The Demise of SoloHQ

As of tomorrow, SoloHQ will cease to exist. (Based upon the announcement, Executive Director Joe Rowlands was pretty unhappy with the state of the site.) All in all, SoloHQ's demise is welcome news. As I told Linz back in October, when he inquired about my unwillingness to engage in debate on SOLO:

SOLO is a pretty disturbing place, I think. It's a welcome forum for TOC staff and supporters, die-hard worshippers of the Brandens, writers of articles horribly misrepresenting Objectivism, the fanatical haters of all things ARI, and those half-baked pseudo-Objectivists who wish to inject the philosophy with their own personal mysticism, altruism, nonjudgmentalism, and appeasement. That's not to say that there's not some good people contributing to SOLO. However, as with all such joint ventures between good and evil, the good elements legitimize the bad while the bad drowns out the good.

Linz then said:

SOLO is a welcome forum for ARI staff and supporters as well, if they choose to post there. Mostly they don't. Their loss. Part of their problem is their refusal to engage anyone who disagrees with them. That's not the way to win hearts and minds. The *articles* are *supposed* to be Objectivist, but occasionally some rubbish slips through the net. ... But general posting is open to all comers, Objectivist, non-Objectivists and anti-Objectivists alike. If I become convinced they're posting in bad faith, as with the 'pusballs' recently, I nuke 'em. Overall, TOC is better represented there by virtue of ARI default. They [ARI] choose to be a secular version of Exclusive Brethren. Not my fault. Our policy is that, since we have an intellectual battle on our hands, we may as well actually engage in it.

I replied:

At least in my own case, it's not at all a matter of any kind of refusal to debate dissenters. If that was a worry of mine, I'd be too damn scared to blog. And ARI intellectuals wouldn't be lecturing on campuses, writing op-eds, and the like. (Frankly, the lovey-dovey folks at TOC deserve that charge more than anyone else, since they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge any substantial disagreement with their intellectual opponents!)

My choice not to post to SOLO is a matter of upholding basic standards in intellectual discussion, particularly as to what constitutes Objectivism. Never in a million years will I chime in with Bob Bidinotto, Barbara Branden, Robert Campbell, Ed Hudgins, Roger Bissell, Michael Kelly, and the like--as if we're all good, honest, and chummy friends of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, albeit with some minor differences of opinion.

Of course, I don't expect you to share my assessment of those people. It took much interaction, reflection, and thought, often over the course of months, to reach those judgments. Often, it meant losing friends--and that was hard. However, you should know that my refusal to engage in debate on SOLO is a direct result of my judgment that far too many regular contributors to SOLO are intellectually unserious at best and dishonestly hostile to Objectivism (and particularly Ayn Rand) at worst. That those people are not just welcome but also beloved on SOLO means that it's not a forum that can offer me (or anyone from ARI) a fair intellectual fight. I hope that clarifies for you a bit.

Nonetheless, I must admit being a bit sad concerning the demise of SoloHQ, since I was often amused by the crazed attacks upon me regularly posted in the Forum. So, as my final tribute to SoloHQ, let me post a few of my favorites:

From Bill Dwyer:

Having just emerged from a discussion on Noodlefood, Diana Hsieh's blog, which included an exchange with a mysterous L.S., who I suspect was Leonard Peikoff, I find myself left with an over-riding impression that refuses to go away - one that prompts me to ask, ever more seriously, "is Objectivism a cult?" The answer is: not as a philosophy, to be sure, because "a cult" refers to form rather than to content. It refers to the way in which an idea is held rather than to the idea itself. So perhaps the more precise and relevant question is: Do (many) followers of Objectivism exhibit cult-like behavior? And to that, the answer is an unqualified "Yes"! It is an answer that continues to reinforce itself on so many occasions that it can no longer be doubted or denied.

I'm not exactly surprised that Bill's essay on Objectivism as a cult (of which the above is the first paragraph) appeared shortly after being ejected from NoodleFood for his unjust and arbitrary attacks upon Andy Bernstein.

From Glenn Fletcher, on the thread about Objectivism as a cult:

I just got back from [NoodleFood]. Does anyone know a good deprogrammer?

From Robert Davison:

SOLO wants to bring to life and to the art of living what ARI would prefer to mummify. Errors are made, yes, but errors are also corrected; and here one need not live in mortal fear that a perceived misstep will get you excommunicated. We live to learn from our mistakes, by being corrected by our peers.

Hsieh and the Randoids have a pathological fear of error. As a result, they stifle their imaginations and settle for dour, dark, and dreary lives. They remind me of ascetics scouring their every thought and deed for mistakes and flagellating themselves even when they find nothing, for having the audacity to believe they are virtuous. If you only look for trouble, trouble is all you will ever find.

From Robert Malcolm:

Yes, it is true Diana reminds me of the monk in The Name of the Rose, who was aghast at the idea of Aristotle's comedic work be known and explored...

From my personal favorite ARI-hating crazy, Andre Zantonavitch:

Diana is a cut above the typical zombie cyborg loser of ARI. But only that. Her reasons cited above for not participating on SOLO are a mish-mash of half-baked nonsense. In the end she refuses to argue and debate here -- or anywhere slightly open and honest -- because she secretly knows she would lose. SOLOists and TOCers belong to the philosophical branch of Objectivism. Diana and her evil ARI cohorts belong to the religious branch of Objectivism. The intellectual divide here is wide.

Ultimately, Diana and her fellow ARIan intellectual perverts are enemies of the Western tradition and Westen liberal progress. They stand in fundamental opposition to reason, philosophy, scholarship, speculation and inquiry, intellectual discourse and dissent, Aristotle, the Enlightenment, Rand, and Objectivism.

These sadsack deviants only discuss things with themselves and those massively ignorant of Ayn Rand and Objectivsm. But when they come across SOLOists, TOCers, libertarians, Austrians, classicists, the Brandens, or anyone whatsoever with any knowledge whatsoever -- they turn tail and run. Like vermin, they fear the light of day. Their claims that the totality of the widely variegated and informed critics of cult "Objectivism" are all intellectually "unserious" and dishonest" are themselves unserious and dishonest.

How sad that like Darth Vaderette, Diana recently turned to the dark side!

Andre Zantonavitch once used such over-the-top invective against ARI that Barbara Branden admonished him that he ought to reserve some terms for Osama Bin Laden and the like. He disagreed.

See what fun SoloHQ can be? Still, I'm glad that it's closing its doors. I do worry that whatever rises from its ashes may be far worse -- although that's somewhat hard to imagine.

Update: Not to worry, Joe Rowlands' new site "Rebirth of Reason" seems to be an exact duplicate of the old SoloHQ, including crazed attacks upon me. As I said to Linz in the comments, "if the 'Rebirth of Reason' consists of calling intellectual opponents names too nasty to repeat here, I wonder what's left to irrationality." Nonetheless, I am quite amused by the fact that people who so vociferously proclaim their low opinion of me care so much what I think about them.

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Miss Bennett on Humor

I am more than a bit reluctant to post on humor again, given the unpleasant debate in the comments on my last post on the topic. However, I cannot resist. While listening to Pride and Prejudice two nights ago, I came across this delightful comment from Elizabeth Bennett about laughter at virtue.

"Miss Bingley," said [Mr. Darcy], "has given me credit for more than can be. The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke."

"Certainly," replied Elizabeth -- "there are such people, but I hope I am not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can. -- But these, I suppose, are precisely what you are without."

So now we have Plato, Elizabeth Bennett, and Ayn Rand all in agreement! As the awful Miss Bingley says in that very scene "Oh! shocking!"

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Sony Virus

John Drake recently sent me the following e-mail about the debacle with the dangerous and intrusive rootkit installed with some of Sony's music CDs. I haven't paid much attention to the story, but I did check my recent CD purchases for any from Sony. (I didn't have any, thankfully.) Although this story isn't new news, but I thought I should pass it along for the sake of the non-geeks.

John writes:

I need to stay up with my news better, since this story is a couple weeks old. I'm not usually a scare mongrel but in this case, its warranted. For those of you have not heard yet, its recently been uncovered that Sony's new copy protected CDs install a software program on your computer that opens your computer up to malicious attacks.

What's worse is that there is no native way to uninstall this program, you must find and download a patch to do so (which itself may be open to vulnerabilities). There are some ethical issues surrounding Sony's behavior as well, but more importantly, I want to alert my friends of the security vulnerabilities imposed by using these CDs.

To Sony's credit, they have removed the vulnerable CDs from the shelves, but if you've bought any CDs from them lately you may be at risk.

