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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please excuse the recent lack

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

Where are the liberals now?

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

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

Thanks to Mr. Anonymous for this this comment:

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

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

In the News..

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

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

Child porn, Bill O'Reilly, Libertarianism and Hentai

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

Edit: A further comment. O'Reilly says

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

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

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

US Army expands Iraqi weapons ban to toy guns..

kids fight back..

Hippies: I knew they were good for something...

I was ego-surfing the web

I was ego-surfing the web today, when I came accross a biography of my namesake -- in Russian. It seems that Äàâèä Âåêñëåð was a a psychologist at Columbia University who invented the IQ test. Specifically, he came up with the following definition of intelligence: "The aggregate, or global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment."

Unfortunately, when Äàâèä came to the United States, he spelled his name "Wechsler" rather than my "Veksler," which is why the very-appropropriate legacy of my namesake remained hidden from me for so long. (Actually, when I was 16, I had my first name legally changed from "Dennis" to "David" -- but that's besides the point.)

Martha Stewart: Political Prisoner

There are a number of interesting stories covering the witch hunt the government is pursuing against Martha Stewart. A number of papers are running stories such as "Official Poll: Is Martha Stewart guilty?" and Poll: Majority of New Yorkers think Martha Stewart is guilty. How the hell is Joe Shmoe supposed to know the details of the legal code or what Martha did or did not do? Fortunately, most of the editorials I've seen recognize the case for what is is: "U.S. government makes her the subject of a criminal test case designed to further expand the already unrecognizable boundaries of the U.S. federal securities laws." A number of sites in support of Martha have popped up, including Martha's own MarthaTalks.com and the SaveMartha.com, which features several hilarious clips from her "enemies."

Martha's own defense has been to say that she is only being prosecuted because she is a successful woman -- but I think this take is misguided. Many successful men have gone to jail for insider trading, and Martha's defense is doomed unless she acknowledges the real motivations of her prosecutors: to inspire fear, uncertainty and doubt into successful businessmen everywhere, and gain political prominence in the process. As the must-read article "Martha Stewart: Political Prisoner" points out,

It is politics, not the pursuit of justice, which is driving this case. Stewart is well-connected politically, but it is to Democrats, who control none of the branches of government at the present time. Her wealth and public persona make her a convenient target of a very political U.S. Department of Justice and of U.S. attorneys who see the example of the Guiliani path to fame and fortune.

I can't say whether Martha broke the law or not: I'm not lawyer, I don't know the facts of the case, and even if I were a lawyer, the SEC regulations are vague enough to mean whatever the government wants them to mean in any particular case. What I do know, is that the insider trading laws are a mockery of justice, and that the witchhunt against Martha Steward is only happening because she and Sam Waksal are successful individuals, and in today's world, success can be a very dangerous thing.

The title says it all:

The title says it all: Starving [African] Nations Reject U.S. Food Donation. If you want my take, read last years blog on it.

In other news, the Defense Dept is adopting the "new" IPv6 protocol. My guess is that when every bussiness has IPv6 implemented in 5 years, the Pentagon will still be conducting studies about how to best implement the protocol.

I'm a corporate tool.

A few months ago, I placed a tiny, invisible image on my blog in exchange for "product samples." A few weeks later, I got a bucket with a shirt, chocolate drinks, other assorted merchandize, and a link to "Raging Cow," a blog "written by a cow" that just happens to have the name and image of a new chocolate drink product. The blog itself has various "humorous" rants that make no sense whatsoever and never explicitly mention the product the blog is advertizing. The only hint that this is a actually an experimental guerilla marketing technique is a tiny link in the corder that sats "©2003 Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc." Will it work? I have my doubts, but their crawler will probably notice this link and send me more merchandize, so I'll be a good corporate tool and keep on blogging about it. You can sign up here, but your blog has to get 50+ hits a day to qualify.

Do you know this bird?

