Random Quote..

A random prediction from sci-fi writer and futurist Robert Heinlein in 1950: "The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called modern art will be discussed only by psychiatrists."
In 1980: "One pay hope…While "fine" art continues to look like the work of retarded monkeys, commercial art grows steadily better."

While you wouldn't guess it on campus, Texas A&M really does have an active fundamentalist population. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either scary, silly, or plain stupid how seriously these guys take their fantasies. Some of them are quite intelligent, but debating Objectivism with them, I’ve realized that they’re quite hopeless.

In other news, portable tele-presence for doctors, another great Cox and Forkum, and Hong Kong Nazi Chic?

Wow, I've finally managed to move my entire blog to Movable Type. Please bear with me while I iron out the wrinkles.

I have heard this before, but I'm glad someone took the time to write an article about it: Earth Worshippers Cause Death in Space: Environmental Dogma Has Led to the Sacrifice of Fourteen Astronauts on the Space Shuttle

I'm back from vacation and eager to get my blog on once more. Preview OCON photos here, and some family photos here. More to come soon!

Here we go again...

The NYT has an interesting story on the internal power struggle among the various Palestinian terrorist organizations. It makes a number of interesting points, such as that Arafat has refused to halt the terrorist attacks because he prefers using the threat of violence to get concessions from Israel, and that he remains a powerful influence despite having officially stepped down. The article also mentions that Abbas and his allies do want a more moderate (i.e. less barbaric) policy that represents a threat to the groups that maintain their power by terrorist activities.

As the article mentions in passing, the recent "truce" seems to have two motivations: first, the terrorist organizations are feeling the heat from Israel and want a chance to regroup and reload for another round, and two, they are hoping that the truce will fail miserably (which it will) and thus discredit Abbas and the moderates. Their demands (which include the release of all Arab prisoners) are outrageous enough to guarantee an imminent Israeli "breach" and a "justified" response of killing of innocent civilians.

The Hamas-run website of the Palestinian groups is actually very revealing of their goals. The English section is a long complaint list of "Zionist atrocities" (Israeli officials are always referred to as "Zionist authorities" as if "Zionist" is a dirty word.) Few photos of the "atrocities" are shown, and most of them are of Israeli soldiers at checkpoints doing their job and crying babies (no joke) without any "Zionist occupiers" in the vicinity. The Arabic section however, is a list of martyrs, vilifications of Israel, praising of the various terrorist cells, and Hamas calls for more attacks. The Russian section is slightly more moderate, with photos of terrorist attacks and martyrs surrounded by what can only be described as glowing halos. Unlike the slick and glossy English section, the relatively amateurish Arabic and Russian sections have articles featuring "answers to the occupation" (if my rusty knowledge of Russian serves me right) with graphic photos of dead Israelis. Can you guess why the English section is the only one not showing the murdered Israelis and praising the terrorists? Why is Sweden allowing Hamas to run its propaganda campaign from servers located within its borders? If you haven't figured it out yet, I recommend you read Laurel's comments on the nature of the Palestinian culture.

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.

I have qualms with her

I have qualms with her views on immigration, but Michelle Malkin has written a great piece on the madness of the SCOTUS affirmative action ruling.

Also: more craziness in NYC: Yoga for dogs.

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.

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:

Finally! The same people that

Finally! The same people that brough you the inflatable church, portable concrete bunker, and private island, now present your very own weatherwane Boeing 727 Airplane Home.

Mike has the written the

Mike has the written the first of many great editorials as a new opinion writer for the Battalion. The best parts of his second editorial (on FCC and antitust) were censored by his editor, so he let me to post it here for your enjoyment.

I enjoyed reading Laurel's take

I enjoyed reading Laurel's take on Iraq and agree with most of it, although I am getting sick of reading non-stop pro-war Iraqi-vision blogs. I appreciate your dedication, but have you noticed that there are witchhunts, scams, boogie-men, liars, thieving plagues, and moochers to worry about much closer to home? Good news too: some of America's finest are leaving their ungrateful hosts to fend for themselves, while spacemen are learning to explore the skies. And with that, yet another Cox and Forkum on the Middle East:

Comic Edition

From Cox and Forkum. Also see this.

(From Day by Day)

Thoughts on Graduate School and the Social Sciences

If there is anything I worship in this world, it can be summed by the word "competence." I respect any man who gets the best job that his abilities will allow and does it well - whether his profession is in aerospace or sanitation engineering. Perhaps this is why I get extremely annoyed by people who cannot even perform some measly job that anyone with mild retardation should be able to do. I remember one Disney flick that featured a scene where an "evil" capitalist boss chews out a waitress for spilling a pitcher of water all over him. (I paraphrase :) "Being a waitress is not a complicated job" he said, "there are only a few simple things asked of you, but you have managed to fuck them up." At this point the waitress cries and the theater boos the "greedy" boss, but I could barely resist shouting "hell yeah!"

Anyway, the major reason that I got out of the liberal arts field and into a technical one is that unlike the social sciences -- where success is measured by federal grants, tenures, votes, and slaps on the back, the measure of success in a technical field is simple: your product either works or it doesn't, your invention either makes money or it flunks. There is no "subjectivity" in deciding whether a certain solution is correct: as one of my profs pointed out today, there may a number of solutions to any given design problem, but there is only one that is best for the job. Both of the professors I am taking now match my ideal for both politicians and academics: teaching is not their primary occupation, and the material they teach is not just composed of abstract theories they have never applied or tested: they make their living with their minds, and they share knowledge that they know from firsthand experience to be true.

This is not to say that the social sciences are necessarily inferior to the technical ones, but that they have come to be that way because of their misguided philosophy. Some would say that the social studies are necessarily more "abstract" and "relative" because they deal with opinions and general statements that are hard to verify -- as opposed to the hard sciences, which deal with directly observable facts. This is not true. In economics and politics I also dealt with many facts that are not in dispute (within most contexts) - the GPD of an economy, an inflation rate, a population size, a particular law, a known number of factories. Conversely, a very "hard" and "practical" field like information tech has many theoretical questions - what is the best model for software development, what is the trend in the relationship between centralized and distributed computing, what does the steady rise in outsourcing tech jobs to foreign countries mean for the industry, what licensing model is best for what kind of software development, etc. The primary difference and the flaw with the social sciences is the way that directly observable facts are integrated into theory. Ideally, one uses an inductive process by which he forms tentative conclusions from a great number of direct observations and constantly verifies his conclusions against reality to form a sound theory about some aspect of his field. Conflicting theories are resolved by comparing them to factual evidence and by integrating them into the field as a whole. The result is an integrated and comprehensive body of knowledge where each statement is firmly grounded in direct evidence and fits in soundly into a consistent body of knowledge. The actual method currently used in the social sciences is diabolically opposed to this. "Research" is split between abstract theories and studies based on direct observation. The first are disconnected from reality as well as from each other, while the second yield conclusions that while true, are useless statistics because they lack any sort of theoretical basis or connection to a larger theory. The end result is that conclusions are based on unstated assumptions and mistaken premises usually having something to do with Marx's definition of commodies.

! Wanted ! (part 1 of 2)

Thanks to Laurel for finding this liberal version of the infamous "playing cards." I'm going to rant about it, but before I start, let me say that this is not just another liberal bashing or space-filler for my blog. (well, maybe) My point is not that liberals suck (which they do) or that conservatives rock (they also suck) or that we should all become libertarians (they're plain losers.) In fact, the only people that don't suck are those who agree with me, which is why you better pay attention.

My message today brethren, is that politicians today stand for just one thing: nothing. They are nihilists whose guiding rule is pragmatism, based on primitive emotionalism and collectivism. The old saying went like this: liberals want to take your money, and conservatives want your freedoms. Lately however, I've found that neither side knows what they want, so they take away both while proudly waving American flags (as long as there aren't any foreigners around) and claiming to support liberty and "hardworking Americans." On the balance however, I support conservatives: they usually betray their principles, but at least they have principles to betray. To make my point, let's look at offenses that conservatives have committed to earn a spot on the playing cards:

§ Looting Social Security trust funds

§ Taking the country to war under false pretenses

§ Ripping up the safety net

§ Eviscerating democracy

§ Strangling civil rights

§ Assaulting the New Deal

§ Being a partisan hack

§ Peddling economic snake oil

§ Perverting the Fourth Estate

Let's reduce the accusations down to the essentials:

§ Going to war for selfish reasons

§ Supporting capitalism and individual rights

§ Having principles (i.e. being "extremists" and "partisan hacks")

The so-called evils of the conservatives are actually their virtues, but sadly, the accusations are entirely underserved. I must run off to my weekend exploits now, but stay tuned for the exciting conclusion where I ponder about how great it would be if conservatives actually lived up to the liberals' accusations.

World News Update, Photo Edition

In today's obligatory Islamic fundamentalism section, here is a protest attended by up to 2000 "peace loving" Palestinians. Can't you just feel all the love and goodwill for his Israeli neighbors the little boy in the center is learning from his big brothers? Awww, almost makes you wanna puke.

Next we have the predictable result of shoddy construction leading to mass casualties whenever even the slightest natural disaster hits oppressive third world regimes. Citizens of developed countries who have spent their hard-earned money not to live in buildings made out of cards suddenly find their incomes being confiscated to clean up after the failures of one or another socialist regime. Meanwhile, their populace votes for the same Statist regulations that keep the evil capitalists from building any buildings that can stand up to the slightest tremor, flood, or hurricane.

Judging Science Fiction

Due to my recent graduation, I have had time to do read several books that I have been putting off, and it got me thinking about the plot elements that a good fiction novel must have. In general, I would list them in this order: adventure, social commentary, and sex.

By "adventure," I mean the excitement that drives the story, whether it is a mystery story, a western, or a sci-fi novel. By "social commentary" I mean the way the author chooses to present reality, whether he chooses to create a new one or recreate past or present history. Because art is necessarily a selective representation of reality, the world the author shapes is always a reflection of his views of human nature. Furthermore, I think that good writers consciously make an effort to present a particular view of man's existence. Think of existentialist writers like Dostoyevsky and Camus versus individualists like Heinlein, L. Neil Smith, and Ayn Rand. (Who else would you add?) This is the "social commentary" element, and while all novels have it, I think that science fiction offers some of the best opportunities to pass judgment on the status quo and propose improvements.

While the average sci-fi reader may like mind controlling/eating aliens and sexy androids, the main virtue of science fiction lies in its power as social commentary -- and the relation of technology to man is just one of the issues it can consider. Great science fiction should explore philosophical issues explicitly by putting characters in situations where they must discuss and make tough choices with outcomes that reflect the author's particular worldview. Examples of such writing (which is not to say that I agree with their particular philosophies) can be found in the writing sci-fi masters such as Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clark. Perhaps this is why I have never liked fantasy - it can certainly be a form of social commentary, but it presents a world that operates by very different rules than our own -- limiting the scope of its conclusions.

Most recently, I just finished reading Friday by Robert A. Heinlein - a book that expertly balances all three elements and presents a philosophy similar to my own. (Not recommended for children -- but a book that proposes to re-create reality can hardly leave out the sexual aspects of human nature.) Here is an interesting question about another book that masters the three elements - is Atlas Shrugged science fiction? As this review points out, according to Rand, "science fiction is valid only if the scientific aspect is integral and necessary to tell the story." Clearly, the motor is both a fictional invention and integral to the story, but does that make the book science fiction?

What do you think?

