An Education

1. We watched the movie An Education this weekend, and I thought it was very good. I want to say a few things about it, but it will ruin the movie. Everyone watch the movie this week and I'll blog about it next week.
2.  One more thing about a conflict of visions (for now, anyway). I think it kind of informs the Public Choice theory I was talking about two post ago (the outcomes of elections being mostly random). One of Boudreax's points in that podcast is that political candidates are a combination of different positions, such that any politician you vote for is likely to hold a number of positions you don't support. And you cannot desegregate the positions; you have to compromise and pick the candidate that best represents your thoughts, taking the good with the bad. But one thing I think does help the situation is that people more or less fall into two camps. They have either a constrained vision (Republican) or an unconstrained vision (Democrat).  I think this undercuts Boudreaux's point because even though when we vote we have to choose a bundle of positions, Sowell's point is we are actually very likely to have preferences that strongly align with one of two bundles.
3. Let me see if this situation strikes you as a paradox like it did me. In the church we can get baptized if we are accountable, but there is no need if you are not accountable. In fact, you may not be permitted to be baptized if you are not accountable. But of course, if you were never accountable--say you are mentally handicapped--then that is no drawback because you are not responsible for your sins. But what if you are accountable, but then become unaccountable? Well, you probably can't get baptized can you, because baptism is a covenant, and you have to enter by choice, but you are not capable of making that choice. But you also are still responsible for your sins. It's kind of a catch 22--your accountable for your sins, but you can't do anything about them. Well, the one safety valve on this scenario is that once you actually die, a baptism for the dead can be performed for you. So you own body can't be baptized, but a surrogate's can. It all works out, but it's kind of strange, that you have to die so that someone else can be baptized for you, and then you can choose to accept that baptism in the after-life, as opposed to just getting baptized yourself and choosing later.
4. You can read some of my thoughts on using U.S. military power, here. And you can comment on this post, if you don't want to comment at B v. E.
5. It's getting late, but I still wanted to write something about vouchers. This study could be better (click through for a summary), although this reply makes some good points. I initially felt a huge let down. Based on first principles, it seemed to me any school choice program had to improve education. On further reflection here are few thoughts on why that doesn't seem to be the case or on what the study might mean:
1. Education has improved but we may not be measuring how it has improved.
2. Surrounding public schools may be competing for students, so an overall improvement in the education of students in the area may be a result of competition, with no significant variance between the quality of public and private schools.
3. Home and family environment are obviously the most important factors in education. Maybe vouchers improve education, but perhaps the effect of a modest or even significant increase in school quality is simply drowned out by other factors playing into education,  like home, family and friends. (I did, however,  kind of think that giving parents some control over where their children went to school would encourage parents to be more involved.)
4. School vouchers don't improve school quality. Suppose for a second that vouchers make absolutely no difference in education. Well that means they haven't hurt education. And now parents have a choice. It seems to me like giving people a choice, even one that doesn't make much of a difference, is still a good thing. It could make a difference down the road? And it at least makes parents feel better about the education their kids are getting. (Or is that just deception?)

Potpourri

1. Prediction: the IPad will bomb. I think it has a couple fatal flaws: 1. no flash support, 2. no keyboard, and 3. no device to hold it up. One of the great things about a laptop is you can put it on your lap and adjust the angle of the screen and get a good, hands-free view of the screen. 4. No gray-scale screen. The Kindle screen I think makes is better for people who want something like the IPad for reading. 5. Not as portable as the IPhone. most people will think they're covered with their IPod Touch/IPhone. Could be wrong, but this is what my gut tells me.
2. Did you see Superman Returns? I just watched it again recently. It seemed to me that the story was a dramatization of the gospels. First, Superman goes off for several years by himself, to investigate his destroyed planet. Something similar to Christ's fasting, or maybe the unaccounted for time before his ministry begins. When he returns, Lois tells superman that the world doesn't need a "savior," but it clearly does in the form of Superman. Superman proceeds save a number of people miraculous for some period. In the mean time, Lex Luther creates the crystal island in the middle o the ocean which threatens to destroy almost all humanity. Superman knows he is going towards the kryptonite that Lex Luther has, but he intentionally submits to his own death.  He is killed by Lex Luther on the crystal island, even stabbed in the side, before falling into the water to his "death." He is pulled from the water and his wounds are tended to by Lois for some time. He then returns to the water only to emerge to purge the world from sin crystal island. It's not a perfect analogy, but to me, the parallels are striking.
3. Has there ever been a more uneven movie than Up? I wish the whole movie was like the first 20 minutes, but that probably would not keep 4 year-olds interested.
4. My new most hated company is Samsung. I bought a Blu-ray player for Christmas, and it worked fine except that it never would connect to the internet, despite saying "Wireless LAN ready" on the box. I finally broke down and read the instructions, and it said I needed a USB wireless card. If a Blue-ray player can't connect to the internet immediately it's not "wireless ready" it's "wireless compatible" at best. So I bought the cheapest wireless card I could find, not really knowing how it would work with the system. After trying that a bit, and not getting it to work, I went online to discover that, to get the wireless to work, you have to buy a Samsung proprietary "dongle" (no really), and that dongle costs 70 bucks, or almost the cost of the Blu-ray player itself. So I took the player back. I think I'm just going to get a PS3, mostly for Blu-ray, although I'll probably play it some. I do like the aesthetic of Samsung products, though.
5. I love this short post about the Alito-Obama Citizens United confrontation. I wish supreme court justices like Alito would do more media. I can only see it helping. I also like this Althousian post. Every once in a while, between photo blogging, and other semi-serious posts, Althouse criticism someone witheringly. You make a lot of enemies with posts like that. I think I care too much about being liked to write posts like that.
6. In an effort not to insist upon the last word, I'm not going to post any more comments over at B v. E on the last two blog posts (Avatar, and Education). I do have more thoughts about education. Brett, the reasons I used economic analysis on this education question, is that I essentially view the problem as an economic one: we have a finite amount of resources (money and time); how do we best allocate those resources in the classroom? Do we teach math, science, dance, psychology, self-help, curiosity, architecture? When you have so many alternatives and each person derives different utility from different options, you need a market responsive to individual preferences.
7. I just got a copy of No Country for Old Men, and I'll re-post on it when I'm done reading (which could be a while).