A few weeks ago, I noticed a little bird nursing two eggs on a palm tree two feet outside my window, and I decided to try to take a few snapshots of the chicks. Although I've seen it clean and feed the baby chicks, whenever I approach the nest on the porch to take some pictures, the mamma bird immediately covers the chicks with her wing and gives me "the stare" until I feel like a tresspasser on my own porch. I took some photos anyway, which you may see here. Update: I liked up the bird, and it's a white-winged dove.

Regarding Monopolies...

I had to cut short a letter to the editor I wrote about monopolies, but if you want to read some common misconceptions about monopolies, you can do so here.

My mom and sister are

My mom and sister are currently on vacation in Israel, visiting my grandmother and many other relatives. With that in mind, I found the following post from James Lileks to be an eloquent summary of my current thoughts on the "peace process":

The top-of-the-hour radio news played today's news just as you'd expect - everything shoved through the tit-for-tat template. Israel attempts to take out a terror leader; Hamas "responds" with a bombing. As if they're equal. As if targeting the car that ferries around some murderous SOB is the same as sending a blissed-out teenager to blow nails and screws through the flesh of afternoon commuters so he can bury himself in the heaving bosom of the heavenly whorehouse. Cycle of violence, don't you know.

They don't have helicopters, we're told, so they use suicide bombers. If they had helicopters, they would have strafed the bus and everyone waiting at the corner. Give them a nation where Hamas runs unchecked, and they'll have helicopters. They won't be Apaches. The bill of sale will be calculated in Euros and the manual written in French. By then the excuse for the terror won't be oppression; it'll be "the legacy of oppression." Sometimes I swear the mainstream media won't take a look at the Palestinian's horrid death-cult subculture until we learn that a suicide bomber played "Doom" at an Internet cafe for five minutes. And then they'll blame Intel.

Also, check out today's Cox and Forkum

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.

JIHAD IN THE PRESENT TIME

Take a look at "JIHAD IN THE PRESENT TIME," an "essay" found on a mainstream Pakistani Islamic website. The writer asks:

Has jihad now become binding on every Muslim?

...and provides the answer:

Until Islam as a Way of Life dominates the whole of the world and until Allah's Law is enforced everywhere in the world, it is binding and incumbent upon the Muslims to fight on against the disbelievers

Every Muslim is bound to continue fighting against the disbelievers as long as they in any part of the world have power and strength enough to persecute the Muslims and as long as a person desiring to accept Islam is reluctant to do so jut because he fears to be persecuted and tortured by the disbelieves and it he somehow enters the fold of Islam, he becomes a target of their (i.e. the disbelievers') oppression.

The object of Jihad in this case is the Indian army in Kashmir, but the essay provides a large number of quotes and commentary from the Qur'an which you may judge for yourself. The writer is a leader within the Hizbul Mujahideen, a quasi-military outfit sanctioned by the Pakistani government. (Thanks to BOL for the link.)

Thanks to Tim for this

Thanks to Tim for this story about a classy Nevada brothel. See what happens when politicians stop being meddling nannies and allow people to choose their own lifestyle? Best of luck to them, but they have a long way to go before they catch up with the Japanese.

Which party does this list of proposed policies describe?

• "Special rights" for certain races/cultures/ethnicities
• Censorship and arbitrary imprisonment of non-crimes such as sexism, "heterocentrism", "ableism" etc.
• Arbitrary redistribution of wealth on the basis of wealth, race, success, etc
• "Reasonable" slave-reparations plan
• State-worship replacing God-worship (note: I don't condone either)
• Extensive gun control and confiscation from "suspect" groups
• Nationalized child care, health care, and education, and social security for the retired
• Rational thinking replaced by mass brainwashing in public institutions
• Arbitrary court system dominated by politics rather than legal code
• Belief that race, class, and society fix the essential traits of every person.
• Many other policies that sacrifice individuals for "society" and the "common good"

Seems like the usual liberal agenda, right? Replace "slave" by "Jew" and "heterocentrism" by "homocentrism" and you have platform of the National Socialist Workers (NAZI) Party.

(This blog inspired by "an extremist homophobic Republican nazi" on the Hobbes forum.)

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.