Have you seen the cool

Have you seen the cool new Honda commercial? It may be originally inspired by Rube Goldberg, who designed many such contraptions. In any case, the most suprising thing about it is that the entire 2-minute sequence is 100% live and unedited. If there is a Guinness record for patience, I think these guys should win it. (See the original at the Honda website)

Comments on "Liquidising goldfish 'not

Comments on "Liquidising goldfish 'not a crime'":

A. Animals don't have rights.
B. Fish are not capable of neither suffering nor caring whether their death is "cruel" or "humane."
C. Putting goldfish in a blender does not constitute art.
D. Neither does it "force people to do battle with their conscience" or "protest against what is going on in the world, against this cynicism, this brutality that impregnates the world in which we live."
E. In fact, it does exactly the opposite -- it's a nihilistic and idiotic muddling of the distinction between (a) rational entities that have rights and non-rational entities that do not and (b) the immoral versus the disgusting and wasteful.
F. Primary responsibility for a crime goes to the perpetrator, not the creator of the weapon (if anyone, the guy that pushed that button rather than the museum director should have been fined.)
G. A college frat induction would have been a far more productive use for the goldfish. Fortunately for the goldfish, their brains are not capable of caring whether they are slowly eaten away by stomach acids or instantly made into chop suey.

An interesting line by LGF

An interesting line by LGF on this story:

First they came for the Nutter Butters, and I said nothing, because peanut butter cookies make my fillings hurt.

Then they came for the Mallomars, and I said nothing, because Mallomars are really kind of gross.

Then they came for my Oreo cookies, and it was too late, because there was no milk left in the fridge.

After my experiment with using

After my experiment with using MSN VoIP as my sole means of calling people yielded mixed results, I decided to get a shiny new glow-in-the-dark cell phone. Single, sexy, and intelligent female readers of my blog may reach me @ (979) 220-6418 :-) Readers bothered by unwanted calls should refer to the very helpful resources at Suing Telemarketers Made Simple.

By the way, one of the primary reasons I decided to go with Verizon (and my roomate refuses to have anything to do with them) is that they are being forced to share their own lines with their competitors as part of an anti-trust settlement. For those not in the know, antitrust is socialism.

Cultural misunderstanding?

Hard to believe but true: The swastica on the Coca-Cola robot below was condemed by Jewish groups who must have been unaware that the Swastika-like shape (not quite - it's reversed) is actually an ancient Chinese symbol of good luck. If the Jews really want to go after anti-semitism, then it's the Arab dictators and Islamic fundamentalism they should be after. Here is a quote in translation from a textbook called Islamic Education for the Tenth Grade, 1999-2000, page 116:

The logic of justice obligates the application of the single verdict [on the Jews] from which there is no escape; namely, that their criminal intentions be turned against them and that they be exterminated. The duty of Muslims of our time is to pull themselves together, unite their ranks, and wage war on their enemy until Allah hands down his judgment on them and us.

The Anti-Conceptual Mentality

I've been engaged in some heated debate with some commies over the last few days, and would like to share my last response, which is basically a rehashing and application of an essay from Philosophy: Who Needs It, which I didn't read, and don't have on me, but found an excerpt from here. Incidentally, I clearly remember possessing the book a few months ago, so if you borrowed it, I want it back!

Anyway, go read my essay on capitalism and the anti-conceptual mentality.

Check out today's Cox and

Check out today's Cox and Forkum. In other news, would conservatives object to this 7-year-old "abortion"?

More on Crime and Punishment

Judging by the number of comments left, my last post left a bit of confusion. I believe I made my point clear enough the first time, but let me reiterate: no, I do not think that the police should spy on anyone unless they have reason to believe that their suspect is guilty of a crime. I believe that the Constitutional safeguards found in the Bill of Rights form a good, but not all-inclusive model for the safeguards that must be followed to prevent innocents from being harassed by the police. The proper level of precautions to follow is an empirical matter, depending on the nature of the crime (murderers should get more scrutiny that embezzlers, citizens more than foreigners) and the nature of the technology available to the police (with DNA, there is less need for eyewitness accounts.) Nevertheless, security and liberty cannot exist without the other.

By the way, it is inevitable that cops, judges, and juries will make mistakes. Innocents will be searched and convicted of crimes they did not commit, and perhaps even put to death for their crimes. Reason and evidence are rarely perfect, and that fact that mistakes will happen must be accepted as a given. The precautions and safeguards taken to prevent erroneous convictions will necessarily have to vary with the accuracy of the system, but the question of what amount of risk to tolerate, how many guilty men must be set free to prevent the imprisonment of one innocent is an ethical question that depends on the value one places on the sanctity of an individual human life versus the value one places on maintaining peace and order.

How does one weight the need to carry out justice versus the risk of punishing an innocent? I would say that the liberty of the individual must be placed first because it is its own end, while justice is only the means of ensuring it. Again, these are not mutually exclusive values, and I have yet to see a sound philosophical discourse on the topic. One thing that is clear however, is that the greater the accuracy of the system, the less guilty men will go free and the less innocent men will be punished.

Btw, what do you think of the background color changing to gray on mouseover? Should I just change the background to gray, or leave it white?

Also, please keep up the comments - I do find them entertaining, even if some of my readers (no names) need a good dose of reality.

The Fallacy of "Liberty vs. Security"

One more thing I'd like to address is the fallacy of "security vs. liberty" -- the notion that our choice is between having a Nazi-like police state and a wild, free-for-all, hedonistic orgy/looting spree. The truth of the matter is that there is no dichotomy between liberty and security, and we cannot have one without the other.

Liberty means "the freedom to engage in any activity which does not involve initiating force against other individuals." Security means "freedom from the initiation of force of other individuals." In other words, liberty is the ability to do as we choose, as long as we respect the same right in others, and security is being free from the force or fraud of others. I should be able to stop there, but the notion of "rights" has been so perverted that I feel that I have to elucidate to get my point across.

Consider the so-called conflict between freedom and security in wiretapping. Is liberty threatened by the attempts of the police to maintain security? If the criminal is truly guilty of a crime, then he is limiting the freedom of others by using force or fraud against them. Wiretapping a criminal is not an infringement of the criminal's security, but the protection of the liberty and security of his victims. As long as the police take due care to not spy on innocent individuals (by following constitutional safeguards, for example) they are not infringing on anyone's liberty or security. There is a fine line between being too zealous in going after criminals and being too lax - but there is a line nonetheless, not a murky gray area where both freedom and security are threatened. The precise procedures are an empirical matter for experts in criminology to define - but we must be clear on the philosophical point that neither liberty nor security can exist without the other. If the police allow citizens to run wild and do not act to stop crime, then the life, liberty, and property of innocent bystanders is threatened - and if the police go around strip-searching random victims and breaking into random homes, then everyone's health and privacy is jeopardized.

This point is especially important to keep in mind as liberals and conservatives wrangle over the various Patriot Act(s) and the "balance" between our freedom and security. So how can we know when we are reaching the ideal? When neither government nor any other goons with guns try to stop you from any taking action that does not initiate force or fraud against others, then you can be sure that both your security and liberty are safe.

What happened to all the terrorists?

Thanks to Hootinan for this story on the State Department's report that deaths due to terrorism are down from 3,300 in 2001 to "only" 725 in 2002, the lowest in more than 30 years. I can already imagine the spin conservatives and liberals are going to give to this story.

Conservative: "This shows the effectiveness of the new Dept. of Homeland Security/Bush Administration/Federal Airport Security!"
Anti-war liberal: "See, I told you the Bush administration just made up a terrorist threat to turn America into a police state!"

I don't think the decline in terrorism should be attributed to a huge new federal bureaucracy nor a sudden change of heart among former terrorists. The CIA still has a lot of dedicated and talented men trying to find as many terrorists as the bloated and un-responsive bureaucracy will allow them, and the federalized airport security is a security risk as much as it is a drain of our tax dollars. The major difference between early 2001 and 2002 is the government's resolve. Granted, the initial determination to find the men responsible for 9/11 was greatly weakened after too many "why do they hate us?" and "love thy Muslim neighbors" tv specials, but the Clinton era pragmatism of lobbing a few cruise missiles into the desert as a pathetically weak response to a terrorist attack was replaced by proactive security agencies that didn't just ignore known planned attacks, but actively went after terrorists and the regimes that supported them. Terrorists, and especially their leaders, who aren't as willing to be martyrs for Allah as their brainwashed followers, took notice.

Let me say that again: any difference between pre-9/11 and post-9/11 levels of terrorism is not due to increased funding or more bureaucrats (in fact, I bet that the agencies could do just as well of a job fighting terrorism with half their current budget) -- the difference is due to the resolve of the government to actually go after terrorists by letting FBI/CIA/etc agents to do their job.

Are online advertisers getting desperate?

Are online advertisers getting desperate? I don't know, but I've clicked on more text ads in the last two months, than all the ad banners combined. Collectrix is soon going to provide our own text-ad service, so let me know if you know of a good ad-management system.

My Boycott of GnuPG

Take a look at the following email I sent to the GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard) team. I encourage my readers to send similar emails to organizations or websites that put up "no war" banners.

Dear GnuPG team,
I noticed a "no-war" image on your homepage linked to the U.N. Human Rights Resolution. I am unclear however, who's "human rights" your project supports. Do you support the human rights of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam's murderous regime? Where is your banner for the human rights of the 3,000 Americans killed by terrorists?

Who do you expect to protect these human rights? Libya, the brutal dictatorship elected to Chair the U.N. Human Rights Commission, or Iraq, Chair of the U.N. Disarmament Conference? Which member of the human rights commission do you expect to champion human rights -- Cuba, Vietnam, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or the slave-holding Sudan? Or do you support the "human rights" of the UN officials to exploit Iraqi suffering for their personal gain? There is only one body in the world today that supports the rights of both the victims of terrorism and the victims of dictatorships with more than hollow resolutions: the United States.Towards this end, please note the attached image of the American flag, which you may link to your favorite branch of the United States Armed Forces.

Until your website stops supporting dictators and opposing justice, I will not endorse your views by using your products. If you do not believe that my portrayal of your position is accurate, I look forward to an explanation or elaboration of the "official" stance of the GnuPG project.

Sincerely,
David Veksler, Former GnuPG user.

Random Stuff...

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.

Islam = Terrorism?

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.

my day...

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 ¾ 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.)

Regime Change

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.

Michael Moore is a big

Michael Moore is a big fat liar. Take away his Oscar, and don't forget:

Hubba Hubba -- Miss Shock and Awe!

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...

^{(Thanks, StarsnStripes)}

Are these the "noble Iraqi people"?

Drumming their chests and whipping their backs, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims swarmed through the holy city of Kerbala on Tuesday on a pilgrimage suppressed for decades by Saddam Hussein. Marking one of the most important events of their year, some men slashed their heads with knives and left bloody wounds in a ritual display of readiness to die for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. The imam was killed in Kerbala in AD 680.

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.

Here is a snippet of

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.

The original purpose of this

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.

While the lights were out...

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:

As the power outage stretched into its third hour, the Brazos County Health Department ordered all area retail food outlets without power to close the doors."There is a simple law under the Texas Food Establishment Laws that once food is being kept below 45 degrees it is no longer safe to eat," said Julie Anderson, spokeswoman for the health department. "We tried to get the message out through the radio, but some restaurants said they wouldn't close so we sent inspectors out there," Anderson said, adding that they ended up having to urge only one to shut down.

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.

Check out my letter to

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

In Defense of Fast Food

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.)}

Where is my free oil?

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."

My response:

Commentary on "America vs. Americans"

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,

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

Pelosi: White House Lawn Not Green Enough

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.

