fidesquaerens

So, I filed my taxes. If you (like me) are of the "never put off until tomorrow what can be delayed until the next day" school, do check out http://myfreetaxes.thebeehive.org/ , which lets you file both state and federal taxes online for free if your income is under a certain level. I have no special relationship to them, but just used them myself and it seemed to go smoothly.

Also: dunk-dunk saved me a substantial amount tonight! On the score of a few hundred dollars. There's a Law & Order episode in I think the first season where a defendant is given legal immunity in New York county but not from the Brooklyn DA office; that's how they got him to testify and still were able to prosecute him. I rewatched it a few weeks back and so it wasn't too far from my mind. Anyway, when filling out the forms it crossed my mind that maybe I'm not a "New York City" resident - I live and work in the Bronx which is one of the New York boroughs, but isn't legally part of New York. So I was surprised to see I owed a lot of state taxes, and phones up the IRS to ask whether I was selecting the right status and they said that in point of fact for tax penalties I wasn't in NYC. Score one for fandom...

I don't know how a lot of people feel about taxes but in the past I actually liked tax day. Oh, sure, it was frustrating to go through all the forms and a bit depressing at how little I earned until this last year. 2010 was a special treat because I had a state tax bill that was exactly equal to my refund, so I had to unexpectedly pay $139 and then wait several weeks to get a check for the same amount. Idiocy, it burns, precious. But I also feel patriotic about me. I am more for social justice than I am for charity, so if you gave me the choice I'd rather have the government spend my tax money (if they do it efficiently and toward the right kind of things - I know, a big assumption) than get a refund and give that to a private charity. The reason's simple enough; charity puts me in a position of power that I haven't earned, and I also think it's downright Biblical ("when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing"; Mt 6:3).

But this year... well, it doesn't feel this way to me. I still like the social justice work my govt does, and with Obamacare (which I support though I really would have liked a public option to buy into) I have more reason to support that kind of work. The thing is, there are other things the government has done that basically drive home the point that even the "good guys" (from my perspective!) don't respect the rule of law. Government always involves a loss of liberty in one sense; law means there are some things I want to do that I can't do for fear of punishment. But I gain freedom in another sense - I always thought in the past - because there's someone to keep the Mitt Romneys and Donald Trumps of the world from taking advantage of me. I always thought of government as a kind of union, that allowed less powerful citizens to organize and claim their rights against businesses that were powerful enough to crush citizens privately. And I thought it did good, so I could support both the means and the ends that taxes point to. I still support the ends, but now I'm not so sure about the means, and it makes it harder to feel patriotic.

I know, I know. Only I would worry about that - and really, getting $126 back in a few weeks is no small thing; if anything, it's cause to celebrate. But I miss submitting my taxes feeling like I'd done my good deed for the week. :-S

On a lighter note, enjoy this pic of the importance of cooperation. Cute!

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(Originally posted at LJ; please comment there.)

My laptop is finally back from repair-land and, at the risks of jinxing it, I think it's finally really and truly fixed. The keyboard was worn out so I had to send it in to be replaced, and then when it got back the bottom case was damaged so that the battery would only stay in if I held it on top of something (and not just a desk; something right up against it to hold the battery in.

HP does a good job of repair-work, actually. They have an online chat tool that I can use to report the problem, troubleshoot, verify warranty and authorize repair - all the stuff that I would have to do with a phone agent, but without the wait times, the difficulty of explaining what exactly is going on, etc. They ship you a box and FedEx it overnight, and usually get it from my doorstep to the repair center and back again inside of a week - all at no cost to me. The problem of course is that I have to be around during the day. With teaching and volunteer work there's really just one day a week. Return shipping is the one part of the process I see real room for improvement; they don't do weekend deliveries or let you schedule a day to have the computer shipped back, which is fine when they're just sending you an empty box which can be left outside the door, but obviously not when that box contains a repaired computer! Granted, this is more a shipping problem than an HP problem, but I do think HP could help here. For instance, if I can tell them I'm home all day Thursdays but not any other weekday, they could hold my computer in the warehouse until Wednesday, whenever they get done fixing it. Or they could just offer the option of weekday shipping, even if it's at a premium or a slower shipment.

Anyway, computer is back. feels like a new machine almost, with the very responsive keyboard and the new undercarriage. Who am I to complain? :-)

(Posted to LJ; please comment there.)

