State-Imposed Angst

I recently highlighted the following paragraph from an op-ed titled "Environmental Angst", by Keith Lockitch:

The only way to leave no "footprint" would be to die -- a conclusion that is not lost on many green ideologues. Consider the premise of the nonfiction bestseller titled "The World Without Us," which fantasizes about how the earth would "recover" if all humanity suddenly became extinct. Or, consider the chilling, anti-human conclusion of an op-ed discussing cloth versus disposable diapers: "From the earth's point of view, it's not all that important which kind of diapers you use. The important decision was having the baby." The next time you trustingly adopt a "green solution" like fluorescent lights, cloth diapers or wind farms, only to be puzzled when met with still further condemnation and calls for even more sacrifices, remember what counts as a final solution for these ideologues. [bold added]

As frequently happens when a culture adopts and implements immoral and impractical ideas, truth turns out be be stranger than fiction. An environmental agency in California, the California Air Resources Board, is threatening to kill off a nascent aftermarket industry that adds additional battery capacity with plug-in capability to such cars as Toyota Priuses (via Instapundit and gas 2.0):

The other potential problem with plug-in hybrids involves unburned gasoline vapors [The other was that hybrids "cold start" more than normal cars, and catalytic converters don't work well when cold. --ed] .... When gasoline-powered vehicles are turned off, some of the fuel in the gas tank evaporates. These vapors are stored in an adjacent canister built to hold up to three days worth of vapors. If you leave your car's engine turned off for more than three days, the canister overflows and the vapors leak into the air and cause pollution. But if you turn your car on before the three days are up, the canister vents the vapors through the engine, allowing the catalytic converter to clean the emissions before they come out of the tailpipe.

Most people typically don't keep their cars turned off for more than three days. But with a plug-in hybrid, it's possible for the gasoline engine to not turn on for days or even weeks at a time. That's especially true if drivers never hop on the freeway and don't otherwise exceed 34 mph. As a result, it's possible for plug-in hybrids to spew gasoline vapors out of the vapor canister on an almost-constant basis, turning a Prius into a gross polluter.

Consequently, air resources board engineers are recommending that plug-in hybrids undergo extensive cold-start emissions and gasoline-evaporation testing. According to agency documents, the tests likely will cost about $20,000 to $25,000 per vehicle. Swanton said in an interview that the board may only require that one vehicle be tested, but the agency's own documents state that the board may force companies to submit up to five test vehicles, meaning the total test costs could amount to $100,000 to $125,000.

Such tests would be prohibitively costly for small startups like 3Prong Power. They also appear to be somewhat capricious. Swanton said the agency's concerns stem in part from testing by at least one major auto manufacturer, which found significant pollution problems in cold-start emissions testing of its own plug-in hybrid prototypes. But the test results "are confidential," because they're considered trade secrets, he said. In other words, a state agency is about to adopt new regulations that could cause some companies to go bankrupt based on testing results that allegedly reveal a problem that it won't reveal publicly. ... [bold added]

And this is just one small excerpt from a much longer article that, needless to say, completely misses the fact that the market for unmodified hybrid cars would ether not exist at all or would be far smaller were it not for government interference in the economy! Remember that when, as you read the article, one environmentalist after another suddenly becomes a champion of free markets.

Environmental regulations are immoral and, as this story shows amply, impractical when human life is the standard of value -- even if smuggled in as the desire to drive with less exhaust. They violate property rights and, in doing so, set the stage for unlimited government meddling in the daily affairs of everyone, including all the little dictators who clamored for them in the first place. When you cede the premise that it is okay for the government to dictate terms to the citizens whose freedom it should be protecting, you open a Pandora's box and end up, in effect, uttering supplications to power-drunk bureaucrats, like the following:

[T]he board's attempt to strictly regulate plug-in hybrids flies in the face of the sweeping new regulations it adopted just last month to combat greenhouse gas emissions. Among other things, the new rules will reduce the amount of carbon in motor fuels and require future cars to get better gas mileage. The regulations stemmed from a 2006 landmark law that put California at the forefront in the fight against global warming.

Clearly, the board's proposed regulations on plug-in hybrids are not in keeping with last month's vote, nor will they help California maintain its leadership role in combating greenhouse gases. It also makes no sense to snuff out the efforts of green entrepreneurs before they've even had a chance to grow.

Brothers, you asked for it! The moment you decided that your goal of clean air warranted forcing other people to change their behavior regardless of their best judgement of their own self-interest, you set the stage for that government gun to eventually point in your own direction.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 398

Powell History Recommends...

... FRS!

Whether you love his history courses and wonder how he does it, or have found other advice from his blog useful in the past, or -- as in my case -- both, follow the link.

Criticism of Peter Schiff

Awhile back, I pointed to a video clip of economist Peter Schiff standing his ground even in the face of open ridicule as he correctly called the collapse of the housing bubble. Last night, via Donald Luskin, I encountered a very long post by Mike Shedlock (aka Mish) criticizing Schiff. My impression is that it is a mixed bag, but I found the following noteworthy:

I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008. There are many other such claims on the internet.

Also, although I haven't gotten to them yet, I saw this morning that an HBL post mentioned two critiques of that very post.

What will publishing look like?

Yesterday, Dismuke forwarded me a link to an article about how publishing is changing with the advent of electronic media. It's geared more towards novelists, but I think any writer would do well to take a look at it.

Here's s sample:

If you think about it, shipping physical books back and forth across the country is starting to seem pretty 20th century. Novels are getting restless, shrugging off their expensive papery husks and transmigrating digitally into other forms. Devices like the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle have gained devoted followings. Google has scanned more than 7 million books into its online database; the plan is to scan them all, every single one, within 10 years. Writers podcast their books and post them, chapter by chapter, on blogs. Four of the five best-selling novels in Japan in 2007 belonged to an entirely new literary form called keitai shosetsu: novels written, and read, on cell phones. Compared with the time and cost of replicating a digital file and shipping it around the world--i.e., zero and nothing--printing books on paper feels a little Paleolithic. [links dropped]

I have several Japanese coworkers. I'll have to ask them about keitai shosetsu....

On the subject of writing, a quiz over at Rational Jenn's says I'd have been a playwright in the Middle Ages.

Helloooouch!

Word to the wise: Don't place a cell phone too close to something you might not want to "answer":

Also file under, "I know I shouldn't find this funny, but...." Something about the ring tone just kills me. (HT: The Fail Blog)

25 Random Facts...

... about Alexander Marriott! Regarding item 23, I think many will ignore his advice. Half of the doctoral rite of initiation is the mind-games the candidate ends up playing on himself directly because of the fact named in the middle sentence in item 6.

-- CAV

Two on Hefner

Some stupid puns are impossible to resist!

[Editorial Note: While composing this post, I realized that using the obvious, four-syllable word to describe what I am discussing might make my blog unable to get past certain common filters. So I shall use the word "umptysquat" instead. Besides, I find it amusing.]

Via Arts and Letters Daily, whose blurb momentarily threw me for a loop by mentioning "the anatomical variety among bunnies," I found a couple of book reviews at the web site of n+1, a magazine that might be worth looking into. One of them discusses Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds, and the other, Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.

I have always found whatever umptysquat I have encountered odd, off-putting, boring (more on that later), or just plain confusing, to the point that my curiosity about it has been mainly of an intellectual, or even anthropological, nature.