(Update: I can't spell. :-\)

Great Quotes in History

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."

I am writing a paper

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:

I do not think, on the whole, that there is more selfishness among us than in America; the only difference is that there it is enlightened, here it is not. Each American knows when to sacrifice some of his private interests to save the rest; we want to save everything, and often we lose it all. Everybody I see about me seems bent on teaching his contemporaries, by precept and example, that what is useful is never wrong. Will nobody undertake to make them understand how what is right may be useful?

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
(Update: here it is.)

'United Nations Holds 'Grand Re-Opening' Event'

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)}}

Herbert Hoover -- defender or traitor of the "American System"?

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:

"No civilization could be built to endure solely upon groundwork of greed or even upon the enlightened self-interest f the individual. It is out of the altruistic and constructive impulses that the standards and the ideals of the nation are molded and sustained."

"Proper action in relief of distress is inherent in the social vision of the true American System. No American should go hungry or cold if he is willing to work. Under our system relief is the first obligation of the individual to his neighbors, then of institutions, then of local communities, and then of State governments. The moment the need exceeds the honest capacities of the local agencies, then they must have the support of the Federal Government as the final reservoir of national strength."

"The American System holds equally that monopoly, group or class advantage, economic domination, Regimentalism, Fascism, Socialism, Communism, or any other form of tyranny, small or great, or small are violations of the basis of Liberty."

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.

Inflation, voice over IP, and cross burning...

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.

Comments?

I warned you..

DON'T CLICK THIS LINK

Whose "peace" do you support?

Wow

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!

Statist Economics 101

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:

"Nature has an integral set of different values (cultural, spiritual and material) where humans are one strand of nature's web and all living creatures are considered equal. Therefore the natural way is the right way and human activities should be molded along nature's rhythms." (UN Biodiversity Treaty)

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.

I really should have posted

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

Also, giant squid, anyone?

My first movie blog...

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."

Funny Stuff

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.

"I was wrong."

This was very touching. Take a read.

Eurythmics Use Ferrets Lay Cable For Y2K Gig

LAUNCH: " [Ferrets] were utilized by organizers of Greenwich, England's Party In The Park millennium eve concert -- featuring the Eurythmics, Simply Red, Bryan Ferry, and the London Symphony Orchestra -- to lay sound, lighting, and television cables through underground tunnels for the event, reports the BBC.
"

Check out my latest: La-La

Check out my latest: La-La Land Economics

Recently, the professor of my economics class discussed the "flaws of markets," claiming, "markets are only more efficient than state run intervention when they approach perfect competition." She then addressed public choice theory, the idea that government bureaucracies are inefficient because bureaucrats tend to care mainly about their budget and job security rather than the function they are supposed to perform. She dismissed the idea as "la-la land" and claimed that bureaucracies could be efficient as long as bureaucrats acted in the "best interests of the country..."more

Peaceniks in Iraq 'Shocked back to reality'...

UPI:"A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

A note to my audience:

If you have been reading my blog and would like to take on my ideas, I recommend two Yahoo Groups I frequent (and moderate):

The NEW A&M Objectivist Club Discussion List (for philosophy)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TAMUObjectivismClub/

..and my own Politics and Economics Discussion List (for politics and such)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProFreedom/

This is great:

http://komo1000news.com/audio/kvi_aircheck_031003.mp3
The best line:
"In 10 years, will people shake your hand and say "Thanks for my freedom", or will they shake my hand and say "Thanks for my freedom"? I think you and I already know it."

Sorry for the lack of updates...

I'm working on some new sites/school stuff.

Laurel has been getting into some trouble bashing Rachel Corrie, the (anti) American terrorism advocate who was crushed as she stood or crouched in front of an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza.

I share the WSJ Opinion Journal's sentiment in that:
"It's a shame that Rachel Corrie died the way she did. It's shameful that she lived the way she did."

Laurel's take on the story is even better:

"What Rachel Corrie did wasn't noble, it was stupid. I sincerely hope that other 'human shields' will realize their naivete and go back to smoking weed all day."

I offer the following photo of her at a pro-Saddam rally last month as my commentary:

Have you forgotten?

I hear people saying we don't need this war
I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
Now they say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it's too disturbing for you and me
It'll just breed anger that's what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it everyday
Some say this country's just out looking for a fight
Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

Now I've been there with the soldiers
Who've gone away to war
And you can bet that they remember
Just what they're fightin' for

Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Some went down like heros in that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
And all the loved ones that we lost and those left to carry on
Don't you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?


Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten?
(Listen to the song at http://www.minibite.com/america/forgotten.htm

some interesting links..

The White House website has an interesting section on the lies that Saddam's regime tries to pull over the world's media. (view the pdf)

On a lighter note, here are some great stories from the Onion: One, Two, Three.
..and one more serious one: Why the Hollywood Left Hates Bruce Willis

10 Tips on Writing the Living Web

This is interesting: "10 Tips on Writing the Living Web." The website has several other good essays for good writing such as "Write A Better Weblog." So, how many of these rules do I actually follow?

Actually, the most helpful essay on good writing I've read is "Writing a Convincing Editorial by Robert W. Tracinski, collumnist and my current intructor in my OAC writing class. His essay and regular editorials provide inspiration and guidance for many of the essays you see on my website.

Edit: George Orwell's 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” is another must-read for any aspiring writer.

"mindless destruction"

Tim Blair reports:
"GENERAL AMIR AL-SAADI, special aide to Saddam Hussein, is heartbroken over the mindless destruction of his beloved Al Samoud missiles:

They're just hurting people, these are creation by the people who designed, worked and manufactured, they belong to families and people, the whole people will be affected by this.

Al-Saadi said Iraq had not permitted photographs or video images of the destruction - despite the potential impact on world opinion - because it didn't want the Iraqi people to see what would be a bitter image."It is too harsh. It is unacceptable. That's why we have released no pictures," he said somberly.

New Template.

What do you think? (Yes, it's a blatant rip-off of BlogSpot, but it's a start..

My page now runs php!

While few will notice the difference (or care), I converted my homepage from .Net to PHP for the heck of it today, thanks to the ASP2PHP converter. Sadly, I don't know how to port my XML quote app to php yet, so it's running from my MySQL database for now.

Sorry, Bill, .Net just wouldn't cut for a high-demand bleeding-edge site like mine :-)

Correction: rationalmind.net still runs .Net but rationalmind.net/David runs php -- which means that I can do some interesting speed tests...

Check this out: Family of

Check this out: Family of electrocuted thief gets $75,000
I have no pity for the crook, but might there be an argument that the booby trap posed a danger to police, firefighters, etc? I think not -- the clearly posted signs warned them, and if that means that they have to let the place burn down, its the bar managers responsibility. If the signs weren't posted, then I think there is an argument for reasonable expectation of being able to enter a building to prevent crime/fires in a city.

Random clips from the news...

Story 1: If antiwar protesters succeed

Story 2:

In Brooklyn, N.Y., Ron Dixon and his family were jolted awake by a noise early one morning.

There was a stranger in the house. When Dixon saw the intruder enter his young son's room, he grabbed his 9 mm pistol, and said to the man, "What are you doing in my house?"

Dixon says the burglar then moved toward him, and so he shot him twice.

The intruder survived. He's a career criminal who's been arrested 19 times. He's now being held in New York's Rikers Island jail.

Dixon has also been arrested and charged with "criminal possession of a weapon." He's threatened with up to a year in jail, because his gun was unlicensed.

Prosecutors want to put him in Riker's Island - the same jail where the burglar was sent. Head prosecutor Charles Hynes wouldn't talk to 20/20 but said of Dixon's case, "You get caught with a [unlicensed] gun in Brooklyn, you're going to do jail time."

Dixon will fight that in court March 11.

At the same time that New York Gov. George Pataki, to save money, plans to let criminals out of jail, prosecutors are trying to put Ron Dixon in? When the career criminal, who was in Dixon's house, got his first conviction, he got probation, no jail time. But Dixon has to go to jail?

Check out the (very brief)

Check out the (very brief) book review of Atlas Shrugged I wrote for my OAC class.

Check out the shirts I

Check out the shirts I designed for the Objectivist Club.
Sample:

I got criticized by several people for being "insensitive," "offensive" and "negative" with my design. I replied "Please explain what you find offensive about the phrase "irrationality will not be tolerated" and what kind of people you think will be offended by that."

Comments?

Who's funding the peaceniks?

Ever notice how the media never mentions what groups are behind the protests? They make it seem like the protesters spontaneously come together in a collective orgy of anti-war sentiment, but as this WSJ editorial points out(subscription required, see one of the peacnik sites for their own list of backers), the case is far from it. Many leftist, environmentalist and plain Marxist groups are actually fueling this "popular movement." Here are some of the financiers (Saddam must have chosen to remain anonymous):

Anti-Capitalist Convergence
Americans for Social Justice
Black Radical Congress
Code Pink for Peace
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Disarm
Ecological Options Network (EON
Green Party of the United States
US Peace Council
Greenpeace
House of The Goddess Center for Pagan Wombyn [sic - lol!]
International Socialist Organization
War Resisters League [gee, sound familiar?]
Socialist Party USA
Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Pride At Work, AFL-CIO
Nukewatch

and so on...see any trend here?

more stupid tricks by the peaceniks

...and force us to march in the streets to support Saddam's regime!




PEACE! ...let the doves fly!



and finally,


what the protesters are REALLY about.

the peaceniks are at it again...

Check out this photo of this weekend's protest in Houston, from the Houston Chronicle. See the token black guy in the center? (Why else do you think the paper choose a photo of him?) That's none other than Rob, longtime associate of Laurel and I and perhaps the most clueless philosophy major I know. Rob, I know you're a regular reader of my blog, so let me tell you now that of all the stupid slogans you could have possibly chosen, you picked the absolute worst one. "No Blood for Oil" would have been preferable to your "The World Says NO." The world's opinion (as if a whole species could have one) has no bearing whatsoever on whether than opinion is right or not - something I've been trying to hammer into your brain for the last few years. Seriously, there are legitimate and critical questions to ask before a nation goes to war, and while I believe taking out Saddam is necessary and just action, a discussion of these issues would be a
proper thing to do. However NONE of the arguments presented by these new-age hippies have anything to do with the real questions we should be asking (is Saddam a big enough threat to the US to justify the cost of taking him out) and everything to do with typical liberal moral subjectivism, pacifism, and a general distate of western values. There's really nothing more for me to add that I haven't already said in my essay The anti-war protesters: what are they for?.

A day in the life of...

Check out the photojournal of my day at A&M!



Update: here are some more photos that I didn't get in yesterdat.

Fundies....

A few days ago, I was feeling argumentative so I sent off a scorching rant to an editorial by "Brother Kelly Boggs" a Creationist pastor (see letter a few blogs below.) I didn't really do it for their sake, and didn't expect a reply, but lo and behold, not only did "Brother Kelly" send be rebuttal, but so did a member of "The Baptist Press." The responses aren't really worth mentioning, since they missed the point of the email. The best part though was the "biblical evidence for why we should attack Iraq" in one of the emails (apparently supporting evolution and/or atheism automatically makes you a peacenik.)
Ah, bashing religious fundies by day and liberal wackos by night - are there any sane people left in the world?

grrr

Someone stole my bike. They didn't just steal it, they snatched it between 6 and 8pm from outside my apartment, with me at home, the windows wide open, and my computer playing music. It was a really nice new and expensive bike too, that I had just been getting used to enjoying. I think any sentiments of what I think of the thieves or the College Station police department would be superfluous.

