Tracinski Lays an Egg

I am not a serious sports fan. Instead, I'm the type who ignores the regular season and tunes in only for the championship game, or only to see a player I particularly like (such as Michael Jordan). But I'm pretty ecumenical in my tastes: I'll watch football, basketball, tennis -- and every two years, I enjoy seeing some of the many obscure sports that get television coverage only during the Olympics.

But I can't stand soccer. Jack Wakeland and I have been complaining privately for many years that soccer is, in Jack's words, "a game designed for double amputees." We have speculated that soccer is the perfect product of a socialist society, which commands man not to use his most effective organs of survival -- in the economy, he cannot use his own judgment; in sports, he cannot use his hands.

I was delighted to see all of those points echoed in this article from the website of the Weekly Standard, along with another very important observation: soccer deprives its spectators of the essential spiritual experience that rewards the viewer's interest in sports -- the experience of scoring. In the realm of sports, scoring is success -- and soccer is diabolically arranged to deprive its viewers of the sight of success.

The historic game with Italy ended in an epic 1-1 tie. But in what was ballad as one of the greatest games ever played by an American team, the United States failed to score. The goal credited to the Americans was scored by an opposing player who--oops!--accidentally kicked the ball into his own goal.

Think about this about this for a moment. It just about sums up everything you need to know about soccer, or football, as it is known elsewhere.

Have Messrs. Frank Cannon and Richard Lesser never heard of the "safety" in American football? Or of quarterback passes being intercepted and returned for touchdowns? Or of a miscue making the difference in an ice skating competition? Accidents happen in sports and winning games (or competitions) will necessarily sometimes entail overcoming (or profiting from) such events.

Most soccer matches end in scoreless ties (or nil, nil in soccer parlance), 1-1 deadlocks or 1-0 victories. A final score of 2-1 is regarded as a veritable outburst of offense, an avalanche of goal scoring that leaves exhausted fans shaking their heads and pining for the old days when teams knew how to play strong defense. A score of 2-0 is said to be a crushing victory (or defeat) of Carthaginian proportions rendering national shame and humiliation and potentially resulting in coup d'etat, or even war.

Um. No. Many matches do end in draws. Many can be decided by a point or two. Two points is usually -- depending on how play went during the match -- regarded as a decisive victory. Three almost always is. At the international level, a loss of four or more is about as embarrassing as a twenty point defeat at the professional level would be in a basketball championship. Damn inflation!

As for the wars, that obviously hasn't a bloody thing to do with soccer as a game. But hey! When you don't like something, use whatever it takes to fool yourself into mistaking your ignorance and personal taste for virtue.

The game consists of 22 men running up and down a grassy field for 90 minutes with little happening as fans scream wildly.

Until the year Rice won the College World Series and I had the opportunity to watch several very good baseball games narrated by a very talented commentator, I had zero appreciation for all the strategy that goes into that game. I used to see (before switching channels): nine men standing around on a field, scratching themselves and spitting while some guy with a beer belly swung a stick at a ball.

I am still not a huge baseball fan, but I will never again be so dismissive of the sport just because I don't always appreciate what is going on strategically.

It is the same with soccer, which I have played and refereed. Not to knock the various sports I will contrast (sometimes a little heavy-handedly) with soccer here, but....

Unlike American football, with its many set plays, soccer features a jazz-like fluidity. A truly great player will develop a rapport with his teammates and create spectacular plays on the fly. If you don't care for improvisation, stay away.

Unlike in basketball, goals consist of much more than some seven-footer slapping a ball through a hoop at will. A goal is more often than not a hard-earned result of a team's patiently building up an attack, combined with on-the-fly teamwork. Sometimes, the player who scores does so after almost acrobatic efforts to strike the ball. If you haven't the patience to follow an offensive buildup or wait for the opportunity to see a spectacular individual althelticism, someone else could use your barstool.

Unlike most American sports, with their unlimited substitutions and interminable time-outs, the clock runs constantly in soccer. You must, quite literally, think on your feet most of the game. Furthermore, all but the goalkeepers and at most six other players must be well-conditioned enough to run almost constantly for two forty-five minute halves. There are no beer bellies in soccer. If fitness annoys you, switch channels.

... Scoring goals is of such little importance...

