Quick Roundup 338

Boston Taxis: No Fare

C. August wrote a very interesting and thoughtful piece last week about how Boston has made life hard for cab drivers and stranded pedestrians alike.

The problem is with the medallion system itself, and the myriad regulations that go along with it. The government caps the supply of taxis, imposing an artificial scarcity, driving up the cost of starting a cab business immensely and skewing the entire "market" from the very beginning. In a Boston Magazine article from 2004, Chris Berdik writes, "Medallions were introduced in the 1930s to curb a glut of cabs on city streets. The number was capped at 1,525 and remained there for six decades until a 10-year legal battle led to 260 more being sold at auction in the late 1990s."

As a result of this artificial scarcity -- with a supply that has changed little in nearly 80 years -- all the other strange problems start popping up. The government adds a regulation here or a price hike there to try and fix things, and new issues crop up. Eventually we see a system that is horribly complex, incomprehensible, and basically unfixable. That is, until we start talking about deregulating the industry and abolishing the medallion scheme. [bold added]

The situation is so bad that I first heard about this from my wife, who is very intelligent, but not that interested in politics or economics. In other words, the situation there is so bad that anyone who might want to use a cab will notice. Read the whole thing.

Objectivist Roundup

Also at Titanic Deck Chairs is the latest Objectivist Roundup, in case you missed it, didn't get through all of it, or missed Myrhaf's article.

Gus Wins an Award!

No, Rational Jenn's baby will astound us with his precociousness when he's good and ready. And no, although I did get quoted by an Australian news site recently, I have nothing in the awards department to bring up here, either.

No. I'm speaking here of another Gus entirely: the one, pictured at right, who recently took top honors in a contest for "World's Ugliest Dog"!

The idea that morality is optional is the real "luxury".

Via Glenn Reynolds, I got wind of an interesting discussion by Megan McArdle about morality as a luxury good. Reynolds cites the following quote from a Nature review of the novel, Lucifer's Hammer:

The authors' main theme is that, comet or no, a civilization has the morality its machinery allows it to afford. [bold added]

Unsurprisingly, given the near-universal acceptance of the incorrect premises that (1) there is no rational basis for morality, and (2) altruism (a type of morality) is the same thing as morality, it is hardly surprising that at least five well-educated, intelligent adults regard this idea as true.

McArdle's point of departure is the notion that the lives of animals "count for something" aside from whatever status as property they might have, and she quotes an anarchist who labors over the question at great length, but unfortunately this only slips in popular confusions about good will and altruism and sloppiness about what "moral status" (let alone morality) is.

McArdle states of the sacrifice of man's interests to animals that is currently all the rage that it shows that, "Prosperity allows us to have things that we all now regard as moral requirements." This is an excellent observation in the sense that the closer we are to abject savagery, the less we can afford to flout our need, as a species, to exploit the earth.

On the other hand, to the extent that we commit the human self-sacrifice of altruism, we will live our lives less fully. An example of swinging a bat at a cow's head in a cited passage is beside the point because it drops all context and considers the act in isolation, as if we live our daily lives in a vacuum. Swinging a bat at a cow's head "just because" would be almost always immoral on egoistic grounds because it would be a waste of time, but the cow, not being rational, has no rights of its own and thus has "the moral status of [a] mere object".

How does this differ from Wimbledon shooting down pigeons that were dive-bombing spectators? The pigeons were making the tournament less enjoyable for its fans and probably would have made it less lucrative for its backers in the future if nothing was done about it. Shooting them was a quick, cost-effective solution that protected the value that the tournament had to offer to all involved.

The dive-bombing probably could be stopped in the future with netting or some other such measure, but if it is more expensive or troublesome than simply shooting the birds down, it is against the self-interest of the tournament's officials and backers to do so, and to that extent, it is wrong.

So yes, the tournament probably would go on if we didn't shoot down the pigeons, but how is it that we can afford to do this, and what does that really mean? This is where another, more subtle error than equating altruism and morality comes in. Note that nobody in this discussion is arguing (explicitly) that we should all exterminate ourselves. They implicitly understand that altruism is deadly (else they wouldn't speak of "morality" -- the rules by which to live one's life -- as an impediment to life or its enjoyment). At the same time, they see life and some possible values (like eating meat) as valuable enough to them to trump "morality".

None of these debaters would, I hazard to guess, be satisfied with mere bodily survival. They want something else in addition, like enjoyment, personal fulfillment, or just comfort. All these things are part of what Tara Smith, author of Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, called "flourishing". I would put this loosely as something like, "living fully and realizing one's potential."

It is this, and not mere bodily survival that many people in the West take for granted as a legitimate reason not to sacrifice themselves, and which Ayn Rand meant when she said that, "The Objectivist ethics holds man's life as the standard of value -- and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man."

In the sense that we can, as individuals or a society, physically survive a certain amount of self-sacrifice, we can "afford" to practice a degree of altruism, but to the extent we do so, we will -- at best -- fail to flourish in some respect. In other words, when the nature of and need for morality is properly understood, we see that egoism is man's proper form of morality and that altruism is a "luxury" he can ill-afford.

Morality -- a proper one -- is a necessity, not a luxury.

Also, come to think of it, a better formulation for the proposition might be, "Neither a man nor a civilization can afford to live, let alone flourish, without the proper moral machinery in place."

-- CAV

PS: Diana Hsieh is posting highlights from this year's OCON. I'm missing it this year in part because an oral surgery date looms. You won't hear me complain, though. These things can be deadly if not treated. My present difficulties come in part from a botched root canal.

Updates

Today: (1) Added PS. (2) Corrected a typo. (3) Added final comment on morality.

Yellow Science

James Kerian has penned a must-read article in the Wall Street Journal that draws an analogy between Yellow Journalism and the deterioration of science that is happening now, and being greatly accelerated by government funding:

The first, and most obvious, temptation for this sort of willful blindness is financial. Hearst made only a fraction of his estimated $140 million in net worth from yellow journalism. Global warming, on the other hand, has provided an estimated $50 billion in research grants to those willing to practice yellow science. Influence in the public sphere is another strong temptation. It might not be as impressive as starting the Spanish-American War, but global-warming alarmists have amassed a large group of journalists and politicians ready to silence any critics and endorse whatever boondoggle scheme is prescribed as the cure to our impending climate catastrophe.

Finally, one should not underestimate the temptation of convenience. Just as it is far easier to publish stories without verifying the sources; so is it much more convenient to practice yellow science than the real thing. It takes far more courage, perseverance, and perspiration to develop formulas, make predictions, and risk being proved wrong than to look at historical data and muse about observed similarities. Yellow scientists have fled the risks of science that Albert Einstein described when he said, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right, a single experiment can prove me wrong." [bold added]

This is a thought-provoking article, and it brings up many issues worth spending some time thinking about. The most prominent one in my mind is the role of government funding of science in its decline. Aside from violating the rights of those whose money was taken from them, such government funding obviously increases the lure of free money in terms of the amount obtainable and how many people can get their hands on it. Having said that, it is wrong to blame the deterioration of science entirely on government interference, or to assume that the buck stops at politics.

The temptation to wield power (which Kerian cites as a contributing factor to the decline of science), for example, would not even exist for the vast majority of scientists in America, were government already confined to its proper role of protecting individual rights. The matter of convenience, though, gets us closer to the heart of the matter. That would always be an issue to some degree.

There have been "scientists" with pet theories throughout the history of science, and there always will be. But what ultimately stops them are three things: (1) the facts of reality that contradict their theory, (2) the freedom of men to investigate those facts, and (3) the willingness of some scientists to do so.

Government that does not respect individual rights reduces the second and third of these. How long will a real scientist last if he can't get funding because an entrenched majority of his "peers" is in charge of reviewing his grant applications (which most often go to a government agency that taps his peers for review)? How long will he care to fight against a majority who are wrong (if that) and indifferent or hostile to the truth? How demoralizing would it be to see nitpicking studies based on junk science funded all the time while his own elegant experiment that might challenge the prevailing "consensus" remains financially out of reach?

