tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19889205537912733262024-03-13T18:45:53.372-04:00Dan Cole's Dubious MemorabiliaThis blog provides a relatively private space for my ideas and opinions, so I don't feel the need to impose them on my FB friends. My interests include music, literature, scholarly research (mostly involving law & social sciences), academia, sports, politics and bad puns. I never intend to give offence to anyone (except racists and anti-Semites). Comments are moderated to exclude spam and ensure civility.Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-46480790316172681562023-01-19T15:42:00.005-05:002023-01-19T15:43:13.904-05:00Back in So.Cal. 40 Years Later<p>After the AALS conference in San Diego, I drove up to Los Angeles to spend a week with old friends I had not seen for more than 30 years. Two of them were my professors from Occidental College: Alan Chapman and Hal Lauter, Alan now teaches grad-level music theory courses at USC and hosts the morning program on its classical music station, KUSC, which is where I visited with him. Alan is as youthful as ever; still writing fun tunes and performing on occasion, sometimes with his entire family (btw, his son is a phenomenal mallet player). Hal Lauter taught me philosophy all the way through college, becoming my first intellectual mentor. He's 93 now but in great physical and mental condition.</p><p>Izabela was with me for the first few nights in LA. We stayed in Pasadena, in part because I remembered the town better than most other places in the LA basin. During my senior year of college, I had lived just up Lake St. in Altadena. Seeing that old house again brough back a lot of sweet memories. Izabela and I managed to get to the Norton-Simon museum, the Huntington Library, Museum and Gardens, and the campus of Occidental College. I was very happy to see that, despite inevitable changes, the Oxy campus <i>felt </i>as it did when I was a student there more than 40 years ago. </p><p>The morning after we arrived in Pasadena, we had brunch with my college roommate for two years, Jim Kerman and his wife Cathy. I don't have enough adjectives to describe what it was like being "Kermo's" roommate, so I'll just use one, <i>awesome</i>. We actually became friends when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. A group of us - the "Late-night Munch Bunch" - included, in addition to Jim and me, Shelly Williams, Deirdre Mulligan, and Gail Fiattarone. Gail stayed a close friend of ours throughout college, but Jim and I lost touch with her after graduation. </p><p>After a couple of days, Izabela grabbed a flight to the Bay Area to visit an aunt in Walnut Creek and then flew down to Palm Springs to visit another aunt. After she left, I moved in with my other best friend from college, Peter Marston, who lives on the Western edge of Glendale, near Burbank. Peter is a professor of Communication Studies at Cal State Northridge. Unlike me, he still loves teaching and plans to do it until he drops. Also unlike me, he's never stopped writing, recording and performing music. His status in the LA pop-rock scene is at this point almost legendary. I stayed with him for four nights and it was so great to confirm just how much we were alike, but also how much we enjoyed disagreeing. Peter organized outings to a couple of great used-record stores, which created problems for me when I was packing to head home. We also visited the Grammy Museum at LA Live, had lunch with another college friend (and musician) Nate Haase, and had a memorable dinner at Jim Kerman's house in La Crescenta. </p><p>One day, Peter and I drove down to Coronado Island to spend some time playing music with another old friend, George Sanger. George is famous in the video game world for being one of the pioneers of video game music composition and production. I even recall seeing a Wall St. Journal profile of him several years ago. These days, he seems quite content living on the island in the house he grew up in with his wife Cindy. Having a chance to play some tunes with Peter and George again was pretty magical. The last time we had played together was at the Troubadour in LA in 1980. </p><p>I also had the chance, during the visit, to spend more than an hour catching up with another dear friend from college, Matt Walker, in his office at Disney Animation. Matt's Senior VP for music at Disney Imagineering, which means he's in charge of all music for Disney Animation, Pixar, and the theme parks. Matt was actually the first musician I got to know at Oxy. He and I were both in the orchestra for a production of Godspell our Freshman year. And we kept playing together after the production ended. He's a great pianist in nearly all genres, though he says he doesn't get to play as much as he would like these days.</p><p>Importantly, the conversations with my friends were only partly about our shared experiences 40 years ago. We also wanted to brief each other on the highlights (and some lowlights) of our lives since then, and to learn about how life is for us now. Despite the length of time apart from these guys, they were all so easy to talk with, as if we had never been apart at all. As we all grow older, these old friendships seem to have enhanced importance. At least, they do for me.</p><p>The final few days of my trip were spent in the Coachella Valley with Izabela. In addition to visiting with her aunt and her uncle (who is unwell), we had a chance to revisit old haunts. Izabela and I met in Palm Springs in late 1988 and we were formally married in Palm Desert in 1990 (after an informal ceremony in a judge's chambers in Palo Alto a few months earlier). My grandparents had been wintering in Palm Springs since I was a teenager, and I would sometimes get to visit them there. Then, my mother and step-father moved to Palm Desert in the early 1980s, and remained there for about 10 years before moving to Scottsdale, AZ. While I was in law school ('84-'87) I would spend my summers and holidays in their house. It was there that I recouped for a month after donating a kidney in 1984. It was my favorite of our family houses. I thought it had been demolished long ago. So, it was a wonderful surprise to find it unchanged on this visit. I have so many memories of the place, mostly good ones. </p><p>All in all, it was a tremendous vacation. I planned to do no work at all during it, and for the first time in my adult life, I kept to that plan (after the AALS conference in San Diego, of course). The good it did me is immeasurable. And it wouldn't have happened if I were still teaching. Classes began in the law school on Jan. 11, and all my time up to then would have been spent on class preparation. Retirement has a lot to recommend it.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-58148158223274654742023-01-05T16:48:00.001-05:002023-01-05T16:48:22.436-05:00Association of American Law School 2022 Annual Meeting <p> I'm attending the AALS conference for the first time in at least a dozen years. I've never thought much of it as an academic conference. It's really more about networking, which is not in my skill set. I've come this time to serve as a mentor to younger environmental law scholars. They prepare papers and I provide them presumably valuable feedback. My friend and colleague Rob Fischman started this program several years ago. I also came because it provides another kind of bookend to my career. I used to attend nearly every year when I first started teaching, though the size of the conference and all the social events organized around it were anxiety-inducing. Usually, unless I had a presentation to make or was in another panel I found interesting, I would stay in my hotel room working. Eventually, I found smaller, more focused conferences (most of which were only partly related to law) to be more attractive and comfortable for me. I guess it's just another indication of how much of an errant law professor I've been.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-71011419204949938422022-12-26T14:12:00.002-05:002022-12-26T14:22:02.743-05:00Early Career Mentors<p>It's difficult to imagine that anyone makes a career in academia without at least one great mentor. I had some good teachers in high school, but none I would label "mentors." But after high school I was fortunate to find three real mentors -- one in college, one in law school at Lewis & Clark, and one at Stanford Law School. