Today's Lovely E-mail

At the top of my page of undergraduate papers, I say "To lazy and dishonest undergraduates: Remember that if you attempt to plagiarize any of these papers, your professor can easily discover that fact with a simple Google search. And if you do plagiarize, I hope that you get caught, that you fail your course, get expelled from college, and that you lead a generally miserable life commensurate with your lack of honesty. You have been warned!"

So I wasn't exactly delighted to receive this e-mail this morning from a "Daniel Lee":

Guess what sweetheart?, I plaigarised the hell out of your undergraduate paper and I didn't get caught. Whats more I got a 4.0 and then won the lottery. So much for a 'miserable life commensurate with my dishonesty', eh?
I almost feel like I should give you some of my lotto winnings but nope - not gonna happen. Na, na, na-na, na!

I'm thoroughly disgusted -- on so many levels. The admission of plagiarism is bad enough, but the gloating is particularly revolting. The implication that winning a lottery is proof that cheating doesn't matter in life and that I'd ever want a dime of those winnings is just icing on the cake.

If anyone knows of a way to track down this student so that I can inform his professors of his gleeful plagiarism, please met me know. A contact at hotmail.com might be particularly helpful.

Here are the full headers:

Return-Path:
Received: from vps.3janehosting.com (root@localhost)
      by dianahsieh.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id j3UFkDkm024329
      for ; Sat, 30 Apr 2005 08:46:13 -0700
X-ClientAddr: 64.4.61.41
Received: from hotmail.com (bay102-f31.bay102.hotmail.com [64.4.61.41])
      by vps.3janehosting.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id j3UFkBSl024312
      for ; Sat, 30 Apr 2005 08:46:11 -0700
Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC;
      Sat, 30 Apr 2005 08:46:29 -0700
Message-ID:
Received: from 64.4.61.208 by by102fd.bay102.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP;
      Sat, 30 Apr 2005 15:46:29 GMT
X-Originating-IP: [64.4.61.208]
X-Originating-Email: [danny5601@hotmail.com]
X-Sender: danny5601@hotmail.com
From: "Daniel Lee"
To: diana@dianahsieh.com
Subject: have it
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 16:46:29 +0100
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 30 Apr 2005 15:46:29.0490 (UTC) FILETIME=[C6773D20:01C54D9B]

Maybe I can get Glenn Reynolds to spread the word.

Read more...

Good News about Boulder

Thanks in large part due Chairman Bob Pasnau, the Boulder philosophy department is well on its way to recovery from the exodus of faculty in recent years.

The Department has announced five new faculty appointments:

Mitzi Lee, associate professor, formerly at Illinois/Chicago. Mitzi works in ancient philosophy, and has just published a book with Oxford entitled "Epistemology After Protagoras." She will begin teaching in the fall.

Robert Rupert, assistant professor, formerly at Texas Tech. Rob works in philosophy of mind, has published papers with many leading journals, and is working on two book manuscripts. He will be in Boulder beginning this summer, but has an NEH Fellowship for next year, and so will not begin teaching until Fall '06.

Eric Chwang, PhD Princeton/MD Baylor. Eric works in ethics and political philosophy, and has a special interest in medical ethics. For the next year and a half he will be taking an NIH postdoc, and so will not be in residence in Boulder until Spring '07.

Chris Heathwood, PhD UMass. Chris works in ethics, and although he is just finishing his PhD, he has already published numerous papers. He will be arriving early this summer, and begins teaching in the fall.

David Barnett, assistant professor, formerly at University of Vermont. David works on metaphysics and language and has published numerous papers in the leading philosophy journals. He begins in the fall.

Five new hires in a year is pretty damn astonishing, particularly for a cash-strapped university like Boulder. (I am particularly eager to meet Mitzi Lee, our new ancient philosophy hire!)

However, these new hires don't really solve the basic problem facing many of us already well into our Ph.D coursework, namely that of finding a well-suited dissertation advisor. I have only one more semester of coursework, so I won't have too much interaction with the new hires, not even with those arriving in the next academic year. Moreover, most of the new faculty are too green to supervise a dissertation.

I'm sure that I'll be able to work it out to my reasonable satisfaction. But until then, it's all a bit worrisome.

Read more...

Tax Competition

Peter Mork of Economics with a Human Face posted some interesting comments a few weeks ago on the effects of a free market for labor within the European Union upon tax rates and other business regulations. The chart showing corporate income tax rates in 2000 and 2005 is pretty astonishing, in an unusually delightful kind of way.

I like the final question: "One question that remains is if Europe continues to move in this direction, how long will it be before the United States itself starts feeling the heat of economic competition from across the Atlantic?"

Soon, I can only hope!

Read more...

Too Bad for the Ladies

Some of you might be interested to read my recent posts to an Objectivism Online thread on the meaning and propriety of a joking comment about romantic availability. (Note that the linked thread actually starts in the middle of the discussion, since it was siphoned off from another thread. However, Post #16 on the first page has a summary of the original exchange.)

Basically, a poster joked that the women reading the board were missing out because he was romantically unavailable to them. He was attacked for making such a comment in jest on the grounds that it betrayed a lack of self-esteem and confidence, particularly a lack of security in his own value to women. Notably, those critics also claimed that making such a comment seriously would be entirely appropriate for a rational man.

I was pretty thoroughly appalled by the grand psychologizing of the poor joker, particularly in public and particularly under the guise of "helping" him. In my view, his joke did not at all betray the psychology so easily attributed to him. But even if it had, the public castigation was entirely improper. Perhaps (and I stress that "perhaps" since the parties were strangers) private discussion might have been appropriate. (Happily, one critic did apologize.)

I was also rather astonished that anyone would regard a serious comment like "Too bad for you ladies that I'm unavailable" as anything other than absurdly rude, disrespectful, and presumptuous. As I repeatedly argued, it ignores the optional values of the women in earshot, values which are critical to romantic relationships and unlikely to be satisfied by some random, unknown man, even if a perfect Objectivist. Such a comment also presupposes a substantially intrinsicist view of value: a good man just is a value to all good women, whether or not they are even aware of his existence. In fact, values are human identifications of the facts by the standard of life, not goodies to be plucked off of trees. So before Paul and I met, say when he was a sophomore at MIT and I was in second grade at Barley Sheaf Elementary School, neither one of us was a value to the other. We became values to each other only after we met.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the debate was my last exchange with "iouswuoibev." After commenting on his total change of subject from serious comment back to joking comment, I wrote, "That's fine, I really have no desire to say any more on the topic." He replied, "That's unfortunate because we haven't finished." Now perhaps he wasn't finished with the discussion, in the sense that he had more that he wanted to say. But I was certainly done. I'd said all that I wanted or needed to say, particularly given his sudden reversal of topic and particularly given the time available to me. So that "we haven't finished" was almost as insufferably presumptuous as the hypothetical under discussion.

