Elsewhere on the Interweb (1/14/08)

Ronald Bailey at Reason also argues that whether a Presidential candidate believes in evolution matters:

Does it matter what presidential candidates believe about biological evolution? After all, they are running for commander-in-chief, not scientist-in-chief. For example, why not practice educational federalism as many Republican candidates suggest and let local school boards and individual states decide what should be taught in science classes? This may seem like an initially appealing option until one considers that schooling is mandatory.

The problem is that creationism and its latest intellectual spawn, intelligent design, are clearly religious teachings. So a local school board or state would be imposing religious teachings on all students if they required the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in public schools. The U.S. Supreme court acknowledged this fact in 1987 when it ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard against a Louisiana law that required the teaching of creationism whenever evolutionary biology was taught. The Court struck down the Louisiana law because it "impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind." In 2005, a federal district court found in Kitzmiller v. Dover that the goal of the local school board's mandate that schools teach intelligent design "was to promote religion in the public school classroom."

Steven Pinker writes in the NYTimes about moral psychology (Hat-tip: Mind Hacks):

The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral ("killing is wrong"), rather than merely disagreeable ("I hate brussels sprouts"), unfashionable ("bell-bottoms are out") or imprudent ("don't scratch mosquito bites").

The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted. One can easily say, "I don't like brussels sprouts, but I don't care if you eat them," but no one would say, "I don't like killing, but I don't care if you murder someone."

The other hallmark is that people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished. Not only is it allowable to inflict pain on a person who has broken a moral rule; it is wrong not to, to "let them get away with it." People are thus untroubled in inviting divine retribution or the power of the state to harm other people they deem immoral. Bertrand Russell wrote, "The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists -- that is why they invented hell."

Tom Firey at Cato@Liberty discusses the likely effectiveness of stimulus packages for what appears to be an impending recession:

Government response to recessions comes in three forms: monetary policy (the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee lowers interest rates to spur investment and borrowing), automatic fiscal policy (the automatic increase in government spending during recessions that results from increased unemployment insurance claims, welfare disbursements, etc.), and discretionary fiscal policy (the adoption of stimulus packages that contain increased government spending and/or tax cuts).

The track records for both FOMC action and the automatic stabilizers are strong, the Romers show. Both kick in quickly when recessions begin, and the economy turns around fairly soon afterward.

Stimulus packages have a much shoddier record, however: they take months to move through Congress, and additional months to implement -- long after the recession has come and gone. Moreover, many of the specific actions initiated by stimulus packages are hardly stimulatory -- extending unemployment benefits or launching major government construction programs requires several months to several years (and sometimes even decades) before the federal monies hit the economy.

Read the whole thing.