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6HuYsDKNE97_k-KewjlEUgy3_MBQ3i5berMIiWLhx_gtVKot3FHlKW3Gu3a5bdgzXgSPdEVGdyIbLgyEyqBS8cGi6Hd7LbgCXpJv5WLmg_mQjXcMEF5ou1HBUo4G8bkJyrpR-HQgrOtukbRNwJNVHHhFTx488kxHwVdNMZmDSokm361uUouNAk-70" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="316" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6HuYsDKNE97_k-KewjlEUgy3_MBQ3i5berMIiWLhx_gtVKot3FHlKW3Gu3a5bdgzXgSPdEVGdyIbLgyEyqBS8cGi6Hd7LbgCXpJv5WLmg_mQjXcMEF5ou1HBUo4G8bkJyrpR-HQgrOtukbRNwJNVHHhFTx488kxHwVdNMZmDSokm361uUouNAk-70" width="205" /></a></div>The first was <b>Herman "Hal" Lauter</b>, a philosophy professor at Occidental College. I first met Hal in The Collegium, an immersive first-year program I was fortunate to get into. Instead of taking various freshman-level courses, students in the Collegium spent the entire year diving deeply into the liberal arts. Hal was the faculty leader of the small group within The Collegium to which I was assigned. From that time through my senior year, Hal was my advisor and friend. [I'm happy to say he's still my friend; I'm planning to visit him in So.Cal. in the new year.] The depth and breadth of his knowledge and his contagious excitement for learning and discovery were so impressive, I thought he must be some kind of genius. Before I met him, I never had any academic pretensions or predispositions (so far as I can recall). Hal, more than anyone else, taught me how to think and inspired my love of the scholar's life. Not that I thought at the time that I had any chance of living that life. I though one had to be intellectually brilliant to do that, and I showed no signs of that. Several other faculty members at Oxy reinforced my admiration for professors, including Marcia Homiak (who taught me Aristotle), Bill Neblett (who taught me Popper), and Alan Chapman (who taught me music theory and advanced pinball). <p></p><p>When I moved back to Chicago to pursue a MA in Philosophy at the U of C, I had some great profs, including Leonard Linsky, Bill Wimsatt, Alan Donegan, Donald Davidson and Stephen Toulmin. But I left after a year, having completed my MA and decided not to pursue a PhD. So, I cannot claim any of them as a mentor. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwBQfUSeDnMGP4XeOIYyys4yzMF2wqXifwHOMGdB7chzGXic1CptHRAcF5dBqtMegI5fFCnXjw2BYJj2tMX7-GBZBl48lRCG_a_kh53B29ZAcwy1LyN_PH2zxt1djqxCAOMmOtPolLxsc-mTNBLOZOUggsGPuRrP3erD4bBO1XIp4cImiLy_-ekwIZ" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwBQfUSeDnMGP4XeOIYyys4yzMF2wqXifwHOMGdB7chzGXic1CptHRAcF5dBqtMegI5fFCnXjw2BYJj2tMX7-GBZBl48lRCG_a_kh53B29ZAcwy1LyN_PH2zxt1djqxCAOMmOtPolLxsc-mTNBLOZOUggsGPuRrP3erD4bBO1XIp4cImiLy_-ekwIZ" width="240" /></a></div>I found my next mentor at Lewis & Clark Law School, <b>Mike Blumm</b>. It was Mike who first got me interested in environmental and natural resources law. I cannot recall how many courses in those areas I took at L&C, but it was several more than the vast majority of law schools offer even today. Most importantly, Mike taught me how to write well, and not just for a legal scholar. I wrote a lot of papers for him, and he kicked my ass on every one. At the same time, he instilled in me a love for scholarship to such an extent that I published four law journal articles before I completed my J.D. Mike has been a constant source of support and friendship throughout my career. And he's still among the most productive scholars I know. As I'm retiring, he's still going strong at L&C. I also have to give some kudos to Jim Huffman, who in some ways was Frack to Mike's Frick. They were (and still are) close friends, who agree on very little. And it was a great experience for me to hang out with them together, as well as separately. In fact, the example they set made me realize that I could have an academic career, if I played my cards right and got very lucky. The bad news was the L&C is not Harvard or Yale. The one thing going for me was that L&C was among the top schools for environmental law. I was never going to land an academic job as a generalist; but I might eventually get on the radar of schools looking to hire in environmental law specifically.<p></p><p>When I completed my JD at Lewis & Clark, I had a standing offer to work at EPA in Washington, as a lawyer in the Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances. I wasn't keen to accept the offer. After all, it was the Reagan Administration. So, I was looking around for something else to do, and landed an offer to become an Instructor, teaching Legal Research & Writing (LR&W) at Santa Clara Univ. Law School. I had a long talk with Mike about which job would better position me for a teaching career, The conventional wisdom for someone on the legal academic-track is to spend at least a couple of years in practice. But Mike told me, "I've always thought the best way to prepare for a teaching career was to teach." Made sense to me. So, I moved to Santa Clara, where I taught for two years and published a couple more articles. In my second year, I directed the LR&W program, having written up my own training manual. </p><p>The biggest piece of luck I had came during my second and final year at Santa Clara. Stanford, just down the road, was advertising for LR&W instructors. At one point, in the Spring of '89, I got a call from the head of the search committee notifying me that one of their LR&W instructors had belatedly decided to leave after her first year in the two-year program, and I was next in their ranking of candidates. This stroke of good fortune had three aspects to it: it allowed me to avoid unemployment; it allowed me to pursue graduate legal studies while teaching full-time; and the value of the Stanford name cured one of several weaknesses on my resume. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCWAcbKECBHlyBdzGxJCO_praqHo4vV0nFZUgIbBdPcNMjYdCRf1HNg6Mvpcozghfn6vtSSMLvtQKLQlrS9C3ijcKc72CaDwczktyJ118iEImfJ4NKMJRmcCu4Njea88F_uZ9bCXmOHeoYkVsKJ1N-kcXZE5nA2OEoI10l-nx7zIBwxu3ySq_-tZr6" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="440" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCWAcbKECBHlyBdzGxJCO_praqHo4vV0nFZUgIbBdPcNMjYdCRf1HNg6Mvpcozghfn6vtSSMLvtQKLQlrS9C3ijcKc72CaDwczktyJ118iEImfJ4NKMJRmcCu4Njea88F_uZ9bCXmOHeoYkVsKJ1N-kcXZE5nA2OEoI10l-nx7zIBwxu3ySq_-tZr6" width="240" /></a></div>It was at Stanford Law School (SLS) that I met my final academic mentor before permanently joining the professoriate, the famous legal history and Law & Society co-founder <b>Lawrence M. Friedman</b>. I first met Lawrence in the SLS faculty lounge at the inaugural meeting of the Graduate Law Students' Association to which Lawrence was the faculty liaison. It was the most memorable meeting of my life because the Loma Prieto earthquake of 1989 interrupted it. As the floor of the faculty lounge began to pitch and roll, I found myself under a table with my fellow grad. student, later colleague, and always friend Leslie Obiora, who kept repeating "I'm going back to Nigeria." Lawrence managed to keep everyone calm - well, as calm as possible in the circumstance.<p></p><p>I started meeting with Lawrence fairly regularly. I'm not sure what he saw in me, but I know what I saw in him - a model scholar, writer, teacher, and mensch. I cannot honestly say I learned as much directly from Lawrence as I did from Mike Blumm or Hal Lauter, but I did learn some important lessons that have stayed with me throughout my career. For example, after learning that Lawrence hardly ever spoke during his own law school education at the U. of Chicago, I decided I would not make students stand and recite in class. I also learned from Lawrence to avoid writing anything that was boring. I learned that not just from the experience of reading his books, but he actually told me that rule. He acknowledged that such a rule might actually impede my ability to publish in many law journals, which tended to view good writing with suspicion. But it certainly had not impeded his academic career. He also told me that he had never even submitted a paper to the Harvard Law Review. Simply put, I learned from Lawrence that all that should really matter for a scholar is the quality of their work, in form as well as function. I'm not a fair judge of the quality of my own work, but I've always tried at least to select research topics and questions not based on what might get me good placements in law journals, but based first and foremost on puzzles in which I am deeply interested. I research the hell out of them, in an effort to minimize the risk of error and maximize the chance of contributing to the stock of useful knowledge. Finally, I've worked hard to write clearly and in a reasonably engaging style. I can pretend to have Lawrence's writing ability, let alone his other qualities as a scholar and teacher, but I could hardly have found a better role model. He's also been extremely supportive throughout my career. Lawrence only retired a few years ago. I'm not in as close touch with him as I used to be, but I still try to touch base at least once a year. </p><p>So, you see, I had wonderful mentors on the way up. There is no question that I would have been in some other line of work these past 30+ years but for Hal, Mike and Lawrence. I was fortunate to receive additional mentoring from others during the course of my academic career, even after I got tenure. I'll write about them in a separate post.