Government funding and other interference in science is a great evil, and goes a long way towards explaining the hastening eating-away of science, but the reason government is doing what it does is ultimately because the public -- which largely thinks that the individual exists to serve others and implements this destructive notion through redistributionist programs -- insists on it.

It will only be when the public demands the protection of individual rights -- rather than handouts -- from the government, that this ironic danger to the scientific progress it imagines a government can grant it will end.

-- CAV

Collegiate Wristbands

Fairly recently, I commented upon the vacuous practice of seeking moral prestige by the wearing of colored rubber bands around one's wrists. Summing up the mindless second-handedness of the fad and its resulting aspect of intimidation, I said:

In an important sense, it makes no difference what ribbon someone chooses to wear when the culture is saturated enough with altruism that wearing a ribbon is commonly regarded as a sign of good moral character. The message to anyone who might beg to differ with the idea that he exists to serve others, is this: "You will have to fight everyone. Give up or be alone."

In higher education, the institutional equivalent of the wristband is the campus pledge, and it illustrates my point perfectly.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, animal rights activists are slowly getting small colleges that do not participate in animal research that might cause "severe" pain to laboratory animals to sign non-binding pledges ... not to do animal research that causes "severe" pain.

Amherst College, Fairfield University, Francis Marion University, and 10 other institutions, none of which are known for conducting animal experiments, recently signed a pledge not to subject any research animals to "severe" unrelieved pain or distress. The pledge was written by the Humane Society of the United States, which has sent it to a total of 301 presidents at similar institutions.

...

"I said to myself, How could I not sign this and have a conscience?" says John M. Carfora, director of the office of sponsored research at Amherst. He said he hoped his signature might influence researchers elsewhere to reflect anew on the necessity of unrelieved pain in their laboratory animals.

...

Officials of Francis Marion University, a public institution in South Carolina, view the pledge as "a humane gesture" that is "reasonable and symbolic," says Elizabeth I. Cooper, vice president for public and community affairs. Faculty members there have done some surgery on anesthetized animals, she adds.

However, she says, the pledge, which offers some examples of procedures likely to cause severe pain, is not "a legal document" that would prevent the university from one day expanding the scope of its research. [bold added]

This is curious. How can a non-binding pledge not to do something you're already not doing have any moral import? This seems about as upstanding and heroic as -- oh, I don't know -- wearing a rubber band around one's wrist.

But remember: The second-hander is a pack animal, and lives for the approval of others, and every pack is led by its more dominant members. Functionaries of college bureaucracies are no exception. Recall what I said about fighting alone? Conformity is the name of the game here, and past acts of domestic terrorism by animal "rights" activists provide an unspoken, threatening subtext to the friendly-seeming invitations to conform:

Signing the pledge was easy, said officials on some of those campuses, because no such research went on there. And that is just what the advocacy group is counting on: a wave of no-fuss pledge signings that will put pressure on larger universities, which do conduct extensive animal research, to follow suit.

...

The document attempts to strike a collegial approach -- for example, the society offers to discuss with signatory institutions any instances of noncompliance it learns about and not to publicize them. (!) That's a different approach from the picketing and vandalism that more-extreme activist groups have carried on at the University of California at Los Angeles and other campuses in a bid to end all animal testing. [bold added]

A "different" approach, eh? Oh, yeah. I forgot about fear of slander and legal harassment.... When you have those, who needs a bunch of stupid kids waving signs around or breaking things?

When you don't have a persuasive argument, you can either accept the fact that others will not agree with you and move on -- or you can try to force them to act the way you want. The animal "rights" movement proved long ago that it has chosen the second tack, and this is more of the same.

In answer to John "How could I not sign this and have a conscience?" Carfora of Amherst, I would say that having a conscience is a matter of honesty and independent judgement, not public perception, and that following one in the face of irrational opposition is not always easy or pleasant. Unless, that is, one realizes the importance of what is at stake: Namely, the freedom of the academy to follow observation and logic wherever it may lead. But when you don't have a conscience, selling out that which it is your job to foster is, as the article says, "easy".

Mr. Carfora is so proud of his little pledge, and yet, if he really knows what it means, he isn't letting on. And that is exactly what the Humane Society wants.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 337

Houston Zoning Debate Returns

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States. It is also the largest without zoning. The ability of its landowners to exercise their property rights without encumbrance (and thus adapt to changes in their neighborhoods and the economy as a whole) has doubtless contributed to its economic strength and helped make possible its recent rankings -- by Kiplinger's Personal Finance and Money as the best city in the nation to live.

Unfortunately, too many Americans have become used to the idea of pressuring politicians for political favors, falling in some respects into a mindset of dependence that mistrusts freedom and its corollary, independent judgement. To such a mindset, absolute freedom by others to dispose of their own property as they see fit is a threat. Every few years, people afflicted with this mentality attempt to convince the people of Houston that they should adopt zoning.

As the Ad Hoc Committee for Property Rights recently put it on its new blog, Houston Property Rights (which is linked permanently at the right), paranoia about how others might use their own property is not just wrong on principle, there are mountains of evidence that it is wrong in practice.

Among the reasons for the ratings are our relatively stable housing market, our certainly affordable housing, and our growing economy. Interestingly, the cities that zoning advocates would have us emulate are suffering from a collapsing real estate market, exorbitantly expense housing, and a loss of jobs.

Even a cursory examination of history or recent events demonstrates, time after time, that freedom -- i.e., the absence of government coercion -- results in a more stable and vibrant economy. [bold added]

Have I not recently experienced the ridiculous housing costs of Boston on my own hide? And was anyone in Houston paying attention when all the comparisons between free Houston and government-controlled New Orleans were being made shortly after Katrina?

Why in the world should Houston start imitating failure just as it is on the cusp of greatness? If we change anything about Houston, it should be to make it even less like New Orleans and other such helpless cities. I am glad to see that the Ad Hoc Committee for Property Rights -- which stopped zoning a decade ago -- is back in the saddle: I'd like to come back some day.

Be sure to take a look around their blog, and tell them I sent you.

Statutory Obsolescence Update

Awhile back, I noted an inane Texas environmentalist law that entails declaring perfectly drivable cars obsolete and then buying them from their owners at inflated prices -- with money looted via taxation, of course. The cars are then destroyed.

Thanks in part to our lucrative PhD's -- and the fact that she isn't yet a practicing physician -- my wife and I actually qualified for this program last year and, based on a line of reasoning similar to the one Ayn Rand took in "The Question of Scholarships" in The Objectivist, we decided to apply because one of our cars had been declared "not green enough" recently:

Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others -- the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it. (93) [bold added]

Well, guess what? The state wasn't done playing around with us! From the "How to Apply" page link for Harris County comes this little gem: "H-GAC To Stop Issuing Vouchers on May 9". We learned this a day or two after the fact, just as we were applying.

That figures. On the one hand, I am somewhat glad to see that this rathole for confiscated money is plugged. On the other, this program remains in place because the hole was plugged for purely pragmatic reasons. This means that it will likely be reopened in the future.

This program is immoral and should be abolished entirely.

Pop-Culture "Atheism" -- or Mainstream Irrationality?

James Taranto, at the end of a recent "Best of the Web" (scroll to the bottom), reminds me of an emotionalist I knew in college who apparently could not conceive of someone actually not believing in God. Upon learning I was an atheist, she thought I was merely "angry at God".

Taranto notes that many people who called themselves "atheist" in a poll also expressed a belief in God. He then mentions the report's probably correct offering of confusion about the term "atheist" as a likely reason for the discrepancy.