This is (usually) bass-ackwards. See my remarks above concerning basketball. In tournament play, this is sometimes correct due to how wins and draws are tallied during round-robin play. If long-range planning doesn't wax your lance, find something that does.

But soccer players use their heads, deliberately, to contact the ball. This is contrary to all human instinct, which is to keep the head out of the way of danger. Duck, you idiot! Protecting the head against injury is deeply rooted in our nature. It's an evolutionary survival response. Sacrifice a limb if you must, give up an arm or leg, but protect your head at all costs. Yet in soccer the player is encouraged, no, expected to hit the ball with his head. This is as stupid an action as a human being can undertake.

One protects himself from injuring his head by learning the proper way to strike the ball with his head. Physical contact is illegal.

And I'd still take a surprise hit on my unprotected head with a soccer ball over an errant (or deliberate) 90-plus MPH baseball in the head while wearing a plastic helmet (sans faceguard) any day. Or participate in a football game where some 300 pound behemoth can decide on any play to "risk" the loss of a few yards by grabbing the face-mask of my "protective" helmet and yanking me to the ground.

If you find that heading a soccer ball is a confusing concept, but that beanballs and face-mask penalties make perfect sense, I cannot help you. Seek a professional.

A looter's paradise

An antitrust probe into the explosives industry that started with a bang in the 1990s has ended quietly with an order signed by a federal judge in Utah.

U.S. District Judge David Sam wrapped up the matter earlier this month by distributing the remaining $48,887 of a $60 million settlement in the case to the Salt Lake

Community Action Program (SLCAP) and the American Antitrust Institute in Washington, D.C. SLCAP advocate Karen Silver said her organization expects to use its share - $16,133 - for advocacy efforts involving utilities.

The amount adds up to pocket change for the mining industry, but it is a welcome addition to the SLCAP's coffers.

We could always use the money," Silver said.

The American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit education and advocacy organization whose mission is to increase the role of competition, was awarded $32,754.

The institute and SLCAP were among the groups that applied for the leftover settlement funds - a standard procedure when there is a small amount of money remaining after the plaintiffs' claims have been satisfied and dividing it up among a large number of plaintiffs would be impractical.

The case has its roots in a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that began in 1992 into whether the manufacturers and distributors of commercial explosives were conspiring to fix prices, rig bids and allocate customers among themselves, according to Washington, D.C., attorney Richard McMillan, who represented mining companies that alleged they were victims of an antitrust scheme.[Pamela Manson, The Salt Lake Tribune]

The New York Times and election year politics

Buffett and Gates Ignore the Fundamental Cause of World Poverty

IRVINE, CA--Commentators are hailing Warren Buffett's $30 billion contribution to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation as a historic day for the alleviation of poverty and sickness around the world. They, like Buffett, think that tens of billions of dollars of charity directed by Bill Gates's brilliant mind will change the world.

But, said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "While Gates and Buffett are brilliant businessmen, they and other philanthropists ignore the fundamental cause of poverty, including poor health care, around the world: lack of capitalism. Wherever and to whatever extent capitalism exists, the productive ability of individuals is unleashed, enabling them to make their lives progressively better. The West used to be as poor as Africa today; it is capitalism that made us rich."

"If the tribalist or religious dictatorships of Africa and the Middle East do not renounce their destructive political systems and adopt capitalism, even $100 billion in charitable handouts will make little difference in their lives."

"Anyone who is truly committed to helping the world's poor should first and foremost use their charitable dollars and their public platforms for the promotion of capitalism."

Colorado Books Project Two-for-One Matching

We are closing in on the goal of $14,000 - which is approximately 1750 books. We are $3,125 from our target -- and you have 4 days to PLEDGE money so that WE can make our goal of providing Anthem or The Fountainhead books to any Colorado teacher willing to teach Ayn Rand in the schools. Our last week's pledge drive did wonders, and this week's offer is even better. I want to thank each of you who have already donated. If you have sent your money to ARI directly, ARI has told me the total amount they received, but not who the donors were or the individual amounts, so if you gave money to ARI, and I haven't personally thanked you, I am thanking you now.

This week, for four days -- from now until midnight, June 30, two other donors and myself will match all PLEDGES or DONATIONS -- $2 for every $1.00 contributed.*** (Up to a $2,500 maximum). So, if you pledge to donate $10 now, we will contribute $20 more, for a total of $30 contributed. If you pledge to donate $100, we will donate $200 -- for a total of $300 contributed. And if all of you together donate another $2,500, the three of us together will donate another $5,000.