A little music for Holy Saturday. Willie Nelson singing the old Gospel song "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?" Very nicely done, and a nice relaxing listen on a Saturday.

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(Originally posted at LJ; please comment there.)

Over at FB, I've seen several people post this meme;

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It's not that different from lots of other memes that float around there, and I feel a bit guilty for singling it out. Particularly as I'll be posting a link of this to FB and really don't want to single out my particular friends. So let me say at the start - I'm not trying to single out the people who shared this. I know they meant well, and my frustrations have to do with a much larger problem. In particular, several larger problems.

#1. Armchair Activism: I always get frustrated with altruism, activism, whatever that doesn't require any real sacrifice. The Kony2012 video is a great example of this phenomenon. You also see it in stores that make donations if you buy a certain product, like the recent October Baby that would donate ten percent of the profit to pro-life groups. Whatever practical good they do, they inoculate us. There's something we're supposed to care deeply about, but all we have to do is go to the movie, or share a YouTube video, or share a picture on FaceBook. And suddenly we feel like we've done our part.

Loving God and loving your neighbor should require more than that. It's supposed to be hard - certainly harder than sharing the news about the new Hobbit movie. And of course there's nothing wrong with doing the simple stuff either. But I know in my experience, with things like this, so often this is the end of the story. You're outraged over child soldiers, you share the video, and there's this catharsis; your angst is relieved. My faith requires more of me.

#2. The "Christian Nation" Vibe: This picture says that 97% of FB users won't repost this simple message. I bristle at drives to "won't you please forward/repost this" on principle - they strike me as manipulative even when they're not meant that way! - but here in particular it seems to assume that all FB users are the kind of people who will post Christian-themed things. There are around two billion Christians in the world, last I heard - roughly 1/3 of the world's population. And that includes people who are Catholic because they were born in Italy, or Southern Baptist because they were white and born in Atlanta, or whatever.

In lots of areas of the world, if you're born there and you don't really think that much about religion or theology, you're probably going to be a member of a certain religion. It's actually a very rare person who considers the different views on offer by the different religions and secularism, chooses the one that best matches up with his own, and is as likely to be a Buddhist or a Jew as he was a Baptist. It's a matter of identity (and of necessity - understanding theology takes a lifetime of study and living with it; not everyone can afford that). Christian Scripture pretty much teaches this fact - cf. Mt 25.

Whatever you think of people like this, it's not just that they're lazy. Acting like the whole world is Christian, let alone devout Christians, is misleading at best.

(For the record, I'm one of those Christians that feels odd about public professions of faith. Not because I'm embarrassed or anything, but because what Jesus said about using faith in God as identity - you know, the people that prayed loudly in the temple, who'd already received their reward. It's not laziness on my part, either.)

#3. He Sees You When You're Sleeping... It's the last bit that really pushes my button. You should post this picture because: "Repost if you love God. He already saw you read it. That's just insulting on many levels, as if the way I live out my faith is just because God's watching over my shoulder. It actually reminded me about another meme I've been meaning to blog about. Will just link to it because it has some triggers for domestic violence, but I can't say it any more plainly: the kind of love depicted in that picture - and that grows out of the fear implied in that last line - is not worthy of worship. Or even sharing on FaceBook. And it's definitely not worthy of God.

(Originally posted at LJ; please comment there.)

Somehow I missed this. Bluegrass great Earl Scruggs passed away over the weekend. A truly talented man who revolutionized the genre. In the fine tradition oof completely forgetting about music I love until just after the artist dies, enjoy his classic "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."

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(Posted at LJ; please comment there.)

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Reading this, I can't help thinking there's some deep comment about American attitudes toward freedom and facts, but I can't quite work it all out. Rather, I will just smile because this is so how many of us approach food...

(Posted at LJ; please comment there.)

I wrote a few weeks back about the by-now infamous bioethics journal article comparing late-term abortions to infanticide. (My initial thoughts and a later reaction.) Now Andrew Brown over at The Guardian is weighing in:

Infanticide is repellent. Feeling that way doesn't make you Glenn Beck.

According to Mr. Brown:

In any case, the piece was picked up by the website of the immensely popular rightwing American Mormon, Glenn Beck. The commentators there – who probably already believe that there is no difference between abortion and infanticide, or believe that they believe this – erupted in predictable fury.

Savulescu [the journal editor] claims that he and the authors have received death threats. In his blogpost he wrote:

"What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited. More than ever, proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society."