I've cataloged more of the story on my blog including the technical vulnerabilities, some of the ethical issues, a link to the specific CDs in question, and how to get a replacement CD if you have purchased an infected one.

Feel free to pass this email around so that more people are aware of this problem.

Music companies ought to take all necessary and legitimate steps to protect their intellectual property, but hacking the computers of their customers is beyond the pale. It's no better -- and perhaps worse -- than breaking into homes to rifle through CD collections and plant bugs while also sabotaging alarm systems. If Sony wants people to respect its property, it needs to learn to respect theirs.

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Benjo!

The Benjo Blog was quoted in a CNet News.com story about the XBox smashers today. Cool!

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Antitrust?!?

Given what Terrell Owens has done to the Eagles, this comment defies belief:

Sen. Arlen Specter has accused the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles of treating Terrell Owens unfairly, and might refer the matter to the antitrust subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said at a news conference Monday in Harrisburg it was "vindictive and inappropriate" for the league and the Eagles to forbid the star wide receiver from playing and prevent other teams from talking to him.

"It's a restraint of trade for them to do that, and the thought crosses my mind, it might be a violation of antitrust laws," Specter said.

As an NFL spokesman said, "The arbitrator's decision is consistent with our collective bargaining agreement, and it simply enforced the terms of the player's contract." True enough, but antitrust law isn't exactly friendly to the enforcement of freely-entered contracts, now is it?

Personally, I hope that TO never plays in the NFL again... or at least that any team stupid enough to hire him (most likely Dallas) suffers the same fate as the Eagles. Talent matters in professional sports, but a pathologically fragile ego like TO's can render even the most stunning athletic prowess utterly worthless.

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Malicious Humor

I know almost nothing about Plato's views on humor, but I did run across an interesting comment in the Republic recently. Socrates is advancing the idea of women as Guardians, although he knows that the mere thought of women engaging in nude gymnastics with the men is sure to be ridiculed. He proposes replying to those who make fun as follows:

Not long ago, as we shall remind them, the Hellenes were of the opinion, which is still generally received among the barbarians, that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and improper; and when first the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians introduced the custom, the wits of that day might equally have ridiculed the innovation.
...
But when experience showed that to let all things be uncovered was far better than to cover them up, and the ludicrous effect to the outward eye vanished before the better principle which reason asserted, then the man was perceived to be a fool who directs the shafts of his ridicule at any other sight but that of folly and vice, or seriously inclines to weigh the beautiful by any other standard but that of the good. (Emphasis added.)

That sentiment about the proper objects of humor bears some noteworthy resemblance to Ayn Rand's own view of humor as stated in "Bootleg Romanticism" (and elsewhere) that "to laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue; to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice." That basic congruence isn't particularly surprising, as I suspect the virtue of mocking virtue is a distinctively modern phenomena. It's all-too-common today: A young girl's serious dispute with a friend is belittled by adults as a passing storm, a man struggling with a tough choice is told not to take life so seriously, a woman unwilling to poke fun at her well-organized life is told to lighten up, and so on.

Personally, I've found such humor to be so common that I have some trouble noticing the more subtle variations, even in myself. Yet it's important to train your subconscious against such malicious humor. To allow it to remain means undermining your own and others' passion for and commitment to the meaningful values and virtues in life. That's particularly true in the case of children, who are most often subjected to this kind of degradation by humor, as well as most innocently susceptible to it.

If you want to understand just how destructive this modern form of humor can be, I cannot recommend anything better than Ayn Rand's "Art and Moral Treason," reprinted in The Romantic Manifesto. If that doesn't impel a person to give his subconscious some new standing orders about humor, nothing will.

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CIA Interrogation Techniques

The CIA apparently has been using a special set of interrogation techniques on selected targets. I personally found #6 the most interesting:

The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

(Via Volokh.)

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Hibernate

Wow, I thought that my laptop's intermittent problems with hibernation were just some strange problem that I had... but I was wrong. It does sound like a fix is coming, thankfully.

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Serenity Now -- And Again

The DVD of the movie Serenity can be pre-ordered on Amazon for just $16.98. It's shipping on December 20th, just in time for Christmas!

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A Tale of Two Novels

This 1998 op-ed by Harry Binswanger comparing James Joyce's Ulysses with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was mentioned twice in two days last week: once in my OAC Intermediate Writing Class and once in private e-mail from Klaus Nordby in response to this post on the quick critics of Ayn Rand's novels. I love the opening:

Did someone say "culture wars"? A major battle erupted recently on the literary front. At issue: What is the best English-language novel of the century? The two opposing camps picked two opposite novels. Here is a representative passage from each.

Novel A:

He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
The visible signs of postsatisfaction?
A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.

Novel B:

She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.

Clearly, one of these novels is a stylistic masterpiece, and the other is trash. The fighting is over which is which.

Read the whole thing, if you like.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday: it's a wonderful opportunity to share a bounty of delicious food with excellent people. (Of course, some people celebrate Thanksgiving as a religious holiday of gratitude to God for his blessings. And some people spend it with family members they can barely manage to tolerate. But that's their problem, not mine!)

Paul and I are hosting the annual 1FROG Thanksgiving this year -- for the very first time. (We moved all the furniture out of the living room to squeeze in tables for 18 people. Soon the 22 pound turkey will be headed into the oven!)

Some of you might be surprised to learn that an atheistic organization like FROG does have a traditional Thanksgiving prayer. It makes more sense once you hear it though:

"Thank God I don't have to pray!"

Happy Thanksgiving, All!

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The Debate of Our Times

Boy oh boy, Trey Givens could not be more wrong:

What I just realized is a bit silly about this conversation (apart from the obvious) is that we're attempting to decided which is more virtuous: the angst-ridden, revenge-seeking dark knight who lives in a cave world and the altruistic man of steel who lives in a world of sunshine and puppy dogs.

Yes, he did really say that -- amazing, isn't it? In fact, not only is the choice between Batman and Superman of critical importance in life, but it's blindingly obvious that "the angst-ridden, revenge-seeking dark knight who lives in a cave world" is far superior to "the altruistic man of steel who lives in a world of sunshine and puppy dogs"!

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Flight from Success

Joanne Jacobs pointed me to this amazing (and free) Wall Street Journal article about white parents in the Silicon Valley area removing their children from the local public school. The problem isn't that the schools are failing, but rather that they are too academically challenging, apparently thanks to the high standards typically set by Asian students and their parents.

From what I've read, the differences in the performance of students by ethnic group is substantially attributable to differences in expectations of parents. People tend to vary by ethnic group in their tolerance for "bad" grades, i.e. in the grades for which their children will get into trouble. In general, the Asian students are in trouble with Bs, white students with Cs, and black and Hispanic children with Ds. That's why the children in poor immigrant Asian families in which the parents don't even speak English will often do much, much better in school than middle class children of well-educated blacks. (The Asian families also organize study groups, with older students tutoring younger students, and the like, but I think that's a consequence of the expectations.) As you might imagine, those differing expectations can make a great deal of difference in the effort that students put into their studies. (Of course, such different expectations are not innate or otherwise determined. All parents can and ought to be consciously aware of their default expectations, so that they can adjust them as they see fit.)

As for the WSJ story, some parents kept their children in the difficult school, telling them to rise to the challenge. Those who changed schools gave their children a rather different message.

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Hope for China

Is this video of two Chinese students lip-syncing a Backstreet Boys song in their dorm room a reason for hope or fear for the future of China? I must admit, I'm not sure.

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Christian Libertarians

A while back, Ari Armstrong sent me to no-longer-available blog post of more horrifying quotes from Christian libertarians than I could possibly stomach.

For example, consider Jacob Hornberger's reply to this question: "It has always bothered me that so many individuals who purport to be followers of the libertarian philosophy have the notion that liberty and religion are mutually exclusive. What's your view on that?"

It's a ridiculous notion. I'm a born-again Christian and a libertarian. To me, the two are entirely consistent, and I cannot see why anybody would find it inconsistent, except if they're saying that you're not free because you are subject to the dictates of the Pope, or God. But that is a voluntary choice.

For instance, there is nothing wrong with anybody entering into a voluntary contract for employment -- even if it's long-term -- which may therefore interfere with your "freedom." And there's no reason why people cannot exercise their free choices to pursue God, and to obey God, and to live your life the way you want. God says, "Thou shalt not steal," which is entirely consistent with the moral case for liberty. He gives us free will, which argues that people should be free to do what they want with their lives as long as their conduct is peaceful. So the area of peaceful sin would therefore be taken out of the hands of the state. How can any of that be inconsistent with libertarianism?

