Water from the sky? Imagine that!

That air-conditioning units, during humid months, cause liquid water to condense out of the air was always obvious. A recent KOLD web article puts a high estimate on the amount: 2-3 gallons per hour from households, and over 500 per hour from the U of A's Marshall Building.

This is clean water, that could be potable were it filtered to remove airborne particulates, and can certainly be used to water landscaping--without draining the aquifer. Whether or not the effect is a significant contributor to the "Non-Soon" is a question I'll leave for another time.

Greg Patterson had better have 'blog insurance.

"Espresso Pundit" and former legislator Greg Patterson had better have 'blog insurance, that is, if Malcolm Hughes and the University of Arizona have the good sense to destroy him like the fleabitten dog he is sue him into last century.

An accusation of academic fraud is serious, and if not substantiated, is the sort of false allegation of fact that amounts to libel. Way back when the "Climategate" e-mails were first being exaggerated and twisted into evidence of wrongdoing, Patterson first smeared Hughes as a fraud, and it was apparently let go. Now he's doing it again--evidence that libel from the anti-science set must be snuffed out early on--dazzling his audience by parlaying a conclusion that a figure Hughes contributed to a report was "misleading" to an accusation of academic/scientific fraud.

Fraud in science is presentation of fabricated or altered data, data that are not as described, or of conclusions that do not follow from the data. Contributing a figure that may be misinterpreted by a "casual" reader--the worst that can be inferred from the report cited by Patterson, is not fraud.

Joesler, who set Tucson's architectural "tone", featured in exhibition.

Driving or walking about Tucson's older neighborhoods, it's difficult not to see the influence of Josias Joesler. An eclecticist responsible for bringing "Spanish Colonial Revival" and "Pueblo Revival" style to Tucson, he is best known for St. Phillip's Church and Plaza, Broadway Village Shopping Center, and the Catalina Foothills Estates residential subdivision.

He's largely if not entirely responsible for the tendency in Tucson to make buildings appear older than they are. At his best, his works are near-paragons of the art of building with the desert landscape. At his worst, he was a pastiche artist. For better or for worse, he largely set the "tone" for development in central Tucson and the Catalina Foothills; many more "modern" developments including Casas Adobes Plaza show his influence. As reported in the Daily Star, through 21 August the University of Arizona Library's special collections department is featuring a Joesler exhibit, consisting of original plans, concept drawings, and photographs of his buildings.

A PIRG case worth reading: even refundable fees are of questionable legality.

Galda v Rutgers, 772 F.2d 1060

See also the University of Chicago Law Review article "The Right Not To Sue".

I won't be around next semester when the fee is imposed and thus will not have standing myself, but I'm thinking of calling FIRE (again) to see if there's anything I can bring to e.g. the U of A general counsel's office, and I'm certain that it will be possible to find students who do have standing.

(An aside, added later:)

Given that the "Student Government" is considering a resolution against concealed carry on campus, this review is interesting.

One of the PIRG culprits identified--read the justification and laugh!

Through the grapevine, your narrator learns that one of the organizers of the effort to charge all U of A students to subsidize the PIRG political organization is one "Pacifica Nicholson Sommers", a biology PhD student. The justification (to a friendly party), word for word:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pacifica Nicholson Sommers
Date: Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: PIRG Info
To: [redacted]


Hey [redacted],

Thanks for writing. I am generally opposed to fee increases as well, but I
think ArizonaPIRG is a really cool program that I would like to see have a
more concrete infrastructure and presence on campus, which is why I am out
there asking people to support this one. There is a lot of talk about social
and environmental problems on campuses, lots of cool research and lots of
round tables and panels and forums. There are some clubs that take on social
issues, but the problem with all-volunteer efforts run by busy students is
that there is often very little accountability and things tend to fall
through the cracks. Leadership gaps open up between school years. The whole
premise of ArizonaPIRG is that we can hire someone to provide structure to
internships for credit, to do the gruntwork of scheduling and logistics, and
who has the experience to train the students in techniques for public
outreach.

The idea of students assessing ourselves fees dates back to the 1960's and
1970's, when students wanted more ownership of their campus life, and wanted
to create women's resource centers, recycling programs, and other things
university administrations were not doing for them. One of those things to
emerge was the Public Interest network. Over eighty chapters in fifteen
different states fund themselves a variety of ways. For example, most
students in the UMass have a mandatory $11 fee - with no refund. Students
voted for it, in fact within the last three years students voted to raise
that from $7 to $11. New Jersey Rutgers students fund student PIRG chapters
through a waivable $11 fee on their tuition bill. In 2007, over 90% of
voting students in a referendum voted to keep that. We are proposing that
all the students on the campus at University of Arizona will benefit from
voting to assess ourselves a refundable $1.50 fee to support ArizonaPIRG
here.

This fee would apply to all students on campus because having ArizonaPIRG as
a funded group on campus would benefit the whole student body. In the big
picture, students are supposed to be learning, engaged, active citizens.
Having someone ask you to take a stand on an issue like the Arizona Clean
Cars program informs you and gives you a chance to think critically. Whether
you file it away for later or you get in a three hour fight following your
rant about the Great Hoax of global warming, both you and the person you are
talking are learning something. We put on events like the panel discussion
on perception and substance in sustainability last semester that give
students a chance to learn something they never thought about before.

