According to Britain’s RAC Foundation for Motoring, one should avoid listening to “Ride of the Valkyries” while driving. Other music to avoid, according to the RAC Foundation: “Firestarter” by Prodigy; “Red Alert” by Basement Jaxx; “Insomnia” by Faithless; and “Dies Irae” by Verdi.

Acceptible music for driving: “Mad World” by Gary Jules; “Another Day” by Lemar; “Too lost in You” by Sugababes; “Breathe Easy” by Blue; and Norah Jones – “Come away with me” by Norah Jones

One should also avoid any music ever featured in a Mitsubishi commercial.

There are three new philosophy grad student group blogs, one of which is from my graduate alma mater.

• What is the name of this blog? (University of Rochester)
• Orange Philosophy (Syracuse University)
• Fake Barn Country (Brown University)

Looking at the list of bloggers at Rochester, I see two “tenured grad students” who were there when I was, seven years ago. I wonder what the record is for the longest amount of time spent in grad school.

(Link via Crooked Timber.)

CNN reports that the Alabama state Senate has overridden a gubernatorial veto to make Conecuh Ridge Fine Alabama Whiskey the “official state spirit.”

Governor Bob Riley had vetoed the measure on the grounds that official designations should not be given to commercial products.

I’m highly sympathetic to Gov. Riley’s view, but I’ll still be looking for a bottle of Conecuh Ridge next time I’m at Joe’s Liquor.

It’s taken a week for me to get around to posting about it, after a lightning strike fried a modem, a hub, and a network card, leaving chez Sides with only one fully functional computer, but last weekend I attended MidSouthCon 22 here in Memphis.

Unlike previous years, when I spent most of my time playing D&D, this year I spent most of my time playing and running board games: Settlers of Catan, Princes of Florence, Ra, Pirate’s Cove, and New England.

I ran a game of Settlers of Catan that Mark from the Conservative Zone played in.

I also extended my collection of dragon art with a print of Cherry Blossom by Maia Sanders, part of her “Dragon Garden” series. I wish I’d picked up a print of Black Pine as well. They would make a nice pair.

Wonderfalls, a new show on Fox which I blogged about here, has been cancelled after only four episodes.

Fox really didn’t give this one a chance.

Back in September, I put a note on my philosophy papers page to potential plagiarists and their professors:

Hey, philosophy professors. If you've come to this page because you've found that a student has plagiarized one of the papers below, drop me a note, philarete at mindspring dot com. I'm curious as to how widely these papers are being plagiarized.

Hey, philosophy students. Don’t plagiarize these papers. For that matter, don’t plagiarize at all. It’s better to fail honestly than to cheat and get an A. Besides, you’ll probably get caught.

Today I received my first email from a philosophy professor confirming that a student has been caught plagiarizing my work. A undergrad at a California university plagiarized two of my papers, one on Bernard Williams on personal identity, and a shorter piece on the Lockean theory of personal identity.

I’m pleased that the professor told me that the student would have received an A, had he or she not been caught.

According to this HealthDay article, San Antonio, TX, “has the highest rate of binge drinking—imbibing till you’re drunk—in the entire United States.”

Congratulations, San Antonio! I certainly tried to do my part while I was there.

The rest of the top ten: Grand Forks, ND; Milwaukee, WI; Austin, TX; Sioux Falls, SD; Davenport, IA; Cedar Rapids, IA; Duluth, MN; Lincoln, NE; and Springfield, MA.

Since Sebastian Holsclaw is reposting some of his early stuff at from his own blog at Obsidian Wings, I’ll take the opportunity to repost my response to his post. I wrote:

Sebastian Holsclaw says that many pro-lifers "muddy the waters of the abortion debate". Those on the pro-choice side, on the other hand, "poison the well of the debate".

Now that’s not fair and balanced, is it?

But anyway, Sebastian is a good addition to Obsidian Wings, which has of late become one of my three favorite blogs (pushing out the Volokh Conspiracy).

Question for other bloggers out there: how do you prefer to be referred to in other blogs? First name and last name? First name only? Last name only? Title with name?