True to that form, "iouswuoibev" seems to have moved on to telling a someone who inquired about his (reasonable) feelings of loneliness that his problem is second-handedness. Really, I kid you not.

(I don't mean to pick on this poor young man too much, since I don't think that he is malicious. Nonetheless, he is doing very real damage. If he won't stop, he ought to be publicly opposed.)

Read more...

Firefly Dreams

Paul and I have been watching Firefly again. I think that's the fourth time for me -- and it's even more amazing than I remembered. (We watch one episode per 40 minute exercise session. I must say, it's damn hard to row when you're laughing at some perfectly delivered line from Jayne. And I nearly leapt myself off the treadmill from fright in the scene where Jayne meets the soon-to-be-Reaver in the kitchen of the dead ship.)

However, this just-released trailer for the upcoming movie is so, so much better, for it promises glories to come (in September). Honestly, I didn't expect to be so thrilled at even small glimpses of new Firefly. But I certainly was.

Update #1: OHMIGOD! Serenity sneak preview! In Denver! In a few days!

Here's what Joss said:

Well.

It gets better.

As thus: The movie is very nearly finished. You've seen many pretty images in the trailer. But I've still got work to do and you've still got months before you can see it.

Unless.

And, no, I'm not talking Australia (but Hi, Australia! anyway), I'm talking here in the more-or-less-United States, a one time multi-city Browncoat sneak event. Thursday, May 5th at 10:00 pm, the movie (Serenity! Pay attention! Jeez.) will be playing at exactly 10 theaters in 10 cities across the country. You (or possibly someone much like you) (or possibly a robot EXACTLY like you, but with better manners and sonic arm-lasers, sent to take your place) will be able to buy a ticket to see Serenity months in advance. Not just the bitty trailer with not enough Kaylee and Book, but the whole film, in its extremely almost completed state.

You probably have some questions. How is this possible? What cities exactly will it be in? What are these changes my body is going through? All valid. It's possible because some clown put a bunch of Universal execs in a theater full of Browncoats and dude, they came out SWEATING, they never seen energy like that. They loved it, and even though they were already wicked supportive of the movie (see: earlier posts re: we're making the movie) they simply weren't ready for you guys. When I whinged on about pushing the date and everyone here was posting about "what do we do till September", they agreed to let me sneak it out.

Maybe they thought it was a fluke. Maybe they wanna see if people really do care about the flick. Or maybe they're just treating us with respect and kindness, though that last option confuses and terrifies me as much as these changes my body is going through (I'm "perspiring" and becoming "interested in girls", which believe me is very unsettling when you're 40.) Does it matter? The plan works for me, and it can work for a select bunch of y'all. Here's what I know:

The cities to be hit are:

Seattle
Austin
Sacramento
Boston
Altanta
Chicago
San Francisco
Las Vegas
Denver
The Portland of Oregon

If you're in or near one of those, you might wanna stop by. There's supposed to be a "Can't Stop the Signal" page on this website (I don't know where it is -- hey, I remembered my damn password, doesn't that buy me any cred?) There should be more info there soon about how to get in, bringing peeps into the fold, I think there's even competetions and stuff. (All I know is I have exactly 20 Brownie points. I answered ONE triv Q and got it wrong. Forget cred. I have no cred.) Now a couple of us might just creep into one of those major metropolitan multiplexes to see if anyone does show up, so remember: swearing in Chinese ONLY.

All right. This will please the fans and satisfy the employers of Joss Whedon, so I must stop as my arm-lasers are getting tired. I politely thank you for your attention.

Should be fun.

-j.

To find out about dates and time and to purchase tickets, go to the Browncoats web site. You might need to create an account, if you are deficient in that regard. I've already purchased tickets for Paul and me. (A bunch of us from FROG will be going, of course.)

Oh, what a happy day!

Update #2: It really says something about Paul's and my obsession for Firefly that we both blogged about the trailer. (I didn't notice his post this morning when I wrote up my post.) In fact, Paul blogged about it twice: once here on NoodleFood and once on GeekPress.

Update #3: All ten cities are sold out. WOW!

Read more...

Serenity Movie Trailer.

Available here. This movie is going to be awesome...

Read more...

Grad School Barbie

Heh: Grad School Barbie. I particularly liked graduate advisor Ken:

GRADUATE ADVISOR KEN: Barbie's mentor and advisor in her quest for increased education and decreased self esteem. Grad Advisor Ken (tm) comes with a supply of red pens and a permanent frown. Press the button to hear Grad Advisor Ken deliver such wisdom to Barbie as "I need an update on your progress" "I don't think you'll be ready to graduate yet" and "This is nowhere near ready for publication." Buy 3 or more dolls, and you can have Barbie's Defense Committee! (Palm Pilot and tenure sold separately.)

I don't have a graduate advisor yet, so perhaps the department will let me choose Ken. At least he could be on my committee.

Read more...

ManPower

I recently found this interesting commentary on the likely response to the impending birth control pill for men by Glenn Sacks on the ifeminists site. He writes:

Women have long lamented the unequal burden they shoulder in the area of contraception. Today researchers are reportedly close to perfecting a male contraceptive that is free of side effects, easy to take, and reversible. But do women really want a male birth control pill?

...while women legitimately complain that biology has condemned them to bear the burden of contraception, this burden also gives women control over one of the most important parts of any human being's life--reproduction. The male birth control pill will shift much of that control from women to men. Is the following conversation far away?

Woman #1: "My [husband, boyfriend, significant other] is selfish. He's on the pill and won't get off. I've asked him to stop taking it but he always says he's not ready. He just won't grow up. I don't know what to do."