But then he says that ambiguity about the word "believe" might be the real culprit and cites the petulant lyrics of a song by the British band XTC as an example. He summarizes the attitude thusly: "[T]he XTC atheists' attitude toward God is like the Arabs' attitude toward Israel. They don't deny that God exists, but they blame him for all their problems, and they refuse to recognize his right to exist."

This is spot-on in one sense and disingenuous in another. To the degree that this band accepts Christian teachings, they are being petulant. But in the sense that Taranto imputes petulance to all atheists, he is being dishonest. He both evades the legitimate question of whether there is a God and psychologizes atheists in one fell swoop.

It is not terribly surprising to me that, many emotionalists who really are "angry at God" (and haven't given the question much rational thought) would call themselves "atheists".

Nor is it surprising that Taranto, like other conservative commentators with a heavy emotional stake in not questioning religion, would leap at the chance to set such people up as straw men for atheism. After all, they've had thousands of years to make their case that God exists and have still come up empty. Rather than own up to the fact that they are not even wrong and move on, they petulantly scapegoat the atheists.

Can we say "projection"? I knew you could!

-- CAV

Albrechtsen on "Fairness"

Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist for The Australian, writes a perspicacious blog posting against threats coming from the Left in America of bringing back the "Fairness" Doctrine. On two points, she is spot-on.

First, she describes it as a violation of property rights, which it would be:

Mandating equal time on privately owned radio stations and television stations is the appropriation of private property for political purposes. This is not the same as a legislative requirement for balance and diversity of views on a publicly funded broadcaster. This is interfering in the free market to entrench progressive views that the talk back airwaves have, by and large, rejected. [bold added]

Second, she notes the hypocrisy of how this "fairness" would be implemented and sees it for the admission of intellectual impotence that it is:

The push for mandated equal time of radio for progressive views is a clear acknowledgement that without some legislative oomph, left-wing ideas won't survive in the free market of ideas. If liberals were confident about the merits of their ideas, why would they feel a need to force left-wing voices on television and radio?

Ouch! And why should we tolerate having them crammed down our throats?

On only one thing do I fault her piece. She gets one issue only partly right, thereby missing a chance to strike a further blow for individual rights:

The only time we should mandate balance is where media is financed by the public. That's because taxpayers from one side of politics are entitled to see their money is not used to finance the unfair promotion of the other side's views. But if a publisher or media owner wants to promote his preferred side of politics on his own nickel he should be entitled to go for it. It would be a pointless as passing a law requiring more balance in Pravda on the Yarra. If The Age wants to cater for a left-wing audience, let them. [bold added]

Certainly, if we are going to have public broadcasting, it should be as objective as possible and not cater to any one particular viewpoint. However, the confiscation of money from ordinary citizens to pay for such public media is just as much a violation of their property rights as telling them what to do with their own property.

If we shouldn't bring back the Fairness Doctrine -- and Albrechtsen is absolutely right on that score -- then we should also abolish public broadcasting.

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 7:00 A.M. on June 24, 2008.

Quick Roundup 336

Housekeeping

Over the weekend, I updated the list of favorite posts and updated the blogroll. You may need to refresh your browser to see the changes to the list of favorite posts. This was a much larger edit than normal because various things over the past few months have kept me from performing my usual periodic edits. Things piled up.

I pruned from the blogroll something on the order of fifteen blogs whose links were stale or which had ceased publication for six months or more. These now appear on the list of retired or inactive blogs.

With the large number of edits I had to make in Blogger's cumbersome template editor -- I use the old one. -- the possibility of human error is higher than normal. So if you were on the blogroll and now you're not, even though you're blogging actively, drop me a line and I'll fix it.

Also, several new blogs appear: Andrew Bostom; Edelweiss; Philosophy, Law, and Life; and Priced in Gold. Look for other additions in the near future. I always mark the last ten additions as "new".

Another Way of Breaking Windows

I first saw this idea -- of the government offering cash prizes for scientific research -- floated by Glenn Reynolds in his An Army of Davids:

Sen. John McCain hopes to solve the country's energy crisis with cold hard cash.

The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting thinks the government should offer a $300 million prize to the person who can develop an automobile battery that leapfrogs existing technology.

The prize would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country.

In a speech being delivered Monday at Fresno State University in California, McCain is also proposing stiffer fines for automakers who skirt existing fuel-efficiency standards and incentives to increase use of domestic and foreign ethanol. [bold added]

Recall for a moment the nature of government -- the sole social institution that can legally wield force against you and me -- and then re-read the above.

First of all, would you rather (a) be free to donate your loose change to a charity of your choice (if at all) or (b) have a pickpocket take it and donate it to a charity of his choice? The smallness of the (government-inflated) dollar stolen from your wallet in no way changes the fact that that dollar was stolen.

Second, look at how free McCain feels to bully around businessmen, whom voters are more accustomed to seeing nudged around at the point of a gun. McCain will demand more of us later on based on this indication and he will have precedent and inertia on his side.

Third, consider the fact that we don't already have McCain's battery in light of the myriad technological advances its scientists and businessmen have produced and gotten into our hands with "only" personal profit as a motive. Hell, Bill Gates has been worth anywhere from two to three orders of magnitude more than this prize! The fact that this battery does not exist may be an indication that it is not valuable enough to warrant development.

McCain's proposal is immoral because it violates our property rights. It is dishonest because it pretends that the pecuniary smallness of such a violation by our own government changes things and that a government prize is the same as that offered freely by private individuals. And it is impractical because it promises to steer confiscated funds, scientific talent, and industrial effort away from more valuable avenues of research clearly indicated by the free market.

It is only the last point that most economists will say anything about -- if they aren't suckered by the "small-government" trappings. Despite it arguably requiring a lower government outlay than normal kinds of research funding, this proposal remains an example of Frederic Bastiat's "Fallacy of the Broken Window".

Another Reason the Death Penalty is Dangerous

Although Ayn Rand did not weigh in on one side or the other regarding capital punishment, she held the view that it was, "morally just, but legally dangerous -- because of the possibility of jury errors which could not be rectified after the death of the innocent man."

I recalled this problem when I noticed that the Supreme Court is due to rule on a Louisiana law that provides for the execution of child rapists. If a crime could be even worse than murder, this would be such a crime. On the other hand, if there is a kind of crime for which there could be a huge amount of pressure to get a conviction and execute, this would also be it.

So what's the problem here? The notion of the government finding even more reasons to execute people. Ayn Rand more than touched on this matter in the postscript to a letter to Rose Wilder Lane, who had asked whether "[T]hose [politically] almost with us do more harm than 100% enemies?"

I had just finished this letter to you, when, strangely enough, I received an appalling answer to the question you asked me -- a final proof that our "almost" friends are our worst enemies. It was the worst shock in all my experience with political reading. I received the Economic Council Letter of August 15th. (Incidentally, I subscribed to that Letter mainly in order to get your book reviews.) And I read that Merwin K. Hart, a defender of freedom and Americanism, is advocating a death penalty for a political offense.

I am actually too numb at the moment to know what to say. I don't have to explain to you that once such a principle is accepted, it would mean the literal, physical end of Americans; nor to ask you to guess who would be the first people executed under such a law; nor to remind you that the crucial steps on the road to dictatorship, the laws giving government totalitarian powers, were initiated by Republicans -- such as the draft bill, or the attempt to pass a national serfdom act for compulsory labor. [link and bold added] (The Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 309)

It is hair-raising to hear that what I regarded as a somewhat remote, down-the-road possibility has already been proposed by an allegedly pro-capitalist American!

Here's a question: Does anyone out there know what, exactly, Hart had in mind?

Software Recommendation

(Or: Run the Ayn Rand Research CD on Linux!)

Regulars will know something of my recent computer woes: In March, while I was preparing for a scientific conference and working on a major writing project, my desktop died. It was the motherboard.

