H2: wow. “Male circumcision is in principle equivalent to childhood vaccination...Just as there are opponents of vaccination, there are opponents of circumcision. But their arguments are emotional and unscientific, and should be disregarded.”
Given the vehemence of some of the anti-circumcision folks, I'll be interested to see the reaction to this. The supposed health benefits were a major part of why we decided to circumcise our son, but we felt guilty about it -- I don't know how reliable this study is, but I find it very validating.
If you don't mind my dropping a new link (I was actually thinking of sending this to you but it promptly slipped my mind, which is a shame because it would've fit in the Relationships category), Reihan Salam has a post in Slate on a topic that came up here awhile back: Is it racist to date only people of your own race? His short answer: Yes.
I actually prefer the snack-size cups because of the higher ratio of scalloped-ness. The full-size ones are a little too soft and peanutbuttery for me.
There are different levels of “controlling” other people’s bodies.
Sure, so what I believe Murali is saying is that if you think even one of those levels is valid, then just saying "people have a right to control their own bodies" to argue for a level that you think is invalid is inadequate.
An employer ... conspicuously inserting themselves in the patient-provider relationship is a dubious kind of favor.
Dude, it's the government that's doing that. The main reason employers are involved in the first place is the tax advantage for employer-supplied benefits, and now the government is mandating what has to be included in a policy to be able to avoid the penalty.
And yes, if a woman has no wish to use a given service and the company can get her out of paying for it, then that would be doing that woman a favor. You seem to have a hard time understanding the concept that other people might make different choices than you would.
@zic @jm3z-aitch Fair enough, it was just a thought.
But I do think it's worth bearing in mind (in general, not just for HL) that the mandate means that women with conscientious objections to these particular contraceptive methods are being forced to pay for the coverage anyway (directly through the employee contribution and/or indirectly due to wage substitution).
I didn't read all the hundreds of comments on this issue, so apologies if someone already brought this up, but it seems to me that if Hobby Lobby has an explicit conservative Christian mission statement, there's a decent chance that most of its employees have a similar religious persuasion. So they're probably no more inclined to use the medications being objected to anymore than HL is inclined to provide them.
So if you go with the assumption that the cost of employer-supplied health benefits merely substitutes for salary, the effect of the contraceptive mandate is really that the government is forcing conservative women to pay for objectionable treatments that they'll never use. In this case, HL is actually doing its female employees a favor by trying to get out of it.
Oh, was that despair? I thought Brandon was just saying that in that case we'd be ditching Medicare Advantage and sticking with the traditional Fee For Service model.
@Glyph, my reactions are similar to yours -- just saying "racism!" seems to be oversimplifying. I'm sure that's there to some degree, but I suspect a bigger part of this is an association in many people's minds between race and class.
Re state funding, I thought states already sent money to poorer school districts, though perhaps not "enough". Even with full state funding, I don't see how you could ever have real equality without actually preventing the wealthy districts from putting extra money into their schools, which would never fly and would just be another incentive for the better-off to put their kids in private schools.
@burt-likko I do see the distinction, but it still leaves us in an odd place -- the government is not allowed to restrict HL as a corporation from advancing the religious interests of its members via speech, but it can force HL to act against the religious interests of its members in ways that don't impinge on speech.
So under your construction, could the government, say, pass a law forcing all corporations to donate money to Planned Parenthood (or going the other way, to Focus on the Family)?
"But a corporation lacks the ability to hold a religious belief. "
Doesn't a corporation just as equally lack the ability to hold a political opinion? The speech of a corporation is just the expression of the thoughts and opinions of its natural-person representatives, no?
I think there's at least one more function, which is, roughly, enforcing the public's sense of "justice". If we just cared about prevention and rehabilitation, then the conversations around sentencing would be largely driven by statistics and analysis, but in fact it generally comes down to the public wanting criminals to get what they "deserve." Of course, this too is impacted by mental illness in rather the same way that #1 is, but instead of being (theoretically) measurable, it comes down to vague ideas of agency and free will.
Saul, I read that article and found it wryly amusing that Ezra would frame the research using the example of climate change, which leaves the impression that what he's really saying is "here's what makes conservatives so obtuse".
Just got my first pair of progressive lenses last month (though my optometrist has been recommending to me for years).
The first time I heard songs from my high school days being played on an "oldies" station was a bitter pill, but that's a few years behind me now. And my younger child is graduating from college next month.