On a more positive note, I've been working on my art collection. On of the highlights is a gallery of bad art. Half of the pieces are famous examples of modern art, going for millions of dollars, and half are made by amateurs/kids/me. Which is which?

Sea lions in the NAVY....yes, real ones

On a more positive note, Sea lions are being used to guard U.S. ships in Gulf. I think it's kinda cool: "the animals were trained to mark people but not to kill. The mammals can dive to 1,000 feet, swim at speeds up to 25 miles per hour, as well as see and hear better under water than any human or mechanical device the military has."

Some more thoughts on the Koreas:

MSNBC reports that much of North Korea's income comes from slave labor camps whose products are "filtered" through China and often ends up at U.S. markets. (I wonder if most libertarians support that as "free trade"?) North Korea has basically become one big slave labor camp -- one which many people are deperately trying to escape at the punishment of death (or worse.) As anyone but a Marxist would realize, North Korea's communist economy has been a miserable failure:

"At the end of the Korean War nearly half a century ago, incomes in the North were actually higher than in the South. Since then, average income and living standards have been falling in inverse proportion to their rise in South Korea. Now, according to CIA estimates, the average North Korean exists on roughly $1,000 a year, compared with $18,000 a year for South Koreans."

"Refugees who were picked up in China just trying to make a living are likely to get six months' imprisonment in North Korea, but there is no crime worse than wanting to defect to South Korea.
"It is the severest crime," said one of the refugees who escaped last year through a foreign embassy in Beijing and did not want his name used. "Surely they will be executed. Or even if they are not shot, they will be sent to a political prison, and they will have to suffer there all the rest of their lifetimes, and they will die there."

Comment counts!

If you're a carefull reader, you've noticed that thanks to my genius :-) both Laurel's and my blogs now have comments. I couldn't figure out how to run code in dynamically-generated text, but I randomly came across a tutorial on Using JavaScript Includes to Manage Content and did just that!

On Columbia

It seems like every single blog on the internet has an ode of some sort to the downed space shuttle. Not all are positive -- Laurel things that it's time to privatize (i.e. close) NASA because it's a waste of taxpayer's money. I think it's important not to confuse the spirit of discovery that allowed man to go to space, and the particular method by which that is being done today.
The International Space Station, (whose massive cost overruns may well have caused maintenance failures that caused Columbia to blow up) is a perfect example of the wrong approach to take to space exploration. The ISS is a typical result of multinational bureaucracies trying to make a political statement (under a scientific cover) and I could have told you with near certainty when this plan was just an idea that the true cost of the ISS was wildly underestimated. In an age when space tourism has become practical (as the Russians have shown) and commercial satellites are launched on a regular basis, a government-run space agency should stick to military applications, and leave the space exploration to businessmen. Skeptics will complain that there is not enough research money for a private version of the ISS, but I bet if the government allowed private enterprise to decide which areas research should go to I am sure that the results would be much better, even if a private ISS takes longer to build.

bleh

My internet access (most of the city's in fact) was down because Cox Internet messed up. Grrr...this just isn't my week. I went to my ECON class today (more on that later) and realized that I had somehow forgotten to go to last Thursday's class...I've missed many classes during my 22 years, but I've never, forgotten about one.

I think I need a "mood" indicator....today's is "Highly Irritable"

Check out my latest site!

My latest project:

hacked

Someone hacked my server today. No, they didn't deface my homepage with some porn -- they got into my arg gallery and "ATH" decided to delete my collection of paintings by Tamara de Lempicka. Sadly, I didn't have a backup since that was it was recently added. How pathetic is that? Some peope hack Microsoft, IBM, CIA, etc, but these punks decided to go after my art. Anyway, with the database file safely out of the way (something I should have done as a precaution), this shouldn't happen again. Just shows that you can never be too carefull about your mission-critical...online art gallery.
Edit: They struck again, exploiting a vulnerabilty in the gallery code. I traced the attack to Montevideo, Uruguay (IP: 200.149.0.209) If anyone want's no snitch to ISP (yo no hablo espanol) it's http://www.telemar.net.br/

Arght!

I lost my keys today. I got off the bus and unlocked my bike on my way to get some food but when I got to Taco Cabana for some burritos, the keys were gone. I retraced my path, but someone had definitely taken the keys in the five minutes it took me to come back to the bike rack. Needless to say, I was pissed. I was locked out of my apartment, unable to leave my bike anywhere, and my roommate doesn't come home till late at night. When I got home, I climbed on the rails of my second story balcony, removed the net, and forced the window open, jumped to the ledge, climbed up, opened the window, and barely managed to avoid breaking the computer I landed on inside. It took me five minutes just to clear of my desk enough to step on it, but thankfully, none of the neighbors called the cops for me. Unfortunately, I am still going to have to get new locks for my bike, and keys/locks for my door and bike. Grrr. Lets hope whoever has my keys doesn't use the Net much

If someone were to sum

If someone were to sum up everything I ever found wrong with the state of modern philosophy, this would be it. Note the source.

New Essay

I've written a new essay on the nature of rights and government. Check it out: You Own Your Life!

Art Stuff

In case you haven't seen it before, I've recently updated my art gallery.

Also, check out another one of my recent projects.

Science and Government Don't Mix!

Here is the headline from today's MSNBC science story:
"A growing number of scientists say President Bush's administration is distorting the scientific advisory process by appointing conservative ideologues to panels that are supposed to be impartial. They fear the appointments are politically motivated and meant to delay decision-making affecting controversial areas such as the environment, abortion and workplace safety. Administration officials say they are merely looking for diverse views and accuse the critics themselves of playing politics."

It is never mentioned that this is the inevitable results of government funding scientific research. When tax dollars rather than private investment funds research, political ideology by scientific amateur (politicians) determines which direction the research heads in. The inevitable result is that popularity and pull determine what area gets research funds, while the unpopular yet most promising areas are left behind. Just notice how AIDS is kills very few American's versus heart disease or cancer yet gets significantly higher research funds than the two major killers.

The article does not mention what standard politicians are supposed to use to determine which scientific and medical projects show the most promise, other than "diverse views." Clearly, this is not an adequate standard - imagine NASA hiring both engineers and UFO-nuts to foster "diverse views." Popularity is also not a suitable standard, since the popular scientists are the champions of the big discoveries of the past, not the future. Unfortunately, when your own investment money is not at stake, the only remaining standard to guide research dollars is political pull, which is exactly what happens in Washington.

Abortion Speech

The speech went really well -- we had over 160 people show up, and with the help of notecards for Q&A, there wasn't any of the usual protest when it comes to abortion. Check out the photos.

New Blogger

I've set up a new site for Silas to spout off his crazy ideas.

The Case of the Missing Abortion Fliers

Here is the letter I sent to the Batt today:

During the last two weeks, the A&M Objectivism Club has been organizing a speech called "Pro-Choice Is Pro-Life: The Philosophical Basis for a Woman's Right to Abortion." Because this is a very controversial topic, we expected a fair amount of controversy, but what we did not expect was for our fliers to be torn down with such aggressiveness by our opposition.

As a poor college student, printing hundreds of fliers is a significant cost to me and the other members, and reflects our strong opinions on the issue and our desire to share our views with our fellow Aggies. Monday afternoon, another member and I spent several hours putting up 500 fliers all over campus. When I went to class this morning however, I discovered that nearly all of those fliers had been torn down, leaving the other groups' fliers around them intact. This action is only indicative of a larger history of tearing down and even vandalizing our fliers and posters.

It seems to me that no one who is confident in the truth of his or her position would be so desperate to silence his opposition for fear that they will change their audience's mind. However, this has not been the case, as some unknown groups or individuals have decided for the rest of Texas A&M which issues and arguments students deserve to hear. I hope that my fellow Aggies will agree with me that no matter what your stance is, each side deserves an opportunity to present its ideas in a public forum, and censure their friends or groups when they decide to go on their next "censorship run."

1000 fliers and 5000 staples

Preparing for Dr. Bernstein's speech this Wednesday has been more of a challenge than I expect. Today, I went on a flier run with Keenan and posted 500 flier within an hour. Unfortunately, the flier misspelled the word "Objectivist" as "Abjectivist," though we figured people wouldn't read that part anyway.

What has the world come to?

I was looking on ebay for an ICQ #, when I came across 5 AOL cd's. I can't believe anyone would pay $ for AOL cd's but then people sell all kinds of crazy stuff on ebay, including snow, Grandma, kids, and even their virginity.

34 BELOW ZERO IN NEW

34 BELOW ZERO IN NEW YORK
X X X X X
MIAMI SETS RECORD COLD

New Photos!

In a long overdue update, I have updated my David and Friends photo albums.

My editorial in the school paper...

Well, most of it. They cut out all the controversial and philosophical stuff. See the original, and the version they published.

My Cool Schedule

Let me brag about my cool schedule for a minute. I am taking history of political thought (with all the classics, from Plato to Machiavelli), American political thought, American foreign policy, industrial organization, and economic development - definitely the best schedule I have had in my last four years at A&M!

Sean Penn on Iraq

From Drudge:

ON LARRY KING LIVE, PENN MADE A COMPELLING, FOCUSED CASE AGAINST THE IRAQI WAR, ADVOCATING DIALOGUE BEFORE BOMBS.

JOINED IN PROGRESS...

PENN: ...IT IS, UM, IMPORTANT. I AM RESPONSIBLE. WENT TO LEARN. I HAVE SEEN AND KNOW. YEAH, IT IS COMPLICATED. SURE, BAGHDAD. NO, MUCH IS REPELLENT ABOUT IT. WE HAVE FAMILIES. BELONG IN BELLEVUE. THEY DID. DISEASE. INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY. I DID NOT GO AS A JOURNALIST. AFTER THE 1991 BOMBINGS, IT WAS SOLD TO THE PEOPLE. AND THE STARVATION, I SAY THIS AS A FATHER OF CHILDREN. YES, I DO.

KING: DID YOUR WIFE WANT YOU TO?

PENN: THEY MAKE IT BUFFOONERY, WELL, IT IS A NERVE-WRACKING THING. BUT I AM MORE SHY FROM THE SHAME I WILL FEEL. NO, THIS IS A MISCONCEPTION OF THE CURRENT NARCISSISM OF THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY. MORE THAN TWENTY HOURS ON A PLANE. YOU START TO THINK. YOU DO. IT IS NOT GOOD TO BE FAMOUS. WHEN I WANT TO GIGGLE, I TURN ON BILL O'REILLY. ONCE EVERY 5 YEARS I HAVE SOMETHING I WANT TO DO. I AM QUITE CRAZY ABOUT IT, BUT IT MAKES ME CRAZY. GULF WAR COST $82 BILLION.

KING: WOULD YOU GO TO NORTH KOREA?

PENN: IRAQ NOT POLITICAL IS HUMAN. I DONT SPEAK OUT MUCH, BUT I FEEL IT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO SPEAK OUT AS MUCH AS I CAN. BAGHDAD. CONSCIENCE, AND I DID FEEL, UM, COULD BE GREAT TO TRY TO, UM, DIALOGUE. ARMS INSPECTORS. REALLY UNAMERICAN. MURDOCH. BECAUSE I AM A FATHER. I'D LIKE TO WRITE MORE. NOT PROLIFIC TO WRITE SCRIPT. TO BE DIRECTOR. YES, SURE. CHILDREN BOMBS IN CONSCIOUSNESS, CAN'T READ ARABIC. THANK YOU, LARRY...

KING: GNARLY, DUDE.