"Drug cartels thrive in US national parks"

The CSMonitor reports that "Drug cartels thrive in US national parks." The blame is placed solely on the druggies, but do you think this would happen if the park land was privately owned or growing weeds was legal? When the government places a very profitable (and harmless) industry outside the law, what else can it expect but the Prohibition all over again? Well, at least public land is finally being put to a productive use.

New Saddam's in Circulation

A brief lesson in central banking: after a number of sources reported that the Saddam's dinar is gaining against the dollar, the new Iraqi government is printing new dinars -- complete with a photo of the deposed dictator on the front. Why? The dinar gained value against the dollar after the fall of the old regime becuase people thought no more would be printed. Printing massive amounts of currency is a favorite means of goverments to finance their Statist schemes, and an end to the old currency meant that the amount of dinars in the economy would be more or less fixed, increasing it's utility as a currency. However, Iraqi bureaucrats wouldn't let the demise of the dinar's namesake stop such an easy and tempting source of revenue, so it looks like the printing presses will keep on rolling. Even if a new currency replaces the old Saddam dinar, it may still prove to be more popular (and valuable) if the people have reason to mistrust the soundness of the currency, just as the pre-1991 "Swiss dinar" is much more valuable than the Saddam dinar now.

My room in 360°

After cleaning up around my room this weekend, I decided to make a 360° composite snapshot with a Matrix-styled theme on my pc's. Check out the results in two versions 145K and 1.6MB

Is driving a "right"?

Remember "Sultaana Freeman," the woman who refused to show her face for her driver's license photo? A number of arguments have been presented in support and in opposition of her "right" to have her photo taken with her veil on. Unfortunately, since no one understands what a "right" is anymore, no one can say whether driving is in fact a right and just what freedoms the the separation of [mosque] and state clause allows. The current interpretation is that as long as your religion (a) does not pose any immediate danger to the public, and (b) is followed by a sufficient number of electorally - motivated followers, you will be free to practice whatever stupid tricks your holy book prescribes. This is of course an arbitrary doctrine without any rational or Constitutional basis. So, "Native Americans" can smoke their dope and wear their bald eagle feathers on their own time, but they can't file for unemployment insurance if they get fired for smoking their dope at work or claim that cannot find work because Friday is their "holy-day." (Whereas Christians who observe the usual Sat-Sun holiday can.) The rest of us can't wear feathers of smoke dope because although that passes (a), it fails (b).

All men are born with a right to life, liberty, and property -- and that includes the right to practice any idiocy your particular shaman prescribes -- as long as you don't harm anyone else in the process. The right to liberty and property includes the right to own and drive a car -- but it is a violation of someone else's right to force them to pay for your roads and traffic cops. There is no right to drive on public roads for anyone, whether you are Catholic, Southern Baptist or Harry Krishna because the maintenance of a "public roads" is theft. So in deciding whether Mrs. "Sultaana Freeman" has the right to have her face hidden involves making the best of a bad (immoral to be exact) situation. The question her collectivist judge is currently asking -- what her religion "really" says is completely irrelevant in the matter. The number of people who share your delusion has no bearing on its truth. The only question the judge should ask "Does wearing a veil pose a threat to the safety of others?" Since wearing a veil undermines the primary function of having an ID (and thus undermines the valid police function of maintaining safety and carrying out justice), I would say that the answer is clearly yes. On that basis, and on that basis alone, there is no "right" to conceal your identity on a public road.

Now as to why I used quotations quotations for Mrs. Sultaana Freeman's name, it turns out that her real name is "Sandra Keller," and as the photo taken for her 1999 felony aggravated battery (of a foster child) conviction shows, she has already exposed her real face to the cops a number of times since her 1997 conversion to Islam.

