After three straight days of

After three straight days of coding, I’m nearing complection on my VB.Net/Access online store. A few months from now I’ll look back on my skills and laugh, but right now I am a .Net God.

In other news, I’ve set up a few new Collectrix customers, including Mike and Steve, who will hopefully join the growing number of prominent Objectivist bloggers. I have also updated my art gallery and moved it to a faster server and continued developing my home-grown CMS for Capitalism Worldwide. For my next project, I’d like to design an original Win32/.Net application, perhaps utilizing XML and/or databases. I still haven’t decided just what I want to create, so if you have any suggestions, send me a note.

Also: I always enjoy reading about new applications of Objectivism to fields you might think are totally unrelated to philosophy. Well, think again: world class champions in bodybuilding and bridge once again prove that an outlook based on realism and rationality will help you succed in any field.

More evidence the world has not gone mad just quite yet…

Congress votes overwhelimingly to support Israel’s response against the terrorists, and Microsoft gets a break. Meanwhile, the worlds oldest professional politician dies. I’d like to think that his switch from being a racist Dixiecrat to a Voting Rights Act supporting Republican had something to do with a change in his values, but I fear the change occured mainly in his constituency.

Supreme Court Ruling Extends Legacy of Supporting Racism into 21st Century*

In its latest ruling, the highest court of the United States decided to prolong its longstanding tradition of upholding state-sanctioned racism by affirming the right of public universities to exclude people based solely on the color of their skin. The recent ruling was a clear vote in support of affirmative action programs, with the possible exception of a contradictory ruling issued the same day. The decision highlights the Court’s unwavering commitment to upholding their oath to abide by and protect the Constitution of the United States, except in cases where the National Interest , Common Good, or the State’s Interest in Protecting the Whims of the Electorate, trumps the guiding document of our government.

As Justice Ginsburg explained, the ruling is exemplary of the Court’s resolute commitment to carrying out justice: "I’d rather let 100 rapists go free on a technicality than commit an injustice." the outspoken feminist declared. "As my record shows, I have always ruled in support of freedom, democracy, and social progress, at least other than on Earth Day, May Day, during you know, my time of the month and generally whenever I didn’t felt like it. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I’m a firm supporter of social and economic progress." She then hurried off to finish the paperwork for her ruling in support of price controls and the upcoming ruling on what consenting adults can do in their own home.

While some critics have criticized the ruling as a vague compromise that fails to provide any real guidance as to what the law really means, Justice Stevens vehemently denied these allegations: "When the conservative wing doesn’t ruin our decisions, we always vote according to principle and set a firm precedent for the future. Other than the rulings on race, abortion, the death penalty, the rights of accused, freedom of religion, property rights, the draft, and other minor issues, we have always spoken as one voice and provided clear direction to the lower courts. I can’t speak for my Republican peers, but the liberal wing of the court has always been a consistent supporter of individual rights, at least other than when we ruled that snail rights trump human rights and that some men don’t qualify as human beings."

*Your freedoms void where prohibited, all rights (not) reserved. This is just a parody, so please don’t sue me for libel.

Please excuse the recent lack

Please excuse the recent lack of posts and slow loading times — my DNS server is being extremely flaky. In any case, I’m brushing up on my coding skills, and hope to have something to show for it soon. If you’re interested in geeky stuff like that, check out my other blog from time to time. Meanwhile, if you’re up for a little debate and discussion, take a look at my forum.

Where are the liberals now?

Hotinan asks a good question — does teaching your children to be bloodthirsty suicidal killers qualify as child abuse? Oh, that’s right, it’s Sharon’s fault that these kids are being raised as homicidal maniacs…(just ignore the adults cheering them on in the back)

Anyone still holding any delusions about the nature of PLO/Hamas should read Mike’s latest editorial on the "peace process" and this dated by still very relevant essay: "Do the Palestinians Deserve a State?"

Thanks to Mr. Anonymous for this this comment:

Someone googled "Jews evil greedy" and stumbled upon your site. You may be Jewish, and you may be greedy, but are you really evil?

I am indeed Jewish by birth and greedy by choice, but am I really evil? Well, since everyone knows that public opinion determines right and wrong, I think this is a perfect opportunity to test my blog’s new polling abilities:

How evil am I?