"Why waste time and money on magazines when there are real women out there?" might summarize my overall attitude, but there was always an additional rebellion against many of the subtexts I'd encounter. "Sex isn't wrong or shameful, so this isn't doing anything for me," would sum up much of this. And then there are the fetishes. Were I to take my own limited forays into umptysquat as an indication, I would conclude that I am the only man on earth who doesn't constantly fantasize about lesbian sex. Maybe I'm weird. Oh well.

Many of the attitudes about sexuality one encounters are, predictably, reflective of the views dominant in our culture, a major one being the Madonna-whore complex, which is the mind-body dichotomy as applied to sexuality. Human psychology and sexuality both being as complex as they are, it would certainly follow that much of the emotional fallout of our altruistic and collectivist culture would also play out as common, but warped sexual tastes, and views about sexuality.

So it was mainly boredom -- from a desire for more -- that really drove me away, and on many levels at that. Let's see.... What do I find more interesting? A random slut -- or an attractive woman I have taken the time to know? Sex with an endless parade of women I barely know -- or a shared life of physical and emotional intimacy with one woman I care deeply about? Notice what's missing from the umptysquat here: the fact that women have minds. (The efforts by Playboy to overcome this limitation as described in the first review were necessarily superficial.)

For a young man exploring his sexuality for the first time, this may be fine, but when I was growing up, Playboy wasn't even good for this because all the models looked the same.

In those days [starting in the mid 1950s --ed] Hefner liked his centerfolds "round, soft, and with a maximum emphasis on the beauty of being female." The Playmates of the first three decades follow this formula, flashing biteable bottoms and breasts. Things go downhill in the 1980s as breast implants became popular: the new boobs are globe-like and tactile only in the way that bowling balls are tactile. Some of them cast a glare, like cartoon balloons. Food metaphors no longer apply.

Something else (related) happens around this time: Playboy ceases to be about the erotic everyday encounter. Flesh and blood women turn to images; the "girl next door" becomes distinctly mediated. The bunnies were always mediated, of course, but something about the earlier photographs made you forget the medium and feel as though you were staring straight into the eyes of a luscious partner. Enthusiastic photoshopping has aided the transformation. Gone are the freckles and downy arm hairs of the predecessors. Breasts are surgically standardized; gym routines and spray tans produce identically toned and tinted bodies. Girls of all ethnicities blend together into one latte-colored woman, and the result looks computer-generated. When you try to imagine how the models might feel and smell, things like rubber come to mind. [bold added]

Exactly. If, as I do, you find beauty in actual women, including their inevitable departures from the Platonic "ideal" the entertainment industry wishes to foist on everyone, and you were trapped in the late eighties, you were out of luck even for window-shopping.

Having said that, sexuality is a very complicated phenomenon, involving one's deepest convictions (both in terms of how one views sexuality and in terms of what one responds to on an emotional and sexual level) and one's psychology (which can affect what optional things, such as what physical "type" one finds attractive, manifest as fetishes, or even affect sexual orientation). There is an enormous variety in what a rational, healthy individual can find sexually attractive. That strikes me as something to celebrate, rather than hide from behind the photoshopped pages of a tawdry magazine.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 397

Admin Note: ISP Problems

Due to connectivity problems at home, posting and comment moderation may be erratic over the next couple of days.

Obama's Popularity

The Software Nerd takes a look at Barack Obama's popularity.

Today, I think the best objective measure of his more enduring (non-honeymoon) popularity is to look at people who actually voted for him. He got 53% of the popular vote. This is a good number, but nowhere near a "vast" majority.

Going back only as far as JFK, Obama is tied for fourth -- with George H. W. Bush!

WWJD?

I was thinking about focusing on a news story out of Texas I heard about yesterday, but I see that Doug Reich at The Rational Capitalist has already beaten me to the punch.

A Dallas-area basketball coach has been fired, basically for doing his job, after his team defeated another school 100-0. What explains this bizarre turn of events? The ethical ideals of his employer, of course.

I agree with the administration that this win was not "Christlike". In fact, I would argue the whole notion of competition is not Christlike. The purpose of religion is not to be great at something "earthly" - it is to live a life of asceticism in glorious sacrifice to the almighty God. Would Jesus have played basketball with his disciples much less run up the score on them? The fundamental problem is not that the coach ran up the score - it is the attempt by the school to act out a contradiction. The contradiction lies in reconciling the Christian moral code of altruism with an activity that requires selfishness. [bold added]

I would note further the complete lack of accountability awarded to the losing side. There was no "mercy rule" -- so, apparently, its coach was not expected to consider forfeiting or pulling his team off the court (if the experience was really so traumatic). And then, as if passivity, or blind obedience to authority, or the refusal to recognize a hopeless situation were virtues, the losing team, Dallas Academy, "has been recognized for refusing to give up during the lopsided contest."

How inspirational! Maybe it's not too late for me to pursue a career in the NBA!

And into Adulthood...

The above situation may seem bizarre to many, given the clear goal of team sports, but the underlying lesson -- that an incorrect morality can cause someone to ignore practical considerations -- applies even more so to the game of life.

Brian Phillips notes a huge pile of evidence damning land use regulation for making housing less affordable, and observes:

With so much economic evidence that land use regulations are destructive, why does a single city still have any regulations regarding land use?

The answer cannot be found in economics. It can be found in morality.

The premise underlying all land use regulations is that the individual must place the "public good" or the "general welfare" before his own interests. This premise holds that the individual is subservient to the community, and that the individual must sacrifice his values to others. This premise holds that service to others--altruism--is the standard of morality. According to altruism, land use regulations are moral. [bold added]

The list of the ways that altruism hinders one from fulfilling the basic need for shelter is overwhelming, and it reminds me of the following quote from Leonard Peikoff's memoir, "My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand."

If you went up to an ordinary individual, itemized every object and person he cared for, then said to him seriously: "I intend to smash them all and leave you groveling in the muck," he would become indignant, even outraged. What set Ayn Rand apart from mankind is the fact that she heard the whole itemization and the intention to smash everything in the simple statement that "reality is unreal." Most people in our age of pragmatism and skepticism shrug off broad generalizations about reality as mere talk -- i.e., as floating abstractions -- and react only to relatively narrow utterances. Ayn Rand was the reverse. She reacted much more intensely to philosophical ideas than to narrow concretes. The more abstract an evil formulation, the more territory it covered, and the greater, therefore, the destructive potential she saw in it. (from The Voice of Reason, pp. 337-338)

The ethics of altruism does not cover as much territory as, say, a mystical epistemology, but it is quite destructive enough!

-- CAV

Weisberg on Obama's "Vision"

Myrhaf rightly notes that the real meaning of Barack Obama's recent swipe at Rush Limbaugh is to attack the Man with the Golden Microphone as a surrogate for holding pro-capitalist principles.

... I think Obama's statement is about a deeper issue than any single radio personality. Rush Limbaugh is a symbol here for holding principles. Granted, Obama is overestimating the Republicans by implying they might have principles any more, but that is what he is truly attacking in his statement. [bold added]

He elaborates more on that last thought:

If the Republicans had free market principles, they would be fighting for separation of economy and state. Any compromise they make with Obama on a stimulus bill helps only the side that wants more big government. Freedom is not advanced by any compromise any more than a man's health is advanced if he only takes half a dose of poison instead of a full dose. [bold added]

Myrhaf is right about that, too, and proceeds to note that Obama, whom some praise as a pragmatist and others hope is "only" a pragmatist -- is perhaps simply using pragmatism here as a means of eliciting compromise -- which really, ultimately means accepting Obama's principles.