</p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-28254769680684432472022-12-22T19:31:00.001-05:002022-12-22T19:31:11.442-05:00This Blog Is About to Become a Lot More Active<p>Now that I've finished my final teaching option, prior to becoming an emeritus professor next year, I plan to begin posting reflections on my highly fortuitous academic career, including posts about mentors, great scholars I've known, the evolution of my research interests, and more. I don't expect any of it will be of great interest, let alone excitement, to anyone. It'll be more in the nature of author-based writing than reader-based writing. Stay tuned, or not (assuming anyone's out there). </p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-36172523181249759352022-10-02T11:49:00.000-04:002022-10-02T11:49:03.519-04:00Ostrom Workshop in Europe<p>I just returned home from a one-day conference in Berlin organized by the Ostrom Workshop (OW) at Indiana University's European Gateway center. Six OW representatives, including myself, met with more than 20 of our European "Affiliated Faculty" members from eight different European countries, as well as representatives of European organizations, some of which have long-standing formal or informal relations with the Workshop and a few, such as UNESCO and the Land Economy Department at University of Cambridge, with which the Workshop is hoping to develop working relations. The meetings, organized by OW Director Scott Shackelford and Asst. Director Emily Castle, were extremely important because, between 2015 and 2020, many of our European affiliates felt alienated from the Workshop (as did I) largely because of Scott's predecessor as Director who had ignored them in restructuring the Workshop, narrowing its focus, eroding connections with longstanding affiliates, and generally marginalizing the Ostroms and associated Bloomington School theories, methods, and projects. </p><p>My impression was that the meeting was a great success, though it might have been expanded over two or even three days to allow for more extensive conversation. In any case, the OW's European affiliates seemed genuinely grateful that we had come to "reconnect" with them. And the newly represented European organizations appreciated learning more about the OW, the Ostroms' approach to analyzing collective action problems, and the kind of interdisciplinary culture the OW's current management is working hard to reinstill. All participants seemed positively energized to start "working together" (to quote the title of one of Lin Ostrom's last books).</p><p>Personally, I knew more of the attendees than anyone else -- so many friends and colleagues with whom I've worked over the past couple of decades, in many cases as professor, mentor, and/or research collaborator. I have ongoing projects with several of them. My only regret is that I did not plan to stay in Europe for another week to spend more time working on those projects with them.</p><p>I am much more hopeful now than I was even a week ago about the OW's future prospects, though so much depends on the choice of the next Director after Scott steps down. IU needs to select someone who really understands the OW's values and culture, as well as foundational elements of the "Bloomington School" of Political Economy.</p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-78486803769737795162022-07-29T12:10:00.007-04:002022-07-31T10:11:56.829-04:00On Reconciliation (Briefly)<p>Growing older means reconciling oneself to many things: grey (or no) hair; declining athletic prowess; aches and pains that occur for no apparent reason; a daily pill box; and the inevitable. But growing older also provides opportunities for more positive forms of reconciliation, for instance, to one's own foibles and past mistakes. The most rewarding reconciliation might be with old friends who have been out of touch for a long time, not so much to rehearse (let alone relive) the past but to communicate about present conditions and concerns with people who share some of one's history and, therefore, a common frame of reference. Unfortunately, some old friends might not be open to reconciliation, whether for good reason or no reason at all. In that case, one must reconcile oneself to not reconciling, which can be a hard pill to swallow. </p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-65489032372970296042022-06-30T11:10:00.006-04:002022-07-04T11:09:09.629-04:00The Travesty of John Roberts and West Virginia v. EPA - A First Take<p> Make no mistake, the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling today in West Virginia v. EPA is every bit as outrageous as its decision to overrule Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case. For the first time in its history, the Court has (a) issued an advisory opinion - a legal ruling overturning a non-existent regulation; (b) manifestly misinterpreted the Clean Air Act to conclude that EPA has no authority to create incentives for fuel-switching to reduce air pollution; and (c) adopted for the first time the "major question doctrine, which basically overrules in all but name the Court's 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which had confirmed EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.</p><p>Immediately, this is a blow to US efforts, such as they are, to combat climate change using existing authorities. That's bad enough, but the implications for all federal efforts to protect public health and safety regulations should concern every American. </p><p>Whenever a new problem arises, the Court can now use the major questions doctrine to require Congress to enact a new statute before an agency (not just EPA) can take action. Even if Congress previously granted the agency broad regulatory authority in a prior statute, the Court's conservative majority can use the "major question doctrine" to strike down regulations, knowing that it will end any chance of regulation because of congressional gridlock. </p><p>But isn't the scope of the "major questions doctrine" limited? According to the concurrence by Justice Gorsuch (signed onto by Justice Alito), it is limited to (1) issues of "great 'political significance;'" (2) when agencies seek to "'regulate a significant portion of the national economy;'" (3) in the absence of "clear congressional authorization." The doctrine also applies when a federal agency regulations "intrude into an area that is the particular domain of state law." Gorsuch hastens to add that this this list might not be exhaustive. Perhaps I am overly jaded, but it seems to me that any regulatory effort a Supreme Court justice finds politically or ideologically objectionable can be said to have "great political significance." And there are not many substantive federal regulations that cannot be said to regulate a significant portion of the national economy, on a common definition of the word "significant." Meanwhile, whether or not any particular congressional authorization is sufficiently clear rather depends on how picky the justices choose to be. In relevant provisions, the Clean Air Act refers to "all pollutants" and "systems" of pollution control, but the majority in West Virginia v. EPA concluded that was not specific enough for EPA to issue regulations incentivizing (not mandating) fuel-switching. What if the Act had included this language: "EPA has discretion to regulate fuel inputs"? Would that have been sufficiently precise? Maybe, maybe not. It still doesn't include the phrase "fuel-switching." The bottom line is that the major questions doctrine, while taking discretion away from executive branch agencies, aggregates to Supreme Court justices a great deal of discretion to overturn regulations they simply do not like. So much for the rule of law.