Axis-of-evil evil

RIAA/SCO Evil

Mega-evil

Mostly-evil

Semi-evil

Quasi-evil

Pseudo-evil

Nano-evil

Tiny weeny bit of evil


Results

In the News..

Unless you’ve been living in a hole the last few months, you know that Iranian students are staging protests in support of democracy and against their fundamentalist regime. Perhaps becuase they have been unable to do anything exciting outside their homes, they have developed a very active blogging community hosted by "Persian" blog hosts like Persian Blog. (Did you know that the word "Iran" stems from "Aryan" as Persia (rather than Germany) is the actual home of the Aryan race? The swastika is actually an ancient Iranian symbol which Hitler borrowed along with the name for his crackpot theory. Many Iranians seems to be aware of this, as all the ones I’ve met in the U.S. say that they are from "Persia.")

Anyway, almost all these Persian sites are in farsi, which has hampered recent efforts by the blogging community to reach out in support of their movement. Fortunately, I found this list of Iranian blogs in English. Such blogs have become popular among westerners following "The Baghdad Blogger’s" personal account of the war from Baghdad. There was much speculation about whether Salaam was even real, but few realized that he was (and still is) risking his life by criticizing the regime, Islamic fundamentalism, and openly talking about his homosexuality. I applaud his objective report on the situation (coming from me, that actually means something), but I have one big beef with his epigram: "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do" — while the media unflinchingly accepted this travesty, Raed fails to understand that it was precisely because of the superiority of it’s ideas and values that the West is generally a nice place to live while the rest of the world is basically a big open sewer. Oh, speaking of crap, a judge declared rap a foreign language.

Child porn, Bill O’Reilly, Libertarianism and Hentai

What do they say? If you can’t take the heat, (or the competition) get out of the kitchen. This "criminal at the computer" read your book and is tired of your "someone should do something!" commieconservatism.

Edit: A further comment. O’Reilly says

the Supreme Court actually helped [the child molestation people] by ruling that virtual child porn, computerized images of kids being raped, are legal, an extension of free speech.

What he is almost certainly talking about, is hentai, or the popular Japanese version of anime, or animated nudes. Japan has strict censorship laws that prohibit the portrayal of genitals (even animated ones), but are very flexible and open on everything else, including breasts. The weird result is that mainstream anime features plenty of bare-breasted women and porn has genitals that are digitized just enough to get past the censors. Anyway, women in Japanese anime only come in two forms: young, nubile, and top heavy, and old hag. Although their huge cleavage, enormous eyes, and purple/green hair hardly qualifies as "human," a number of conservatives (like Mr. O’Reilly) have labeled hentai as "child porn" and sought to ban it outright. It doesn’t take much brains to figure out that this is only a stepping stone to banning pornography, masturbation and all kinds of other things their preacher thinks are bad. So what is child porn and what should be illegal?

I was arguing with a prominent "libertarian" a few months ago who was said that while child molesters are guilty of a crime, those who distribute child pornography are are not, because they didn’t actually harm anyone. I compared this to saying that while a thief commits a crime, those who knowingly buy his stolen loot do not, since they didn’t steal anything themselves. (The libertarian agreed with this as well, at which point I gave up.) The fact is in both cases, both parties are guilty: one of the actual crime, the other of aiding and abetting. When dealing with virtual child porn however, there are no victims and no crime. The behavior may be immoral, but it’s in the same status as watching the numerous rape and gang-bang scenes in adult movies. (Not that I watch that kind of stuff, but did you know that the rape scenes frequently feature tiny white women and mean-looking black men, yet are happily purchased by all races?) Not surprisingly, I have heard many arguments made by feminists for banning "rape" scenes and by conservatives for banning adult stars who dress to look underage. Their logic is based on the implicit assumption that humans are like apes who mindlessly imitate whatever they see, be on it television, computer, or newsprint. If that were the case, then my many hours of playing Doom are a much bigger threat to society than my small but growing hentai collection. In any case, child porn it is not, and to prove it, I’ve posted a random sample here. Judge for yourself, but not for too long, since it may soon be against the law.