Re “‘Bomb Robot’ Takes Down Dallas Gunman, but Raises Enforcement Questions” (news article, July 9):
I find the use of the military robot to kill the Dallas gunman both clever and extremely disturbing. As reported, the gunman was completely boxed in and could not move more than a few feet. So I wonder, if the police could use a robot to blow him up, couldn’t they have used it to shoot him with a tranquilizer dart instead? Or used the robot to let off a gas that would have knocked him out, so that they could then arrest him?
A government’s use of lethal force against a citizen must always be heavily scrutinized and must always be a last resort—no matter how deplorable a citizen he may have been.
Despite losing nine of their past 12 games, including five of seven to the lowly Minnesota Twins, the Texas Rangers have the best record (54-36) in the American League at the All-Star break. The Houston Astros are coming on strong, so it should be an exciting second half.
Addendum: The execrable New York Yankees, at 44-44, are going nowhere. (Sorry, John.)
Addendum 2: Teams doing better than I expected are the Baltimore Orioles (51-36), the Cleveland Indians (52-36), the Texas Rangers (54-36), and the San Francisco Giants (56-33). Teams doing worse than I expected are the Kansas City Royals (45-43), the Seattle Mariners (45-44), and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (37-52).
It's very, very important for Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election in November. If she doesn't, Attorney General Rudy Giuliani will prosecute her for the many crimes she has committed. If you want Bill and Hillary behind bars, where they belong, then you should vote for Donald Trump. I know I will be.
Here is the latest from Derb. I expect a full-blown race war at some point, especially if people like Barack Hussein Obama continue to incite racial hatred. Obama is the opposite of what he pretended to be. He called himself a uniter. (Remember "Hope and Change"?) He's the most divisive president we've ever had. He always takes the side of blacks, even when he is ignorant of the facts of the case. He presumes that whites are bad and that blacks are good. What's funny is that he himself is half white. It's as though his black side hates his white side. Maybe that's it. He's a self-loathing white person.
Re “The New England Effect,” by Samuel J. Abrams (Sunday Review, July 3): Whoa there, Professor Abrams. While faculty at New England colleges and universities may well be shifting to the left, you provide no evidence that this is leading to an ideologically unbalanced education in the region. What, exactly, does liberal physics look like? Left-wing geology? Marxist math? Even where the subject matter may produce opportunities for left-leaning ideology, it is an insult to those of us in the profession to claim without proof that we allow our ideology to influence our syllabus. If your students can tell which way you lean from the content of your lectures, then shame on you.
GRAHAM DAVIS
Boulder, Colo.
Note from KBJ: I agree with this. The question is not whether professors are progressive or conservative in their private lives, but how they conduct themselves in the classroom. In my Social and Political Philosophy course, which I teach every other year, I discuss five theories of distributive justice: Libertarianism (which views justice as liberty), Radical Egalitarianism (which views justice as equality), Liberal Egalitarianism (which views justice as fairness), Conservatism (which views justice as desert), and Utilitarianism (which views justice as happiness). I guarantee you that at the end of the course, no student knows which theory (if any) I subscribe to. The only way a student would know is by going to this blog, and I make no reference to this blog in my courses. In my Ethics course, which I teach every spring, I discuss many normative ethical theories, from Theological Voluntarism to Utilitarianism to Egoism to Kantianism to Contractarianism. Same thing. In my Philosophy of Religion course, which I teach every other year, I discuss arguments for and against the existence of God. Same thing. I'm an educator, not an indoctrinator. I'm proud of that. I have no respect for professors who indoctrinate their students (or try to). They have no business being in academia.
Note 2 from KBJ: If you're a past student of mine, please post a comment either vouching for what I say or denying what I say. I promise to approve every such comment.
How freaky is this? I have over 9,000 songs in the iTunes cloud. When I ride my bike, as I did today, I pick a song to start with and let iTunes select the rest. Here's what happened today. As I approached the point on the trail where I turn the music on, I wondered which song to start with. I hadn't heard any Led Zeppelin in a while, so I thought of my favorite Led Zeppelin album, Physical Graffiti (1975). My two favorite songs on this album have always been "Custard Pie" and "The Rover." I thought about selecting "The Rover," but settled on "Custard Pie."
To my amazement, the fifth song played was "The Rover." (No other Led Zeppelin song was played during the ride, which took two and a half hours.) My first thought was, where do I buy a Texas Lottery ticket? What are the chances that "The Rover" would come up out of over 9,000 songs? But John Sullivan tells me he's convinced that iTunes does not select songs randomly, and there appear to be others who share his view. Maybe iTunes "reasons" as follows: "This guy apparently likes Led Zeppelin, so I'll play another Led Zeppelin song for him." Then it occurred to me: I have 180 songs by Led Zeppelin. What are the chances that "The Rover" would be selected from 180 (or rather, 179) songs? So even if iTunes "reasoned" that, since I picked one Led Zeppelin song, I might appreciate hearing another, it's still freaky.
Then it occurred to me: Maybe iTunes "reasons" as follows: "This guy apparently likes Physical Graffiti, so I'll play another song from that album for him." But wait! There are 15 songs on Physical Graffiti. I chose one of them ("Custard Pie") to start my music for the day. That leaves 14 others, and iTunes chose the very one ("The Rover") that I was thinking of. Unless iTunes can read my mind—let's not go there—it had no way of knowing this. So, at a minimum, there was a one-in-14 chance that a second Led Zeppelin song would be "The Rover," and that's what came up.
Freaky Saturday. How freaky, I will leave for you to decide. Even John Sullivan will have to admit that it's a bit freaky.
Addendum: Here, as your reward (punishment?) for reading all this, is "The Rover":
