Hm, it’s now three years since I dropped out of alt.fan.cecil-adams in a bit of a snit. I left because my writing there had been increasingly sour – whether because of my returning depression or because of the insidious influence of the group’s chief troll, I cannot say – and I did not like what my persona was becoming.
I regret that I went without saying why.

I was recently tempted to buy a bumpersticker that said

Don’t believe everything you think

Daniel Webster:

It is hardly too strong to say that the [US] Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.

Michael Kinsley:

We can add gay marriage to the short list of controversies – abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty – that are so frozen and ritualistic that debates about them are more like kabuki performances than intellectual exercises. Or we can think outside the box.

What a charming way to put it. (I’d add nuclear power to the list.) The solution offered is not original with Kinsley, but I am pleased to see it get more publicity. (Link from Sasha Volokh.)

I don’t agree on much with my old schoolmate Eric Rasmusen, a newcomer to the weblog craze; but we’re similarly disturbed over Lawrence v. Texas.

Scalia . . . probably would vote against the Texas sodomy law as a citizen. But as a judge, he is offended when other judges violate their oath of office and pretend the law says something it does not. That kind of behavior is serious, and calls for a serious response. If the President were to ignore the Constitution and say he was going to eliminate the Texas sodomy law, we would, I hope, impeach the President. Why, then, do we tolerate a Supreme Court doing clearly unconstitutional things?

Most, or at least much, of the world’s trouble can be blamed on the notion that governments ought to do every well-meaning thing that they can do. While I’m pleased (unlike Eric, I assume) at the immediate result, i.e. one bad law fewer, I don’t think it was any of the US judiciary’s business.

The increasing concentration of power is a disturbing trend, even – I might say especially – when it happens under the flag of a good cause. The power to overrule Texan sodomy policy is the power to overrule Californian marijuana policy.

Having said all that I suppose I ought to go read the decision. Who knows, I could even change my mind.

The earliest known source of the “turtles all the way down” anecdote – variously told about William James, Bertrand Russell, T H Huxley and others – is a dissertation written in or about 1969, according to this page. (Cited by Alice Faber in alt.folklore.urban.)

Ever since reading Greg Egan’s novel Diaspora (1998), part of which takes place in a five-dimensional universe, I’ve occasionally tried to imagine aspects of life in higher spaces (which is tricky, as I lack the knack of visualizing in such spaces).
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