September 09, 2006

On waterboarding.

While reading Mark Kleiman's tired, old-news, but entirely right post about torture and the depressing fact that our government has been doing rather a lot of it, I was struck by a sudden thought. It's often hard to feel genuinely sympathy for the pain of very distant and unfamiliar others (especially when they deserve, if not pain, then at least something); torments unfamiliar to us, like 40-hour sleep deprivation and waterboarding, give our natural sympathetic faculties further difficulties.

This, I think, is one reason why the torture reporting didn't really explode until the Abu Ghraib pictures came out; images have the ability to capture our sympathy in a way that words often cannot. While we can be told that waterboarding is so awful that even the bravest last mere minutes before begging to confess, it's hard to internalize: I mean, there's cellophane preventing the water from actually drowing the person, so how bad could it be, right?

At any rate, I was suddenly reminded of something that happened to me quite recently: I was scuba diving by a reef wall in Mexico, when all at once some combination of the strong current, the sand in the water, and the large number of divers around me caused me to have a sort of panic attack. I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer wrongness of breathing canned air through a tube, and it took every bit of self-control I could muster to keep myself from pulling the scuba-gear out of my mouth. Now, keep in mind, I was ninety feet under water at that point. This was a wholly irrational, nearly suicidal impulse. But at that instant, it was very real and very strong; despite the objective fact that I was quite safe, I felt terrified enough to almost do serious injury to myself.

My point is simply that just because we can't immediately understand why a given set of objective circumstances is awful enough to constitute torture doesn't mean that it doesn't, in fact, do so. It probably just means that we're lucky enough to have never experienced anything similar.

And, hey, since this is pretty gloomy: look! A sea turtle! Isn't he cute?

TurtleCS.JPG



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The Music of Veronica Mars

When you watch Episode 16 of Season 2, you will be unable to stop listening to Tegan and Sara's "I Know, I Know, I Know," over and over and over again.



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Fear of Commitment, Defended (semantically)

Eugene Volokh reminds readers that it's not a phobia of commitment if there really are strong downside risks:

Commitment is scary, and should be scary. It indeed has all sorts of benefits, as well as risks — I should note that I'm happily married. But "phobia," which generally means irrational fear, is a generally unsound term to describe normal, reasonable fear of making what could be a very emotionally (and financially) costly mistake.
My own oblique posts about this are here and here.



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Teaching Law and the Sacred Trust

Over at PrawfsBlawg, Bobby Chesney asks whether it is appropriate-- from a student's point of view-- for a Professor to cancel classes in order to attend conferences and otherwise pursue their research agenda. While I am unwilling to go quite so far as to say it is inappropriate or a violation of one's duties to one's students, I do think it is something that a professor should not do lightly, and that a professor who can avoid doing it at all is one who has done better by those who he teaches.

I don't have the tome handy, but my recollection is that when Felix Frankfurter was nominated to the Supreme Court, he didn't attend the first several days of his confirmation hearing (which was less traditional in those days at any rate). Finally somebody called him and complained that people were starting to think he cared more about teaching his class than about getting the nomination. Frankfurter claims to have responded that that was precisely the case.

Teaching is already neglected in hiring-and-firing-and-tenure decisions far more than it ought to be by any right. Professors have monetary and other incentives to skimp on teaching class and put more effort into writing articles, lobbying students to place them, consulting, trying cases in their spare time, and otherwise living the sort of active scholarly, lawyerly, or intellectual life that legal academia makes possible.

So I think a very strong presumption against sacrificing class even further to one's other professional ambitions is at the very least an ideal. I would like to hope that is not too much to ask for.

UPDATE: Further thoughts are here

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What I've Eaten So Far

Breakfast: One Pain au Chocolat every day. So far, Mr. Jourdan's offering in the 15th arrondissement is my favorite; Buttery, richy, with a crackly, "croustillant" exterior. I'm still in search of the perfect pain au chocolate; though. Perhaps a couple of days with François, my baker friend, will help. But I'm going to keep eating nonetheless.

Lunch: What could possibly be better than a "formule dejeuner" at Boulangerie Tesson, a newcomer to the southern 16th arrondissement scene? 6.5 euros for an incredible sandwich of swiss cheese and a deeply flavorful ham (more on bread later), a drink, and a dessert (so far, mostly various lemon tarts, or tartelette de citron). I've also indulged in a small quiche lorraine from Mr. Jourdan, and today ate lunch at Tocques et Chefs - a traiteur (a kind of deli) my family here is friends with. The tocque (chef's hat) in question served roast chicken with fennel today, with a glass of wine. Just under 10 euros, and wonderful.

Snacks: So, I love snacks at 4:00 pm, especially in Paris. Typical is Boulangerie Tesson's version of financier aux noisettes (hazelnuts), although its mere goodness belies the extraordinary excellence of their bread. DSC00638.jpg The flavor of the hazelnuts was not quite pronounced enough, and the usual tone of butter mysteriously muted. But it was still quite good, and well, I had my coffee to go from the local cafe, Les Sports.

Dinner: I've mostly eaten dinners at home so far, but I have indulged in at least one beautiful cheese. DSC00660.jpg This pungent Paladron Fermier, a young raw milk goat's cheese, is just ten days from the farm. (and thus presumptively illegal in the US - raw cheeses must be aged for much longer). What can I say? As one description I found on the web says, "onctuous, and a true example of how goat cheese should taste". Like he said, I think.

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