Hornberger is seriously confusing the fact of metaphysical freedom with the value of political freedom. More precisely, he is wrongly attempting to directly infer the value of political freedom from the fact of metaphysical freedom. That's simply not possible. The fact that humans can freely choose their actions does not automatically imply that others ought to allow them to do so. That inference requires substantial intermediate steps, most notably: (1) free will as the choice to exercise reason or not, (2) life as the standard of value, (3) reason as man's basic means of survival, and (4) coercion as the only means of preventing a man from acting by his reason. So political freedom is good because it protects a man's capacity to act in accordance with the volitional exercise of his reason in pursuit of his life amongst other men by banning coercion.

Without those intermediate steps, the inference from metaphysical to political freedom is nothing but a straightforward example of the naturalistic fallacy: X is the case, so X ought to be the case. Significantly, none of them is even remotely supported by Christian theology. Most significantly, the proper end of Christians is not this life but the next, and the proper means to it is not reason but faith. As the story of Abraham and Isaac makes perfectly clear, the proper servant of God should be willing to do anything -- even murder his own son -- in obedience to God's inscrutable will.

On a related point, Peter Schwartz has a nice discussion of why the devout Christian who refrains from killing because of God's command "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is not actually opposed to murder in his lecture on "Contextual Knowledge." Such a person is actually in favor of obeying God's will; that's the principle that governs his actions. So if God told him in a revelation to murder, he would do so. In refraining from killing other people, he is not acting upon any opposition to the moral evil of murder, but only upon his commitment to conform to God's commandments. (By way of contrast, a more worldly Christian's opposition to murder would be based upon common sense reasoning about the evil of destroying an innocent human life. So even if he believed that God commanded him to murder, he could not do so.) Obviously, the same applies to "Thou Shalt Not Steal" -- and any other vaguely libertarian Biblical commandments.

If Christian libertarians like Hornberger cannot see the contradiction between religion and liberty, that's his problem, not ours. It's his failure to think seriously about the philosophical foundations of liberty.

I also love this bit from Cato Institute "Senior Fellow" Doug Bandow:

Is capitalism Christian? No. It neither advances existing human virtues nor corrects ingrained personal vices; it merely reflects them. But socialism is less consistent with several Biblical tenets for it exacerbates the worst of men's flaws. By divorcing effort from reward, stirring up covetousness and envy, and destroying the freedom that is a necessary precondition for virtue, it tears at the just social fabric that Christians should seek to establish. A Christian must still work hard to shed even a little of God's light in a capitalist society. But his task is likely to be much harder in a collectivist system.

Capitalism makes people rich -- so let's ignore Jesus' statements about heaven's hostility to rich men. Capitalism protects rights by retaliating against the initiators of force -- so let's say that Jesus was misquoted about the obligation to passively comply with compulsion and ignore Paul's statements about the evil of resisting the powers that be. Capitalism's justice rewards men according to their this-worldly competence -- so we'll just imagine that's what God loves too.

Last but certainly not least, let's consider this lengthy comment on Ayn Rand from Jacob Hornberger from a Full Context interview.

Q: On the topic of ethics, Ayn Rand maintained that self-sacrifice is wrong and destructive. The morality of most of America is the Judeo-Christian ethic, and self-sacrifice is one tenet. Rand maintains that the ethic of self-sacrifice is undercutting American Capitalism, giving the liberals the moral justification of the welfare-state, and leaving the conservatives morally helpless to argue against it. Because of this, we keep sliding further into socialism and our rights are continuing to be diminished. As a Christian and a Libertarian, how would you solve this dilemma?

Hornberger: I've concluded that this subject is so complex that not even the Randians understand it. For example, Randians would argue that Mother Theresa acted irrationally because she sacrificed her life for others. Yet, if a person donates all his earnings to an Objectivist foundation, Randians would say that he hasn't sacrificed his life for Objectivists but simply placed a high value on feeling good over what the foundation did with his money. Well, why can't we say that Mother Theresa put a high value on feeling good through helping others?

Or let's say that a child is about to be run over by a bus. A 50-year-old Christian jumps in front of the bus, knowing that he will be killed but that the child will be pushed to safety. The Randian would say that the man has acted irrationally by sacrificing his life for another. But if the 50-year-old happens to be a Randian and the father of the child, the Randian will say that his act is rational because he places a high value on his child's life. Well, why isn't it possible for a Christian to put a high value on a child's life who he doesn't know?

Part of the problem, of course, is that Randians haven't yet discovered that God really does exist, and therefore it is entirely rational for them to believe that those who have are acting irrationally. Moreover, Rand was not being logical in suggesting that simply because people in society like to help others, that that necessarily means that they'll turn to the state to do so.

But what attracted me so much about Rand is the strong moral foundations she presented for a free society, even if the roots of her convictions are different from mine.

Actually, I believe that the failure to understand this supposedly complex subject lies solely with Jacob Hornberger. He cannot conceive of self-interest as anything more than the satisfaction of whatever subjective desires we happen to feel. The Objectivist conception of self-interest as defined by the actual facts about what promotes a person's life is not even on his radar. That's an understandable confusion for a typical college student. It's inexcusable coming from a leading libertarian intellectual.

However, even that pales in comparison to his summary and criticism of Ayn Rand's view that altruism in ethics (i.e. the moral obligation to sacrifice self to others) means collectivism in politics (i.e. the political obligation to sacrifice individuals to the group) as "Rand was not being logical in suggesting that simply because people in society like to help others, that that necessarily means that they'll turn to the state to do so."

I couldn't make that up in a million years.

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Another Letter from ARI

Here's another letter from ARI:

Dear Editor:

The Kansas Board of Education has redefined science to make room for the supernatural. But changing definitions will not alter the fact that science and religion are incompatible.

Science seeks natural explanations for natural phenomena. It does so by logical inferences from observable facts and experimentation.
Science relies on reason and evidence.

Religion, in contrast, relies on supernatural "explanations" for natural phenomena. It demands belief unsupported by evidence and/or contrary to facts. Religion relies on faith.

Just as evolution and creationism are mutually exclusive and naturally pitted against each other, so are science and religion. Changing definitions will not change reality.

David Holcberg
Ayn Rand Institute
Irvine CA

As the e-mail says: "If you plan to use this letter, please let us know. Thank you."

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Environmentalist Invention of the Day

The latest invention being touted to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming is the heated bra. No, really.

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NoodleFood Housekeeping

Yesterday, I updated the blogroll. I added, deleted, and shuffled. Most notably, I added Trey Givens.

I also recently looked at my Amazon referrer data for the whole of dianahsieh.com. It was rather interesting, so I thought I'd post it.

Over the past year, these books got at least 10 direct clicks from dianahsieh.com to amazon.com. The chart shows that books, in decreasing order of direct clicks, with sales data from those direct clicks and other links.

Book Title	Direct Link Conversion	Direct Link Clicks	Direct Links Orders	Other Orderes	Total Orders
The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics	1.67%	180	3	4	7
Ayn Rand Answers	5.06%	178	9	4	13
Mila 18	0.00%	137	0	2	2
The Capitalist Manifesto	4.55%	132	6	3	9
Life at the Bottom	2.75%	109	3	1	4
The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand	1.06%	94	1	0	1
The Art of Nonfiction	1.30%	77	1	0	1
Ayn Rand and Song of Russia	2.67%	75	2	1	3
Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior	0.00%	68	0	1	1
Basic Principles of Objectivism	1.67%	60	1	0	1
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand	0.00%	48	0	1	1
Our Culture, What's Left of It	3.45%	29	1	1	2
Wheelock's Latin, 6e	3.85%	26	1	0	1
Who Killed Homer?	0.00%	24	0	1	1
We	0.00%	22	0	1	1
A Short History of Medieval Philosophy	0.00%	19	0	1	1
Abolition of Antitrust	0.00%	18	0	2	2
The Art of Horsemanship	0.00%	16	0	1	1
The Russian Tradition	0.00%	13	0	1	1
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal	0.00%	12	0	1	1
The Return of the Primitive	10.00%	10	1	0	1
The Varnished Truth	10.00%	10	1	0	1

I'm in no danger of making a fortune from my Amazon referrers, but I thought the data was interesting!

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Craig Biddle in Colorado

As announced in October, Craig Biddle traveled to Colorado to give two lectures in early November. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, he lectured on "Ayn Rand's Morality of Selfishness" to about 100 students. At FROST, he lectured on "Living Purposefully" to about 50 people. As expected, I very much enjoyed both talks.