After weighing my needs and options, and taking into consideration that I'll soon be moving across the country, I decided to purchase an ASUS Eee PC as a laptop, and cobble together the remnants of my old desktop and my wife's old desktop -- both of whose disks are all IDE as opposed to the newer SATA. (She has the laptop in Boston.)

The former takes care of my mobile computing (and blogging) needs. The latter was dual boot, so I could use Windows when I needed to for work. I could wait until I was in Boston to buy a new desktop.

Well, you guessed it. The hard drive drive with the Windows installation crashed within a week of my building the new desktop! While it was possible to repartition the Linux hard drive and install Windows there, this would be time-consuming. Also, all I really needed Windows for was to run Word and a proprietary image browser/editor for my work.

Normally, I would use VMWare to run a virtual Windows computer on Linux for such needs, but it is impossible to upgrade the desktop to more than 750 MB of RAM and I would be able to budget only half of that for the virtual machine. This is bad enough, but we're talking about images that require at least 512 MB RAM for me to work comfortably with them.

So decided to try Crossover Office from Codeweavers. This application, which was only $40.00 and was downloadable the moment I bought it, involves less computational overhead than VMWare. It is a compatibility layer rather than a virtual machine, meaning that I could skip repartitioning my hard drive as well as installing Windows.

This, if it worked, would allow me to run Word and the image browser as if they were native Linux applications, making them run faster and, incidentally, saving me from having to reboot my computer (if I took the dual boot option) or booting a virtual Windows machine (as with VMWare). Fortunately, it did work, and more. (Note that with VMWare, which runs Windows, you can run nearly any Windows program you want without fear.)

Your mileage with other software may vary -- as the Codeweavers site explains clearly enough -- but MS Office 2000 runs almost perfectly for me as does the image browser (which Codeweavers does not officially support) and -- pure gravy here! -- I'm running my copy of Oliver Computing's Ayn Rand Research CD under Linux now. Quite convenient!

So I was able to just change the temporary desktop to a Linux-only machine and still use the software I need to be able to work at home again!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Corrected typos. (2) Added parenthetical comment on VMWare.

Bubble Bursts, Perhaps for Now

Rich Lowry pens a column to the effect that the global warming bubble has burst and illustrates at the very same time why, if he is correct, something else will quickly replace global warming as an excuse to limit the freedom of Americans.

Before I begin, I will note that I don't regard the global warming bubble as having burst just because the Senate ceased debating national fuel rationing for now -- nor will I even if such a cap never comes to pass. Let's see a new oil refinery or two get built and some offshore drilling first. And then let's toss in some significant repeals of environmental regulation. My point is that -- as is the case with socialized medicine, which has been foisted on us incrementally for decades -- freedom needn't be slain in dramatic "up or down" fashion. A slow death by poisoning will make it (and us) just as dead.

Furthermore, "climate change" is merely the latest marketing gimmick of many used by statists (from both the left and the right) to push for greater government control over our lives. If the idea that man has rights and its corollary, that the government's sole proper function is to protect them, do not eventually win the day, their opposites will -- whether starving children, "racism", or the weather provides the excuse.

Just look at these excerpts from Lowry's column to see what I mean:

1. The cost-benefit analysis of battling global warming is never going to make sense for Americans.
2. We should feel a moral obligation to aid Bangladesh and similar places with mitigation measures, when (and, again, if) the time comes. Until then, our consciences should rest easy, given the $20 billion annually we spend on development assistance, including billions of dollars fighting AIDS, malaria, and other diseases affecting people whose suffering isn't theoretical.
3. If we can't get China to quit jailing dissidents and arming a genocidal Sudan, what hope is there of getting it to stop something -- rapid economic development -- that's otherwise unobjectionable? With hundreds of millions of Chinese people living in abject poverty, the country's economic growth is one of the world's most important initiatives against human misery.
4. Finally, there's the global-cooling spell. The world hasn't been warming since 1998, and an article in the journal Nature says warming won't pick up again until 2015. Since global warming is a long-term trend, a decade-long or more stall in temperatures doesn't mean much -- except that environmentalists have banked so much politically on whipping up hysteria based on imminent catastrophe. [bold added]
   

Lowry's account for the demise of the fuel ration (for now?) amounts to saying that the abstract goal of the global warming alarmists -- American self-sacrifice -- is noble, but that it is impractical: Americans would be willing to fulfill their alleged moral obligations (2), but not willing to misdirect those efforts (1), or see them so easily undercut (3) or wasted on a manufactured crisis (4).

And now that I've lain these four points out, I see a part of the global warming puzzle that has been partially obscure for me all along. I have maintained for quite awhile that the scientific debate over whether there is warming (and why) should not be confounded with the political one over what (if anything) ought to be done about it. Nevertheless, it has struck me as odd that more opponents of global warming hysteria haven't caught on.

Yes, there is widespread intellectual confusion over the nature of government today, but there is also widespread support for altruism and its collectivist expression in politics. The only question for most people is merely about whose will is to be imposed on everyone else.

This is why, for example, fundamentalists who are well aware of left wing propaganda being promulgated in our public education system don't seek the repeal of socialized education, but fight for prayer in the schools -- to take that system over for themselves. Most people today are altruists and have no moral objection to collectivism as such. They merely oppose manifestations they find distasteful. Or, to put it another way, they all like different flavors of Kool-Aid.

And this is why we have a conservative, a supposed champion of free enterprise, heaving a mild sigh of relief about China's unwillingness to go along with fuel rationing. Americans have just as much right to burn the fuel we need as the Chinese, and man's life is an end in itself. If more people understood and accepted those ideas to begin with, there would never have been a global warming bubble in the first place. And we'd have no other similar shams to look forward to in the future.

We have the right to live our own lives. Real Americans don't wring their hands and then say, "I'm off the hook because of China."

-- CAV

Thompson on Taxation

I was pleased to learn that C. Bradley Thompson, whose seminal "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" I frequently cite here, appears in the newsletter of Glenn Beck, a popular conservative commentator.

His editorial is titled, "Individual Rights, Taxation and the Proper Role of Government". Here is an excerpt:

How one thinks about taxes depends more fundamentally on how one thinks about the nature and purpose of government which in turn depends on how one thinks about the rights of individuals. Taxation is a social barometer measuring the degree to which a society is prosperous or poor, free or enslaved, good or evil.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans had a very different conception of government than we do today. At the time of the American Revolution, the American people believed that the sole purpose of government was the protection of individual rights - the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Various attempts by the British Parliament during the 1760s and '70s to tax the colonists without their consent provoked the Americans to revolt, to declare their independence from Great Britain, and to develop a radically new conception of government founded on the moral principle of man's rights. [bold added]

I have noted before that I am great admirer of Thompson's ability to apply his pro-reason, pro-individual rights perspective to American history and I hope that Beck features more of his work in the future.

The newsletter is free and I subscribed this morning. So far, my subscription has been confirmed, but I have yet to see whether subscribing today will get you the issue with that editorial.

I'm just back from Boston and swamped. If anyone subscribes today and gets that editorial (or knows how to access any archives), do please leave a comment.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added hyperlink.
6-24-08: Bill Brown has found an Internet posting of the whole article. Thanks, Bill!

Australia's Exploding "Fat Bomb"

Via Matt Drudge comes a news story that illustrates perfectly what is wrong with the West. It leads with the recent finding that, on the whole, Australians are more likely to be obese than Americans and then notes the "necessity" of the government taking action to combat this "problem".

Why am I placing the term "problem" in quotes? Even if being overweight always doomed someone to poor health, what difference would it make to me, in a society where the government does not force me to pay for someone else's carelessness (through socialized medicine in this case) whether someone else is overweight? It would be that person's problem and not mine.

But under a mixed economy such as Australia's, the opposite is true.

Titled "Australia's Future Fat Bomb," the study compiled the results of height and weight checks carried out on 14,000 adult Australians in 2005.

...

