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28 February 2002  

Disillusionment Day

All my heroes are crumbling before my eyes. On the same day Lileks disses Rand, Damian turns out to be a disciple of her archenemy. Oy.

02:08 PM |

Except Ye Repent...

Here's a good David Janes post on global warming that picks up on the environmentalism-as-a-religion theme:

Like smug evangelical Christians, global warming catastrophics take comfort in the fact that if we don't hear the gospel, if we don't convert, we will surely fry in hell ... er, rather fry on a ruined earth. And like Seventh Day Adventists knocking on the door at supper hour, maybe we should be telling them to move along, thanks.

01:58 PM |

Dear James...?

Can my love affair with Lileks survive today's Bleat, wherein he calls Ayn Rand a "dreadful writer"? It'll never be quite the same, that's for sure.

01:51 PM |

27 February 2002  

Ouch

Oh, this is funny. It reminds me of a story I heard about Margaret Atwood. She was talking to a brain surgeon who casually mentioned that he was thinking of writing a novel in his retirement. "What a coincidence!" the author replied. "When I retire, I'm planning to take up brain surgery."

10:08 PM |

23 February 2002  

More Bjorn

Yet another good story on the Lomborg phenomenon.

04:11 PM |

My Ethical Philosopher Matches

According to this quiz, my ethical beliefs are most consistent with these philosophers:

1. Aristotle (100%)
2. Rand (96%)

02:34 PM |

Slobogoogling

For a little Saturday morning diversion, I decided to jump on the Slobogoogling bandwagon and expose the person behind a name from this Free Milosevic petition. My target:

      678. Marius Laza, Software Engineer, Canada

Turns out Laza is (or was) a graduate student in computer science at the University of British Columbia. The head of that department had occasion to take particular notice of Laza last summer when his use of ubc computers to post racist comments to newsgroups was protested. As a result, Laza was forced to apologize (twice) by the university.

Just one more example of the of the many thoughtful, decent citizens who signed the petition.

12:27 PM |

22 February 2002  

Giese's Foreign Policy Rule #1: Don't Piss Anyone Off!

Rachel Giese chastises the Bush administration for upsetting US allies with its "axis of evil" rhetoric. She ends with this:

The real question... is not why the rest of world doesn't like or doesn't support America, but rather why does America care so little about the rest of the world?

(Here's a good answer to Giese-style hand-wringing.)

11:14 AM |

21 February 2002  

Twelve-Tone Tympanic Torture

Andrew Hofer steers clear of "important" music.

11:18 PM |

Bjorn Again

In a good summary of the anti-Lomborg hysteria among environmentalists, a perceptive point is made by author Matt Ridley:

The pessimists argue that Lomborg's good news might lead to complacency. But [false doomsday scenario specialist Paul] Ehrlich’s counsel of despair is far more dangerous. Many people now work to improve the environment at a local level with optimism that they can make the world a better place. To be constantly told by the big pressure groups that all is doom and gloom is no help. There is something rotten in the state of environmentalism. It lies not just in the petty factual dishonesty that is rife within the movement — Stephen Schneider once said, 'We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have' — but in the very philosophy that lies at the heart of greenery: the belief in constraint and retreat.

If six billion people have both more food and more forest than their three billion parents did; if the prices of copper, wheat and natural gas are going down, not up; if there are 20 times more carcinogens in three cups of organic coffee than in daily dietary exposure to the worst pesticide both before and after the ddt ban; if renewable resources such as whales are more easily exhausted than non-renewables such as coal; if lower infant mortality leads to falling populations, not rising ones, then perhaps we need to think differently about what sustainability means. Perhaps the most sustainable thing we can do is develop new technology, increase trade and spread affluence.

10:33 PM |

20 February 2002  

Porcine Panic Placation

Very funny commentary at Happy Fun Pundit on alarmist science reporting by the Washington Post. (Via Megan McArdle)

10:31 PM |

18 February 2002  

The Ties That Bind... and Gag

I can't say I was surprised to get some hate mail for my anti-recycling post; I just didn't expect it to be from my family. Thanks a lot little brother (cabinboy) and Dad (fredwick). Ah, the wonders of the Internet! Now, you can be harangued publicly by family members from a thousand miles away.

08:51 PM |

PC Shibboleths

Tim points out a good article on PC shibboleths by Thomas Sowell.

08:41 PM |

16 February 2002  

Recycle This

I don't recycle.

If you're like the majority of people of people who've discovered this fact about me, you're now either scowling contemptuously or, more likely, simply scratching your head wondering why. What possible reason could a person have for not recycling? After all, it's just as easy to drop your recyclables into the designated bin as it is throw them into the trash can, right?