I’ve been using the following convention. I use first and last name the first time I refer to another blogger in a blog post. I use just the first name on subsequent references, unless the person has a high-status title, such as “Professor” or “Doctor,” in which case I use title and last name.

For some reason the blogosphere seems more familiar than the world of print. I’d never, for example, refer to David Brooks as “David,” but I find it difficult to refer to Will Baude as “Baude.”

Just for reference, I’m fine with being called “Brock.”

Will Baude today heard of the Peabody ducks for the first time.

I’ll count this as the tie-breaker for the Memphis Schelling point. I had two votes for the gates of Graceland, and two votes for the lobby of the Peabody.

You have heard of Graceland, right, Will?

Will Baude has “mixed feelings” about the illegality of dueling, and asks:

How did the introduction of the pistol change dueling culture? When did "pistols or swords?" first become a choice, and how did this new choice on the part of the challenged man change the game theory of duelling? Did this deter duels (as it logically should, since now the challenger knew that his opponent would get to pick the weapon with which he was relatively stronger)? Did those who regularly felt offended make a point to practice both shooting and stabbing?

I can’t imagine what positive aspects of dueling would prompt Baude to have mixed feelings about the barbaric practice, and I don’t have any particular answers to his questions. But Baude may want to find a copy of the March 2004 issue of Smithsonian magazine, in which there is an article on dueling.

Two interesting tidbits from the article:

Perhaps as a way of relieving ennui, the French weren't averse to pushing the pushing the envelope in matters of form. In 1808, two Frenchman fought in balloons over Paris; one was shot down and killed with his second. Thirty-five years later, two others tried to settle their differences by skulling each other with billiard balls.

Even in dueling's heyday, reluctant warriors were known to express reservations about their involvement by shooting into the air or, after receiving fire, not returning it. Occasionally they chose their weapons -- howitzers, sledgehammers, forkfuls of pig dung -- for their very absurdity, as a way of making a duel seem ridiculous.

Nerf guns at twenty paces!

Over at Freespace, guest blogger Erik Peterson writes:

If you’ve seen Roger and Me, you know its about Moore’s attempts to get an audience with General Motors CEO Roger Smith. This was supposed to show how aloof and uncaring and inaccessible corporate dictators can be.

Moore has met with Smith a couple of times since then, including once on his short-lived show TV Nation, where Smith came down and changed the oil in a truck to demonstrate CEOs can do what their employees do.

I don’t know whether Roger Smith has ever met with Moore or not, but it was not Roger Smith who won the “CEO challenge” on TV Nation. I remember watching that episode, and it was the CEO of Ford.

every schoolchild in America, every one who doesn't make a spectacle of him or herself by conscientiously objecting, is expected every schoolday to

pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America And to the Republic for which it stands One nation under God, indivisivible, with liberty and justice for all

which is, really, an awful lot like an oath of loyalty and citizenship.

Alex Tabarrok, however, goes a bit over the top in opposing the pledge for similar reasons. You've heard of Godwin's Law, haven't you, Prof. Tabarrok?

Monty Python’s Life of Brian is being re-released to theaters.

Perhaps as a double-feature with Passion of the Christ?

Is it just me, or is David Bernstein striving to single-handedly turn the Volokh Conspiracy into Little Green Footballs?

Last week I asked readers to submit Schelling points for Memphis: places that you would go to meet somebody if you had prearranged the meeting time but not the place, and you just had to guess where that person would be (knowing that the other person would be guessing where you would be). I also asked about Schelling points for the U.S. and the world.

I myself would choose the gates of Graceland for Memphis, the steps of the Capitol for the U.S., and the top of the Eiffel Tower for the world.

In Memphis, Scott Hayes and Mike Hollihan would meet me at the gates of Graceland.

Randal Woodland would miss me, because he would be in the lobby of the Peabody, “even though I’m resigned to the fact that the person I’m meeting will probably be at Graceland.” Alexander Ignatiev and Chip Taylor will be there as well.

For the U.S., there will be no successful meeting. Scott Hayes will at least be in the same city as I will, but at the Washington Monument. Alexander Ignatiev will be in New York at Madison Square Garden. Chip Taylor and Scott Hayes will also be in New York, at the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building, respectively.

