Some Food Thoughts

I have two motivations for this post.

1) The Gilmore Girls have been the front page of my blog for far too long.

2) I want to make a record of a few interesting food experiences I've had lately.

So, here are those food experiences.

Experience A: Figs



I had fresh figs for the first time that I can recall this weekend. I don't like them. There are too many seeds, and the flavor isn't sharp enough for my liking. I actually ate them with goat cheese, which has a very sharp flavor, but the flavors didn't mix well enough to improve the pungent fig taste for me.

Despite this bad experience with fresh figs, Fig Newtons are still awesome.

Experience B: Naan Bread



Normally, I like Indian food when it's there, but I never crave it. I have a newfound respect for Tikki Masala, but that would be a tangent. And I'm not a man who tolerates tangents. In any case, Naan bread is one of the greatest things to come out of India since the Just So Stories. I realize that the bread was probably around before Rudyard Kipling.

Experience C: The Cheese Shop

So, this past Thursday, we went to help Annie's mom paint in a place called Ridgefield, CT. It's rather a rich person's town. We saw one of these on the road:



NOTE: It's an Aston Martin DB9. I knew this because I've started watching Top Gear, one of the funniest television shows ever. It's a show about cars, which may make it inaccessible for some of you who read this blog, but when I make Annie watch clips of it, she always laughs a lot. Yet she still won't watch full episodes with me. Odd? I think so, but I'm sure she has her reasons. Anyway, writing any more about this would be another tangent. And again, I'm not a man who tolerates tangents.

In any case, while in Ridgefield, CT, I had the opportunity to walk into a cheese shop. It was all I could do not to launch into the Monty Python cheese shop sketch the moment I walked in the door. Still, I was able to control myself, and after a conversation with the extraordinarily helpful shop owner, I bought two kinds of cheese.

First, Brebirousse D'Argental.



Artisancheesegallery.wordpress.com has this to say about Brebirousse: "A ewe’s milk cheese from the Lyon region, France, the Brebirousse is a lovely soft and creamy aromatic cheese. It spreads wonderfully on a sliced baguette and pairs with both a crisp dry white and a sweet ice wine."

Second, Tallegio



Tallegio, according to artisanalcheese.com, is "a semi-soft, washed-rind cheese from the Valtaleggio region in northern Italy, near Lombardy. It is characteristically aromatic yet mild in flavor and features tangy, meaty notes with a fruity finish."

I absolutely loved both of these things. I may be a little bit of a food snob, and I'm absolutely a nerd, but I really love good cheese. I could have spent an hour in that cheese shop, and I can hardly stand to spend an hour in any store.

I'm not going to back off of my stance on tangents, but I'm going to go on a bit of a sidebar here. One of the troubles with the view that we should all give away everything we have above subsistence level until everyone in the world reaches subsistence level is that most of the things that really make life interesting and sweet would not longer be economically viable to produce. There would be no Brebirousse, no Tallegio, no Aston Martin DB9's, no television shows--probably no televisions, for that matter--no internet, etc. I'm not saying that this makes economic equality an undesirable goal, but I'm saying that there's something important against which to balance the goal.

That's about the whole of it. I'll end with a gratuitous picture of my wife. Because I love her.

What I Learned from the Gilmore Girls

Annie loves Gilmore Girls--as, I've found, do a lot of women I know. I'm generally not so fond of the show. My main quarrel with it is that many of the "conversations"--especially those between the two main characters--seem to be races to see how fast they can get the lines out. They sound like they're just saying lines really fast rather than actually talking to each other, and the frenetic pace gets under my skin a little.

So the other night, I was wanting to do something that Annie likes to do. Usually, in order to do this, I have to think of something that she would want to do, propose that we do it, and then convince Annie that I actually want to do it. Otherwise she won't do it and we have to do something that I like. Few men have to suffer so much to do things for their wives :)

On this particular night, I proposed that we watch Gilmore Girls and managed to convince Annie that I wanted to do it. So we did. In the first episode we watched, Rory was having a hot affair with a former boyfriend (Dean) who had since married Lindsay (I think), who appeared to be a lovely girl.

