betting. For instance, you might not want to bet. Or you might be playing poker for "other stakes." And you may have noticed that poker--without betting--is horribly boring (this, of course, depends on what "other stakes" you're playing for). Thus, I present a non-betting poker game with the ultimately interesting addition--a marketplace!

In Posner Poker (named after everyone's favorite Seventh Circuit judge), you get 10 cards. You then can bargain with your opponent, trading various cards for cards (for instance, a king for a queen, if that's what you both want, or an ace of spades for three unknown mystery cards. Any trade of cards is valid). The act of trading gives you information both about what's in your opponent's hand and what you could possibly draw from the deck. You can also trade in cards from the deck at the rate of 2 cards from your hand for one unknown card from the deck. The game finishes when everyone decides their hand is ready, or when everyone is glowering at one another, refusing to trade.

(A variant, Epstein Poker, allows you to trade with your opponent not only cards for cards but other household items--such as pots, pans, spatulas, and kidneys--for cards.)

Speaking of Indiana, I'm now heading home for the weekend, so my own posting will be unpredictable. Some of my capable co-bloggers (both new and old) will have things to say though, I'm sure.

Given that my post two posts both linked to Cowen's blog Marginal Revolution, I thought I'd complete the hat-trick and direct you to Dan Drezner's paeon to Tyler Cowen.

And, of course, I'll throw in some self-promotion and note that you can read Tyler Cowen's 20 Questions Interview here.

I think we'll be posting more of these in the near future. Stay tuned, as they say.

Earlier, guest-blogger Ben Glatstein discussed the rationale behind the Talmudic prohibition against "stealing one's mind." The idea is to cure the classic free-rider dilemma where you go to a high-price high-service store, get an idea of what you want, and then go buy it at a low-cost outlet.

This is, for example, how I bought my winter coat. The gentleman at Nordstrom's was very helpful about what kind of coat I should get, but the folks at Filene's Basement were very helpful about what kind of price to provide it at.

Anyway, because of this problem I've always been surprised that Borders and Barnes and Noble were so willing to let people just come in, nose around, sit reading a book in a comfy chair for a while, then leave. Indeed, I had assumed that the comfy-chair revolution was a result of this free-riding.

Tyler Cowen suggests that if book prices are low enough, though, Barnes and Noble doesn't have to worry about people like me going over to Amazon or a used bookstore to buy what Barnes and Noble has been pushing. For those of us who intend to continue our free-riding, it's always good news to learn that everybody else doesn't.

Don't miss Josh Chafetz's admirably thorough nose-counting post, where he determines that the Federal Marriage Amendment is unlikely to clear the Senate. Hurrah.

Also, allow me to express my personal relief that neither of Indiana's Senators (one D, one R) is currently in favor of the Amendment. In light of Alex Tabarrok's sound criticism of Hoosier anti-outsourcing policy, it's nice to have some good political news from the home front.

Should also note, there's a concurrence to Mr. Tabarrok here by Phil Tsipman. He's a fellow Koch alum who wants me to link his blog.

To all interested: The Nathan Hale Society Chicago Chapter will have its next meeting a week from Sunday, on March 7, at 7:00 P.M. Again, we will be meeting at the Cosi's on Michigan Avenue. Details of our first meeting are here.

With the Academy Awards approaching, I just thought I'd remind everybody about Amy's predictions in this area. The New York Times rounds up the current thought here. Charlize Theron is supposedly unstoppable; Johnny Depp is a dark horse candidate for best actor. The Theron-Depp Oscars would be profoundly weird.

In a passing attack on non-abstinence sex-education, Sara Butler writes:

Here's what really bothers me most about "safe sex" sex-ed: it assumes that teenages are raging animals who can't (and shouldn't and don't need to) control themselves. I takes for granted and thus allows young people to be hormone-driven beasts, rather than soon-to-be adults who have, um, reason and will, both of which could use some exercise.

Before the Curmudgeonly Clerk gets a chance to, I figure I should comment on Amanda's comments on the Hiibel case below. It's apparently not entirely clear what the relevant facts are.