Woman #2: "That's what the pill has given men--a right to be perpetual adolescents. It's given them veto power over women who want to have children."

Despite the stigma that will develop against men who take the pill, the pill will be a success. While most women are responsible and want to have children with a willing, committed partner, studies show that lack of reproductive control can be a major problem for men today. For example, the National Scruples and Lies Survey 2004 polled 5,000 women in the United Kingdom for That's Life! magazine. According to that survey, 42% of women claim they would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, regardless of the wishes of their partners.

...According to research conducted by Joyce Abma of the National Center for Health Statistics and Linda Piccinino of Cornell University, over a million American births each year result from pregnancies which men did not intend.

The article then briefly considers the serious, years-long burden of child support which may be imposed upon unwilling fathers. A male birth control pill could obviously put an end to much of that.

At present, women certainly do have a double power over procreation not enjoyed by men. First, the most reliable form of birth control, i.e. the pill, is taken or not by the woman, often out of the sight of the man. Second, only women have the power to opt out of pregnancy via abortion or out of child-rearing via adoption. A male birth control pill would offer men substantial control over contraception -- and thus obviate much need (or wish) for abortion and adoption. Even with a male birth control pill, I still think that men ought to be able to opt out of fatherhood in the case of accidental pregnancy. Men ought not be placed into indentured servitude for 18 years due to bad luck.

I do suspect (and hope) that the author is wrong that a "stigma... will develop against men who take the pill"; the hypocrisy of that view would be too much for any reasonable person to bear. I'm sure that some women would lament the loss of their capacity to trick their man du jour into fatherhood. However, I suspect that such lamentations will be largely private, as they would reveal a rather twisted soul.

Read more...

Wasted Dollars

It's true: "You and I just spent $2.5 million to turn a pyramid on its side, paint it with a rainbow coalition of colors and build a stairway along its side for a stick figure to climb."

See for yourself:



The old food pyramid is beautifully comprehensible in comparison.

Read more...

Sweet Justice

I love Wendy's hamburgers, so I'm pleased to hear that the woman (Anna Ayala) who claimed to have found a finger in her chili has been arrested on various charges. She seems like an all-around horrible person:

The investigation into the severed finger prompted the second criminal charge against Ayala, who authorities said sold a mobile home that was not hers to a woman who spoke only Spanish. The victim in that case lost her life savings of $11,000, police said.

The reward money for information about the source of the missing finger still stands.

Read more...

A Bit of Humor

I absolutely loved these two headlines from last week's Onion: Heaven Less Opulent Than Vatican, Reports Disappointed Pope and Cost of Living Now Outweighs Benefits. Heh.

Read more...

Invented Evils

Wendy McElroy just published an op-ed on the harm done to genuine rape victims by feminists who falsely claim rape. Based upon Wendy's description of the facts of the case, that seems to be precisely what the Brevard, Florida NOW Chapter President and part-time Rollins College student Desiree Nall did. After surveying the facts of the case, she writes:

Assuming that Nall lied, she has achieved the opposite of what I believe she intended. By "crying rape" she has made every woman who is a victim less credible and less likely to receive justice from the police or the public. She has made women less safe.

Rollins student Elizabeth Humphrey states the point simply: "Lying about that story is absolutely horrible because women are victimized every day. And if we get the reputation of lying, then people won't start to believe us if it does happen."

Instead of publicizing sexual violence against women, Nall has spotlighted the problem of false accusations against men. Her case also raises the question of whether NOW-style feminists encourage false accusations when they flatly insist that women must be believed.

In the '60s, feminists fought to have rape taken seriously. But taking an accusation seriously is not the same as granting it automatic validity. Rather, it means investigating the facts and weighing them in an unbiased manner that favors no one and nothing but the truth.

The feminist dogma that a woman has no incentive to lie about rape is absurd in the extreme; it's a all-too-easy way to totally ruin a man's life, even if the case dies before trial. It is certainly terrible that some women do lie about rape. It is a grave injustice to the man falsely accused. It creates an (in fact) unfounded fear of attack in the community. Worst of all, it casts doubt upon the allegations of rape by genuine victims.

It's bad enough for a woman to do all that for petty reason of revenge; such a woman deserves to be shunned by all honest and civilized men and women. For a feminist to falsely allege rape in order to "raise awareness" about it is incomprehensibly vicious. (The same evaluation, of course, applies to those who write racist graffiti in order to "raise awareness" about racism, as also recently happened on some college campus.) Such tactics are also bizarrely dishonest: If rape or racism were such a problem, couldn't examples be found rather than invented?

I vaguely remember hearing (perhaps from Stephen Hicks) that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the hard left faced an inescapable either-or choice between socialism and reality. Unsurprisingly, they abandoned reality in favor of socialism -- and thus postmodernism was born. Based upon my readings on Soviet Russia and Red China, I'm certain that most (if not all) hard leftists abandoned reality decades earlier. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the last shred of their pretend concern for the facts disintegrated. Postmodernism then served as a convenient rationalization for their abandonment of that pretended concern for facts: Wow, as it turned out, the idea of objective fact was just a myth!

That same general pattern seems to be at work in these cases of invented evils, in that the facts are simply treated as irrelevant in the face of leftist dogma about pervasive racism and sexism.

Read more...

Top 11 Rejected Names For Pope Benedict XVI

From BBspot. My favorite is #7.

11. Pope Jesus II
10. P-Benny
9. Pope Rageous sponsored by Mountain Dew
8. Pope xXx
7. Pope.tmp
6. Pope Muhammed I
5. Pope Inquisition II
4. Pope Position LXIX
3. Pope Doggy Dog
2. Pope John Paul George and Ringo
1. Pope Cracker CCLXII

Read more...

Fat Hysteria

In some ways, I'm glad to see that the hysteria of "an epidemic of obesity" being deflated by scientific inquiry into the actual health effects of moderate "excess" weight. The reasons for the apparent benefits of a few extra pounds aren't yet clear, but the possibilities suggested by some of the doctors interviewed in the article do seem reasonable on common sense grounds. Some extra weight in old age could serve a protective function against death, in that the body would have internal food resources upon which to draw in cases of acute illness. Also, people are now better able to manage the usual bad effects of their excess weight, particularly high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, with advances in both detection and treatment of these secondary conditions. So the primary danger of excess weight in youth or middle age then might well be just the danger of slipping into obesity.

