For the ride...

"The funny thing is, it appears there’s a certain humanlike subjectiveness to the sex life of lab animals as well. When Jim Pfaus tested PT-141 on his female rats, he based his experimental design partly on the work of Raul Paredes, a fellow rat sexologist testing the effects of something more elusive: personal autonomy. That’s a tricky thing to measure, but it can be done. Paredes did it like this: First, he looked at rat couples living in standard, box-shaped cages and recorded the details of their sexual behavior. Then, he altered the cages in only one particular: He divided them into two chambers with a clear wall broken only by one opening, too small for the males to get through but just right for the females. Architecturally it was a minor change, but what it did for the females was huge. It let them get away from the males whenever they chose to, and thereby made it entirely their choice whether to have sex. Paredes then observed the rats’ behavior in this altered setting. Here’s what he found: The effects of giving a female rat greater personal control over her sex life are essentially the same as those of giving her PT-141. Autonomy, in other words, is as real an aphrodisiac as any substance known to science."

Great comments to Jim Henley's post on Kelo. Particularly jlw: "Power is as power does–always has, always will.
What’s different is that the post-War (um, the Big One) explosion of prosperity brought about by managerial liberalism and the New Deal has fooled a lot of people into believing that their tiny property holdings and small stakes to corporate profits entitled them to the same deferrence as those with real fortunes. Every man’s home is his castle, and all that...
Those who rail against the New Deal might have a small point: Had it never succeeded so well, it might not have engendered so many false beliefs in our own worth in the eyes of Authority."

Yglesias' thoughts on Kelo are the counterpoint.

Amazing post in comments by Katherine at Unfogged

It's odd--you seem to agree with me that torture is wrong, but you seem bizarrely disconnected from me on the single, central reason WHY it is wrong.

It's not because it happens to innocent people, though it often does, and that makes it worse. It's not because it happens without due process, though it usually does, and that makes it worse. It's not because it happens in secret, though it usually does, and that makes it worse. It's not because it's against the law, though it is, and that makes it worse. It's not because it's counterproductive at deterring crimes or reducing terrorism, though it is, and that makes it worse. It's not because torturers make untrustworthy leaders in all sorts of other ways, though it does, and that makes it worse.

I'm not saying those things aren't important. I'm saying they don't go to the central reason why torture is wrong.

So what is that central reason? I think you need to read your William Brennan. It "treats members of the human race as nonhumans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded."

22 Million Chinese Seek to Block Japan's Bid to Join U.N. Council

UNIFEM staff on the ground in Iraq wrote their impressions while there.

"As they walked off the dais, voters would look around almost as if expecting applause and then would shyly look down at the ground, and stride off quickly, clearly trying not to look as if anything special had happened but all had small smiles and when I told them ‘mabruk’ (congratulations) they would break into a big smile.”

Newt Gingrich and George Mitchell will co-chair a taskfoce on the UN. "Ex-Top Lawmakers to Advise on U.N. Reform" (AP) -- "The task force, organized by the U.S. Institute of Peace, plans to complete its report by June with the expectation that the Congress and the administration could act on its recommendations before the fall U.N. General Assembly... Gingrich and Mitchell, in an opinion piece in Wednesday's editions of the Washington Times, said the task force 'will focus on the United Nations from the perspective of American interests and American responsibilities, not on the basis of an abstract notion of international community or of the concerns of other countries.' The goal of the task force, they said, is to produce a 'realistic, actionable plan for U.S. actions to help strengthen the United Nations.'"

June is when Volker's final report is due. The first of Volker's interim reports was released earlier this month.

The Most Overrated Film of the Year

A. O. Scott must have overheard me expounding on Sideways in the subway. It's a good film, not great ("quaffable but not transcendent"). And it was clear from the amazing Rotten Tomatoes rating that something else was going on. I assumed it was middle-aged male critics identifying with the main characters, but A. O. Scott is probably right -- it's the appeal of the sympathetic critic whose philosophy is validated, and he gets the girl.

Paul Giamatti's character is absolutely annoying, and both relationships are unrealistic.

Long live Eternal Sunshine!

Women in China finally making a great leap forward

The Christian Science Monitor has a great series up on urban women in China, family, and love and money. Still has a lot of "Mao said... and look at them now!" stuff, but interesting observations.