EPA agents are being used a personal servants, more proof that Saddam worked with Bin Laden, my former economics proffesor Dr Reynolds on his experience at the Dept of Labor, and a very informative interview of Victor Davis Hanson about Iraq, education, and left/right bias in universities.

Saturday, April 26, 2003

Thanks to Hootinan for this photo of 18-year-old Ahmed Khatib, who blew himself up for Allah. He's misinterpreting the "peaceful nature of Islam", right? Some people would beg to differ. Any religion can be used to justify violence and oppression -- once people are brainwashed into believing that their own senses and reason are subordinate to "faith", it's not hard to get them to follow the orders of some mystic. However, there is only one faith in the world consistently being used to justify violence and brutal regimes on a worldwide scale -- Islam. Again, the lesson here is not that the Qur'an has some magic line that makes its followers violent -- but that whenever reason is systematically subordinated to faith and life of individual sacrificed for some "greater cause", it is only a matter of time before that cause is used for violence -- and that lesson is just important for Americans as it for the Arab world.

Friday, April 25, 2003

Last year, I bought an IBM keyboard from CyberRebate, which sold stuff at many times the cost of rebate value, promising to give you a 100% rebate in exchange for paying many times the actual worth of the stuff it sold. If that sounds like a pyramid scheme, it was, and CyberRebate went bankrupt (over $11mln in debt) the week before it was supposed to ship me my $110 check for my $15 keyboard. Even worse, the keyboard driver only worked on Win98/NT, which says something about the crappy companies IBM allows to use its brand name.

Anyway, two weeks ago, I won an Ebay auction for a cool new Logitech keyboard, which was shipped by UPS, and finally got here yesterday. Unfortunately, I was taking a class when the brown truck came by, so I couldn't be home to sign for it. Meanwhile, my fourth bike was stolen from outside my apartment. This was my third bike stolen this year, all from right outside my apartment. It was a cheap, broken down bike, not worth $10 (after having had two expensive bikes being stolen, I learned my lesson) but my regular transportation is also broken at the moment, so I have to walk a mile to class right around finals. What's even force is that I had a class right around the time the keyboard was to be delivered today, so as I walked home in my jeans and 82°F, I was hoping to get back before the UPS came by. About ž of a mile from home, I saw the UPS truck pull away from my home street, and suddenly became sufficiently frustrated with the $#*$& bastards who stole all my bikes to run half a mile after the truck, track it down in a neighboring block, and proceed to get my package delivered in propria persona. I am still out $110 and four bicycles, but with a shiny new keyboard, I feel much better.

In other news, in my foreign policy class today, we were discussion US unilateralism, and I gave a passionate defense of US unilateralism, bashed European collectivism, Bush's fence-sitting, AND Clinton's pragmatism. With the possible exception of the two political thought finals next week, I will never again have to regurgitate Statist BS in a commie POLS class. From now on, you're only going to hear 100% uncensored, unplugged, uncut greedy capitalist propaganda. Down with collectivism and pass the ammunition!

(Btw, I just plugged in my Logitech Internet Navigator keyboard, and not only am I able to use two keyboards at the same time, but Win XP's native driver has built-in support for the multimedia keys! The keyboard has a great, albeit slightly too light touch, and in addition to my iFeel mouse, and Wingman joystick, Logitech is the only hardware company about which I don't have any complaints.)

Thanks to Keenan for this and this story of modern art being used as a torture device. Now it's obvious to everyone but pretensions snobs that modern art is garbage, but it turns out that the Spanish nationalists actually used it to torture prisoners. If share my strong feelings about modern art, you can try my "Art or Fake" gallery to see if you can even tell apart fake modern art from...fake art, or go to my gallery of great art. Here is what one of the "artistic" prison cells looked like:

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Check out today's Cox and Forkum on the topic of my earliest post. Then read Turning Iraq Into Another Iran. Also interesting is an acount of media bias at Hootinan.

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Yes, Fox reporters are so popular that they have their own fan sites, and Jennifer looks pretty "fair" and balanced to me :-) Any day now, Iraqi women are going to riot against having such good-looking American women walking around without rags on their heads...