However, I must admit that I'm not completely thrilled with the news, as I suspect that it will encourage people to pay less attention to the pounds that are all-too-easy to accumulate over the years. Such excess pounds do extract a cost from a person over the course of his life, in that they slow a person down in myriad ways.

Certainly, I'm not going to be packing on the pounds any time soon. In fact, I still have about ten pounds of excess weight to lose. Although I've always been well-within the bounds of "normal weight" for my height, I was carrying way too much fat at my peak weight last winter. I'm much happier with my appearance now, as I've lost 15 pounds, even while gaining substantial muscle mass. Just to do that required a massive restriction on my daily intake of food, combined with at least 4 miles / 40 minutes of running or rowing every day. At least it is paying off, albeit very slowly.

Read more...

How To Clean Your Toilet

I've seen this before, but it's still one of my favorites:

How To Clean Your Toilet

1. Put both lids of the toilet up and add 1/8 cup of pet shampoo to the water in the bowl.

2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom.

3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close both lids. You may need to stand on the lid.

4. The cat will self agitate and make ample suds. Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this.

5. Flush the toilet three or four times. This provides a "power-wash" and rinse."

6. Have someone open the front door of your home. Be sure that there are no people between the bathroom and the front door.

7. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can, and quickly lift both lids.

8. The cat will rocket out of the toilet, streak through the bathroom, and run outside where he will dry himself off.

9. Both the commode and the cat will be sparkling clean.

Sincerely,
The Dog

Heh.

Read more...

Varieties of American English

I moved from New Jersey to Maryland when I was 11, so this rating seems pretty sensible.

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

20% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

(Via EGO)

Read more...

"Living In Harmony With Nature"

Don Boudreaux has written an excellent essay on the currently in vogue concept of "living in harmony with nature". Here's an excerpt:

To live harmoniously with nature is to understand and accept natural forces. The greater this understanding and acceptance, the greater the harmony. Because we know so much more today than we did before about physics, chemistry, meteorology, biology, physiology, metallurgy, and on and on with our ologies and urgies, we live so much more harmoniously with nature.

Pre-Columbian peoples lived simply, to be sure, but let's stop mistaking ignorance and poverty with harmony. It's an utter myth -- we might say an urban myth -- that primitive peoples lived with nature harmoniously. Nature devastated them. Nature battered them into early graves. Their ignorance of nature prevented them from achieving much material wealth. To dance to imaginary rain gods or to chant and pray for a child dying of bacterial infection is not to live harmoniously with nature; it is to live most inharmoniously. Nature is doing its thing -- failing to water the crops, growing bacteria within a child's lungs -- while human beings who are as ignorant of nature as nature is of human beings, moan, chant, pray, dance, build totems, burn leaves and twigs, all in fruitless, inharmonious efforts to solve the problems.

It is we today, with our knowledge of how to irrigate fields using science and engineering, and how to make and administer antibiotics, who live harmoniously with nature. We don't demand miracles. We don't expect nature to change its logic simply because we arrogantly wish it to do so. We accept nature's logic and work with it.

(Via Eugene Volokh.)

Read more...

Be Still My Beating Heart

Really, this find is surely The Best News Ever:

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure -- a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye -- decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a "second Renaissance".

I'll be ecstatic even if the collection consists entirely of ancient literature. Yet I can't help but wonder if any substantive works of philosophy will be discovered.

Please Athena, let us find some fantastic new Aristotle! (If you want me to sacrifice a goat in return, just let me know.)

Read more...

The Objectivist Academic Center

Over the past school year, I've been taking Onkar Ghate's "The Philosophy of Ayn Rand" course from the Objectivist Academic Center. It has exceeded my wildest hopes and dreams for education in Objectivism. I've learned more than I thought possible.

So I'm pleased to pass on this announcement from the Ayn Rand Institute. Note that the application deadline is just three days away. (The announcement sat in my inbox for a few weeks.)

If you know anyone who you think may be interested in becoming a student at the Objectivist Academic Center, or if you know anyone who is "on the fence" about applying, please encourage them to apply.

The application deadline for admission to the OAC's undergraduate program for the 2005-06 academic year is April 18, 2005. There is a second deadline of August 1, 2005 for applying for the 2005-06 academic year, however, priority is given to the applications we receive by the April deadline.

Information about the OAC is available here. The application form is available here.

I strongly encourage all students with a serious interest in Objectivism to apply. I also strongly encourage regular folks to audit various OAC classes, particularly Onkar Ghate's "Philosophy of Objectivism" course.

I've learned more philosophy in my one year of undergraduate study with Onkar than in my three years of graduate coursework at Boulder. Although the extra work has been a definite burden, I've never been blessed with a better education.

Read more...

The Dreams of Men

I learn something new every day! Just a few moments ago, I learned this helpful tidbit in a hysterical collection of inadvertently sexual comic book covers:

"It's every man's dream to have a penis so large that he must hire a small boy to carry it."

Heh. You'll have to look at the page to find out what prompted that comment!

Read more...

50 Ways to Sanction Evil

About two weeks ago, I saw a flyer announcing a talk on Cuba's fabulous health care system. (That's what all the Cuban refugees must be fleeing... good health care!) Then, earlier this week, I was forwarded this announcement on Boulder's graduate student list:

Come to Cuba this summer for a unique research experience. Open to scholars from all disciplines, this two week trip will allow you to make contact with your professional counterparts, experience Cuban reality, and pursue your own research interests in the company of fellow scholars.

The RESEARCH NETWORK IN CUBA will be conducted from June 14-28, 2005 in Havana, Cuba. Among the special activities being planned are:

* SEMINAR ON THE HISTORY OF CUBAN THOUGHT
* WORKSHOP ON THE NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE IN CUBA
* AFRICAN DERIVED TRADITIONS IN CUBA
* CUBAN AGRICULTURE - visit to a sugar mill
* other field trips to neighborhoods, institutions and civil society.