Immediately I wondered why so many women that I know and admire, including my wife, talk about loving Rory so much. Rory's a tramp who breaks up a marriage that the wife was clearly trying desperately to save! Seeing later episodes only made it worse--yeah, Rory feels bad about it for a while, but ultimately she and Dean establish that he would have left his wife for Rory even if the wife hadn't kicked Dean out, and he and Rory date.

So my opinion of Rory was quite low.

To my astonishment, Annie had forgotten that the affair even occurred. She had an "oh, yeah..." moment as we began watching and were immediately confronted with Rory's adultery. How could something so big as a flagrant violation of the seventh commandment escape her memory?

My conclusion was that Annie had seen all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls multiple times, and thus she knew Rory a lot better than I did. Maybe Rory learns, at some point, that adultery is still a horrible thing no matter how much you happen to love the other person. Or, more likely, maybe Annie, knowing more of Rory, was able to balance everything out and still love her.

That would have some comforting implications. I tend to look at my mistakes one by one and internally castigate myself for each mistake relative to its severity. Because I make a lot of mistakes, some of them quite serious, I'm almost always mad at myself about something. This is extremely frustrating to Annie, who frequently has to assure me that I am a good person and that she loves me even though I keep screwing up. She looks at me as a whole, and miraculously is able to see good.

For God, who can look on the totality of my existence, perhaps that ability is eternally magnified. Perhaps that is why He can have billions of children who rape, murder, steal, and commit senseless acts of cruelty, and still love each of them more than we can comprehend. And perhaps that is why every time I pray saying "Father, I messed up again," He's there to help me pick up the pieces.

A Room With A View (Part II)

Better now?

A Room with a View

Boston's kind of a pretty place. People should come visit us.

The Non-Super Bowl Party

As much as I love football, I've never watched a Super Bowl. That's just how my parents raised me. In what probably amounts to a case of ignorance being bliss, it's never bothered me too much that I don't get to see the game. However, as I grew older and came to know the wonders of good party fare/appetizers, I became extremely envious of Super Bowl parties, where apparently such things are had in abundance. I explained my frustrations to Annie last year around this time. We decided that there was no reason we couldn't have a party celebrating the joys of finger food even if we didn't partake of the pinnacle of commercial glamor and American sport that usually accompanies such parties. Thus, in what we hoped would become a tradition, we held our inaugural Non-Super Bowl Party.

We continued the tradition this year. We made a fruit salad, bought some wings, and procured a bag of tater tots that really should only have been purchased by a day care or a mother of twelve. We invited a few other couples, who brought other fantastic appetizers, including homemade meatballs that just made the world better and the greatest cheese dip ever (they mail ordered the ingredients). It was great fun, and we may have made some friends, which would be a first for us as a couple.

I would have posted pictures, but the following happened: part of our massive grocery shopping trip for the party (3 grocery stores! None of them had Lil' Smokies!) included a trip to BJ's--a sort of east coast Costco. There, we got batteries for my camera. As we were heading out, I realized that the cashier hadn't rung up the batteries, so I went back and paid for them. The guy who checks your receipt at the door was very impressed. He was adamant that I should receive a medal. Well, however much integrity I have, I make up for it with stupidity. I left the batteries in the shopping cart in the parking lot. So we don't have any pictures.

...and then I found five bucks!

The Rest of My Day

1:30- I start working again. My lunch breaks are always longer than I want them to be because I'm easily distracted. ESPN.com, realclearpolitics.com, drudgereport.com, hulu.com, and my netflix account constantly beg for my attention, and I give it to them much more often than I should. Incidentally, all of the stories about Peyton Manning paint him as a great guy, extremely hard worker. It's a sad product of today's sports that I'm just waiting for him to make the inevitable mistake that will assassinate his character.

I start working on the Natural Resources homework for tomorrow. The assignments usually range between 40-50 pages per night. A lot of students here are probably faster, but it usually takes me three or four hours to get through all of it. Today, by 3:00, my head is about to explode. I decide that now would be a good time to go back to the gym, but Annie gets off at 3, and I want to see her before I go. So I start doing research for the Environmental Law Clinic, which I'm doing this semester.