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Are these the "noble Iraqi people"? If we really want a peaceful Middle East, it's time to bring some of that eeevil western imperialism (read: secularism and private property) to Iraq, rather than allowing rabid Islamic fundamentalists to spew their religiously motivated hatred of rights, reason, and reality. Liberals have it all wrong: they blame the conservatives for their "colonialism" but Bush, with his new-age Christianity, will never understand that the true nature of the conflict is western secularism vs. religious fundamentalism.

Sunday, April 20, 2003

Here is a snippet of irony from my daily life: I am on various Objectivist listserves from which I recieve regular emails via Yahoo Groups. The emails are often headed by advertisements which as of lately have been dominated by religious merchandise. So every time I open an email to read articles like "Without Selfish Individuals, Nothing," I have to look at ads like the one below first.

LGF reports that hundreds of millions of dollars were found in Iraq by US soldier, who stubmled upon the money hidden in sealed-up cottages in an upper class Baghdad neighborhood. CNN reporters are currently debating whether the money was destined for Iraqi civilians or the dismantling of WMD's. </sarcasm>

In other news, new evidence shows that the shuttle was most likely doomed by the falling debris in the first few seconds of flight. Read my take on NASA here.

Saturday, April 19, 2003

The original purpose of this blog was to comment on various web-design tricks and technologies as I explored them, but since it has turned out to be a forum for my political and philosophical rants, I decided to start a new web-design oriented blog. Check out the inagural entry on Google.

Friday, April 18, 2003

The power went out in College Station last week, and Texas A&M shut down for the day as the stop lights in the entire city died (see the photo I took above.) Moments after my power died, I heard the generator in the private dorm come on, while the rest of the city remained dark. Going to my [canceled] class, I overheard various cell phone conversations as one person said "pray for power" and another "the main power line for [XYZ] generator is down." (I leave the metaphysics lesson up to you.) In a scene eerily reminiscent to a certain book, I later heard that the power failure had been greatly compounded by faulty infrastructure caused by massive bureaucratic regulation of the state's power grid. (My own conclusion.) The official response to nearly 4 hours without power? Keeping the citizens safe from food poisoning:

Meanwhile, as the stop lights in the entire city died, I watched one-time coordination scenarios play out over and over, as thousands of students who had only been driving for a few years somehow managed to avoid hitting each other, and while traffic backed up, there were no major accidents and only a few horn blows. A policeman tried to direct traffic on one street, but seemed to give up when the drivers did a better job directing traffic on their own. Alternation between cross-traffic seemed to happen by momentum: whenever a driver paused before crossing an intersection, the cars next to him would pause as well, giving the cars and pedestrians on the intersection a chance to cross. When the first pedestrian or car paused before crossing the intersection, the other side would get started, starting the next cycle. The biggest pauses were caused by unaware or aggressive drivers who tried to initiate crossing the intersection without waiting for a prompt from the other side. All in all, an interesting study in game theory.

I'm going down to Mexico for a day, so excuse my lapse of entries, y ruegue que no consiga la venganza de Montezuma. ĄMuchas fotos que vienen pronto!

Thursday, April 17, 2003

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Check out my letter to the school paper today: Gaines Memorial Would be a Tribute to Racism. Here is the original story.

Monday, April 14, 2003

Check out my latest editorial, In Defense of Fast Food, inspired by this article: Anti-War Leaders Fear US Fast Food Threat to Iraq _{(Thanks to} _Dakach_{for the original story.)}

Saturday, April 12, 2003

Oh, speaking of Stupid Stuff Liberals Say, here is a prediction a liberal I was debating sent out shortly before the war:

"Let it be known [that] the people of Iraq will do everything in their power to keep our government and armed forces out. Women and children will take arms protecting their land from a foreign government, just as we would if we were invaded."

