Woo hoo! I just got my Objectivism Research CD-ROM running on my Mac using CrossOver Mac. The installation was a breeze, and it's working perfectly. Yeah!
Update: With some fussing, I even got it working from the hard drive, without any need for the cd-rom. Double Woo Hoo!
If you've ever watched Law and Order, you absolutely must watch this two minute spoof. It's so damn perfect -- even in its plot!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
I vaguely recall doing a report for my ninth grade biology class on slime mold. However, I don't recall pictures anywhere near this cool. (Via MR.)
Read more...Don Watkins, former NoodleFoodler, recently published an excellent op-ed via the Ayn Rand Center on prohibitions on indecent speech. Here it is:
Fleeting Freedom: The Indecent Assault on Broadcasters
The fleeting expletive case before the Supreme Court is about more than broadcasters' ability to air dirty words--it's about whether "community standards" should be allowed to override free speech.
By Don Watkins
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments Nov. 4 in the so-called fleeting expletive case, Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, it's clear that much more hinges on its outcome than broadcasters' ability to air dirty words.
The FCC has had the power to fine broadcasters for "indecent" speech for decades. But following Janet Jackson's infamous Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction in 2004, the government declared all-out war on indecency. Congress increased the maximum penalty per infraction tenfold, from $32,500 to $325,000; the FCC started issuing fines left and right; and Congressman James Sensenbrenner went so far as to recommend jail time for broadcasters who violated "indecency" guidelines. At the same time, the FCC began issuing fines for fleeting expletives. Suddenly a star's offhand comment on live TV could cost broadcasters hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In the midst of all this, one question never got answered: just what is "indecency"? The Supreme Court had defined it as speech that "depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities and organs in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards." But which Americans count (and don't count) as part of the community? Why are they king? And how are broadcasters to divine their supposedly shared standards? In response to these unanswerable questions, the FCC issued a hodgepodge of rulings in specific cases and told broadcasters, in effect, "You figure it out."
Multiple uses of expletives in Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary The Blues? Indecent, said the FCC. Multiple uses of those same expletives in the movie Saving Private Ryan? Not indecent. Suggestion of teenage sexual activity on CBS's Without a Trace? Indecent. Graphic discussion of teen sexual practices on Oprah? Not indecent. Bono's use of the "F-word" during the 2003 Golden Globe awards? Even the FCC wasn't sure about that one. Initially it said the word was not indecent, but later changed its mind and started handing out the fleeting expletive fines at issue in FCC v. Fox Television.
So what is a broadcaster to do? Engage in self-censorship, cutting any material that regulators might declare indecent.
Defenders of the war on indecency admit that the FCC's regulations are murky. But without such restrictions, they say, Americans will be helpless against the stream of offensive programming pumped into their homes: either we allow the government to wield arbitrary power over broadcasters, or we give broadcasters arbitrary power to subject us to filth.
What this argument ignores is that broadcasters' power is not arbitrary. They must earn their market by offering programming Americans choose to consume. We choose to buy a TV (or not). We choose to pay for cable (or not). We choose which channels we and our children watch. Broadcasters can't force us to watch offensive programming any more than an author can force us to read an offensive book.
This is the meaning of free speech: people have the right to say whatever they want, no matter how offensive--and we remain free to listen or not. We don't have to abide by the opinions, prejudices, and errors of our neighbors, but can judge for ourselves whether something is true or false, art or trash, insightful or indecent.
But once the government becomes the enforcer of "community standards," no speech is safe. How long until, say, the Bible Belt declares that the theory of evolution is offensive, corrupts young minds, undermines community values, and must be suppressed? This question is not academic. Bolstered by the indecency precedent, efforts are already underway to regulate "excessively violent" broadcasts.
And if the government can suppress speech "the community" allegedly deems offensive, then why can't it force broadcasters to engage in speech "the community" allegedly regards as good? In fact, it already does so: Univision was recently fined $24 million for failing to air a sufficient amount of educational children's programming. On the anti-indecency movement's premises, judging the value of programming is not the prerogative of broadcasters, who decide what to air, or viewers, who decide what to watch--it's the prerogative of "the community" (and its self-appointed spokesmen).
This is what is at stake in FCC v. Fox Television. The question is not whether fleeting expletives are indecent, an issue that individuals have a First Amendment right to decide for themselves. It's whether the Constitution grants government the power to trample on freedom of speech, using non-objective laws to dictate what we can say and hear on the airwaves. The Supreme Court should take this opportunity to respond with an emphatic "No!" Anything less would be indecent.
Don Watkins is a writer and research specialist at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
I'm voting by mail, so I need to fill out and mail my ballot tomorrow. And wow, I'm just not sure that I can bring myself to vote for Obama. So I might abstain.
If only I could make my choice so funny as Leonard Peikoff's Podcast #33, I'd be just a wee bit happy about it. As it is, I'm just sick about the whole thing -- and very, very worried that we'll face an even worse choice in 2012.
Ping-Ponging Toward Fascism has the latest edition of the Objectivist Roundup. Go check it out!
Read more...Last week, I sent out the following op-ed on abortion -- particularly focusing on Colorado's Amendment 48 -- to the various Colorado papers:
Abortion Is a Woman's RightI haven't checked the various papers to see where it has been published, but I do know that the Pagosa Daily Post published it on October 23rd. They then published a a lengthy reply on October 27th. (I won't reproduce it here; it's too long and too wrong.) On the 29th, they published a great letter in reply by Gideon Reich of Armchair Intellectual:
Colorado voters face a stark moral choice in this election: vote yea or nay on Amendment 48. That ballot measure would grant fertilized eggs the legal standing of persons--including "inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law"--in the state constitution.