You are also invited to participate in the 17th CONFERENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN AND CUBAN PHILOSOPHERS AND SOCIAL SCIENTISTS held at the University of Havana from June 20-24. (Sponsored by the University's Faculty of Philosophy, History and Sociology, the Institute of Philosophy, and the Cuban Society for Philosophic Research.) In past years as many as 95 North Americans have joined with 140 Cubans for this week of discussions. Proposals for papers to be presented at the Conference are invited. The Cuban organizers will make every effort to pair your paper with one by a Cuban scholar on the same topic. Send a 1 to 2 page abstract by April 1 to cdurand@morgan.edu Earlier proposals are encouraged.

EXTRA: Extend your stay in Cuba to June 30 with a 4 day trip to SANTIAGO DE CUBA focusing on the culture of the region.

LICENSE: The U.S. government severely restricts travel to Cuba. However, scholars going for a full time program of research, can travel legally under a General License.

Graduate students: This trip is also open to graduate students with a research interest in Cuba. If your university has an institutional license, you may be able to travel under it with a letter of authorization from the university. Otherwise, under current U.S. regulations, in order to travel legally to Cuba students will need a specific license from the Treasury Department. We can assist you in obtaining this license if you are receiving academic credit for the trip. Application deadline: March 1, 2005.

COST: Approximately $1400 for a basic 14 day stay in Havana, all group activities included from departure to return through Nassau in The Bahamas. There will be some added cost for additional days. Some scholarship assistance may be available for those with limited means.

DEADLINES:
* March 1, 2005: graduate student applications for license
* April 1, 2005: abstracts for papers (1-2 pages)
* May 1, 2005: completed papers
* May 1, 2005: completed applications

We expect that all will approach this interchange in the spirit of friendship and out of a desire to promote mutual scholarly interests.

Additional information available at www.cubaconference.org or by contacting Cliff DuRand at cdurand@morgan.edu.

What's next, travel to North Korea to discuss that country's ingenious weight loss program? Or how about a trip to China to learn about their legal system? Or maybe travel to Iran to hear about alternatives to oil-based power?!?

Blech. I'm disgusted.

Read more...

Battle of the Weblogs

GeekPress beats NoodleFood on intelligence.

Read more...

Leftists for Slavery

Based upon Tom Palmer's review, Cass Sunstein's new book The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Way We Need It More than Ever is nothing more than a absurd plea for welfare rights. I find the line of argument discussed by Palmer below to be of particular interest, as it seems to be gaining currency among hard leftists frantically seeking a new rationalization for the Altruistic Leviathan. (If I recall correctly, Thomas Nagel made a similar argument in a co-authored book a few years ago.)

So what is the argument? It is that because government is necessary for the creation of wealth, individuals have no right to the wealth they create. The whole argument depends upon a total dropping of context, particularly of the obvious fact that the rational, productive activity of the individual is also necessary for the creation of wealth.

Tom Palmer's review traces some of the absurdities of this argument:

Second, Sunstein insists that without government protection no one would enjoy anything of value, and therefore that all value must be attributed to the action of the state: "Government is 'implicated' in everything people own.... If rich people have a great deal of money, it is because the government furnishes a system in which they are entitled to have and keep that money." The problem here is that Sunstein's economic theory of value is stuck in the period of the classical economists, who tried to attribute all value to one necessary factor of production; for them, that was labor. Sunstein merely substitutes what he has decided is the one necessary factor: the state. But after the "marginal revolution" in economics (circa 1871), no serious thinker should make such a mistake. It is now recognized that we make choices across a great many margins, and that value is not created by a single necessary factor. If that were not so, we could say that farmers produce all value, since without food none of the rest of us would produce anything else; likewise, for other groups and factors of production. The theory of value on which Sunstein rests his case for the welfare state is remarkably naive and primitive.

Third, the ethical implications Sunstein draws from his theory of value do not withstand scrutiny. He says that "to believe that people have a right to their current holdings, so that any diminution of those holdings amounts to a violation of their rights... is an utterly implausible position. Those who possess a great deal do so because laws and institutions, including public institutions, make their holdings possible.... In the state of nature -- freed from the protection of law and government -- how well would wealthy people fare?" Let's see what else this theory would entail: If a doctor were to save my life, then, since the doctor would be responsible for my existence, and therefore for all of the liberty and wealth that I might enjoy or create henceforth, the doctor would have the right to decide what should happen with that liberty and that wealth, since without the doctor neither I, nor the liberty, nor the wealth would exist. In short, Sunstein's ethical theory is just silly.

Paul will be pleased to learn that his patients literally owe him their lives, not merely a fee. Of course, he might be master over those patients, but he'll also be a slave to everyone else from his parents to the postman. So maybe he won't be so pleased after all.

Read more...

Cat Sleeping Pose Olympics

Here are the top entries in the Solo, Duet, and Still Life categories. But my favorite has got to be the Upright Radiator Hugathon from the Internet Anonymous category.

Read more...

The Routledge Monstrosity

Ever since I was alerted to this monstrosity in January 2004, I've been wanting to blog it. Unsurprisingly, it pertains to The Objectivist Center (TOC), particularly to their 1998 response to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Ayn Rand. (When I learned of it, I was still in the middle of writing up my public statement disassociating myself from TOC. So I didn't want to say anything about it at the time. Then, I forgot that I hadn't ever blogged it -- until recently, that is.)

In the October 1998 "Sightings" of Navigator, Roger Donway reported upon the Routledge Encyclopedia's inclusion of an entry on Ayn Rand. Here's what he wrote:

Routledge has just brought out a massive ten-volume encyclopedia of philosophy (a mere $2,500 at the special introductory price good through October 31). Writing in the New York Times Book Review (Sunday, July 5, 1998), George Steiner praised the work highly but went about the critic's task of picking nits. He lamented that several people were missing, such as Carlo Michelstaedter, now apparently influential among Italian existentialists, and then, having displayed his learning, Steiner remarked: "Not that these men would have wished to be in the company of Ayn Rand, whose vacuous vaporings harvest a full entry!" (Exclamation point in the original.) Congratulations to Routledge for having the wisdom and courage to include Rand in their encyclopedia, though doing so has opened them to the sneers of the world's Steiners.