Leonard Peikoff recently gave a speech at the Ford Hall forum titled "America Versus Americans." I'm not going to summarize it, because you should watch it yourself. Several points stood out. First, while it's easy to get wrapped up in the outpouring of support for the war coming from moderates and conservatives, we have to put things in context: in many ways, America is fighting the wrong war for the wrong reasons.
While Dr. Peikoff explains the reasons for our moral failures sufficiently well, I recently experienced the views he mentioned firsthand. I work with two students -- a Russian exchange student and a typical Texan bible-thumping conservative. When the topic of civilian causalities came up, the Russian was vehemently anti-war and claimed that even one civilian casualty was killing, which was wrong per se. Now, we are normally on good terms, but I almost ended having a shouting match with him right in the middle of the office. I asked if the victims of Saddam Hussein counted as murder too, and he gave the usual liberal rant about evil US occupiers, violence wrong in all forms, etc, etc, until I refused to listen anymore and he stormed off shouting about western imperialism, Dictator Bush, etc, etc. At this point, I took up the conversation with my Christian coworker, giving him the same arguments as those found in Stop Apologizing for Civilian Casualties. In reply, he questioned whether it was more important on balance to risk the lives of American soldiers or Iraqi civilians. (!!!) I asked him why we were in the war in the first place, and he have the usual altruist reply (even using biblical references) that our sole motivation was "to free the Iraqi" people, and rejected any "selfish" motivations such as being free from terrorism. At this point, I gave a passionate defense of the proper motivation for the war, the idiocy of valuing civilian lives over that of our soldiers, but that is beside the point. The incident was indicative of how conservatives are just as blinded by religiously-motivated altruism as liberals are by the secular kind from seeing the real nature of the conflict: pro-individual western secularism vs. collectivist fundamentalism.
I did not agree with everything Dr Peikoff said however. I am tempted to agree that Iran is a more worthy target of regime change than Iraq, and that the primary reason we are in Iraq is that it is much easier to portray Saddam as a just another "corrupter of the peaceful nature of Islam" and rely on the existing public support from Gulf War I. However political reality makes a war with Iran impossible, and I think that Iraq may be more successfully used to influence the rest of the Middle East if we take an approach of peaceful reconstruction into a US-friendly democracy, than trying to intimidate the Islamic world by turning Iraq into a nuclear wasteland, as Dr Peikoff would have us do. If it were politically feasible (and if it were, we would not have a terrorist problem in the first place) nuking Irag may scare fundamentalists into behaving, but it would not result in long-term positive change. Creating a free democracy in Iraq on the other hand, will put continual pressure on other Middle Eastern governments, and that may be a more effective strategy in the long run. After all, even Al Jazeera admitted that Saddam's fall sends a warning message to other Islamic dictators.

Check out Mountain Health Care, R.I.P a sad story about the latest victim of antitrust...

Friday, April 11, 2003

Oh please. The Democrats are getting so desperate for issues, they have to resort to claiming that they could have won the war for less, and demanding that Bush kowtow to the "international community." Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of either party: while the Republicans are politicking for who gets to rebuild Iraq both parties are busily creating a socialist state in America.

MSNBC: Roh Moo Hyun, the new South Korea president, said Kim was threatening to develop nuclear weapons because he had "no other bargaining chips ... Without this bargaining chip, Kim Jong Il does not have any other means of convincing his people that they are safe."
Translation: without nukes, Kim has no means of convincing his people that he can continue terrorizing and running his slave labor camps.

"If I mention the North Korean human rights situation, it will not help to improve the human rights conditions in North Korea."
Translation: "I can't mention the NK human rights situation becuase I don't want to remind the world that I won my presidency by supporting 'reunification' with a brutal dictatorship."

"Rather than confronting or opposing them politically, it is better to have dialogue with the regime to fundamentally solve this problem."
Translation: "Appeasement worked with Hitler and Saddam, why shouldn't it work with Kim?"

"The reason I cannot say I agree with [the possiblity of attacking NK] in public is because it would become an unstable factor for the Korean economy."
Translation: "The reason I cannot say I agree with the possiblity of attacking NK in public is because it would become an unstable factor for my presidency."
or: "The reason I cannot say I agree with the possiblity of attacking NK in public is because a communist dictatorship is obviously better for the Korean economy than capitalism."

"[The United States'] strong military presence in northeast Asia still scares North Korea."
Translation: "I like to pretend to sympathize with those who resent the US troops that are keeping my country from being wiped out by North Korean nukes."

Thursday, April 10, 2003

I am writing a paper on Alexis de Tocqueville's interpetation of "self-interest rightly understood." I will post the link to it tonight, but meanwhile, here is food for thought:

The New, Improved U.N: As Relevant As Ever

(2003-04-09) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today that the United Nations will hold a "grand re-opening" event later this month to "let the world know we're still in business."

Mr. Annan said that the unified global body is as relevant as ever, and looks forward to doing some important things.