If fully implemented, almost all abortions would be outlawed in Colorado, including in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity. Any woman who terminated a pregnancy would be guilty of murder, subject to life in prison or the death penalty. To take the birth control pill, which might sometimes prevent the implantation of an embryo in the womb, would be a criminal act. Miscarriages might be investigated by zealous prosecutors.
Roe v. Wade would not necessarily protect women against these ominous legal controls. Rather, Amendment 48 might be used to challenge that landmark case--or to inspire a nationwide movement for a similar federal constitutional amendment.
Despite its draconian effects, this proposed amendment has gathered solid support from Colorado voters. A recent poll shows that 39% favor it, 50% oppose it, and 11% are undecided.
Why such strong support? Over the past two decades, the religious right has effectively waged a holy war on abortion. Abortion is the murder of an innocent human life, they say. It violates the God-given right to life of a "preborn child." It is part of a "culture of death." So most Americans regard abortion as morally wrong except when a pregnancy threatens the woman's mental or physical health.
Yet the religious right's attacks on abortion are completely and utterly wrong. They evade the true meaning of the biological facts of pregnancy.
Opponents of abortion claim that embryos and fetuses have the same right to life as babies because they are distinct, living human beings. Undoubtedly, an embryo or fetus is alive, not inert matter. It's also human--not canine or hippopotamus. Yet every distinct, living skin cell a person washes off in the shower also contains human DNA. A tumor is human tissue distinct from its host. The embryo or fetus is different: it might develop into a born baby. Yet the differences between an embryo or fetus and that born baby are vast.
In the early stages of pregnancy, the embryo has nothing in common with an infant except its DNA. Its form is similar to the embryos of other mammals; it cannot survive outside the womb; it lacks any kind of awareness. To call that clump of cells a "person" is sheer nonsense.
Even when more developed, the fetus is not a biologically separate entity capable of independent action, like a baby. It exists as part of the woman carrying it, wholly contained within and dependent on her. It goes where she goes, eats what she eats, and breathes what she breathes. It lives as she lives, as an extension of her body. It is not yet an individual human life; it is not yet a person.
That situation changes radically at birth. A baby lives a life of its own. Although still very needy, he maintains his own biological functions. He breathes his own air, digests his own food, and moves on his own. He interacts with other people as a creature in his own right, not merely as a part of a pregnant woman. His life must be protected as a matter of right.
So a woman has every right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy--for any reason. If an abortion will protect and further her own life and happiness, then she ought to pursue that option with a clear conscience.
Amendment 48 would obliterate the moral right of every pregnant woman to control her own body. It is based on sectarian religious dogma, not objective facts. Please vote "No" on 48.
Diana Hsieh is the co-author of "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person," an issue paper available at http://www.seculargovernment.us.
Van Horn Opinion Misses the PointThank you for writing such an excellent letter, Gideon! Read more...
Gideon Reich
Steve Van Horn's rebuttal in the Post to Diana Hsieh's excellent article on abortion shows a complete lack of understanding of the one crucial concept in the abortion debate: Individual Rights. Far from being mythical supernatural endowments implanted at conception, or social conventions subject to popular vote, rights derive from a human being's nature as a rational being. His existence requires the free exercise of his rational faculty to sustain his own life.
A "right," as Ayn Rand pointed out, "is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context." Thus, the freedom of action that ought to be guaranteed to an individual is the freedom to think and act without interference from others in society for the achievement of his goals, as long as he respects the right of others do the same.
The very first requirement for such a freedom to apply is that the "individual" in question actually be a separate individual in a social context -- not a mere potential that is part of another actual individual. As Ms. Hsieh has eloquently shown, the unborn fetus, to say nothing of the embryo or zygote, has not met that requirement.
The pregnant woman, on the other hand, clearly has -- and has every moral right to act accordingly.
In his October 24, 2008 radio show, Rush Limbaugh essentially told Republicans who believe in abortion rights that they should leave the Republican Party:
Good Riddance, GOP ModeratesNo problem, Rush. I've already sent the following message to numerous Republicans at the local, state, and national level:
...We flushed 'em out. We found out they're not really Republicans and they're by no means conservatives, and now they're gone. Now the trick is to keep 'em out.
...The minute you say that conservatism includes people who are pro-choice, you've destroyed conservatism because conservatism stands for "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness." Without life, there is nothing else here, and if we're going to sit around indiscriminately deciding who lives and who dies based on our own convenience, that's not conservative. Individual liberty. The essence of innocence is a child in the womb who has no choice over what happens to it. Sorry. If we don't stand up for that person, if the government doesn't, then nobody will. And if we allow ourselves to get watered down by a bunch of people who are embarrassed over that position, they're not conservatives.
I used to support the Republican Party because I believe in individual rights, free markets, a strong national defense, and the right to keep and bear arms.Given that Rush Limbaugh has just confirmed that they don't want members like me, I'm happy to oblige him.
However, the Republican Party alliance with the religious right on "social issues" like stem cell research, abortion and gay marriage has turned off many former supporters such as myself.
Americans have a right to practice their religion as a purely private matter, and I defend everyone's right to do so.
But the government should not force one group's religious views on everyone. Hence, I no longer have a home in any political party. To paraphrase a quote from Ronald Reagan, "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me."
And let's not forget that his impassioned defense of individual freedom (which I heard part of, and which by itself was quite good) was made in defense of voting for JOHN MCCAIN... you know, the guy who blames the financial crisis on greedy Wall Street, who dismisses those who pursue profit instead of "service," who thinks the First Amendment deserves scare quotes, who supports cap and trade, who opposes drilling for oil in Alaska, whose hero is Teddy Roosevelt, who chose religious nut-job and anti-intellectual populist Sarah Palin as his running mate, etc., etc., etc. What a sin it would be to elect that kind of nightmare in the name of *capitalism*!If McCain and Limbaugh were the only "defenders" of individual rights against the likes of Obama, then our country would be in sorry shape. Fortunately, there are better defenders out there... Read more...