I have a few reasons. For one, I get a kick out of the reactions. You don't realize how entrenched and pervasive an ideology recycling is until you flagrantly use the wrong receptacle to dispose of your empty Diet Coke can. The scandal! The shame!

Another reason is that it's one small way to protest against the religion of environmentalism. I oppose most of environmentalism's agenda, which is demonstrably not to make the world a cleaner, healthier place. The real agenda is a more sinister one that treats nature as superior to man and which seeks to hinder or halt the growth of technology and wealth. (This is not to say the aren't millions of duped followers who believe the former.) By refusing to recycle, I identify myself as a conscientious objector who's exempted himself from service in the environmentalists' crusade.

But the main reason I don't recycle is that it doesn't make any economic or environmental sense, as this excellent piece by John Tierney explains. At best, says Tierney, it's a way for guilty consumers to make up for giving in to their baser instincts.

Recycling has become a sacrament of atonement for buying too much stuff — for secretly loving stuff too much, as James B. Twitchell explains in "Lead Us Into Temptation," a study of consumer passions. "While we claim to be wedded to responsible consumption," he writes, "we spend a lot of our time philandering. Trash is lipstick on the collar, the telltale blond hair." Recycling is our way of saying, "I'm sorry, honey."

Sinners have every right to repent, but in this country religious sacraments are not supposed to be legally mandated or publicly subsidized. Recycling bottles and cans next year would cost taxpayers more than $50 million. Why don't its devotees find another ritual of atonement that might help the environment and save the city money?

10:26 PM |

15 February 2002  

Skategate

Since I was asked: I'm glad Salé and Pelletier got their gold. Though I didn't see the competition (I expect to hear from the citizenship police any day now), it seems that all the experts agree that only unfair bias could account for the Russian win. But I wish the Russians had had their medal taken away. After all, they wouldn't have had it if the judging had been fair.

The bigger question this whole thing raises in my mind, though, is how someone can choose to invest the tremendous time and effort necessary to become an Olympian in a sport where the outcome is dependent upon the whim of an "emotionally fragile" judge. Or a nationally biased one. Here, according to the National Post, is what the French judge implicated in the Salé and Pelletier debacle had to say on this subject:

One is stuck between a rock and a hard place. We're here to push our skater, but without contravening the ethics and risking suspension.

On a related note, here's a good Robert Tracinski piece in praise of figure skating. In it, he gives an interesting explanation of its status as a sport rather than an art form.

The primary reason figure skating is regarded as a sport is that it could find no place in contemporary art. After all, the essence of the modernist approach to art has been destruction: to tear down the standards and methods of every art form, to destroy melody in music, to destroy realism in art, to expunge rhythm and grace from the dance. Amidst this orgy of destruction, why should the modernists wish to help create a new art form? And of course, if modernists were ever to gain control of figure skating, we can be certain that it would soon become unwatchable (and unwatched). Sports provide a relatively clean and safe refuge.

09:08 PM |

14 February 2002  

Hospers' Memories of Ayn Rand

OK, let's make it a hat trick of Ayn Rand entries.

I just found this reminiscence by John Hospers.

When Marcel Proust tasted his famous cup of tea with madeleine, the experience of that unique taste evoked in him such a flood of recollections that it filled seven volumes.... Three days ago when I was invited by Full Context to record a few recollections of my acquaintance with Ayn Rand, I thought I could make it quick and easy. But in the ensuing hours, a flood of memories overcame me, many of them long buried, and now resurrected after an interval of 35 years, as vividly as if they were occurring at this moment.

09:25 PM |

10 February 2002  

Peikoff's Pair of Pages Provokes Prosecution by Pencil Pushers

Speaking of Ayn Rand: If you're a famous author considering depositing your papers with the Library of Congress, you may want to think twice. In the early 90's Leonard Peikoff, Rand's heir, generously donated all of the manuscripts and related documents for her novels — worth about $1 millon at the time — to the library. All except two pages, that is. He held back for himself the first and last pages of The Fountainhead. A few years later, when Peikoff casually mentioned the two pages in an interview (joking that he'd "stolen" them from the Library of Congress), the Department of Justice sprang into action on behalf of the library and demanded their "return." After years of legal wrangling, and mindful of the time, money, and stress a more prolonged fight would involve (while still not ensuring success), he gave in. Soon after, a government representative entered his home, took the framed documents off his wall, and walked out. You can hear about the whole sorry episode from Peikoff himself. (Real Audio, approx. 53 min.)