In the world, Skip Perry will meet me at the Eiffel Tower. Alexander Ignatiev will be at Trafalgar Square, and Scott Hayes will be at the Taj Mahal.

Thanks to everyone who submitted answers!

Brian Doherty, in the American Spectator, writes a eulogy for Dave Sim’s comic book epic Cerebus, which ended this month with the 300th issue.

Digging back through my comic boxes, I see that I stopped reading Cerebus at issue 206, at which point the mysogyny and general pretentiousness became too much for me. Doherty’s article makes me think I didn’t really miss anything in the last 94 issues.

But I highly recommend picking up a copy of High Society.

Hat tip to Hit and Run.

Via John Gorenfeld, I learned that my Congressman, Harold Ford, Jr., was present at last night’s “Crown of Peace” awards dinner, hosted by none other than the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Moon himself received an award for “lifelong public service.”

Harold Ford, Jr., as Chris has noted before is “Congressman-for-life-if-he-wants-it,” and I doubt his Republican opponent for the Senate in 2008 will be able to make much of this, given the closeness of Moon to certain prominent Republicans. But Ford is rumored to have even higher ambitions, and an association with the loathsome Moon would not be something I would want on my resume if I were running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 or 2020.

Hat tip to Wonkette.

Back in February, Will Baude asked

If you had to meet somebody you’d never met before someplace in Chicago, but you hadn’t agreed on a time or a place, and you couldn’t talk to them in advance, where and when would you go, hoping that the other person would pick the same time and place?

Last week he answered, pulling together suggestions from readers. Will decided that noon on the steps of the Chicago Art Institute was the best answer, although the Sears Tower (the observation deck, I suppose?) was chosen by just as many readers.

I wish to pose the same question for Memphis. I’ll take it that the time answer is settled: you’ll meet at noon. If you had to meet somebody you’d never met before someplace in Memphis, but you hadn’t agreed on a place, and you couldn’t talk to them in advance, where would you go, hoping that the other person would pick the same place?

And lets suppose we extend the geographical area a bit. If you had agreed to meet someplace in the U.S., but had not agreed on a place, where would you go?

And finally, removing all geographical constraints: if you had agreed to meet somebody from a different country (but you don’t know which one), and you hadn’t agreed on a place, where would you go?

Send your answers to blog@lordsutch.com.

• 3/4 lb. firm tofu, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 1/4 cups peanut oil

• 1 oz. roasted peanuts
• 3 tbsp. peanut butter
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 2 tbsp. water
• 2 tsp. rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp. finely chopped cilantro
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. chili oil
• Sriracha chili sauce

Eugene Volokh writes, regarding the prosecution of two Unitarian minister in New Paltz, NY for marrying same-sex couples:

Some readers suggest that the clergy may be being prosecuted for signing their names to some government document attesting to the marriage. This might indeed be more punishable as an offense, partly because it’s more likely to be seen as a false statement of fact—a clerk might indeed not realize on a quick glance that this is a same-sex marriage, and be confused into thinking that the marriage was valid. But that’s not what I understood “solemnizing” to mean under New York law; as I understand it, solemnizing means performing the marriage, not signing a document.

This prompted me to dig up my New York marriage certificate from August, 1995. There’s a signature on it by the town clerk who issued it, but no place on the certificate for the signature of the person who performed the ceremony. (The town clerk happened to be the person who performed the ceremony, but if someone else had, there’s no place on the certificate for that person to sign.) For that matter, there’s no place on the certificate for the couple to sign, and I seem to recall signing something at some point. The wording on the certificate alludes to a “duly registered license … on file in this office.” Perhaps the person who performs the ceremony has to sign the duly registered license.

Amanda Doerty, arguing for the intrisic immorality of theft, asks:

If, in any situation, we find it justifiable for any person or group to take the property of any other person without the consent of the other (whether by force, or threats of jail, etc.), we cannot argue that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that act. On what, then, do we base our objections to theft?