Via ChordStrike: "Though it's definitely a catchy song, I doubt many people would remember A-ha's 'Take On Me' if it weren't for its innovative-for-the-'80s half-animated/half-live action video. Recently, some evil genius took a crack at rewriting 'Take on Me,' crafting the lyrics as a running commentary describing exactly what's happening in the song's iconic video. The results are hilarious. Behold:"
Update: Richard suggested adding a link to the original video, for anyone unfamiliar with it. Here it is:
How good is your eye at judging spatial relations? Find out here.
Update from Diana: I got a score of 4.76. Beat that! (Really, I'm sure that some of you will. And when you do, you're welcome to gloat.)
Update from Paul: 3.2 on my second try. I seem to have the most difficulty with the "bisect the angle" portion.
Ari and Linn Armstrong recently wrote an excellent column for the Grand Junction Free Press on the clash between campaign finance laws and freedom of speech. Ari was kind enough to give me permission to repost it here, and he also sent me a version with links added. Also, below the column, you'll find the full text of his interview with Eric Daniels.
Also, if you're not reading Ari's blogs -- AriArmstrong.com (on faith and politics) and FreeColorado.com (on politics and culture) -- you should be.
Time to speak out for free speech
by Linn and Ari Armstrong
Free speech is under assault in America by state and federal governments, despite constitutional protections.
Both major presidential candidates are enemies of free speech. In 2002, John McCain rode the McCain-Feingold campaign censorship law through Congress. Among other things, the law prohibited select groups from running certain political ads before elections, though the Supreme Court struck down some of the worst parts of the law. Barack Obama wants federal controls on media ownership, his spokesperson told Broadcasting & Cable.
Some conservatives want more censorship over pornography. Many on the left call for censorship of the radio by forcing broadcasters to air certain views; supporters laughably call their scheme the "Fairness Doctrine."
Here in Colorado, various activists have faced legal threats for daring to exercise their rights of free speech. For example, in 2006 Becky Clark Cornwell put up yard signs and protested a plan to annex her community of Parker North into the city of Parker in Douglas County.
A supporter of annexation filed a legal complaint against Cornwell and others, claiming they had engaged in "illegal activities" under Colorado's campaign censorship laws.
Lisa Knepper of the Institute for Justice (IJ), a civil rights group that defended Cornwell and her neighbors, said that, while the U.S. District Court ruled the group could not be penalized, the court "failed to change the law to prevent such abuses of campaign finance law in the future, so we're appealing to the 10th Circuit."
ABC's 20/20 featured Cornwell in an October 17 story about the campaign finance laws. Cornwell said "the lawsuit was used in an effort to shut us up about the annexation, to scare us enough and clobber us with these laws so that we wouldn't talk about it any more."
20/20 paid people to try to fill out Colorado's campaign forms. Nobody did so successfully. One subject said, "A regular citizen cannot read this legalese." Another said, "I'd rather just not get involved in the political process if I have to go through the nonsense that I had to go through today."
Steve Simpson, the IJ lawyer defending the Parker North residents, said he's also defending the Independence Institute, which was sued over its criticisms of Referenda C and D in 2005. Simpson is awaiting a decision from the Colorado Court of Appeals. He said "it would be impossible" for the Independence Institute, a think tank, to comply with the reporting requirements as an issue committee, because the group gets funds for general purposes and spends them on a wide variety of issues.
Even though we've condemned Amendment 48, which would absurdly define a fertilized egg as a person in the state constitution, we were displeased to see that a fellow named John Erhardt sued the Amendment 48 campaign for petty violations of the campaign censorship laws. Erhardt gloats on his blog, "So, while the fine of $150 won't break their campaign, they did have to spin their wheels to defend this."
Diana Hsieh, co-author of the paper "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life" at SecularGovernment.us, said the advocates of 48 "should be free to advocate their views -- not bogged down in opportunistic legal action by opponents... I want opponents of Amendment 48 to be spending their time arguing against the substance and philosophy of it, not playing campaign finance dirty tricks."
Finally, Douglas Bruce has taken flak in the media [one and two] for mailing a flyer against Amendment 59 and Referendum O through a nonprofit group, Active Citizens Together, without filing the legal paperwork that some think applies.
It's past time to rethink the validity of the campaign censorship laws, along with all the other restrictions on free speech. We checked in with Eric Daniels of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, and he offered a refreshingly consistent defense of our rights.
Daniels said, "Free speech means the right (not privilege) of individuals to express their opinions without government censorship of any kind, whether by hindering speech through regulation or through restricting it through prosecutions after the fact."
We don't even like requirements to report contributions. People have a right to speak anonymously. There's no clear way to distinguish between advocacy and education. And, the voters can demand disclosure with their votes.
Daniels agrees: "If politicians wish to disclose the source of their financing to the public, they are free to do so... The electorate can indeed decide through voting whether to support candidates who do or do not disclose their financing. Contributing money to a political candidate or to supporters or opponents of a ballot measure should properly be a matter between the private parties themselves."
Government should not abridge "the freedom of speech, or of the press." Politicians have gotten away with doing just that for far too long. If we wish to retain and restore our other liberties, we must above all fight for our rights of free speech.
Linn is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son Ari edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.
Full Interview with Eric Daniels
Note from Ari: My purpose in contacting Daniels was not to cover familiar ground, but to elicit responses about some of the most difficult implications of free speech. Until I thought more carefully about the matter on October 23, talked with another friend about it, and contacted Daniels, I wasn't sure about my position on the matters of campaign-finance disclosure and campaigns by foreigners. Now I am sure. I am for freedom, not controls.
