The Nobel Prize went to two physicists honored for the discovery that neutrinos have mass . Their discovery was a major contribution to what is now known as the "standard model" of the elementary particles. Until their turn-of-the-millennium work, the widely shared opinion was that neutrinos (like photons) don't have mass. This consensus had led -- don't ask me why-- to a further consensus on how many of them ought to be detectable on earth. And that, in turn led to some confusion because the quantities actually detected were much smaller than what they 'should' be. So these are experimenters who managed to clear up a split between other experimenters and theorists. The theory had to be revised so that the experimental results, the actual quantity detected, could be accommodated, and their work showed how that could be done. A victory for pragmatism in science, the hospitable homeland of pragmatism. I enjoy this time of year for a number of reasons, n...
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The Justices are back at work. There are a number of fascinating items in the pipeline. I'll mention in this entry just two that the Court has recently decided to hear: Bank Markazi v. Peterson, and FERC v. Electric Power Supply Ass'n . Bank Markazi involves sanctions against Iran, and a blatant Congressional effort to interfere with ongoing litigation in the courts. The FERC case asks whether the Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. § 791a et seq ., gives that agency the authority to regulate the way that operators of wholesale-electricity markets match supply and demand in real time and through day-ahead markets. The above link will take you to the Solicitor General's petition for cert in the FERC case. In the sanctions matter it was the Iranian central bank that had to petition for cert. You'll find that petition here.
Enos B. Comstock, an American writer and illustrator of the early 20th century, may be best known for his TUCK ME IN stories. Thus, the above illustration. But I find inspiration in another of his works, the following poem, TRIUMPH You see me here within this shallow shoal, This graveyard of abandoned ships, Where wrecking crews have taken toll, And battered hulks make no more trips, Stripped of my spars, my topmasts and my shrouds You seek for romance here in vain: The full-blown sails that kissed the clouds Will never bear me forth again. Come, let your fancy take you far away -- Behold me tossed on emerald seas, I bow to meet the silver spray And revel in the tropic breeze. Or, match me with a hundred winter gales No peril did they hold for me: They lashed their fury at my sails But I came home triumphantly. And here I bide, to pass to slow decay, The murky waters lap my keel. But when ships pass on Judgment Day Thus proudly will I make appeal: ...
I've discussed trolley problems before. This is a new version, in a new philosophical context. One common issue in the philosophy of religion is: does religious belief help people act morally? If so, how? Nietzsche famously contended that the "death of God" had great implications for morality, for the transvaluation of values, implications which he welcomed. Many theists accept that judgment, but dis-value what Nietzsche valued. Many atheists and agnostics deny that there is any such implication. One interpretation of Nietzsche's somewhat cryptic comments on the subject is that the idea of equality -- that my life is worth as much as yours, or in a variant that no quantitative comparison can or should be made between my life's value and yours -- is a religious presumption at heart. It depends upon the background notion that we are all alike creatures of the same Creator and it will not long outlast the death of that idea. In that spirit, Brian Leite...
On a SLATE comment thread, I recently wrote as follows: Is it just me, or does all this have a very 1968 vibe for anyone else? Here as there, the incumbent President is a Democrat. In '68, of course, LBJ was eligible to run again, but was knocked out early. Let's ignore that difference for a moment and see what else lines up. There are two Democrats each with a plausible claim to continue the incumbent administration, for those who WANT to see it continued. There is a former cabinet member (Attorney General or Secretary of State, as the case may be) on the one side, and the sitting Vice President on the other. The establishment of the Dems could live with either of them. There is also a very non-establishment figure coming off from the flanks, with a surprisingly strong following in the base, call him Eugene or Bernie as you please. All very '68. The signature domestic accomplishment of the incumbent is in the area of health care reform, Medicare/Medicaid. Ove...
My personal view of the field, in ten questions. I'll work in traditional order, from Being through Knowledge, to Value. 1. Does the world consist of substances with attributes (that is, enduring things with various properties), or is that a misleading way of thinking? 2. If one accepts the substance/attributes dichotomy, what COUNTS as a substance? How many of them are there in the world? Are there an infinite number of substances, or could it all be boiled down to a smaller number? Three, as Descartes thought (mind, matter, God), or maybe just one? 3. In terms of the nature of a human being, are we each one substance with various attributes? Or are we two different substances that somehow interact? Or is a person an attribute of a trans-personal Substance? 4. If we end up with a view of the world in which humans consist of both mind and body: how DO they interact? 5. What do we mean by "truth" as a matter of common language. also, what SHOULD we take the ...
I recently saw the movie Black Mass, based on the criminal career of Whitey Bulger and his protectors in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was a fine movie, and as cineastes by now know, it features a subtle performance by Johnny Depp in the leading role. Surprisingly subtle, in that Depp's career has been built on characters he paints in very broad strokes -- Captain Jack Sparrow comes first to mind, The one scene that sticks to my mind is a dinner at which Bulger and his two FBI buddies (Connolly and Morris, IIRC) are sharing barbecue, while the wife of one of the G-men is upstairs in her bedroom, feigning sickness. Yes, there is an intense after-dinner confrontation between Bulger and Mrs. Connolly in this context, but that is not the bit I'm thinking of right now. The bit that sticks to my mind is at the dinner table, where Bulger tells Morris, who has been working at the grill, that the b-b-cue sauce he's using is delicious. Morris boasts it is a family ...