Should churches be forced to recognize gay marriages?

Yes.

But this gay guy doesn't think so.

The state cannot force a church to change its beliefs. Even gay people realize that is wrong.

It sounds reasonable but suppose a church said it won't recognize a marriage between a black man and a white woman because they feel that is wrong. Does anyone find that acceptable? In 50, maybe even 20, year no one will find opposition to gay marriage any more acceptable.

Quote of the Day

From David Leonhardt:

Eventually, the country will have to confront the deficit we have, rather than the deficit we imagine. The one we imagine is a deficit caused by waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil industry subsidies and vague out-of-control spending. The one we have is caused by the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), a Social Security program built when most people died by 70 — and to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades.

Brad DeLong explains Nozick

Nozick disavowed the argument DeLong explains so maybe it unfair to say it is his.

Here is DeLong's takedown. I figured that out when I was 16 so Im glad to get validation 5 years later.

Also, although it is a good point, I think the main point to make to libertarians isn't that they are (apparently) willing to treat children like shit. The main problem is that they believe in perfect markets. I think without that faith they'd be less willing to shit on children.

A good essay

This essay on Nozick and libertarianism is taking a lot of heat on the blogosphere.

I understand why the bloggers (mostly libertarians) don't like it. For starters, Metcalf is probably wrong about something claims in the essay--a lot of is about the psychology of what is going on in libertarian's heads. Second, everyone get emotional when insulted.

But I still think it's a good essay with a substantive claim: libertarians confuse capital with human capital, or in other words, spend so much time trying to arrange institutions to ensure that uniquely talented people get money, they forget that most people with money are rich because they have crap (capital) not human capital. He also has a decent explanation of the main problem with libertarianism: the perfect competition model is often a bad approximation--though he leaves out a the second half of the point, that we can distinguish when it does and doesn't fit pretty well.

Is that claim of interest or worth discussing? Yes! The libertarians on the blogosphere don't need to be psychoanalyzed, but the average idiot on Facebook who insists that cigarette labels are an affront to human dignity despite making smokers and non-smokers happier does need to be psychoanalyzed. There is a large class of people smart enough to understand perfect markets in outline but not smart enough to understand asymmetric information, behavioral economics, public goods and why market fails in general. We need to understand how to treat (medically) those people.

Stat of the Day

Lebron James' +/- in 2011 NBA Finals game six: -24

Is CS that unpopular?

Only 11,000 B.S.s in computer science were granted this year. There are on the order of 1,000,000 college graduates each year so that's 1% of graduates.

Is computer science that unpopular?

China Lays the Smackdown

China just laid the smackdown on some douche.



I used to think all people from China were like that piece of shit. They were entitled dumbasses who all played either violin or piano, had no sense of humor, no upper body strength, and said things like "who are going" and "too many spaghetti."

But the truth is that's just most Asian-Americans and the rich people in China. I'm glad the government just laid down the law.