</p><p>Justice Roberts disserves special opprobrium for his transparent effort to elide the standing issue in the case by turning it into an issue of mootness. The fact of the matter is that no rule was presently in force, and no state or private petitioner suffered any harm from the Obama-era rule that the Court stayed (in another unprecedented move) back in 2016. Roberts maintained that states were harmed because the D.C. Circuit had repealed the Trump regulation, including that regulation's repeal of the Obama Clean Power Plan. Consequently, the Obama rule was back in effect. Except, it wasn't. At the Biden Administration's request, the DC Circuit did not reactivate it, and Biden announced that it would not resurrect the CPP. Consequently, the only harm to the states from Obama's Clean Power Plan was purely theoretical. There was no harm in fact - zero. Not even Justice Scalia would have had the stomach to find standing in this case. In fact, I have never seen so much deliberate obfuscation as Robert's employs in his majority opinion on the standing issue. </p><p>By the way, just how "major" was the CPP in terms of economic impact? Consider this: despite the fact that the rule never took effect, all of its goals were achieved by the market and more quickly than the regulation would have required. In hindsight at least, the rule seems completely insignificant, except as a matter of law, based on the opinions of six activist Supreme Court justices. </p><p>As a practical matter, the West Virginia decision obliterates the greatest advantages of sub-congressional rule-making, which are flexibility and speed. Congress can, on occasion, act quickly, as we have just seen on the issue of gun control. But that is exceptional. When the next pandemic comes around, how many people will have to die to spur Congress into action, so that agencies can take sensible actions to protect public health?</p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-90522586722538594672022-05-30T13:21:00.007-04:002022-07-08T18:36:43.330-04:00Where Many of My Publications May Be Found (click on text below the image)<p><br /></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcjldQY1_9mV1WAvipuAOJN1f5SreNmZxoZAmOasaSwUuNfZS68-R-mdshkOYd1eHVrbO5Op9bGmM43t1MzYwPLWg5mxhHVcnSo4cdeZd97Pbu2r0tWPxqDwwDd2zoW0jVv3djPI0iUrJ4Ts8VXDtJgMmBvfQymcH99_7i8gNanwUJeKoN8Cw7g0mH" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="253" data-original-width="980" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcjldQY1_9mV1WAvipuAOJN1f5SreNmZxoZAmOasaSwUuNfZS68-R-mdshkOYd1eHVrbO5Op9bGmM43t1MzYwPLWg5mxhHVcnSo4cdeZd97Pbu2r0tWPxqDwwDd2zoW0jVv3djPI0iUrJ4Ts8VXDtJgMmBvfQymcH99_7i8gNanwUJeKoN8Cw7g0mH=w640-h166" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Cole%22%20author_fname%3A%22Daniel%22&start=0&context=1823868&facet=" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Daniel Cole's Publications</span></a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p><p></p>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-91865672773818172942022-05-30T13:21:00.004-04:002022-05-30T13:21:45.209-04:00RIP John Clark<p> I recently learned that my old friend and co-author, John Clark, died in late January from COVID-related complications that he fought for over a year. </p><p>John was a super-interesting and smart guy. In 1990, he and his dissertation supervisor, Aaron Wildavsky, co-authored a terrific book, "The Moral Collapse of Communism: Poland as a Cautionary Tale." I read that book several months before I met John, who moved from Berkeley to take up a research position at the Hudson Institute, which was then headquartered in Indy. Somehow, he found out that I was working on a book about the failure of environmental protection under communism in Poland, and he called me one day. I failed to recognize his name, so when he told me about his research interests, I recommended he read his own book. We became fast friends (as did our spouses), and started working on projects together, most notably a conference that led to a jointly edited book, "Environmental Protection in Transition: Economic, Legal and Socio-Political Perspectives on Poland" (Ashgate 1998). </p><p>John also introduced me to my dear friend and frequent collaborator, Peter Grossman, shortly after he moved from Wash. U., in St. Louis to Butler U. in Indy. I have very fond memories of the reading group John, Peter and I started, along with a couple other economists then at Ball State Univ., Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok, both of whom had, like Peter, been students of Doug North. Eric later served as Chief Economist on G.W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisors and Director of Research at the RAND Corp, before joining the faculty at Claremont McKenna College. Alex is well-known as co-founder of the Marginal Revolution blog. He's been on the Econ faculty at George Mason Univ. since 1999 and has served as Director of the Independent Institute. </p><p>It was a wonderfully contentious reading group, with John mostly on the left, Peter and I more or less surrounding the center, and Alex outflanking Eric on the right. They all had great academic pedigrees; I was a mutt. I learned SO much from those guys, especially about economics and political-economy, which I never studied in school. </p><p>Several years later, after the Hudson Institute moved back East from Indy, John started working for other think tanks and policy organizations in Indy. Eventually, we lost touch. I think the last time I talked to John was at a conference I organized at the law school in Indy a couple years before I moved down to Bloomington. </p><p>John was a real intellectual. But he was also a very kind, unassuming, and gentle person. It was a real honor for me to be associated with him.</p><div><br /></div>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-2131342544693273802022-05-30T13:21:00.002-04:002022-05-30T13:21:24.891-04:00A Magical New DAC from Musetech<p>I've been quite content with my Mytek Brooklyn+ Digital-to-Analogue Converter. But I had read so many posts on audiophile websites praising a new DAC by a little-known Chinese company, Musetech (formerly LKS Audio), that I thought I might give it a try. Users referred to it as an "end-game" DAC, i.e., a piece of equipment they never expected to be surpassed in quality. Some even said that they had sold off $15K DACs in favor of Musetech's $3.3K MH-DA005. I'm always a bit suspicious of such glowing reviews, especially in the absence of reviews from well-respected audio journalists. In this case, however, I read so much enthusiasm, from several different quarters, that I decided it was worth the risk. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmOwuzBJkPP4wakdlKG868bqjkKHdbWE6sXUYK2GNgEDBn6nPztl27ut-OhyphenhyphenE2ko22LR2fKZrEMKFRVOhbKDx13S7qiEJvy0wobZrdsDC5S4HeCXVzgJdldp-JaT11DzoaX8WQmgNo-o/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmOwuzBJkPP4wakdlKG868bqjkKHdbWE6sXUYK2GNgEDBn6nPztl27ut-OhyphenhyphenE2ko22LR2fKZrEMKFRVOhbKDx13S7qiEJvy0wobZrdsDC5S4HeCXVzgJdldp-JaT11DzoaX8WQmgNo-o/w400-h400/image.png" width="400" /></a></div>Deciding to purchase the Musetech 005 turned out to be a lot easier than actually buying one. Musetech has no official presence in the US, and the few dealers who carry Musetech-LKS products have long been out of stock. I didn't want to order it from China, so I've been biding my time. Last week, a dealer in Northern Indiana, Midwest Audio, published an ad for a new one at usaudiomart.com, a highly reputable marketplace I've used in the past to buy and sell used equipment. The price was right, so I ordered the DAC.<p></p><p>To be honest, I didn't expect vast improvements over my Mytek Brooklyn +, which is a very, very good DAC, which was only a few hundred dollars less expensive than the Musitech. But, as soon as I plugged the Musetech into my system, even before it had a chance to warm up, I could hear big, positive improvements. Specifically, it is more detailed than the Mytek, but also a bit less bright and forward. The Mustech's soundstage is wider and deeper, but without any hint of the kind of distortion one sometimes hears in tube-based and R-2R-ladder DACs. Mustech uses two ESS Sabre 938Pro chips in its system, which one would expect to be better than the Brooklyn+'s pair of ESS Sabre 928 chips. But that's not the whole story. </p><p>Many audiophiles dislike (or at least dis-prefer) Delta-Sigma DACs, like the Mytek and the Musetech, which use are chip-based DACs. They prefer R-2R-ladder DACs, which use a bank of weighted resistors, rather than chips to convert the digital signal to analogue. They claim that R-2R DACs sound more "natural" and "alive" than Sigma-Delta DACs. Those who prefer Delta-Sigma DACs tend to claim that they tend to have less distortion and provide more musical detail than R2R DACs. In truth, both sets of claims are misleading because, while the chips/resistance ladders may be predominantly responsible for the sound reproduction, they are not the only parts in a DAC that affect sound reproduction. As one reviewer on Audio Asylum put it: "Power supplies and quality parts really matter." So does