But really, I've accepted the loss of my youth now, after a rather serious struggle in my early forties. Though I'm not quite ready to give up the pleasant delusion that the cute young barista is giving me a smile that's a bit more significant than what her other customers get.
Well, at least in his first comment, Chris wasn't really talking to you, just responding to a comment in a public forum that happened to be posted by you. I don't think it's really up to you to tell him he can't do that, though of course you're free to ignore him.
It seems to me that what he was really defending was just a well-funded and muscular military, not so much any specifically neo-con policies -- he doesn't advocate in the article for any particular bit of military intervention, just for not reducing the budget. It would've been helpful if he had been clearer about exactly what he was supporting, rather than just not renouncing the neocon label.
And though I was opposed to and dismayed by the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, I think it's useful for everyone to remember that we don't know how the alternative would've worked out in either case -- we shouldn't leave off the scale the people who would've suffered under the then-existing regimes who are free of them now. As much as everyone wants to see Right vs Wrong, it really comes down to a cost-risk-benefit calculus.
" all she has to worry about is recreating the notes that somebody else somewhere else wrote for her. What an achievement. "
So I suppose you don't think there's any art in acting either, since it just involves reciting lines that someone else wrote for them, right? Except for improv theater -- that must be the pinnacle of acting, I guess.
Perhaps you might compare what a professional musician does with a piece of music to what you get by programming the notes into a synthesizer -- I suspect that you'd notice the difference.
On “In the Eye of the Storm”
Picard provides my reaction to 95% of the comments re AGW, here and elsewhere.
On “Linky Friday #68”
H2: wow. “Male circumcision is in principle equivalent to childhood vaccination...Just as there are opponents of vaccination, there are opponents of circumcision. But their arguments are emotional and unscientific, and should be disregarded.”
Given the vehemence of some of the anti-circumcision folks, I'll be interested to see the reaction to this. The supposed health benefits were a major part of why we decided to circumcise our son, but we felt guilty about it -- I don't know how reliable this study is, but I find it very validating.
On “Linky Friday #66”
If you don't mind my dropping a new link (I was actually thinking of sending this to you but it promptly slipped my mind, which is a shame because it would've fit in the Relationships category), Reihan Salam has a post in Slate on a topic that came up here awhile back: Is it racist to date only people of your own race? His short answer: Yes.
"
Also see Salam's response re the impact of the US housing crash on these numbers.
On “Mount Rushmore – Candy Edition”
My wife is in full agreement with you. I'm surprised she consented to marry a freak like me.
"
I actually prefer the snack-size cups because of the higher ratio of scalloped-ness. The full-size ones are a little too soft and peanutbuttery for me.
On “Controlling Other People’s Bodies”
Sure, so what I believe Murali is saying is that if you think even one of those levels is valid, then just saying "people have a right to control their own bodies" to argue for a level that you think is invalid is inadequate.
On “Bodily Integrity”
An employer ... conspicuously inserting themselves in the patient-provider relationship is a dubious kind of favor.
Dude, it's the government that's doing that. The main reason employers are involved in the first place is the tax advantage for employer-supplied benefits, and now the government is mandating what has to be included in a policy to be able to avoid the penalty.
And yes, if a woman has no wish to use a given service and the company can get her out of paying for it, then that would be doing that woman a favor. You seem to have a hard time understanding the concept that other people might make different choices than you would.
"
@zic @jm3z-aitch Fair enough, it was just a thought.
But I do think it's worth bearing in mind (in general, not just for HL) that the mandate means that women with conscientious objections to these particular contraceptive methods are being forced to pay for the coverage anyway (directly through the employee contribution and/or indirectly due to wage substitution).
"
I didn't read all the hundreds of comments on this issue, so apologies if someone already brought this up, but it seems to me that if Hobby Lobby has an explicit conservative Christian mission statement, there's a decent chance that most of its employees have a similar religious persuasion. So they're probably no more inclined to use the medications being objected to anymore than HL is inclined to provide them.
So if you go with the assumption that the cost of employer-supplied health benefits merely substitutes for salary, the effect of the contraceptive mandate is really that the government is forcing conservative women to pay for objectionable treatments that they'll never use. In this case, HL is actually doing its female employees a favor by trying to get out of it.
On “Just because you’re paranoid…”
Oh, was that despair? I thought Brandon was just saying that in that case we'd be ditching Medicare Advantage and sticking with the traditional Fee For Service model.