Whatever the case, the following example of Republican "opposition" to Obama's stimulus plan was none too heartening:

Republicans are also angry that the economic stimulus plan contains funding for contraceptives and other Democratic pet projects....

Not that I am morally opposed to contraception, but I don't want the government funding it, either. However, as a principled proponent of capitalism, I must say that even if such opposition were secular (which it isn't), there are far bigger fish to fry here.

I would oppose the "stimulus" plan on the grounds that I oppose the government interfering with the economy at all. This is in part because, in order to redistribute wealth, the government must violate property rights sooner (e.g., via taxation) or later (e.g., via inflation). In addition to the recent orgy of Republican interference in the economy, this bickering over how to redistribute wealth shows that many Republicans are already exactly where Obama wants them.

Be that as it may, and regardless of whether Obama is more the cunning leftist who sees the value of pragmatism in breaking up an unprincipled opposition or simply the pragmatist surrounded by leftists, it is interesting to see that the issue of pragmatism staring to crop up in the more sympathetic mainstream press.

I saw an excellent example on a visit to RealClear Politics this morning, where we see that Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate and author of In Defense of Government, is no pushover for mere pragmatism, and finds himself disappointed when reconsidering the Obama Inaugural Address "in the less euphoric light of the next day":

"Whatever works" is less a vision of the public sector's proper role than a placeholder for someone who has yet to figure out what he thinks that role should be.

Obama's pragmatic liberalism risks blurring execution with intention, means with ends. To take his illustrations, it is either up to the commonweal to provide a minimum income to retired people, to offer health insurance to everybody and to increase income equality -- or it isn't. Most liberals would say these are legitimate responsibilities of government. Most conservatives would argue they aren't. On income security for the elderly, we've had a social consensus since the New Deal. On health care, a consensus may be emerging after decades of national ambivalence. When it comes to growing income inequality, a newer problem, there is no consensus. But Obama must decide what government's goals are before considering the subordinate questions of what works and how much we can afford. [minor formatting edits, bold added]

And yet, we get the following somewhat vague clarification at the end of the piece:

But as he navigates the crisis, Obama would do well to figure out what he thinks about the fundamental question of government's responsibilities. He might begin by pondering some words of his role model, Abraham Lincoln, who in 1854 wrote, "The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves." Obama's test of practicality comes after Lincoln's test of principle. [bold added, link dropped]

Lincoln's wide-open (and incorrect) notion of the proper role of government still leaves hanging the whole question of what the people ought to do. This is interesting in and of itself, but I think it shows that the left is starting to become paranoid about Obama, but not yet so paranoid as to openly admit what it thinks the the government ought to be doing.

Whether that paranoia is warranted or not, it is high time that America began discussing the proper role of government, for it would seem she has been slowly forgetting it for quite some time.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 396

Facing Prosecution

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, noted for distributing the documentary Fitna over the Internet, is facing criminal prosecution for anti-Islamic statements.

In a statement, the appeals court wrote: "The Amsterdam appeals court has ordered the prosecution of member of parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs.

"Regarding this turn of events, Wilders recently made an appearance (clip embedded below) on the Glenn Beck show, where he rightly likened Europe's Moslem immigrants to colonists.

Somehow, I don't think the savage holding the sign that read, "God bless Hitler," will have to defend himself in court similarly, not that airing an opinion should ever result in prosecution, outside of incitement.

Obama's "One-Letter-Off" Presidency

Ian Hamet titles a post with the exact same sentiment I had regarding other news pertaining to Barack Obama. First, he quotes from an Instapundit post discussing an Obama nominee: "[Tax] rules, it seems, do not apply to the lofty," to which he says, "There seems to be a typo. The last word ought to read 'lefty'."

That's close to how my mind reacted the other day to Obama's calls for a "new maturity", of which one of his aids said, "He will buck up the American people."

"Buck up?" Yeah. That's one letter off, too!

Zimbabwe Hyperinflation Update

Andrew Dalton recently linked to a news report that Zimbabwe has issued a Z$ 100 trillion note.

In the process, he reminded me of a back-of-the envelope calculation I did some time back when I realized that Mardi Gras doubloons were probably worth much more than Zimbawean currency.

Here it is, revised for the new exchange rate, which is already two orders of magnitude lower than when I did the original calculation a month or so ago.

(3.40 USD /100 gold plastic doubloons)*(26,255,633 ZWD/1 USD) = Z$ 892,691.53 per cheap plastic doubloon

Myrhaf on the Era of Clarity

Myrhaf notes that Obama has started his Presidency off on the left foot: "Obama signed three executive orders appeasing an enemy that wants to destroy America." The three orders pertain to closing Guantanamo Bay, reviewing the use of military tribunals against terrorists, and banning certain forms of torture. And, oh yeah. He snubbed the Salute to Heroes Ball and made his first presidential phone call to Mahmoud Abbas.

Objectivist Roundup

Travelling, I forgot to contribute, but it's hosted by Rule of Reason this week.

Watkins on Big Government vs. Freedom of Speech

Read it and be prepared for the next time some hippie complains about Clear Channel.

How He Does It

Recently, I said, "Paul Hsieh has been such an effective advocate of individual rights in medicine that it seems almost superfluous to mention his appearance in a major news media outlet."

Today, Diana posts on how he does it! Worth the read.

-- CAV

Papal Confession

At some point during my ongoing blur of incessant travel and guzzling from the font fire hose of scientific knowledge, I read a short news blurb somewhere about a campaign by the Vatican to encourage more Catholics to go to confession. This morning, still a bit tired from one of the busiest days I've had in quite some time, my mind remembered thinking at the time that the piece was blogworthy. So I hunted for and found the story.

The above link discusses the campaign in some detail, specifically the small part my blurb focused on:

It will be a historical day for the world, Catholicism, and the Vatican. For the first time, is going to give a peek into the tribunal of confessions. It will be the first time in 830 years.

In the last few years, the Vatican has seen a decline of people coming in for confession. That means not many people are coming to confession. As a result, the Vatican is trying to get more people to come into confession. For the first time in its history, the Vatican will be giving a sneak peek of what goes on in regards to the handling of confessions. While the priests listen to confessions, it is a revealed that there is a tribunal for such confessions.

There are confessions for the most sinful acts and crimes. The tribunal that handles such confessions is known as the "tribunal of conscience." It has invited the public to see what goes on in regards to confessions. This is the Vatican’s way of fighting against the decline of people confessing their sins. [minor format edits]

This story sets the context, but, in addition to never naming the Apostolic Penitentiary, it misses the juicy morsel that caught my eye the first time. For that, we'll go to another report:

As the Vatican's highest court, the tribunal deals with confessions considered so grave only the Pope himself has the authority to absolve them.

Defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ, is among several sins that can be forgiven only at the highest level, officials said. Yet confessions of crimes the general public may consider even more serious, including genocide and serial murder, can be dealt with by local priests or bishops.

...

Defiling the Eucharist is one of five sins that can be dealt with only through the tribunal.

Cardinal Stafford says there has been a rise in incidents of people receiving the host and spitting it out or otherwise desecrating it, sometimes in Satanic rituals.