The study predicted there would be an extra 700,000 heart-related hospital admissions in the next 20 years due to obesity and almost 125,000 people would die because of the condition in that period.

The report calls for a national weightloss strategy on the scale of smoking and skin cancer campaigns, including subsidising gym memberships and personal training sessions.

It suggested hospital waiting lists could be prioritised on the basis of weightloss, to give obese people incentive to slim down. [bold added]

Those calls for a triage on the basis of a patient's personal habits (along with calls for the government to start meddling with them) will sound very familiar to regular readers here. Outright denial of services by individual physicians and similar proposals to expand the government have been heard from Britain recently.

On that score, this is just more of the same: The government discourages personal responsibility by doling out a necessity for "free" and then, when the economic cost of countless bad decisions becomes apparent, someone proposes to give the government an even greater improper role.

The West has been doing that for decades. Controls breed controls, as many economists point out, but don't go far enough when they do. What's so interesting here is how the West, which many conservatives and libertarians seem to think is trending towards greater freedom, speaks capitalist-sounding language even as it hastens its death spiral towards tyranny.

Just look at the talk about "incentives" here. The distinguishing characteristic of the government is that it is the sole social institution which can legally force people to do things or harm them. Properly, this physical force would be used only to protect the individual rights of citizens, but otherwise, when it is wielded, it will violate someone's rights, and all such instances also set the dangerous precedent that such is acceptable.

By its nature, then, when the government tells you what to do, it is basically doing so while pointing a gun at your skull. Government "incentives" to do anything other than respect the rights of others are morally equivalent to the "incentive" any street thug offers when he says, "Your money or your life."

So we already have one of the world's freer societies confused about individual rights and the proper role of the government -- and operating an altruist-collectivist medical system that rewards irresponsibility at the expense of the able and productive,

This is bad enough, but then Pragmatism, the rejection of principles on principle, rears its ugly head (and probably alongside that of ignorance of the nature of a better political system, capitalism). The one thing absent from this discussion of "incentives" is the one thing that best puts to work incentives -- the real incentives of the goal of self-preservation and betterment. That would be greater freedom.

If Australians were personally responsible for their own medical bills, each could consider for himself whether he regarded being overweight (or smoking, or whatever) as unhealthy and, if so, as worth the risk. Those who made good decisions would spend less on medical care to the extent that one's health depends on good habits, and those who did not would burden no one but themselves.

What boggles the mind is that all this talk about "incentives" you hear floating around all the time these days is directly because there is some appreciation out there for the efficiency of a market economy. But this often goes only so far, and only to the extent that some short-term goal -- evaluated wholly out of context -- is made to look easier to accomplish. So you get a proposed government control -- forcing the obese to the back of the line -- being called an "incentive".

The proper purpose of a government isn't to reduce the spending of confiscated money to some lower level by issuing orders to its citizens. it's to protect their right to live free from the threats and harm that come from other men initiating physical force. In this case, Australia shouldn't just refrain from hectoring its people about their habits: It should stop stealing their money and ruining their medical system.

In the meantime, something that would preserve freedom for all Australians; usually save prudent, virtuous, and productive Australians money; and incidentally, probably encourage many to make better personal choices is swept under the rug: Capitalism.

Australia's real "fat bomb" isn't a projected rise in public expenses caused by a government-encouraged neglect of personal health: It's the huge and growing level of involvement of its government in every aspect of the daily lives of its citizens. Not only that, the real "fat bomb" isn't just ticking. It's going off. Now.

The "fat bomb" cited in this study is, incidentally and ironically, merely a symptom, and the proposals laid out there would be as wise as treating a symptom while ignoring the disease.

-- CAV

PS: I have just noticed that Paul Hsieh has posted on mandatory waistline checks in Japan.

Updates

Today: (1) Added the word "legally" to description of government. (2) Added "of the nature of" between "ignorance" and "a better political system". (3) Corrected two typos.

Botolophston wins the crown!

Today, what I could have billed, MTV-style, as "Gus Van Horn Unplugged Week" draws to a close. (Or perhaps "untethered" would be a better term.) I'll be back in Houston tonight and, after a weekend of catching up on the news and my usual blogs, I'll be closer to my usual mode of blogging than I have been over the past week.

Of course, between not being sure of whether I'd have Internet access at all in a couple of places and then having to pull a work-related all-nighter before I left town (thus having nothing composed in advance until just this past Saturday), I was more sure of it being "Gus Van Horn -- Not" week. All things considered, I am pretty happy with the past week of blogging despite being so out-of-touch, and think I might have learned a lesson or two on how I can proceed after my relocation here.

Usually, when I go somewhere new, I take a morning stroll with a camera, and like last year with Telluride, some of my photos make it here. No photos this time, though. I finally got to take my traditional morning stroll, but I didn't want to wake my wife for the camera, and I'd forgotten to pack the USB adapter for it anyway.

So I'll jot down a few notable memories from the Boston leg of our trip instead....

• On the walk, I found a very old church that would serve as a fitting metaphor for religion itself. It was somehow beautiful and malevolent-looking all at once. Religion bundles together good, higher emotions (e.g., love and reverence) and evil moral teachings (centered on human sacrifice). Don't think that just because blood isn't literally being spilled that sacrifice isn't taking place and never let anyone convince you that self-sacrifice is any less human -- or noble in any way -- just because victim and performer are one and the same.
  
• Within that area was a street -- St. Botolph -- whose Tolkienesque name piqued my curiosity. Wikipedia had nothing on him, but a Google search answered our question of what he might be the patron saint: Boston itself! And the town's name is derived from his, too!
  
• Last night, after going to bed, my wife and I were awakened by horn-honking and yelling in the street. It made me question whether our read on the neighborhood was right after all -- until I checked the news this morning and found this. Twenty points is an ass-kicking. This was nearly forty! Myrhaf's looking to next year and the NBA finals played right into sibling rivalry this year: My wife's city bests my sister-in-law's.
• We got to have lunch with one of my old friends and his wife. He also has an interesting, but time-consuming avocation: He's a comedian.
• We had dinner with another friend who's also part of a couple moving from Houston to Boston. His wife and son will probably end up here around the same time I do.
  
• I witnessed an overwhelming display of love for a daughter by her parents. My in-laws made this move almost vacation-like for us with all their help!
• Last but not least, I had the pleasure during my stay in Boston of meeting one of my fellow Objectivist bloggers for a sociable pint at this very old and very charming pub. Also in the pub while we were there was a cast member of a popular television series, but that would have gone right over my head had it not been pointed out to me....

Next time, there will be pictures!

-- CAV

Slow Roundup 5

1. Here's something I wish Google Blogger would try: Timed comment settings. The way Blogger is set up now, if you allow comments at all, you have either (a) open comments, which means your blog will get spammed with "comments" that are nothing more than ads, or (b) moderated comments, which means you have to moderate all comments.

In the first case, the only way to avoid comment spam is to personally check any post with open comments and personally close comments to each post as reader interest wanes. In the second case, you have an easier time avoiding comment spam, but if you get lots of traffic, you probably won't be able to moderate comments effectively unless, again, you personally close off posts to comments.

Both problems could be solved -- and with more bloggers moderating comments, comment spam almost eradicated -- if Blogger incorporated a feature that would allow you to have comments automatically close after some pre-set period.

2. I've seen lots of buzz about the Amazon Kindle -- Rational Jenn has one and loves it, while Ann Althouse hates hers.

Me? My Eee PC is great for reading PDFs, such as the scientific papers I often need to read and which, oddly, the Kindle does not support. Also, I prefer to carry one multifunctional device over several specialized ones.

I prefer to let early adopters sort things out, and I smell a convergence. Why shouldn't the Kindle do more than it does? And why not sell books in a format that more users than those who buy a specific device can use?