Mr. Brown goes on to argue that this is ridiculous, concluding, "If "the very values of a liberal society" include killing inconvenient babies, or discussing their killing as if this was something reasonable and morally competent human beings might choose to do, then liberalism really would be the monster that American conservatives pretend it is."

Now, Mr. Brown is a well-respected journalist, the section editor of a major paper, and I have no reason to doubt his intelligence. But here's the thing: that's such a simplistic reaction to the issues at play here, that I'm struggling a bit to see how to reply. Whatever I think of the article (and I still haven't had time to read it, so can't comment on it directly - I know, shame on me), I would still find it deeply upsetting to think that a professional philosopher should get freaking death threats for anything he wrote in an academic journal. I found it astounding when a legislator got a brick through his campaign headquarter's window after he signed Obama's healthcare legislation, and politicians have in a certain sense signed on to be in the limelight.

Not so with academics. If we've gotten to the point where private citizens can't testify before a Congressional committee and be called "slut" for their efforts, where a university professor publishing in an academic journal could have his life threatened - well as someone whose academic interests touch on that powderkeg that is religious practice, I do have a dog in that particular fight. And yes, that is a key value of liberalism: that people are free to express ideas. And yes, you are free to disagree with my ideas. But you don't get to intimidate me from having or expressing them.

Mr. Brown also takes aim at the article itself. He seems to think it's advocating infanticide, and asks what we would think about sex-selective infanticide. And as I said, I've not read the original article, but I have read several different summaries of it by people both friendly and not-so. I've also read the other articles the journal editor cites as originating the arguments these bioethicists are building on, and I'd be very surprised if they were actually advocating infanticide. (If they are, I'd say that's a big mistake on their parts, but that their basic point can survive without that claim.)

More likely, I'd expect Giubilini and Minerva to argue for something more subtle. If a fetus one day before birth and a child one day after are as similar in their features as (say) a one-day and three-day old child, then you'd expect there to be similar standards for how we treat them. Namely, if it's wrong to kill a newly-born child in certain circumstances, then it should also be wrong to kill an about-to-be-born fetus in those same circumstances. And vice versa; if abortion is permissible in circumstance X one day before birth, then infanticide should also be morally permissible in circumstance X one day after birth.

That's actually a perfectly reasonable position, at least when we're talking about morality. (The law doesn't always have to coincide with morality precisely, though it should try to minimize the effects of bad behavior on other people so ethics is obviously a part of what makes a good or bad law.) But nothing about this means infanticide will always be okay. Mr. Brown gets this precisely when he says:

The equation of abortion with infanticide is central to the rhetoric of many anti-abortionists. It is something that most pro-choicers emphatically reject. For them, the moral justification of abortion lies in the fact that an embryo is not a human being, whereas a newborn baby is. The moral status of a foetus changes over time in the womb, and while there will always be arguments about when the change should be recognised, there is wide agreement that a time limit on abortion is morally significant.

Yes, precisely. So if an abortion is immoral one day before birth - as almost all of them would be - it's just as immoral a day later. From the snatches of the article I've read, it seems like Giubilini and Minerva go too far in this category, proposing that neo-infanticide is morally permissible if the family's financial circumstance changes. I think it's really reprehensible to kill a one-day old child because you can't afford to raise it. But that's not because it's a born human, but because it's much further along its path toward acquiring personhood than a fetus a few weeks after conception is. It would be equally horrendous to abort a fetus in the last day of pregnancy, and even if the law didn't call that murder, and even if I don't consider it morally murder (since the fetus/infant isn't fully human yet), it's still a seriously wrong act. In either case.

This answers Mr. Brown's concern about sex-selective infanticide. Of course it's immoral to kill a newly-born baby because you'd like a son rather than a daughter. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that said daughter is now born. In fact, I'd go so far to say this kind of abortion is never permissible unless we're talking about a cultural situation where a daughter's life really will be miserable. In that case, maybe you could make a lesser of two evils argument. But even then, at the time the fetus/child distinction becomes an issue you've known (or could have known) the fetus was a girl for months. I can't think of a reason in the world why this claim, that gender-driven abortions should be permissible even in the latter stages of pregnancy.