3:00-4:30 research. Reading statutes and cases, figuring how how they apply to the facts of our case. I like doing this, which bodes well for my career. I often don't like law school, but I like doing litigation work. I hope I'm actually good at it, but I don't know. I wrote a brief for a really easy appellate case last summer, and we won that case. But it was the legal equivalent of a layup. I spend about 30 minutes a day torturing myself by wondering whether I'll really be a good lawyer or not.

4:45- out the door to the gym. Spent a few minutes just talking and goofing off with Annie before I left. Best part of my day so far.

5:00-6:30- basketball. Spent most of the time waiting to get on the court. I'm slower than I used to be, I can't shoot anymore, and I don't jump as high as I used to. I shouldn't feel old at 25. But gosh, do I love playing sports. You know how some people just feel at home in the water, swimming? I feel at home on the soccer field and the basketball court.

On the way home, I pick up parsley for the pesto we're going to make for dinner. Annie ends up making it while I continue reading my Natural Resources assignment.

8:00- FHE. We sing before we study, which Annie originally hated (and may still hate), but I love and think is important. Her voice is really good; I wish I could get her to sing louder so that I could hear it :)

8:30- a couple episodes of Seinfeld. Sometimes this space is filled with Friends (Annie cannot live without Friends, and it turns out I like the show), Alias, or the Dick Van Dyke Show.

9:30- back to work. Still have to read for Theories About Law, tomorrow's assignment for Federal Civil Litigation, and the scriptures. Still, I'll put a cap on it around 11. I've learned over the years that you can get away without doing all of the reading.

My Day

Many of you may not be aware of the kind of person I've become. I think that most everyone who ever looks at this thing has spent some period of time in which they were pretty closely involved in my life--knew what I did most of the time. But not anymore. So, this is how things go now.

Woke up at 7:45. That's a good morning--3 mornings per week I go prepare breakfast for a lesbian couple and "their" son, and then I take the little boy to school. Those mornings, I have to wake up at 6:15. Even waking up at 7:45 today, I seriously contemplated going back to sleep until I absolutely had to wake up.

Annie did that morning job this morning, and she gets home from it at about 8:25. Just in time for me to kiss her as I'm walking out the door. We make fruit smoothies every morning--I left it on the counter for her, where I also tragically left my part of it.

Class at 8:40- Federal Civil Litigation. My group and I, along with all of the other groups, had submitted a drafts of a Complaint last Friday, and the professor spent today telling us how terribly we'd done. He thinks that we should be so dedicated to our jobs that we should be up every night reading laws and treatises between midnight and 2 a.m. He tells us that every day of class.

Class at 10:20, right after the first one ended--Natural Resources Law and Policy. I have a visiting professor for this one, and my experience with those that they're fairly low quality. If this guy's tasteful clothes and impeccably styled hair are any indication, he plays for the other team. He also has stlyishly long stubble, which he sometimes plays with absently as he's trying to get through another sentence, which doesn't come easily to him. The concepts in the class are interesting, but I prefer to get them from the book.

11:50- walking home for lunch. I had planned to play basketball at the campus gym before going home, but my gym clothes are sitting, perfectly packed, next to my smoothie. It's a 15 minute walk. Winds in Harvard Square average around 12 mph, which combined with the habitually sub-freezing winter temperatures makes for a cold walk. Deciding whether or not to call Annie or a family member on the walk home is a question of how much I love my hand that day.

I guess I have a lot to say about my day :) So I'll split it into another post.

Natural Resources Law and Policy

That's one of my classes this semester. And I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I think the way we treat the non-human parts of our world is important, for a couple of reasons. Oh, incidentally, for those of you who may have thought about this a lot more than I have, I'd like to point out that I know that everything I'm about to write over-simplifies the issues, but you have to start somewhere.

First, how I treat the environment affects other people. After all, what I pour into the river upstream is what you're drinking downstream. So, in some ways, how I treat the environment is part of how I treat other people. There's also the bit about preserving the environment for future generations.

Second, how I treat the environment is important in itself. I draw this from Genesis 1:28, among other scriptures. That's the one about multiplying and replenishing the earth, subduing it and having dominion over it, etc. I read this to mean "stewardship."