I understand the whole concept of grad students needing to be focused on
"piling higher and deeper." Undergraduate years are the time to get that
breadth of experience, to go out and campaign and protest and skip classes,
right? Still, I contacted the PIRG organizer on campus when I arrived here
and wanted to get involved. I have found a really useful niche in being a
part of ArizonaPIRG, in that I can interact with undergrads and inform
(yes, beyond being a TA for them, fun as that is). I have been involved in
reaching out to faculty to advise us and participate in events, which has
been neat since I end up reading about their work and finding out about
novel sources of funding and programs. Plus, I have learned public speaking
and planning skills that will be helpful if and when I run anything from my
own lab to my own department.

I am not sure what is "sneaky" about students funding a student-run advocacy
group - the whole point is that any students who are interested can join and
can help set the agenda. That includes tea-partiers if they are interested
in organizing change the status quo for the better. The defining feature of
campaigns we work on is that it's our interest against special interests. We
organize peers against monopolies for concert ticket prices, like would
occur if LiveNation and Ticketmaster are allowed to merge. We organize for
public transportation. That's not a partisan issue. There are plenty of
conservatives (Bob Walkup, Mayor of Tucson) and liberals (Al Gore) alike who
support alternatives to high gas prices. The whole point, however, is that
students join and set the agenda for that campus and that state. Arizona is
in no way required to conform to Massachusettes' or California's agendas.

And we certainly intend not to be sneaky about what we're doing. No one will
be paying a fee unless students vote for it. That takes getting the word out
to a lot of people. We have been doing class announcements and tables on the
Mall. We met with GPSC last semester and have been working with them on what
it would take for them to support this. We're hoping GPSC representatives
can help explain exactly what this is for to their department peeps. Our
goal is to do a poll of the student body and have at least three quarters of
the students know what ArizonaPIRG is and what we're doing.

The whole point of students being able to assess ourselves fees is so
someone with a proposal can give students the option. That's what we're
doing - putting in a proposal. I think it's a great organization, and a cool
idea, but I won't force anyone to agree. That's why we have votes, right?

Anyway, sorry this is so long. I just wanted to make sure I gave you some
concrete details. Does this answer your questions?

Pacifica

To sum up why a PIRG subsidy is ok:

1. UMass has a mandatory fee and hasn't been spanked in the courts yet. (It's worth noting that Rutgers PIRG's fee is refundable because they were beaten in court. See Galda v Bloustein.)
   
2. Students in the PIRG club can vote on what PIRG does.
   
3. The issues PIRG concerns itself with are largely "nonpartisan" and that somehow makes them better.
   
4. The organization is student-run therefore it's ok that students fund it. (Isn't that argument from equivocation?)
   

It appears that Ms Sommers either doesn't understand at all why people would oppose a PIRG fee or sees the cause worthy of "used car salesman" disingenuity, equivocation, and fast talk. I'd like to think that a PhD student isn't so flaky as to fall into the first camp, nor so unethical as to fall into the latter. It's tough to be charitable here.

PIRG is back at it.

The Naderite busybody brats of PIRG are at it again, attempting to secure funding for their political activity through a line-item fee at the University of Arizona, or so I have learned through the Associated Graduate Council of the College of Science listserv, which I for some reason am still on, a few years after my involvement with that organization.

No word on whether or not another illegal election will be held. I don't know if I'd have standing to sue (I plan on graduating before the next semester starts) but I'm sure I can find someone who does. What's amusing about this is that PIRG lost the plebiscite that (up to the obvious legal speed bumps) decided whether or not they'd be funded by a student line item.

The Internet is great, in that nonsense lives forever. I don't know who the people are in Associated Students of the University of Arizona (the undergrad "student government", a sort of Mickey Mouse organization) who think that they can decide better than individual students--grads, undergrads, or others--what political and policy causes are worthy of support. But I'd like to know, so that their names be preserved on the Web and show up on Google searches for a very long time, for example, when they are being screened for admittance to the bar. They're 18, they're at college: childhood should have been over a couple of years ago. Time to hold them to adult standards.

Schmidtz finally getting his due.

From this month's lead Cato Unbound essay:

Finally, it is possible to advance liberty and defend individual rights in a manner different from Rand’s, as the works of Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky, Jan Narveson, and David Schmidtz attest, and thus there is nothing in this proposed discussion that should be taken to deny the importance of their works.

It's ridiculous to put the blustering slob Ayn Rand on the same level as Nozick, Lomasky, and Narveson (and by extension Rawls and Gauthier)--the topic of the month's discussion aside, it'd have been better for Rasmussen to write "It is possible to advance liberty and defend individual rights in a manner different from the neo-Aristotelean treatment of myself and Den Uyl..."

But I digress. Arizona's own David Schmidtz--a sort of anti-Rand in his caution with language and his search for a common starting point with his readers--does belong in that bunch and it's pleasing to see him get his due.

Readers unfamiliar with the dean of local (classical-)liberal thinkers would find his Political Theory paper How to Deserve or the draft treatment of property rights recently recommended by Will Wilkinson good places to start. His Elements of Justice was also a lot of fun on an intellectual level, and if nothing else helped tremendously to clarify the questions. (I'd say it provided a few answers, too; your experience may vary.)

Global warming and desert flowers

Via the University of Arizona, news of a study that shows that anthropogenic climate change (local effects of global warming) is both diminishing and changing the showy Sonoran Desert spring blooms.

Counterintuitively, the change favors more cold-hardy species; as rains get shifted later into the season, germination happens in colder weather. The whole news article is an example of responsible science journalism and is worth reading.

For more information about how AGW will affect Arizona, see the Southwest Climate Change Network website, a project of the University of Arizona.