My basic approach is that personhood doesn't fully attach until some time after birth, when the child can start making its own choices. But that it's also not an either/or situation, and the child and late-term fetus has some degree of personhood all along, always increasing, so the longer the pregnancy has gone on, the better a reason you need for an abortion to be moral. There are other factors involved, too, like whether the fetus has to take over someone else's body to continue living and whether other people will think of the fetus as a person even if it isn't one. (Killing a born child that others can see looks like a mini-person has to effect whether we think it's okay to kill other full persons, so there's a higher bar to meet there.)

It's a complicated issue, to be sure. But that's precisely why we need experts to think and talk about this issue. Just like we need Georgetown law students to be able to testify about sex and how our policies re: contraceptives impact their lives is necessary, if we're going to work out whether a certain law is just or not. Calling for a philosopher's death because they wrote a challenging article does make you like Glenn Beck, and not in a good way. With all respect to Mr. Brown, it just does. That's a line you just don't cross.

(Originally posted at LJ; please comment there.)

Is this really such a surprise?

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Also, this may explain while I'll be staying home in November, and why I find international politics more interesting than domestic ones.

My politics can be a bit complicated sometimes. On social justice/economics issues I tend to be liberal and value social justice over private charity. That means I have my doubts about the free market's ability to solve things, and given a choice between private charities and mandatory govt. spending that's actually efficiently done I'll choose the latter. That's because I believe very firmly that we only have those rights we have the ability to exercise, and capitalism as it's practiced today means that the wealthy - often not because they're better people, but because they're lucky - have more of the good things of life than the rest of us.

But I also recognize that governments often aren't all that efficient, that they tend to impose a one-size-fits-all approach, and that it's good for people to actually help each other voluntarily. Meaning that while in general I recognize a strong state that can redistribute the wealth as necessary (only when the market doesn't do a good enough job at that to meet peoples' basic needs), I also don't think it's the cause for every social ill.

On moral issues I recently described myself as a traditionalist, and that's true. With some important quantifications, of course; I think homophobia, racism, and misogyny is deeply immoral and I know people a few centuries ago weren't that enlightened. But I think that various traditions (religious or otherwise) are significant and inform our values in important ways - as it should be, IMO. That makes for some rather odd results like my disapproving more of casual sex than gay sex full stop. In any event, whatever I think about sexuality, family values, drug + alcohol, and the like, I tend to think government should be as neutral on those things as possible. It's the government's job to make sure that I (and each of us) can live according to our values as much as possible. People as individuals should then work out what those values are, individually and socially but not through fear of govt. compulsion. So my "culture wars" issues really don't affect my politics all that much...

The truly interesting thing is that I often took the questions differently than I think it was meant. For example, one question stated: It's a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product. I disagreed with that, not because I think that would be sad if it was what was happening but I don't. Wherever bottled water is available there's almost always decent tap water as well, virtually for free, so people who buy bottled water are buying something other than water. (Status? Convenience?) It's not the commodification of basic resources so much as the commodification of status symbols, which isn't any great surprise. But I'm sure selecting that gave the computer quite the wrong impression. Sometimes I think about these things too much, honestly.

( just for fun - Lehrer's  )

H/t Dan Fincke. (He has a really interesting discussions of various limits on the quiz going on in the comment section.) You can take the quiz here.

Somewhere I saw someone posting a picture a day from their life. I am camera-shy so don't expect to see any actual pictures of me. And I may not get around to posting every day, but I'd like to try to do this as much as I can, because I love my city and I like the idea of sharing it. Plus, I finally have a functioning phone for the moment which means a functioning camera.

So without further adieu:

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I call this little fellow "Señor Pika." When I first moved into the neighborhood I was trying to explore my neighborhood and was hopelessly lost getting home. I had blisters, it was heat like you can only get in July in the Bronx, I had no internet at home and hadn't even found the garbage room and knew no one or where to go to relax - typically moving-in stress, I'm sure all college students have experienced it, but I was about reduced to tears. And I was lost and didn't even know how to explain where I lived to ask for directions. Then I saw Señor Pika smiling down at me with his absurdly bright yellow color, and I laughed.

Things got better almost immediately and I did learn my way around. Not just the neighborhood but the city and beyond; for a Southern girl I've taken to public transit and pedestrian adventuring remarkably well. But when I've had a particularly stressful day I walk by Señor Pika - down Kazimiroff Blvd past the botanical gardens, across the bridge and up Southern Blvd. It's a little out of my way but is a lovely walk, and is worth it to see my first real friend in New York.

Some good music for my good friends, or even if we're neither.

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