My prediction: If the Supreme Court holds the search unconstitutional, the facts will be that there is no obligation to show one's papers to an officer without further suspicion. If the Supreme Court holds that the search was okay, the fact pattern will be the narrower and less favorable one.

Earlier this week I confronted Slithery D's etiquette question of whether and how to tell a lady that her pants are coming off. It turns out that Miss Manners has dealt with this question before, and a reader sends along a link to this column. Nonetheless, I stand by my answer for the circumstances Slithery D described-- etiquette does permit one to tell a lady that her slip is showing, but for various reasons I suggest Slithery D be injoined from doing so.

[note: taken down, just read Samuel Huntington's "The Hispanic Challenge" in Foreign Policy]

If I'm out walking, just walking, must I show ID if asked, must I carry ID? That's the case of Dudley Hiibel, which the Supreme Court will hear Monday, Mar. 22nd.

Nathan Hamm's experiences with showing ID on command in Uzbekistan are worth reading.

UPDATE: Accounts of the fact patterns don't match up very well.

According to the Washington Times op-ed, "he was leaning against his pickup truck on the side of the road near his ranch. The police officer did not offer any specific reason why he demanded proof of identity. Having committed no crime, Dudley Hiibel, the cowboy, refused — and was arrested." That description suggests a scenario not entirely far from Kolender v. Lawson. It's an O'Connor opinion, with Rehnquist joining White's dissent. The CA statute requiring loiterers and wanderers to provide "credible and reliable" identification was void for vagueness. [thanks to John Bogart for the cite]

According to the Solicitor General's brief (link via The Curmudgeonly Clerk), "Deputy Lee Dove received a report that a witness had seen an individual striking a female passenger inside a pickup truck. Dove drove to the location of the incident and spoke to the witness, and the witness directed him to a truck that was parked nearby. When Dove approached the truck, he observed skid marks in the gravel, suggesting that the truck had been pulled over in an aggressive manner. Petitioner was standing outside the truck and his minor daughter was seated inside. Based on petitioner's mannerisms, speech, eyes, and odor, Dove believed that petitioner was intoxicated."

Were the Washington Times fact pattern true, I'd hate to think that being next to a vehicle, or even in a vehicle, automatically suggests that you've driving the car. That at least was the theory my twin sister and I used when we'd go out driving and realize that only the passenger had remembered to bring her license: "Laura, put your wallet in my jacket pocket. We'll switch who's driving relatively soon, but if we get stopped before then, I'm you." Her photo actually looked more like me than mine looked like me (neither really looked like Laura, but what did you expect from a DL pic?). But there were also times when one of us had remembered to grab her license, and the proper person was driving. I never figured out what would happen if the police were ever in a situation of figuring out who's who (side question: how good should one's ID card be at proving identity? Some photos may suggest that I'm not Laura, but they don't prove it, and other photos are misleading).

Can a requirement to produce identification (perhaps unclear if an ID card is needed, or a name will suffice) become a requirement to carry ID? The SG's brief emphasizes that all the officer wanted was a name, to know Hiibel's identity; it avoids discussions of official forms of identification. Kolender voided the CA statute because it wasn't clear, under those words, whether you had to carry an ID or if you simply had to provide enough identifying information that you later could be found (the jogger with empty pockets). White's dissent notes that the Supreme Court didn't consider 4th or 5th Amendment rights in its majority opinion. Maybe those questions will come up now.

I don't know if the Supreme Court will reach the issue of identification cards. One of the Clerk's commentators said he saw the video of the exchange, and the officer was clearly asking for "identification" not "identity." Again, that's not the story the SG brief tells. I don't think that America will get to the situation of Uzbekistan (or of dire Ray Bradbury predictions), but I do like the feeling that I can wander around anonymously. I could answer my name and address if stopped, but I'm a forgetful person -- there's no guarantee I would remember my wallet or my phone number, and I'd really like to hope that minor level forgetfullness of that sort is just silly, never criminal.

From the very end of the NYT review of "Good Bye, Lenin!"

"Good Bye, Lenin!" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has Communist rioting and violence and post-Communist nudity, strong language and alcohol consumption.