Other sins that would land a repentant Catholic before the tribunal include attempting to assassinate the Pope and, as a priest, breaking the seal of confession by revealing who has sought penance and why. In addition, the Vatican's highest court would handle priests who have offered absolution to their own sexual partners and men who directly participate in an abortion, such as by funding it, and later seek to become priests or deacons. [bold added]

To summarize: Spitting out a piece of unleavened bread at the wrong time will get you into a long, one-sided conversation with the Pope, but serial murder and genocide get pawned off onto the local priest.

Remember this the next time someone claims that the "alternative" to the various modern expressions of collectivism is religion, or that without God, there would be no morality. What kind of morality -- what guide to living one's life -- would appraise human life so cheaply?

This was part of a campaign to entice people to become more observant in their faith? That, too, is a confession!

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 395

It's a very crowded day for me. Perfunctorily blog ... set up an assay in the lab ... present to the department ... pack ... head up to Boston for a few days... sleep. The whole list is important, as is the order, particularly regarding the last step. (Although if I put my department to sleep first, perhaps I could catch a wink then....)

New Blog

I'm looking forward to becoming more familiar with Tito's Blog, which I added to the sidebar this morning just a couple of days after learning about it. Tito, who wonders whether he'll get in trouble on his history exam for, "defy[ing] the 'Nazi/communist' polar dichotomy," describes himself as, a "student, Objectivist and Linux fan from the UK".

Heh! Talk about a marked man!

Belated Congratulations

I was happy to see that Bubblehead pulled ahead and won -- and by a comfortable margin -- "Best Up and Coming Blog" in the 2009 Weblog Awards..

Silly Quiz Time

I haven't seen one of these I've wanted to take for a while...

What Keyboard Key Are You?

You Are "alt"

Some people might find you to be strange, mysterious, and even a bit off putting. You tend to be drawn to and influenced by alternative lifestyles. You're definitely not normal.

Once people get to know you, they realize you're interesting, intriguing, and very intelligent.

You have a lot of knowledge stored in that big brain of yours. Most of it is useless knowledge, but some of it is very useful.

(HT: Dithyramb)

Mindless Celebrations? Check. Honeymoon Over? Check.

The Obama Presidency is not even a day old and I have had a member of the Barack Obama Foreign Auxiliary celebrate the occasion by venting his spleen at my blog. We'll call it a two-fer and leave it at that!

And now, on to the rest of my day. Ugh!

-- CAV

Updates

1-22-09: Fixed a formatting glitch.

New Technology, Old Fallacy

Via Arts and Letters Daily is an informative, but misleading article by Harry Lewis on Internet censorship called, "Not Your Father's Censorship".

Unfortunately, Lewis ends his article by making not just your father's, but your father's father's equivocation between political power (i.e., the use of force by the government) and economic power (i.e., corporate market share, which is a gross measure of the voluntary, uncoerced decisions of large numbers of customers):

The Internet is, for the most part, privately owned. So is the publishing business, where the free market has always worked. If a publisher doesn't want my book, I can take my business elsewhere, but I can't cry censorship. We wouldn't want government regulation of book publishers, and we don't need it. Is the Internet any different?

The Internet is different from publishing, in fact if not in theory. Were one publisher as dominant as Google or YouTube, its corporate judgments might have a very big impact on the free flow of ideas. And the DMCA protocol presents opportunities for the powerful to suppress speech by spurious invocation of copyright law. In the United States, the Internet is still the "most participatory form of mass speech yet developed," as a federal judge, Stewart R. Dalzell, wrote in overturning an early Internet-censorship law. For the Internet to remain so, more legislation will be needed to guarantee its openness. [bold added]

The monopolist element of the above argument will sound all too familiar to anyone who knows the story of the rise of Standard Oil, which Alex Epstein did a fantastic job of setting straight in The Objective Standard not too long ago.

But Lewis does tweak the old argument just a bit. Earlier in his article, he notes that Google has actively aided the Chinese government in maintaining censorship. Later (and above), he argues (correctly or not) that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be misused to remove content from the web that ought to be freely available.

In both cases, he is counting on readers to miss the fact that there is (or may be) an element of illegitimate government interference contributing to the blockage of information. (I add now that, consonant with its property rights, no company has an obligation to provide a forum to all comers. That said, aiding government censorship remains immoral.) Not to whitewash Google for aiding Chinese censorship, but if governments the world over (including, incredibly, even Australia's) want to impose censorship, how is "more legislation" going to "guarantee" the "openness" of the Internet?

There is merit in the idea of improving the government's own conduct regarding the protection of freedom of speech in electronic media, but that is quite a different thing than proposing that it be free to dictate a Google's "corporate judgments".

Regarding the latter, Lewis might counter that Google's cooperation with the Chinese government shows that corporations, free to act on their own, will not necessarily stand up for freedom of speech. He would be correct, but the fact remains that in a free market, someone would be free to address the shortcomings of a Google. Should the YouTube owner begin pulling rather tame videos over allegedly sexual content, for example, some other competitor might decide to post just that sort of video.

A government, on the other hand, could simply threaten anyone who wants to show such videos with fines or imprisonment. In other words, decisions by even huge corporations are not backed by government force -- except when government interference in the economy such as Lewis proposes to somehow guarantee open access to all information for everyone makes it otherwise.

There are no guarantees in life. Even the leaders of a successful corporation like Google can fail to stand up for the very principles their success depends on. But unlike government officials, who can make the same mistakes, a mere corporate leader cannot force others to suffer from his mistaken judgement. This is why the best solution to the emerging problem of the abuse of technology to promote government censorship is to have the government much less involved in the communications industry.

And an important first step towards that solution is for more people to recognize the difference between government force and market share, and see that the government imposing, say, "decency" standards is a different phenomenon in kind from a corporation deciding that it need not provide a forum to pornographers, who remain free to create one of their own, provided that in doing so, they do not violate the individual rights of others.

-- CAV

Wishing Darwin Away

Sharon Begley, writing at Newsweek, would have you think that new research is casting serious doubts on the validity of the theories of evolution and molecular biology.

Teamed with genetics, Darwin's explanation of how species change through time has become the rock on which biology stands. Which makes the water flea quite the skunk at this party.

Some water fleas sport a spiny helmet that deters predators; others, with identical DNA sequences, have bare heads. What differs between the two is not their genes but their mothers' experiences. If mom had a run-in with predators, her offspring have helmets, an effect one wag called "bite the mother, fight the daughter." If mom lived her life unthreatened, her offspring have no helmets. Same DNA, different traits. Somehow, the experience of the mother, not only her DNA sequences, has been transmitted to her offspring.

That gives strict Darwinians heart palpitations, for it reeks of the discredited theory of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829). The French naturalist argued that the reason giraffes have long necks, for instance, is that their parents stretched their (shorter) necks to reach the treetops. Offspring, Lamarck said, inherit traits their parents acquired. With the success of Darwin's theory of random variation and natural selection, Lamarck was left on the ash heap of history. But new discoveries of what looks like the inheritance of traits acquired by parents -- lab animals as well as people -- are forcing biologists to reconsider Lamarckism. [minor format edits, bold added]

That "somehow", as Begley correctly notes, is called a "genetic switch", and the notion that a primitive species like the water flea might use one to determine whether offspring develop "helmets" makes perfect sense -- in the context of Darwinian evolution and the genetic theory of inheritance.

Clearly, a water flea without a helmet would be ill-adapted to survive in an environment rich in predators. Perhaps not so clear is the fact that a water flea with a helmet has at least one disadvantage to one that does not: That helmet has to come from somewhere. The superior armament will cost it more food. In an environment where there are no predators, then, a helmet-less water flea has an advantage in needing less food.