The lecture on selfishness was an excellent introduction to Ayn Rand's ethics. It was clear, concretized, and engaging. I particularly enjoyed his list of the six attempted justifications for altruism, all of them fallacies.

1. God says so. That's an appeal to (supernatural) authority.
   
2. Society says so. That's an appeal to the masses.
   
3. Others need your goods. That's an appeal to pity.
   
4. If you don't sacrifice, we'll force you. That's an appeal to force.
   
5. The good of altruism is obvious to the mature. That's a personal attack.
   
6. No decent person could question altruism. That's the argument from intimidation.

When hearing such introductory lectures, I always try to put myself back in the context of just before I discovered The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I ask myself: Would this lecture have intrigued me enough to read Ayn Rand? In this case, the answer was definitely "YES."

Craig's FROST talk on purpose was more personally interesting to me. As some background context, I should mention that I've been struggling with an intense hatred for the inanity of graduate school these past few months. Even though I've had the summer and fall off, I've found myself utterly without motivation to work on my four incomplete papers, despite forcing myself to do so on occasion. The whole situation has been making me seriously miserable, more generally unhappy than I've been in years and years. A few weeks ago, I realized that I faced a very stark choice: Either I finish these papers or I quit graduate school. I couldn't let my misery drag out for much longer. Knowing that everything I want to do as an intellectual will be much easier (if not possible at all) with a Ph.D, I've done some hard thinking and made some changes in my daily routine over the past few weeks. Consequently, I've been able to start working on my papers on a daily basis again, although I'm not yet progressing as quickly as I would like.

Happily, I heard Craig's talk on purpose right in the middle of my hard thinking on this problem -- and it was quite helpful. He strongly emphasized the need to be consciously goal-directed in every aspect of life where choice applies. (I've tended to let myself drift in various ways, rather than work on my dreaded papers.) He talked about the need for a clear hierarchy of values to guide purposeful daily action. (Until recently, I haven't been clear about the choice I face.) He suggested some helpful standing orders that he uses, e.g. GAYB or "Go About Your Business" -- meaning don't allow yourself to be distracted away from your considered purposes by immediate feelings or pleasures. (I'm far too easily lured away from important but unpleasant work, I think.)

Given my struggles with graduate school, Craig's talk was of particular interest to me. But I wasn't the only one who thought he brought some fresh insight into the topic, as I heard much praise for the lecture, including from Paul.

In preparation for Craig's visit, I started reading his book, Loving Life. I finally finished it yesterday. (It's not a long book; I just got busy with other tasks.) As with his lectures, the book is a clear, engaging, and well-concretized presentation of Ayn Rand's ethics. It's not excessively technical, nor is it rationalistic. So it's a good short introduction to Ayn Rand's ethics, particularly for people who find Ayn Rand too heavy, too dense, or too polemical. I particularly enjoyed Craig's discussion of physical force as invalidating an individual's judgment in Chapter 7, as it was a very clear discussion of a point that students often struggle to understand. So I expect that I'll make good use of the text when I teach that topic, whether as class reading or source material for lectures. (I suppose I should mention a few technical quibbles with the book, most notably the inverted structure in the discussion of the virtues of rationality and productiveness. Those were minor problems, however, unlikely to cause any significant confusion in the mind of the reader.)

Finally, I should mention that I really liked Craig himself. He was a pleasure to be around, particularly since he clearly has all manner of interesting philosophic ideas brewing in his head. (He was even good enough to tell me about Kant's amazing views on sex and masturbation -- but I'll save that delight for another blog post.) So in my book, Craig is a Really Good Guy. On that note, here's a picture of Lin, Craig, and me after the FROST talk.

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Set Your PHASR on Stun

"The US government has unveiled a 'non-lethal' laser rifle designed to dazzle enemy personnel without causing them permanent harm. But the device will require close scrutiny to ensure compliance with a United Nations protocol on blinding laser weapons." The new weapon is called, appropriately enough, the "Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response" or "PHASR rifle". Here's the official US Air Force press release.

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Not All Analogies are Equal

Although analogies often help illuminate relevant principles, they aren't a strong form of argument by themselves. Nonethless, some analogies are better than others. Case in point: This story from the latest Dilbert Newsletter is perhaps the worst analogy ever.

One of my co-workers (who is originally from Arkansas, just FYI) told me one day that he knew for a fact that sex feels better for women than it does for men. I asked, "How do you figure that?" His reply was (and I am not making this up!), "Because when you put your finger in your ear and wiggle it around, it feels better to your ear than it does to your finger."

Top that, Plato!

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Ending the War

Since the Bush Administration has shown itself spectacularly unwilling to wage an effective war against the Islamic terrorists in Iraq, I cannot see much point in continuing to risk the lives and limbs of American soldiers in that country. So this headline is good news: Senate Republicans Pushing for a Plan on Ending the War in Iraq.

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The Ingenuity of the American Soldier

American soldiers have found a simple but useful application for Silly String:

I'm a former Marine I in Afghanistan. Silly string has served me well in Combat especially in looking for I.A.Ds., simply put, booby traps. When you spray the silly sting in dark areas, especially when you doing house to house fighting. On many occasions the silly string has saved me and my men's lives...

When you spray the string it just spreads everywhere and when it sets it lays right on the wire. Even in a dark room the string stands out revealing the trip wire.

(Via Boing Boing.)
  

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Murder in the Netherlands

I like birds as much as the next gal, but this is just ecological insanity:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- The Dutch animal protection agency said Tuesday it is investigating the shooting death of a sparrow that knocked over 23,000 dominoes during an attempt to set a world record. The ill-fated bird flew into an exposition center, threatening to derail a world record Monday, before it was chased into a corner and shot by an exterminator with an air rifle.

The bird was a common house sparrow -- a species placed on the national endangered list last year. "Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird, and a permit can only be granted when there's a danger to public health or a crop," agency spokesman Niels Dorland said. "That was not the case. I might add, is it really necessary to kill a bird that knocked over a few dominoes for a game?" Dorland said the agency plans to submit the case to national prosecutors. The incident came as the national birdwatchers association was preparing a campaign to draw attention to the rapidly declining number of sparrows in the country.

The Endemol production company, which organized the Domino Day event, defended the killing. The organizers wanted to break their own Guinness World Record of 3,992,397 dominoes set last year by toppling a chain of 4,321,000 blocks. Around 200,000 dominoes were left to go, and the bird knocked down 23,000 of them. Endemol spokesman Jeroen van Waardenberg said organizers made a "split-second" decision to shoot down the bird. "That bird was flying around and knocking over a lot of dominoes. More than 100 people from 12 countries had worked for more than a month setting them up," he said. He said organizers had believed the building was fully sealed against birds and mice.

The company is considering some kind of memorial or mention for the dead bird during the television broadcast Friday, he added. But Dorland said shooting the sparrow to ensure the success of the program was an overreaction. "I think they were awfully fast to pull out a rifle," he said. "If a person started knocking over a few dominoes they wouldn't shoot him would they?"

A Dutch website called Geenstijl offered a $1,200 reward for anybody who knocks over the dominoes ahead of time to avenge the bird. Hans Peeters, director of the Netherlands Bird Protection agency, called the killing "ridiculous." He said rapid urbanization in the Netherlands was threatening the species. "There were more than 2 million breeding pairs in the Netherlands 20 years ago," he said. "Now there's a half a million to a million at most. We hope this can be a call to action."

Oh boo hoo hoo! One dumb sparrow out of one to two million in the Netherlands was killed for causing a ruckus. Perhaps my heart is shriveled and black with hatred for Our Blessed Mother Earth, but why oh why is this event even news? (I know, I know: It's news because the environmentalists are determined to undermine man for the sake of pristine nature at every turn.)

I wonder if the company sponsor is genuinely in favor of a memorial for the cruelly murdered bird, or if it's just an attempt to quiet the public displeasure and lessen the legal threat.

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Southwest

I haven't flown Southwest in years, since they don't serve Denver. However, that's going to change in just a few months. I might still prefer Frontier, but the competition will be lovely!

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Optical Illusion of the Day

The illusion is called "Mr. Angry and Mr. Calm". The image shows two faces. Up close, the face on the left looks angry while the face on the right looks calm. But if you stand about 10 feet away, they switch places!

Here's the technical paper (PDF format) on how it works. (Via Clicked.)