Daniels's answers follow the questions in italics:
Briefly, why do you think free speech has come under attack by both right and left in recent decades?
Fundamentally, the reason free speech is under attack by both is because both fail to understand the nature of individual rights. The majority opinion in politics today holds that rights are gifts from the government that allow individuals to do some things as long as they do not upset certain vested interests. In the case of free speech, politicians believe that you should be allowed to say what you want as long as it does not, for example, offend religious or ethnic groups or as long as what you say is not backed by too much money, or as long as what you say meets some vague notion of community standards. But that is not free speech. Free speech means the right (not privilege) of individuals to express their opinions without government censorship of any kind, whether by hindering speech through regulation or through restricting it through prosecutions after the fact.
Should the law require disclosure of campaign-related expenses? I'm leaning no. People have a right to speak anonymously. There's no clear way to distinguish between advocacy and education. And, the voters can demand disclosure with their votes. Do you agree with this? Explain.
I do not think the law should require public disclosure of campaign- related financing. If politicians wish to disclose the source of their financing to the public, they are free to do so. Likewise, if they choose to keep their donors' identities to themselves, they should also be free to do so. The electorate can indeed decide through voting whether to support candidates who do or do not disclose their financing. Contributing money to a political candidate or to supporters or opponents of a ballot measure should properly be a matter between the private parties themselves. It does not matter how much a person gives or how much air time he buys, voters always remain free to take the message for which he has paid in the appropriate context. No one forces the voters to believe or discredit any given message, they do so of their own will.
Should the law prohibit campaign contributions from foreign entities and people? For instance (Diana Hsieh raised this example), if the U.S. were going impose a tariff on British goods, should British citizens be able to campaign against it in the U.S.?
Giving money to a political campaign is an issue of individual right -- that is, the donor who has earned his wealth has a right to give it to whatever candidate he chooses, and the candidate has a right to accept money from anyone he chooses. Foreign citizens or political action committees have just as much right to speak as do Americans. Again, if there is some belief on the part of voters that foreign influence is unduly affecting some candidate, the voters retain the right to demand that the candidate disclose the source of his funding or face losing their votes.
Is there anything else we should know about free speech in the modern era?
Even though much of the recent controversy about free speech is tied to speech about political issues, it is important to remember that we have the freedom of speech not just because it facilitates a robust discussion of public policy (which is the unfortunate modern interpretation), but because it is a right of each individual to express his ideas in the manner he chooses and to reach whatever size an audience his rightly-earned wealth will allow.
I suspect that many conservatives would regard this video interview of Joe Biden as an example of what journalism ought to be:
In fact, it's nothing of the sort. It's blatant partisanship, not objectivity.
I've never thought much about the proper standards of journalism -- until I began fighting Colorado's Amendment 48. So here are my preliminary thoughts: Journalists should ask difficult questions, particularly of politicians. However, those questions should be fair -- not loaded with presumption and innuendo. So a journalist should allow a person to state his basic views, then dig deeper by asking some tough questions. The goal should be to expose the person's views for what they are -- good, bad, or ugly.
Thoughts?
The October 23, 2008 edition of The Economist has printed another LTE of mine, this time on Massachusetts' health care "reform". This one is in the print edition (as opposed to my first LTE there which was online-only.)
They did minor editing, but kept the central meaning intact. The letter is the 4th one down:
Freedom to chooseRead more...
SIR – The Massachusetts system of "universal" health care remains afloat only because of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal support ("In need of desperate remedies", October 18th). One reason costs are so high in Massachusetts is that individuals are forced to purchase benefits they neither need nor want. Under any system of mandatory insurance, the state must necessarily define what constitutes an acceptable insurance policy, meaning that individuals are buying insurance on terms influenced by lobbyists and bureaucrats, rather than based on a rational assessment of their needs. If the federal government adopts the Massachusetts system on a national scale, it would merely multiply those problems fifty-fold.
Dr Paul Hsieh
Co-founder Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine
Sedalia, Colorado
Notice of a Special Event: A Lecture by Mr. Flemming Rose, editor of Jyllands-Posten, publisher of the Danish Muhhamad cartoons, on "Free Speech in a Globalized World."
When: Thursday, October 30, 2008, 7:00 PM
Where: Page Auditorium, Duke University (directions)
In September 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons depicting the Islamic figure Muhammad with images of terrorism. The newspaper’s publishers stated that they wanted to bring issues of free speech and censorship forward into public awareness. The result was a firestorm of protest, ordered by clerics some weeks after the publication, that highlighted the seriousness of this issue. Over one hundred people were killed in the ensuing riots.
This event will be a unique opportunity to hear the cultural editor of this publication explain the decision to publish these cartoons, the issues at stake in the decision, and the meaning of the protests and the violence that followed. A Q&A will follow the talk.
Flemming Rose is a journalist with long experience in European, Russian, and American issues. He has been awarded the "Free Speech Award" from the Danish Free Press Society.
Web Site: www.committeeforfreespeech.com
Contact: John Lewis, Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science, Duke University, john.d.lewis@duke.edu
The UCLA Objectivist Club will be sponsoring the following debate on October 30, 2008, "Universal Health Care: The Cure or the Disease?":
Universal Health Care: The Cure or the Disease?Unfortunately, I live in Colorado and won't be able to make it. But I encourage anyone in the Southern California area with an interest in health care policy to attend! Read more...
Thursday, October 30, 2008 (7:00pm - 9:00pm)
UCLA Campus: Moore 100
Health care has been an important issue in politics, especially in the last several years. Amidst much specific policy analysis and political quibbling over superficial issues, the fundamentals have been ignored: What are the underlying philosophic and economic considerations? Is universal health care moral? Does it achieve its stated goal? Is there an ethical and practical alternative?