"The two faces of Arab terror"

The following post by David Horowitz is a great summary of the "peace process" in the Middle East:

As the Road Map continues, it is every day evident that for Arabs, peace is war continued by other means. Thus it was with the Oslo "Peace Process" which demanded words from the Palestinians and deeds from the Israelis, and led to land for the Arabs and suicide bombers for the Jews. Thus it is with the current charade in Sharm El-Sheikh. "Five Arab Leaders Denounce Violence" is the Washington Post headline on the peace summit that took place. And, to be fair, it is accurate since that is exactly what the world class liars who head the Arab states that were present did. The Jews, of course, were once again expected to respond to the hot air with actual deeds, which they once again did. In particular, they met an Arab request which was to release 100 Arab murderers of Jews. The most notable was a killer named Ahmad Jubarah who was whisked to the presence of his patron Arafat, for a ceremonial kiss. Jubarah had blown up 14 Israeli civilians in a terrorist attack 27 years ago. Meeting with reporters, he had the only honest words of the peace process to date. He was asked if he regretted his terrorist act. No, actually, he didn't. "We were in war and still we are in war," he said. Quite. The Arabs declared war on Israel the day it was created in 1948. The Arab agenda then as now was to destroy the Jewish state. Until they renounce that aim, which would mean jailing and executing the terrorists among them -- Arafat included -- the peace talk is talk, and the Jews better not forget it.

I saw Horowitz speak at my school two years ago, and he is a great speaker who's conversion experience (liberal Jew who learned from experience how repulsive the left is) reminded me of my own.

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:

So I'm learning Visual Basic.Net

So I'm learning Visual Basic.Net and I'd like to focus my learning efforts on making a program that's actually useful to help me stay motivated. Can you think of a simple GUI program that you might like to use? If so, please leave me a comment!

Thoughts on the new WTC Design.

Have you seen the design chosen to replace the twin towers? It's an atrocity: a bare skeleton where the building stood and a big hole in the ground where it fell. Apparently Mr. Libeskind has chosen to erect a giant tombstone as his tribute to the "resurgence of life." As a further insult, he has decided to place a garden atop the framework as "a constant affirmation of life." It seems that a few weeds are a better affirmation of "life" than the work of 100 thousand individuals. There are a number of groups that share my indignation at the chosen design: one group is hoping to rebuild the twin towers, while another is suing the port authority. It seems that neither the old nor the new WTC are subject to the building code imposed on private enterprises because they were/will be maintained by the Port Authority, which is immune to prosecution. I'm not qualified to speculate whether this made any difference on 9/11, but I have much more confidence in private construction that does not follow a building code than a public one that does. Since it was found out that Mr. Libeskind will not actually construct the new WTC, as he has never build a skyscraper before, there have been a number of alternative designs proposed. Most of them are impossible designs made by amateurs, but here is one I actually like.

One a side note, the skyscraper in general may be becoming an outdated relic. The rise of the Internet and intranets has greatly diminished the need for large numbers of people to work in the same place, allowing large, sprawling corporate campuses to become the new standard. As much as I love skyscrapers, they may soon join the sailing ship and biplane in my list of great symbols of man's mind surpassed by even greater inventions.

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.

Interesting stuff from the news

CNN reports that a new television program called 'Meow TV' will consist of a tv show entirely for cats. This may be a clever marketing ploy, but does anyone actually buy this? Until cats start to do their own shopping, I think it will be a pretty stupid idea, but I'm glad to live in a country that can afford to market human-like food... and now television to animals. I remember how in Ukraine, everyone would make fun of Americans for buying food made especially for animals while bums starved in the streets. (Of course, no one starves in a rich country unless they want to, and even then nowadays some social worker will probably force feed you.)

SecurityFocus reports that the CIA may have "too much security" -- it has ancient software, restricts internet access and PDA's to analysts who need it, and generally fails to keep up with innovations in technology. The sad (and scary) result is that "analysts maintain informal networks of personal contacts within the agency just to track down the information they need to do their job." In a related story, my web host (but not my own servers, which are ironclad :-) ) was hacked this morning with the SSH crc32 compensation attack detector exploit. The damage was light, but if you are running SSH 2.2 or older, I strongly suggest that you upgrade ASAP! For you movie buffs, this may be the same exploit that was used in the new movie Matrix Reloaded.

Also, anyone want to buy an aircraft carrier? Only $4.5mil USD