Robert Shelton weighs in on UA "Climategate" involvement.

This is why it is good to have a scientist as a University president: he knows how to evaluate popular controversies about science.

In full:

M E M O R A N D U M

TO: UA Employees
FROM: Robert N. Shelton, President
SUBJECT: Email Messages on Climate Change
DATE:Dec. 9, 2009

The University of Arizona takes very serious any allegation of impropriety, academic or otherwise. As soon as news accounts surfaced about selected emails that were illegally obtained from a British university computer server and posted publicly, the UA reviewed the material with the full cooperation of UA faculty whose names appeared on some of those messages.

We firmly believe there is no substance to the negative allegations regarding the content of the emails. To the contrary, the work of our professors is contributing substantially to humanity's growing understanding of the origins and nature of global climate change.

As a matter of course, our faculty adhere to the highest standards of research ethics. Their data, once published, are available to other scholars as required by the journals publishing the work, and in most cases are posted online and hence are freely available for download. Their research conclusions are cross-examined through vigorous rounds of peer review. In the case of collaborative research by the UA's Malcolm Hughes, independent studies by other research groups and critical reviews, including by the National Academy of Sciences, have confirmed both the integrity of their research methods and their basic findings.

The research area in question - global climate change - is the subject of vigorous, worldwide debate. The implications of the findings being produced by the world's scientific community are profound. Naturally, there will be those who will not fully understand or be prepared to accept scientific conclusions that may be upsetting. This is an expected part of our faculty's work. Their response is to inform and explain their research methods as transparently and dispassionately as possible.

The UA faculty mentioned in these stolen emails have done so admirably. For that reason, the leadership of the UA has full confidence and pride in both the scientific methods they have employed, and the conclusions they have reached.

Unlike the Arizona Daily Star's false balance--Ross McKitrick is neither a "skeptic" nor a credible person nor one making reasonable accusations--and the Wildcat's parlay of this into an actual accusation by the paper itself of scientific wrongdoing, Shelton nicely gives weight where weight is due. Shelton is not a journalist and not acting as one, but nevertheless, his use of good sense is exemplary and the note is a show of fair-mindedness. Word to the Washington Post and the Star: Impartiality doesn't require you to give equal time (or, in the Post's case, well more than equal time) to the ridiculous. Most of the time, you do not do so!

What we should see from Hughes and Overpeck is a public lecture. They don't owe it to anyone, but it would go a long way to restore confidence, unfairly lost or not.

No word yet on whether or not either scientist plans to hit back. Maybe the Wildcat crossed the line and maybe it didn't--what's "potentially" supposed to mean?--but there have been things written in the blogosphere, especially about Hughes, that are outright libel. Being upset with a scientist's finding does not justify allegations of "fraud", even if one can cite private e-mails out of context to justify this post hoc. "Fraud" is an allegation of fact, not of opinion.

"Climategate" comes to Arizona

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe has sent intimidating-sounding but somewhat vacuous letters to University of Arizona dendrochronologist Malcolm Hughes and paleoclimatologist Jon "Peck" Overpeck. Something a bit more substantial was directed to U of A General Counsel Lynne Wood.

To Wood:

Recently a large number of alleged CRU documents and e-mails were released to the public. These documents and e-mails outline disturbing trend of actions, which, at the least, imply activity to create a false impression of the certainty of climate change science. I will be conducting an investigation into these matters.

I am requesting that you secure, as soon as possible, all documents and records related to the communications or other interactions with CRU. This would include materials directly and reasonably related to CRU documents, e-mails, and its subject matter. Should you discover that other employees in your agency/organization have interacted with CRU or have furnished information which may be used in communications with CRU, please secure those documents as well.

Very interesting doublespeak there: "Released to the public." Meaning "somebody committed a computer crime, downloaded information from a mailserver, and then released the stolen information to the public."

And the e-mails don't really "imply activity to create a false impression of anything", at least not to a reasonable person familiar with academic science, when put in their proper context. The stolen e-mails may contain evidence that U.K. scientists ran afoul of that country's Freedom of Information laws, at least enough to merit investigation. There's nothing in the e-mails pointing to wrongdoing by any U.S. researcher. Claims to the contrary have all fallen apart upon critical inspection.

But to the point: Inhofe is requesting communications between U of A scientists and those at the CRU--and the "and its subject matter" bit can only mean that he is requesting all documents and records pertaining to climatology done at the U of A, from all labs!

The letters sent to Overpeck and Hughes were clearly both showboating and a smear. The stolen e-mails not imply a single act of wrongdoing by either man, but Inhofe's letters serve a way to imply that their activities are suspect without making an accusation.

The request for all information, however, is clearly nothing but an harassment tactic, designed to prevent scientists from spending their time doing science. Can the "legal eagles" clarify to what extent this request must actually be met?

Overpeck and Hughes are both holding their own in the Daily Star. Those who bother to read can confirm: no wrongdoing here.

If you stop at "We need to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period", yes, it looks bad, but stopping there is simply lazy. When reputations are at stake due diligence is a moral obligation. That's something Inhofe doesn't understand. (And I'd love to see him cross the line to libel, so Overpeck can sue him off the planet!) Overpeck makes due diligence easy:

Overpeck said last week that he had searched through his e-mails dating back a decade, and could find none like Deming referred to. Overpeck pointed out that he has written papers dating to the late 1990s saying that various records, including tree rings, stretching back 1,200 years, confirm earlier assertions that the Medieval period was warmer than today in the North Atlantic and northern Europe — but not globally.
"My papers are the record of fact, and in this case, I obviously did not try to get rid of the MWP," Overpeck said. "Instead, I have tried hard to be clear what it likely was and was not."