Noam Chomsky, Marxist

James Ostrowski has an interesting piece on Noam Chomsky in today's Mises article. I knew Chomsky was a Marxist, but Ostrowski elegantly refutes his views, and shows just how clueless he is. Take a look!

This is for the geeks out there...

Check out this SomethingAwful.com photoshop gallery:

New Stuff

I've written a new op-ed, Putting Liberals into Context" and updated my site a bit, including a new downloads section on my projects page.

What I've been up to during the break...

That's me in front, blissfully unaware of the guy behind me, about to blow me away. (Don't worry, I still won the game.)


Btw, the game is Unreal Tournament 2003, which I have just bought, and highly recommend to anyone who likes FPS gaming.

Movementarian Banners

I've made two new movementarian banners:

One:

And two:

New Web App

I spent a whole day making a new favorites page. It may look deceptively simple to the untrained eye, but it took me a whole day to get the XML databinding and sorting to work. Also, I think my collection of links is pretty cool. Check out out!

New Design

I would like to take this time to brag about the the new layout I did tonight for Laurel's blogger, inspired by one of Tamara de Lempicka's art-deco paintings.

Graduation

I was at Tim's graduation last night, and happened to be looking through the PhD theses in the brosure, and some of the sociology and english titles reminded me of this quote

You know, if every "Woman's Studies" department was closed, and the student loans were used to create businesses that hired women instead of studied them like tragic butterflies impaled on the patriarchal pin, we might be better off. Granted, we'd be without PhDs theses like "Rape Symbolism and Beatrix Potter: A Rake's Progress," but the culture would survive; the only noticeable effect at all would be a 17% decrease in Frieda Kahlo poster sales, and a 50% decrease in 33-year old college students.

Oops!

I overclocked my computer a few days ago, disabling its ability to reboot. Last night, it rebooted to apply an automatic update, but becuase of the overclock, it didn't come back up, and after a few hours, Cox reset my IP address, causing the DNS entry to be erroneous. So, my website will be down for a day or two, until the new DNS clears...

Random clips from the news...

Ted Turner on terrorism: "There's a lot of despair out there. Despair and poverty... these breed anger. And, I think, that's one of the reasons terrorism exists. There's so much frustration, anger, and despair..In the Arab view, America doesn't do enough to help them and that's why they're so angry at it," he said. The battle against terrorism is a battle against poverty and injustice. People are willing to die when they don't have anything to live for."

meanwhile, "poverty-stricken .... North Korea's Foreign Ministry said Thursday it would immediately end a freeze on its nuclear power plant in response to an allied decision to suspend oil aid to Pyongyang,.Under a 1994 pact, Pyongyang promised to scrap plans to develop nuclear weapons in return for light water nuclear reactors and fuel oil supplies."

as, US forced seized then released an unmarked, North Korean freighter loaded with Scuds and chemicals:
"The real name of the North Korean ship had been painted over, so too had the registration number. The vessel was not flying a flag which Señor Trillo said meant the Spanish crew was within its legal rights to seize the vessel.At first the So San's captain claimed she was a Cambodian vessel but on seeing marines clambering into launches and heading in his direction he asked if he could contact his masters in Pyongyang. "
"Señor Trillo listed the haul as 15 Scud missiles, 15 conventional warheads, 23 tanks of nitric acid rocket propellant and 85 drums of chemicals."
The ship was allowed to go on with all it's cargo after "The [Yemeni] Sanaa Government insisted the Scuds were for their own defence and were indignant at suggestions the missiles could fall into unscrupulous hands."

Also, apparently Palestinian rule seems to have it's flaws:
"Crime wave in West Bank as unpaid cops turn rogue...A network of gangs have appeared that extort from businessmen, steal property and other assets and work for those who want to eliminate their rivals. The sources said the gangs operate in the Jerusalem and Ramallah areas and face virtually no danger from being captured by either Israeli or Palestinian authorities."

Let's see if they can dig themselves out of this hole

Gray Davis and the California democrats have done it again: California is on the edge of bankruptcy. Apparently all those "progressive" social programs couldn't survive the recession.
Personally, I'm glad. Those stupid democrats have dug themselves into this hole, and I hope they feel the pain on the way out. After all, CA is unionized to hell, and they will have to convince all those teachers and state workers to take massive pay cuts /lay offs.
Either that, or raise taxes. But higher taxes will scare away even more business, digging them into an even bigger hole. Either way, California is screwed. Apparently, the highly progressive tax system in CA had a part to play:

"California prides itself on its progressive income tax, with people earning high incomes paying a huge share of state taxes. The top 10 percent of filers pay 75 percent of personal income taxes. But when their income drops, as it did when the technology boom went bust in early 2000, the state treasury crashes."

"Mr. Wesson, the Assembly speaker, said it was "mathematically impossible" to balance the state budget without raising taxes.
"The way you do it is to put absolutely everything on the table, every conceivable cut, every conceivable way to raise taxes," he said. "Then you sort out what is the least painful and what is the most fair."

Latest essay...

Check out my latest:Google, Censorship, and the Hostage Dilemma

"On September 8, 2002, the Chinese government blocked Google, one of the Internet's biggest search engines. The government of China regularly blocks websites that it considers "dangerous" to its regime, but Google.com is a search engine - it only indexes the Internet without bias or preference to the content of a particular website. So why would Google be banned in China, especially considering that it is a crucial research tool without adequate Chinese substitutes? I believe that the answer lies in a game theory scenario known as the hostage dilemma. Because Google had the potential to greatly improve coordination between pro-democracy supporters, it may pose a threat to the Chinese regime. While the exact intentions of China in blocking Google are not clear, the incident holds a lesson for anyone trying to support or suppress democratic movements in authoritarian regimes."

Can you spot the difference?

See if you can spot the difference between two following photos from MSNBC: ....this and this

...I couldn't.

(A bit of context: both groups were protesting the same topic.)

Consumer profiling can make you gay

Interesting story at ArsTechnica:
As this article points out, many consumers are finding themselves presented with odd choices when they return to their favorite websites. Just today I searched on Amazon.com for "writers market". Now, when I return to Amazon I'm presented with a list of recommendations, all of them books matching my earlier search criteria. This kind of techno-profiling, or as they would like you to believe, "feature", is becoming quite common.

For a live demonstration before an audience of 500 people, Mr. [Jeff] Bezos once logged onto Amazon.com to show how it caters to his interests. The top
recommendation it gave him? The DVD for "Slave Girls From Beyond
Infinity." That popped up because he had previously ordered "Barbarella," starring Jane Fonda, a spokesman explains.

"The problem was, I overcompensated," he says. "It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich."

My own experience with Amazon is pretty good, with the expetion being the four post-modern books I ordered from Amazon for my english class. The books sucked, but the authors kept popping up on my recomendation lists until I finally rated all the books as "crap" (or whatever the amazon rating for that is) at which point Amazon resumed pushing Objectivist books at me due to my purchase of OPAR a few years ago.

Website Updates...

In a pathetic attempt to find avoid having to work on all the papers I have due this week, I have checked my email, bugged all my friends online, done my laundry, cleaned the apartment, scrubbed the bathroom, and finally, in desperation, I even cleaned the toilet. All to no avail, as my paper still isn't done. Oh, I also updated my website, so take a look around.

Photos Online

I haven't updated my photo gallery in a while, so I shared my entire photo directory:
http://rationalmind.net/mypics

Here is the rant of the day -- by me!

The following post was inspired by the fine folks at the Atheist & Agnostic listserv:

It seems that everyone who has replied to my recent posts so far is stuck in the racist mindset. Black's must obviously favor taking all the government's money and steal...err, "redistributing" it to themselves and letting al the black criminals out of jail, and unenlightened whites who do not realize that they are racist (and just don't know it) are only interested in keeping their "superior social status" and perpetuating "structural" racism. "Enlightened" whites like the fine young gentlemen debating with me however, have become wise to the situation and engaged in trying to get all the white people to loathe themselves and blame themselves for their ancestors mistakes.

I don't suppose it has ever crossed your mind that it's possible to look at people by what they believe in and how they act rather than judging them by factors outside their control. I don't suppose you would realize that to a color-blind person, (of any race or creed) it doesn't matter what the race of the criminals in prisons is, as long as they are guilty, and it doesn't matter what color a college student is, as long as they are qualified.

To a person who views other people as fellow human being, rather than rival racial factions, it is completely irrelevant what the ratios of blacks and whites and Asians in the prison and universities is. To a non-racist, it's really completely irrelevant what the racial proportions are in any category. Where there are social problems, you address them as social problems, irrelevant of whether they are "black" or "white" problems.

Not being racist yourself is not going to make other's stop being racist, but it WILL end it on your part. Trying to "compensate" for white racism by encouraging black racism is only going to prove that you still see people as tribes and collectives rather than individuals. Joining the NAACP is only going to show that just like the clansmen of the KKK, you only see colors, not people.

Let me re-emphasize something very important: if you view people as individuals, not races, it is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT whether "structural" unequalities exist. The entire notion that all institutions should mirror society in their racial proportions is based on the racist idea that race is the primary defining factor of people, not their own identity. Eventually, by teaching others and being an individual yourself, racial divisions in society will disappear. However when or if they do is completely irrelevant, because the whole notion of "getting back" for past discrimination is inherently racist itself. You CANNOT make up for slavery by giving a black man now a job he doesn't deserve, and you share NO RESPONSIBILITY for past discrimination, EVEN IF you benefit from starting off in a higher position. Two wrongs don't make a right, especially when you are not "righting" anything by being a bigot yourself.

Reports BusinessWeek:In April, 2002, hackers

Reports BusinessWeek:
In April, 2002, hackers broke into the payroll database for the state of California. For more than a month, cybercriminals rooted around in the personal information of 265,000 Golden State employees, ranging from Governor Gray Davis to maintenance workers and clerks.

Worse, the California Controller's Office, which ran the database, failed to notify state employees for more than two weeks after the breach was discovered. Although officials with the Controller's office insisted the break-in probably hadn't resulted in any significant harm, the incident enraged Golden State pols and employees, whose Social Security numbers, bank account information, and home addresses were fair game for the hackers.

This lapse sparked what may mark a dramatic shift in legal policy toward cybersecurity. Over strenuous objections from the business lobby, on Sept. 26 California enacted a sweeping measure that mandates public disclosure of computer-security breaches in which confidential information may have been compromised. The law covers not just state agencies but private enterprises doing business in California. Come July 1, 2003, those who fail to disclose that a breach has occurred could be liable for civil damages or face class actions.

Here is Slashdot's very perceptive take on the new law:

" IMHO Big companies will have the resources to set up investigations even when they know it is unlikely to get anywhere, and business will go on as usual for them. Small businesses that don't have the resources to maintain an investigation will have their reputations ruined. Also, the article doesn't mention the contingency where a break-in occurs because of a software/hardware issue for which there is no released technical solution (i.e. anyone else who has software X would be susceptible to the same type of break-in). This is not good."

Another Slashot comment on the story:
"Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) filed documents with the SEC today relating to a breach of network security.

According to the filings, at 5:23 AM last Tuesday, Microsoft's network was "owned" by a hacker calling himself "Z3r0 kew10r". While the hacker refered to himself as "1337" in his defacement of Microsoft's webpage, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates indicated that the security breach was very minor.

