Fitter, Happier, More Productive . . . -- Tyler Cowen points to Michael Sandel's Kass-like essay on the perils of genetic enhacement in the New Atlantic. Tyler makes a good point: if you're worried genetic engineering will indirectly imperil some social value, like solidarity, say, you can always solve the problem by directly engineering a better sense of solidarity. Sure, but I think Sandel may be worried that it may take a while to learn how to rejigger our sense of solidarity while the ability to build in a few extra inches, or a few points of IQ, purple eyes, or whatever, is coming soon. So we might get a solidarity problem in the interim.

Anyway the prospect of genetic engineering raises all sorts of interesting moral puzzles. Does hedonic utilitarianism imply that we ought to re-engineer people to find breathing, say, especially pleasurable? If I propose that some aspect of our existing moral sensibility be re-engineered, does any argument against my proposal based in our existing moral sensibility beg the question?

Wonk'd -- Judging from this NYT Fashion & Style piece, Ana Marie Cox is all the rage. (Nice dog!) I just want to point out that the Gray Lady failed to note my attendance at the Peter Bergen party. (I was the guy in the burlap thong.) And for that matter, they missed, Matt "Baby" Yglesias (who is, thanks to AMC, "famous for DC.")

Technical Difficulties -- The Fly Bottle and related pages may suddenly go down today or so as I switch webhosts. Thank you for your tolerance.

Oh... and my willwilkinson.net email will also be temporarily unavailable. Try my gmu.edu, umd.edu, or yahoo.com email address. If you don't know any of these addresses, then I guess it can probably wait.

[Update: Seems to have been pretty painless. Now I need to figure out how to get my obsolete commenting system to work. Hope I didn't lose all the comments!]