This year's pledges to contribute money to the Colorado Book Project by December 31, 2006, mean that ARI again send out brochures to Colorado high school teachers, which will result in more teachers requesting more books, thus giving another 1750 students the opportunity this coming spring to read Anthem or The Fountainhead in their high school classrooms. In addition, this year's contributions together with the past year's success (of more than 3600 books sent to teachers, means that more than 5,300 Colorado students could read Ayn Rand during the next school year.

All of your contributions to this project go to ARI and are tax-deductible as charitable contributions.

However, most importantly for you, these donations can help better your life here in Colorado by deliberately creating the opportunity for Miss Rand's genius to once again light up the minds of a new generation --- but, with the specific intent to cultivate and develop rational, capitalistic egoists in this state.

One last time, send your contributions to ARI this week -- OR -- send them to me (Payable to the Ayn Rand Institute) -- OR pledge to me whatever amount you would like to see tripled and sent to ARI for this project. Please -- note on any check or money order that it is for the Colorado Book Project.

Remember, I need your pledge by Friday, June 30, for the matching contributions.

And I want to thank each and everyone of you for your support and cooperation in making this idea reality.

Lin

Remember, there are now four ways to contribute -- 1) Send a check or money order directly to ARI and indicate on it that this money is for the Colorado Book Project; 2) Send a check or money order to me, payable to ARI; 3) donate stock shares to ARI (contact Kathy Cross at ARI, at 310-876-1633 or kathyc@aynrand.org); or 4) contact me by phone, e-mail or letter with your pledge amount -- to be donated later this year.

ARI's Address --

The Ayn Rand Institute
2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250
Irvine, California, 92606-4926

My address

8700 Dover Court
Arvada, CO 80005

Lin Zinser
Front Range Objectivism
www.FrontRangeObjectivism.com
E-mail: Lin@Zinser.com
Phone: 303.431.2525

Mary Gordon's sick sympathy

Ms. Gordon suggests that "there are two major narratives in the world, the narrative of fundamentalism and the narrative of consumerism." Given her own religious faith, she explains, she is much more comfortable imagining the inner life of a suicide bomber "than I am of Donald Trump"; she finds the terrorist mind, with its belief in eternal truth, "much more comprehensible."

Ms. Gordon says that whenever she sees people driving Hummers, "I want to just drive them off the road" -- or worse. She could "go out on quite a spree," she says. What stops her from becoming a roadside bomber fighting for eternal truth, she explains, is her Christian belief that these "greedy" materialists "are sacred and valuable in the eyes of God."

Human organs for sale? Yes, time has come

By David Holcberg:

Athletes who received organ transplants gathered recently for the 2006 U.S. Transplant Games. Meanwhile, a record 90,000 individuals who did not share the athletes' good fortune stand on the U.S. national waiting list for organs. Of the 80,000 waiting for kidneys or livers, about 6,000 will die in the next 12 months. Yet no one is considering a simple way to save many of these people: legalize trade in human organs.

Millions of Americans have exercised the right to give away their organs by signing donation cards. But very few made the legal arrangements necessary to ensure that their organs can be harvested after death. Many more would make such arrangements if their families were to be paid for the donated organs. It may work as a type of life insurance for the benefit of the deceased's family and would create a mutually advantageous situation: the deceased's family gets needed money while the transplant patient gets a vital organ.

A few people may choose to sell an organ (or part of one) during their lifetime. This may seem like a radical idea, but it need not be an irrational one. According to the Mayo Clinic, extraction of a section of liver, for example, carries a risk to the donor's life of less than 1 percent -- not negligible, but not overwhelming. In the case of a kidney donation, the New England Journal of Medicine reports that the risk to the donor's life is even smaller: just 0.03 percent. Moreover, liver donors can usually count on their healthy liver's ability to regenerate and regain full function. And donors of kidneys usually live normal lives with no reduction of life expectancy.

A person may reasonably decide selling an organ is actually in his own best interest. A father, for example, may decide that one of his kidneys is worth selling to pay for the best medical treatment available for his child.

But those who object to a free market in organs would deny this father the right to act on his own judgment. Poor people, they claim, are incapable of making rational choices and so must be protected from themselves. The fact, however, is that human beings do have the capacity to reason, and should be free to exercise it.