the actual design of the circuit. Unlike most DAC-makers, Musetech actually publishes details about the components they use. Presumably, they do this because they use all top-of-the-line clocks and capacitors. </p><p>So far, I have to concede that the Musetech MH-DA005 is everything that I have read about it. It has great presence and atmosphere. Musical instruments sound real and existence in nicely defined spaces. To use an overused cliche, the sound is "holographic," almost as if the musicians are in the room with you. There is no tinniness or hard edge to the sound; to the contrary, the overall tone is ever-so-slightly darker than absolute neutral (to my ears). I can easily imagine that, in a blind test, even veteran audiophiles would conclude that the design is R-2R, rather than chip-based. But it has none of the distortion or smearing that I have heard in less expensive and/or less well-designed ladder DACs (such as the Holo Spring, Level 2, which I found so disappointing, I returned it after a week). In all honesty, the Musetech MH-DA005 sounds to my ears like a best-of-both-worlds kind of DAC, combining the best qualities of chip-based and resistance ladder-based DACs. </p><p>I don't believe in the special ingredient called "magic dust," which reviewers sometimes allude to in raves about some new product that seems more than the sum of its parts. The Musetech is that, and then some. But the real magic is the design and implementation work done by the company's audio engineers. I can't say whether or not it is as good or better than other, more expensive DACs because I have not heard them (let alone heard them in my system). But now that I have heard the Musetech, I am a lot less skeptical of claims that it is a giant killer. Whether it is an "end-game" DAC remains to be seen, of course. Especially given the rapid pace of substantial technological improvements in digital-to-analogue conversion, no one knows how even the best of today's DACs will stack up against those built in 10-years' time. But for right now, and at least the next few years, it is a DAC to be reckoned with. </p><p><br /><br /></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-8375791526366052462022-05-30T13:21:00.001-04:002022-05-30T13:21:17.717-04:00Reflections on Interdisciplinarity in Higher Education<p>For a long time now, academic institutions - especially Tier 1 Research Universities - have acknowledged (or paid lip-service to) the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship. Realizing that the theories, methods, and insights of no single academic discipline can provide more than a partial explanation or solution to any complex social or combined social-ecological problem, they have sought to diminish the hard boundaries that traditionally have prevented scholars from (a) conducting cross-disciplinary scholarship and (b) co-producing such scholarship with scholars from other disciplines. However, as Elinor Ostrom, Amy Poteete and Marco Janssen explained in their 2010 book, <i>Working Together</i>, efforts to support interdisciplinary research have run up against structural impediments that still exist and may be ineradicable. </p><p>First and foremost, academics can be tenured in only one discipline. In order to obtain tenure, they must publish articles that can be understood by their intra-disciplinary colleagues in journals that are rated highly within the discipline. Those journals will, generally speaking, restrict them to building on previous work within the home discipline, which will in turn restrict the kinds of questions they can seek to answer using the discipline's approved (by convention or tradition) methods and modes of discourse. And the extent to which their teaching can cross disciplinary boundaries will likewise be restricted. [These restrictions are relatively mild in my own home discipline of law; they are much more pronounced in other social sciences.] While the number of interdisciplinary journals has been rising steadily, the extent to which they are valued in any particular discipline is questionable. In most departments, undue weight is placed on a journal's "Impact Factor " (IF) which is an estimation of a journal's overall quality based on citations to articles appearing in it. Very few (if any) interdisciplinary journals, which tend to be more recently established that intra-disciplinary journals, have IFs that are competitive with the top journals in a particular field. The resulting structure of incentives is for scholars to focus on infra-disciplinary issues, at least until they receive tenure, i.e., six or seven years into their careers. When they finally receive tenure, they might then broaden their research to include interdisciplinary issues, but disincentives remain. For one, at that point, their entire scholarly reputation is based on work they've published within the home discipline, and they might be reluctant to allow that reputation to be eroded by moving outside their home discipline. For another, the reputation of their home department, which matters for US News Rankings, which remain a big deal for departmental and central university administrators, continues to rest on faculty publications within the home discipline's journals. </p><p>The increasing use of "joint appointments" for interdisciplinary scholars is helpful to some extent, but by no means is it a panacea. I have held a joint appointment in the IU-Maurer School of Law and the IU-O'Neill School of Public & Environmental Affairs (SPEA) for the last 10 years. I am a full faculty member in both departments. But, under university rules (which I believe are consistent with those of other universities), I have just one tenure home, in the law school. Since I already had tenure at the time I moved to IU, Bloomington (from the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis, now the IU-McKinney School of Law), that did not present any kind of problem for me. To some extent, the tenure-home concept actually made things easier for me. Among other things, all of my service requirements, e.g., committee assignments, are within my tenure home. But for that rule, I would have had twice the committee assignments, among other service commitments, of single-disciplinary faculty members. Nevertheless, it does involve a trade-off. Because I have not regularly attended SPEA faculty meetings or served on SPEA committees, I have interacted very little with the vast majority of my SPEA colleagues. In fact, I have not even met a majority of my (more than 100) SPEA colleagues. And even among the colleagues I have gotten to know fairly well there, some remain unaware that I am a member of the SPEA's faculty with full voting rights (other than for tenure and promotion, where voting is restricted to one's tenure-home), rather than a colleague from across campus who teaches in SPEA as a non-voting member of the ever-changing "adjunct" faculty. </p><p>Meanwhile, my true intellectual and scholarly home at IU remains the Ostrom Workshop, which is a fully interdisciplinary unit of IU. But, of course, the Workshop is an almost uniquely successful interdisciplinary enterprise, and even that success has been jeopardized in recent years by poor leadership. Happily, the current leadership of the Workshop is fully attuned to its interdisciplinary heritage. It almost goes without saying that, because of the Ostrom Workshop, it is much easier to be an interdisciplinary social scientist at IU than at most other universities. Still, for me to teach in the Workshop, a course must be cross listed in both the law school and in SPEA, and one of those schools must agree to count the course toward fulfilling my departmental teaching obligations. The law school has been more generous about that than SPEA over the years, though SPEA appears willing to allow me to teach in the Workshop for the last course I owe them before retiring. </p><p>In addition to the Workshop, I have also benefitted greatly as an interdisciplinary scholar from always having had a law school as my tenure-home. Both in Indianapolis, where I spent my first 20 years, and in Bloomington, where I have spent the last 10, my interdisciplinary bent has always been not only tolerated but actively supported and rewarded my law school administrations. I don't believe that is because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of law. I do, in fact, believe the law is inherently interdisciplinary, but it's by no means clear that most legal scholars regard it as such, despite the fact that an ever-increasing percentage of newly minted legal scholars these days seems to possess a PhD in a cognate discipline. Many, if not most, legal scholars continue to