Come hear Professor Mark Kleiman (UCLA Department of Public Policy) and Dr. Peter LePort, M.D. (Ayn Rand Institute Board of Directors) answer your questions about the issue of universal health care.
7:00pm: Opening Statements
7:30pm: Q & A with the Audience
Transportation Information
Parking is available for $9, available for purchase at the Parking Information Kiosk at Westwood and Strathmore.
Parking Structure 6 is in close proximity to the event location.
Please allow 30 extra minutes to secure parking and walk to the venue. Doors open at 6:30pm.
Media should contact Arthur@ClubLogic.org to RSVP for parking and priority seating
A few days ago, I realized that I ought to occasionally post a reminder about my various OList mailing lists. So without further ado...
OList.com is the home of three specialized e-mail lists for Objectivists, all to help promote Objectivist ideas in the culture at large:
Here's the original x-ray:
This patient has a partially collapsed right lung, also known as a spontaneous pneumothorax.
If you look closely, you can see that the branching blood vessels that go from the heart to the lungs have a normal pattern on his left side, starting off wide and becoming getting finer and finer as they move away from the heart until they reach the edge of the lung (and are no longer discernible).
On the abnormal right side, those branching blood vessels stop abruptly at a sharp thin vertical line, indicated by the multiple arrows. This is the edge of the collapsed lung, now pulled inwards. Note that no blood vessels extend past that vertical line on the right side.
Here are a few diagrams that explain this abnormality. The first diagram shows a normal pair of fully-expanded lungs:
The second diagram shows a partially collapsed right lung, just as in this patient. You can see the empty space (or "pneumothorax") between the edge of the lung and the ribs:
The third diagram shows the proper treatment of a large pneumothorax -- a chest tube is placed through the skin and into the pneumothorax cavity. The end of the tube outside of the patient is then attached to a suction device which removes the dead air and allows the lung to re-expand. That's how this patient was treated:
Here's lots more information on spontaneous pneumothorax.
Thank you all for playing!
This week on Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government:
Here's yet another a Sunday Open Thread for your thoughts:
For anyone in the fiery grip of a random question, comment, joke, or link they'd like to share with NoodleFood readers, I hereby open up the comments on this post to any respectable topic. (Please refrain from posting personal attacks, pornographic material, and commercial solicitations.)
Nick Provenzo of Rule of Reason writes:
A short op-ed I wrote for Fox News' Fox Forum on the threat either a McCain or Obama presidency poses to freedom is the featured commentary for the weekend. I argued that both Obama and McCain are "equally dangerous for economic freedom in America" and that "on every question, both men share the same corrupt moral premise, differing only in degree and their particular focus."I also encourage you to write a comment! You can also give it a "thumbs up" via StumbleUpon. Here's Paul's comment:
I encourage you to leave a comment there adding your own thoughts. The URL is:
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/25/opposingviews_1024/
Thank you, Nick, for a well-argued essay!If you post a comment, you're welcome to repost it in the NoodleFood comments. Read more...
Dr. Malcom G refers to a superb lecture by Leonard Peikoff entitled, "Health Care Is Not A Right" from 1993.
There's an updated (2007) version of his talk available at the website for Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine at:
"Health Care Is Not A Right"
http://www.westandfirm.org/Peikoff-01.html
To add to Nick's point, the biggest problem in modern American politics is the failure to recognize what individual rights are.
Rights are freedoms of actions (such as the right to free speech), not automatic claims on goods and services that must be produced by others. Individuals are legitimately entitled to services such as health care that they purchase with their own money, are promised by prior contractual agreements, or are given to them via voluntary charity.
Otherwise, government programs to guarantee health care as a "right" must necessarily violate someone's actual rights - either the rights of those compelled to provide medical care or the rights of those compelled to pay for it. Such programs then become just another form of state-sanctioned slavery or theft.
Both McCain and Obama suffer from this faulty understanding of individual rights. Both would use the power of government to trample on legitimate rights (such as the right to free speech) as well as to attempt to guarantee false entitlement "rights".
Unless Americans reaffirm the proper conception of rights as freedoms of actions (and concomitant limitations on government powers), then we'll continue our current downhill slide. A civilization will collapse if citizens decide that they can vote each other goodies from the government trough, at the expense of those who produce such goods.
The Romans learned this lesson the hard way. The big question is whether Americans will also learn this lesson before it's too late.
Paul Hsieh, MD
Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM)
http://www.WeStandFIRM.org
As I've blogged before, I began eating a substantially different diet over the past few months. I thought some more details might be of interest.
Basically, I eat whatever I damn well please of real, whole foods. I particularly avoid three kinds of highly processed foods: grains, sugars, and modern vegetable oils. My eating is never really regular. Sometimes I eat heartily, sometimes I eat lightly, and sometimes I skip meals altogether. Sometimes I snack between meals, and sometimes I don't.
One of my major goals in eating is not to spike my blood sugar. So I have been running a series of tests on the foods that I typically eat with my blood glucose meter, sometimes with surprising results. I'll post those in a few weeks, when I have more data.
To give a better sense of my day-to-day diet, here's a list of what I eat and don't eat for various meals, plus some various comments below.
Breakfast
I don't eat pastries, muffins, pancakes, waffles, cold cereals, bread, meat substitutes, or sweetened coffee drinks.
I eat...
Gun Van Horn gives Alan Greenspan a much-needed ass-kicking for his repudiation of free markets. And here's the Ayn Rand Institute's press release on it:
Greenspan Has No Free Market PhilosophyI can't possibly express the depth of my disgust at Alan Greenspan. Well, let me try. By continuing to associate himself with the free market ideas of his former mentor, even while thoroughly contradicting them in word and deed as Fed Chairman, and then publicly repudiating them based on a government-created financial crisis, the man has done more damage to Objectivism than Barbara and Nathaniel Branden.