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Letter from ARI

I recently subscribed to ARI's mailing list for letters to the editor. With due permission, I'll be posting them periodically, as I like these quick, focused hits. Here's the most recent one:

Dear Editor:

Once again politicians are denouncing oil companies for their record profits and accusing them of "gouging" consumers. Lost in the general outcry is the fact that the oil companies made their profits by productive work. They didn't just happen to be at the right place at the right time. They risked their money and invested tens of billions of dollars over decades in prospecting, drilling, transporting, stocking and refining oil. They created a huge infrastructure to produce and distribute gasoline. They dealt with their customers by voluntary means. They exchanged value for value (i.e., gasoline for money). No gasoline buyer was forced to contribute to the oil companies' profits.

Politicians, in contrast, produced nothing but environmental regulations that crippled the ability of oil companies to drill, transport and refine oil in this country. Moreover, in the last 30 years our politicians have forced us to pay in gas taxes more than twice the amount made in profits by the maligned oil industry.

If the American people want to stop the gouging responsible for high gasoline prices, it is the politicians--not the producers--that they must rein in.

David Holcberg
Ayn Rand Institute
Irvine, CA

As ARI says at the bottom of these e-mails: "If you plan to use this letter, please let us know. Thank you."

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Academic Freaks

Heh: Here's how not to interview for an academic position. I was particularly amused by this story about a candidate for a position in the English and philosophy department:

One man illustrated proper logic with this syllogism:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is a man.

I raised my hand. "Birds are mortal too, aren't they?" I asked, hoping he would correct his error.

"Yes," our teacher agreed.

"So Socrates could be a bird?"

He smiled benignly. "No. Socrates doesn't have feathers."

Who says logic can't be uproarious funny?!?

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Catch It If You Can

I'm really glad to see that Yaron is on TV so much. Here's the latest announcement from ARI:

ARI executive director Dr. Yaron Brook is scheduled to appear on the CNBC program "On the Money" tonight, November 14, 2005. The program airs between 7:00 and 8:00 pm Eastern. He will discuss the UN World Summit on the Information Society meeting this week in Tunis, Tunisia where many countries are attempting to wrest control of the Internet away from the US-based private consortium that now governs the Internet.

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How Did They Know?

While Googling, I accidentally happened upon this two-page discussion of Ayn Rand's fiction. After overcoming my horror at the appalling grammar, I was intrigued by the vehement expressions of hatred for her fiction and philosophy from people who managed to only read a few pages of her fiction. The bizarre misunderstandings from her defenders and detractors were also quite fascinating, in a morbid kind of way. Although these kinds of comments aren't new to me, I've never found so many collected together. Here are some samples:

Ayn Rand is definitely the worst, most supremely vacuous writer to ever be accepted by the mainstream of literature. Her philosophies are, in a word, absurd---influenced by cold war propaganda and empty, capitalistic rhetoric. She is also the only writer I've ever heard of who writes 900 pages novels in which every character remains the exact same on the first page and on the last page. Sloppily written and profoundly stupid, Rand's works are not only utterly irrelevant (both in the realms of philosophy and literature), they are painful.

From another writer:

Although Rand's treatment of many issues is less than perfect, in my opinion, she really answers some key questions about human happiness and social structures in general. I haven't read Anthem, but I have read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, both of which I enjoyed immensely. They may lack the storytelling zest that many people are used to and enjoy so much, and they don't really embrace any archetypal ideas, but that doesn't seem like their purpose. I think that their purpose is to convice people that individuality and creative achievement are the most sacred things anyone can hope to obtain. Almost everything I've read seems to say, "yes, life has some problems, but these can be overcome." What authors don't typically show is how. All solutions came in hints and whispers, riddles and rhymes, but Rand is one of the few people who just say, "Invent! Invent and you'll be happy." I think that this has to be taken on it's own.

From another writer:

I have never read ayn rand. ok, maybe abut 10 pages of Atlas Shrugged. I only read it because i was at the time sleeping with this canadian woman from vancouver. What struck me was not the absence of a narrative style (that shouldn't be any reason not to read a writer). But what annoyed me was the existentialist credo she had obviously assimilated and was now trying to preach. Existentialism is not an Ethic. At least not a universal one. That is why, existentialism never really became a powerful philosophical trend. That is why, sartre tried at one point to justify it by trying to marry it with Marxism. That was because sratre knew that he argued himself into ma corner - if what was right and wrong depended on the individual as long as one faced the consequences of one's actions, then there was no way to say something could not be done. But The existentialists also believed in responsibility, mauvais foi, as they called it, bad faith. Responsible acvtion. It gets sticky here, because what is responsible can be debated upon. What is responsibl;e for you, goddog may not be for S.S. because of the moral values one has been incvulcated with. If we follow this line of reasoning, then we have to go back to Nietzsche and his genealogy of morals. But lets not go there.

Goddog is right when he says that everyone is left to do his own thing, but there must always be the burden of responsibility. Freedom is not another word for nothing left to lose. It is not a liberation. it is a burden, that comes with a social conscience.

Ayn rand tries to take this and then preaches the right kind of behaviour. It became for me a fictionalised self-help book. I would venture to say that the only reason why she has become big in the second half of the 20th century is the escape route she provided for people like George Bush. I bet he has a whole shelf full of her books. Oh sorry, I forgot, Bush doesn't know how to read english. Well then, barbara bush must have told him some bedtime stories taken from rand's work.

Okay, i am being mean here. And i apologise. I was only trying to say that rand was preaching a right way of doing things, a right way of living. Invent, Invent and you'll be happy, says Ian, very early on in the posts. But Creation is a tragic exercise. Creation is Death. If all writers were happy when they invented their tales, if all artists were happy after hoiurs of labouring over their canvases, if all musicians were happy after writing their songs, then, there will be no more writing, no more art, no more music. Because art, creation, this inventing that ian claims rand exhorts us to do, is a recognition of the chimerical nature of human emotions.

From another writer:

Rather late in life (mid/late 30s) I was prevailed upon to read Rand by a young friend who found her to be amazing and wonderous. I admit to having reservations, but because I liked this person I decided to make a sincere attempt.

By page 20 I was disgusted, but vowed to press on. By page 40 I decided that a lobotmized hamster wouldn't find it credible, but that I would read it as a form of cultural studies. By page 60 I decided watching bad afternoon game shows would be a more enlightening, uplifting, and intelligent form of cultural studies.

I actually threw the book away, something I have only ever done to one other author (a copy of Rush Limbaugh's book that fell into my hands). A couple of years later I thought perhaps I may have been too harsh, or maybe AS was not the most representative work, so I tried The Fountainhead. Made it about 1/3 before it too went in the trash....

More than anything what offended me was the "characters" Rand creates as foils for her principle sympathetic characters to outwit, out argue, and generally debase. These foil characters aren't caricatures or cartoons, they don't have nearly that much breadth or depth. They are such lame, pathetic, unidimensional nonentities that one has to wonder why they are created at all.

Sadly the answer comes all too quickly - what Rand presents as the ideas and philosophies that she wishes to disprove are in fact such fantastic distortions, misrepresentations, and gross mis-characterizations that she needs characters equally lacking in substance to act as mouthpieces for them.

And of course Rand then had the sympathetic characters intellectually demolish these bogus philosophies with ideas that are only marginally less specious. Specious arguments, straw man and ad hominum attacks - who could ask for more?

So there may be something to what Rand had to say, but I didn't find it in what I read. What I got was lame ideas presented as better because they were contrasted against ideas that were falsely represented as even lamer - hardly a foundation for a life philosophy (but more than enough substance for much current social policy, at least some people seem to think so).

Another writes:

I have only read one book by Rand, "For the New Intellectual" and all I can say is that it was trash, to be blunt. I didn't like it very much because in this book she says that today there is no new thought or new "creations". I disagree with that because even though there are a lot less people thinking, there are a lot more that are thinking. Take everyone in this forum for instance. Dionysus, whom I've chance to talk with a few times and Persevere who has really good points and who's discussions I enjoy reading. To someone else it may very be just people talking but its more than that. It seemed to me that Rand belittled that saying our world today isn't as inventive or growing as it was back then. I see it as this, we're still exploring, the depths of the ocean and space, and we are still THINKING! There may not be as many genius's now as there was then but we are not at a standstill. Another thing that irked me was how Rand catagorized people as being emotionally controlled or physically controlled, the Witch Doctor and the Atilla the Hun theory. I'm neither so what does that make me? I know for fact I don't fall into any catagory and I don't think anyone else does either. We are merely people. What was her new philosophy? Perspectivism? something like that. I think its unfounded because how do you base a philosophy on not following a philosophy? Thats a contradiction. The short of it two thumbs down. I'll read the other books before I comment on how the writer is as a whole.

