Dispatch from an airport terminal.

Holy smokes, an airport where the WiFi is actually free! (If only San Jose International were more mass-transit friendly…)
I’m going to be offline for much of the day since I’ll be in transit on my way to PSA 2008. I’m hoping Pittsburgh’s weather will not destroy me. (The temperature ranges predicted as of yesterday don’t seem too frightening, but California can do things to a person.)

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Ask a philosopher why you should vote

… and, if that philosopher is Brian Weatherson, you’ll get a detailed consideration of cost, benefits, and rational strategies like this one:

Voting is a lot like playing an n-player Prisoners Dilemma with the other people who (loosely speaking) share the values that underlie your vote. I’m taking values to be defined loosely enough here that it includes most people who vote the same way you do. You’d prefer that all of you vote to all of you not voting. Given turnout rates in the U.S., that’s pretty much always the difference between winning and losing. But conditional on what the other people will almost certainly do, you’d prefer to not vote than to vote. And so would everyone else.

Of course, our electoral version of the game has more than one turn, which makes a difference to the winning strategy.
It’s a lovely post. I encourage you to print it out and tuck it in your pocket before you head out to the polling place. It will provide you with something worthwhile to read as you stand in line, and it may even be good fodder for conversation with your fellow prisoners there.

Electoral math.

I’ve been thinking about the Electoral College, that mechanism by which voters in the U.S. indirectly elect their president. More precisely, I’ve been wondering whether small modifications in the system might make a significant difference.
When the polls close on Tuesday night and the votes are tallied, the next President of the United States will not be chosen on the basis of which candidate received the most votes cast. Rather, each state (and the District of Columbia) will tally its votes, and whoever wins within each state (or the District) gets all of its electoral votes.
Except for Maine and Nebraska, which I’ll get to in just a moment.

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Physics professor gives common sense the day off.

Sadly, the Houston Chronicle brings us another story about an academic caught plagiarizing. The academic in question is Rambis M. Chu, a tenured associate professor of physics at Texas Southern University, who is currently under investigation for plagiarism in a grant proposal he submitted to the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
Since the investigation is still under way, I’m open to the possibility that Chu will present some evidence to demonstrate his innocence here. However, should the facts reported in the Houston Chronicle stand up to scrutiny, this is shaping up to be one of those cases where the accused took leave of common sense.
From the Houston Chronicle article:

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The challenges of dialogue about animal research.

Earlier this month, I wrote a post on California’s Researcher Protection Act of 2008, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law on September 28. There, I noted that some opponents of the law expressed concerns that the real intent (and effect) of the law was not to protect those who do academic research with animals, but instead to curtail the exercise of free speech. I also wrote:

I’m left not sure how I feel about this law. Will it have a certain psychological value, telling researchers that the state is behind them, even if it doesn’t actually make much illegal that wasn’t already illegal? Will it end up curtailing free speech, possibly driving more people to pursue “direct actions” against researchers because their attempts at dialogue are frustrated?

In comments on this post, Clinton raised some important issues about what is — and is not — involved in a dialogue, especially around the question of research with animals. Clinton wrote:

Why is it when you write “dialogue” what I read is “getting their way”?
There is no problem with the dialogue. Particularly in these days of the internets and blogz and all that, people who oppose the use of animals in research can sound off to their heart’s content. It is very likely they can find a venue for dialog with animal research supporters as well. They are free to lobby their local Congressional representative. With just a little effort they can probably get on their local nightly news. “Dialogue” is freely available.
People on the animal rights bandwagon who are “driven to direct action” are not being driven by a failure of dialogue but rather by a failure to get their way. It is a failure on their part to convince a majority that they are correct in their extremist views.

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