"It's like we're re-launching the product," he said. "We've been here all along, but we may have slipped from top-of-mind awareness. We want to make the U.N. a leading brand again."

A massive advertising campaign will precede the re-opening celebration, featuring the slogan: "The United Nations: We Put the "s" in Revolution."

The event is scheduled to take place at the U.N.'s recently renovated Baghdad offices.
_{^{(Thanks to}} _{^ScrappleFace}_⁾

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

While reading Herbert Hoover's 1934 book "The Challenge to Liberty," I discovered the groundwork of the political views held by both of the major parties today. Hoover was by no means the greedy capitalist that history professors bill him as, but rather offered the market system as a temporary excuse - because "for at least the next several generations, we dare not abandon self-interest." His defense of (mixed-economy) capitalism was not based the morality of capitalism, but on its practical necessity - at least until we could find a way to make socialism work. There are many lines I could offer, but following are quotes indicative of his approach:

With this approach, is it any wonder that Statism/altruism has been the dominant political philosophy of the 20th century? The success of socialism was not caused by the supposed flaws of capitalism, but by the moral default of its so-called supporters. I won't make the same mistake.

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

The AP reports that the FED is in "uncharted territory" and is trying out "experimental moves" to stimulated the economy. How? Basically, by "lending massive amounts of money directly to commercial banks to make sure that financial markets do not freeze up."

I'm not sure if the public is so clueless about economics that they are afraid question Greenspan's policy, or whether they are deluding themselves into going along with the Fed's hysteria about a "deflationary cycle" but it is clear that the only solution the Fed has to offer to the depression we are now in is inflation. The "solution" also happens to be the catalyst that caused the depression in the first place. The Fed hopes to jumpstart the economy by making (virtually) interest-free money available to investors, but since there are few solid investment opportunities out there (otherwise we wouldn't be in a depression) the funds are likely to go high-risk, politically nimble, but non-viable enterprises that will collapse just in time to wreck the real recovery. In other words, the seed of the next depression are being planted in this one. The real risk is not a "deflationary cycle" but the redistribution and uncertainty caused by the Fed's inflationary policies.

If the government really wants to help the economy, it should do the only thing in can do for business - create a business friendly environment by moving towards real capitalism. This means ending the witch-hunt of CEO's, ending government handouts and subsidies, lowering trade restrictions, ending anti-trust, and protecting all forms of property rights. Until entrepreneurs are not sure whether they will reap the rewards of their labor or have it stolen by some government looter or given to a competitor, they will not risk hard-earned money the investments needed for real economic growth. (Update: Frank Shostak agrees.)

Meanwhile, Japanese entrepreneur Sachio Semmoto, the founder and CEO of eAccess, one of the most successful DSL suppliers in that country is planning to offer voice over IP service, undercutting traditional phone service, and according to MSNBC, "perhaps yet another blow to the already shaky Japanese economy."

The columnist here makes the classic mistake of thinking that an improvement in technology causes workers to lose jobs by making labor more efficient. He sees Japanese telecoms firing workers because internet VOIP service can do it cheaper and with less labor. What he doesn't see is that consumers suddenly have more money to spend on things other than phone bills, that fired telephone company workers are not only hired by the VOIP providers, but find new jobs thanks to the extra money made available by the increased efficiency of communication. The short-term loss of telephone companies is the long-term gain of everyone else.

Finally, the Supreme Court has decided that cross burning is not protected by the First Amendment because it is an "instrument of terror." This reminds me of sexual harassment law, which states that sexual harassment is anything that "feels" like harassment. Likewise, racism is now defined according to how it makes you feel, rather than actual threats or violence against certain groups. Non-objective law which based on whether you "feel" wronged, rather than the actual use (or plans to use) force is one example of the dangers of non understanding the initiation of force. Feminist groups are already planning to use the ruling against anti-abortion protesters who "intimidate" abortion clinic workers. Imagine the effect on free speech if any action that made someone "feel threatened" could suddenly land you in jail.

DON'T CLICK THIS LINK

The British Marines experience their first major defeat in the war to liberate Iraq. Better luck next time guys. I thought they trained for this sort of thing.

