Philanthropy as a license to behave badly

I have had many posts about really awful wealthy people (the Sackler family and Jeffrey Epstein being noted examples) using philanthropy to cover over the stain of their actions and enable them to act like they are pillars of the community. The assumption is that these acts of generosity are after-the-fact attempts at covering up their ill-gotten gains or their evil acts and ingratiating themselves into society.

But Patricia Illingworth, a professor of ethics, writes that the problem is even worse and that the very act of philanthropy may actually give these people a sense that they have the right to behave badly, something she refers to as ‘moral licensing’.
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Nice little brain teaser

I came across this nice little puzzle that I got from the Quora website from someone named Alejandro Jenkins who said that he cannot recall where he first heard or read about it. In its essentials it is easy to state and understand even though, as seems to be the tradition with such puzzles, a story is constructed around it.

The two leading mathematicians in the kingdom, Alice and Bob, have run afoul of their tyrannical king. Rather than behead them outright, the king decides to prolong their misery by locking them in separate dungeons, so that any communication between them is impossible.

Each morning, a guard is to enter the corresponding dungeon and toss a coin so that the prisoner in that dungeon can see the outcome. Then the prisoner will be asked to guess the outcome of the coin toss in the other dungeon (i.e., Alice has to guess the outcome of the toss witnessed by Bob, and Bob has to guess the outcome of the toss witnessed by Alice). If at least one of the two prisoners guesses correctly, they will live to see another day. Otherwise they will be put to death forthwith.

It would seem that the mathematicians are doomed. But as they are being led away in chains Alice and Bob manage to confer for a brief moment and they agree on a strategy that will delay their execution indefinitely. What is the strategy?

What I like about this puzzle is that there is no trickery involved, no hidden meanings and the like. It is a straightforward logic puzzle. Jenkins provides the solution but for some reason, I cannot deep link to it and so will wait a day to let people discuss it in the comments if they so choose and then post the solution in the comments.

“No malarkey”? Really?

I am a certified old guy. Just for the fun of it, I sometimes show my children how in touch I am with the younger generation by using slang that is way out of date, such as ‘far out’, ‘groovy’, ‘dig’, and ‘hip’. But even I would not stoop to using the word ‘malarkey’ and it baffles me that Joe Biden, already fighting an image that he is utterly out of touch with current times, would actually use it in his campaign slogan.

Conan O’Brien talks to Biden’s communications person as to the wisdom of this decision.

But maybe this might work. Young people may not know that this is a very old term and may think he has coined new slang and that would make him a trendsetter.

I can’t believe I’m defending Donald Trump

I was intrigued by this news item.

One of President Donald Trump’s most common responses to intelligence briefings is to doubt what he’s being told, former Deputy Director of Intelligence Susan Gordon said Tuesday.

Gordon, an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, said Monday that Trump had two typical responses to briefings.

“One, ‘I don’t think that’s true,'” Gordon told the Women’s Foreign Policy Group.

“The one is ‘I’m not sure I believe that,'” Gordon continued, “and the other is the second order and third order effects. ‘Why is that true? Why are we there? Why is this what you believe? Why do we do that?’ Those sorts of things.”

The article implied that Trump was asking these questions because he had got information from other sources that he liked and trusted more that went counter what the intelligence briefers were telling him.

In my own teaching of science, I had two goals: (1) to enable students to sufficiently understand (not necessarily believe) the scientific consensus on the topic we were learning so that they could use it to solve problems; and (2) to get in the habit of reflexively asking themselves the questions: What do I believe? Why do I believe it? What is the evidence for it? What is the counter-evidence against it?

I felt that these two things enabled them to function is the world of science as well as building up necessary critical thinking skills that would stand them in good stead in all areas of their lives.

So I cannot fault Trump for asking the intelligence officials such questions. Of course, it is not clear if he was actually seeking information in order to make better judgments or whether he was merely finding a way to reject conclusions he did not find congenial. Given what we know about him, the latter is likely but still the asking of such questions is a good thing.