So those are the reasons that I think it's important to think about and try to preserve/improve/whatever the non-human parts of the world (it's been pointed out to me that "nature" is kind of a hard term to pin down).

On the other hand, to study Natural Resources Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, you have to deal with a lot of ideologies that I find kind of strange. For instance, some people believe in "deep ecology," which has among its tenets that "all organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as parts of the interrelated whole, are equal in intrinsic worth" and that "the flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease."

These other ideologies are, of course, very popular in Cambridge, MA. Indeed, for many of the modern residents here, environmentalism is religion. That can make it difficult for someone like me, who cares about the environment in a more utilitarian fashion.

So how can you study and care about the environment today without going to extremes? I'm open for suggestions.

P.S.- My wife thinks it's really funny when I'm frustrated. Yesterday we were driving to the nearest Sears Auto Center to get new tires--a good 25 minutes, if you know where you're going. That last bit was important: if you know where you're going. My lovely wife often knows generally where she's going, but not exactly where she's going. So on occasions like yesterday, when I forgot to ask whether she knew exactly where she was going, we sometimes get to the general area and then have to drive around kind of hoping we happen upon the right street. We did, eventually, but while we were just kind of driving around, my frustration started to build a little bit, and my wife thought it was hilarious.

Now that the moment has passed, I can look back and laugh, too. But does anyone else's wife have trouble taking him seriously when he's frustrated? Is this normal? Should I just get used to it? There may not be easy answers to these questions.

Our First Christmas Tree

Total cost: about $10. And it's artificial, and therefore reusable.

Some Stories

So, I didn't really intend for this to be a political blog. I made it when I was single as a place to just pour out thoughts about different things. It's been getting too political lately, so now I'm just going to put up a couple of stories about my life (and....PICTURES!).

Story 1

I met my wife thanks to my turkey-cooking skillz. I cooked my first turkey on my mission, then cooked several more while I was at BYU. Anyway, soon after I got to Cambridge, I got a call from this girl I'd seen before in the ward, Annie Siddoway. I found it quite flattering that she'd call me, since I thought she was quite pretty. Well, she was actually calling because she needed to cook a turkey for a dinner she was putting on for the guys that had helped her move, but her oven was broken. Since she knew my roommates (in fact, she had dated one of them) and we lived only a couple of blocks from her new apartment, she called my roommates to ask if she could use our oven. But only I was home.

So, soon enough there was a knock at the door, and when I opened it there stood Annie, holding a raw turkey. I showed her to the oven. Soon, however, it became apparent that she (and her roommate that was with her. Of course she never would have come alone) had never cooked a turkey before. Well. I showed her how to cook a turkey. I think she was especially impressed when I momentarily disappeared into my room, reappearing moments later with a baster. Her version of what she was thinking at the time: "Ok, this guy is either incredibly weird or incredibly cute." She has since determined that the former is always true, while the latter is only occasionally true.

To make a long story short, it takes a few hours to cook a turkey, so I had a captive audience. And the rest is history.



Story 2

I have a very odd sense of humor. I'm the kind of man who loves the Muppets, Ask a Ninja, and videos about blenders powered by v8 engines. I also love unintentional comedy--when actors are very much trying to be serious but only succeed in being ridiculous.

This is what makes it so wonderful that Annie and I have so much fun together. There are not that many people that understand or enjoy my sense of humor--most people can enjoy certain parts of it, but Annie enjoys almost all of it. As demonstrated by the gifts she has gotten me so far.

Our first holiday as a couple (not yet a married couple) was Christmas of last year. As she thought of what to get me for Christmas, Annie remembered that one of the most memorable of our early dates was the time we went to see High School Musical 3. As far as unintentional comedy goes, it doesn't get much better than Zac Efron sings and dances out his teenage angst in a high school gym as hundreds of computer-animated basketballs fall around him and lightning flashes in the background. So, for Christmas, Annie got me a Zac Efron t-shirt. There was a lot of laughter at the time...we're still not quite sure what to do with it. I won't wear it in public and she won't let me hang it above her side of the bed.