Also, thanks to Routledge for informing IOS that the author of the Rand entry is Chandra Kukathas, an associate professor in the School of Politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia. Though not an Objectivist, Kukathas is a familiar figure in libertarian circles. In a note to IOS, Kukathas observed that "a bad error" had crept into his Rand entry in some way he could not explain: "The Virtue of Selfishness is cited as a novel." Also, its publication date is given as 1974 rather than 1964, which would make it the last of the four collections of essays published in Rand's lifetime rather than the first. Beyond such bibliographical quibbles, however, lies the fascinating fact that Kukathas gives prominence to the concept of "despair." Its application to many secondary figures in The Fountainhead is obvious, but is it true that Atlas Shrugged "charts the rise of those who begin in despair"? Would it not be more accurate to say the strikers begin with a refusal to despair of the world and join the strike only after they can refuse no longer? Whatever the answer, Kukathas's focus on this emotion in Rand's two great novels is sure to have Objectivists raising interesting questions about its place in the human landscape.

Before reading the actual entry on Ayn Rand, note that Roger Donway's review of it is quite positive. He praises the "wisdom and courage" of the editors of the Encyclopedia. By saying that the author (Chandra Kukathas) is "not an Objectivist" but "a familiar figure in libertarian circles," Donway suggests that he is knowledgeable of Ayn Rand and perhaps even friendly toward her. He treat Kukathas' focus on "the concept of 'despair'" as a legitimate and interesting question. His only complaint seems to be the (inadvertent) biographical errors in the entry.

Okay, so now read the actual entry:

Rand, Ayn (1905-82)

Ayn Rand was a Russian-born US novelist and philosopher who exerted considerable influence in the conservative and libertarian intellectual movements in the post-war USA. Rand's ideas were expressed mainly through her novels; she set forth a view of morality as based in rational self-interest and in political philosophy defended an unrestrained form of capitalism.

Ayn Rand was born Alyssa Rosenbaum into a middle-class Jewish family in St Petersburg. Her family's expropriation by the Bolsheviks and subsequent poverty had a profound effect on her; her first novel, We the Living (1936), describes the tragedy of a Russian student struggling against an evil society in the 'vast prison' that was the USSR in the 1920s. Her work was marked not only by a hostility to communism but also by a strong antipathy towards any form of compromise among competing values.

Popular success came in 1943 with the publication of her philosophical novel, The Fountainhead, the story of an architect who refuses to compromise his independence or his integrity while good people despair in the face of evil. A deeply moral work, its theme is integrity which, for Rand, was at the root of the idea of freedom. Even greater success came with Atlas Shrugged (1957), Rand's final work of fiction. More explicitly political than her earlier work, it tells of the breakdown of a society of evil as the captains of capitalist industry withdraw from a world marked by political and moral corruption. As with her earlier works, the hero is uncompromising in his integrity and confidence in the value of the moral path; the bulk of the novel charts the rise of those who begin in despair. However, Rand also turns more explicitly to philosophical problems in ethics in an attempt to set morals on a more secure epistemological footing. The book contains many long philosophical speeches by characters speaking for Rand.

The popular success of her fiction brought discipleship and the 1960s and 1970s saw the growth of an 'objectivist' movement. The influence of Rand's ideas was strongest among college students in the USA but attracted little attention from academic philosophers. Her outspoken defence of capitalism in works like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967), and her characterization of her position as a defence of the 'virtue of selfishness' in her novel of the same title (published in 1974), also brought notoriety, but kept her out of the intellectual mainstream.

The central philosophical argument of Rand's thought is an attempt to show that the good life is itself a substantial ethical value from which may be derived important moral conclusions. In this she is self-consciously Aristotelian, although most commentators have concluded that her argument falls victim to the same difficulties, relying on a morally substantive and controversial account of human nature to generate ethical conclusions.

Rand's political theory is of little interest. Its unremitting hostility towards the state and taxation sits inconsistently with a rejection of anarchism, and her attempts to resolve the difficulty are ill-thought out and unsystematic. Of more enduring interest is her fiction, belonging to a genre she labelled 'romantic realism'. Despite her attack on altruism and insistence on the virtue of selfishness, her real concerns were the defence of the value of integrity (to the point of self-sacrifice) in the face of evil and moral despair.

Could a worse encyclopedia entry on Ayn Rand have been written? I suspect not. It is inaccurate, superficial, dismissive, spotty, and worse. Yet the real horror is Roger Donway's review. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual encyclopedia entry: Donway neither accurately reports its content nor properly evaluates it. The review is a monstrous injustice to both Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

I have no inside information concerning Roger Donway's motivations for writing the review that he did. The most plausible explanation is that TOC was attempting to appeal to libertarians -- and chose to do so by sucking up to Chandra Kukathas and his "libertarian circles" rather than by challenging the better libertarians to seriously engage Ayn Rand's ideas. Such appeasement is TOC's standard operating mode, after all.

Notably, most of Roger Donway's readers would not have easy access to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry itself. As such, they could not possibly judge the honesty or justice of Donway's comments upon it. I think that Donway was counting upon such ignorance. Why? Because he dramatically changed his tune in response to sharp criticism from Irfan Khawaja in the January 1999 "Sightings":

Last October, "Sightings" mentioned that Routledge had published a massive ten-volume encyclopedia on the history of philosophy that included an article on Ayn Rand by Chandra Kukathas, who is not an Objectivist but a well-known figure in libertarian circles. Navigator's decision to see the entry as a welcome bit of cultural recognition for Rand brought a sharp response in the form of a letter to the editor from Irfan Khawaja, who cited the entry's numerous deficiencies. Since Navigator has no "Letters" column, the disagreement over how to treat such a deeply flawed recognition is simply noted here. Those who would like to read a brief but harsh critique of Kukathas's article should check the Web site of the Ayn Rand Society (http://aynrandsociety.org), where there is a letter from Allan Gotthelf to the encyclopedia's editor, Edward Craig.

Notice the backtracking: Only now does Donway mention that the encyclopedia entry was "a deeply flawed recognition" of Ayn Rand with "numerous deficiencies." No such worries were even hinted at in the original review. Also notice the bizarre claim that it was "Navigator's decision to see the entry as a welcome bit of cultural recognition for Rand" -- as if his total evasion of the essence of the entry was merely an optional matter.

Looking back on it now, I'm not surprised that I was sick to my stomach for hours upon discovering all this material back in January of 2004. At the time, I was particularly distressed that IOS/TOC was obviously and concretely corrupt way back in 1998 -- and I missed it. It was a real low point, I must say.