In a press release accompanying the filing, Gates said: "t#1s punk th1nks h3's 1337 but h3's just a littl3 scr1p7 k1dd13 and i'm g0nna sh0w h1m what 1337 is when m3 and the M$ haxx0r cr3w crak his b0xx0r!" "

In response to *Recapturing the Lost Art of Gracious Victorian Living*, by Linda S. Lichter

Ms. Lichter makes several good points in her nostalgic ode to Victorian morality as she shreds the "chaotic muddle" which goes for morality these days. However, before jumping on the "traditional family values" bandwagon, it is worthwhile to examine the particular differences between Victorian morality and what passes for morality today.

Victorian ideals stressed a rigid code of values that came from God himself. Being Good was the sole purpose of these values, regardless of whether they brought happiness and success or required the sacrifice of one's dreams and desires to preserve an image of "true nobility and god deeds."

Unfortunately, Queen Victoria's morality died with her. Men who had been enjoying sex with whores suddenly felt free to enjoy sex with their own wives. They concluded that the Victorian morality was too "idealistic" and adopted a pragmatic approach to life. If morality is a set of rules to govern one's actions, the first rule of today's morality is that there are no rules!

For example, take sex. Where Victorian ethics preached sexual decency (no sex until marriage, and then only on the Sabbath.and don't even think about enjoying it!) today's moralists tell us to "Have sex whenever you want...with two or more people/sexes at a time.in public!" Consequences of actions are divorced from their causes: "If you get AIDS, take some protease inhibitors and lobby the government for more research to "solve the AIDS crisis." If you find yourself unable to have meaningful relationships with the strangers you wake up next to, take Prozac!

Clearly, Victorian morality is just as "impractical" as today's anti-morality -- if living successful, happy lives is our goal. Victorian ethics divorce morals from their fundamental purpose (to serve as a guide for a happy and productive life) and today's anti-morals divorce actions from their consequences by claiming that following whims and urges is sufficient guidance for achieving all of one's goals without suffering the consequences of self-destructive and contradictory actions.

Ms. Lichter is correct in arguing that society has abandoned the very idea of morality as a principled guide to one's actions. However, the foundation of morality is not to discard individual happiness and pursue self-sacrifice, but on the contrary, to seek individual happiness by means of a moral code. While the Victorian era's morality may be an improvement over the modern-day wholesale rejection of morals, it lacks the logical foundation of morality, based not on an idealized concept of God, but on the idealized concept of principled man.

On Voting..

Today's blog comes from my post on the ASC forum

Voting by definition is a process that involves forcing your will on others. Some actions of government (or its agents) are clearly coercive in that they limit your liberty directly, while others don't involve initiating force, but rather define just what the initiation of force involves. Either way, voting is a process of forcefully restricting the actions of other people. If it weren't forceful, they we could just ask, pay, or convince them to do whatever without going through the hassle of elections.

Statists think voting is a legitimate way to coerce anyone into doing anything, or in other words, that there is no higher, independent moral authority other than the "voice of the people." Classical liberals (and their variants) on the other hand think that man has rights which are due to his nature as man (either because God said so, or that's just how man is.)

Voting is not of course "the most important right" as some statists claim. Elections are only one of many safeguards used to protect the real rights, which are life, liberty, and property. Unfortunately, without constitutional safeguards on liberty, "voting" is just another word for "mob rule." (Incidentally, so is anarcho-capitalism, where votes are replaced by ballots made of guns and money.) Now, many people who (correctly) think that the government of the US initiates force on a regular basis choose not to vote because they do not want to implicitly legitimize the system even when they vote for less force.

Such non-voters are mistaken. Whether you believe that voting is not a sufficient means of protecting liberty (as a classical liberal) or voting is a completely illegitimate means (as an anarcho-capitalist, for example) the fact remains that voting is the best means you have of changing the actions of government. It is also arguably the only nonviolent means you have of limiting the actions of government (at least until your private army is big enough so that the US military gives up without a fight.) Whether you like it or not, unless our whole society decides unanimously to change to another social order, voting will remain the most effective non-violent means to limit the growth of government.

This is not to say that the anti-statists of the world will be able to vote themselves into freedom, or even shrink the size and power of government - as a philosophical change in the public's view of the role of the State is the best and only way to achieve liberty in the long run (which is why the LP will never succeed without adopting a philosophy of liberty.) In the short run however, the freedom lovers of the world must use every practical means to stop, or at least slow the growth of the leviathan state NOW, and short of non-violent protest in the form of tax evasion and such, voting remains our most effective way of doing so.

Touchstone

I came across this line in the Touchstone, Texas A&M's local liberal loony paper:
"Greedy capitalists will not likely relinquish their firm grip on the currency. The future therefore looks bleak."
I appreciate the compliment, but there is a small error in this logic: the government is actually in control of the currency, not "greedy capitalists." The more general reply is that liberals have no idea what money actually is. Instead of writing a long rant on it, let me refer them to someone who wrote a much more graceful essay on it. To quote from it:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"No one will listen if they have no reason to (unless they are simply bored and like listening to ads, which some people do)
The one reason radio stations continually repeat 'popular songs' is to hook the commuter who only listens while driving (or working out) and wants to hear their favorite song.
So, just like any other company that truly has to work for their money (via advertisements, etc.) they must have something to sell. And the reproduction of entertainment certainly follows that line of reasoning.

Bush

In response to the ridiculous claims by Democrats that Bush in effect pushing seniors of a cliff by "privatizing" social security, the RNC has released an even more ridiculous cartoon about Bush "saving" social security, as if this Ponzi scheme of the ages can (or should) be saved:


The Republicans also reassure us that Bush's scheme is NOT in fact privatization:

Ideas Matter!

Dante said in the Divine Comedy that "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis." For those of us who understand the dangers of collectivism and its growth in America during the 20th century and especially now, the time of great moral crisis is upon us NOW. However, among those aware of the dangers of omnipotent government, there are two kinds of people.

One has grown weary or apathetic of the fight for freedom and compromised with the dominant ideas of the day. They include many prominent libertarians and conservatives as well as organizations that promise to "defend our rights" while conceding the argument that "some" rights should be limited. Some of them have gained fame, fortune, and success, and claimed that "compromise" with the other side is necessary because "idealism" and "radical ideas" will never be the "practical" thing to do.

However, there is a second, smaller group of individuals who recognize that, as Ayn Rand said, "In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." They realize that in the process of compromising with their opponents, they concede that statists have a point, that maybe the government really does have the right to interfere in our lives, and the question is only how much of our lives the government may run for "the social good." This second group recognizes that the problem with conservatives is that they can only say "slow down!" on the road to serfdom. By compromise, they may gain all sorts of recognition and win the battle, but inevitably, they lose the war because they betray their own side.

There is an even smaller group of intellectuals among those who refuse to compromise with evil. These are people for whom the fight for freedom is not a burden but a joy. Many of them are alienated and belittled by their fellow intellectuals, lose opportunities for prestigious academic positions, have a hard time getting their books published, and are frequently lambasted as "radicals" by the media. However, they generally manage to live happy and successful lives and rarely, if ever, complain of their fate. I believe that the distinguishing feature of such men and women is that they care about ideas - they believe that what is True and Good is True and Good no matter how unpopular it is and no matter how much misfortune their views give them. As one jailed Soviet dissident said "I cannot do otherwise." Not all of them are right, and in fact many of them differ with me on many views, but all of them believe that life is only worth living when it is lived on one's own terms -- or as Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death!"

If I were to worship anyone or anything in this world, it is these men and women that I would worship and proudly call my heroes. Their greatness comes not from their willingness to make great sacrifices or act with unusual bravery, as society tells us, but simply to life every day of their lives with the proud motto that ideas matter. They wont think twice about sacrificing worldly success, material values, or even their lives for that they believe in: for them it is not a sacrifice but the preservation of the only terms they are willing to live their lives by. As Howard Roark said in The Fountainhead when he acted on principle and forfeited a major commission, that is "the most selfish thing you've ever seen a man do."

These men are not just an abstract ideal: there are many examples of them in real life. I would like to recognize one you might not have heard of: Ludwig von Mises. I think Mises the best and most dedicated defender of classical liberalism of the 20th century. He developed his idea in a climate of increasing state worship and socialist revolution across the world. He staunchly defended laissez faire economics during a period of growing government involvement in every level, and wrote his epic, Human Action, shortly after the world was getting out of a the Great Depression and into a major world war, as government was being accepted as the cure to every social and economic problem. He lost out prestigious university positions and had trouble printing his epic work when Keynesianism "proved" him wrong. Most of his former students turned away from his ideas and told him that he was his own worst enemy, and that everything he published was only hurting his career. As Lew Rockwell says, "Mises was surely aware that he was not advancing himself, and that every manuscript he produced, every book that came to print, was harming his career ever more. But he didn't back off. Instead he chose to do the rarest thing of all in academia: he chose to tell the truth regardless of the cost, regardless of the trends, regardless of how it would play with the powers that be."

Mises prevailed. He gained a small but growing following of new intellectuals who saw the truth in his views. The Mises Institute, established after his death, has been a major success, placing many free-market economists in university positions and becoming a major source of economic research, education, and support for free - market economists. Certainly neither Mises nor the Mises Institute are right on all the issues, but you will never find such dedication to ideas among the nihilistic and pragmatic liberals of today.

So here is my tribute to heroes. I hope I can live up to my heroes by living according to my own ideals and never forgetting that ideas matter.

New Essays

I've written a new essay on Free Will vs Determinism. Check it out!
(There are a few more new ones on my essay page.)

...

Nothing exciting happening lately...but Tim's kitten is pretty cute:


Update: I forgot all about my b-day, which I really didn't do much on, though I got some nice presents ($)

Bates v. State Bar of Arizona (USSC 1977)

"The key to professionalism, it is argued, is the sense of pride that involvement in the discipline generates. It is claimed that price advertising will bring about commercialization, which will undermine the attorney's sense of dignity and self-worth. The hustle of the marketplace will adversely affect the profession's service orientation, and irreparably damage the delicate balance between the lawyer's need to earn and his obligation selflessly to serve. Advertising is also said to erode the client's trust in his attorney: Once the client perceives that the lawyer is motivated by profit, his confidence that the attorney is acting out of a commitment to the client's welfare is jeopardized. And advertising is said to tarnish the dignified public image of the profession. "
Commentary coming soon...

Sinful Pleasures

I remember a bully from my childhood who liked to beat up smart kids because he had no confidence in his academic ability, and violence was the only way that he could dominate his classmates. However, the bully was not the only person who had trouble keeping up: I constantly struggled to do well in my math classes -- but unlike the bully, I felt no need to take my out frustration on my classmates. Instead of being jealous, I worked harder on my assignments until I was ahead of my class.
The bully in every jealous person is like the one from my childhood: instead of being inspired by high-achievers, he feels envy and even hatred towards them, shutting off any possibility of accomplishing anything great himself in the process. A bully sees the achievements of those around him as mocking his failures, and he hates successful people because they are everything he has decided he could not be. Unlike the bully, the self-confident high-achiever is the exact opposite -- he accomplishes great things not out of jealousy, but out of a desire to fulfill his dreams. Great inventors do not try to match their peers, but to do the best they can: the Wright brothers invented a plane, Thomas Edison a light bulb, and Gordon Moore a microprocessor instead of a better bike, lantern, or vacuum tube. In short, there are two kinds of men: the self-confident high achiever who does great things, and jealous, self-hating bully who wishes nothing more than to see the high-achiever fail.
[From a letter to the editor I wrote in response to "Sorrow So Sweet: A Guilty Pleasure In Another's Woe, " a NYT article.]