Valentine's Day brought another fun gift from Annie. Earlier we had discussed one of the kinds of gifts that I loved seeing on Valentine's Day in high school--stuffed animals inside of balloons. To me, there just aren't many more ridiculous looking things. Well. Annie got me socks (Smart Wool socks. Awesome), but had the nerve to go to a gift place and ask them to put the socks into a balloon with confetti and the whole bit. While she definitely got some weird looks from everyone at the store, I absolutely loved it.

Conclusion

That's probably enough stories for one post. I do want to leave everyone with a couple more pictures, just in case you're one day called upon to recognize me or Annie in a crowd and it's been years since you've seen either of us.

An Account of Democratic Self-Government

The following is from Ronald Dworkin:

To achieve that sense of a national partnership in self-government, it is not enough for a community to treat citizens only as if they were shareholders in a company, giving them votes only in periodic elections of officials. It must design institutions, practices, and conventions that allow them to be more engaged in public life, and to make a contribution to it, even when their views do not prevail. Two conditions are necessary for this:

a) First, each citizen must have a fair and reasonably equal opportunity not only to hear the views of others as these are published or broadcast, but to command attention for his own views, either as a candidate for office or as a member of a politically active group committed to some program or conviction.

b) Second, the tone of public discourse must be appropriate to the deliberations of a partnership or joint venture rather than the selfish negotiations of commercial rivals or military enemies.

If we embraced that attractive account of the conditions of self-government, we would have to accept that democracy—self-government by the people as a whole—is always a matter of degree. It will never be perfectly fulfilled, because it seems incredible that the politics of a pluralistic contemporary society could ever become as egalitarian in access and as deliberative in tone as the standards I just described demand. We would then understand democracy not as a pedigree a nation earns just by adopting some constitutional structure of free elections, but as an ideal toward which any would-be democratic society must continually strive.

We would also have to accept not only that America falls short of important democratic ideals, but that in the age of television politics the shortfall has steadily become worse. The influence of wealth unequally distributed is greater, and its consequences more profound, than at any time in the past, and our politics seem daily more rancorous, ill-spirited, and divisive.

So this analysis of democracy as self-government confirms—and helps to explain—the growing sense of despair about American politics that I began this essay by trying to describe. How should we respond to that despair? We must understand the First Amendment as a challenge, not a barrier to improvement. We must reject the blanket principle the Supreme Court relied on in Buckley, that government should never attempt to regulate the public political discourse in any way, in favor of a more discriminating principle that condemns the constraints that do violate genuine principles of democracy—that deny citizens information they need for political judgment or that deny equality of citizenship for people with unpopular beliefs or tastes, for example—but that nevertheless permits us to try to reverse our democracy's decline.

Risk/Reward Question

So, it's unprecedented for me to post twice in a single day, but I have a question now.

I just read this.

Among other societal/economic problems right now, we have a lack of risk taking and a dearth of effective leadership. If we want to increase risk, do we have to decrease scrutiny and criticism? If so, how can we do it w/o unconstitutionally abrogating speech?

We need more warrior/adventurer spirit. How can we get it?

A Political Thought or Two

It's probably pointless to post this here, since most (if not all) the people who read this blog usually vote Republican. But in any case.

Here's a recurring theme in present day politics. The President (a liberal Democrat) or the Congress (majority Democrat, with liberal Democrats in the highest leadership positions) proposes a governmental solution to some problem--be it the economic/financial crisis, health care, whatever. Republicans, and especially conservatives, decry the solution as one that a) likely won't work, and b) involves too great an expansion of government power. The Democrats' rejoinder, at least in large part, is often "all you're doing is criticizing. You haven't offered another solution."

While that may be true (the Republicans/conservatives who offer the criticism may not have been thinking of a solution), there seems to be an obvious counterpoint that at least the Democrats are missing. That is, that the alternative "solution" may not be that the government do something else. It may be that the government do less, if not nothing. To assume that this is the equivalent of "do nothing" is to assume that the government is the only possible actor in the situation.

Republicans'/conservatives' preference--and perhaps mine, though I just don't think I know enough to make strong claims about what will and won't work--might be that private individuals, private groups of individuals, and private business entities work for themselves, stimulating the economy through their own economic activity. The idea is that you work for yourself; don't ask government to work for you. It won't do a good job.