3. Good typo of the week: "undertasken". I was thinking about some work I'd started for my boss when I wrote that one!

4. I love my wife, but she's not the most confident speller. Recently, when I replied to her request for a confirmation of how to spell, "matter", I tossed in the following phonics lesson in joke form: "It's m-a-t-t-e-r. With one 't', it's 'mater, and that's a vegetable."

5. Van Horn's Law of Corporate Computing: No matter how sophisticated computing becomes, some corporations will find new ways to apply it poorly.

For example, back in the late eighties, I believe, when computers were still brand new, I remember people using them all the time in ways that were actually more inconvenient and less effective than established ways of doing things. This sense of novelty seemed to get the better of the folks in charge of International Harvester, who renamed their company "Navistar". They selected this ghastly name with -- you guessed it -- the "aid" of a computer.

Nowadays, I find myself making purchases on the phone because some scientific supply houses have web pages so poorly designed that they aren't worth the trouble of trying to figure out. "Please, please help me put my money in your hands," I think.

I then go straight to a web site -- of a competitor -- that actually works, unless there is none that I know of, or the phone. Being on the web does not necessarily mean you're being cutting-edge anymore, and just because you think you're cutting-edge doesn't mean you are going to make money.

6. Possibly paraphrasing from the May 6 entry of the 2008 Beer-a-Day Calendar: "In Texas, it is illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing."

Yeah. That's my real reason for moving to Bean Town!

7. Random thought: When it comes to "Big Oil", leftists want to take everything away from the evil corporations. But when it comes to the the oil "owned" by various dictators, suddenly, "property" is a sacrosanct right. But then, "bigness" is a sin for all but the government in their eyes.

8. As I mentioned before, my wife sometimes coins the cutest portmanteau words and phrases. Recently, when deciding what to have for dinner, we had narrowed things down to Italian and she started out thinking of pizza, but switched to pasta in mid-thought. The word "pista" (pronounced "peace-tah") came out.

9. The straitlaced grammarian in me winces every time I hear someone say, "a number of Xs are". The subject, "number", is singular, so the verb should be , as well. And, yes, the grammatically correct wording does sound awkward. Try something else.

10. Bikers on streets should obey traffic laws and rules of common courtesy that apply to cars, including all that apply to the smooth flow of traffic. This means, among other things, that they should travel mainly at the edge of the road -- rather than slowing everyone else down by forcing their green piety in our faces by occupying the center of the lane at 15 MPH.

Instead, many do this and more, even turning into pedestrians when that suits them. I just love crawling behind some idiot and then having to stop at the red light he made me miss, while he trots his bike across the pedestrian crossing with the crosswalk signal.

I think pedestrians hear my car horn better, too, and bikers who behave like that are always pedestrians in my book.

You want to be a car? Then act like a car.

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 8:00 A.M. on June 17, 2008.

What Does "Complicated" Mean?

I recently heard an interesting description of the burdensome and complicated security arrangements Israel has in place to keep aspiring murder-suicide bombers from crossing into Israel from the barbaric lands that surround it.

These arrangements -- not to mention the whole situation in Palestine, the geographic area that contains Israel and some of these barbaric areas -- were described again and again as "complicated".

This is not the first time I have heard either described with this word nor will it be the last, for the word is a reflection of the state of our culture in the West. In our current culture, the differences between wealthy, civilized Israel, and the poverty-stricken barbaric areas that border it are attributed to anything but the moral differences between the people who live in each area.

I would submit that the place this crucial difference is missed or evaded the most is within Israel itself, for the description of "complicated" came from someone who had just been there and who had learned much about the facts on the ground. My distinct impression is that the Israelis used this term themselves.

But facts on the ground cannot be meaningfully interpreted without proper principles. For example, Israel is much greener and has many more trees than the surrounding areas, even though all have the same climate and similar soils. This is directly because during the decades Israeli settlers spent irrigating the land, farming it, and planting trees, the Arabs did not.

Even now, the hostile Arabs in Gaza -- existing by the grace of Israeli moral paralysis and massive welfare payments from the West -- are building bombs to attack Israel rather than following its example and improving their own lot through hard work and long-range planning. Or supporting their terrorist leaders. Or tolerating those who do. Or not doing what they can to resist or leave forever.

Everyone knows these things, but since morality is so commonly thought not to apply to the matter of furthering human life, no moral import is granted to these questions. Instead, the "plight" of the "Palestinians" immediately nullifies all other considerations. They are in need -- never mind that it is largely their own fault -- and thus, Israel (and the West) must continue feeding this pack of wolves leering at them from such a short distance.

In one sense, this is a very simple situation. Israel should cut off all access from the "Palestinian" areas and the West should stop all aid. Access to the West or trade should be banned until the inhabitants renounce all hostilities towards Israel and agree to be militarily occupied until they propose a form of government that will not threaten Israel.

What "complicates" this situation are the dominant philosophies in the West. Pragmatists (and those influenced by Pragmatism) disavow any need for abstract principles to guide man's actions at all and, as such, make it impossible for many people to evaluate information available to all and draw proper conclusions. And altruism, the dominant morality, motivates the continued feeding of the wolves even in the face of their implacable hostility and the mortal threat they pose to Israel.

So despite many indications that there are clear moral differences overall between the people of Israel and those who plot and scheme against them from next door, these are swept aside, making many people unable to see for very long after the latest bombing that a state of war exists between Israel and "Palestine".

The combatants, their sympathizers, and those who might work against them if they saw clearly that it would be in their interest do do so -- all of these are allowed to live as if the actions of "Palestine" are a normal part of daily life. In the meantime, Israel has to adopt elaborate and intrusive security measures so its citizens can remain alive even as they maintain the fiction that "Palestine" deserves statehood rather than the choice of supervised reform or annihilation.

In the sense that, say, check-in procedures at the Israeli border or the political arrangements within Palestine involve many details, they really are complicated. But in a moral sense -- in the sense that there is a clear, if very unpleasant course of action for Israel and the West to take, the only complications arise from an inability or refusal to recognize that course of action brought on by Pragmatism and altruism.

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 8:00 A.M. on June 16, 2008.

The War Non-Debate

Editor's Note: The good news is that I have some measure of Internet access. The bad news is that to use it, I had to fire up my wife's Windows machine and use Internet Explorer. I feel like I'm stretching my neck just to log on to my throw-away email account, let alone my blogging account or main email. So it'll just be a brief emailed post today, and if you've left a comment or tried to email me recently, I'll reply as soon as I can.

Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute has just written a piece that in the wake of yesterday's Supreme Court decision concerning the captured foreign combatants being held at Guantanamo should make you really mad. He discusses the lack of debate about the current war during this election cycle, which would be bad enough in any time of war, but which the results of the policies of the past six years makes unforgivable.

Journo aptly summarizes the Bush "war" policy as, "not to target the greatest threat, but instead to minister to those in greatest need. ... to show compassion to oppressed Iraqis and Afghans, to raise them out of poverty, to give them elections," and then he lays out the inevitable results of that policy:

Six-plus years into a "war on terror," Washington has done nothing to counter the spearhead of the global jihadist movement, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States has allowed it to grow stronger. Iran races to acquire nuclear weapons; it taunts and threatens our naval vessels; it arms and trains insurgents in Iraq in attacking Americans; it backs jihadists across the region--all with impunity.

What about Iraq? Four thousand-plus U.S. troops died so that hostile Iraqis could elect a new gang of anti-Americans to sit in Baghdad's parliament. Iraq's government is still dominated by Islamist groups, which still operate death squads, and it is still deep, deep in Iran's pocket.