If you're trying to decide whether or not a term is perjorative, how much does the original meaning matter?

Take horde.

I'm not sure that it's original meaning was clear. A linguist of Turkic languages claims it refers simply to a group of 10 people in an army. Other derivations say it came from the Middle Mongol word (h)Ordu, meaning camp or encampment. Another explanation says it does derive from ordu, but that an ordu was composed of several tumen, and each tumen was a military grouping of 10,000 soldiers and their families. The OEDgoes to Australian anthropology to say that a horde is roughly five family groups. I have no idea which one is the right history of the word, but none of these histories suggest that if I knew how to use the word properly, I should avoid it because people might think of an invading Genghis Khan and burning cities. Such an image simply isn't hinted at.

But if you look at the rest of the OED's entry, you get not so nice, or not so ambivalent:

1. a. A tribe or troop of Tartar or kindred Asiatic nomads, dwelling in tents or wagons, and migrating from place to place for pasturage, or for war or plunder. b. Also applied to other nomadic tribes.

2. transf. a. A great company, esp. of the savage, uncivilized, or uncultivated; a gang, troop, crew. b. Of animals: A moving swarm or pack.
Hence horde v. intr., to form a horde; to congregate or live as in a horde.

The etymology of the word -- of any word that may be shunned -- is interesting, but in the end, I don't think it's very relevant as to whether or not it should be used in conversations where one is especially concerned with being pc. Today's meaning is more important than the context of the first uses.

Dennis Kucinich gave a speech at the law school last night. They let me write the news article in the law school paper. You can find it here. I'm trying to get more hits on the web site than the article about the new Dean of Students (who we appear to have stolen from Chicago, where, by all accounts I've read, she was beloved and wonderful and amazing and so I suppose I'm glad she's here, even though I don't know exactly what a Dean of Students does). Here's why they don't usually have me write news articles:

The audience was filled with not just students but Kucinich supporters from the broader community, wearing buttons, carrying signs, waving banners, and, perhaps in the case of one woman who coughed throughout the event, suffering from a lack of universal health care.

A while back, I promised a more substantial defense of state universities. This argument owes much to a certain professor at a certain land- and sea-grant university.

Public universities are effective tools for social stability and security.

The larger the gap in income inequalities, the more resentment will develop in the portion of the population that feels like it has been screwed. If there were ever a serious mass riot/uprising in America (ok, so there are substantial coordination problems to be jumped), the police and the military would not be able to handle the situation well at all. Granted, it might be unlikely, but massive chaos if it ever came to pass. And history does have examples of times when significant portions of the population thought the situation was hopeless without radical political change -- see interwar Germany.

This isn't a reason that comes up much in discussions of public universities. LSU's National Flagship University plan focuses on benefits through a more cheerful lens:

LSU can serve the state by providing:
- a world-class knowledge base that is transferable to educational, professional, and business enterprises;
- an incubator for the development of new products and technologies prominence in the national arena for federal projects and funding;
- nationally ranked programs that prepare students for the most competitive and prestigious graduate programs and employment opportunities;
- and a competitively educated workforce, trained for attracting high-growth industries.

But look at the list -- it's a plan for strengthening the state and attracting more and better jobs, and for keeping the people educated by K-12 and state universities in the state (so many now are leaving).

Some criticize public universities for redistributing wealth to the upper crusts of the society. Maybe. It does happen to some extent. But public universities can also strengthen the ties that middle-class, potentially wealthy young people have to their states, keeping them around to help the state develop. New Orleans was crawling last weekend with LSU baseball hats and t-shirts, and not all were worn by students or recent grads. For us, I think keeping these people in state is a relatively new idea. Louisiana is the most rooted state in the nation (and Vacherie, a bit west of New Orleans, the most rooted town). It is the educated people who are most likely to leave now, but also who need to be kept here the most if the unskilled workers are going to have any chance of a job or of a social net funded on the companies and wages of the wealthier (yes, I'm a liberal. Expand Head Start. More $ to public schools. Revitalize the charity hospitals. More job training programs. Use the money of the upper income brackets to do it.).