insist on the "autonomy" of law as an academic discipline. Given that, I remain profoundly grateful to all of the law school deans I have had, who have uniformly supported my interdisciplinary research, including with regular summer-research funding of projects I had no intention of publishing in law journals. </p><p>Whether academia can and, if so, will be restructured to facilitate greater interdisciplinarity remains questionable, but I remain cautiously optimistic. I believe the will exists, generally speaking, even if university administrators still have a long way to go in fixing structural problems that create disincentives to interdisciplinary scholarship. </p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-1938314033362948542022-05-30T13:21:00.000-04:002022-05-30T13:21:09.797-04:00Against Natural Law<p>Below are a few paragraphs I recently wrote for a book chapter, explaining why the concept of natural law is both rhetorically attractive and pernicious. They will likely be cut from the chapter because of space limitations. So, I thought I would post them here (for possible use later):</p><p>John Locke first argued that individual liberty and property are rights under "natural law." Each person owns herself, and because each person requires sustenance to survive, so her acquisitions must become her inviolable "property" (so long as she doesn't claim too much and leaves "as good and enough" for others to claim). Some liberal thinkers, especially self-described libertarians, continue to embrace Lockean “natural law” on behalf of individuals and their property. But they are not the only theorists that claim the mantle of "natural law" for their preferred political values and policies. </p><p>Many progressive and conservative scholars also subscribe to theories of “natural law,” which are, more often than not, at odds with libertarian “natural law.” Progressives agree with libertarians that liberty and property natural “human rights,” but deny they are the only human rights. So too, they claim, are rights to social security, equal pay, employment, holidays, child care, and others set out in the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Many of these so-called “positive” rights require state action that would redistribute resources via taxation and social programs that inevitably would violate individual liberty and property rights. Consequently, the progressive “natural law” of human rights violates libertarian “natural law" (though not other liberal theories that either do not rely on "natural law" or have a more relaxed view (as Locke, himself, did) as to what constitutes consent to interference with liberty or property rights.</p><p>Theocratic “natural law” theories are no less inconsistent with libertarian “natural law.” The basic purpose of religious doctrine is to propagate moral constraints on individual liberty, under threat of divine punishments that often are meted out by humans. In ancient times, some religions required human sacrifice, among other rituals. Even in modern times, the three major monotheist religions impose various requirements that conflict with individual liberty, including prayers, tithing, dietary restrictions, and prohibitions against certain consensual sexual relations. Such requirements would not trouble libertarians so long as individuals remain free to choose and change religions. If an individual chooses a religion that constrains her liberty, then she consents to the obligations imposed. For most of human history, however, freedom of religion did not exist. In fact, it was religious persecution, more than anything else, that gave rise to liberal philosophy in the eighteenth century. </p><p>Religious convictions (or confessions) can be imposed by social norms as well as by law, which makes them no less coercive. Whether sanctioned by the state or imposed by social norms, coercive mandates violate the liberty and property of individuals, especially of non-congregants or non-believers who are persecuted. The arch libertarian Murray Rothbard (1999 [1975]) illustrated the counter-libertarian nature of religious rules by reference to early Puritan Church doctrines in Massachusetts. The Puritan churches had rules against kissing a wife in public on the Sabbath, mandatory church attendance enforced by either local police or other congregants, prohibitions on the playing of shuffleboard and other games in public houses, and punishment of idleness and drunkenness (but not drinking). Rothbard deplored those coercive rules, as well as the Puritans’ treatment of women as “instruments of Satan." He did not bother to mention witch-burning as a problem.</p><p>It would be surprising, indeed, if theologians did not invoke “natural law” to support their preferred rules for ordering society. Unsurprisingly, different religious denominations do not agree on a single, consistent set of "natural" laws. They may overlap on certain specific rules, such as the golden rule and the golden mean, but the sets of "natural" rules they provide differ significantly. And none of them is consistent with either the progressives’ “natural law” of human rights or libertarians’ “natural law” of individual liberty and property. So, which is the real “natural law?” </p><p>Imagine a good-faith debate between natural law theorists promoting different rules. One claims the "natural" rule is <i>x</i>. The next replies that it is <i>y. </i>A third responds that it is <i>z</i>. Each of them supports her claim by pointing to some (for them) authoritative source, e.g., a passage from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, the Hindu Ordinances of Manu, John Locke's <i>Second Treatise of Civil Government</i>, the US Declaration of Independence, a Kantian categorical imperative, and the list goes on. How might the dispute be settled? It would not depend on factual evidence, of course, because facts about rules have no bearing on whether a particular rule is "natural." <br /></p><p>We also have to consider the possibility that no one’s claims of “natural law” is correct. The founder of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, famously dismissed the "natural law" claims of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (authored in large part by Thomas Jefferson) as as not just nonsense but “nonsense upon stilts.” In the nineteenth century, Sir Henry Maine (1901 [1861] at 74) observed that “the importance” of natural law theory “to mankind has been very much greater than its philosophical deficiencies would lead us to expect." </p><p>So, does natural law exist and, if so, can we possibly know which version of it is correct? The answer to the first question appears to be that we cannot know because there is no fact of the matter. "Natural law" is an assertion of belief not of fact. It is an inarguable super-normative claim about what rules <i>should</i> be in effect. As such, the compound term "natural law” has great appeal as a strategic rhetorical device. Whether it is anything more than that is unknowable and somewhat beside the point. Claims of "natural law" really are not even "arguments" about which rules should be followed. They are argument-enders. Good reasons may support an ordinary law, but that law is, by definition, inferior to a "natural law," period. For this reason, arguments from "natural law," including libertarian claims of "natural law," might be said to be fundamentally illiberal. </p><div><br /></div><p><br /></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-68560846472897612882022-05-30T13:20:00.004-04:002022-05-30T13:20:59.389-04:00My Audio System at College, Summer 1978<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEithvyC-NI4toZ78m74l_p5ALYBn_3lIt7M6ZrZFU8qwlaXpeJK3iFhY_WcDvb1m_zTO2kEA5FFP9rTH2I9HARsp_DnGFJh6EgdraSpfXreu9Nyw5jysLMf8kxCNx9Vd6DIJ5GfaUm0ipchE1zps1TaP9oj6nbcU4FQa3V8bS9fBDaWIqTnI3tOkkOa=s805" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="805" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEithvyC-NI4toZ78m74l_p5ALYBn_3lIt7M6ZrZFU8qwlaXpeJK3iFhY_WcDvb1m_zTO2kEA5FFP9rTH2I9HARsp_DnGFJh6EgdraSpfXreu9Nyw5jysLMf8kxCNx9Vd6DIJ5GfaUm0ipchE1zps1TaP9oj6nbcU4FQa3V8bS9fBDaWIqTnI3tOkkOa=w400-h261" width="400" /></a></div><br /> The Thorens turntable on the left was not might, and I don't recognize the other one. The rest of the equipment is my own, including a Yamaha A600 integrated amp, Soundcraftsman equalizer, and a brand new (at the time) Pioneer RT-707 reel-to-reel deck.