What solution is best? Predators aren't always a problem for water fleas, so a species that saddled itself with unneeded armament would be wasting precious food. (And, I suppose, creationists would pounce on that as an example of how God was telling puny man that He was in charge.... What Intelligent Designer would fail to sign His work?)

But predators sometimes are a problem. Gosh, perhaps an organism that could either have a helmet or not have one as needed would have an evolutionary advantage! I am no expert on water fleas, but something tells me that they don't live too long, so its best bet as a species would be -- oh, I don't know -- to evolve the capacity to turn the helmet gene(s) on or off from one generation to the next. (News flash: Genetic switches, as "gene regulatory proteins", are encoded in the DNA by genes.)

Well! I'll be switched! That's exactly what happened!

But Begley either does not understand this fully or she is an active, dishonest opponent of the theory of evolution, as we see in another example:

Since 1999 scientists in several labs have shown that an experience a mouse mother has while she is pregnant can leave a physical mark on the DNA in her eggs. Just to emphasize, this is not a mutation, the only way new traits are supposedly transmitted to children. Instead, if mother mouse eats a diet rich in vitamin B12, folic acid or genistein (found in soy), her offspring are slim, healthy and brown -- even though they carry a gene that makes them fat, at risk of diabetes and cancer, and yellow. It turns out that the vitamins slap a molecular "off" switch on the obesity/diabetes/yellow-fur gene. [minor format edits, bold added]

Yes, a genetic switch has been thrown, and it affects the physical appearance of offspring. But without the genetic code already in place (including both the regulated genes and the switch proteins other genes encode), neither the range of possibilities nor the switching mechanism we're busy distracting ourselves with would even exist.

In Begley's defense, some of the scientists she draws upon seem not to understand how to hold new data or complicated theories such as evolution and genetics in their proper context, and Francis Crick's foolish decision to refer to his theory of inheritance as the "Central Dogma of Molecular Biology" has not helped. On the other hand, the fact that the phenomenon of epigenetic inheritance has been known about for quite some time indicates that further research was warranted -- on Begley's part.

There is no great controversy here. Epigenetic inheritance, far from being a reason to resurrect older, discredited or -- worse -- arbitrary theories of speciation, actually serves as further evidence in support of Darwinian evolution and molecular biology. Begley just insulted the guest of honor by calling it a skunk!

-- CAV

Change

Old friends meet.
Eternity looses its iron grip.
Youth returned in a knowing glance,
"You had to be there...."
And so you were.

Laughter sweet,
A mem'ry shared, increases.
Soul-mates unbreached by happenstance.
"I wish you were there!"
And yet you were.

Time is fleet.
All -- even love -- are conquered.
Here and now, we've only this chance.
"Why are you not here?"
At least you were.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 394

Raed Jarrar Update

About a week ago, through a press release by the Ayn Rand Institute, comes news of a matter I blogged about over two years ago: An incident in which an airline faced a federal lawsuit simply for attempting to exercise its property rights.

Thomas Bowden succinctly describes the injustice of the outcome:

It's an injustice when a private airline is penalized for exercising its rights as an owner. ... Property owners are entitled to set standards for conduct, including dress codes, that their customers must observe when using company property. If a potential customer finds those standards unreasonable, he is free to take his business elsewhere.

... JetBlue should have been legally entitled to forbid Mr. Jarrar from frightening other passengers aboard its privately owned jetliner. In deciding the matter, JetBlue had a right to consider that Mr. Jarrar’s behavioral and physical profile resembled that of terrorists who have left a trail of blood and bone across the globe, both before and after destroying the World Trade Center with hijacked airliners in 2001.

Now, however, Mr. Jarrar is a quarter-million dollars richer because our anti-discrimination laws forbid businesses to use their own judgment in these matters. [bold added]

I agree completely with Mr. Bowden.

At Study Group for Objectivists: The Ominous Parallels

Burgess Laughlin will be moderating a six-week look by the Study Group for Objectivists at Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels this spring.

Being a participant in the OAC, I'm sitting this one out, but it does sound interesting.

Lying in Wait

Awhile back, I noted that there can be value in, "having rational commentary 'out there', just waiting to be Googled." Recently, I have seen just that with a very old post about Large Group Awareness Training that a relatively new blog, The Truth about Human Potential Seminars, has recently linked to, causing a small, steady, trickle of traffic to head my way.

Some Tunes

Reader Adrian Hester points me to a pretty good (but embedding-disabled) music video.

I found this as I was looking for videos of my favorite African singer, Baaba Maal.... [The] video features him singing his style of music (yela) along with reggae. Works quite well, beautiful scenery, fun dancing, and if you listen to the reggae enough you'll have all the major acts about Senegal stuck in your brain forever, so it's even educational! Heh.

Loved the music, liked some aspects of the video -- but was reminded by other aspects of a dated and lame UB40 video of one of my favorite songs of theirs. (You can hear a slightly better version of "Dubmobile" here, as well as "I've Got Mine" following directly after.)

Well, that's a wrap. Working weekend ahead for me!

-- CAV

Lucy is to Charlie Brown ...

... as Hugo Chavez is to Any Oil Executive.

As I mentioned a few days ago, it's crunch time on my paper, hence the short, pre-scheduled post....

This news article from The International Herald-Tribune is a two-pager, but well worth the time, for it gives a valuable glimpse at what Hugo Chavez has done to the Venezuelan economy, as well as how involved Western oil companies are in enabling him to pretend that socialism is a viable (or even powerful) economic system. (That said, it fails to explicitly link Venezuela's decline in oil production to its actual cause: government mismanagement.)

President Hugo Chavez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to damage his efforts to establish a Socialist-inspired state, is quietly courting Western oil companies once again.

Until recently, Chavez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases.

But faced with the plunge in prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials here have begun soliciting bids from some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks -- including Chevron, Royal Dutch/Shell and Total of France -- promising them access to some of the world's largest petroleum reserves, according to energy executives and industry consultants here.

Their willingness to even consider investing in Venezuela reflects the scarcity of projects open to foreign companies in other top oil nations, particularly in the Middle East. [minor edits, bold added]

"Their willingness" also reflects about equal doses of pragmatism and resignation to the unforgivable fact that our government, in failing to take a moral stand against theft by foreign governments, thus encourages nationalization. Why not organize an industry-wide boycott of Venezuela, so that even greater profits can be had after Chavez fell?

But that would require long-range thinking, a commodity that is in scarce supply these days. I doubt that anyone involved in this really thinks Chavez plans to actually hold the football for them as they kick. He'll gobble up as much of whatever they have that he thinks he can get away with just as surely as Lucy will yank that ball before Charlie Brown attempts to kick it.

On the second page, we learn that Halliburton is helping Chavez along even more than in the past. This is not surprising, but it is the first I've heard of it. Apparently, leftists neither care that Halliburton is propping up a dictator like Chavez -- nor are they having a post-Iraq change in heart now that it is helping a "hero" like Chavez carry on. But then, leftists don't spend a lot of time discussing useful idiots.

There was one part that almost made me laugh, regarding Chavez's temporary admission that socialism does not and can not work:

"If re-engaging with foreign oil companies is necessary to his political survival, then Chávez will do it," said Roger Tissot, an authority on Venezuela's oil industry at Gas Energy, a Brazilian consulting company focusing on Latin America. "He is a military man who understands losing a battle to win the war." [bold added]

Yeah. He's making a tactical retreat in the war against reality that is socialism!

