Content-Type: text/shitpost

Can we infer from Wesley's name that he and Dr. Crusher are Methodists?

(Asking such questions is perilous, because someone might show up at my door with a 58-page summary of past and current scholarly thought on the subject.)

From Chris Siebenmann's blog:

The reality of sysadmin life is that in many situations, there are too many obvious problem causes to keep track of them all.

I recommend this blog.

Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy blog has written an article on how to read a legal opinion. I have found reading federal court opinions fascinating and educational. U.S. federal judges are almost always intelligent and thoughtful, and excellent writers. I recently wrote:

Even when I disagree with the decision, I almost always concede that the judges have a point. It often happens that I read the decision and say “of course that is how it must be decided, nobody could disagree with that”, and then I read the dissenting opinion and I say exactly the same thing. Then I rub my forehead and feel relieved that I'm not a federal circuit court judge.

As dense technical material, law opinions are unusual because their underlying topics are public policy issues that affect everyone, or everyday issues as property disputes and interactions with the police. So they have a relevance that, say, scientific or engineering material does not. If you really want to know what the Supreme Court said recently in connection with Masterpiece Cakeshop, you are not going to do better than to read what they actually said about it.

But like other dense technical material, court opinions are full of obscure jargon. Kerr's article explains the most important parts of this jargon and describes the overall structure of the opinions. If you think you might be interested in reading some Supreme Court opinions, but you find it hard to get your feet under you, you might give Kerr's article a try.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports today:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a redacted copy of a highly anticipated grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse, one the court said identifies more than [some number of] “predator priests”

The number boggled me.

It was given as “more than 300”. Holy cow. And this is only for six of Pennsylvania's eight dioceses. Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown were investigated previously.

Had I been greatly underestimating the number of priests in Pennsylvania, I wondered. No, there are 792 in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and 207 in the Pittsburgh Diocese. The six dioceses in the report couldn't have more than 1200 priests total.

I am speechless with rage and disgust.

(Further developments)

[ Addendum 20180817: I tried to estimate what fraction of all priests were mentioned in the report and guessed around 6%. ]