12:49 PM |

9 February 2002  

Ayn Rand on Values

I devoured Facets of Ayn Rand in the space of a few hours this week. It is a fascinating look into the personal life of the philosopher/novelist. One thing that jumped out at me through the anecdotes was Rand's passion for values. She was unwilling to let pass any attack on that which she held dear and she counseled others to be as steadfast in standing up for their own values. This advice applied not only to fundamental values like freedom and romantic love, but also to more prosaic things like the satisfaction taken in hobbies — or even housework. Mary Ann Sures, the co-author, writes:

One day, I was depressed because an acquaintance had criticized me for taking pleasure in cleaning a copper-bottomed frying pan. I enjoyed cleaning it and then seeing it shine on the wall, hanging on a peg board…. I was bothered by the criticism that I was finding enjoyment in something so nonintellectual…. I told [Ayn] about the incident, and she nodded in understanding. When I finished she said, "Oh, check your premises." … She pointed out that it was significant that I didn't clean [the pot] and then put it away, that I hung it up so I could look at it and enjoy its beauty…. In that discussion, she explored my attitude to housework in general and learned that I didn't mind doing it, and then she lead me to understand that I enjoyed the result — a polished and shined appearance to a room — and why that was a value I shouldn't apologize for…. She explained the necessity of identifying your values and knowing why they are values, why you shouldn't give up a value because someone questions it, even if you can't fully explain why it is important to you….To this day, I seldom mop a floor or polish a mirror without thinking of that afternoon with Ayn Rand and how much that discussion about values has meant to me.

Caught between the old social order and the sudden freedoms of a more democratic age, Princess Margaret led a life shadowed by the great disappointment of her thwarted romance with a divorced commoner….

Margaret was only 22 when her ill-starred romance with Royal Air Force Group Capt. Peter Townsend, a dashing — but divorced — hero of the Battle of Britain, made headlines around the world. By the standards of the day, divorce was seen as shameful, and for the sister of the new queen, marriage to a divorced man was unthinkable.

After more than two years of negotiation, press speculation and enforced separation from Townsend, Margaret announced in October 1955 that she would not marry him, "mindful of the church's teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth."

02:55 PM |

Rex Murphy on the Preoccupation with Prisoners

Rachel Giese:

Will America be the beacon of freedom, democracy and civil rights that it keeps saying it is? Or will it be the kind of nation that puts bags over the heads of prisoners and hold trials in secret — acting no better, in this case, than the despots with whom it's at war?

Those who are greatly exercised, now, by the Americans' treatment of the prisoners of this campaign might want to contemplate that, without the Americans, there would have been no campaign, and no prisoners to worry about.

This would have created a quite different, more profound, moral dilemma for this country. What would we have done, apart from making some hollow noises, in response to the murder of 24 of our nationals? More important, what, with our resources, could we have done about a terror network concentrated in Afghanistan, scattered over the globe, that had killed some of our citizens? Some mourning, much posturing, and no action.

Now that we're in the campaign, the choice of worrying over al-Qaeda's plight strikes me as eccentric, even to bizarre.

01:04 PM |

8 February 2002  

Den Beste Response, Part II

Steven Den Beste finishes up what he started.

08:52 PM |

6 February 2002  

Teddy vs. Ayn Rand?

Well, this explanation of Ted Kennedy's idiotic remarks makes as much sense as any I've heard:

Celebrating the Patriots' upset victory in the Super Bowl, Sen. Ted Kennedy declares (third item): "At a time when our entire country is banding together and facing down individualism, the Patriots set a wonderful example, showing us all what is possible when we work together, believe in each other, and sacrifice for the greater good." Facing down individualism? Teddy must've heard Osama bin Laden say something about the Koran and thought he said "Ayn Rand."

07:54 PM |

Den Beste Rises to the Challenge

And the answer to yesterday's question of who would be the first to respond to the Project on Defense Alternatives' why-the-war-was-a-failure report: Steven Den Beste. He says he's "not really ready to write a complete response yet, but a few comments...." For Den Beste, of course, "a few comments" is a dozen paragraphs. Here's one of them:

There is ... an unspoken assumption that "coalitions are a good thing" and based on that substantial criticism of the way that the US operated unilaterally. A priori, it assumes that failure to create a coalition is de facto a defeat. Indeed, several of the objections in here boil down to "That's not how things are supposed to be done!" He actually complains about the fact that the war was won rapidly and efficiently, and says that it should have been a slower campaign, planned more deliberate, prosecuted next spring, and involving substantial American ground forces.

02:40 PM |

Lileks Has NOT Left the Building

Just in case you believed Lileks when he said he wasn't updating this week: he is.

