RedStateEclectic

Hormesis versus Leviathan

Radiation hormesis hypothesis compared with LNT and linear model with threshold. In all 3 graphs, x-axes represent radiation dose and y-axes represent magnitude of health effect. Zero-equivalent point (ZEP) represents level of health effect in absence of radiation. The quadratic model of Figure 1 approximates threshold graph of this figure. A threshold model would imply no effects of radiation up to certain level, after which risk rises linearly with dose. The radiation hormesis model, in contrast, shows beneficial effect at low levels of exposure as it drops below ZEP.

Dr. Calabrese presents his (highly generalisable) findings about the nature of dose response in the low dose zone, discovering that longstanding "scientific" standards underlying regulatory rulings systematically ignore the true reaction pattern, thereby introducing massive bias. The key insight presented by Dr. Calabrese seems to me to consist in the fact that rather than following a linear pattern, dose responses are characterised by two phases such that at low doses they may act in a stimulating way, only to display inhibiting effects at higher doses - (hence the terms "biphase" or "hormetic"). Low doses of radiation for instance may stimulate healthy reactions in the human body, thus actually improving their well-being, while causing harm only at higher doses.

For more on what hormesis is, consult my post Hormesis and Regulation Failure. See also Hiroshima Victims Live Longer.

 

The Economics of Lushness

In a strand of his argument, Matt Ridley seems to imply that man-made global warming is of a significant magnitude. Which puzzles me, as the evidence available to me seems to suggest that anthropogenic contributions are minute compared to non-human drivers of CO2 emissions. Be that as it may, I like the gist of the presentation:

 

The source is the excellent PERC - Property and Environment Research Center.

The Life and Death of Democracy...

...is the title of a book by John Keane that I am reading in substantial extracts, at the moment. It is an exceedingly well written, thoughtful and inspiring book.

I have never been an anarcho-capitalist, but as a user of the vast resources - articles and ebooks - available from the LvMI, I have been tempted into ignoring alternatives to the often simplistic and enclosed views of the Rothbardians, especially concerning the state, democracy, and a number of topics in the field of economics. 

Presently, I am looking into the issue of democracy, and have made this diary entry to encourage me to pursue the below intuition - and it turns out, Keane's book provides material that confirms the hunch:

Freedom and democracy form a tense relationship. Isonomia, equality before the law – that precursor and beginning of the rule of law – gives rise to a desire to further strengthen this firewall against tyrannical domination: democracy is added to it, as a means of controlling rulers and permitting a bloodless change of government.

Why is it that there seems to be a continuing affinity that ties together the rule of law, a comparatively high degree of personal and economic freedom, and democracy?

A vague suspicion: practises characteristic of the rule of law, personal and economic freedom are protected by a subset and intersecting set of rights equally requisite to maintain democracy. In order to keep democracy alive one mustn’t undermine these common rights. Though democracy may be popular because it opens up options to act in ways that can be directed against freedom, still continued effectiveness of democracy is wedded to the need to respect rights that lend a certain robustness to freedom, too.

 

Coolidge

Amity Shlaes just published a biography of Coolidge.

“When in 1929 the thirtieth president climbed onto a train at Union Station to head back home to Massachusetts after his sixty-seven months in office, the federal government was smaller than when he had become president in 1923.”  Why, you may ask, do we not know more of this man, this American leader?

The source.

 

See also Ships Not Shops, and Amity Shlaes on the Forgotten Man ...

Reims

I am looking forward to a day trip to Reims, to celebrate the birthday of a very dear friend.

 

A Survey of Law - Simple Rules for a Complex World

Image credit.

Richard Epstein is a rich source of insight and inspiration for the classical liberal who seeks to tread the middle ground between 

(1) F.A.Hayek's highly abstract theory of the rule of law - valuable in its own right, but often of limited use in discussing concrete issues - and

(2) the broad and uncertain schemes of law attributed to a social utopia void of the state, the attendant summary denouncement of legal arrangements and the denial of freedom in contemporary societies with pervasive state structures, or

(3) today's predominant legal positivism based on the assumption that the state has a superior problem solving capability compared to all other societal agents and is therefore entitled to practice unrestrained discretion in its capacity as the the sole legitimate source of all law.

 

Recidivism

I just bumped into him again - Theodore Dalrymple. Electronically, that is. We first met in Bodrum, Turkey, last September. His lovely French wife was the first person I got to talk to in the hotel's luscious garden, after I had arrived late and hungry and glad to find myself amongst a crowd of diners. Soon Theodore appeared, back from a buffet prowl, I seem to remember. We were also joined by the historian Professor Norman Stone, formerly of Oxford university, who now teaches at universities in Istanbul and Ankara. With the three of them, I spent a wonderfully convivial evening of a British and a pronounced academic flavour. I would be only too happy to fall into relapse.

A retired prison doctor and psychiatrist, Theodore writes:

I was on my way a few days ago to France via the Eurostar, the train that goes from the center of London to the center of Paris via the Channel Tunnel, and bought Le Figaro, the French newspaper of conservative posture, to read on the way. Its lead story was about the plans of the French Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, to suppress short prison sentences in favor of such penalties as probation, community service and the wearing of electronic bracelets, to release substantial numbers of prisoners before their prison sentences were completed, to give future prisoners the automatic right of release after serving two thirds of their prison sentences, and to remove certain crimes (unspecified) from the penal code. My heart sank; we’ve tried all that in Britain, with results that only an intellectual with years of training to prevent him from being able to see what is in front of his nose would or could find surprising.

The entire article.

Letter to Charles Darwin

The older I get, the more I cherish the experience of getting closer to the truth by being wrong at a considerable rate.

The amazing thing about this story, Charles, is that not a jot of it was known even when I was a boy, let alone you. There is something almost miraculously exciting about the way we can recover and relive the past adventures of the planet in glorious detail thanks to modern science.

You once wrote, in a letter to your sister from the Falkland Islands in 1834, of the pleasure of "finding a fine group of fossil bones, which tell their story of former times with almost a living tongue." Today, almost 180 years later, the fossils, isotopes and spores not only speak softly of slow and gradual changes but cry out the story of a violent and truly terrible catastrophe that once transformed life on Earth.

Read the articles here and here.

Edmund Burke and the Woman on the A-Train

"The cloudy sky is more grand than the blue," said Edmund Burke, according to the image source.

Following up on Laura's post Conservatives and Libertarians: Uneasy Cousins, I offer the lucid - and to me highly inspiring - below lecture on the great "conservative-libertarian" thinker and politician Edmund Burke, delivered by Ian Shapiro, Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

I have always neglected "my Burke". Though, I once had a go at Conor Cruise O'Brien's magisterial biography. At the time, however, I was insufficiently prepared to cope with the onslaught of historic ideas and circumstances jumping at me from the tome.

Shapiro's presentation certainly is a paragon of clarity and concentration.

 

You Can Always Tell Them Not To Jump

Image credit.

The commercial was shot prior to ... see the below news item.

 

They may have been just a little too eager to jump.

Kaupthing was one of three Icelandic banks that failed at the height of the global credit crunch, with debts equivalent to more than 10 times Iceland’s gross domestic product. The country was forced to seek a multibillion-dollar bail-out from the International Monetary Fund.

The source.

See also Iceland.