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 5:00 A.M. on January 15, 2009.

Quick Roundup 393

I'll take a skull, thank you.

Jason, writing at Erosophia, takes a look at an ancient practice from a secular, this-worldly perspective:

As a human, I am necessarily going to die. It is important to realize that my time is finite, that every moment I have is precious. Memento mori serves to remind me not to waste my time, not to let it slip through my fingers, to never take my life for granted.

Along those lines, but focused more squarely on the process of living my life, I have to say that I am enjoying my Book of Happiness....

Job Hunt Update

Among the more recent entries in my Book of Happiness are a couple related to my job hunt, which is now, finally, making progress, thanks to advice the Resident Egoist pointed me to some time ago. When I head up to Boston next week, I will meet two new contacts, one of whom works in an industry in which I could be hired quickly, and another in an industry I may want to move into. Both I have met through people I already know.

I don't want to discuss details, but this -- not answering random job ads posted at Monster or flapping my gums at HR reps who know nothing about science at job fairs -- is what I had originally guessed my job hunt might look like. This I can understand and be comfortable with. This promises actual success. And, most importantly, this is better than I did in the previous months of my job hunt.

I am now speaking with professionals who know the kinds of jobs and industries I am looking at, rather than pragmatic "recruiters" who, for a real example, tell me I'm speaking to a hiring manager "next week", only to cancel within an hour and never be heard from again. (Having said that, I will still go to job fairs and answer interesting-enough ads, but will do so bearing in mind their lower probability of success.) How do I even know I want to be hired unless I've spoken to people at the company? How will I learn what the job entails or they get a measure of me? A relationship involving the lion's share of my time should evolve naturally.

This academic moving into the private sector regards his job hunt as having actually started December 14. Much else I did before then was a waste of my time. At least I learned a better way to do this.

Details Kill?!?!

If you went to your physician and, instead of taking your history, examining you, and running some tests, he held his hands over his ears and shouted "Nananananana," you would probably not listen to this doctor's advice, and you would doubtless find another. How can he prescribe a rational course of action without knowing the relevant details of your illness, so he can apply the relevant principles of medicine to your situation?

And yet, this is exactly the approach Tom Daschle wants to do take regarding America's semi-free medical sector! We see this from the following example, which Paul Hsieh recently quoted from Dr. Steve Knope at We Stand FIRM:

All indications are that there will be attempts to ram a national healthcare program through Congress early in the Obama administration. They will create a false sense of urgency, just as they did with the "financial bailout" of our economy. No time to study the issue; this must be done or the society will collapse! Tom Daschle has studied Hillary Clinton's failed national healthcare attempt and he does not want to make the same mistakes she made. He was just quoted in the WSJ as saying that the new Congress needs to act quickly. "We need to be on the offense. This time around, lawmakers cannot try to address every detail when it comes to legislation. Details kill." [Secretary-nominee of Health and Human Services Tom] Daschle said. [bold added]

Details kill?!?! Whom or what, Mr. Daschle?

This, by the way, is yet another example of how politics in a mixed economy stifles debate. Most, unfortunately, agree broadly that the government should solve all our problems, but any particular scheme will, by its nature, have major flaws, so putting forth positive proposals for rational evaluation is to invite being shot down. So, just as we got the President who managed to say the least during the campaign, we have lawmakers who intend to avoid any serious consideration of their dangerous schemes.

Write it Down

Paul Hsieh's post was actually about protecting oneself as much as possible from any future socialized medicine scheme, and is worth a read on that basis. Related, but on a level that applies to any situation, Darren Cauthon offers some good advice regarding hospitalization: Write everything down.

Watch Your Wallet (And Your Lawn)

The Texas legislature is back in session. And the Houston City Council is getting ready to empower neighborhood busybodies to keep you from parking in your own yard.

A Time Line

Sez the Software Nerd, "[W]hen a young Objectivist is pessimistic, tell him that we've got till 2026 if we go at the pace of the Communist revolution!" He provides evidence from history to back up his claim. I'd like to add abolition of slavery and black equality to the list, although they don't have as definite starting points.

2026 may be a little early, given that Ayn Rand's ideas are more revolutionary than in any of his examples, but the point is well-taken. Major positive change can and does occur rapidly.

Superb Op-Ed

Keith Lockitch's recent piece on "Environmental Angst" is a must-read.

The only way to leave no "footprint" would be to die -- a conclusion that is not lost on many green ideologues. Consider the premise of the nonfiction bestseller titled "The World Without Us," which fantasizes about how the earth would "recover" if all humanity suddenly became extinct. Or, consider the chilling, anti-human conclusion of an op-ed discussing cloth versus disposable diapers: "From the earth's point of view, it's not all that important which kind of diapers you use. The important decision was having the baby." The next time you trustingly adopt a "green solution" like fluorescent lights, cloth diapers or wind farms, only to be puzzled when met with still further condemnation and calls for even more sacrifices, remember what counts as a final solution for these ideologues.

(HT: Diana Hsieh)

-- CAV

Chuck that map and floor it!

"I heard we were gettin' near a cliff, so I chucked my map and floored it!"

Assuming one was hearing the truth, anyone would rightly conclude that, fool that he is, the interlocutor is lucky to be alive.

How much worse is it, then, to hear basically the same thing coming from the mouth of the man invested with the most responsibility for protecting our rights and our lives and, in today's mixed economy, the most power to endanger both.

It happened yesterday, with President Bush boasting yet again that he abandoned his professed "free market principles" in order to save the day:

I readily concede I chucked aside my free-market principles when I was told ... the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression. (But) we've taken extraordinary measures to deal with frozen credit markets (that) have helped thaw the credit market. [minor edits]

I have already elaborated at length on the vital importance of rational principles, and summarized myself thus:

[A] pro-capitalist would know what capitalism is, what it requires (full government protection of individual rights), and why statism and anarchy are inferior, and dangerous to the survival of the people he is sworn to protect. He would know these things because he would rely upon free market principles when thinking about the economy. And he would know that if he doesn't rely on such principles -- if he "abandons" -- them, he will have no way to decide what action is best for the discharge of his office.

In his folksy boast, Bush has -- as usual -- conceded much more than he realizes, as men who attempt to go through life without thinking are wont to do: He has admitted that he never really held "free market principles".

It is telling that Bush chose to make this unwitting confession just before his last week in office. During such times, I imagine one would stress those things about his term of office for which he wants to be remembered.

So be it.

Our Founding Fathers were men of principle and men of action. George W. Bush is not, and he is proud of it. Dropping all historic context, and, in the process, failing to see whom he would be measured against, the fool described himself better by accident than I could have had I wasted a day thinking about it.

Not to embrace Obama's continuation and distillation of your willfully ignorant approach to government and the failed policies that flow directly from it, but here's wishing the door doesn't hit your ass on the way out, Mr. President.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 392

Final Push

Vote for The Stupid Shall Be Punished in the 2009 Weblog Awards. He now leads by over 400 votes, but there's no such thing as a convincing-enough win!

The Waistline Police

Paul Hsieh has been such an effective advocate of individual rights in medicine that it seems almost superfluous to mention his appearance in a major news media outlet, but....

Read his article on "Universal healthcare and the waistline police," which recently appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, if you have not done so already. It is outstanding.

