"So far, B-cycle bike-share program is glitchy."

It's Madison’s bike-share program. We were out biking — on our own bikes — yesterday, and we noticed one of the "stations." Meade took some pics.

These guys were trying to figure it out:



Here's what they were reading. Here are the bikes, waiting for release by credit card:



They look heavy, though easy to mount (what with that "girl bike" styling). They don't look like something people would want to steal, but stealing is a bad idea, because they've got GPS devices embedded in them.

I hope the glitches are worked out and that people use them, because we've got them.

"The tanned Duchess of Cambridge blew Michelle Obama out of the water."

Insane Daily Mail headline. It's supposed to relate to the fashion:

For their first meeting yesterday, Kate wore a simple but stylish £175 bandage dress in fashionable ‘nude’ from Reiss, one of the few truly British fashion brands left on the planet....

Michelle Obama, on the other hand, looked like a little girl in a too short pink bolero (I hate boleros – and only six-year-olds should wear pink!) that my fashion spies tell me is not even vintage, it’s just old. Ouch.

Fashionable nude and impossible pink... apparently.

"U R the lowest common denominator. 30+ Bernie statues??? Your greed disgusts me more than your profile picture."

Milwaukee Brewers promotion goes predictably wrong.

At the Square Events Café...

... you can be hip or square.

(Enlarge enough to read the 2011 Calendar of Events for Monroe, Wisconsin.)

"Are you supposed to be Suzie Doozie, the fearsome litigator during work, then put on an apron and magically transform into Suzie Homemaker at nights and weekends?"

"What's the point of that schzoid existence? Will your kids be better adjusted because you share daddy's name? Shouldn't they respect you for your independence?"

Vivia Chen on the trend of women keeping their maiden name professionally but adopting their husbands' names for social/personal matters.

I've gotten married twice, and both times I kept my original name. The first time, it was 1973, and my reasons were: 1. I strongly identify with my name, 2. I imagined myself becoming a significant artist with that signature, 3. "Althouse" was more distinctive and more balanced with "Ann" than my then-husband's last name,  4. Feminism, and 5. I thought keeping your name was the wave of the future, and I didn't want to be stuck on the end of the old wave. My ex-husband's name was also highly expressive of a tradition that was not mine, but I would have been offended if anyone had accused me of rejecting the name for that reason. In the years of that marriage, which continued until 1988, I rankled at being called Mrs./Ms. + [presumed married name], and I did not always completely hide my disdain for the (to me) backward individuals who assumed a mother's last name is the same as her children's.

The second time I got married, in 2009, I seriously considered adopting my new husband's last name, but once again, I did not. I saw good reasons on both sides. For keeping Althouse: 1. I'd been Althouse for so long, it would be weird to be anyone but Althouse, 2. It would be a lot of work changing my name on everything (when you can still call me Mrs. Meade whenever you want), 3. I have done a lot of writing with the name Althouse on it, and 4. Having failed to align my name with my sons' name, it seemed wrong to take my husband's name the second time around. But I came close, because I'm not starchily ideological about names. It's more about feelings and aesthetics right now. "Meade" is an aesthetically pleasing name, but "Ann Meade" is too plain, and Meade is Meade, not me. But I did feel that it would be a unique and thrilling expression of love to take the name! And I'm perfectly happy to be called Mrs. Meade — or Ms. Meade or Professor Meade — by anyone, at any time. It wouldn't make me feel "schzoid" (or schizoid!) or make me worry about overly housewifely or whatever it is Ms. Chen is concerned about.

Manal al-Sharif, the woman leading the right-to-drive campaign, is arrested by the Saudis.

Was she arrested for driving or for speaking out about the driving ban?

Ms. Sharif was arrested after two much-publicized drives last week to highlight the Facebook and Twitter campaigns she helped organize to encourage women across Saudi Arabia to participate in a collective protest scheduled for June 17.

The campaigns, which had attracted thousands of supporters — more than 12,000 on the Facebook page — have been blocked in the kingdom. Ms. Sharif’s arrest was very likely intended to give others pause before participating in the protests in a country where a woman’s public reputation, including her ability to marry, can be badly damaged by an arrest.

“Usually they just make you sign a paper that you will not do it again and let you go,” said Wajiha Howeidar, who recorded Ms. Sharif while driving on Thursday. “They don’t want anybody to think that they can get away with something like that. It is a clear message that you cannot organize anything on Facebook. That is why she is in prison.”

If she drove to promote the right to drive, that is the form of speech that is civil disobedience. It draws attention to the commission of the crime, and it's not surprising that it attracts arrest. Isn't that the purpose of conspicuous violation — to get arrested and make everyone notice and want to help you? This is working for Manal al-Sharif. But Howeidar's point is that she's really arrested for speaking out on Facebook, not for the driving per se. She wasn't treated like other female drivers, who are let off easily. And there's something wrong with targeting the person who used Facebook to organize.