That some people might make irrational choices, however, is no reason to violate the rights of everyone. If the law recognizes our right to give away an organ, it should also recognize our right to sell an organ. The objection that people would murder to sell their victims' organs should be dismissed as the scaremongering that it is.

Opponents of a free market in organs argue that it would benefit only those who could afford to pay -- not necessarily those in most desperate need. Need does not give anyone the right to damage the lives of other people, by prohibiting a seller from getting the best price for his organ, or a buyer from purchasing an organ to further his life. Those who can afford to buy would benefit at no one's expense but their own. Those unable to pay would still be able to rely on charity, as they do today. And a free market would enhance the ability of charitable organizations to procure organs for them.

If your life depended on getting an organ, wouldn't you be willing to pay for one? And if you could find a willing seller, shouldn't you have the right to buy it from him? The right to buy an organ is part of your right to life. The right to life is the right to take all actions a rational being requires to sustain and enhance his life.

If the government upheld the rights of potential buyers and sellers of organs, many of the 90,000 people now waiting for organs would be spared hideous suffering and an early death. How many?

Let's find out.

David Holcberg is a media research specialist at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif.

Aristotle on Diviners

(3) The third is to avoid ambiguities; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are pretending to mean something. Such people are apt to put that sort of thing into verse. Empedocles, for instance, by his long circumlocutions imposes on his hearers; these are affected in the same way as most people are when they listen to diviners, whose ambiguous utterances are received with nods of acquiescence-

Croesus by crossing the Halys will ruin a mighty realm.

Diviners use these vague generalities about the matter in hand because their predictions are thus, as a rule, less likely to be falsified. We are more likely to be right, in the game of 'odd and even', if we simply guess 'even' or 'odd' than if we guess at the actual number; and the oracle-monger is more likely to be right if he simply says that a thing will happen than if he says when it will happen, and therefore he refuses to add a definite date. All these ambiguities have the same sort of effect, and are to be avoided unless we have some such object as that mentioned.

It is this emphasis on the totality that is essential to the dialectical mode of inquiry. Dialectics is not merely a repudiation of formal dualism. It is a method that preserves the analytical integrity of the whole. While it recommends study of the whole from the vantage point of any part, it eschews reification, that is, it avoids the abstraction of a part from the whole and its illegitimate conceptualization as a whole unto itself. The dialectical method recognizes that what is separable in thought is not separable in reality.

Moreover, dialectics requires the examination of the whole both systemically and historically. From a systemic perspective, it grasps the parts as structurally interrelated, or "internally related," both constituting the whole, while being constituted by it. For example, Rand, as a dialectical thinker, would not disconnect any single theoretical issue, such as the problem of free will, from its broader philosophic context. She necessarily examines a host of connected issues, including the efficacy of consciousness, the nature of causality, and the reciprocal relationships between epistemology, ethics, and politics.

From a historical perspective, dialectics grasps that any system emerges over time, that it has a past, a present, and a future. Frequently, the dialectical thinker examines the dynamic tensions within a system, the internal conflicts or "contradictions" which require resolution. He or she refuses to disconnect factors, events, problems, and issues from each other or from the system which they jointly constitute. He or she views social problems not discretely, but in terms of the root systemic conditions which they both reflect and sustain.

The dialectical thinker seeks not merely to understand the system, but to alter it fundamentally. Hence, a dialectical analysis is both critical and revolutionary in its implications. Thus, Rand, as a dialectical thinker, does not analyze a specific racial conflict, for example, without examining a host of historically-constituted epistemic, ethical, psychological, cultural, political, and economic factors that both generate racism--and perpetuate it. In Rand's view, racism--like all vestiges of statism--must be transcended systemically.

What Onomatopoeia Sounds Like

Aristotle on Pity

Let us now consider pity, asking ourselves what things excite pity, and for what persons, and in what states of our mind pity is felt. Pity may be defined as a feeling of pain caused by the sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to befall ourselves or some friend of ours, and moreover to befall us soon.