Nor are public universities entirely engaged in taking money from the middle-class and up parents and giving it to those people's children. It's also the place where dreams of American success stories can easily come true. What's the easiest way to become successful if you don't come from having much luck? Find a way to get into college. Work hard. Yeah, the K-12 also needs a lot of work, but it's not impossible. State universities don't have the highest of admission standards, and the sub-branches and other systems-- Southern, UL-Lafayette, Southeastern, McNeese State, U New Orleans -- are even more inclusive. It's a step up in life of the "teach a man to fish" variety.

Chris Lawrence called LSU a "'blue-blood' state university." I'm really not sure what he means by that. You don't need to be a blue-blood to attend. It has lower in-state tuition and far more free tuition than Illinois's flagship at Urbana-Champaign. Louisiana's TOPS (Tuition Opportunity Program for Students) will essentially pay your tuition at any public in-state university if you get a 2.50 weighted GPA in core high school courses, and earn the state's average ACT score of the previous year (currently a 20); do better, and you get more money. Want to go to Tulane, Centenary, or any of the other in-state privates? They'll give you the same amount of money to spend there, too. It works out to about about LSU tuition, which is $2,000 a semester.

And so why is this something that should be run through the public university system rather than by giving cash handouts to privately financed universities?

Pride and accountability.

Few would dispute the USNews & World Reports rankings that place Tulane ahead of LSU, but LSU gets more pride. Tulane is seen as somewhat peripheral to the state's future (it's not, it's actually the largest single employer in New Orleans, and its med school faculty lot is the best place to park for Mardi Gras parades, but that's irrelevant). It's not just pride of the university in itself, but pride of the state in the university. LSU is the dream to which we can all aspire, and it's a place that makes other dreams possible.

Accountability. LSU's plan to get national prominence is linked to plan of the state legislature and governor to called Louisiana 2020. It's a drive to keep the state from being a job-market deadwater and the subject of all the jokes in Arkansas (ok, so maybe that last part won't happen). But by linking this institution, the state university systems, to the bureaucracy will make it more likely that the state universities will achieve their goals (educating more students and doing it better, R&D). As always in these systems, there's a danger that the embedded institution won't be able to keep the purity of its goals once its subsumed into the larger government (see: Daniel Drezner, “Ideas, Bureaucratic Politics, and the Crafting of Foreign Policy.” Am. J. of Pol. Sci. 44 (October 2000): 733-749). Here, though, I'm not too worried. The bureaucracy and the universities want largely the same thing. State universities can be more easily controlled than private universities, and so long as you have both, I think that's a good thing. When the University of Chicago was pretty callous towards its neighborhood in the 60s, it by-and-by got away with it. Now it's decided that was a bad idea and to try to reform its ways. I'm not sure that a state university could have been so insentitive, so long. There are checks on the process, because (and I return to the beginning of my argument) social instability should be avoided.

UPDATE: Prof. Levy pointed out to me the historical errors that my optimism overlooked. U of C was able to be a poor resident of Hyde Park because it had the Daley machine on its side with zoning issues and useful eminent domain claims. The public Univ. of Illinois at Chicago was also established in its current location under Richard J. (history: the Medical Center had been there since the 19th cent, but in 1965, the Navy Pier campus moved to the same campus). The mayor wasn't after serving the people's interests in their universities; he was after separating white and black neighborhoods.

Hei Lun, at Begging to Differ writes:

One of the thousands of little things in life that really annoy me is when someone accuse another person of being a coward because the other person said something bad about them, but not "to their face". If you're so tough, why don't you say it to my face, the line usually goes. The implication is that the other person wouldn't say what he said if he risks getting a punch to the face. My thinking is, so what? It doesn't make what is said any less true just because it's not said in the presence of the subject.

Tim Sandefur explains why he thinks that USPS v Flamingo was wrongly decided (the case, handed down this week, ruled that when the Post Office entered businesses other than mail-delivery-- in this case, the selling of bags-- that it was not a "person" for purposes of the Sherman Antitrust Act).