I can understand that a person might dislike Ayn Rand's fiction and/or philosophy, perhaps even strongly so. I can't possibly agree, but that judgment is comprehensible to me. After all, if a person is a serious mystic, altruist, or collectivist, they just won't be able to stomach her heroes and their ideas.

However, I'm completely baffled by the immediate hatred that some people have for her fiction after just reading a few dozen pages. Precisely what could they feel so clearly at such an early stage? The comments by such people aren't particularly helpful; they're usually not much more than vague emotional ejaculations. I suspect that such people aren't actually able to determine the source of their feelings by introspection. But what is it in Ayn Rand that tips them off?

I also understand how people might miss some of the deeper philosophy in Ayn Rand's fiction. But what would lead anyone to think that her philosophy is a marriage of Existentialism and Marxism? Or that her basic message is "Invent! Invent and you'll be happy"? Where do people get such crazy readings?

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Communicating With Future Generations

Sandia National Laboratories has asked a team of outside experts to devise a marking system for nuclear waste disposal sites that can last for 10,000 years. The system has to be robust, so that even if future generations lose knowledge of the English language or advanced industrial technology, they can still understand the importance of avoiding this area. It should also be designed in such a way as to discourage vandalism or other attempts to destroy or remove the markers. Hence, the markers must somehow convey the following:

• This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
  
• Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
  
• This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
  
• What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
  
• The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
  
• The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
  
• The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
  
• The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
  
• The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
  

This is a fascinating and non-trivial problem, and some of their proposed solutions are very interesting, such as:

• Landscape of Thorns
  
• Spike Field
  
• Spikes Bursting Through Grid
  
• Leaning Stone Spikes
  
• Menacing Earthworks
  
• Forbidding Blocks
  

It's worth reading the whole thing. (Via Linkfilter.)

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Revealing Headline

When I saw this NY Times op-ed headline, "Science and Religion Share Fascination in Things Unseen," my first thought was "Yeah, but in the case of religion, the things are unseen because they don't actually exist!" As it turns out, the "science" in question is studying entities just as imaginary as God.

The article is worth reading, but only as a stellar progression of one vague evasion after another. Just when you think the author might be coming to some decent and reasonable point about the difference between science and religion, he veers back into dense fog. No doubt, this early paragraph certainly takes the cake:

It seems that humans are hard-wired to yearn for new realms well beyond the reach of our senses into which we can escape, if only with our minds. It is possible that we need to rely on such possibilities or the world of our experience would become intolerable.

Speak for yourself, brother!

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The Zombie Left

As an ideology, the left is utterly spent. Its grand vision of human wealth, prosperity, and happiness via secular collectivism died with the collapse of the world's major communist regimes. It's now a political zombie, walking and talking, but without a mind directing it. Nonetheless, the agenda of the left is still a danger, particularly if its programs are picked up by the religious right. Case in point: religious environmentalism. Here's how the NY Times article "When Cleaner Air Is a Biblical Obligation" begins:

In their long and frustrated efforts pushing Congress to pass legislation on global warming, environmentalists are gaining a new ally. With increasing vigor, evangelical groups that are part of the base of conservative support for leading Republicans are campaigning for laws that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists have linked with global warming.

In the latest effort, the National Association of Evangelicals, a nonprofit organization that includes 45,000 churches serving 30 million people across the country, is circulating among its leaders the draft of a policy statement that would encourage lawmakers to pass legislation creating mandatory controls for carbon emissions.

Environmentalists rely on empirical evidence as their rationale for Congressional action, and many evangelicals further believe that protecting the planet from human activities that cause global warming is a values issue that fulfills Biblical teachings asking humans to be good stewards of the earth.

"Genesis 2:15," said Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for governmental affairs [!], citing a passage that serves as the justification for the effort: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."

"We believe that we have a rightful responsibility for what the Bible itself challenges," Mr. Cizik said. "Working the land and caring for it go hand in hand. That's why I think, and say unapologetically, that we ought to be able to bring to the debate a new voice."

Here's a quote to remember, courtesy of that lovely Mr. Cizik: "I don't think there's a Republican running for the White House in 2008 who will not have to deal with the emergence of evangelicals on creation care."

The phrase "creation care" really says it all, no?

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More Penises

In the spirit of schlongs I don't want to see: A wood carving entitled "(Some) Penises I Have Known" is being auctioned on EBay. It's a rather clever and funny sculpture, in a delightfully vindictive kind of way. Personally, I must admit that I cannot imagine displaying a carving of the dressed-up penises of some artist's former lovers in my home. Not that I'd wish to display a carving of dressed-up penises of my own former lovers either! So I suppose that I'm just categorically against the display of carvings of dressed-up penises in my home. Sheesh, perhaps I ought to have just linked without comment like Alexa. I'm just digging myself in deeper with every sentence! In any case, it's worth a look and a chuckle.

(Via Alexa Brett and Boing Boing.)

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Song of Russia

The movie Song of Russia, the subject of Ayn Rand's HUAC testimony (discussed in Robert Mayhew's excellent book Ayn Rand and Song of Russia), will be shown on Friday, November 11th at 4:00 am MT on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

Expect to be revolted by all those brave and happy communists!

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Enforced Pacifism in San Francisco

Yesterday was a day for all sorts of unusual election results. As Diana noted, we did see the good news of the theocrats being defeated in Dover, PA, but as others have noted, they won in Kansas.

On the West Coast, San Francisco voters approved one of the most draconian anti-handgun laws in the US, Proposition H. This measure includes the following provisions:

All handguns owned by private citizens have to be turned into the police as of April 2006.
No handguns may be sold or manufactured inside SF city limits.
No ammunition may be sold inside SF city limits.

Reportedly even off-duty police officers may not carry a handgun. And federal agents who live in SF city limits cannot own a handgun.

Another article astutely notes:

Washington, which banned handgun ownership in 1976, has a murder rate that is eight times the national average, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Chicago, with a ban in place since 1982, had the highest murder rate of all U.S. cities in 2003, according to FBI statistics cited by the police union.

San Francisco's measure would be tougher than those in Washington and Chicago, which banned new sales only and didn't require people to surrender guns they owned before the law. Proposition H would bar even retired police officers and federal agents who live in the city from owning handguns.

Gun control laws such as this essentially tell the honest citizen, "If you are attacked by a bad guy, you can fight back with your hands, but don't you dare use something that's proven to be effective such as a handgun". Handguns have been traditionally known as the "Great Equalizer", precisely because they allow those who are physically weaker (such as women or the elderly) a fair chance to defend themselves against younger, stronger attackers. Hence, for all people, but especially for those who are least able to defend themselves, the San Francisco law amounts to legally enforced pacificism.

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Turn That Cheek, Brother!

It's time for the Christians to turn the other cheek, since they just got slapped.

Voters on Tuesday ousted a Pennsylvania local school board that promoted an "intelligent-design" alternative to teaching evolution, and elected a new slate of candidates who promised to remove the concept from science classes. The board of Dover Area School District in south-central Pennsylvania lost eight of its nine incumbents in an upset election that surprised even the challengers, who had been hoping for a bare majority to take control of the board. The new board, which includes teachers, opposed the incumbents' policy of including intelligent design in science classes.

In recent years, evangelical Christians have been diligently influencing local politics, largely via school boards. I'm delighted to see them so utterly repudiated by voters after attempting to implement their theocratic agenda.

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Gun Nuts, More Literally Than Usual

While I'm not at all prudish about nudity, I do think that it's only appropriate in certain very limited contexts. Clothing serves some very important purposes, including protecting the body from cold and scrapes, concealing ugly physical features like rolls of fat, and preventing unwelcome sexual displays and sexual contact.

Given the many important functions served by clothing, its absence ought to serve some genuine purpose, without imposing unwanted costs upon others or otherwise interfering in normal human interactions. For example, swimming is significantly more pleasurable in the nude, but I'll never forgo a suit in the company of mere friends, let alone strangers. Nor would I wish to be in the company of skinny dipping friends or strangers, even if I were properly covered. In those kinds of cases, the nudity would inappropriately sexualize the gathering, such that acting normally would require assiduously ignoring certain obvious visual stimuli. To put it crudely, I don't want to see a schlong unless I'm going to make some good use of it.

In general, I'm quite baffled by the nudist desire to do away with clothing in everyday activities among virtual strangers. It seems like a strange form of exhibitionism to me, albeit not a malicious one in which the display is shocking and unwelcome to others, as with the weirdos who masturbate in the juvenile fiction section of the library. (I encountered one of those freaks when young enough to read those books; he was eventually arrested.) I've just never found clothing to be restrictive per se, so I cannot understand the supposed freedom of shedding it. However, if some people wish to wiggle around naked in designated areas, that's their business -- just count me out.