07:25 AM |

5 February 2002  

'Strange Victory' Report

An anti-war site summarizes a new 86-page report, "Strange Victory: A critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan war" from the Project on Defense Alternatives:

An ill-concieved and hastily arranged war has killed a bunch of civilians, created 500,000 new refugees, turned Afghanistan back to the warlords, and helped to increase tensions in the Middle East and Kashmir. In sum, a dumb war.

11:55 AM |

4 February 2002  

Egyptian Crackdown on Gays

Guess I'll have to postpone that Egyptian vacation I've been planning. (Via InstaPundit)

10:06 AM |

Andrew Sullivan's Book Cluv

Andrew Sullivan's pulling an Oprah and starting up his own book club.

09:01 AM |

3 February 2002  

Quote of the Moment

As you can see, I've added a Quote of the Moment over there on the left. I'll be updating it now and then with quotations I find particularly insightful, humorous, or both.

If you're using Opera, you'll notice that the QotM box is positioned oddly. I am sorry. My HTML and CSS skills are not up to the task of making it work in your browser. When I have some free time, I'll take another crack at it. In the meantime, if you happen to be an expert in these matters, your suggestions are welcome.

10:59 PM |

Enron/Star Wars Connection

The evidence of an Enron/Star Wars connection becomes more convincing every day. First, Dave Barry noted the similarity of the company's name to a fictional planet from the movie. Now, James Lileks discovers two more links. (Via Tim Blair)

11:35 AM |

Fearful Forum Fools

The front page of The New York Times has a story on the mood at the WEF:

Gone... is any post-Sept. 11 reticence about criticizing the Bush administration's war against terrorism.... Almost every speaker congratulated the United States on how it has fought the war in Afghanistan. But in the next breath, many European and other leading diplomats say that Mr. Bush's use of the phrase "axis of evil" on Tuesday night, to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, made them fearful that a superpower on a roll was now looking for trouble.

In the same article is a quote from Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government:

For the Europeans "axis of evil" was a bridge too far. There's a strong suspicion here that Bush is back to unilateralism, that after Afghanistan, America isn't especially interested in listening to the rest of the world.

10:13 AM |

Sontag's Grocery List

Yum. Marxies Dried Gruel Breakfast Crunch™ cereal. Just one of the many exciting items on Susan Sontag's grocery list.

12:42 AM |

Lomborg v. Scientific American

I just spent the evening with Bjørn Lomborg. Oh, I wish. Actually, I spent it with his detailed response (pdf format) to the hatchet job Scientific American perpetrated upon his book. If you have a couple of hours, take a look at it. You'll be amazed at how very little the four scientists they trotted out to discredit his work actually managed to accomplish.

12:10 AM |

2 February 2002  

Dave Barry Explains Enron

I've been looking for someone who could explain this Enron mess to me, and today Dave Barry comes to the rescue:

Q. How, exactly, did Enron make money?

A. Nobody knows. This is usually the case with corporations whose names sound like fictional planets from Star Wars. Allegedly, Enron was in the energy business, but when outside investigators finally looked into it, they discovered that the only actual energy source in the entire Enron empire was a partially used can of Sterno in the basement of corporate headquarters. Using a financial technique called "leveraging,'' Enron executives were able to turn this asset into a gigantic enterprise whose stock was valued at billions of dollars.

Q. What does "leveraging'' mean?

A. Lying.

04:44 PM |

Lomborg Defended

An Economist article explains why Bjørn Lomborg is getting so much flak for his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist:

Dr Lomborg's critics protest too much. They are rattled not because, as they endlessly insist, Dr Lomborg lacks credentials as an environmental scientist and is of no account, but because his book is such a powerful and persuasive assault on the central tenets of the modern environmental movement.

01:39 PM |

Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle's Live from the WTC is smart, funny, and well-written. Here's a sample:

Authors who write stupid studies like this [on the lack of women in technology] are the kind of people who envision nothing as having any purpose except a social one. GM is not there to make cars; it is there to provide jobs to people in Flint, whether any cars get made or not. Computer Science programs, likewise, are not supposed to produce students who write working software; they are supposed to produce people who feel good about themselves and technology. When these women are huddled in their collapsing hut with its leaky, 'non-traditional' roof, trying to figure out how to make a hoe for their organic gardens with 'alternative' iron-smelters and 'non-androcentric' metalworking machines, they will still be prattling that the reason for their slow starvation is the failure of society to adopt a more inclusive paradigm. And I have only one thing to say: don't you dare go around saying that I can't learn anything I damn well want to thank you very much.

12:09 PM |

Happy Ayn Rand's Birthday!

Happy Ayn Rand's Birthday! On this day in 1905, Ayn Rand was born. For detailed information on Rand's life, check out Richard Lawrence's comprehensive page.

11:08 AM |