Learned Lawyer

Posner on Friedman

It is the period since 2001 in which Friedman’s ideals have been most fully realized in the United States, yet this has been a period of economic and political decline, in significant part as a result of regulatory laxity in banking and securities regulation (financial markets, it turns out, are not self-regulating) and exaggerated belief in the economic efficacy of reducing taxes as a method of stimulating economic activity, a dogma that risks starving government for funds needed for infrastructure, basic research, and combating global warming.

Download Full Comment Posner May 2013

Wine of the Week for June 10, 2013

via www.winespectator.com

90 pts - 16 $

UC Law Geoff Stone on Snowden

In the absence of such a procedure, what should Edward Snowden have done? Probably, he should have presented his concerns to senior, responsible members of Congress.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

senior responsible members of congress? are you kidding me?

UC Law Geoff Stone on Snowden

In the absence of such a procedure, what should Edward Snowden have done? Probably, he should have presented his concerns to senior, responsible members of Congress.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

senior responsible members of congress? are you kidding me?

Finally - iBooks ditches the ugly woody bookcase

the iBooks bookcase will apparently do away with the fake wood grain look

via www.eweek.com

A Wealth of Words

In English class, young children are now practicing soul-deadening how-to exercises like “finding the main idea” in a passage and “questioning the author.” These exercises usurp students’ mental capacity for understanding what is written by forcing them to think self-consciously about the reading process itself. The exercises also waste time that ought to be spent gaining knowledge and vocabulary.

via www.city-journal.org

Agreed

PROOF OF THE PROFESSION’S CRISIS

It gets worse. When asked to identify their greatest challenges over the next 24 months, the item that managers cite most often is “increasing revenue.” The rest of the list is, in order: new business, growth, profitability, management transition, cost management, and attracting talent. If you’re wondering where clients fit — other than as a source of revenue and profits in items one, two, and three — “client value” finished eighth.

Long-term thinking? Forget it. The client silo mentality and resulting culture of short-termism are widespread and deep.

via thelawyerbubble.com

Ave atque vale by Donald Kagan - The New Criterion

It is increasingly obvious that trying to deal with human beings, creatures of independent will and purpose, as if they were objects like atoms, molecules, cells, and tissues, produces unsatisfactory results.

via www.newcriterion.com

But only if in fact human beings exercise independent will and purpose; if they're more or less cows, then yes, by all means, treat them as if they were atoms and molecules.

The after-life and rationality

From the 11th Circuit:

One could argue, as Ferguson’s attorneys do, that his belief that he will be resurrected as the Prince of God negates a rational understanding that he will be killed and thereby establishes that he is not mentally competent to be executed. That cannot be correct. Panetti cannot mean that a belief in resurrection or other forms of life after death is inconsistent with the rational understanding of death that is required for mental competence to be executed. If it did mean that, most Americans would be mentally incompetent to be executed.

http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201215422.pdf

Thought Experiment: Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain

“It was just amazing to me that you could have a little more or less of some chemical and your whole worldview would be different,” he recalls, smiling with boyish wonder. “If you can switch a chemical and your personality changes, who are you?”

To find out, he took up psychiatry at the University of Cape Town but swiftly grew impatient with the field. “I could see that this was not a science,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I didn’t see any future in it, grouping people by symptoms and prescribing whatever drug the pharmaceutical companies said.”

So he quit medicine and joined the only Cape Town lab doing experimental neuroscience

via www.wired.com

Obamadrones

Much of this chapter centers on the Obama administration, and an important, chilling effect of Rohde’s book is that the current president doesn’t appear all that much better than George W. Bush. Obama’s drone program feels at least as mendacious and ill-conceived as the campaign for the invasion of Iraq—if not, in fact, more so. The program also comes off as a natural step in America’s military evolution: For US policy hands, drones are a painless and easy means of killing supposed enemies, while diplomacy is controversial and hard and involves negotiating with real enemies.

via www.bookforum.com

The Real Karl Marx by John Gray

The programs of “free market conservatives,” who aim to dismantle regulatory restraints on the workings of market forces while conserving or restoring traditional patterns of family life and social order, depend on the assumption that the impact of the market can be confined to the economy. Observing that free markets destroy and create forms of social life as they make and unmake products and industries, Marx showed that this assumption is badly mistaken. Contrary to what he expected, nationalism and religion have not faded away and there is no sign of their doing so in the foreseeable future; but when he perceived how capitalism was undermining bourgeois life, he grasped a vital truth.

This is not to say that Marx can offer any way out of our present economic difficulties.

via www.nybooks.com