His analysis is pretty thorough, and he's right that the court seems not to have taken the case very seriously, and to have relied on some pretty silly economics (in particular, its notion that the Post Office is different because it's only trying to "break even"). But one nagging argument againt Flamingo still bothers me-- the Post Office is subject to the Taft-Hartley labor act, which is part of its having been launched into the marketplace-- but the Reorganization act specifies this. If the drafters of the bill thought Taft-Hartley liability needed to be laid out explicitly, why not Sherman liability?

QUESTION: But of course, the Reorganization Act itself specified that they'd be subject to Taft-Hartley, did it not?
MR. KRENT: That's correct. And that's part and parcel, I think -
QUESTION: So why didn't it specify that they would be subject to the Sherman Act?
MR.

Daniel Davies calls hurray for the jury system. Out of fear that a jury would refuse to follow the law because of their sentiment about the war, charges in the case against Katherine Gun were dropped.

I'm happy about the result in this case, but as to the broader "hurray," color me cautious. After all, refusal to convict somebody because of the war can go both ways. [Imagine, for example, some particularly offensive anti-war protesters being assaulted shortly after 9/11-- would it have been possible to muster up a jury that would convict the patriotic thugs?]

Davies writes:

It establishes a precedent (not a particularly strong one in the legal sense, but one that could be taken as indicative and quite a strong one in practical terms) that there is an implicit defence of justification in charges under the Official Secrets Act. This seems to me like a very attractive position indeed; it is still against the law for spooks to leak, but in extremis, they can follow their conscience, as long as they’re prepared to believe that their cause is so obviously right (or their perception of the national interest so widespread) that they’re sure that a jury would take their side.

Follow up on Will's post below. There's a relatively recent article about him here, in the London Financial Times. Summarizes his past work, talks about sumo wrestling being fixed and abortions causing the crime rate to drop, and, perhaps most controversially, drops a quote about how Billy Beane and the Oakland A's just ain't that special:

Levitt read Michael Lewis's book Moneyball about the supposed innovators, the Oakland As, and is unimpressed. "If you look at all the stats they say are so important, the As are totally average! There's very little evidence Billy Beane [the club's general manager] is doing something right."

Thought Will might like that one, given his response to my comments on Moneyball earlier.

You are... A Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich!!!

You have two distinct halves that come together as one.
Both sticky and sweet, your proportions are often meddled with,
but you are nonetheless a tasty treat. Your compassionate
side appears when you selflessly shed your crusts
in the name of motherly tenderness.
Everybody loves you, but they love you even more
when your buddy, Glass "o" milk, shows up.
The key decision for you in the next five years will be,
"Should I be cut diagonally or horizontally?"
PS - Wonder Bread only. Wheat bread is for sissies.

Take the Personality Quiz, brought to you by Mr. Poon.

(For a little bit more on the evils of Wonderbread, go here.)

If you happen to be a University of Chicago student registering for Econ 200 next spring, take the section taught by Steve Levitt. I'm not quite sure why he's deigning to teach such a lowly class, but he's. . . well, amazing. (For more on which, see here).

[Editor's note: THREE UPDATES now below.] Slithery D poses an etiquette dilemma on his blog-- namely that a lady he shares a class has a tendency to dramatically display her underwear when she is sitting. As this happens on a habitual basis, his question is whether and how he can gently caution her of her (perhaps) undeliberate immodesty.

As always, our inquiry begins with Miss Manners. I can't find a spot where she's directly covered this issue, but she has covered a related issue-- what a lady should do when she sees other ladies whose tags are sticking out. Miss Manners offers (1/28/04):

The rule about such corrections -- and Miss Manners can think of worse clothing errors of which the wearers would be grateful to be informed in time to salvage their appearance -- is that they must be made in confidence and that the problem must be easily fixable on the spot. If you can manage to be really discreet, no one else need know about it -- neither the tag-wearer's escort nor your daughter.

"I often tell my friends that their nipples are showing. depending on how close i am to them, it ranges from, 'you may want to, uh,... ' to 'yo, your nipples are showing.'"

Rehnquist writes for the majority against Justices Scalia and Thomas in Locke v. Davey (holding that the states or state constitutions can exclude theology from scholaraship programs without violating the First Amendment). This just hasn't been Scalia/Thomas's week.