Also, here is a touching story about the Iraq man who tipped U.S. Marines to the location of American POW Jessica Lynch.
_{(Thanks to the} _{GMU Oist Club}₎

Monday, April 07, 2003

I'm writing a paper on bias in the media for my foreign policy class, and while checking out today's comics I noticed that all thirteen comics that featured political topics were against the war, the Bush administration, or both. This makes me all the more glad that cartoonists like Cox and Forkum exist to provide a rational and humourous take on the news. I can only hope to see their comic in a mainstream news source one day...check them out!

Sunday, April 06, 2003

When I first announced ObjectivismOnline, I got an email from a college CS major who warned me against using Open Source software because (a) the leader of the movement is a dirty marxist, and (b) free software in general is anti-profit, and this anti-capitalism. After doing some (very little) research, I indeed found out that Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU is a pretty sick character, who rants against self-interest and capitalism. (Not to be confused with Richard Salsman, who writes great articles.)Understandably then, I had to give a lot of thought to using free software, which is mostly released under the anti-IP GNU GPL license. There are other free software licenses such as the Creative Commons license, which features a dollar sign with an line through it as a logo, and the simple BSD license. (BSD="Berkeley Software Distribution") Not all free software is hostile to profits however. ImageMagik, a popular graphics library, starts out with John Galt's pledge, and simply asks for postcards in exchange for using it.

So is using and making free software consistent with supporting intellectual property and profits? I think so. The advantages of open source software have already been covered at length, but I think the widespread usage of open source projects like linux, apache, php, and MySQL in commercial enterprises speaks for itself. For companies, open source projects are especially useful for creating standard platforms that they don't have to develop on their own, and that their customers don't feel chained to. From a personal standpoint, working on free software offers opportunities to develop new skills, work with a team on important projects, and show off your abilities. None of this is to say that there's something wrong with closed software development. Both have their own niche, and I think that one should decide what kind of software to use based on their individual merit, rather than on ideological grounds.

Check out the latest from Capitalism Magazine: The UN's Power Path: Restricting Freedom Under the Mantra of "Sustainable Development"

It's a revealing look at UN's Sustainable Development program, which is the "best policy model for developing nations" according to my "economic development" professor.

The UN makes no secret of its plans for a world-wide regime that controls every aspect of our lives:

Echoing the UN, my prof outlined a three-tier socialist approach to economic development: "social equity," "economic prosperity," (in the form of central planning) and "ecological integrity."

There are many other repulsive things I hear in my my class, and since I can't very well argue with the prof (it's not worth getting a bad grade over) I write my own rebuttals to them later. During my last class, she explained the principles of trade and the benefits of voluntary exchange, and then went on to say that a policy of unilateral free trade may be bad for developing nations because of (a) less-than ideal market conditions (which somehow make socialism more efficient) (b) rich nations with high tariffs that "steal" from poor ones (so let's punish domestic consumers for the mistakes of foreign governments) and (b) globalization diminishing government's control over the economy. Why is the last bad? "Of course [society needs] a central decision maker who's planning for the economy."

Underlying my professor's logic against free trade is a common notion among today's economists: while voluntary trade between individuals is beneficial to the parties involved (otherwise they wouldn't trade) it is somehow harmful to the mysterious living, breathing entity known as "society." The connection between individuals and society is masked by enough politics and ethereal mathematics to keep an army of bureaucrats busy, but the conclusion is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Inevitably, the rights of the individual are sacrificed for some vague ideal known as the "social good," or in practice, the mooching pockets of a pull peddler.

Thursday, April 03, 2003

I really should have posted this two days ago, but oh well: 'TIME-TRAVELER' BUSTED FOR INSIDER TRADING

Also, giant squid, anyone?

This movie from FreedomAds.com reminded me of a quote by Ludwig von Mises:
"All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out."

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

Check out some of the great comics at the Cox and Forkum blog. I wish I wasn't such a poor college student, or I might actually get their new book.

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

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Sunday, April 27, 2003

Saturday, April 26, 2003

Friday, April 25, 2003

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Sunday, April 20, 2003

Saturday, April 19, 2003

Friday, April 18, 2003

Thursday, April 17, 2003

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Monday, April 14, 2003

Saturday, April 12, 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

Thursday, April 10, 2003

The New, Improved U.N: As Relevant As Ever

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Monday, April 07, 2003

Sunday, April 06, 2003

Thursday, April 03, 2003

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

Tuesday, April 01, 2003