This leads to other questions, such as whether the distribution of wealth and power in the market has become such that a small number of powerful actors working in their own self-interest make it impossible to achieve everyone's self interest (I feel like game theory should come into this, somehow, but I don't know enough about game theory). If that is the case, maybe the government does need to level the playing field somehow? But I don't know that I'm quite ready to believe that.

On a related note, I tire of the argument that Republicans' failed policies got us into this mess, so their proposed solutions have no merit. The ability to see mistakes in hindsight says nothing about the merits of proposed solutions to current problems. It means neither a) that Republicans proposals won't work for current problems, nor b) that Democrats' proposed solutions will. Yes, the Democrats have an electoral mandate to try their solutions, but that doesn't mean they can assume the Republicans' solutions to current problems are wrong just because some Republican policies arguably led to undesirable consequences.

In the end, I don't know the future any more than the people that are making these arguments. And really, I hope their solutions work, because they're the only solutions we're likely to get for a long time, given who's in power right now. But I hate bad argumentation.

My Thoughts on Punishment

Thanks to everyone who posted a comment about punishment. I'm going to try to explain the difficulties I see with punishment, and then I'll go into what I think a good system of punishment might be. I should stipulate at the outset that I'm mostly talking about societal punishment of criminals. A couple of the comments on the last post were about punishing children, which I hadn't really thought about before, but is a really important arena in which to understand punishment as well. Since the comments on that topic came from actual mothers, I probably won't go into that topic very deeply here for fear of sounding like an idiot.

Difficulties with Punishment
1. Punishment is returning harm for harm. The old adage says that two wrongs don't make a right. On its face this argument is too simplistic, but it's one I've heard. After all, the physical acts themselves--both the criminal's and society's--are harms (say for example, robbing and confining a robber to prison). But the difference between the acts is at a metaphysical level. As we conceptualize it, the robber steals to enrich himself and takes what is not rightfully his (or hers). But confining the robber to prison is done to satisfy justice, deter future crime, rehabilitate the criminal (teach him/her to be a productive member of society), or incapacitate the criminal so that he/she can do no more harm.

But what about the robber who steals food to avoid starvation? What about criminals who were tricked or coerced into committing crime? We still punish these people, reasoning that such people make criminal errors in judgment. But if what justifies society in imposing a harm is its motive, then why can't many crimes be justified because of the criminals' good motives?

2. Problems with Retributivism- I think everyone has a sense of justice. And my heart, my gut, my moral sense--whatever you want to call it--tells me that wrongdoers deserve punishment simply because of their acts and without reference to any future outcome. As Immanuel Kant says, "Juridical punishment can never be administered merely as a means of promoting another good either with regard to the criminal himself or to civil society, but must in all cases be imposed only because the individual on whom it is inflicted has committed a crime. For one man ought never to be dealt with merely as a means subservient to the purpose of another...He must first be found guilty and punishable, before there can be any thought of drawing from his punishment any benefit for himself or his fellow-citizens. The penal law is a categorical imperative; and woe to him who creeps through the serpent-windings of utilitarianism to discover some advantage that may discharge him from the justice of punishment, or even from the due measure of it, according to the Pharisaic maxim: 'it is better that one man should die than that the whole people should perish.' For if justice and righteousness perish, human life would no longer have any value in the world."

Now, I don't fully agree with Kant here, and that's the trouble: Kant's view is pure retributivism. As he says, retributive punishment is punishment because of guilt, and only because of guilt. When asked "Why do we punish the criminal?", the retributivist replies "Because he is guilty." But I don't believe that guilt is the only purpose of punishment. After all, Kant's "Pharisaic maxim" is actually divine reasoning: "it is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief" (1 Ne. 4:13).

3. Problems with Utilitarianism- in their pure form, utilitarian justifications for punishment don't work either. Utilitarians hold that punishment can have three purposes, all of which are net positive consequences. First, punishment can serve to deter future crime, both by the criminal punished and by others who would otherwise commit the same crime. Second, punishment can rehabilitate the criminal, helping him/her become a productive member of society. Rehabilitation also serves to deter any future crime the rehabilitated would have committed. Third, punishment can incapacitate the criminal, keeping him/her from committing any future crime.

