Thursday, July 14, 2005

L&S: I'm Just Kidneying

Well James is at it again. His final talk is on "The Market for Transplantable Human Organs." He's distinguished among "current" markets, "futures" markets, and "cadaveric" markets, aligning with immediate sales, promised sales in the future, and selling the kidneys of the recently dead (cue Monty Python here). What's scaring me at the moment is that as he began his discussion of the "current market," he placed a small cooler on the table in front of him. After the appearance of Flossie earlier in the week, it's not clear at all what might be in there.

James' style of handling these controversial subjects is really worth emulating. It's a marvelous mix of humor and a very clear, precise, almost syllogistic, structuring of his arguments. The eminently enjoyable Scottish accent only adds to the fun.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And here I thought the Monty Python cue would be the not-yet-deceased liver transplant (http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_pictures/life/v-remove.jpg) (icky picture warning).

Tom W. Bell said...

I second Steve's praise of James' use of humor. The guy is hee-friggin'-larious. And it's not (always) superfluous humor; he gets a lot of laughs by pushing hypotheticals to logical but shocking extremes.