Disney Socialism

I just finished watching the 1998 Disney movie "A Bug Life" and despite my hopes to the contrary, I was reminded how pervasive socialist ideology has become in absolutely everything Disney produces. I have come to expect collectivist overtones from Disney's regular programming, but the extent to which its animated films are full of socialist indoctrination is simply disgusting. Unlike most liberal media companies, Disney produces more than the usual "multicultural" garbage but actually inserts Marxist ideology into the plot of its animated children's movies.



"A Bugs Life" has all the elements of the topical Disney presentation of the class struggle: the proletariat, represented by the worker ants, the bourgeoisie, represented by the grasshoppers, the greedy slave-driving boss, represented by the "boss flea" in charge of the flee circus. Famous lines include [as I remember them]: "if the ants only realized that they outnumber us a hundred to one, we would be finished!" and "you've committed the ultimate sin: you put yourself before the colony!" If that were not enough, the flea-boss frequently explains "let's go, there's money to be made!" as he denies his worker's request for a raise and proposes a routine where one the bugs is burnt to a crisp. Meanwhile, the movie makes it a point to show the ant-queen diligently joining the worker ants in their work, as she and Flik, the hero repeatedly explain "I care for the colony!" I'd like to say that Flik is at least a creative non-conformist, but the movie makes a point to show that none of his ideas are self-inspired, and all of them come to fruition only by collective effort.



Not surprisingly, the movie ends with the defeat of the overclass, as the revolutionary hero Flik inspires the ants to rise up and ensure that the ants get to keep all the "surplus" grain they collect by their collective effort. Compare this plot to "Antz," a Dreamworks SKG release, which featured an ant who questioned his role in the ant collective and championed individualism and private ingenuity.



This review may be four years late, but Disney has clearly continued its tradition of promoting Marxist ideology in movies such as "Monster's Inc." where the villain is a factory owner who is found torturing little children (Can those capitalist pigs get any worse??) and is replaced by one of the factory workers by a .government agency. In general, everything Disney touches display several common elements: the subjugation of the individual to the collective, the rejection of all selfish motivations as immoral, the worship of authority figures, the proposition that all cultures and values (other than capitalism) are equivalent, and of course, the duality between the greedy capitalist slave-drivers, and the hardworking workers of the collective, who almost always rise up and show the evil capitalists who's boss.


I'd point out some other examples of Disney socialism, but I do my very best not to support Disney in any way, and if you care about self-interest, and freedom, I strongly suggest you do the same.

Social Unsecurity

A flash movie on the DNC website shows Bush pushing a senior off a cliff --the consequence of privatizing social security. Apparently, letting people decide what to do with their own money is the same thing as murder to liberals.


I would remind the sane reader that social security is in fact much more insecure that any stock market -- after all, if you had invested in the stock market five years ago, you would have made the horrible loss of 0% interest, whereas social security payments are not only guaranteed to pay 0% interest, but are inflexible, unfair, untransferable (at death), and likely to break down, as the Ponzi scheme of the millenia unravels and millions loose as the so-called "lock-box" turns out to be empty.
Not to mention that social security is welfare socialism at its finest.

More Censorship

In yet another example of censorship by so-called liberals, an order of ARI fliers titled In Moral Defense of Israel sent to the University of Toronto Objectivist Club for a speech have been denied by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, which claimed "The following goods [the pamphlets] have been detained for a determination of tariff classification as they may constitute obscenity or hate propaganda."

To read the whole story, see this.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

"Just days after a spelling error-ridden memo outlining Barbra Streisand's political views on the pending Iraq war is faxed to congressional leaders, the artist finds herself in another highly-embarrassing turn: Streisand recited made-up Shakespeare lines before thousands at Sunday's National Democratic Gala in Hollywood...
..Streisand received a standing ovation before walking onstage at the Kodak Theater, plus repeated ovations during her performance of song and lecture.
To make her case not to go to war against Iraq, Streisand quoted extensively from William Shakespeare -- but the quotes were from a William Shakespeare hoax that has been circulating on the internet!...
.."I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening," Streisand continued. "Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening... I find bringing the country to the brink of war unilaterally five weeks before an election questionable - and very, very frightening..."

[story from Drudge]

USA Today

In case you missed it, USA Today had a cover story on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, which was not all positive (it fell into the typical Attila vs Mother Theresa dichotomy) shows the growing influence AR has on the world.
Check it out!

Update

In case my throngs of faithful readers are losing sleep over my lack of updates lately, let me assure everyone that all is well, and I am up to my usual escapades designed to keep me away from academics as much as possible.

If you care to see what I've been up to, check out the popular pictorial depictions here, here, and here.

I have also been busy on TexAgs, spewing my radical views and generally trying to get on people's bad side in various other ways.

IDIOT OF THE WEEK:

ZAMBIAN PRESIDENT LEVY MWANAWASA

Now here's a world leader who's really scores high on the idiot quotient. Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who has refused donations of genetically modified corn from the U.S. to solve his country's hunger crisis, has asked his starving countrymen to remain patient while "scientists investigate the issue."

Last month, Mr. Mwanawas's government rejected corn donations from the United States, the largest donor of food to alleviate the southern African famine, because some of the American corn was genetically modified. Talk about political correctness gone mad. The Zambian government -- taking its cues from the well-fed environmentalist lobby in Europe and America -- said it was worried about the danger genetically-altered corn could pose to the health of recipients of such food donations. Better that they starve to death, it would seem, than have their health potentially threatened by environmentally-unsafe agricultural products (which, by the way, United Nations agencies have certified as safe).

Well, that's one way to deal with environmental hazards, as defined by the environmentalist fanatical fringe. Let people die, rather than be exposed to politically-incorrect food stuffs which might, um, damage their health.

And what a neat solution it is from the point of view of the affluent, well-fed environmentalist activists in the West who have foistered this half-baked science on the Third World. These designer activists can happily depart their favorite gourmet eateries with full bellies every evening, head home to their comfy brownstone abodes for the night, and happily fall sleep knowing that they have once again thwarted the greedy American agribus monster -- saving the hungry of the Third World from the horrible evils of genetically-altered food. After all, better dead than wrongly fed, they'd probably argue.

Unfortunately, none of it will be of much comfort to the millions of starving people in Zambia as they waste away from hunger.
(from http://www.iconoclast.ca)

Fight Statism: Send Pro-Capitalist Cards Online!

Update

In reponse to my last post, I have written a story at Movementarian.com

"PHILADELPHIA, PA - In an unprecedented move of bipartisan cooperation, Bush has proposed and Congress has passed a new Constitution and Bill of Rights to serve a new governing document for the Equal States of America©. The move came after the leaders of both parties openly admitted that they had been blatantly ignoring the old Constitution for years, not to mention to the publicly hallowed but usually ignored Bill of Rights"

I think I'm gonna be sick

Hello again to my hordes of faithfull readers [sarcasm]
I've gotten over my cold/fever and am feeling much better, plus I've been busy with the various clubs that I'm in.
I'm taking four out of five classes at the Bush school which are fairly interesting, but there is on in particular -- Constitutional Rights and Liberties which has been....annoying me to no end. More specifically, reading the textbooks for the class nearly makes me sick every time I pick up my books. Let me give you some examples of the questions the authors poses:
"What are rights and liberties if you lack the resources to take advantage of them?"
"What use is freedom of speech if no one can hear you?"
"Is it possible for the welathy few to dominate public debate and stifle the 'free marketplace of ideas'?"
and my favorite,
"Does the Constitution protect us from private institutions which interfere with our liberties and rights?"
Hey, Mr Sulivan, do you have any idea what rights are? How about the initiation of force?
Apparently not, as he subscribes to the ideology that everyone is guaranteed the "right" to a paycheck, food, housing, healthcare, cable television, and a spot to spew his rhetoric as part of his "constitutional rights" to everyone else's life, liberty, and property --an ideology also known as "socialism," "communism," and more recently, "democracy."

SUMMER'S OVER

But it was good while it lasted:

Movementarian.com is LIVE!

The project that has been keeping me busy for the last three weeks, Movementarian.com has gone live! It's our third day since the big opening, and our hits have already passed 5600.
I have not had time to write too much for it yet, but check out my piece titled Sexual Frustration Caused by Porn Industry
More to come soon!

Vacation

I am currently writing on my laptop from my dad's place in San Antonio. I was going to come for a week, but my dad's 50th is in two weeks, so I am going to stay for two weeks, right up until school starts. This is the only real vacation I am going to get, so I might as well try to enjoy it. I'm already very tired and very suburned, and it's only my first day back. I might write some stuff later, especially if I ever learn to use the very funky keyboard on my laptop. Tommorow, I get to build my sister a computer, since she is going to need it when the leaves for UT in a week. I'm really wishing I had my desktop and broadband access right about now...I resorted to logging in to my server via modem from here to use its broadband cause the connection here is sooo slow.

A new title and a new essay

Yup, I got bored with the old name, so I am going for a new look. The CRAP (Content Review Assessment Property) rating has been reduced from 7 to 4!

Also, a finally finished an essay I've been meaning to write for a while now:The Virtues of our Time: Collectivism, Nihilism and Pragmatism
Oh, fun quote:
"If the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch and fight and die."
Yup, this is Slick Willy speaking to a Jewish group in Toronto last week. I believe you, Bill -- I know what an awesome patriot you were for this country 30 years ago.

Technology, for better or worse.

Despote environmentalist and "post-modern" myths to the contrary, technology is a Good Thing. Many liberal profs will spread BS about how the 20th century demonstrated the "evils of technology" but I don't buy any such thing. Technological progress is driven by the individual innovation and requires certain conditions to take place. While it is possible for technology to be used for evil purposes, as it was in Nazi Germany, only a society which rewards individual self-interest will progress technological in the long run, because only such a system will encourage men to take risks, devote years of their lives, and attract investment from other men who are free from control to invest in good ideas.
Both innovation and investment are key to progress. For example, Germany developed a nuclear and jet program much sooner than the US, but the totalitarian system did not deem nuclear research or fighter jets a high enough priority to do much damage to the allies. The United States on the other hand, provided the technology to mass produce conventional and nuclear weapons because it had a clear and proper moral purpose and the semi-free economy to support it, while Germany diverted vital resources to concentration camps and focused on the wrong technologies, losing the war.
Thus, technological progress, whether civilian or military, will only occur when some degree economic and political freedom exists to stimulate and direct innovation and development in the right direction.

Anyways, I was looking through my server logs, as I often do, and I found not only the usual traces of automated hacker attacks (which are logged in detail) but some disturbing search terms. It turns out that search term "+child +penis +img" in google, displays the Aggie Review website as the first search result! I realized that a satirical article someone wrote about the Vagina Monologues, was leading all sorts of unsavory people to my site. Now, I don't plan to report them, or the random hacker to the FBI, but it is strange to how the net attracts all these people to my server, especially since it's only been up one month.
A better example of the net at work, was the girl in Toronto who was searching for information in her hometown of Vinnitsa - which just happens to be the name of one of the photos in my photo collection, as I am from there as well. Because of Google's amazing search technology (and my website skills) I was able to connect with another person, who randomly matched a word that that we shared, and as it turned out, a lot more as well.