Theoretically, these are good ideas. But do they work practically? America's efforts at rehabilitation (it was a prominent theory in the 70's) proved costly and ineffective. Also, what if someone commits a crime, then realizes the wrongness of her actions and reforms herself so that she will never commit crime again, and all this without punishment. Then, according to rehabilitation theory, there would be no reason to punish the criminal. But that seems wrong because of the reasons for retributivism. Incapacitation only works if you keep the criminal in custody until he/she can no longer commit crime, which may be until either infirmity or death. Deterrence is more interesting, but leads to questions about what level of severity is necessary to effectively deter. The level of severity required to deter may exceed the level of severity that is proportional to the crime committed. Furthermore, there may be many crimes that no punishment will deter, such as crimes of passion or crimes committed by those who have nothing to lose. In many cases, such crimes are the most violent and most harmful of all. What good is punishment if it cannot deter those crimes?

Beginnings of a Theory
The feeling I've gotten in discussions on punishment in the past is that retributivism and utilitarianism are mutually exclusive, just as deontology and utilitarianism are alternative moral theories that cannot be easily combined. But I see good things in both of them, and I think parts of both are necessary to a good theory of punishment.

I'm tempted to say that utilitarian punishment is good for this life, and we should leave retributive punishment to God, who knows both who deserves punishment and how much punishment is deserved. But isn't there something dangerous about leaving one's moral sense unsatisfied?

There's a lot more to say about this, but I feel like I've said enough that some of you may have thoughts about it that will be valuable to hear before I write any more. Then again, you may all be bored with this by now and ready to move on to something else. But, as you can tell, I'm still not out of the woods on this one, and I would still appreciate your help.

Why Do We Punish?

I'm back! But I'm back with a purpose. I've been trying to figure out why we punish, both as a society and in a religious context. And I can't figure it out, so I need your input. Here's a brief note from my Criminal Law casebook describing the two basic theories:

"Broadly speaking, the justifications for punishment fall into two large categories, retributive and utilitarian. A retributivist claims that punishment is justified because people deserve it; a utilitarian believes that justification lies in the useful purposes that punishment serves. Retributive rationales are essentially backward looking, as they seek to justify punishment on the basis of the offender's behavior in the past. Utilitarian rationales are essentially forward looking, as they seek to justify punishment on the basis of the good consequences it is expected to produce in the future."

What do you think? How do we justify punishment?

Acadia

I thought I might show you all a few pictures from my recent travels. Please note: I will write nothing thoughtful or profound in this post.

There's really not too much to say about it other than that Acadia National Park is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I can't imagine a place that I would find more beautiful.





Also, the people that I went with weren't all that normal.



Finally, there's picture of me, just to let you know that I'm still alive (cue music).

I Like Law School

And I didn't capitalize the first letter of every word in that title just because it's grammatically correct. This is a big deal.

I honestly hated the first two weeks of it. I was working desperately just to finish normal homework assignments, feeling lost in some classes, and watching as my classmates came up with great arguments I had trouble following. Every time I opened my mouth in class, I was wrong about something (except for that one time when I correctly informed the class that state courts can hear diversity cases and cases arising out of federal law. But I only knew that because I'd screwed up on a question about jurisdiction on my first day of Civil Procedure). I wasn't making friends among my classmates or even networking effectively. I missed the bus to school on my second day.

But then, last night, a wonderful thing happened. I had been working on my first legal memo all day (except for a couple hours of TF2 in which Adam burned lots and lots of bad guys), and I was skipping a major social event to do it. Once I was done with 10 hours of research for the paper, I couldn't work on it any more. So instead I picked up my books for class on Monday and started reading the assignments. And, at about 11:30 p.m., I finished my homework for Monday. As I sat on the couch, my eyes burning from having stared at a computer screen for too long, my head numb from thinking about attorney-client privilege, remedies for breach of contract, and canons of statutory interpretation, a weird feeling came over me. I was happy.

I liked the weird facts in the cases I had read. I liked figuring out why attorney-client privilege is important and why/how applying it to the facts of a case makes people more free. It's still not easy, but I like what I'm doing. And that's important to me.