October 24, 2008
Washington, D.C. --Opponents of the free market are giddy at Alan Greenspan's declaration that the financial crisis has exposed a "flaw" in his "free market ideology." Greenspan says he is "in a state of shocked disbelief" because he "looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity"--and it didn't.
But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, "any belief Greenspan ever had in truly free markets was abandoned long ago. While Greenspan long ago wrote in favor of a truly free market in banking, including the gold standard that such markets always adopt, he then proceeded to work for two decades as leader and chief advocate of the Federal Reserve, which continually inflates the money supply and manipulates interest rates. Advocates of free banking understand that when the government inflates the currency, it artificially increases prices and causes booms in certain sectors of the economy, followed by inevitable busts. But not only did Greenspan lead the inflation behind the .com bubble and the real estate boom, he blamed the market for their treacherous collapses. Greenspan should have recognized that what he wrote in 1966 of the boom preceding the 1929 crash applied here: 'The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market--triggering a fantastic speculative boom.' Instead, he superficially blamed 'infectious greed.'
"Should it be any shock that Greenspan now blames the free market for today's meltdown--rather than the Fed's policies, which fueled an inflationary housing boom, which rewarded reckless lenders and borrowers from Wall Street to Main Street? Greenspan didn't mention the word 'inflation' once in his testimony.
"Whatever Greenspan's economic philosophy is, it is not anything resembling a free market."
Yes! It's true! Libertarians have been running the country for years. How do I know?
I know because Jacob Weisberg, the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Slate Group (which publishes the online magazine), has just penned an article describing for us immature Ayn Rand naifs how it is that the financial collapse killed libertarianism.
A source of mild entertainment amid the financial carnage has been watching libertarians scurrying to explain how the global financial crisis is the result of too much government intervention rather than too little...That's all by way of introduction. He follows with a bunch of haphazard facts strung together in a string of non sequiturs that I've become bored with, they're so ubiquitously offered as proof the financial crisis was caused by the "free market." So forgive me if I don't quote here the "facts" the article supposedly marshals in support of its conclusions (check out the full article if you're not easily nauseated). Weisberg concludes with slap at, of all people, Ayn Rand:
Utopians of the right, libertarians are... convinced that their ideas have yet to be tried, and that they would work beautifully if we could only just have a do-over of human history. Like all true ideologues, they find a way to interpret mounting evidence of error as proof that they were right all along.
To which the rest of us can only respond, Haven't you people done enough harm already? We have narrowly avoided a global depression and are mercifully pointed toward merely the worst recession in a long while. This is thanks to a global economic meltdown made possible by libertarian ideas.
[Emphasis in original.]
The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school.This article is yet another gob-smacking exercise in tortured rationalization of the avoidance of uncomfortable facts by someone steeped in the rhetorical method not of thrust-and-parry, but avoid-and-slime. Weisberg first avoids the facts that 1) Libertarians have never run the American government, 2) it's a non sequitur to declare that financiers and corporate-welfare statists who run to the government for a bailout believe in the free market (!) and 3) Libertarianism has been rejected wholesale, outright, and damn near shrilly by Ayn Rand and the philosophy of Objectivism. Weisberg then slimes principled Objectivists as "immature" and "ideologues," and by playing on the flat ignorance of most of the public of the tenets of Objectivism. (Not to mention trotting out that tired when-are-you-going-to-grow-out-of-it smear.)
What's wrong with this picture? (This is a real-life case from my work from a few days ago.)
(Click on the image for a larger view.)
This is a chest x-ray from an otherwise healthy 25-year old man who came into the emergency room complaining of sudden onset of chest pain and shortness of breath. He hurts on his right side. There was no recent injury or unusual preceding event.
For non-physicians, the film is oriented as if the patient were looking at you. His right side is on the left side of the image and his left side is on the image right.
The heart is the whiter area in the center and the two lungs are the darker regions on either side.
The bones (such as the ribs and collar bones) are white. The backwards "L" in the upper right of the image is a film marker placed by the x-ray tech to indicate the patient's left side ("L").
This is classic teaching case for 3rd year medical students just starting their hospital rotations on medicine, surgery, or the ER -- some might get it and some might not.
The average 1st-year radiology resident (i.e., someone who had finished 4 years of medical school and one year of internship) should make this diagnosis in about 2-3 seconds.
The radiologist's next step would then be to call the ER physician ASAP to alert him to this diagnosis.
The answer will be posted on Monday.
Wow, this video of mind-blowing acrobatics on a flexible bar makes the balance beam look damn easy:
(Via The Agitator.)
For a blog called "NoodleFood", we don't often use actual noodles to illustrate interesting ideas. I'm going to correct this deficiency right now. Here's a classic video using noodles to illustrate powers of 2, as well as to discuss about the size of atoms:
(Via Marginal Revolution.)
This interesting flowchart of US immigration procedure has been making the blog rounds lately. 
When I sent it to one of my physician friends who was born in Canada but is now a US citizen, he replied (quoted with his permission):
Thank you for sending this. The entire process took me nine years and about $15k. The time, energy and money spent on becoming an American citizen was the best investment by far that I ever made. I have far more freedom to pursue my intellectual and career goals in the USA compared to any other country.I completely agree.
Also our [child] would likely not have survived if [my wife and I] had not had access to the home fetal monitoring technology developed by Michael Katz in San Francisco. The home fetal monitoring picked up premature labor several times including the preterm labor before delivery. The doctors were able to give steroids to improve lung maturity and delay the Caesarian section. This technology would never have available in Canada.
I shudder at how our life might have turned out if we stayed in Canada.