On a more positive note, the referenced letter from Allan Gotthelf to the editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia is a tour de force of intellectual virtue: strong, clear, principled, essentialized, detailed -- and always polite. Unfortunately, it's no longer available on the Ayn Rand Society web site. (I would love to post it here, but I haven't asked for permission.) You can read it via the Wayback Machine -- and I do strongly recommend that you do so, particularly if you are interested in a detailed analysis of the Routledge entry.

Read more...

Middle East Culture

For anyone with even a passing interest in the culture of the Middle East, this collection of ten letters on Saudi Arabian culture by an American businessman is well worth reading. (To read them all, rather than just the latest, use the links in the left-hand navigation bar.) From a distance, Suadi culture looks pretty damn perverse. Up close, it's much worse. (Via TIA Daily.)

Read more...

Colorado Spring

Just yesterday, the temperature was in the mid 60's. Today, it's snow, snow, and more snow. We're expected to get over a foot of the white stuff.

It's typical Colorado weather!

Read more...

Leonard Peikoff Was Right

The greatest danger to the United States is the religious right, as this article on Tom Delay's threats against our independent judiciary amply demonstrates. The article reports that one proposal of the conference in question was that Congress ought to "pass bills to remove court jurisdiction from certain social issues or the place of God in public life." In other words, these folks wish to gut the separation of church and state in First Amendment by preventing the courts from ensuring that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Lovely.

I found the article found via TIA Daily, which notes:

The good news, such as it is: at least all of this is coming into the open now, before the looming battles over the president's judicial appointments (including, possibly, to the Supreme Court). And the religious right's threats are so obvious an attack on the American system that they are likely to produce a backlash, stiffening the backbones of a few Senate Democrats and undermine public support for Senate Republicans.

Although I do think that the sheer clarity of the threat now is good, I worry that Tracinski is overestimating the Democrats commitment to secularism, rule of law, and an independent judiciary. After all, did any principled Democrats stand up against the phony "culture of life" in the battle over Terri Schiavo? From what I saw, they were scared into silence, despite opinion polls which indicated overwhelming opposition to the shenanigans of the religious right and support for withdrawing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. Additionally, Hillary Clinton's eagerness to jump into bed with religion doesn't offer much hope for the future of secularism in the Democratic Party. Yet maybe the Republicans will suffer in the next election, if indeed the religious fanatics are misjudging their base.

This country desperately needs a powerful, principled, and pro-American voice for secularism... but I fear that time is growing short.

Read more...

SuperPope!

What do you do when your religious leader dies? Reincarnate him as a comic book superhero!

Pope John Paul II is being reborn in a Colombian comic book as a superhero battling evil with an anti-Devil cape and special chastity
pants.

The first episode of the "Incredible Popeman" is about to go on sale in Colombia and shows the late Polish pontiff meeting comic book legends such as Batman and Superman to learn how to use superpowers to battle Satan...

Like any self-respecting superhero, the Incredible Popeman has a battery of special equipment. Along with his yellow cape and green chastity pants, the muscular super-pontiff wields a faith staff with a cross on top and carries holy water and communion wine.

In the comic book, the pope dies and is reborn with superpowers beyond the infallibility Catholic doctrine gave him on Earth.

Some sample pages of the comic book are available here.

Read more...

Cheaters Never Prosper

With widespread availablility of internet access, many unethical college students are turning to on-line term paper mills in order to avoid having to do their own schoolwork. However, a recent experiment showed that many of the papers are of very dubious quality:

Students who pay internet companies to write essays for them are not only cheating but could be wasting their money, according to a university professor.

An experiment at Loughborough University in which students were encouraged to buy essays from a number of ghostwriting companies found the results were of questionable quality.

One essay costing 205 British Pounds [$380 US] was of such low quality that it barely scraped a pass mark, says Prof Charles Oppenheim, an information science teacher and the university's plagiarism expert.

"As well as breaking the rules on cheating, students are taking a big risk because they are clearly not getting value for money," he said.

In particular,

Prof Oppenheim judged the worst work to have been provided by Essays-r-Us, which claims to be "a unique service of ready-made and tailor-made essays and research facilities for both professionals and academics".

In response, the company claims that the poor quality is intentional:

An Essays-r-Us spokesman said it wrote to order. "We are sometimes asked to write at an overseas student level and the mistakes are done on purpose. We have thousands of essays at different levels and attaining different grades from fail to distinction. The client gets what he/she orders."

Yeah, um, sure...

As Mike Masnick of Techdirt notes:

However, it still makes you wonder what sort of person would buy a paper online when there's absolutely no way to judge the quality of it? Oh, right, the sort of person who buys a paper online probably is too clueless to recognize that quality might matter.

Read more...

Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson"...

... is now available for free online. (Via Marginal Revolution.)

Read more...

Sensible Deer

I like a great many things about life in Colorado, particularly as opposed to the East Coast where I grew up. I like the friendly and seriously people involved in Front Range Objectivism. I like the relaxed, friendly, and independent culture of the West. I like the big open landscapes. I like the crazy weather. I like the nearby skiing. I like the common "pry my gun from my cold dead hands" attitude. I like living near our good friends Cliff and Alexa Brett and their four fabulous children. (They just moved back to Colorado last week from Los Angeles. Hooray!)

Of course, I do have some complaints. I mourn the lack of Trader Joe's, the most amazing grocery store ever. (It's a cheap and delicious gourmet store.) Happily, they are getting closer, as they are now in Santa Fe; it's only a matter of time before they expand to Denver. I also wish that I could be closer to my parents, but there's not exactly good sailing in Colorado.

One of my favorite aspects of life in Colorado is rather peculiar: sensible deer. I grew up (mostly) on a farm in Maryland. Driving up the long private road to the house was always a nerve-wracking experience, particularly at night. The white-tail deer would jump out into the road, just in front of the car, without any warning whatsoever. Now in Colorado, I also live in a fairly rural area. However, we have sensible mule deer. When cars pass them on the road, they do turn their heads to look. But they stay put. And so every time I see them placidly gazing at my passing car, I say to myself: Thank goodness for Colorado's sensible deer!

Really, life is better out west.

Read more...

"Action Philosophers" Comics

No, really...