As I said: no scandal here, just a mal fide twisting of a scientist's words, a treatment of informal private communications as though they trump what Overpeck actually contributed to the scientific record.

If any Arizona scientist ought to be investigated regarding climate it's probably ASU's Robert Balling. Funding sources do not necessarily or even usually control scientific outcomes, but there are clear tail-wags-dog cases, like Fred Singer and the late Fred Seitz, who went from tobacco denialism to ozone hole denialism to global warming denialism. Balling doesn't publish his arguments against the scientific consensus (meaning, consensus of those with current scientific arguments) in the meaningful sense of "publish" but spends an awful lot of time directing them at a noncritical public. Just what is it that the Western Fuels Association pays him to do?

Balling, of course, will never be investigated by Inhofe, because he's a "skeptic". "Skeptic" in Oklahoman must mean "one who disagrees", without the implications of reason, caution, and modesty that the word usually carries. A skeptic, and most scientists are skeptics, who agrees with the only position compatible with what we know now--as Overpeck does--doesn't count. Being a real skeptic, that gets your research interrupted by a showboating Senator who has an ideological or psychopathological beef with the implications of your work.

No word yet on whether Inhofe's request for anything and everything pertaining to climatology has yet hampered research at the U of A. But Arizona taxpayers and donors to the U should be mad as hell. Being a U.S. Senator shouldn't mean that your peculiar form of crazy be nursed, in the form of a frivolous investigation, at the expense of a university.

Have questions? Readers should follow the instructions in Inhofe's letters and direct them to (202) 224-6176.

How I spent the morning of November 22.

I made it into the newspaper police blotter for the morning of November 22:

Football fan battles bicycle to lose his blues

UAPD officers were dispatched to the Arizona-Sonora Residence Hall on Nov. 22 at approximately 4:20 a.m. in reference to a report of two unidentified men kicking and jumping on a bicycle near the northeast corner of the residence hall. En route, officers observed two men matching the descriptions given by the man who reported the incident. Officers made contact with the two men and detected the strong odor of intoxicants coming from both of them. The men stated that they were on their way to the Villa Del Puente Residence Hall from the Coronado Residence Hall. When asked about the report, both men denied being near any bicycles or bicycle racks at any point during the evening.

At that point, the man who reported the incident arrived on scene. He identified the two men as the same men he had seen jumping on a bicycle in front of Arizona-Sonora. Officers asked the men if they had been drinking and both men admitted that they had. One of the men further admitted that he had been upset because of the football team’s loss to Oregon and had taken his frustration out on a random bicycle. He further stated that his friend had not participated in the event. The man then led police to the area where the damaged bicycle was located. Officers observed that the rear fender was severely damaged. Officers cited the man on charges of minor with spirituous liquor in the body and criminal damage. His friend was cited on charges of minor with spirituous liquor in the body. Both men were released on scene.

Of the three mans in that article, you can probably guess which one I was. I thought it'd be better to follow them and identify them to police--cell phones are fun!--than to tell them to knock it off. That way, the owner of the bicycle could identify them and sue for damages.

Charles Murray is right: we should not use a college degree as a signal for all that we use it for in our society. It is no longer a proxy for middle-class values--not clear to my Chicagoan working-class-origin self that it ever was--nor is it a near-sufficient indicator of good sense. It's stupid enough to be angry about a loss in a sporting match--especially if you weren't one of the players!--but to be angry eight hours later and to let the anger drive you to kick and jump on a bicycle, that's just plane ridiculous. It's too bad the paper didn't release the culprit's name for future employers to Google.

I'm pleased to see that one of them confessed; I couldn't say for sure whether it was one or both of them who was damaging the bicycle.

Evan Lisull in the clear.

Not only were the criminal damage charges against (Desert Lamp 'blogger) Evan Lisull dropped, he no longer faces the possibility of University penalties.

No word yet on whether or not he will pursue a code of conduct violation civil rights lawsuit against the arresting detaining officers.

Skimming the police report, there appear to be a few potential problems:

1. Hearsay can certainly be probable cause, but flights of fancy cannot. The (unnamed) witness states that he saw Lisull marking the ground with chalk and decided for himself without any real reason that Lisull must have been the person marking up buildings. The police must take care to distinguish between facts and opinions reported by witnesses.
   
2. Faced with an obvious multi-party chalking campaign--an explanation for chalk on buildings and other raised surfaces that rules out need for a "lone gunman"--police could only have reasonably believed that Lisull was marking the ground. From "Lisull was spotted chalking the sidewalk, Lisull had chalk in his pocket." it does not follow that "It is likely that Lisull made some of these many large chalk drawings on buildings and statue pediments." Moreover, Lisull's observed conduct is specifically exempted in the statute the violation of which Lisull was charged by Cpl. Leon. Can specifically exempted conduct be probable cause for conduct in violation of a statute?
   

Not airtight in the least--perhaps one of the few lawyer types who read this can correct me where I'm wrong. But it's worth considering. Given the privileges afforded to on-duty police, their unique ability to ruin one's day without penalty or with a mere slap on the wrist, it's very important to maintain a "broken windows" approach to keeping their conduct within its legal bounds.

Lisull arrest about more than free speech.

By now readers have probably heard of Desert Lamp 'blogger Evan Lisull's arrest for ostensibly lawful conduct: writing on the sidewalk with chalk.