In order to feel pity, we must obviously be capable of supposing that some evil may happen to us or some friend of ours, and moreover some such evil as is stated in our definition or is more or less of that kind. It is therefore not felt by those completely ruined, who suppose that no further evil can befall them, since the worst has befallen them already; nor by those who imagine themselves immensely fortunate--their feeling is rather presumptuous insolence, for when they think they possess all the good things of life, it is clear that the impossibility of evil befalling them will be included, this being one of the good things in question. Those who think evil may befall them are such as have already had it befall them and have safely escaped from it; elderly men, owing to their good sense and their experience; weak men, especially men inclined to cowardice; and also educated people, since these can take long views. Also those who have parents living, or children, or wives; for these are our own, and the evils mentioned above may easily befall them. And those who neither moved by any courageous emotion such as anger or confidence (these emotions take no account of the future), nor by a disposition to presumptuous insolence (insolent men, too, take no account of the possibility that something evil will happen to them), nor yet by great fear (panic-stricken people do not feel pity, because they are taken up with what is happening to themselves); only those feel pity who are between these two extremes.

In order to feel pity we must also believe in the goodness of at least some people; if you think nobody good, you will believe that everybody deserves evil fortune. And, generally, we feel pity whenever we are in the condition of remembering that similar misfortunes have happened to us or ours, or expecting them to happen in the future.

A War of Wishes

Mr Bush said he understood European concerns over the US detention camp in Cuba.

"I'd like to end Guantanamo. I'd like it to be over with," he said.

He said 200 detainees had been sent home, and most of those remaining were from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

U.S. ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer said on Wednesday that if North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile it would be a "clear violation" of agreements it has made in the past.

The United States has activated its ground-based interceptor missile-defense system amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.

Asked if the United States would try to shoot down a North Korean missile, Schieffer said: "I think what we have said is that we have greater technical measures of tracking than in the past and we have options that we have not had in the past, and all these options are on the table."

Iran's president said Wednesday his country would take until mid-August to respond to incentives to roll back its nuclear program, prompting President Bush to accuse Tehran of dragging its feet. [bold added]

Give us money, or we’ll rape our women

This BBC article talks about how sexual violence in war is increasing. The article does not provide an explanation, but I can think of two: (1) the massive amounts of aid being sent to Africa is being used to fund ethnic wars, and (2) the world is actually more peaceful than ever, so it is the most savage (African and Islamic) civilizations which are still waging wars are getting all the attention.

The interesting part is this:

Sexual violence has also been linked to development funding. Cases in Gaza and the West Bank have increased significantly since the EU and the US cut funding after January’s election of Hamas, Luay Shabaneh of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics says.

In other words, we should not cut off funding to terrorist groups because when they don’t have the money to commit violent acts against us, they will commit violent acts to their own women. And of course Kofi Annan ” urged donors to “provide the backing required” to deal with the problem.”

Diplomacy Encourages North Korea's Belligerence

By Elan Journo:

After decades of chasing nuclear weapons, North Korea is on the brink of success. Worse yet, it may already have the means of mounting an attack against us. According to news reports, North Korea is about to test-fire a powerful long-range missile capable of threatening not only South Korea and Japan, but also the continental United States.

To end this nuclear stand-off without bloodshed, many people believe that we must restart the stalled negotiations with North Korea and engage in diplomacy. Pitched as levelheaded and practical, this approach would culminate in a supposedly win-win deal: the North promises to halt its nuclear program in exchange for a combination of economic and diplomatic concessions from the West.

But such a shameful deal, like all previous ones, would reward the North for its aggression and strengthen it into a worse menace. North Korea has become a significant threat precisely because we have appeased it for years with boatloads of oil, food and money.

Some twenty years ago, North Korea's nuclear ambitions became glaringly obvious. The West pretended that this hostile dictatorship would honor a treaty banning nuclear weapons. To get its signature took years of Western groveling and concessions. The North's promises to halt its nuclear program were predictably hollow. By 1993, after preventing required inspections of its nuclear facilities, Pyongyang announced its intention to withdraw from the treaty. Our response? More "diplomacy"--in the form of the "Agreed Framework," brokered in 1994.

For agreeing to freeze its nuclear program, North Korea was offered two light-water nuclear reactors (putatively for generating electricity) and, until the reactors were operational, 500,000 metric tons of oil annually (nearly half its annual needs). The United States, along with Japan and South Korea, paid for these lavish gifts. During these years of apparent tranquility, our handouts and assurances of security buoyed North Korea as it furtively completed two reactors capable of yielding weapons-grade fuel. By 2003--when the North actually did withdraw from the nuclear treaty--it was clear that Pyongyang had continued secretly to develop weapons-capable nuclear technology.

