Last Friday I was teaching my research design class on experiments. In political science, this is a small but quickly growing field of research. One topic that always comes up in that class is ethics – it is the one area in social science research where ethics are most clearly an issue. Is it alright to mislead people during the experiment? Is it alright to have people involved who did not volunteer for the research? But while there are very serious ethical concerns, this kind of research is ideal for figuring out human behaviour with regards controversial issues such as discriminatory practices, authoritarian personalities, effect of hierarchy, etc. Issues that are absolutely crucial to understand human behaviour and to understand how humanity commits its worst atrocities. At what point does the importance of this understanding outweigh the ethical issues with the experiment? The Milgram experiments are the most famous example of “unethical” research that nevertheless leads to crucial insights about human behaviour and Eichmann-like obedience.

One consequence of more open borders would be a collapse of the welfare state as we know it. So one thing I have always wanted to spend more ttime thinking about, but never get around to, is how structures similar to the welfare state could function without strict delineation of nation, state, or citizenship. Various vague ideas exist in my head, but nothing concrete. Perhaps KickStarter is an example of a small step in the right direction. The Indonesian phenomenon of an arisan also provides a hint. Perhaps an online community with membership fees, which are distributed to members who need it, with their need evaluated on the basis of a plee, which is evaluated by the crowd of members, with a maximum pay-out per person per time period, the rest being saved as a provision for future problematic cases – if you still follow me. In any case, some kind of system that is based on voluntarism, that cannot run into deficit by design, and that contains some incentives to join and pay.

I find it very difficult to see why people born in a particular location inherit significant rights to that territory, such as to be able to exclude outsiders from this section of the planet. So how do Western states have the right to exclude others from access to their countries? Why does the coincidental fact that I was born in the Netherlands give me access to almost all over the world, while someone who is similarly incidentally born in Indonesia has much more limited access? And thus, by extension, what gives the Netherlands the right to decide that restrict employment rights in the Netherlands to EU citizens only (with exceptions)? So basically two questions follow:

• Is there a moral / ethical basis for territorial group rights?
• If not, what would be the practical / pragmatic consequences for present day politics?

(At the very least, we can blame the government for acting very slow in terms of disaster relief, of course, which is true, but that wasn’t the point I wanted to make.)

Alas, the parts of Cantr II code I wrote is neither a good example of beautiful nor of good documentation …

Whatever you think of recording your sexual activities on tape, I cannot see any justification for putting someone like this in jail, since he never intended to distribute any of those tapes. I cannot see any good moral justification to disallow distribution in the first place, but at least you could argue that’s the law. Also, his recording activities took place in 2006, two years before the new law became active – only the distribution happened later.

His music career is, for now, destroyed – other Indonesian bands are taking over the top of the national charts. I just discovered his music this Christmas and really enjoy it. Really sad it has to end like this … Now I just hope the courts will see the lack of sense in this and find him not guilty.

There are also photos from the competition and a result overview.

I – just too late for this Christmas – discovered there is also a Go club in Yogyakarta, which means there is a nice group to join on future visits (webpage is dated, but the group still exists).