I've blogged earlier on Locke v. Davey-- suggesting that it might be a mistake to assume "theology" is identical to "religion"-- here. Happily, I seem to be in good company. Justice Thomas writes:

Because the parties agree that a “degree in theology”
means a degree that is “devotional in nature or designed
to induce religious faith,” Brief for Petitioners 6; Brief for
Respondent 8, I assume that this is so for purposes of
deciding this case. With this understanding, I join
JUSTICE SCALIA’s dissenting opinion. I write separately to
note that, in my view, the study of theology does not nec-
essarily implicate religious devotion or faith. The con-
tested statute denies Promise Scholarships to students
who pursue “a degree in theology.” See Wash. Admin.
Code §250–80–020(12)(g) (2003) (defining an “ ‘eligible
student,’ ” in part, as one who “[i]s not pursuing a degree
in theology”); Wash. Rev. Code Ann. §28B.10.814 (West
1997) (“No aid shall be awarded to any student who is
pursuing a degree in theology”). But the statute itself
does not define “theology.” And the usual definition of the
term “theology” is not limited to devotional studies. “The-
ology” is defined as “[t]he study of the nature of God and
religious truth” and the “rational inquiry into religious
questions.” American Heritage Dictionary 1794 (4th ed.
2000). See also Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Diction-
ary 1223 (1991) (“the study of religious faith, practice, and
experience” and “the study of God and his relation to the
world”). These definitions include the study of theology
from a secular perspective as well as from a religious one.

Louis Menand has this interesting article on chess in The New Yorker. Ed Cohn has these interesting thoughts on the article on Gnostical Turpitude. Ed's irritated that Menand calls chess a "sport".

The misuse of the word "sport" is a pet peeve of mine; my main extracurricular activity has been quizbowl (an academic competition), and I'm always annoyed when people try to claim that it's a sport. (The people most likely to do this are the sort of people who seem most upset at their own lack of athletic prowess, and they invariably want to dumb it down and make it more audience-friendly.) In my experience, no one seriously refers to Scrabble or intercollegiate debating as a sport... Activities like these--pseudo-intellectual pursuits that aren't even vaguely athletic--just don't qualify, as far as I'm concerned, and to claim that they do will often be tantamount to an attempt to simplify them or dumb them down.

In regard to all the fear-of-child-blogging that's been going on earlier over here, my friend John Coleman links to this video. It's pretty cruel when you think about it, but also one of the most effective "use condoms" videos I've seen.

I'd hate to make enemies with my first post after being fortunate enough to get my name on the masthead (and I admit I'm overselling what I'm about to write, but the word "enemies" fit so nicely in the sentence), but I did a double-take when I read Amy's post below where she writes:

it often seems that the people least suited to parenthood are the ones who end up with children. It's those who don't realize how much work is involved in raising children who are most eager to acquire little rugrats of their own. Those who understand the true scope of the task are disproportionately the ones doing everything they can to avoid taking it on.

I'm a guy, and I don't have any children (though I hope one day I will), so maybe I'm just not qualified to have anything to say about this, but I don't believe that's true. At least I don't want to believe that's true. I want to believe lots of people are thrilled they had children and do a great job raising them, and think the rewards outweigh the costs. I understand being a parent probably isn't for everyone, and certainly respect everyone's right to make the decisions that they feel are best for them with regard to this, no argument. But to imply that people are fooled into parenthood if they don't know how much work it is seems to ignore that people can get an awful lot of reward and satisfaction out of it. I realize I sound incredibly naive to even think what I'm about to write, but even the summers I spent as a camp counselor let me feel, just a little bit, and I'm not trying to turn this into a bigger point than it is, the fulfillment that can come back to you when you feel like you're really making a difference in a child's life, that you're there for them, that you're giving of yourself. And, yeah, people who aren't parents can work with children in all sorts of ways, and get that reward without cleaning up vomit, but still: I just can't imagine Amy's proposition really reflects reality, and that a good (even stunning) percentage of parents wouldn't trade it for the world and don't regret having their kids. I almost can't fathom otherwise.