I think the USA has a moral obligation to liberalize immigration. If someone wants to work and someone wants to hire him and they are not shmucks or scoundrels we should allow them to make their own choice.
Nick Provenzo of Rule of Reason has the latest Objectivist Roundup. Go check it out!
Read more...Despite all of the recent economic turmoil, it's important to keep a long-term perspective. If the currently semi-free US economy is allowed to function, we will still be in pretty good shape. The following graph of GDP per capital over the past 200 years shows how the US economy has done. Even the Great Depression and WWII can be seen as fairly minor blips in the overall upward trend.
However, the one thing that we can do to screw things up is to impose massive new regulations. This sort of self-inflicted damage could harm the long-term future economy far more than any particular stock market crash. Hence, it's important to continue to defend and advocate for the free market.
(Graph via Center for Global Development and Will Wilkinson.)
According to the October 2, 2008 Wall Street Journal, the unofficial prison currency in the US is no longer the cigarette, but rather the mackerel:
There's been a mackerel economy in federal prisons since about 2004, former inmates and some prison consultants say. That's when federal prisons prohibited smoking and, by default, the cigarette pack, which was the earlier gold standard.It's interesting that these prisoners understand the need for a stable objective medium of economic exchange far better than the US government which is incarcerating them, even though few of those prisoners have studied articles such as, "Gold and Economic Freedom" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal which explain the importance of a gold standard.
Prisoners need a proxy for the dollar because they're not allowed to possess cash. Money they get from prison jobs (which pay a maximum of 40 cents an hour, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons) or family members goes into commissary accounts that let them buy things such as food and toiletries. After the smokes disappeared, inmates turned to other items on the commissary menu to use as currency.
...[T]he mack is a good stand-in for the greenback because each can (or pouch) costs about $1 and few -- other than weight-lifters craving protein -- want to eat it.
1) Perhaps it's the US economy that is based "fishy" premises, not the prison economy.(Via Marginal Revolution.) Read more...
2) Perhaps more US government officials need to spend some time in a federal penitentiary -- they may learn an important lesson about sound money (as well as some well-deserved lessons on other subjects.)
My friend Bill Perry (officially known as William E. Perry) sent me the following bit of news about "The Legend of the Seeker," an upcoming miniseries based on Terry Goodkind's first novel. I've not read any of Goodkind's work, but Bill tells me that he's an Objectivist.
Terry Goodkind's first novel Wizard's First Rule is the basis for the mini-series "The Legend of the Seeker." The Sam Raimi of Spiderman fame is the executive producer. The series is syndicated so times and stations vary, but it is on WGN, so most cable systems will have it.I'm definitely planning to watch it! Read more...
The series starts the weekend of November 1, but an introduction with footage from the first episode starts October 18. It is called "The Making of a Legend" and is hosted by Lucy Lawless. Local listings for the introduction and the series are available here.
While Goodkind was not an Objectivist when he wrote the novel he has been closely involved in the production and I'd anticipate that the non-Objectivist portions have been fixed. I have read all of the novels and have followed the publicity about the making of the mini-series and am extremely excited about watching the upcoming series. Even if you haven't followed the series I'd recommend watching for anyone who likes fantasy shows, or even Objectivists who aren't really fans of the genre. I wasn't before I discovered the series.
Imagine this: Your yoga instructor will no longer be doing as many Chataranga Dandasanas in yoga class because the EPA has determined that allowable C02 emissions would be exceeded due to proper yoga breathing.
Imagine this: Your household will be restricted in their consumption of pinto beans due to the potential over-production of intestinal gases with a corresponding excessive release of colonic C02 into the atmosphere, exceeding EPA standards.
We haven't even considered the potential impact of feeding cheese to your dog, or those statistically-higher ambulance runs made from nursing homes. We're talking C02 excesses in the...in the....parts per something!
Front Range Objectivism hosted a fascinating supper talk on October 18 by John Lewis, PhD, visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University and research scholar and writer in history and classics. His talk was entitled, "A Call to Action: Understanding and Defeating the EPA's Plan for Environmental Dictatorship." From his talk I drew several disturbing conclusions concerning the sweeping powers delegated to the Enviromental Protection Agency as a result of a recent Supreme Court ruling.
As background, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, in Massachusetts et al. v the EPA, ruled in favor of a consortium of environmentalist-friendly plaintiffs, delegating to the Environmental Protection Agency the responsibility of regulating C02 emissions under the Clean Air Act. The plaintiffs argued that man-made C02 emissions (and other greenhouse gases) are the primary cause of "global climate change," and that to avoid worldwide disaster action must be taken. The EPA established an "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" to allow public comment, advising the public of the widespread impacts this would cause to our society and economy. Dr. Lewis argued that, even as lay persons, we can judge and reject the claims of imminent worldwide catastrophe raised by the plaintiffs in this case. (I'm including the link to the comments to the EPA made by Dr. Lewis and scientist Paul Saunders.)
From the talk, three issues struck me as particularly important about this case: the scientific, the political and the constitutional.
First the scientific. The Supreme Court ruling used the widely-reported conclusions of the United Nations-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the scientific basis for regulating C02. The panel's basic conclusion: "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."
What's concerning about this conclusion from a lay person's observation is the fact that global climate over the eons has changed not just dramatically, but extremely: ice ages, deserts that used to be jungles, plains once covered by oceans, gigantic shifts in northern ice patterns but the opposite occurring in the southern hemisphere, etc.
As far as the validity of the science, the IPCC conclusions were based primarily on computer modeling involving many variables. And much of the data is bad, as in faulty measurements of ground temperature. Then then there's Al Gore's infamous inversion of the C02-temperature relationship: Ice core data actually indicates that over the millennia global temperature increase comes before C02 rise by several hundred years. Finally, as every lay person knows from experience, the best of climatologists can't even predict the local weather very well, let alone weather change on a global scale projected decades into the future.