Bureaucracy

(This is an update of an earlier post)
So I've already gotten in trouble once for publishing security exploits, but I think it's worth chancing it again to make my point. I went by the Student Activities office today to get a subdomain name, and decided to ask for the SOFC # for the Libertarians. The nice girl at the desk promptly looked it up for me, and then when I asked her about the procedure for changing passwords, she wrote down the password for the group's account as well. Since I had mentioned in passing my membership in another group, she wrote down their SOFC # and password as well. At no time did I actually say that I was an officer in any of these groups, show any identification or even ask for the password - I simply asked how to go about getting to it, and she provided passwords for two groups for me. Then I proceeded to the computer office to get a new subdomain for another group I'm webmaster of - again, no confirmation of my identity or membership status was necessary. Now I'd like to think that my trustworthy appearance and rugged good looks persuaded the girl at the info desk to be generous with the info, but somehow I doubt that's the case, and that worries me because many groups keep significant sums of $ in their accounts, and this is less than stellar security, despite the huge bureaucratic mess than a group has to go through to get organized and maintain their mandatory bank account with SOFC.
This reminds me of the policy at Evans library to force changes to passwords every 90 days. As a result, many staff members write their passwords on sticky notes on their monitors, and one of the library admins advised me to amend a "02f" "O2s" and so on to a "base" password as a way of remembering it, which I suppose is the advice she gives to everyone else....kinda defeating the purpose?
But, hey, what do I know, maybe Aggies really don't lie cheat or steal after all.
Ten days ago, I requested a room for the Libertarians. I had to get my advisor to sign a form where I picked my top preferences for meeting rooms because there was no way to look them up (or so the person at the registration desk said.) This means, that everyone who reserves rooms has to hope to not request the same day as any other group. Then today, I went to pick up the schedule, and they said they couldn't find it. After about 30 minutes (not kidding) of looking, they found that it had been misfiled under the wrong file. Now it wouldn't be too hard to put all this info online to eliminate security risks, calendar mix-ups, and several jobs, but this is a bureaucracy we're talking about here. Government jobs contribute to "aggregate output" -- right?

Grrr...I'm mad. I have been

Grrr...
I'm mad. I have been following the status of the legal legitimacy of arbitration for several years and I don't like this ruling one bit. The implications are clear, as both Thomas and Dieteman mention, and I have a feeling this is only the beginning. I have been dreading just this ruling for a long time, and I think the consequences are going to be much more serious than even Justice Thomas realizes. This case is about whether America is ruled by laws or by bureacratic whims, and I think the trend is pretty clear.

Die Amtrak, Die!

Like many bureacracies, Amtrak just refuses to die. New evidence of incompetency causing the latest accident as wel as an incident where man suffering a heart attack on a rush-hour commuter train was forced to wait while the train made scheduled stops to pick up passengers before reaching paramedics in Boston don't seem to deter Amtrak bureacrats from asking for more $, leading to a "a $64.7 billion transportation bill that would provide $1.2 billion for Amtrak." Bush has proposed a more typically "conservative" $521 million, as an "emergency measure". Meanwhile, if you look up Amtrak's "
Legislative Grant Request" (a document begging for more federal money) they claim to attain profitability by Dec 2002 "just around the corner", just as they have been claiming for the last dozen years. It's unclear how this is possible considering that they have a huge and growing deficit and a large % of their cars is down for repairs without the funds to do any. Meanwhile their high speed train initiative has stalled, while Japan has had low cost commuter trains going over 170mph for years.
Socialism anyone?

And so it begins...

[DRUDGE]Bureaucratic Infighting Said To Have Stalled Airport Security Effort
Almost a year after the Bush administration promised a nationwide drive to tighten airport security, such efforts are being stymied by poor coordination among federal agencies and a lack of clear-cut technical requirements, said executives of aerospace and defense companies seeking to land government contracts. The WALL STREET JOURNAL reported on Friday: Bureaucratic delays and disagreements among agencies, these officials contend, have made it hard to get decisions to deploy new technologies or speed the flow of funds for new security initiatives. Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Co. and Honeywell International Inc. are among the companies that have privately or publicly voiced such complaints, urging a more focused effort.
'There has to be some direction' from the Bush administration before the situation will improve,' said David Cote, Honeywell's chairman and chief executive. 'Until the regulation is there and the funding is put there' to establish clear priorities, he said during this week's Farnborough International Air Show near London, 'I don't think it's going to happen.'
Heather Rosenker, a spokeswoman for the TSA, said, 'We're not aware of any complaints,' adding that 'our systems are going fine, and we don't have any problems.'
She said the agency is still waiting for funding from Congress and quoted Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta at a congressional hearing Wednesday stressing that the TSA needs money to move ahead with projects.

Ah, bureaucracy, don't you just love it. As usual, when a government agency fails to do it's job, it's becuase it "needs more money," or "more regulation/power is required for to be effective" -- it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the inherent unefficiency/incompetency of government bureacuracies, could it now?
Just one question,

Censorship, etc

Check this out:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/
07/22/borderless.internet.ap/index.html
"Police in Italy didn't care that five Web sites they deemed blasphemous and thus illegal were located in the United States, where First Amendment protections apply. The police shut them down anyway in early July, simply by sitting down at the alleged offender's Rome computer. "
Yes, blasphemy is illegal in Italy, just as "hate speech" is illegal in France. Gotta love the Europeans, huh? No wonder the're in love with Palestinians...

In a tottaly unrelated story, a Russian jet full of kids on vacation slammed into a cargo jet:
"Ordered to climb higher by the electronic voice of the cockpit's automatic collision detector, the pilot of the children's plane obeyed the befuddled ground controller instead. The airliner dove head-on into a DHL cargo jet - a tragedy that might have been averted if people put more faith in machines"

Are people EVER going to learn to trust computers? Do it for the children!!!

Photos, etc

In between recovering from my rollerblading accident and studying for the GRE, I scanned in some more photos today. This bring the total number to some ungodly amount. (1170)

Check out the ones I took in Vegas

Also, I made the TAMULUG website this weekend. What do you think? I am also working on our satire site, www.movementarian.com, but that is staying under wraps until it goes live...

SC Report

The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism posted a "Supreme Court
Year in Review" for 2002 outlining decisions relevant to issues of individual rights. Interestingly, the court sided for individual rights in 55% of the cases, with Clarence Thomas (not suprisingly, my favorite justice) voting 75% for freedom.

So is 55% a positive trend? Yes, but the court should rule for liberty 100% of the time, and I doubt that it is enought to counteract the many anti-liberty actions of Congress, et all since Sept 11th. Still, I'm glad that there are people (kinda) on my side in high places.

Yay!

I got A's in my INFO and Logic classes! (Big suprize, huh?)

In other news, I compiled a Linux kernel and the associated OS from scratch at work over the last two days...fun stuff, only I need to be studying for the GRE instead of playing with computers....

oh, and I got up before class to swim two days this past week! Usually I barely make it to my morning classes as it is, so I was amazed myself.

The first summer session is almost over!

I finished my swimming class today, and I've really improved over the last few months, from dog paddling back and forth in the water to finally getting my freestyle technique down, learning how to do flip turns, and generally not looking totally incompetent in the water anymore. I was afraid of failing it when I started the class, as coditioning swimming is probably the hardest KINE class at A&M, but by the end I *almost* had an A, and would have if I had not taken it pass/fail.
Oh, and there are two other side effects -I finally started replacing some of those emergency supplies ..err fat I had been generating with muscle, and the endorphin induced high I get after workouts has been keeping me in relatively high spirits despite a very dull summer. Oh, and today, when I entered the outdoor pool, I could have sworn all the girls checked me out (or is it my speedos?) hehe

Quote

I found a quote I like on the web, which sumarizes my philosophy pretty well:

"What is is. Perceive it. Integrate it honestly. Act on it. Idealize it."

Web Stuff

I redesigned Laurel's Site for a totally new look and posted a totally new site, based on my INFO 209 Project, "A guide to compression for the Web"

Check out Laurel's Site
before
and
after!

Also, I am working on a new essay (several essays actually) called "Politics for the Unitiated"
A draft of its beginning's is currently up here.

Before They Were Part II...

By Francisco Rangel
Famous movie characters weren't always comedians, knights or scary little
kids. They were pizza delivery guys, garbage collectors and even tech support.



Jerry Seinfeld from Seinfeld

Customer: I bought a 256MB DIMM from your company last week....

Seinfeld: Did it come in a bag? One of those bags that look like airplane
peanut bags?

Customer: Um, if you're referring to the anti-static bag, then...

Seinfeld: What's the deal with airplane peanuts?

Customer: Look, I just need help installing the DIMM.

Seinfeld: Why do they call it a DIMM? Are the people who created it not
BRIGHT enough?

Customer: *click*

Sir Bedevere from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Customer: I bought a CD and I want to burn it, but I don't know if it's
copy-protected.

Bedevere: There are ways of telling whether it is copy-protected.

Customer: Are there? Tell me!

Bedevere: Now, what do you do with CDs?

Customer: Burn them!

Bedevere: What do you burn apart from CDs?

Customer: More CDs!

Bedevere: No.

Customer: Wood?

Bedevere: Right. So, why do CDs burn?

Customer: Because they're made of wood?

Bedevere: Exactly. And wood floats in water. So logically...

Customer: If the CD floats in water... It won't be copy-protected... and
I will be able to burn it!

Bedevere:Yes!

Customer: Thanks! *click*

Cole Sear (the little kid) from The Sixth Sense


Customer: Hi, is this where they help you with broken computers parts.

Cole: Yes. I see dead computers.

Customer: Well, I can't get any sound from my computer.

Cole: I see. Dead speakers?

Customer: No, my speakers are working fine. The little light is on.

Cole: Sometimes speakers lights are on like regular speakers. They don't
know they're dead.

Customer: Oh, wait. The volume was turned down. Never mind. *click*

Stuff

I've decided to do some *minor* updates to my Resume

heh heh...

Economics

In other news, I am reading Human Action and it's AWESOME! Mises explains the intricacies of economics as clearly as Hazzlit explains its basics and Rand explains philosophy. I've just started the book, but I've been highlighting practically ever other sentence as a quote to add to my list.....

Oh, and I got a 100 on my last logic exam! Yay!

Annoying Stuff

My INFO class is BOOORING!
We were learning html today and it was like someone teaching me how to tie my shoes. I make it a point to go to every class, but I think I would be much better of skipping and going to work where I can get paid to do real work with computers. Plus it's really frigging annoying that my prof does her html code in ALL CAPS, without "quotes" and with huge tabs in front of her code. (It's against the current html standard) Not to mention that she requires us to use frames and I consider frames a big no no when it comes to make quality sites.
Then at work today, this cute sounding, but clueless girl calls in and I spend AN HOUR trying to figure out just what her problem is. My favorite thing with people like that is when I ask them to do something simple like "open up your browser" and then wait for 5 minutes as I hear them struggling and saying thinks like "ok" and "here we go" and "hmmm" and and I ask them if they need help and they say "no, I got it!" and then finally they ask "so, what's a browser?"
!!!

Definitions

Irony: David stays up all night programing instead of sleeping/studying and get's a low grade on his INFO exam on computer systems the next day.

Public educamation: He still gets the highest grade in class.

Irony (#2): David practices every day for his swimming exam thursday only to find himself sore and cramped up all over wednsday night.

Grrrr...

The DNS2Go DNS server is down!

GRRRRR!

(update: the server is back! Yay!)

My New Website is up!

Welcome to my new website!
Now featuring ASP.NET, XML, inline frames, an access database, 100% CSS formating and XHTML!

Please click "comment" below and tell me what you think!

issues /other blogs

I definately need to get used to living and cooking on my own. I just left out some open catchup and tomato sauce for over a week. The weird thing is, until my roomate didn't point it out, I didn't even expect the stuff to spoil.

anyway, check out the blogs people have gotten from me

Laurel's Blog
Tim's Blog