Beware--Random Thoughts

In a feat of extraordinary extraordinariness, I finished my daily quota of schoolwork before midnight. And so, I thought, what to do with a few minutes of free time, late at night? "Blog" seemed like the sensible answer.

So I learned a couple of interesting things today. State courts have to have personal jurisdiction in order to serve complaints to potential defendants--or in English, if you don't live in a state but someone who does wants to sue you in that state, they can't unless you're also in the state. Interestingly enough, though, "in the state" means "anywhere in the state." That includes if you're in a plane flying over it. There was actually a case where this guy who wanted to sue someone in Arkansas got onto a plane with him (the plane was going to fly over Arkansas). As the plane was over Arkansas, the guy served notice on the person he wanted to sue, and the courts upheld it.

It feels bad when you're waiting for the bus, and it comes, and then just keeps going by without stopping for you.

Sometimes I cover up the fact that I don't know what to say to my classmates outside of class by studying. Instead of talking to people between classes, I just read and reread the cases.

They have free coffee on campus, and my classmates drink it all the time. I don't understand how you can want a hot drink in summer. Now, they do also have free hot water. So, come winter, I may bring hot chocolate powder or cider to drink during class. But will that be giving the appearance of evil?

My computer is pretty. I love seeing all the moving (and apparently non-moving) parts working together fluidly. I get a lasting sense of accomplishment from having built it. It's similar to the feeling I get reading a well-written paper that I wrote. Of course, the beauty here is different than a tree's beauty, a painting's beauty, etc. But there is a beauty to mechanism that too few people appreciate, I think. I should stop talking about this, though, aesthetics never was my strong point.

Of all the topics I like to talk about (religion, philosophy, sports, politics, law, games, writing), the thing I most love to hear is the good that other people think of each other. It feels so good to hear someone talk about how they love someone else, or to hear/see someone show kindness through words.

Creating Truth

Is truth created or discovered?

I eat a tomato, and I don't like it. "I don't like tomatoes" is a true proposition.
However, my mother continues to serve tomatoes, twice a week throughout my childhood. She forces me to eat them. Over time, I acquire a taste for tomatoes. Now, "I like tomatoes" is a true proposition, and "I don't like tomatoes" is not. Have I discovered the truth that I like tomatoes, or have I created it?

The Dark Knight, part II

As promised, here is a follow up post.

First, a response to the (im)poster, who says the following:

"Quoting Batman, 'Sometimes the truth isn't enough. Sometimes people deserve more than the truth.' The Church agrees with Batman here; it teaches that some things are more important than the truth:

Elder Packer has said, 'There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not...Some things that are true are not very useful.' ("The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect")

I gather from this statement that the truth is not always the ultimate reward for someone's faith. That's why the Church teaches 'faith-promoting' history as opposed to true history. I am not saying I agree with this, just that that's how it is."

My response:

It seems inaccurate to call what President Packer describes "more than the truth." Revealing truth "line upon line, precept upon precept" is not the same as lying, which is what Batman referred to when he spoke of "more than the truth." Consider two examples:

First, we teach kindergarten students that 1+1=2. All well and good, but the truth of the proposition "1+1=2" depends on what base number system you're using, as well as on certain postulates of linear algebra. Even that truth that seems most basic is only conditionally true.

Second, let's turn to that great source of wisdom: Return of the Jedi. In it, we have the following conversation:

Luke: Why didn't you tell me? You told me Vader betrayed and murdered my father.

Obi-Wan: Vader was seduced by the dark side of the force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.

Luke: A certain point of view?

Obi-wan: Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Earlier, speaking with Yoda about the same thing (that Luke learned that Vader was his father), we have:

Yoda: Unexpected this is, and unfortunate.

Luke: Unfortunate that I know the truth?

Yoda: No! Unfortunate that you rushed to face him, that incomplete was your training, that not ready for the burden were you.

I remain convinced that to some degree, we have to choose to believe something before we can know anything. And I remain steadfast in the faith that, as the hymn says, "all now mysterious shall be bright at last."

This post also having gotten long, my final point will have to wait for part III.