The Democratic party’s problematic foreign policy positions

The Democratic party does not have a good record on foreign policy. The party’s establishment has long adopted hawkish interventionist polices rationalized by asserting humanitarian motivations that have doubtful validity. As Alex Kane writes, one notable feature has been the subservience of the party leadership to the dictates of the Israel lobby, even though the grass roots of the party and progressive Jewish groups have long since distanced themselves from it. In the party leadership, we see an abundance of so-called PEPs (Progressive Except for Palestine). Three powerful Democratic congresspersons Eliot Engel, Jerome Nadler, and Nia Lowey have been instrumental in advancing the lobby’s agenda but all three are encountering progressive challengers in the upcoming primaries.
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Post-election plans for the NHS

Given the current polling, it looks like the Conservative party might win an outright majority in the December 12 general election. If so, Brexit will almost surely pass in some form or other, leading to turmoil in the near future.

But I want to look at another major issue and that is the future of the National Health Service. It is widely assumed that Boris Johnson will put NHS privatization on the table as part of a bilateral trade deal with the US. Donald Trump has said in the past that he wants this.
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So much for editorial freedom

Much of the major media in the US is privately owned, by individuals, families, or corporations. These media love to insist that they have complete editorial freedom and that the owners do not exert any pressure on them as to what to write about and how. That is of course rubbish. In cases like Fox News, the owner’s wishes are explicit and manifestly followed. But in less overtly propagandistic outlets, editorial control by the owners is exercised more subtly. The editors are selected because their views conform to those of the owners, and that process filters all the way down the line.

But on some occasions, if the issue is important enough to the owner, even that thin mask of editorial independence is ripped away and the owner gives direct orders as to what the editorial line should be. We see that with billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s entry into the presidential race. He is the owner of Bloomberg News and he has made it very clear that his outlet should not criticize him. In an effort to retain a shred of credibility as a news organization, the editor says that they will also refrain from investigating other Democratic presidential candidates.

I feel sorry for the reporters at Bloomberg News. It is easy for outsiders to say that they should quit. I am sure that many are looking for other jobs where the control is less overt but the job market in media is tight.

Why I distrust US media coverage of foreign countries

(I came across this old blog post of mine from 2005 before I moved to FtB and thought I would repost it because it may explain why I am so skeptical of the way that the US media covers events in other countries. I have edited it slightly because I cannot help editing.)

In July 1983, I lived through a major upheaval in Sri Lanka where rampaging mobs raged through the streets looking for the homes and businesses and members of the minority Tamil community, killing and destroying everything in their path, with the government and the police just standing by doing little or nothing. There was strong speculation that the government had actually instigated and guided the events to serve their own political agenda, but since the government itself was doing the subsequent investigation, one should not be surprised that nothing came of it.
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Isn’t regular football brutal enough?

American football is a brutal game and so it should not be surprising that it occasionally erupts into outright violence. This feature was on display recently when Myles Garrett, a player for the Cleveland Browns, yanked off the helmet of an opposing player and repeatedly beat him on the head with it until he was restrained by other players. As is often the case there were events that led up to this assault but it was still egregious by any standards. In fact, yanking out a player’s helmet can be very dangerous because the neck is violently jerked. He has been suspended indefinitely but it made me wonder at what point this kind of on-field violence moves into a territory where the perpetrator is subject to legal prosecution.
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Using anti-Semitism against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party

The UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has leveled charges against the Labour party that it has a serious problem of anti-Semitism within its ranks and that its leader Jeremy Corbyn and the top leadership have not done enough to combat it. Under the surface is the implication that Corbyn himself is an anti-Semite. Corbyn has responded.

Speaking the following morning, Corbyn said a future Labour government would be “the most anti-racist government you’ve ever seen”. He said: “Because that is what I’ve spent my whole life doing, fighting against racism, and I will die fighting against racism.”

He said he had made it clear that antisemitism is wrong. “Our party did make it clear when I was elected leader, and after that, that antisemitism is unacceptable in any form in our party or our society and did indeed offer its sympathies and apologies to those who had suffered,” he said.

Corbyn, just like Bernie Sanders in the US, has been a lifelong campaigner against racism and for human rights. But both have recognized the injustices suffered by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government and called for giving them the rights they deserve and it is this stance that has alarmed the Israel lobby in the UK and the US.
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