Isn't the real question is whether women should be allowed to drive, not whether organizing on Facebook incurs harsher punishment when you commit a crime? Think about some other crime — some crime that obviously should be a crime. I hesitate to describe a crime, but let's say some Saudi man thinks women who drive should be dragged out of their cars and beaten. He sets up a Facebook page to promote that opinion and gets 12,000 supporters. Then — twice — he drags a woman out of a car and beats her. Now, he is arrested. Let's say that in Saudi Arabia men who beat women for driving are normally just asked to promise not to do it again. Would you object to making an example out of the man who used Facebook?

Should psychiatrists offer opinions about the mental conditions of various characters in the news?

The official rule of the American Psychiatric Association is that they can speak generally but it's unethical to give a professional opinion about an individual. The rule grew out of a case involving Barry Goldwater:

Just before the 1964 election, a muckraking magazine called Fact decided to survey members of the American Psychiatric Association for their professional assessment of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the Republican nominee against President Lyndon B. Johnson....

The survey, highly unscientific even by the standards of the time, was sent to 12,356 psychiatrists, of whom 2,417 responded. ... Half of the respondents judged Mr. Goldwater psychologically unfit to be president. They used terms like “megalomaniac,” “paranoid” and “grossly psychotic,” and some even offered specific diagnoses, including schizophrenia and narcissistic personality disorder....

There were several attempts at a psychodynamic formulation of Mr. Goldwater’s character. One unsigned comment called the candidate “inwardly a frightened person who sees himself as weak and threatened by strong virile power around him,” and added that “his call for aggressiveness and the need for individual strength and prerogatives is an attempt to defend himself against and to deny his feelings of weakness.”...

Goldwater sued for libel and won, which led to the APA rule barring opinions. Obviously, it brings psychiatry into disrepute when ordinary people can see it used dishonestly to promote a political goal. But I don't see why it's so bad for psychiatric experts to speculate and opine about public figures. We the people need to think about the events in the news, and some expert opinion is helpful. Let us decide which experts are worth hearing from. The political hacks will be enjoyed or condemned as we see fit. But some analysis is going to be good. Frame it as speculation and hedge appropriately: I would need to meet with the individual to make a professional diagnosis, but here's what I can say....

If the experts don't do it, the pseudoexperts will. As for the fear of lawsuits, libel law is constrained by free speech values. Mere opinion in not libel. And public figures have to meet a high standard to prove libel.

Why then did Goldwater win his lawsuit? The linked article, by psychiatry professor Richard A. Friedman and published in the Science section of today's New York Times, says:

The Supreme Court awarded the senator $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages — and, more important, set a legal precedent that helped change medical ethics for good.

Of course, any lawyer knows that the Supreme Court doesn't award damages. It only affirms the lower court's decision. But what is this Supreme Court case and how did it deal with the free speech issue? Hello? New York Times? Don't you wonder how this case would square with New York Times v. Sullivan (second link, above)? So did Justices Black and Douglas, dissenting from the denial of certiorari in Ginzburg v. Goldwater! Justice Black wrote:

This case perhaps more than any I have seen in this area convinces me that the New York Times constitutional rule is wholly inadequate to assure the 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open' public debate which the majority in that case thought it was guaranteeing....

This suit was brought by a man who was then the nominee of his party for the Presidency of the United States. In our times, the person who holds that high office has an almost unbounded power for good or evil. The public has an unqualified right to have the character and fitness of anyone who aspires to the Presidency held up for the closest scrutiny. Extravagant, reckless statements and even claims which may not be true seem to me an inevitable and perhaps essential part of the process by which the voting public informs itself of the qualities of a man who would be President. The decisions of the District Court and the Court of Appeals in this case can only have the effect of dampening political debate by making fearful and timid those who should under our Constitution feel totally free openly to criticize Presidential candidates. Doubtless, the jury was justified in this case in finding that the Fact articles on Senator Goldwater were prepared with a reckless disregard of the truth, as many campaign articles unquestionably are. But, even if I believed in a balancing process to determine scope of the First Amendment, which I do not, the grave dangers of prohibiting or penalizing the publication of even the most inaccurate and misleading information seem to me to more than outweigh any gain, personal or social, that might result from permitting libel awards such as the one before the Court today. I firmly believe it is precisely because of these considerations that the First Amendment bars in absolute, unequivocal terms any abridgment by the Government of freedom of speech and press.

So the jury found that the New York Times standard was met, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court declined the case, with Justices Black and Douglas arguing for greater free-speech protection.

And when I say "the New York Times standard was met," I mean the legal standard from the case New York Times v. Sullivan. I do not think the New York Times standard of journalism was met for this article!