I couldn't help but notice that the caption for "The All-Sex Special #1" reads:

"I Was the President's Love Slave!" tells the shocking true story of Thomas Jefferson, the contradictory genius of American Democracy (and Racism!) Also: St. Augustine: The hard-loving, hard-drinking African mastermind of Catholic dogma! Ayn Rand: A steamy love affair nearly ruined her Objectivist Institute!

Read more...

It Takes a Licking...

As I was doing laundry today, I found my mini USB drive in the washer. Yes, I washed it... in warm water with soap and a cold rinse. (I must have accidentally left it in a pocket.)

That's not particularly noteworthy, as I often find stuff in the washer that really ought not have been washed. What is noteworthy is that it still works. It reads. It writes. And apparently, it washes.

I'm dumbfounded.

Read more...

Compare and Contrast, Take Two

In a recent post, I linked to an ARI op-ed entitled "A Culture of Living Death" on the worship of suffering and death underlying the so-called "culture of life" championed by religious conservatives in the Terri Schiavo case. I mentioned that Objectivists, at least, "know what is at stake." In that vein, I certainly ought to have also mentioned Robert Tracinski's really excellent essay "Skepticism, Mysticism, and Living Death posted to the new TIA Daily Blog.

Of course, I meant that comment to apply to those who genuinely understand Objectivism, not merely those who spin absurd rationalistic castles from it. I also didn't mean it to apply to those who possess only a superficial understanding of the philosophy, like TOC Executive Director Ed Hudgins. He was recently quoted in an NRO op-ed on non-religious opposition to removing the feeding tube of Terri Shiavo. Here's what the article said:

"There are issues in this case that well-meaning and intelligent people on both sides can disagree with and have to think seriously about," says Ed Hudgins, executive director of the Objectivist Center. He describes himself as "an atheist and a humanist in the Aristotelian tradition." He adds: "I hope this case focuses people's attention on the importance of living life and flourishing while you have it, and on getting everything you can out of this wonderful condition we call conscious life."

Wow, what a strong and uncompromising stance!

Now, perhaps Ed was misquoted or quoted out of context. However, given his track record, I doubt that. I strongly suspect that the friend who sent me the article hit the nail on the head: "This seems like another attempt by TOC to be all things to all people, without saying anything controversial or taking a stand on any important issue. Worse: it seems to tip its hat to skepticism." It's worse than a hat-tip to skepticism though; it's a full bow to it. Worse still: it's an evasion of the fundamental moral issues at stake, as so clearly identified by ARI-affiliated scholars.

Once again, the contrast between the Ayn Rand Institute's loyalty to the principles of Objectivism and The Objectivist Center's betrayal of them couldn't be clearer.

Some of you might wonder when will I stop pounding on The Objectivist Center. The answer is simple: When they give up their absurd and dishonest pretensions to being an Objectivist organization. Once they stop claiming to represent Ayn Rand's philosophy, I won't care what stupid nonsense they spout. In the meantime, their frauds deserve to be exposed at every turn.

Read more...

The "Culture of Life" as the Worship of Death

The advocates of the "culture of life" do not actually value life at all. If they did, they would worship health, vitality, happiness, flourishing, and strength -- not poverty, weakness, deprivation, and suffering:

In carrying on, [Pope] John Paul also offers us a precious gift: his suffering. It is hard to see him suffer. But this pope does not ask for relief from his sufferings. To the contrary, a bishop once told me that the pope used to refuse medication precisely because it interfered with his suffering. He has a mystical relationship with his suffering, offering it up for us, and for the whole world -- a world that increasingly embraces the culture of death, euthanasia, and the abortion of disabled fetuses, because it mistakenly believes there is no greater moral good than relief from suffering. In bearing his pain, John Paul says to us, in union with the Apostle Paul, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions."

We need his example in this world filled with suffering. We need the lesson he is teaching us: that suffering is not useless; that it can have meaning, and salvific power. As John Paul wrote in his 1984 encyclical On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, once this meaning and power are discovered, suffering actually becomes "a source of joy" because "faith in sharing the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person...is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters. Therefore he is carrying out an irreplaceable service."

I'm completely horrified, as any human with a modicum of rationality or self-respect ought to be. Yet this philosophical masochism is widely advocated and accepted as not just moral, but morally elevated. Principled opposition from the left seems to be in short supply. Ordinary people who disagree with such suffering-worship seemed disarmed by it. The only strong opposition that I've heard has been from Objectivists. At least they know what is at stake.

I wonder if, fifty years from now, we will look upon the recent deaths of the Pope and Terri Schiavo as cultural turning points. If so, I can only hope that the turn will be away from the horrors of the "culture of life," not toward them.

Read more...

The Aspiring Mafiosos of the Boulder Administration

The following "Vital Student E-memo" is a stellar example of deliberately vague threats. Honestly, I don't think that the Godfather could do any better.

TO: All UCB students
FROM: UCSU
SENDER: joseph.neguse@colorado.edu
DATE: 4-1-05
SUBJECT: April 5th Forum Addressing Racial Climate

Dear Fellow Students,

It is time for us to unify and overcome the current, undesirable campus climate. Our accomplishments are being overshadowed because of certain behaviors and incidents on campus. Everyday when we listen, read, and tune into the news, it is clear that we are in a constant struggle to preserve the value of this public institution. We cannot afford to fight, disrespect, and hate amongst ourselves.

Recent incidents of racism on this campus will not be tolerated. As your student leaders and peers, we are truly saddened and disgusted by these cowardly acts. Please know that everything in our power is being done to ensure a zero tolerance policy for people who choose to involve themselves in acts of racism and hate.

We pride ourselves on principles of accessibility and diversity in higher education. It is our priority to protect these principles because we believe that all students deserve a safe and undistracted learning environment.

This coming Tuesday, April 5th at 6:30PM in UMC 235, there will be a forum with our elected state leaders, including Senate President Pro-Tempore Peter Groff, addressing the racial climate on our campus. As students who come to this campus everyday to receive an education, it is critical that we learn where our state officials stand and how they intend to proceed. We strongly encourage everyone to attend.

As always, you - the students - are our primary concern, so please don't hesitate to contact us with any of your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Joseph Neguse
Garrett Stanton
Veronica Crespin
UCSU Tri-Executive

Does anyone care to translate that into comprehensible English?

Read more...