She dismisses the utilitarian answer thus:

Pure utilitarianism is of course impossible—you can’t know what serves the ‘greater good’ unless you have some conception of what that greater good is, and it obviously won’t work out too well if every single person gets to decide what he or she thinks the greater good is. ‘Happiness’ is often proposed, or ‘life,’ or something similarly vague. The difficulty of deciding how one would measure such things is problematic enough for the utilitarian route, and there is always the question of why a certain criteria should be used. Not only that, but for those people who do not personally benefit from serving the greater good, there is no compelling reason to do it anyway.

In any case, you can’t really hold on to a utilitarian ideal if you believe that individuals have certain unalienable personal rights, since those rights will likely be often violated if every one always acts for the ‘greater good.’ For those of us who want to hold on to the idea of individual rights, that is probably enough reason to stay away from utilitarianism.

As a card-carrying utilitarian, I feel compelled to respond.

First, a purely definitional matter. Classical utilitarianism, a la Bentham, certainly does have a “conception of what the greater good is”: pleasure is the good, and pain is the bad. Nothing vague about that. Some contemporary utilitarians define utility in terms of preference satisfaction, which comes close to “every single person gets to decide.”

Hard to measure? Yes. But do we have any reason to think that figuring out the right thing to do will always be easy? As for “the question of why a certain criteria should be used,” I don’t see how natural rights theories fare much better in this regard. The Kantians claim to have an answer, but that's responding to the Kantians is beyond the scope of this blog post.

And the only ethical theory that can provide a compelling reason for everyone to follow it is ethical egoism. As nice as it would be to have the ethical coextensive with the rational, I can’t see any reason to think that it must be.

Amanda is correct, though, that pure utilitarianism is incompatible with “inalienable rights.” But even if people do have “inalienable rights,” it doesn’t follow that the utilitarian answer isn't the correct explanation of the wrongness of theft. It seems to me that the strongest candidates for inalienable rights are rights to control one’s own body: the right not to be killed, the right get a tattoo, the right to injest whatever sort of intoxicating substance one pleases. There’s a big leap from those to general property rights. So perhaps a rights-based explanation is the correct explanation for the wrongness of murder, but a utilitarian explanation is the right explanation for the wrongness of theft.

I bought a Hamilton Beach ShortCut food processor at Target on Saturday. My wife took it out of the box today, only to discover the following warning, in English, French, and Spanish, on the plastic bag enclosing it:

IMPORTANT: REMOVE BAG BEFORE USE

I watched the premiere of Fox’s new comedy/fantasy Wonderfalls this evening, in the Friday night “geek slot,” as my wife describes it.

Caroline Dhavernas stars as Jaye Taylor, a cynical, overeducated (philosophy major, Brown University) young woman working at a souvenir shop in Niagara Falls, NY. For some reason, a red wax lion and a brass monkey begin talking to her, telling her to do things, but not explaining why. Jaye, of course, thinks she’s going crazy, but does what they say in a effort to get them to shut up. The things they get her to do, lead, Rube Goldberg-like, to helping people, including Jaye’s sister Sharon and a UPS delivery man.

(What’s with the rash of young female characters with philosophy degrees? First Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation, now this show.)

Dhavernas plays the role well, and is very cute, but the supporting cast, with the exception of a Texan tourist, is pretty bland. The pilot was well written, with very funny dialogue and situations. And the location shots in Niagra Falls, NY are beautiful. I look forward to watching more of this show.

Hat tip to Crooked Timber for getting me interested enough to watch this show.

My two cents on using “they” as a singular pronoun: it’s acceptable in spoken English, but not in written English. In writing, one should use “he or she” unless one has to repeat it more than once in succession, or if one has to use the reflexive form, at which point it just gets too awkward. In that case, one should just use “he” or “she.” And for crying out loud, don’t ever write “he/she” or “(s)he.” Shudder.

I also note that Tim Sandefur shares my biggest grammatical peeve: signs at the checkout aisle that say “10 items or less.” It’s “10 items or fewer.” Use “less” with mass nouns (“Less than 10 inches of snow”) and “fewer” with count nouns (“Fewer than 10 cats”).

It’s interesting that “more” works with both mass nouns and count nouns.