Imagine a country where the government regularly checks the waistlines of citizens over age 40. Anyone deemed too fat would be required to undergo diet counseling. Those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further "reeducation" and their communities subject to stiff fines.

He notes that this is already happening in Japan, and it is heading our way.

The American Founding Fathers who fought and died for our freedoms would be appalled to know their descendants were allowing the government to dictate what they could eat and drink. The Founders correctly understood that the proper role of government is to protect individual rights and otherwise leave men free to live – not tell us how many eggs we should eat.

The article does a great job of illustrating the real-life consequences of socialized medicine and showing how they directly result from the abdication of personal responsibility it represents.

With an altruistic President making evil abstractions sound good to most people, countering his dangerous proposals will require work like this. Obama refuses to name specifics for a reason. Fortunately, we have Paul Hsieh filling in those crucial details.

Ideas have consequences when put into practice.

The Nearby Pen

I recently learned of a promising new blog that focuses on aesthetics, called The Nearby Pen, and have added it to the sidebar. Daniel's more recent posts discuss a movie I recall being heavily promoted in my part of town some time ago, but which I never saw, Amelie.

The following Wikipedia description seems typical of what I heard about the movie at the time....

It tells the story of a shy waitress who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better, while struggling with her own isolation.

In the context of much of modern culture, this sounded enough like an altruistic schlock-fest that I saw no need to investigate further, especially as I was getting ready to write my dissertation at the time.

But Daniel has me wanting to rent the movie now. He's examining it in some detail, and has piqued my interest in the film. Here is how he opens his ongoing series of posts on Amelie:

Not terribly long ago a director made a movie where every shot is comparable to a painting -- and a beautiful one at that.

It was a film where everything, from the movement of the camera and the music played to the set design and the use of specific colors, was integrated together in order to tell a story consistently well.

That story is a good one. The director is Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The film? Amelie.

The characters in Amelie are driven by deeply personal (often interesting) values. These values are what distinguishes one person from the next. And more, they are shown in such a way that one can easily see the relationship between the attainment of them and their happiness. [markups for accents removed]

Other posts discuss such topics as Lee Sandstead's Art Attack series and the history of chocolate. I look forward to finishing my paper and having more time to go through them myself!

Windows Vista Revisited

Matt F, leaving a comment regarding my usual disappointment with Microsoft products, pointed me to the following XKCD cartoon:

Quite true.

2012 Election Bumper Sticker: "O? No!"

Also, via Matt F is Myrhaf's take on Obama's plan to finish doing to the economy what George Bush started:

Most people, I'm afraid, will read his speech without finding anything objectionable because, as usual, he speaks in banal generalities with making specific proposals. Obama has mastered the art of rhetoric in a welfare state: promote the altruist-collectivist bromides and leave the details for the bureaucrats and lawmakers to deal with behind closed doors. He stays so vague in this speech that he does not even put a number on the cost. Why say anything that can be analyzed and criticized? Like most welfare state politicians, Obama is not a profile in courage. [bold added]

As with the election, so with the Presidency. I noticed this awhile back with regard to the election, in which both major candidates were the ones who managed to say the least.

[W]e are so far down the slippery slope that politicians are loathe to speak in anything other than vague generalities or aphoristic sound bytes that can mean almost anything to anyone. If they were more specific, they'd risk having their power grabs exposed for what they were. Far safer, electorally speaking, to say nothing at all -- or damn near exactly what the other guy is saying.

I now see that this is the essential quality most in demand of a welfare state politician, and it has the added advantage of playing on the individual "dictator fantasy" of any voter who has one.

Obama is a "Human Rorschach Test"? Good for him in the Machiavellian sense. Every "little dictator" out there who voted for him will see Obama as implementing his own personal delusion of the ideal totalitarian state, and thus grant Obama the power to implement his totalitarian agenda -- or, if he an en empty-enough suit, that of someone behind the scenes -- to the degree he thinks he can get away with it.

And when Obama's schemes fail, what next? Barring a massive intellectual revolution, in which Americans rediscover the value of freedom and renounce the welfare state, all future alternatives will be (a) blind rebellion vs. (b) a move towards a "more efficient" ruler whose policies -- essentially the same as Bush-Obama's -- will work "this time". This is because the dominant explicit morality today is altruism, and the dominant approach to ideas is pragmatism. Neither can result in freedom when put into practice.

Grief Recovery Update

I would like to take a moment to thank again all who offered their condolences to me yesterday upon the loss of my cat, Jerome. I had not planned it this way, but writing that post caused me to re-live what I had gone through and turned yesterday into an unplanned day of mourning.

Yesterday was hard, but writing about it, having your sympathy, and (finally) getting a good night's rest have helped a lot. I feel much better today than I have since about the middle of last week. The mourning isn't over, but you helped me get through a major initial phase of it. Thank you!

-- CAV

Jerome, RIP

This last Friday afternoon, I had to euthanize my beloved cat, Jerome, after more than seventeen years of his constant companionship. That was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but I take comfort knowing that doing so was best for him.

More than twenty years old, Jerome had been suffering from declining renal function for quite some time, and had gotten much worse around the holidays. Upon my return from New Orleans, he was noticeably feeble and lethargic due to dehydration.

He rallied for a day after I took him to the vet, where he received subcutaneous saline and I was shown how to continue the treatment at home.

There seemed some hope that he would survive with the fluids long enough for my wife to say good bye to him when she came down to Houston on vacation in mid-February, but it was not to be. Thursday night was very ugly. Several things made it clear to me that Jerome was suffering and would not improve, and that it was time to let him go.

The next morning, I went about my usual routine of blogging, then worked on my paper at home so I could observe Jerome a little more, and otherwise be sure of my decision before calling the vet. Around noon, I called and set the appointment for 3:45.

After giving me some time alone with Jerome, the vet and her assistant came in, administered the injection, and, in a very short time, he was gone. It was a little after four o'clock.

I was only twenty-four when I welcomed Jerome into my home, and he was with me through thick and thin ever since. Until near the end, he'd race to keep up with me during my morning routines, sit on exactly the next book or paper I was going to read, and prance back and forth in front of my computer screen while I was trying to write. (I once knew it was time to go to bed when I tried clicking on a window in order to superpose it over him.) Knowing for some time he was going to go, I am fine, but I have been amazed over the past couple of days how entwined around his presence my routines at home have been.

The ... photograph ... above shows Jerome in his prime. That picture always amuses me a little bit because the demonic eyeshine contrasts with his very friendly disposition. In that way -- and because he will be looking back at me from my desk one more time -- it will be a perfect reminder of the little critter, along with the following memories:

... Shortly after I first acquired Jerome back in Norfolk, he got out of the apartment after just a couple of days. I spent hours trying to find him and was about to give up when I was heading for the stairs. A couple of orange dots in the bushes turned out to be his eyes. I coaxed him out of the bushes and carried him back upstairs, slung over my shoulders. He likes to be carried around like that to this day.

Back in my Navy days, I often snacked on olives. He started showing up as soon as he heard me open the jar, so I let him try some. For years, we were both snacking on olives, but he usually just sniffs around them when I offer them now. I have to hide photographs from him. Many cats find the gel coating on some prints very sweet and Jerome behaves like a junky around such prints. Normally, he has excellent control of his claws, but I have to pick him up by the scruff of the neck to pry him away from a photograph without getting hurt! Years ago, I trained him respond to the word "photograph" delivered in a stage whisper by letting him lick one for a few seconds. (He'll follow you around after getting his fix if you're carrying the photo or anything that looks like it might be one!) In any case, I always assumed that the word had to be stage-whispered.