Across the Middle East, Washington campaigned for elections in the strongholds of various Islamist groups--such as Hamas and Hezbollah--that it should have worked to destroy. Many people, true to their ideological beliefs, voted to give these groups more political power. Naturally, the jihadists feel encouraged. According to a new study, the Iranian-backed Hamas has amassed at least 80 tons of explosives in Gaza since 2007, and it has also got its hands on anti-tank weapons. So expect another Islamist war emanating from the terrorist proto-state of "Hamas-stan," which Bush's policy helped create. [bold added]

As for the Supreme Court decision, I am not familiar enough with it to comment on whether it was correct, considering the rationale used by the Bush administration for holding and trying the war prisoners by military tribunals. But something in one or both of the branches of government involved is clearly horribly wrong.

Our government hasn't the will to fight a real war, it won't let our soldiers kill the enemy, and now, apparently, it won't even take prisoners!

-- CAV

Updates

6-14-08: Corrected formatting of post.

Note on Comments

The modem at my current location is excruciatingly slow. (The Google search page takes minutes to load!) If there are comments in the queue, I will be unable to moderate them until tomorrow morning -- if I have an Internet connection at all. Otherwise, the comments will have to wait until I do, which will be some time within the week. Thank you for your patience! -- CAV

I'd rather be in Texas.

I woke up this morning contemplating a bumper sticker -- one containing the words in the title of this post. There will be no graphics since I am using a very slow telephone modem and posting via email. But I am sure that if you looked, you could find one out there on the web. I am not the bumper sticker type. I will not risk damaging the paint job of my car if it is new, by placing one anywhere other than on a metal bumper -- Do new cars have those anymore? -- or on a window. I am a little freer with old cars, but that said, I think I have used a total of two bumper stickers in my entire life. In addition, I simply dislike most bumper stickers, and this borders on disliking the idea of bumper stickers in general. Why? For one thing, most of them violate my sense of aesthetics. For another, as an intermittent series of posts here would indicate, years of seeing people attempting to "educate" others about their almost uniformly incorrect and immoral political views have caused me to regard the practice with distaste. (The series is titled "Idiot Bumper Stickers". You can find them on the "Favorite Posts" page. No link today -- I am composing this on my laptop for a cut-and paste later, and there's ZERO wireless access here....) But I have nevertheless tattooed my car twice. The first time, I was a soccer-playing kid in high school, and had a sticker that simply read "Soccer" on the metal bumper. The "o" was a soccer ball. The second time was after the Islam-inspired atrocities of 2001. I placed an American flag decal on my rubberized plastic bumper. Expressing my allegiance to civilized values in some way was simply too important. The bumper sticker originated as tourist advertising, and owners of popular attractions would apply them to the cars of tourists while they they were having fun and the cars sat in their lots, if I recall correctly. (If I remember to do so, I'll link to some reference here. If I don't, you'll get this parenthetical comment. Damned telephone modem. And dammed recollection!) The bumper sticker was and is a form of advertising. This fact is crucial when considering whether a bumper sticker really is appropriate or trying to understand the phenomenon of the political bumper sticker. What is an advertisement? It is an attempt to make others aware of something, motivated by the values of the advertiser. Some guy running a campground obviously wants to attract more paying customers. The American patriot wants to rally his countrymen to its defense. Those are obvious enough. But what about the left-winger who slaps a "Coexist" sticker on his car -- as if people attacked while minding their own business need to hear that? Or the fundamentalist who proclaims that abortion "stops a beating heart" -- as if this standard of the sanctity of life wouldn't make slaughtering cattle just as wrong as murder? They, too, are motivated by their values, or at least what they imagine to be their values. The novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand made an astounding and revolutionary connection as an ethicist: She connected the notion of "value" to the process of a living being remaining alive, and thereby connected morality to life, uniting the moral and the practical for the first time in millennia of philosophical and proto-philosophical (i.e., religious) thought. All philosophies have something to say about how man should act, and those which answer the question of what constitutes the good will hold that man ought to do what is good. Ayn Rand alone was able to connect morality to life by asking why man needs morality at all. Doing so, she realized that it is because man hasn't instincts, but a rational mind that needs to explicitly answer the question, "What must I do to survive?" This is why man needs an ethics and, incidentally, why a proper ethics will be egoistic, but Rand explains this better than I ever will.... A value, for a living thing, is something it needs to survive. Man, having no automatic way to seek values, needs a proper morality to guide his pursuit of values. I will note here that in this context, Rand defined "value" as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep". Guided by a rational morality, one would act to gain or keep only those things that would actually further his life. One's professed "values" would ... really BE values. But let's get back to the popular understanding of the term "values". In the parlance of our times, "values" is a package-deal of valid elements (i.e., things we really do need to live and prosper, such as political freedom) and elements that really ought to be examined further (i.e., morality, which most people unfortunately equate to a specific kind of morality, altruism). Indeed, since "values" is an abstraction and most people are not in the habit of connecting their abstractions to reality or checking them against reality, the valid part of the package deal is used to sucker people in to committing the human (self-)sacrifice that is the essence of altruism. Consider almost any discussion of moral ideals or "values" today and you will see what I mean. The leftist will speak of "tolerance" when he hopes for you to remember the benefits of individual freedom as he slips egalitarianism in under the radar. (The left has ridiculed values as being religiously-based, which they are not, for so long that few who aren't religious will openly speak of having values.) A theocrat will speak of "values" such as faith, sacrifice, and obedience while pretending that America, which often ridiculed the first and rebelled against the second two, was founded on them. Now consider the idea that to survive, man must act rationally to further his own self-interest. In the sense that an altruist will act to gain or keep it, having others subscribe to or at least profess his code of morality is a value to such an individual. In the sense that self-sacrifice diminishes one's ability to live, having anyone at all adhering to altruism to any degree whatsoever is not a value to anyone. So it is in the former sense that the altruists advocating leftist or theocratic political causes are advertising their values, but in the latter sense that they have a tough sell. Reality and rational self-interest are not on their side. Leftists, being animated on the whole by a visceral hatred of America, can't offer actual rewards to people who adopt their causes. You will live more poorly if you go green. You will die or worse if you give Islamic totalitarianism any quarter. They can't sell their ideas based on the results of carrying them out, so they attempt to paint those who disagree with them as horribly, inexcusably, and morally wrong. It is no accident that leftist bumper stickers come across as preachy and snide at once. Hatred isn't just not a family value, it's a tough sell. Shame (and often improper shame at that) and social intimidation are about all they have to work with. And on the right? Religion is a confused lump at once of man's highest aspirations and some of the deadliest teachings he has ever conceived, and it is irrational at base. The fact that you can't come up with a rational argument in the space of a bumper sticker is no problem to someone whose whole philosophical system is built on faith and obedience. The things needn't even make sense. "God is love." "Jesus plus one cross = 4given" (or something like that). Religion so permeates our culture that theocrats need only remind others of religion to have some hope of that person returning to the fold. Religion also poses against the left -- which is collectively the biggest "useful idiot" in history -- as the defender of actual values, and as the path to happiness. Some religious bumper stickers (such as anti-abortion stickers) are, to be sure, as preachy and nasty as anything from the left. (I would suspect that this would tend to happen mostly when the obvious implications of religion are anti-life.) But many enlist the aid of actual values for the cause of spreading religion. It is our current cultural state, I think, that I really hate, and not so much the bumper sticker itself. The bumper sticker, as an advertisement can be harmless fun, and plenty of people use them in this way. And if you are really telling others about something of value to you, isn't part of the whole point that you might occasionally get the chance to explain what you like so much about that value? Might an advertisement of an actual value lead to some interesting conversations or lead to meeting interesting people? I'm really going to miss Texas. Perhaps mentioning this fact will occasionally allow me to explain what about it I will miss, and lead me to meeting the occasional Texan in spirit as I go about my business in Massachusetts. If don't learn that it is less un-Texan than I think it is, I can at least interject an, "It doesn't have to be this way!" into the sound bytes that constitute roadway conversation. And if I do, the Bay Staters, will smile and understand. -- CAV

My First Bush Bulb

On my last trip to Wal-Mart, I inadvertently did something I swore I'd avoid until it was absolutely impossible: Purchase a "Bush Bulb".