The pattern of America's suicidal diplomacy is clear: the North threatens us, we respond with negotiations, gifts and concessions, and it emerges with even greater belligerence.

Without economic aid, technical assistance and protracted negotiations affording it time, it is unlikely that the North--continually on the brink of economic collapse--could have survived. It is also unlikely that it could have built the fourth-largest army in the world. The North is believed to have sold long-range ballistic missiles to Iran, Yemen, Pakistan and Syria. By some estimates, North Korea already has the material to create eight nuclear bombs. As it doubtless will continue engaging in clandestine nuclear development, the North may soon be wielding--and selling--nuclear weapons.

What made this cycle of appeasement possible--and why do our political and intellectual leaders insist that further "diplomacy" will work? Because they cling to the amoral fiction that North Korea shares the basic goal of prosperity and peace. This fantasy underlies the notion that the right mix of economic aid and military concessions can dissuade North Korea from its nuclear ambition. It evades the fact that the North is a militant dictatorship that acquires and maintains its power by force, looting the wealth of its enslaved citizens and threatening to do the same to its neighbors. This abstract fact, the advocates of diplomacy believe, is dispensable; if we ignore it, then it ceases to exist.

Notice how, in preparing the way for renewed talks, the Bush administration ceased describing North Korea as part of an "axis of evil"--as if this could alter its moral stature.

What the advocates of diplomacy believe, in effect, is that pouring gasoline onto an inferno will extinguish the fire--so long as we all agree that it will. Thus: if we agree that North Korea is not a hostile parasite, then it isn't; if we pretend that this dictatorship would rather feed its people than amass weapons, then it would; if we shower it with loot, it will stop threatening us. But the facts of North Korea's character and long-range goals, like all facts, are impervious to anyone's wishful thinking. Years of rewarding a petty dictatorship for its belligerent actions did not disarm it, but helped it become a significant threat to America.

There is only one solution to the "North Korea problem": the United States and its allies must abandon the suicidal policy of appeasement.

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Arab Society and Schizophrenia

Hazy on Death

Dear Editor:

In upholding Oregon's assisted suicide law, the Supreme Court reached the right result for the wrong reasons. The law should have been upheld on the grounds of an individual's right to his own life.

The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise is to deny the right to life at its root. If we have a duty to go on living, despite our better judgment, then our life does not belong to us, and we exist by permission, not by right.

Individuals have a moral right to seek assistance in committing suicide. And if a doctor is willing to assist, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

There is no rational basis upon which the government can properly prevent an individual from choosing to end his life. The choice is his because the life is his.

Religious conservatives, supported by the Bush administration, want to ban assisted suicide because it defies God's will. Such conservatives crave to inject religion into the bloodstream of American law, thereby assisting in our own national suicide. People of reason must refuse their consent to the religious conservative agenda.

Thomas A. Bowden

Ayn Rand Institute
Irvine, CA
2121 Alton Parkway #250
949-222-6550 ext 226

Euthanasia is more complex [than birth control, abortion, and suicide], because the life of another person is involved. If a man makes arrangements stating that he does not want to feel unbearable pain, and it can be proved that this was his desire, in principle I'd say it is his right and the doctor's right to perform euthanasia. But it would be difficult to put this into law, because of the safeguards needed to prevent unscrupulous doctors in cahoots with unscrupulous relatives from killing somebody who is not dying and in pain. The danger here is legally giving to the doctor the arbitrary power of killing. I suspect, however, that there are many cases of euthanasia about which we do not know and probably shouldn't know; in such cases, it is up to the doctor involved. Only he can know if a terminally ill patient is suffering truly unbearable torture. I feel like saying that I would not assume to pass judgment on him. I don't know. The situation is too horrible. I sympathize with the doctor who helps the patient die, but I would not advocate euthanasia as a law.

Aristotle's Rhetoric

We shall learn the qualities of governments in the same way as we learn the qualities of individuals, since they are revealed in their deliberate acts of choice; and these are determined by the end that inspires them.

Matching Funds for the Colorado Books Project

A few years ago, the Ayn Rand Institute surveyed high school teachers and discovered that the major reason many don't teach Ayn Rand's fiction in their English classes is the simple lack of books. The bureaucracy makes it difficult to obtain them from the school, and they are expensive to buy out-of-pocket. So ARI started its "Free Books for Teachers" program to remedy that problem.