On “The Atlantic just published the most important story of the year.”
"Ken, there are pretty simple ways to redistribute the money"
Sure, but none that would keep the wealthier areas from either finding ways to spend the money they want to spend or just exiting the public schools.
"
@Glyph, my reactions are similar to yours -- just saying "racism!" seems to be oversimplifying. I'm sure that's there to some degree, but I suspect a bigger part of this is an association in many people's minds between race and class.
Re state funding, I thought states already sent money to poorer school districts, though perhaps not "enough". Even with full state funding, I don't see how you could ever have real equality without actually preventing the wealthy districts from putting extra money into their schools, which would never fly and would just be another incentive for the better-off to put their kids in private schools.
On “In My Opinion’s Wake”
@burt-likko I do see the distinction, but it still leaves us in an odd place -- the government is not allowed to restrict HL as a corporation from advancing the religious interests of its members via speech, but it can force HL to act against the religious interests of its members in ways that don't impinge on speech.
So under your construction, could the government, say, pass a law forcing all corporations to donate money to Planned Parenthood (or going the other way, to Focus on the Family)?
"
"But a corporation lacks the ability to hold a religious belief. "
Doesn't a corporation just as equally lack the ability to hold a political opinion? The speech of a corporation is just the expression of the thoughts and opinions of its natural-person representatives, no?
On “Incarcerated with the madness”
I wasn't going to point it out, but thanks for noticing.
"
I think there's at least one more function, which is, roughly, enforcing the public's sense of "justice". If we just cared about prevention and rehabilitation, then the conversations around sentencing would be largely driven by statistics and analysis, but in fact it generally comes down to the public wanting criminals to get what they "deserve." Of course, this too is impacted by mental illness in rather the same way that #1 is, but instead of being (theoretically) measurable, it comes down to vague ideas of agency and free will.
On “Je suis confus”
Saul, I read that article and found it wryly amusing that Ezra would frame the research using the example of climate change, which leaves the impression that what he's really saying is "here's what makes conservatives so obtuse".
And Krugman goes a step further, leading to his being ridiculed by Kahan himself.
On “Stupid Tuesday questions, Oil of Olay edition”
Just got my first pair of progressive lenses last month (though my optometrist has been recommending to me for years).
The first time I heard songs from my high school days being played on an "oldies" station was a bitter pill, but that's a few years behind me now. And my younger child is graduating from college next month.
But really, I've accepted the loss of my youth now, after a rather serious struggle in my early forties. Though I'm not quite ready to give up the pleasant delusion that the cute young barista is giving me a smile that's a bit more significant than what her other customers get.
On “Marriage For Thee, Stairwell Makeout Sessions For Me”
Well, at least in his first comment, Chris wasn't really talking to you, just responding to a comment in a public forum that happened to be posted by you. I don't think it's really up to you to tell him he can't do that, though of course you're free to ignore him.
"
It seems to me that what he was really defending was just a well-funded and muscular military, not so much any specifically neo-con policies -- he doesn't advocate in the article for any particular bit of military intervention, just for not reducing the budget. It would've been helpful if he had been clearer about exactly what he was supporting, rather than just not renouncing the neocon label.
And though I was opposed to and dismayed by the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, I think it's useful for everyone to remember that we don't know how the alternative would've worked out in either case -- we shouldn't leave off the scale the people who would've suffered under the then-existing regimes who are free of them now. As much as everyone wants to see Right vs Wrong, it really comes down to a cost-risk-benefit calculus.
On “The Right Path, Part II: Nate Silver and the Delegitimisation of Traditional Journalism and Objective Data”
Tod, you need your own sub-blog with its own rules and expectations...
On “Bad Science”
On a related note, did everyone see this Twitter exchange?
On “Heavenly!”
" all she has to worry about is recreating the notes that somebody else somewhere else wrote for her. What an achievement. "
So I suppose you don't think there's any art in acting either, since it just involves reciting lines that someone else wrote for them, right? Except for improv theater -- that must be the pinnacle of acting, I guess.
Perhaps you might compare what a professional musician does with a piece of music to what you get by programming the notes into a synthesizer -- I suspect that you'd notice the difference.
On “Weekend!”
I'll be scouring the internet to see if any headline or tweet about a recent basketball upset says "The Quality of Mercer is Not Strained".
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.