Archive for the 'My Life…' Category

I finally registered for my

Posted by David on May 30th, 2003

I finally registered for my first classes of graduate school today on my way to a masters in MIS. I will be taking VB.net and Database Design the first summer semester and taking off the second to go to California. Getting into grad school turned out to be a big fiasco becuase my recomendation letters were somehow lost by the admissions office, and my application nearly got lost in the "incomplete" pile. Apparently the address given on the application downloaded from the website was old or inaccurate. Well either way, I should be out of here in a year if everything goes well and I take a full load.

By the way, I saw The Pianist last night, and the movie really sucked, despite by best expectations. Growing up Jewish, I saw dozens of movies about the Holocaust and grew terribly sick of them when I realized that nobody had a clue of what caused it or even attempted to answer why. More often than not, it was portrayed as a natural disaster, not to be understood and learned from, but merely blindly countered with "never again" without knowing what was the evil thing that should not be repeated. I know now of course, which is why I was all the more angered when I saw the same attitude towards 9/11.

Anyway, I thought the movie would have much more piano playing and less drawn out and impresonal history of the Warsaw ghetto and several scenes which reminded me of how I sometimes scrounge around my apartment looking for leftoover food. The only part I liked was the smuggling of the guns, which reminded me of a flier I saw some time ago (shown below). The Nazis, Chinese and Soviets never banned all guns — they just made sure that they were controlled tightly enough so that no "subversives" could get their hands on them. By this standard, gun laws in England and parts of the US (like NYC) are already equal to or worse than those under the Nazi’s and Soviets.

If you’re wondering why all the interest in guns all of a sudden, it’s becuase I decided to get one a while back and started doing research on both the legal and psychological aspects of gun control. I found that the gun-control movement exists as a natural extension of the collectrivist-liberal philosophy — in this case, intrincisim (guns are inherently evil becuase men are unevitably unstable and amoral), determinism (violence is inevitable, we can only choose to take away the weapons), Statism (the State owns the people) and malevolence (a desire for criminals to have an advantage over honest citizens). The last seemed shocking to me too, but it is easy to see in explicit terms when one looks at the pacifist’s foreign policy agenda in areas like terrorism, the UN, and Israel.

Some psychologists have looked at the anti-gun mentality as a passsive-agressive mental disorder, but I see it as a typically irrational reflection of the subjectivist’s own mentality. Lacking values themselves, the liberals/subjectivists/posmodernists seek to destroy value out of pure envy. Their tolerance is actually an intolerance of principle, and they seek to riducule and destroy the concept of value itself (hence subjectivism disquised as "tolerance" and "diversity"). A principled and moral man flies in the face of the degrading collectivist view of human nature and cannot be taken on directly, so they seek to eat away at his principles by deterministic nanny-state policies such as welfare and gun control. For the great majority of liberals, the connection between their philosophy and its political outcome is subconscious, which means that rational challenges to their views can be that much more powerful by contrast. Unfortunately, the philosophy of rights, reason, and reality is so lacking these days that both sides muddle on without really knowing what issues they are debating. Liberty is lost in the end because the bureaucracy is inherently unstable and politicians always power hungry, so that one side is always pushing for slavery while the other can only respond "not so fast!" as they give up their lives one regulation at a time.

monopoly

My Gradumacation

Posted by David on May 10th, 2003

Well, I graduated yesterday. I got a BS in Economics and Political Science from TAMU and a cool watch from my dad (on the right.) What does the future hold for me? I don’t know, but if you’re looking to hire a highly-motivated techie to design the next killer app, let me know. Meanwhile, I will be having fun at the Objectivist Summer Conference and Cancun this summer as I catch up on my programming and philosophy and put my plans for the future in focus.

my cap

¡Voy a México!

Posted by David on April 18th, 2003

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

Update: Check out the various photos I took along the way.

What I’ve been up to…

Posted by David on January 3rd, 2003

I’m working on some new websites and learning PHP/MySQL in the process. Check out Capitalism Worldwide to see one of the PHP/MySQL content management sites I have been developing. I celebrated New Year’s at Laurel’s parent’s place, and took lots of pictures, but unfortunately, my BRAND NEW digital camera broke on my way home :-(

Thanksgiving…

Posted by David on December 1st, 2002

I had a great time in San Antonio over thanksgiving, including good food, several new books to read, and a brand new digital camera! Expect higher quality photos soon!

Meanwhile, check out a few shots I took with the new camera…

Back in Aggieland!

Posted by David on September 7th, 2002

WHOOP!

WHOOP!

Swimming Sucks

Posted by David on June 18th, 2002

Actually, I love swimming, but lately I have been cramped up all over and seriously not ready for my 100 yard swim test on thursday…I should probably spend more time at the pool practicing and less on the keyboard getting carpal tunnel…

(Update: I passed my swim test! Yay!)

My South Park Character!

Posted by David on June 15th, 2002


Get your own…

Libertarian Convention..

Posted by David on June 10th, 2002

…was a blast! I met many, many cool people, talked philosophy, politics, economics, ethics, and business all night, ate some great food, stayed in a snazzy hotel room, and got the (unofficial) job of LP state webmaster in addition to potentially doing some local campagn websites. I also made a tentative speech plan for the coming year and met several potential speaker I can invite to come to A&M.
There were some negative aspects however, such as the highly argumentative nature of the nomination and convention process (more than should be, methinks) Also, some less than qualified people were nominated to office, but I suppose that’s what elections are all about. In any case, I bet the Libertarians are about the only party that actually have a real Parliamentary – style convention process, whereas the Dems, Reps, and Greens probably have big PR gigs, while the real decisions are made in smoky bars and strip clubs. I’d like to know how true that is.

Check out photos
here