Interpreting the Obama cabinet

An entertaining NRO piece on the left's reactions to Obama's centrist picks.

I think there is more to the "projection" argument than the NRO writer does; I think a lot of folks on the left forgot that "not Bush" defines a very large policy space indeed.

Trends in fashionable food consumption

A tasty post from Kerry Howley (of Reason but on her own blog) about the move from fair trade to localism as the foundation of ethical eating and caffeine consumption.

Of course, buying local goes beyond food. Local Ann Arbor businesses often promote buying local which has always seemed to me a bit odd for a left-wing sort of town. Shouldn't the left view be that we should drive into Detroit to buy from poor people? Of course, that would increase our carbon footprint. And, of course, both buying local and buying from poor people in Detroit do nothing to help the really poor people in the third world.

Having mutually incompatible values is hard and I suppose is what leads to this sort of normative cycling. Normative cycling is also useful because it allows people to signal that they are politically with it. You need the "right thing" in "doing the right thing" to change with some frequency otherwise everyone would eventually catch up and then "doing the right thing" would lose its value as a signal of hipness.

Naming names and naming things

As a follow-on to my earlier post about UM naming something after its sitting university president, Mary Sue Coleman, here is InsideHigherEd with some rules about naming. They agree with me.

Movie: Rachel Getting Married

We saw Rachel Getting Married last week at the Michigan Theater. It is a tough, well-acted and well-written movie about addiction, truth, and family dysfunction. Highly recommended.

California 48 Washington 7

The misery of the 2008 Washington Husky football season came to an end last night with a 48-7 loss to California. It is not obvious from the score, but the defense played a lot better than the offense, and third-string quarterback Taylor Bean played surprisingly well compared to Ronnie Fouch, whose passing seems to have, if anything, decayed over the course of the season.

Ty's employment ended yesterday as well; I have read news reports that he has had interest from New Mexico State and San Jose State for their head coaching jobs.

Was I the only one surprised by the 2/3 full stadium at Cal on a beautiful day for a sure win? And the stadium is not that big to begin with.

For those at Michigan, and I have heard and read them, who say "it can't get any worse", let me assure you that it can. I have been there and I have seen it with mine own eyes.

The coaching change to Steve Sarkisian became official not long after USC finished their victory over UCLA. Here is the Seattle Times story about Sarkisian's words. He is apparently going to serve two masters through USC's appearance in the Rose Bowl.

Torture

This op-ed piece, published anonymously in the WaPo, has attracted a lot of attention.

I was prepared to like it better than I actually did when I read it. Some points:

1. I am disappointed that the military is stone-walling this guy's book. It would, of course, not be the first time the military has shot itself, metaphorically, in the foot. It seems to me though, that as a general rule open and honest debate are good things, even in terms of military strategy. Normally, that debate occurs outside the public view (largely due to lack of public interest) but torture policy has aspects beyond just efficacy that should be included in decisions about policy.

2. I think the op-ed goes off the rails a bit in interpreting the claims of individuals being interrogated that it was American torture that led them to join Al Qaeda. Could it be that they are saying this in the hope that it will reduce their chance of being tortured? I am sure that our torture policies had some effect on recruitment but I think the op-ed author reduces his credibility by not explicitly noting that those making these statements have a strategic incentive to do so. This leads, of course, to real issues with the broad claims that are made about loss of life due to US torture policy in Iraq.

3. The authors epistemic stance is basically that his one data point trumps however many data points advocates of torture could bring forward. One problem with this is the same one that plagues evaluation of apparently successful, small-scale employment and training programs: you don't know if it is the technique or the person. If it is the technique, you can scale it up. If it is the person, you cannot. Maybe this fellow is very good at his style of interrogation, and at getting his underlings to do it successfully, but maybe others who tried to emulate his style would not be. As such, a more compelling end to the op-ed would have been a call for the systematic collection and analysis of evidence on the efficacy of alternative interrogation techniques rather than the complete elimination of one techinque based on what is essentially an anecdote.

I liked this interivew piece in the Atlantic a couple of years ago much better - it has, of course, also has the advantage of length, which allows more nuance. Also, my liking it better is not particularly related to the somewhat different policy conclusions of the two pieces. I just think the Atlantic piece is a lot more thoughtful. My policy reviews here remain largely unformed, with the exception that I think the evidentiary bars for policies of either occasional or routine torture are very high given the normative costs, much higher than it appears we have reached at present.

Raj Chetty to Harvard

Here is the news as reported by Greg Mankiw.

I think this is good news for Michigan as it should make UCB less attractive to Jim Hines.