However, this inquiry on "concealed carry at nudist camp" is just plain wrong on so many more levels than mere nudism:

My wife and I have taken the plunge and are planning to spend a full week at Forest Hills Nudist Resort this summer. We've been to nudist camps twice before, but never overnight. Since these previous trips were to beaches, my concealed carry technique for those situations was to keep my Makarov in a Ziploc bag inside our cooler. This summer's trip, however will include volleyball, pot-luck dinners, and dances. My cooler can't be within arm's reach in those situations. I need some advice. I've become so used to my CCW, I can't imagine being unarmed. Here are my options, as I see them:

1) Go unarmed, because nudists are generally real nice folks.

2) Carry around a leather satchel or man-purse. With a shoulder strap, of course.

3) This one's kind of hard to explain. My wife and I are into a rather unusual type of entertainment, and I've discovered that normal duct tape adheres very well to human skin. You should also know that I'm quite overweight, bordering on obese. In a flash of revelation one fine morning, I realized that one of the advantages of being rotund is that I'm able to conceal a NAA mini-revolver between the two largest rolls of my belly. A bit of duct tape holds it in place. Its completely invisible when I'm standing or sitting upright. It does show a bit when I recline or lie down, however.

Other than those three choices, I'm stumped. Any suggestions?

As someone replied, "This thread may have permanently scarred me."

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Delivery Day!

It's delivery day Chez Hsieh!

Our fancy new elliptical trainer arrived. We've wanted one for a while, since running is a bit too much pound-pound-pound on the joints. (My knees and hips almost always get achy after six miles, even though my muscles and lungs could run further.) Paul's sprained ankle is still healing, so he can't run yet, although he's eager to do something other (and more aerobic) than rowing. So that was the proximate cause. Personally, I can't wait to try it out later today.

I also had six tons of day delivered for the horses, plus ten or so tons of granite fines for their stalls. Thankfully, my excellent landscaper is here to help put all that in its proper place. (I have stacked six tons of hay in years past, even before I was so fit. It was pretty darn painful.)

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Eugene Ionesco Is Not Ayn Rand

Jared Seehafer (president of the Boulder Objectivist Club) e-mailed me today about the following quote. He heard it attributed to Eugene Ionesco, although it bears a striking resemblance to Ayn Rand.

You are a human being, and as such you have a philosophical view of existence--whether you realize it or not. About this you have no choice. But there is a choice to be made about your philosophy, and it can be put in these terms: is your philosophy based on conscious, thoughtful, and well informed reflection? Is it sensitive to, but not chained by, the need for logical consistency? Or have you let your subconscious amass an ugly pile of unexamined prejudices, unjustified intolerances, hidden fears, doubts, and implicit contradictions, thrown together by chance but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown?

It is not the answer that enlightens us, but the question.

That should sound somewhat familiar, since it's a serious bastardization of a few sentences from Ayn Rand's seminal essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It." (Of course, Ayn Rand would certainly never ask whether your philosophy is "sensitive to, but not chained by, the need for logical consistency"! And sheesh, what the heck kind of nonsense do people mean when they trot out tired old cliches like "It is not the answer that enlightens us, but the question"?!?) Here's what Ayn Rand actually wrote:

As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation--or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

In Googling, I found the same version that Jared encountered (e.g. here and here). All seem to trace back to Nick Alchin's book Theory of Knowledge. I sent Mr. Alchin a polite e-mail (cc'ing the publisher) about the error in both quote and attribution.

Nick Alchin wrote me back immediately saying:

Thank you for this. Several others have also noticed the error - for which I have no excuse! I disposed of my notes for the book several years ago, so I don't know exactly where the error came from. Almost certainly me!

The second edition of the books is out in Jan and it has been corrected there.

Ah, good man!

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Holy Usenet, Batman!

Just for the record, freaky threads like this one are precisely why I no longer bother to debate substantive issues on usenet groups like humanities.philosophy.objectivism. According to some crazed folks in that thread, spending a few minutes posting an announcement about Craig Biddle's recent lectures at CU Boulder and FROST, in the hopes of alerting some fine person to the fantastic events put on by Front Range Objectivism, was some kind of sacrifice.

Of course, that's pretty benign speculation compared to some of the lies that I've recently heard about myself churning out of the rumor mill, but I'll save those for another post.

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TO's KO'ed

Ah, it's the sweet smack of justice: Eagles say Owens won't return this season. I'm glad for the decision, even though it's pitiable to see such a talented football player so totally undermined by his own pathetic psychology.

However, none of that matters in the slightest in comparison to tonight's critical game for my beloved Peyton and the Colts against their most formidable opponent, the New England Patriots.

Go Colts!

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Objectivist Tape Transfer Service?

I'm in the process of converting my rather substantial collection of Objectivist lectures from tape to mp3. Mostly I want to be able to listen to those lectures from my iPod. (Before I got my iPod, I preferred tapes to compact discs, since my portable cd player would lose its place when shut off. With the iPod, I can listen to any lecture, whenever and wherever I please, without ever losing my place. I now regularly listen to lectures on my iPod while driving, gardening, cleaning, riding, biking, running, and so on.) Also, it's significantly easier to search for a particular discussion by scrolling around in iTunes rather than going forward and back manually through a tape or cd.

This past weekend, I finally got started with the conversion. I'm using a high quality, stereo component tape deck, an excellent external sound card to convert RCA input to USB output, plus a fantastic little program called RIP Vinyl that makes it super-easy to grab just the lectures without any surrounding silence. With this setup, transferring from tape is basically just as easy as ripping from cd. (Unlike with music cds, ripping lecture cds requires manually inputting the information for 4-5 tracks for every hour of recording. So even ripping from cd is something of a pain.) The sound quality from the tapes isn't quite as pristine as from cds, but it's very good. (I ran quite a few tests to find the best settings for both the tape deck and the computer before starting.)

I've already transferred Darryl Wright's excellent Advanced Topics in Ethics. I'm presently zipping through Leonard Peikoff's illuminating The Art of Thinking. Amazingly enough, I expect that I can do my whole collection in a week or two. (I never thought it would be that quick and easy!)

As far as I understand copyright law, it's perfectly legal for me to transfer intellectual property between media for my own personal use. As with lectures that I've ripped from cd, I'll be careful to act as if I have just one copy of the material, meaning that I won't lend out the tapes while also listening to the mp3s. However, I do have some questions about the limits of what I can morally and legally do.

If a friend of mine also owns the tape course, is it legal for me to give him a copy of my mp3 files, so as to save him the time and trouble of converting his own tapes himself?

Can I charge another person money for such a change of medium, again provided that he already owns the tapes? (Professional tape-to-mp3 services usually charge around $6 to $10 per tape. I wouldn't charge nearly that much, but some compensation would help fund more purchases from the Ayn Rand Bookstore!) Does it matter that, unlike with the professional services, I'd be giving the other person mp3 files made from my tapes not his tapes?

Could I go so far as to run a tape-to-mp3 service just for Objectivist lectures? I would only have to transfer the tape lectures to mp3 files once, meaning that my marginal costs would be fairly negligible. Of course, I would have to verify tape ownership, as well as clearly impress upon people that the tapes and mp3 files are not separate goods such that the tapes could be sold while retaining the mp3 files.

Given the explosion of portable mp3 players, combined with the decrease of tape players in vehicles, I suspect that quite a few Objectivists would be eager to acquire mp3 files of lectures they already own on tape. For them, using a specifically Objectivist tape transfer service would be easier than transferring their own tapes themselves and cheaper than using a general transfer service. It would also be both cheaper and easier than buying and ripping new cd versions, if even available. (Many older lectures and courses from the Ayn Rand Bookstore are still only available on tape.)

After I got my iPod, I decided that I simply wouldn't buy any more lectures on tape, since I suspected that the conversion to mp3 would be a big hassle. However, now that I've set up such an easy system of tape conversion, I'll start buying whatever I please again. (In fact, I'll save some money that way, since the tapes are always a few dollars cheaper than the cds.) I do wonder how many other people are holding out for certain lectures to appear on cd, so that they can listen to them in their cars, on their iPods, or whatnot. So many people have invested so much money in tape lectures -- often thousands of dollars. It's a shame for them to pay so much in time and/or trouble simply to acquire the very same material in a different format. Perhaps it's also an opportunity for me.