How does it work? Often with the help of directed donations, the teachers in a given area are notified of the program by a lovely brochure. They can order any number of free copies of Anthem and The Fountainhead from ARI, along with teacher's manuals. In return, all that the teachers must do is agree to actually teach the novels.

So far, the project has been enormously successful: demand for the books has been very strong, teachers are delighted with the enthusiastic response of their students, and many more students are submitting to ARI's essay contests. Most importantly, hundreds of thousands of high school students are reading Ayn Rand in their classes thanks to this program. And soon, those students will be voting -- and shaping our culture and politics.

Last year, Lin Zinser of Front Range Objectivism solicited donations for Colorado. (Minus Denver, since that was already taken.) And because of that, thousands of soon-to-be-voting Colorado students have read Anthem and The Fountainhead. Happily, demand was greater than expected: more Colorado teachers wanted to teach Ayn Rand's fiction than ARI anticipated based upon its general response rate. So this year, Lin is working to raise even more money for the Colorado Books Project. If you choose to donate to the Colorado Books Project, you can get enormous bang for your buck: someone has donated $1000 in matching funds for donations for Colorado greater than those of last year, including any donations from any new donors.

To take advantage of those matching funds, you can write your check directly to ARI. Just be sure to indicate that it's for the "Colorado Books Project." And you'll need to e-mail Lin the amount of your donation in order to take advantage of the matching funds. (Full donation directions can be found toward the bottom of this blog post.) Donations of any size are welcome -- and for areas outside Colorado too. (Matching funds only apply to Colorado, however.) All donations are tax-deductible.

If you are interested in changing the culture in America for the better by introducing young people to Ayn Rand's ideas, ARI's "Free Books for Teachers" is a program that you ought to support. Ayn Rand is her own best salesman -- and the impact of hundreds of thousands of high school students reading Ayn Rand's fiction every year will be enormous. Even if you're still wary of ARI, you can support this program without endorsing all that ARI does.

Please forward this announcement to Objectivists you know unlikely to see it here. Your donations -- and theirs -- could make all the difference in the world.

Don't delay: The time to act is now!

We are closing in on the last 2 weeks of this drive. We need your support. I have received a challenge from 2 supporters -- who will match any contribution over what was made last year -- up to $1,000. So, if you have not given any monies before, then any contribution by you to the Colorado Book project will be matched by them -- up to $1,000.00. If you did make a contribution last year, then any contribution over and above what you made last year will be met by them up to this same limit. This includes pledges. So, if you can't write a check for that amount in the next week, but can do so in the next few months, this counts.

Make these two people pay, --- make them give 'til it hurts!! (grin) -- and join our group of people donating to make Ayn Rand read by every high school student in Colorado. Remember, these kids will be voting in just 2 to 5 years. These students will be making choices on issues and candidates in a very short while. NOW is the time to provide some positive influence on what they think about and how they think about themselves and the world, including the people around them and the cultural and political issues in this country and abroad. Reading Anthem or The Fountainhead can make a difference in their lives -- after all, it made a difference in yours.

Many tax-deductible donations don't promise a lot because they are easing the suffering or tragedies that have befallen good people -- like the generosity of those who provided monies to those who were hit by natural disasters -- earthquakes, hurricanes or tsunamis. These tax-deducible donations to ARI are a way to a brighter future for you and me because, through these donations for the ARI Colorado Book Project, more young people will understand what it means to be a self-starter, to be first-handed, to be self-reliant, and will want the government to leave them alone to pursue their own visions and values. The only way to meet the political challenges of the leftist louses and the rigid religious right is to change the culture and the only way to affect that change is by philosophy.

Please help me change the future of Colorado. Take it from the hands of people like our present governor and legislature, who made smoking in public places illegal, but kept eminent domain legal even though there were five bills and two constitutional amendments considered by the Colorado legislature on that issue. One way to affect this change is to give money to ARI for the Colorado Book project so that future legislators and governors will be forced, in response to their constituents, to forget about smoking and outlaw eminent domain.

All Contributions to the Ayn Rand Institute are tax-deductible. Thank you for your attention to this request.