The charges have since been dismissed, but that only solves one problem. Police suffer harm for flouting the Constitutional and common-law bounds on their conduct so rarely that there is little incentive for them to respect our rights. Surely, gross misconduct is often--but not always--punished, even with a slap on the wrist. It's this 'blogger's opinion that such a "coarse-grained" or "low frequency" approach is insufficient: police should be made to toe the line. (You could call it a "broken window" approach: there's a slippery slope from Evan Lisull to Cheye Calvo and from there to Cory Maye--and even if there is no slippery slope, what happened to Lisull is bad enough!)

"But they won't be able to do their jobs if they know they'll be second-guessed", say right-wingers, who seem sometimes to get their idea of policing more from The Commish or Walker, Texas Ranger than from reality. (Regarding reality: one of us has trained in close combatives with the police, been drinking with the police, etc.) If that's the case, and they won't be able to simultaneously do their jobs and respect the rights of others, fire them all--if they cannot toe the line they are not qualified for their jobs. Fire them all and hire more intelligent ones. Pay them more and even raise taxes if we must. Given the power afforded to police, the lower standards for use of force, the ability to waste others' time and ruin their day, they must be strictly constrained. And I'll pay a dollar extra to get police who say "yes sir" and "no sir", too.

Why do I write of police misconduct? Seizures, including arrests, must only be made based upon probable cause. And if a statute explicitly exempts a person's conduct in its definition of an offense, then that conduct alone does not constitute probable cause. A letter I just sent to the Daily Wildcat has more:

Hitting a baseball thrown by my neighbor with a bat is not probable cause for my having hit my neighbor with a bat.

Writing in my lab notebook is not probable cause for my having wrote on the artwork in the Center for Creative Photography.

Driving my car on the street is not probable cause for my having driven it on the sidewalk.

Sending an e-mail to my brother is not probable cause for my having wired money to Osama bin Laden.

Writing with chalk on the sidewalk is not probable cause for my having wrote with chalk on a building.

Arizona Revised Statutes 13-1602, which establishes criminal damage as a statutory offense, is very explicit about what that act is: "Drawing or inscribing a message, slogan, sign or symbol that is made on any public or private building, structure or surface, _except the ground_ (emphasis mine), and that is made without permission of the owner."

The arrest of sidewalk chalker Evan Lisull for violating this statute, with its clear exception for writing on the ground, is not merely an infringement of free speech, and the dismissal of the charges should not be treated as a reprieve or amnesty: no reasonable person would believe that Lisull committed a crime. The arresting officers showed contempt for rule of law per se and for the "probable cause" standard governing the power to arrest, established by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The explicit exemption of Lisull's conduct in the statute makes it highly unlikely that the officers were even acting in good faith. They should be fired at once, and the University should consider itself fortunate if Lisull does not sue for damages.

Update: The Wildcat printed the letter, albeit with a curious wording change that takes the emphasis away from the Fourth Amendment issues. The UAPD, according to Lisull's account, claims he was not under arrest, but there was clearly a seizure, which is enough. And, reading the police report now posted to the Web, there may have been borderline probable cause. If an angry, flaky University employee calls to complain of chalk on walls, and in his own mind decides that the guy chalking the sidewalk must be responsible, is that probable cause? Possibly, but at some point in the seizure, when it becomes clear to a reasonable person that the caller was drawing unsupportable inferences, that should mean that there is no longer probable cause and the seizure must be ended: "you're free to go." Otherwise, for example, every time a senile old lady calls the police after deer eat her geraniums and claims "the colored kid next door, with the basketball and the rap music, he tore 'em up" the police could take the kid in question down to the station.

More on Fan Cans

The Desert Lamp has done a fairly thorough roundup of "Fan Can" news. Notably, Becky Pallack, 'blogging for the Daily Star, heard from Budweiser distributor Golden Eagle that not selling UA "Fan Cans" was a "business decision".

Interesting. There'd probably be more demand for this than for blue, white, and tan cans in Provo (I'm picturing Jim McMahon in the commercial...) but not enough to justify whatever costs in storage, retailer shelf space, and goodness knows what else--I don't know a thing about the macrobrau distributor business!--offering yet another permutation of the famous acetaldehyde-flavored rice brew would entail. I presume that that, and not avoiding being the subject of pseudo-moral grandstanding from Robert Shelton, is the reason for the decision.

On that subject: is there any reason to believe that administration grandstanding makes students less likely to consume? Less likely to consume to excess? The way I see it, responsible position-taking on matters of institutional or public policy entails considering whether or not one can reasonably believe one's preferred policy to be effective. There may be good or at least respectable reasons for administrators of a public university to choose ineffective policy. (Some of my readers may be thinking "principle", but saying that one is doing something "on principle" is saying that one is doing it "just because". I'm thinking more about signaling.) If it's not expected to be effective, one must also consider whether or not it will make things worse. Signs point to "yes" here--today's Daily Wildcat reports at least two cases of extreme intoxication resulting from different instances of clandestine, anti-social drinking. Not taking a hardline position on alcohol consumption by 17-20 year olds would put the administration in a far better position to promote socially normal and responsible drinking behavior. And the signaling to our knuckle-dragging black-and-white-worldview legislature and the public that elects them shouldn't be as problematic as it would be if Shelton and Co. grew spines and took an independent stand. They need only engage in me-too-ism and sign on to the Amethyst Initiative.

This actually gives me a good angle for a Sheriff Joe post I'm expecting to have up within the next day or two...

