Let’s replace the 2nd Amendment

The Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding gun control in Washington, DC, has returned this issue to the headlines. A central disagreement, as usual, concerns how to interpret the Second Amendment (the full text of which is at bottom). Part of the problem with this amendment is that it seems internally contradictory. It justifies the uninfringeable rights of “the people” in terms of the necessity of “a well-regulated militia,” but the connection between the two is not clear. Another problem is that it addresses gun-ownership rights in terms of “the security of a free State,” (italics added) when most – but not all - of the debate over gun-control laws these days centers on personal defense, individual liberty, and hunting. Finally, it is not clear whether the amendment limits only federal powers or those of the states, too.

Given these ambiguities, why not replace the amendment altogether? Let’s have a national debate and referendum on a clearer amendment that will address the central point of contention – who, if anyone, can legally control the use and ownership of guns.

Are Teachers Productive?

A recent UN report has highlighted the average American worker’s productivity – about $8000 higher per year than the runners up in Ireland. That’s nice for the average Americans, I suppose, but what about me? I’m pretty sure that my productivity last year as a high-school teacher wouldn’t show up in that UN report. Was I simply an economic parasite?

Two Grades for One Class? Sweet!

What do grades in high-school classes reflect? Knowledge? Learning? Effort? The truth is that the grading criteria differ from class to class and, with some teachers, from student to student. As a result, parents, employers, colleges, and the students themselves inevitably misinterpret students’ transcripts. And students have insufficient incentive to focus on both of the qualities that people commonly assume are being reported: knowledge and productive behavior. I propose that schools issue separate grades for each.

Gods’ pets?

While mucking around with my cats’ lives and seeing that they faintly comprehend that I enact my will on their universe, I often imagine that they see me as like unto a god. Will I feed them, let them out on the balcony, abandon them for several days … ? They undoubtedly notice that I exist in their world but that I also frequent a separate realm beyond theirs; I call it “outside” and “work.” To them, I must be awesome.

Here, then, is my hypothesis: Perhaps the roots of some religious beliefs lie in early believers’ imagination of how putatively less-conscious beings around them – such as domesticated animals – saw their relationship to humans. These incipient theologians might have taken inferences such as mine regarding my cats’ beliefs as analogous to humans’ relationship to other forces. In GRE fashion: ’(semi-)domesticated entity is to human as human is to other entity.’