<p></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-18240343615890275592022-05-30T13:20:00.003-04:002022-05-30T13:20:45.044-04:00Photo Restoration<p> I signed up for a subscription for Vance AI, an online photo restoration software app that uses artificial intelligence to edit old pics. Here is the result of the first experiment. The band Rock Service (Kevin Kelly, Rock Joseph, John Osmon, and myself) at a gig on July 4, 1976 (just before I moved to LA for college). The results are, I think, quite good (I wasn't expecting miracles).</p><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> Before</span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhcWkKph5ioq2jv0WJvp5TAmaf-180dcFMaTaBZyCj9SgnL1bJ8wv56NQqG8LByRUWzijm24Y6-t4GOksCo9U7zOegGbJiDCsbDDDkFoNWxDy4lqm2yJ6kUWa3AJ2k3XXBrknfGa9Q7-OHJ0SJ_DWBGariC7EL7LJFArp3_AwzOq4qgI_YC60iegmAt=s720" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="720" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhcWkKph5ioq2jv0WJvp5TAmaf-180dcFMaTaBZyCj9SgnL1bJ8wv56NQqG8LByRUWzijm24Y6-t4GOksCo9U7zOegGbJiDCsbDDDkFoNWxDy4lqm2yJ6kUWa3AJ2k3XXBrknfGa9Q7-OHJ0SJ_DWBGariC7EL7LJFArp3_AwzOq4qgI_YC60iegmAt=w400-h308" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span>After</span><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyLrrlkOqbKT9eOepGnEbBaO8Gis59P1zUVKgR0eFmWZkH3Y-jPTWthHM0Hz539K0_R-bbGKeplZMnfTX0YOCr3nOV4lEo4ZmjPYKIU4ook8Xr5ve8UERdCKLC4J9huW3eIwxY4Oxe_cfJWVJ85zTIrpJICOOHh-FpcRFe3Wa5UnfRtSEXmC1z4JAn=s720" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="720" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyLrrlkOqbKT9eOepGnEbBaO8Gis59P1zUVKgR0eFmWZkH3Y-jPTWthHM0Hz539K0_R-bbGKeplZMnfTX0YOCr3nOV4lEo4ZmjPYKIU4ook8Xr5ve8UERdCKLC4J9huW3eIwxY4Oxe_cfJWVJ85zTIrpJICOOHh-FpcRFe3Wa5UnfRtSEXmC1z4JAn=w400-h308" width="400" /></a></div><p></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-85730671009283295482022-05-30T13:20:00.002-04:002022-05-30T13:20:38.804-04:00A Mighty Tweak<p> "Tweaks" are all the rage among audiophiles, looking to improve a system's performance without replacing pricey components. Ranging from tens of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, tweaks include (among many others): sorbothane isolators and platforms placed beneath components to reduce mechanical vibrations; room treatments; and cable risers designed to reduce static interference from cables resting on carpeted floors (though decent, double-cased speaker should be immune to any static interference in the first place). Based on advice from a column written by eminent audio guru, Herb Reichert, I just replaced the thin, cloth mat that came with my Pioneer PLX-1000 turntable with a soft rubber mat made for the Technics 1200 series of turntables, which are nearly identical to the Pioneer, but twice the price. The cost of the mat was $30 from Amazon. Of all the tweaks I've tried (it's not a long list), it has provided by far the greatest bang for the buck. Herb was absolutely right. Changing the mat tamed the roughness I had been perceiving in the upper frequencies and provided a boost to the low end, which had seemed somewhat skimpy. Before making the change, I had thought I might a different turntable-and-cartridge combination (I currently use an Ortofon Quintet Bronze on the PLX-1000). Very likely the $30 tweak saved me thousands.</p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-25107006883104296542022-05-30T13:20:00.001-04:002022-05-30T13:20:29.638-04:00The Right Combination<p> My Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 is now paired with the Philharmonic BRM speakers in the bedroom. My old Snell Jii speakers have been moved to the living room, where they are paired with the Pioneer Elite SX-S30 A/V tuner and amplifier. Having the larger speakers in the living room makes sense, but the Lyngdorf/Philharmonic pairing is magical, with special credit to Lyngdorf's RoomPerfect software.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcK-NDDNko2mflGvNMiBOP6lF88lXwco4q_613SRqy9PSF-HjPvVvyyh25Xli4jA9s4P20lEo6UezXNHMaIfpVIHa0KGVE_ZdJIfH34k7K_A7b9LiY9BiWgG8bkK8OsOeq2KmtzhT6z-U/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="1751" data-original-width="2048" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcK-NDDNko2mflGvNMiBOP6lF88lXwco4q_613SRqy9PSF-HjPvVvyyh25Xli4jA9s4P20lEo6UezXNHMaIfpVIHa0KGVE_ZdJIfH34k7K_A7b9LiY9BiWgG8bkK8OsOeq2KmtzhT6z-U/w400-h342/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-38408975969776218602022-05-30T13:20:00.000-04:002022-05-30T13:20:06.134-04:00Happy Practicing<p> After a three month or so hiatus, while my drum teacher got settled into his new job as an endowed professor and head of the jazz program at UMKC, we got back together this past week, with two lessons in seven days. During the hiatus, my practicing trailed off because, I guess, I really need the pressure of upcoming lessons to keep my nose to the grindstone. Since the first lesson back, I've practiced every day for at least an hour (almost nothing for those with grand ambitions, but it's a good start for me). Meanwhile, group practices have become more regular. I have two groups - a trio that meets weekly and a quartet that meets every other week. Having regular lessons and group practice sessions is a big deal for me. It really helps me to improve at a fairly consistent rate (albeit with plateaus between periods of clear improvement). </p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-76655924358421248522022-05-30T13:19:00.007-04:002022-05-30T13:19:55.622-04:00Finding Gold in the Bins at Landlocked Music<p><span style="background-color: white;">I'm g</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">lad to have Izabela with me after a month in Poland looking after her mom. Today, I celebrated by buying three used LPs (actually, five since two are double-albums) in really fine condition: CSN&Y, "Four Way Street," Todd Rundgren, "Back to the Bars;" and Tears for Fears, "Songs from the Big Chair." I'm now only buying vinyl that is from analogue recordings (mostly pre-1990s). It took a while, but I </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">finally figured out that buying analogue pressings of digital recordings makes little, if any, sense. </span></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-77090617658657290562022-05-30T13:19:00.006-04:002022-05-30T13:19:46.436-04:00The Gates BBQ Suite<p> I've been waiting for this LP to arrive for months. Bravo, the great Bobby Watson.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EwHcOM5nb62Zg_Gu4ExRW6l5tM1UDj6P-uQrMi28k-7h6IPXxy2uXQVzw2N1SaKiQJtRY31aoJL5WYwVnU4uz38rGNkXRomrardOOWyaDV1z-oUV4_2XHzynmaGpWtbBlfQo-6Qa3Nc/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EwHcOM5nb62Zg_Gu4ExRW6l5tM1UDj6P-uQrMi28k-7h6IPXxy2uXQVzw2N1SaKiQJtRY31aoJL5WYwVnU4uz38rGNkXRomrardOOWyaDV1z-oUV4_2XHzynmaGpWtbBlfQo-6Qa3Nc/w400-h400/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-81018375112264639032022-05-30T13:19:00.005-04:002022-05-30T13:19:37.406-04:00Latest Addition To My Audio CollectionThe Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 integrated amplifier has replaced the Peachtree Decco 125SKY in my bedroom audio system. It's about twice the money of the (now discontinued) Peachtree, but it's at least twice as good. For one thing, it has an HDMI ARC output, so it serves more effectively as a two-channel A/V system. Although it has less power than the Peachtree, its Class D amplifier is a lot better. I can hear a lot more detail out of my old Snell Jii speakers. It's in-house app is much better than the Muzo app on which the Peachtree depends. And, best of all, it comes with Lyngdorf's proprietary Room Perfect system to tailor the sound to the dynamics of the room. Without Room Perfect, it's still a better amp than the Peachtree. With Room Perfect, it's miles ahead. My Snells have never sounded so good. Special thanks to Lyngdorf dealer Jeff Stake Hifi for the great service.