Raise "tuition" without raising tuition--just don't mention the acetaldehyde

Actually, now that I think about it, if the acetaldehyde is mentioned it'll be lost on the victims of my scheme, anyway.

The Desert Lamp has resumed, perhaps with the application of a bit of tequila to the flickering wick; among the several topics covered are colored beer cans.

Evan Lisull's most recent post discusses a Federal Trade Commission objection to, of all things, colored beer cans. Anheuser Busch/InBev has been packaging Bud Light in cans with color schemes matching those of the U.S.'s biggest party schools state megauniversities.

The FTC and many colleges have objected, claiming that this may somehow encourage more underage drinking to take place--as though an 18 year old will think harder before he has the regular Bud Light than the one in University of Arizona blue and red--and might be construed as University endorsement of the product. The University of Arizona has been silent on the matter.

They should embrace it and even go one farther: license the "A" logo or the silly Wildcat thing, and charge a per-can royalty.

I'm guessing that the Bud Light drinkers, especially the ones who'd be more inclined to drink it because of the logo, overlap considerably with those who moan--and hop buses to the Capitol en masse to moan--about tuition fee increases (how dare they charge me more for this private good?) even as the State faces extreme shortfalls. I'm fairly certain they're also the ones who shout "ow!" at random on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, who blast stereos from their cars, who pile five at a time into trucks and harass pedestrians, and who generally lower both the University's prestige and, more importantly, the quiet enjoyment of the neighborhood by others.

Bud Light licensing, like a surcharge for the most obnoxious students. Fair enough, right?

Lost and found forbidden Daily Wildcat comic

In the comment thread of a recent post concerning the University of Arizona's absentmindedness about the First Amendment, I noted that when I went looking for a copy, either digitized or printed, of a controversial Joseph Topmiller cartoon in the Daily Wildcat, none was to be found.

Evan Lisull of the Desert Lamp dug up a copy on the Web. I thus finally get to see what the fuss was about. Offensive? No, just stupid, and not funny, and too stupid and too unfunny--too clumsy--to be offensive. The Keef "We're voting for the nigger" comic on the other hand was both hilarious and thought-provoking even if based on a true story, and whether or not one was offended was sort of a binary IQ test. Miss the point, get offended.

I'm an on-again, off-again go player. One of the more difficult lessons for a beginner in go is to learn to tell the difference between sente and gote moves, those which require response and those that do not. The Japanese (with stereotypical bombast) consider the goban to be a mirror of life, and there is a correspondence here. While that day's paper's disappearance from the Wildcat's physical stash and the removal of the cartoon itself from the archives is not a First Amendment matter, the events do speak to a general cowardice at the U in regards to free speech. We don't need to be protected from stupid--students should by the time they get to college be able to recognize stupid and have the confidence to simply not respond. Stupid is a gote move, not a sente move.

As for the Wildcat, the better response would have been "Joseph Topmiller has been fired because his cartoons are unfunny and he will be replaced by someone we force-fed LSD, locked in a closet, and convinced he was actually Arnie Bermudez."

Two First Amendment violations in one year at University of Arizona

It's getting to the point where the University of Arizona could offer to its undergraduates a three-credit course in U.S. First Amendment law based around its own willfully negligent missteps.

Back in March I remarked several times on the University's holding of a plebiscite to decide whether or not to fund a chapter of PIRG. A solid series of precedents established that distribution of student fee monies to clubs and advocacy groups must be viewpoint-neutral and that plebiscites are not viewpoint neutral at all. The University went ahead with the vote in spite of this--perhaps whoever the responsible parties were didn't know the law (when one is so obviously "close" to First Amendment issues, there's no excuse to not look) and the U's counsel was asleep at the wheel. I (still a PhD candidate) was on the phone a few times with FIRE getting ready for possible legal action if PIRG proponents won. Fortunately for the University and the taxpayer, they lost.

Now Evan Lisull at the Desert Lamp reports on further First Amendment-violating shenanigans last Spring. Apparently, because David Horowitz is "controversial", the University of Arizona felt it should charge his hosts at the U a large "security fee". As explained in a letter sent by FIRE to UA president Robert Shelton, such practices run afoul of established First Amendment law--most directly, the precedent in Forsyth County, Georgia v. The Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123 (1992)--as they burden expression based on its content. In response to FIRE's letter, the University refunded the fee.

Colleges have for a long time given those best at a sort of ritualized histrionics of faux-victimhood a heckler's veto over others' expression, including over the exchange of ideas. What happened to Lawrence Summers at Harvard was the most prominent and perhaps nastiest example--there's no way he could even have predicted his remarks could have offended, unless he had a thorough understanding of how unreasonable people think. The problem there was akin to predicting the actions of a retard on amphetamines. The real trouble is with the low-profile cases: "political correctness" persists. Offend someone who's learned to play the game, and you're in for much waste of your time if you are a student or loss of your job if you are staff. Better to exercise caution keep those ideas to yourself.

The First Amendment, although routinely ignored, at least in theory limits the extent to which state universities may hinder free speech. Private institutions should maintain similar standards simply because anything else is incompatible with intellectual life. If one must self-censor because another to whom the administration is sympathetic is good at throwing a fit and will be "offended" by something with which he disagrees, there is no free exchange of ideas. If nothing else, a BS or BA should leave college with two things: intellectual humility and a tendency to critical thought. (Mathematical skills and logic are probably number 3.) When the "victim ritual" is part of the "hidden curriculum", reactionary tendencies become validated and even encouraged; both humility and critical thought go out the window.