For those who follow textualism and discrimination arguments, General Dynamics Land Systems (issued today) is also worth a look. At issue was the question of whether a law that outlawed "discriminat[ion] because of an individual's age," for those over the age of 40 stopped employers from discriminating against 40-year-olds in favor of 50-year-olds. (And also, as a corollary, whether interpreting the law to forbid such discrimination was unreasonable, and therefore whether Chevron applied).

A six Justice majority held that "discriminat[ion] because of an individual's age" occurs only when there is discrimination because of an individuals old age, and that a statement to the contrary made by one of the bill's sponsors notwithstanding. They further held that this interpretation (their own) was so clearly right that the EEOC was unreasonably wrong to think otherwise, and thus owed no deference under Chevron. For those of us who are disillusioned by the use of legislative history, this case could be another case in point.

Also at stake was the Court's reliance on what it termed "social history." (On which Justice Thomas wrote the following):

Strangely, the Court does not explain why it departs from accepted methods of interpreting statutes. It does, however, clearly set forth its principal reason for adopting its particular reading of the phrase "discriminate . . . based on [an] individual’'s age"” in Part III–A of its opinion. “The point here,” the Court states, “is that we are not
asking in the abstract how the ADEA uses the word ‘age,’ but seeking the meaning of the whole phrase ‘discriminate . . . because of [an] individual’s age.’ As we have said, social history emphatically points to the sense of age discrimination as aimed against the old, and this idiomatic understanding is confirmed by legislative history."

Ante, at 14 (emphasis added). The Court does not define “social history,” although it is apparently something different from legislative history, because the Court refers to legislative history as a separate interpretive tool in the
very same sentence. Indeed, the Court has never defined “social history” in any previous opinion, probably because it has never sanctioned looking to “social history” as a method of statutory interpretation. Today, the Court takes this unprecedented step, and then places dispositive weight on the new concept.

The Atlantic Monthly article that Amy links to below also fed a recent conversation in Slate, "Am I Exploiting My Nanny?".

I'm leery of having children because of the short blurb which Slate carried for that series of articles (they changed it after a day or two; perhaps because other people had my reaction; perhaps because they like to change the blurbs). It referred to the nanny question as a women's dilemma (I wish I could remember the exact words).

No. If my hypothetical future husband and I should have children, how to care for the children is a problem that belongs equally to both of us. Granted, only by a dreadful mistake would I marry someone whom didn't agree with me on this point, but I am afraid of this still-existant cultural presumption that the children would be peculiarly my domain.

Fortunately, I've already got one sister who's been dubbed She Who Will Provide Grandchildren for Our Mother, so all's clear on that front. :-)

(Thanks to Steve at BtD for pointing out that I'm probably not 'leary' of children, esp. given that the OED doesn't know what that word means ["Origin and meaning obscure."])

Caitlin Flanagan has a very thoughtful article up on the ways in which the problems that face upper-class women have diverged from those facing working-class ones. I'll leave the substantive commentary to blogs like Diotima or Alas, but I wanted to point out this paragraph section:

am about the same age as Naomi Wolf, and we had children at about the same time, but I had neither expected nor wanted a revolution. I did not have a single dream about moving into the world of work when I was a girl. In fact, when I concluded that being a girl was in every way superior to being a boy, my two top pieces of evidence—freely offered, never challenged—consisted of the facts that I would never have to go either to Vietnam or to a job. (I confess to a brief, Howard Carter-inspired period during which I planned to become an Egyptologist, but that dream centered chiefly on a pale-blue linen sheath that I intended to wear in the desert. I was also deeply affected by the Modesty Blaise novels, but I realized that all the images they inspired—principally of having an erotically charged but entirely chaste relationship with a worshipful man while we cheated death and fought crime on an international basis—were, although startlingly intense, the stuff of fantasy.) What I dreamed about was getting married and having babies and running a household. I did, as a young woman, teach school, but I always thought of it as an engaging time killer until the babies arrived. And arrive they did, trailing the advertised clouds of glory, but also (this had not entered into any of my dreams) trailing an awful lot of shit work—shit work that grew more onerous and complicated with each passing month. Furthermore, the shit work seemed to be devolving almost entirely to me, for like Naomi, I had taken up a preordained place in the hierarchy of class and gender.