<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1yTJWVFoig706FD2-HdxerIm9pLf-REV6Jgo9yJkxvi0PDyXUZLkxmPggNtOyFZJpTbMe16FPvRSzP_U9ovAnojcPbGs9yf5jdJhBW2zPSinhDav2JGi6WfH9JhvPyDTdhspEAb7VLs/s1600/1633721915414583-0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1yTJWVFoig706FD2-HdxerIm9pLf-REV6Jgo9yJkxvi0PDyXUZLkxmPggNtOyFZJpTbMe16FPvRSzP_U9ovAnojcPbGs9yf5jdJhBW2zPSinhDav2JGi6WfH9JhvPyDTdhspEAb7VLs/s1600/1633721915414583-0.png" width="400"> </a></div><br></div>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-38259415346612579212022-05-30T13:19:00.004-04:002022-05-30T13:19:29.829-04:00Reflections on My Academic Career - Part I<p> I'm currently in my second year of a three-year phased retirement from IU. After this semester, I will have one more course to teach in the 2022-23 academic year. I don't know whether the inclination is natural or not, but I've already begun reflecting on my career, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens. My reflections are not intentionally structured or organized. This will not be a chronological narrative; and it certainly will not be complete. It is not an exercise in nostalgia - I am not normally a nostalgic person, though I am sentimental. In other words, I care about the people and places currently and formerly in my life, but I have no desire to return to some earlier time in the mistaken belief that life was better then. Finally, I don't presuppose that anyone outside of my family will find any part of this, let alone the whole thing, interesting or valuable either in itself or as a socio-historical reference. For the most part, I'm writing this for myself and my family. </p><p>This first installment examines the question of why I am retiring now. I'll be fully retired just after I turn 65, which is a traditional retirement age, but not so common today as it once was, especially in academia. Several older colleagues of mine have no intention of retiring any time soon. So, why am I retiring, when I'm in good physical health? I have several reasons, some of which are more important than others;</p><p>(1) I no longer enjoy teaching as I used to do. I increasingly dread it. It has a lot to do with changing course packages, something I knew would be necessary when I moved from Indianapolis to Bloomington. The biggest change was a move to regular teaching of undergraduate courses around 2014. Before then, I had zero experience teaching undergraduates who, pedagogically speaking, are very different from grad students or law students. The special challenges they present I've never been able entirely to overcome. The class preps more onerous and time-consuming, in part, because undergrads require more in-class activities to keep them engaged. And I taught three different undergrad courses over the course of five years. Anyway, SPEA kept me in the undergrad curriculum until I signed the contract for the phased retirement. I suspect I might not yet be retiring, if I was not regularly teaching undergrads.</p><p>(2) The increasing stress of teaching aggravated the depression and anxiety disorder I've been dealing with most of my life. It impacted not just my work life but every aspect of my life. </p><p>(3) While my love of teaching has diminished, my love of music, especially (but not exclusively) jazz, has reemerged. I want to spend more time learning about, playing and listening to it. [It's very important to have something to retire <i>to </i>because, otherwise, retirement could feel like a death sentence.]</p><p>(4) Izabela and I want to travel more, especially to spend more time in the UK and Europe, while we are young and healthy enough to take full advantage. </p><p>(5) Sorry to say, but I want more time for reading and writing than the life of a teaching professor, ironically, allows. I'm not nearly eminent enough to get course relief in exchange for more writing time. I have at least two books on my agenda, one on the global history of environmental protection extending back to the earliest human settlements, and one on institutional analysis (as a method). I'll be writing other pieces as well, I imagine.</p><p>(6) Very fortunately, according to my financial consultants, I can afford to retire.</p><p>(7) I don't think of my retirement as complete. I'm not leaving IU so much as changing my relationship with it. In exchange for not paying me, I will not teach, but I'll keep on producing scholarship, working with PhD students, etc., especially in the Ostrom Workshop. I might even teach the Workshop seminar, as needed or desired, after I'm "emeritus." That's assuming that the Workshop does not start ignoring the Ostroms' legacy again.</p><p>Future installments of reflections will focus on: perceived highlights, such as they are, of my career; whether my move from Indy to Bloomington was, on balance, worthwhile; as objective as possible assessment of my scholarly contributions, including one or two writings I consider under-appreciated; opportunities I've screwed up or spurned; the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary scholarship in the university; great scholars, and people, I have known; the silliness of over-seriousness in the cut-throat world of academia. </p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-66010441286545292972022-05-30T13:19:00.003-04:002022-05-30T13:19:24.751-04:00RIP Dr. Lonnie Smith<p>One of the all-time great jazz-funk organ masters.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipWW0vhcRoaKmrwqYfOFZ8i0TxeacBpbeo6TSy2W5EJBx0bo79fDcEClxWK50MtmMtcTLpX4FoHC9BJJFANF8iSTOr02rfCGECRIhlDFnyhqY_zQkk0NGdgPgXH3Ui_aT9W1B-4WK6Dug/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipWW0vhcRoaKmrwqYfOFZ8i0TxeacBpbeo6TSy2W5EJBx0bo79fDcEClxWK50MtmMtcTLpX4FoHC9BJJFANF8iSTOr02rfCGECRIhlDFnyhqY_zQkk0NGdgPgXH3Ui_aT9W1B-4WK6Dug/w400-h400/image.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-4905502230652255832022-05-30T13:19:00.002-04:002022-05-30T13:19:20.343-04:00Shifting Political Labels<p>Joe Biden is not a "moderate" Democrat. He's always been among the more progressive members of that party. These days, however, he is flanked on the left by a growing group of radicals who refer to themselves as "progressives." Representatives Tlaib, Bush, Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez are all members of the Democratic Socialist Party of America. That party's platform calls for central planning of the entire US economy, which, if history is any guide, would make every American a lot poorer, and less free. It is not progressivism as defined by scholars or politicians such as John Dewey, John R. Commons, and Robert LaFollette. Nor is it Joe Biden's progressivism or Barack Obama's progressivism or Hillary Clinton's progressivism. It is equally a mistake to refer to those politicians and scholars as "moderate" Democrats, a term that better describes Bill Clinton and his "New Democrats" (similar to Tony Blair and the "New Labourites" in the UK. </p><p>While the precise terms we use to define parts of the political spectrum are not so important, it is very important to use the terms consistently to avoid conflating different parts of the spectrum. These days, it is convenient for politicians on the left to accuse every one to their rights as "conservatives," and for conservative politicians to refer to everyone to their left as "socialists." That kind of labelling always sheds more heat than light. Reality is always more complicated than labels. But if we are going to use labels, let's at least be consistent about their application so as to highlight meaningful differences between political positions.</p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-11780293464719050362022-05-30T13:19:00.001-04:002022-05-30T13:19:12.896-04:00Transatlantic Problems in Environmental Law<p> A conference under that title just finished. A few papers were commissioned focusing on, respectively, the EU, the UK, and the US. My old friend Jurek Jendroska and two authors presented a paper on the EU's "Green New Deal." Richard McCrory (UCL) presented his paper on the UK's new Office of Environmental Protection. And I presented a paper explaining why the nature of US policymaking by Executive Order, which has become the norm in this century, prevents the US from making credible commitments to its international partners on issues such as climate change. Those papers, and others, can be freely accessed <a href="https://czasopisma.uni.opole.pl/index.php/osap/issue/view/230">here</a>.</p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1988920553791273326.post-62202781238260214192022-05-30T13:19:00.000-04:002022-05-30T13:19:03.988-04:00The Unusual Enjoyment of Teaching<p> I haven't enjoyed teaching as much as I am now for the past several years. I think its party a function of the course and the readings - it's Lin Ostrom's Seminar in Institutional Analysis and Development, which I first taught the semester after Lin passed away, and last taught it in 2015, before the Ostrom Workshop was taken in a new direction (from which it is now recovering). It helps that I know the materials quite well, but that's also true of other courses I teach but no longer enjoy. I think it also has something to do with the fact that I'm more relaxed knowing that I'm halfway into retirement. It's not that I'm working any less hard on class preps; I just feel less pressure. Mainly, though, it's just more fun to teach because of the mix of PhD students, Visiting Scholars and faculty members participating in the seminar. It feels less like teaching and more like discussion. </p>Dan Cole's Dubious Memorabiliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147107393040754553noreply@blogger.com0