But the University of Arizona, in levying that fee, went beyond validating encouraging the reactionary "victim ritual". It gave a sort of heckler's veto to a hypothetical violent mob. That is the antithesis of higher education. And the implications would make a great topic for a freshman termpaper.

That's the way to do it!

A long post on checkpoints, reasonable suspicion, and probable cause has been in the works for over a week. Until it's up, take a lesson from two or three University of Arizona undergraduates. The Daily Wildcat reports:

The RA told police that while he was doing rounds, he smelt the odor of marijuana. He said he traced it to the men's room, so he called another RA up to the floor to see if she smelt it too. The other RA did smell marijuana, so he made contact with the people in the room. The RA said that there was another man who lived in the room with the student, but he left the scene after being asked to stay. When he returned, he began to yell at and harass the RA, saying that there was no marijuana in his room and that he was being wrongfully persecuted. The RA said the man would not allow him to speak because he constantly interrupted him and spoke over him.

Police had the man take them up to his room. While they were walking there, the officer noted that the man showed him a lot of attitude. The man was cursing and saying that the situation was "so unfair and unjustified" because there was nothing in his room and he does not smoke marijuana.

When they got to the man's room, the officer asked him if he had smoked any marijuana in there. The man said no.

While police were talking to the man, another resident from a neighboring room tried to interject, even when the RA told him to go back to his room. He continued to stay near the scene.

Police asked the man if they could search his room, but he refused saying that he would prefer not "because of principle." The man said that his roommate was in the room all night and was sleeping.

Police knocked on the door and the man's roommate answered. He seemed to be in a daze from waking up, and was asked if there was any marijuana in the room. The roommate said no. Police noticed that there was a strong odor of marijuana coming from the room as soon as the door was opened. They asked the roommate if they could search the room, and he too said no.

That's precisely what should be done. Never give your consent to a search.

Police noted that every time they tried to talk to the first man, he accused them of "bullying" him or "being mean" to him. He would not allow officers to speak and he refused to stop talking when asked to be quiet. Throughout the incident, the man continued to yell at the RA and told his roommate not to speak with officers.

"Bullying" sounds like childish hyperbole, but see what follows.

Police asked him if there was nothing in the room, why would he not allow them to search it.

"Well, officer, let me search your home, too. You have nothing to hide, right? And let's have a look at that hard drive. Do you have a license for that copy of Leisure Suit Larry--and what would the wife think?"

The man continued to say that it was on principle. Police told the men that they had the right to deny a search, but the more they cooperated the better it would be for them (Emphasis mine--BSK)

See, bullying. "Cooperate or else." Bullshit. Maybe not bullshit if la migra is involved and there are few to no witnesses--more on that later. But here, bullshit.

Both men said that they still did not want police to search the room. The man became so upset at one point he started crying and would not stop for several minutes.

The man was referred to the Dean of Students Office for disorderly conduct.

Note that he's not going to Pima County court. He's being referred to a university inquisition. And if he were smart, he'd retain a lawyer. Being a University student shouldn't mean being forfeit one's Fourth Amendment-protected rights. (It shouldn't mean being forfeit the right to keep and bear arms in self defense protected by the Arizona constitution, either, but that would seem to be a matter for another year.)

Update: Evan Lisull of The Desert Lamp beat me to it.

And for an example of a less impressive student commentator:

Read Taylor Kessinger in the Daily Wildcat kick a dead horse and slip in a few trite remarks about capitalism in the process.

"Original Intent" is a dead legal doctrine. Dead like Richard Nixon, Optimus Prime, socialism, George Mason, and Jesus. Dead. The mere idea that the U.S. Constitution had a singular original intent is nowadays considered ridiculous, and has been for some time. The Philadelphia Convention was a summer-long argument, and as soon as the fifty-five delegates left the room there were disputes over the nature of what they wrote. "Original intent" remains a trope on the far right, at its best shorthand for an aretaic vision for the U.S. based on a founding myth, but it's not taken seriously by legal scholars. S

So why write over five hundred words condemning it? Because it's an easy target? Hang around any college long enough and you'll hear heartfelt condemnations of fascism, which is also dead. But you'll have to strain to find the same invective directed against e.g. social democracy. Kessinger's a reasonably sharp guy, perhaps one who even understands that column-inches are valuable and wouldn't waste them on something he knows to be dead. So maybe he doesn't know that it's dead. But if he doesn't know that original intent is dead, why would he deign to write about legal theory in the first place.

It gets goofier.

So-called "originalists" like Antonin Scalia, as well as "paleoconservatives" like Ron Paul, are like Biblical literalists: They claim to be unbiased and to have a magical, direct conduit to the writers' intent, but they don't.

Not all originalists do the original intent thing. Most don't, because original intent jurisprudence is dead. Scalia certainly doesn't, and if Kessinger can point me to a counterexample, I'll buy him a pizza. Like Clarence Thomas, he's a textualist of the "original meaning" variety, which is a much different school of thought than original intent. And Ron Paul's reading of the Constitution is an unscholarly, self-serving, maybe-sincere sui generis mashup.

And starting again from the top, goofier still.

It's the legal discourse equivalent of Godwin's Law.

Except it's not, because it doesn't come up at all in serious legal discourse.

Take a look at the Second Amendment. From an objective point of view, the sentence simply is not very well-written; its meaning totally changes depending on whether or not the second clause ("the right of the people to keep and bear Arms … ") is meant to be dependent on the first ("a well-regulated Militia, being necessary … "), as well as whether the first comma is omitted or not.