How? These sickly, twisted mercury-infused votive candles of the Church of Global Warming are impossible to confuse with incandescent Edison Bulbs, right?

Right, unless they come disguised as real light bulbs and you're in a hurry.

We have an odd back room off the kitchen where I keep my home brewing supplies, my roll-top desk, and, within some unobtrusive white cabinets, my tools. It's as close to a "man cave" as I've ever had. I have even hosted the occasional poker game there, hence we call it "the poker room".

Its main source of illumination is a flood light located in a recessed housing on the ceiling. With months to go before I head up to Boston to join my wife, the bulb went out and I added "Flood Light" to my Wal-Mart list.

As has been usual lately, I was in a hurry when I went there. The selection of flood lights was limited to a bunch of very expensive bulbs that touted how long they'd last.

I'm leaving soon. Why should I spend extra money on a bulb that will last for years?

But that's all they had and I needed light back there. I didn't want to waste time going on another trip for the sake of one bulb. Into the cart it went.

On returning home, the first thing I saw when I picked up the package of the bulb to replace the flood light was a Bush Bulb peering out at me from behind the lens of its Edison Bulb-like housing.

Damn. Had I purchased a Bush Bulb? The packaging confirmed that I was about to desecrate my man cave. The 15 watt bulb was touted as "equivalent" to the 65 watt bulb I was going to replace it with. It wasn't going to be my place for long and I'd get to see for myself what the light bulbs our government is about to force us to use really can do.

At least for this application, the bulb is not " equivalent". There is a seconds-long delay between when you turn on the switch and when you get light. When you do, the light is dim for a period of something like a minute or two. Apparently, this bulb has to warm up a little. This means I can't depend on it to give me light instantly if I need it. After it warms up, the light is similar-enough to what I had before that it will do, but the unnecessary delay would ordinarily make this bulb unacceptable to me. Were I not leaving soon, I'd replace it.

And were President Bush and Congress not intent on handing out marching orders in the name of "saving" "the planet", I would be free, from now on, to benefit from the knowledge that, as flood lights, CFL bulbs are inferior to incandescent bulbs.

But President Bush and Congress are not about doing their job, which is to protect the individual rights of the American Citizen. This is too bad, for if they won't permit us to make a simple decision like buying a light bulb, how else will they harm us down the road?

I can't trust them on small matters. And yet, they can compel me through force to do their bidding on large matters. This is the essence of what is wrong with American government today. This has got to change, but it will not do so until the people re-learn the importance of individual rights and the proper purpose of government. Only then will Americans demand a government that isn't so intrusive that it will screw them out of making the right decision even on something so simple as which light bulb to buy.

-- CAV

What's in a barrel of oil?

Many things, and when all is said and done, the total volume is more than the original 42 gallons of crude:

Figures are based on 1995 average yields for U.S. refineries. One barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil. The total volume of products made is 2.2 gallons greater than the original 42 gallons of crude oil. This represents "processing gain."

Another site explains "processing gain" as due to the addition of other chemicals during the refining process.

It's interesting to see what 4.2 grams of gold will get for you in an industrialized society! (HT: The younger of my brothers.)

-- CAV

James and Luciano

So I'm headed out of town and thinking of how I might manage to blog without always having Internet -- while waiting on some data -- and remember that I haven't re-tested Blogger's post scheduling feature, which I'd decided wasn't ready for prime time the last time I tried it.

I decide that posting a YouTube video of one of my favorite James Brown songs, "It's a Man's Man's Man's World", if I can find it, might be excuse enough to fling a test post into the ether, while also being worthwhile in and of itself.

But when I went to YouTube, the version of the song I wanted came with a still shot. What's the point of embedding that?

So I looked around and stumbled across this: James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti performing the song together.

"What the hell is this?" I thought.

But I gave it a try anyway and liked it.

Enjoy!

And now, if you will excuse my gratuitously tossing in some links that got stripped last time: If I use post scheduling again, I need to know what to expect.....

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 8:40 P.M. on June 9, 2008.

Quick Roundup 335

Blogging Forecast: Highly Uncertain

I leave town tomorrow for a week and change to help my wife move to "that place back East", as Myrhaf would put it. Since her new position will probably make it hard for her to travel much for the next few years, we'll be visiting with some of our relatives along the way. I'll have my trusty Eee PC on hand, but whether I will be able to access the Internet with any degree of regularity is anyone's guess.

I had been hoping to at least put a few pre-scheduled posts into the publishing queue, but an opportunity to publish a paper with a collaborator may scupper that plan. I have already divided my time this weekend between computer repair and data analysis while also trying to pay some attention to my wife and help her attend to her moving preparations. And I may find myself having to work while on the road, but probably not that much.

I move to Boston once I find a job up there. Until then, I'll be wrapping up a project down here, job-hunting, and traveling to Boston every few weeks to visit my wife.

Defending against Shareholder Activism?

I recall hearing from somewhere in Objectivist circles recently about social activist "investors" -- left-wingers who have decided that the best way to advance their agendas is to transform corporations into ... tools ... for social change. (An op-ed from the Ayn Rand Institute in March alludes to something that would be a particularly effective means of achieving that end.) [Update: It was from Paul Hsieh that I recalled hearing about investor activism. Note that the theocrats are just as happy to play this game as their cousins on the altruist-collectivist left.]

An article from the Wall Street Journal describes an example of the trend in this way:

With their membership falling, union leaders are finding it harder to influence companies or politics from the factory floor. Their new approach is to use their control over large employee pension plans to insert themselves directly into the boardroom. The result is what one observer has termed "the new politics of capital," in which liberal activists attempt to turn entire corporations into lobbyists for their social and political goals, their campaigns all neatly disguised as "shareholder activism." [bold added]

From a reader email, I have learned that there is now a backlash, specifically in the form of an investor's fund that seeks to defend free enterprise. (The reader sent me a link to a YouTube audio of Steve Milloy from JunkScience.com speaking at an Exxon shareholder meeting.) From its information page and collection of news releases, it seems that much of its current efforts focus on getting corporations to stop suicidally supporting global warming legislation.

I do not know much about this fund. The fact that Steve Milloy is agnostic (at best) about evolution undermines his credibility to speak about science, and Milton Friedman, whom the fund quotes on its default page, was not a consistent defender of capitalism. Having said that, its site looks, at a minimum, to be a worthwhile resource for keeping tabs on "investor" activism.

Hugo Chavez to Rescind Spying Decree

Hugo Chavez, in the face of overwhelming opposition to a recent decree of his that would have required citizens to spy on one another -- and worried about losing another election -- has decided to rescind his unpopular decree:

"This law is shamelessly anti-constitutional," Fernandez said. "It violates the rights of defense, privacy, property and due process."

The law gave police the right to conduct searches without a court order, which she said "would have led us to a police state, I have no doubt." It also followed the Cuban model of appointing neighborhood leaders to whom citizens would be compelled to bring incriminating information about their neighbors, she said.

...

"But we can't be too confident about the president's promise to change it. The enabling law gives him the right to make laws without any public discussion or input from legal experts," Porras said. [bold added]

Another commentator gave what I think was an accurate description of what was behind Chavez's reversal: "Until November he will avoid anything that will produce a shock or which has the appearance of radicalism that could set people against him."

This is a blatant admission that he knows that his hold on power is weak, but then, I have noticed this before.

Play Games, Cure Diseases

From a professional newsletter, I have learned of an online game which may help scientists cure some diseases:

[K]nowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. A small proteins can consist of [a chain of] 100 amino acids, while some human proteins can be huge (1000 amino acids). The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins. [bold added]

Don't be put off by the ribbon the site uses as an emblem. This is a very interesting idea.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added note with missing link.
6-10-08: Corrected a typo.