Don't get me wrong: I got a real kick out of the babies. But the cleaning was putting me in a funk—a bad kind of funk. A feminist-type, really cheesed-off kind of funk. I had expected, merely upon the simple fact of giving birth, to be magically transformed from the kind of woman who likes to spend most of the morning lying on the couch reading and drinking coffee and talking on the telephone to the kind of woman who likes to spend most of the morning tidying up and thinking about what to cook for dinner and inviting other mothers over for a nice chat. It didn't happen. Play dates—a sort of minimum-security lockdown spent in the company of other mildly depressed women and their tiresome, demanding babies—brought on a small death of the spirit, the effects of which I feared might be cumulative. I also felt resentful and sometimes even furious about almost any domestic task that presented itself: why was I supposed to endlessly wipe down the kitchen counters and lug bags of garbage out to the cans and set out the little plastic plates of steamed carrots and mashed bananas that the children touched only in order to hurl them onto the floor? Hadn't every essay I'd ever submitted in college come back with a little mash note telling me I was in some way special, a cut above, meant for something? Wasn't I designed for more important things than putting away Lego blocks and loading the dishwasher? I was! It was time. Cherchez la femme

This confirms a pet theory I've always held as to why it often seems that the people least suited to parenthood are the ones who end up with children. It's those who don't realize how much work is involved in raising children who are most eager to acquire little rugrats of their own. Those who understand the true scope of the task are disproportionately the ones doing everything they can to avoid taking it on.

UPDATE: I don't mean to say that there aren't benefits to having children that cam make all of the work involved more than worthwhile. Babysitting was my summer job all through high school, and I loved it--more than I can say for most all of the jobs I've had since then. The point is simply that people who realize the magnitude of the task of raising a child from infancy to adulthood are not going to undertake it without serious soul-searching, and are more likely to delay or forgo parenthood than those who haven't realized just how much work is involved.

A recent article in which Simon Schama spouts off about the incredible tediousness of most academic writing on history has been making the blogosphere rounds. He calls for a return to the so-called golden age of historical writing: Macaulay, Carlyle, and Gibbon. Timothy Burke comments on it approvingly, as does Invisible Ajunct, both with the caveat that academic history is the foundation upon which any modern popular historian must build, but Kieran Healy objects that it is nothing more than a pipe dream for a generalist to command the sort of respect that Macaulay did.

I think Kieran has missed the point regarding Timothy Burke and Invisible Ajunct's complaints. The problem is not that popular histories don't get written, or that they don't command respect from the public at large, the problem is the utter contempt such efforts are held in from within the academy. Part of this is, I think, envy of the money and fame that comes with television miniseries and bestselling biographies, but another part is the degree to which the type of epic history that Macaulay et. al. wrote embodied a conception of history in which only military and political events (and only the privileged men who particpated in them) were worthy of narration. Historians of all stripes rightly rebelled against these limitations, insisting that history as a discipline had to encompass much more than the story of great men and great events. This, however, is a battle that was won a generation ago, and now there is no reason that one could not write like Macaulay about the history of housework.

What Macaulay had that modern historians lack (besides a way with words) is a firm sense that there were important lessons to be learned from the past that would guide our actions in the present. It was this concept that justified popular historical reading--that, and the pleasure of a good story. Academic historians call this dumbing history down, for good theoretical reasons, but fail to realize that their enterprise is sterile unless it is dumbed down for public consumption.

I don't believe history as a discipline is in crisis--the tension between academic and popular history was first developed by Neitzsche more than a century ago in his treatise "On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life", and there is no particular reason the current situation, in which historians in the academy produce technical works and historians outside the academy make their living recasting these works in ways that please the public, can't continue indefinitely, even with outright hostility of academic historians towards their populist bretheren. That said, I don't think the current situation is a healthy one. Both academic and popular historians have a deal to learn from one another. A healthy exchange between the two could go a long way towards injecting some life into the currently flat academic prose, and some moresophistication and accountability into popular histories, which are often riddled with inaccuracies that will go unnoticed by the general public.