This may be "an objective" point of view but it's also naïve; this has been dealt with decisively over the last few decades; Kessinger might find Larry Tribe's remark in the third edition of American Constitutional Law a palatable place to start. Worth noting is that the Second Amendment is one place where original intent jurisprudence can almost be done, and it gives quite a different answer than the textual originalism brought to bear in the Court's decision in Heller.

and that gun ownership is not usually an effective form of self-defense

Where? Perhaps Kessinger is technically right on this one, since merely owning a firearm isn't a form of self-defense at all, but if he intends that to be a claim that firearms are not effective tools for self-defense, it's so ridiculous that I doubt he could overcome the burden of proof. Kessinger's a small, skinny guy, too--I wonder what his take on self defense is. I'd recommend a semiautomatic pistol.

Similarly, if they knew what we know today about how badly capitalism fails at safeguarding the environment or ensuring universal access to health care

To say that "capitalism" fails at safeguarding the environment or ensuring universal access to health care is to say that there is no way to change the regulations defining a market system so as to safeguard the environment or to fix some failure of the health care market that has services underprovided to paying consumers. Ronald Coase would vehemently disagree on the first point. Peter Orszag, Robin Hanson, Uwe Reinhardt, John Cochrane, the people of Singapore, and did I mention Uwe Reinhardt? could set him straight on the latter.

One thing we're not teaching in the schools, or that the students aren't learning, is scholarly modesty. I'd be embarrassed to have my name in print associated with such wild claims. I wouldn't write about such disparate topics without being confident that I knew a little something about each, and then still I'd do so from a position of modesty. It's worth noting that what Kessinger does here by repeating trite hipsterisms about legal theory and half a dozen other topics, many free-marketeers--someone at the Goldwater Institute who'll go unnamed immediately comes to mind--do by repeating red-herring arguments about global warming.

Anyway, I don't even mean to pick on "the kids", but now that you have a basis for comparison, you can see why I had good things to say about the Desert Lamp guys the other day. Good commentary does not consist of repeating something some smart person said. Modesty and skepticism need to be brought to bear.

If your only tool is a hammer, you might be David Horowitz.

In today's Daily Wildcat, Justyn Dillingham interviews White Black Panther turned crusader against left-wing academics David Horowitz lectures tonight at 7:30 in the Education building at the University of Arizona.

It appears that he hasn't evolved much in his thinking since his last visit. I took him to task in the Wildcat back in 2007 for fretting too much about the mere existence of theories of left-wing pedigree and not enough about the real nature of bias in academia, which is far more insidious, and for verging on calling for a false balance in every course syllabus. Longtime Horowitz bogeyperson V. Spike Peterson couldn't possibly teach her Gender and Politics course if she had to spend time on foundations of canonical gender theory and on the (many, good) arguments against them.

Every course at the university, beyond the survey level, comes with a set of assumptions. Those in a physics course are less controversial than those in Gender and Politics--unless the topic up for discussion is climatology, in which case the right-wingers "question" the validity both of radiative balance and of using digital, automatic computers (as opposed to the old-fashioned human kind) to do calculations--but they're there. Should each semester's physics course cover modern philosophy of science, disputes over foundations of e.g. statisical mechanics and quantum physics, and additionally the probably mal fide right-wing misgivings about digital computers?

Horowitz worries about students being indoctrinated with "infantile leftism"--and were that happening, it ought to be worrisome--but he misses his own infantilizing assumptions:

1. Students cannot assume things that, strictly speaking, are not true, like the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the social construction of gender, for the sake of exploring an idea without coming to mistake these assumptions for truths.
   
2. Without being told that an opinion is opinion, students will mistake it for fact.
   
3. Students will not know that foundational issues, such as the social construction of gender, are in dispute unless they are explicitly told so in their classes and will not locate the opposing views unless these are presented by their professors.
   

Horowitz is an anti-intellectual gadfly, but one whose rhetoric is tuned to provoke legislative interference in the curriculum. We do need more policing of intellectual standards at our universities, and to say "no more" to studies departments which become havens for those whose approach to the liberal arts is ideological. But not by the legislature, and not for the reasons Horowitz emphasizes. To invoke Barzun, there ought to be no room for merely laying a sieve over a problem and reporting on what comes through. The trouble with Marxism, gender feminism, and the like is that they are mechanistic.

And that's the problem with Horowitz, too. He lays a sieve over a syllabus and sees what comes through. All too often, he reports artifacts of his methodology as though they were genuine phenomena. Two years ago, graduate student Sung Ohm emphasized dialectal and critical reading in his English 101 syllabus, but because the reading list was radical left, the course must have been, lack of evidence be damned, an attempt at indoctrination wherein students will be graded based on their demonstrated acceptance of the ideas presented in the course reading.

Evan Lisull of The Desert Lamp did some digging and reveals Horowitz's criticism of at least one other syllabus to miss the point. Horowitz cries "bias!"--as if it's a bad thing for professors to have opinions--and makes believe that students will be indoctrinated because a course includes an introduction to Marxism, when he should question whether Marx merits inclusion and why certain other thinkers are omitted. Marxism! Bad! Infantile leftism! Must...slander...professor!

Horowitz supports equal time, but he's not showing us academic types how that would work. I think it's safe to assume that the probability Horowitz will tonight present Kalafut's opposing view--that Horowitz's criticisms are misplaced and amount to anti-intellectual slander--is very close to zero.