On to the political. The IPCC is essentially a governmental entity that works by political consensus, like most U.N. endeavors. In fact, as Dr. Lewis pointed out (and as I have learned elsewhere), the conclusions were haggled out first, line-by-line, by bureaucrats. This is not at all proper to the standard method of producing a scientific paper.
There are many respected scientists from such fields as oceanography, climatology and astronomy that study the impact of the oceans and the sun and other factors in global temperature change and C02. Many claim that their input was either dismissed, suppressed or ignored by the IPCC, even when they were initially involved as expert reviewers. And there are many other scientists who simply claim that nobody can get a handle on something as vastly complex as global climate change at our present state of knowledge. But this input is exed-out in the IPCC and the Supreme Court ruling because of politics, not good science.
Finally, Dr. Lewis responded to a question concerning the Constitution and the very disturbing and ever-growing power of the emerging "fourth" branch of government: those rule-making regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services. These are composed of unelected civil employees who have been delegated the power to write detailed rules and regulations impacting rights of property, contract, privacy, and more. Operating behind the scenes, they have enormous power to control our businesses and lives.
And with the new Supreme Court ruling, the EPA will have no choice but to somehow figure out--despite the fact that climate science is really in its infancy--how to regulate all of the C02 emissions we put out. Just imagine the onerous responsibility, tremendous power and grave consequences involved...
And remember, don't sigh too deeply, just grunt.
As someone who takes ideas seriously, I've always found it frustrating when philosophers take it upon themselves to offer judgments on subjects they haven't bothered to devote serious time and attention to studying. The charge that philosophers (academic or otherwise) sometimes judge where the epistemically virtuous would fear to comment isn't new. (For instance, it isn't rare to hear someone claim that speculation from the philosophical armchair is a poor method of settling some contentious issue.) What makes this phenomenon -- the venturing of unwarranted opinions -- especially pernicious in the case of philosophers is that philosophers are supposed to be the guardians of rationality, revering the mind by sacrificing hasty conclusions at the altar of the well-formed argument. Philosophers are supposed to love wisdom and shun mere belief; when they make assertions that betray culpable ignorance, they sin against their profession as well as the truth.
I don't know what it is about Ayn Rand that makes many philosophers think they can get away with saying whatever they damn well please about her without having studied her work carefully and honestly. I suspect that the real explanation has less to do with Rand and more to do with personal biases on the part of her critics. But whatever the cause, the phenomenon is nevertheless real. It isn't just that many philosophers dislike Rand. We philosophers are an opinionated bunch; we dislike all sorts of things. Rather it's that many philosophers will attribute all sorts of nonsense to Rand without actually considering what she has to say.
To offer an example, below is a passage from Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics. This work, published relatively recently by Oxford University Press, is intended to be used as a textbook on, unsurprisingly, virtue ethics.
"We can interpret Thrasymachus, and more obviously Nietzsche and Rand, as saying that, rather like hive bees, human beings fall, by nature, into two distinct groups, the weak and the strong (or the especially clever or talented or 'chosen by destiny'), whose members must be evaluated differently, as worker bees and the drones or queens are."Um... what? Anyone with even a cursory familiarity with Rand's ideas will realize that she believes no such thing. Rand's philosophical anthropology -- her theory of human nature -- does not recognize a distinction between types of human beings. Her ethical theory evaluates individuals on the basis of their choices, not their unchosen attributes, and she appeals to a univocal standard of moral evaluation -- not to distinct standards for distinct types.
"...the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."(I can't resist noting that Rand held a similar view to Keynes about the importance of philosophy in history, though her insight was deeper than Keynes. Rather than viewing history as being primarily driven by political philosophy, Rand viewed metaphysics and epistemology as being much more influential. For more on Rand's insights here, consult the title essay of For the New Intellectual, as well as the title essay of Philosophy: Who Needs It. Peikoff develops Rand's insights on the philosophical motor of history in Ominous Parallels, the epilogue to Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and in his forthcoming book on how epistemology shapes society.)
Low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking system. This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the supply of money, through the money creation process in a fractional reserve banking system. This in turn leads to an unsustainable "monetary boom" during which the "artificially stimulated" borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities. This boom results in widespread malinvestments, causing capital resources to be misallocated into areas which would not attract investment if the money supply remained stable. A correction or "credit crunch" -- commonly called a "recession" or "bust" -- occurs when credit creation cannot be sustained.Loose monetary policy by central banks leads to people taking on more debt than they otherwise would. Artificially low interest rates allow more credit to be extended to risky borrowers. In our current case this lead to skyrocketing real estate values, since there was an increased demand for houses (made possible by banks extending credit to more and riskier debtors). This effect is obvious enough in the case of commercial banks, which more than doubled the amount of real estate loans they made (thus allocating large amounts of resources into the real estate market -- allocations that wouldn't have occurred in a free market for money and credit.
I'm Diana Hsieh, a philosopher specializing in practical ethics. I received my Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009.
Paul Hsieh is a physician specializing in orthopedic and emergency radiology. He blogs about science, technology, and random humorous items at GeekPress. He's a co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) and regularly writes for its blog, We Stand FIRM. He has published a slew of op-eds and essays on health care policy. You can e-mail Paul at paul@paulhsieh.com, and follow him on Twitter @PaulHsieh.
Greg Perkins is a software architect working in the R&D labs at Hewlett-Packard, Boise. His degree is in mathematics and computer science. Greg hosts The Objectivism Seminar. Aside from work and philosophy, he plays jazz saxophone professionally with groups such as The Sidemen and Onomatopoeia. You can e-mail Greg at greg@eCosmos.com, and follow him on Twitter @gregperk.
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