I was wrong. One day, I had guests over and casually used the word "photograph" in a conversation. Guess who shows up? That's right! Jerome the dope fiend in search of a fix! (How many cats have you ever heard of that can recognize a three-syllable word?) ...

...

When I'm at the house, Jerome is almost invariably near by. He sleeps at my side or nearby on my wife's dresser at night. If I watch a soccer match, he's on the couch with me. He's laying here against the back of my laptop as type this, in fact. Back in grad school, when I had to read at night until the wee hours, he'd sleep on top of my rolltop desk (whose wood his fur matches perfectly). One of my more amusing grad school memories came from this habit and the fact that, for a cat, he's a little clumsy! I once glanced up from the book I was studying just in time to see Jerome, asleep, roll off the back of my desk. (There was some frantic clawing on the way down.)

We had some good times, buddy! I'm going to miss you.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 391

Vote Early, Vote Often!

These days, I barely have time to follow my own blog, much less meander about the blogosphere, so I have been really slow on the uptake....

Bubblehead's blog, The Stupid Shall Be Punished, has been nominated for "Best up and Coming Blog" in the 2008 Weblog Awards. As of this writing, he leads in his category by about twenty votes. Remember: You can vote once per day per computer, and, counting Monday, when the polls end, that means we can help put him over the top with 4 votes apiece per computer.

It was thanks to Bubblehead's nomination last year that Gus Van Horn was able to compete for and win last year's award in its size category.

Daddy's New Car

Mrs. Van Horn and I had already decided it was high time to buy a new main computer, but we'd decided to wait until after I moved to Boston, just to avoid having to worry about moving a brand new computer cross-country. But the need to have Windows to run some proprietary data analysis software for my paper, and the spotty availability of the workstation I normally use for that at work conspired to make my purchase earlier.

Love the machine, hated the OS until last night when I installed Linux.

Linux?

Yes. The plan all along was to buy a good machine, run Linux on it, and Windows when necessary on virtual machines. I had wanted to wait to do that until Boston, but along with the 2.4 GHz processor, 6 GB RAM, and 640 GB hard drive was a serious deficiency. It is euphemistically known as Windows Vista.

The program I needed to use -- the very reason I decided I could not wait to buy -- calls on a proprietary Microsoft database that the newer version packaged with Vista can't read properly! I hate vendor lock-in to begin with, but shouldn't you at least be able to access your own data if you buy future versions of a vendor's product? This show-stopper instantly transformed my purchase into a $700.00 brick. I can't touch a new version of Windows without being reminded why I switched to Linux over a decade ago.

So I have Linux installed now, and plan to run my application on XP in a virtual machine on top of that so I can do what I bought the computer for. With 6 GB RAM, I don't think virtualization is going to slow me down! Thanks for wasting my time -- again -- Mr. Gates!

On a positive note, I love having twelve times as much RAM as the computer I'd assembled from the smoldering remains of two others that had died around the same time! And Firefox 3 seems much more stable than Firefox 2.

[Update: For once, a problem turns out not to be due to Windows! I thank Darren Cauthon for asking about the database and causing me to learn that the problem was with the software itself.]

Objectivist Roundup

The weekly Objectivist blog carnival is going strong, and you can see it over at Rational Jenn's this week.

Two New Blogs

I have finally gotten around to adding Caroline Glick's blog and Heroes of Capitalism to the sidebar. Happy reading!

The Picture of Mindlessness

The fact that we haven't already defeated an enemy like this says a lot more about us than it does about them. (HT: Scott Powell)

The sign says, "Death to all juice." And we need a Department of Homeland Security because of these guys? No. We are told we need one because we aren't using the Department of Defense properly.

Wrong Title

This video is hilarious, but FAIL Blog got the title wrong. They should have called it, "Darwin Award Fail"....

-- CAV

Updates

1-12-08: Added update in computer section. HT: Darren Cauthon.

The Goat of the Gaps

Some time back, I think it was through this Greg Perkins post at NoodleFood, I was introduced to the term "God of the Gaps":

The history of mankind has been one long account of religious explanation being crowded out by scientific discoveries and rational understanding. This pattern of poor thinking is so common that it even has its own name: the "God of the Gaps," where a supernatural agent is cited as the reason behind something we do not understand. Here's the clincher: just notice how it always goes one way -- natural, rational explanations are never displaced by supernatural "explanations."

Today, news that huge, existing and projected federal budget deficits might threaten some of Barack Obama's massive spending programs alerted me to a type of argument we can expect to hear incessantly over the next four years. I propose to call this argument the "Goat of the Gaps":

Yet while Obama stressed that he'll inherit the $1.2 trillion deficit -- and on Tuesday called the Bush administration irresponsible for adding to the national debt -- he didn't identify any Bush-era policy that he'd reverse to reduce the deficits and mounting debt. [bold added]

On the one hand, this is just another example of "more of the same" from the candidate for "change", and, too, blaming other politicians as cover or diversion is common. On the other hand Obama's slickness gives those of us who know better a valuable opportunity. He is using Bush to distract us from his own intellectual bankruptcy for a reason: Regarding the origins of the economic crisis, he does not want to go there at all. This is valuable information.

In a sense, Obama is hoping to do what Greg Perkins has never observed: replace actual knowledge with a convenient non-explanation. He hopes to use the gaps in many people's understanding of the financial crisis (or whatever else, like the "war" in Iraq) to scapegoat George Bush even as he prepares to follow essentially the same course of action. The bad situation is already Bush's fault, according to Obama, so who can blame him if he has a hard time resolving things?

Although the chance for most of us to challenge Obama directly on the national stage will be slim to none, we can still go where Obama doesn't want us to go -- in daily conversation and in any forum open to us. Obama expects his followers and admirers to accept what he said uncritically and repeat it often enough for it to become the conventional wisdom.

The solution to Obama's tactic lies in using whatever opportunities we get to challenge what he says. For that reason, it is worth taking note of what Obama said, why he said it, and what he wants to remain unclear.

But how? As Myrhaf once pointed out, we can't explain capitalism anew in every single conversation, or even convey how horrible Obama's policies would be when put into practice.

But we can raise the questions Obama is hoping nobody will ask. McClatchy indicates for us at the very end of the article where the line of questioning should go when it notes that Obama "didn't identify any Bush-era policy that he'd reverse to reduce the deficits and mounting debt."

This -- That Obama has never said how he will differ from Bush. -- is what one must bring up when hearing capitalism blamed through the convenient proxy of Bush (Who is far from being a capitalist.) Your mileage may vary, as I recently saw, but it is always worthwhile to indicate that, at the very least, not everyone simply takes Obama's word as received wisdom.

Obama wants us to act as if he differs in some significant way from Bush. We must question that at every possible time, and, when we can, note that neither man is a capitalist. Bush holds a large share of the blame for lots of what is wrong today, but he is not the only one to blame. And we cannot allow Obama to get away with making things worse through essentially the same policies, while making Bush the "Goat of the Gaps".

-- CAV

PS: Related to this, I recalled a favorite old Myrhaf post of mine.

Understanding capitalism requires an ability to think in higher abstractions and principles. With progressive education teaching people to think in the opposite manner, in isolated concretes that never integrate into principles, we're in big trouble. Stupidity and freedom do not mix.

This is a huge problem, but should not deter one's efforts.