So would an Objectivist Tape Transfer Service violate any principles of actual or proper copyright law? If a person is allowed to transfer his intellectual property between media at home, shouldn't he be able to hire a service to do the same? Is the standard distinction between private versus commercial uses of copyrighted material even valid?

Perhaps I am seriously confused: I'll certainly admit that I don't have a firm grasp on the proper bounds of intellectual property. In any case, I'd certainly inquire with the Ayn Rand Institute before even seriously considering any such endeavor. In the meantime, I'd be interested in any informed opinions on the matter.

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The Cover of the Person

Miss Manners has some excellent comments on the information conveyed by one's choice of clothing:

...clothing is a social language that everyone reads, consciously or not. Any job counselor, costume designer or defense lawyer will attest to that.

Is this shallow? Well, it is undoubtedly on the surface. But sometimes that is all one can see, and even those with the opportunity to dig deeper still have to deal with the surface.

Unlike beauty or other physical characteristics, dress is presumed to be subject to some degree of choice. You may choose to be as close or as remote from the prevailing convention of the time and occasion as you like, but the distance will be read as reflecting your attitude. This is why movie stars and hip-hop musicians dress so differently when they go to court. Such symbolism is powerful, and those who use it to lie should not be surprised or offended when others take these statements at face value and presume them to be childish or criminal.

Too many people are happy to latch onto the cliche of "Don't judge a book by its cover" when convenient for them. In fact, the cover of a book often says a great deal about what's inside. Just as with clothing, it was designed to do just that.

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Fine Young Cannibals

Do you know a recovering cannibal? You might be able to help him ease his cravings for human flesh with the help of Hufu. I'm serious: it's in the FAQ. (Really, if it's on the internet, it must be true!) I wonder if these poor suffering cannibals have a Twelve Step group of their own: Cannibals Anonymous, perhaps?

(Via Alexa Brett, who has a lovely new collage that she really ought to have submitted to that art competition!)

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Jeff Britting on BookTV

I couldn't post this announcement from ARI yesterday, due to problems with Blogger. But there's still time to catch it.

Jeff Britting, archivist at the Ayn Rand Institute and producer of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life," will participate in a panel discussion on Hollywood's blacklist sponsored by the Liberty Film Festival titled: "Was Communism a Threat to Hollywood?"

The discussion will be broadcast on C-SPAN II's Book TV [yesterday] (Saturday), November 5, at 6:00 pm Pacific, and on Sunday, November 6, at 4:00 pm Pacific.

I'll be particularly interested to hear what the other panelists have to say, in light of the disturbing facts presented in Robert Mayhew's excellent Ayn Rand and Song of Russia. Also, there's some comments on the panel discussion on The Forum.

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Yo-Yowza

Wow. I can barely manage to make a yo-yo go up and down the string. Never in a million years could I manage the feats in that video. (Via GeekPress.)

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Ironic Story of the Day

Environmental group Greenpeace has been fined almost $7,000 for damaging a coral reef at a World Heritage site in the Philippines.

Their flagship Rainbow Warrior II ran aground at Tubbataha Reef Marine Park, in the Sula Sea, 650km (400 miles) south-east of Manila. Park officials said almost 100 sq m (1,076 sq ft) of reef had been damaged.

Greenpeace says the fault lies with the Philippines government for providing inaccurate maps. (Via Metafilter.)

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Crazy Day

Today is a rather crazy day for me: I'm busy cooking for twelve people for a dinner party tonight. (Since Craig Biddle is in town for two lectures, we're hosting a relaxed evening for him and various Front Range Objectivists.) I'm highly organized when I cook this much food because I make and keep a fairly rigid schedule. Due to that careful planning, I was able to squeeze in a quiet cross-country ride on my mare Tara. But now it's time for me to return to the kitchen, as I have a dessert to make!

Just for fun, here's the menu:

Appetizers:

Cheese, Crackers, Salami, and Olives

Dinner:

Fresh Ham with Apple Cider and Brown Sugar Glaze

Green Beans with Buttered Bread Crumbs and Almonds

Maple-Orange Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Baby Greens with Fresh Apple and Parsley Dressing

Brown Bread

Dessert:

Coffee Pudding Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream

Everything but the brown bread is a Cook's Illustrated recipe, of course.

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No I in We

A few days ago, I read Yevgeny Zamyatin's classic 1920 novel We for the first time. I was pretty disappointed with it.

The underlying philosophy was confused, but I expected as much. As is standard in totalitarian dystopias, the state perfectly manages a wonderfully smooth, precise, and abundant technological economy. Moreover, reason is on the side of totalitarianism, while emotion is its primary enemy. (I find that standard association of reason with repression and emotion with freedom somewhat puzzling. The idea surely goes back further than the socialists who claimed that central planning was rational and scientific. So was it actually rooted in post-Kantian romanticism, particularly its ideal of wildly subjectivist freedom achieved through immersion in irrational emotions? I'm a bit fuzzy on that period of philosophic history, I must admit.)

Surprisingly, my major disappointments with the book were literary, not philosophical. It was written as the first-person journal of a thoroughly dedicated cog of the totalitarian collectivist state, a supposedly rigorously logical engineer who comes to some doubt through his love for an enigmatic dissident. However, the style of writing doesn't match that basic character at all. From the outset, it's highly imagistic, often strongly focused on minor details, often described in excessively abstract terms. As a result, I found it near-impossible to imagine the characters in setting and often difficult to follow the critical action, particularly as the story progressed. When I realized that I hadn't properly understood some earlier passage that set the context for the present text, I'd go back to re-read, often discovering that the problem was with the muddled writing, not my quick reading.

Also, the hero of the story was not heroic in the slightest. He stood on no principled understanding of his world, but merely vacillated between submission to the Great Benefactor of the One State and submission to the mysterious demands of his lover. (Worse still, he had no reason to love her at all. It was simply an irrational, incomprehensible passion.) Consequently, the climax of the novel was more than a little anticlimactic.

Honestly, I'm thoroughly puzzled as to why I've heard so many favorable comparisons of this novel to Ayn Rand's Anthem over the years. (For example: The Wikipedia entry on Anthem flippantly discusses an unsourced and absurd accusation of plagiarism by Rand of Zamyatin, under cover of the "neutral point of view." Peter Saint-Andre wrote a lengthy "dialectical" essay on the topic as well.) Although the characters, settings, plots, styles, and philosophies of Anthem and We share some similarities, those similarities pale in comparison to their deep differences.

Happily, Shoshana Milgram discusses some of those similarities and differences in her essay "Anthem in the Context of Related Literary Works" in Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem, pages 134-41. (I haven't read the whole volume or even that whole essay yet, but I did read that one section.) I particularly appreciated her comments on the epistemological underpinnings of the basic differences in style:

The prose of Zamyatin's D-503 [the hero] is elliptical and cryptic; that of [Ayn Rand's] Equality 7-2521, even with the handicap of the absence of singular pronouns, is clear, as if to imply that clarity itself is a goal to be pursued. The contrast in styles becomes greater as the books progress: D-503 is progressively more disoriented, and Equality 7-2521 is progressively better equipped to describe his experiences and their significance.

The progressive degradation of the prose in We certainly conveys D-503's progressively chaotic mental state brought on by his emotionalism. On the basis of his emotions alone, he cannot choose between submission to the state and submission to his love, so he is simply alternating between the two, usually depending upon his most recent contact. That makes sense of some of the wild prose, particularly toward the end of the novel. Yet my basic complaint about the description by abstract, floating images remains. In contrast, Anthem is poetic, but not floating.

Just to be clear, my objection to those favorable comparisons of We and Anthem mentioned above is not that Ayn Rand's fiction is so fabulously revolutionary that no worthwhile comparison to other fiction in its genre is possible. That would be beyond silly.

In fact, a book on the major dystopian novels of the early 20th century would be an interesting and worthwhile project for a scholar of literature and/or philosophy. I've been personally fascinated by dystopias ever since I read quite a few in my early teens. (Unfortunately, Anthem was not among them.) So I'd be delighted to read such a work, if done well. I've even long thought that I'd like to teach a "Totalitarianism In Fiction" philosophy class. However, such a work would be worse than useless if not ruthlessly focused on the fundamentals of the works discussed, rather than upon accidental or superficial commonalities. The philosophic and literary analyses of the works would have to be primary. Any discussion of influence would have to be secondary, as well as grounded in facts rather than arbitrary speculations.

Since a book like that is unlikely to be produced by modern academics, I won't be holding my breath. However, I will be continuing my own studies: I will be re-reading 1984 next.

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