General

Consumer profiling can make you gay

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3202 days
by in General

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.

But wait, there’s more. Not only has this trend become standard procedure at sites such as Amazon.com and NetFlix, even TiVo is in on the action.
Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described “straightest guy on earth,” he tried to tame TiVo’s gay fixation by recording war movies
and other “guy stuff.”

“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…

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3203 days
by in General

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.

Rant on “structural racism”

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3214 days
by in General, Listserv

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

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3221 days
by in General

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!” “

LTE: “Recapturing the Lost Art of Gracious Victorian Living”, by Linda S. Lichter

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3231 days
by in General

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..

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3235 days
by in General

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

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3240 days
by in General

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?

One more quote from the same piece: “The bottom line in commercial radio is the bottom line, and entertainment is merely a by-product, if there is any at all.”
Let me quote my friend Tim on this:

“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.

Nevertheless, the Touchstone writers insist that socialism is not only inevitable, but desirable: “[According to] dialectical analysis…the only rational and humane conclusion is to do everything we can to bring about socialism.”

What can I say to that? According to Marxist theory, socialism may indeed be the inevitable conclusion, but if it’s really inevitable, there’s no point worrying about it, since we are merely products of our linguistic chains and “capitalism [cannot] go on destroying lives and the ecology indefinitely.”

Bush

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3240 days
by in General

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:

SSN.jpg" alt="SSN1" />
The Republicans also reassure us that Bush’s scheme is NOT in fact privatization:
<span class='caps'>SSN</span>1

Ideas Matter!

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3243 days
by in General

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.

…

0
3252 days
by in General

Nothing exciting happening lately…but Tim’s kitten is pretty cute:
Kitty!

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

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