Remember, there are now four ways to contribute -- 1) Send a check or money order directly to ARI and indicate on it that this money is for the Colorado Book Project; 2) Send a check or money order to me, payable to ARI; 3) donate stock shares to ARI (contact Kathy Cross at ARI, at 310-876-1633 or kathyc@aynrand.org); or 4) contact me by phone, e-mail or letter with your pledge amount -- to be donated later this year.

ARI's Address --

The Ayn Rand Institute
2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250
Irvine, California, 92606-4926

My address --

8700 Dover Court
Arvada, CO 80005

Lin Zinser
Front Range Objectivism
www.FrontRangeObjectivism.com
E-mail: Lin@Zinser.com
Phone: 303.431.2525

Freegan Hilarious!

Almost every week, [Adam] Weissman organizes an event commonly referred to as "dumpster diving," where he leads an open tour among the various trash heaps and dumpsters of Manhattan to gather discarded food. The activity is part of a larger social movement known as freeganism, which views capitalism as the primary force in destroying the environment and avoids the capitalist structure through such practices as eating discarded food, squatting in abandoned buildings instead of paying rent and refusing to hold a job. Just as vegans are vegetarians who avoid animal products, freegans subsist only on free food found in the garbage as consumer waste. In Manhattan, there is plenty to go around. [bold added]

Weissman assembled those who were still present for a final stop back to Daniel's Bagels. As expected, an enormous bag filled with bagels was waiting on the curb. Weissman grabbed a bagel from the bag and a mushy avocado from his backpack. He began dipping the bagel into the soupy avocado and looked around at the surrounding neighborhood.

When asked whether he viewed living so close to a beacon of unfettered capitalism such as New York as contradictory to his ideals, he quickly denied it.

"This is exactly where we need to be," he said. "If there's any one place on the planet where there's a vital need for people to be suggesting that capitalism is not a sustainable system, where people need to be demonstrating that we can create alternative ways of living to capitalism, then I think New York is that place."

Pausing to dab at the gobs of avocado stuck in his beard he said, "I couldn't think of another place in the world that would be more appropriate to what we're doing." [bold added]

Net Neutrality vs. Internet Freedom

By: Alex Epstein

Microsoft, Google, and other supporters of "Net Neutrality" legislation claim that they are protecting freedom on the Internet. But, said Alex Epstein, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "Any law enforcing 'Net Neutrality' would be a terrible blow to Internet freedom."

"Just as cable companies have a right to apportion their bandwidth between Internet and television data, so Internet providers have a right to apportion their bandwidth between standard and premium Internet data."

"'Net Neutrality' laws would forcibly prevent network owners from selling innovative services to their customers," said Epstein. "Shame on Microsoft and Google for trying to deny their competitors the freedom that has made the Internet great."

### ### ###

Alex Epstein is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. Mr. Epstein's Op-Eds on business and government regulation have been published in major newspapers such as the Detroit Free Press, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Arizona Republic, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Orange County Register.

By David Holcberg:

Cable and phone companies have no obligation to treat all Internet traffic
equally. If these companies judge it to be in their self-interest to sell
speedier delivery to certain content providers, they should be free to do
so.

Just as FedEx and UPS are free to charge their customers for faster
delivery, so should cable and phone companies.

The idea that cable and phone companies cannot offer superior services to
some of their customers is an attack on their freedom. As owners of their
networks, they have the right to run their businesses as they see fit.

$125 Giveaway Competition to ObjectivismOnline Contributors

I have a new Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Elite Keyboard/Mouse ($99 list) and a $25 Amazon gift certificate. The prizes will be given to the two largest contributors to the website.

There are no conditions, and no time limitations - just make a significant contribution to the content of the website, and they are yours. (Definition of "significant" is entirely up to me.) You can contribute to the Wiki, essays, links, or propose something entirely new. (Forum posting does not count, unless your posts significantly affect the overall forum quality.)

Hurry! If I stare at this shiny new keyboard for too long, I may decide to keep it :-)

Bravo, Omar!

Third is this ominous line from al-Reuters on the occasion of President Bush's jaunt to Baghdad:

BAGHDAD, June 13 - U.S. President George W. Bush told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Tuesday Iran's "interference" in Iraq must end, said Iraqi government sources who attended the talks.

Can it be that, at long last, we are going to take steps against the mullahs to save the lives of our fighters and the Iraqi civilians who have been targeted by the terrorists who are armed and manipulated by the Iranians and the Syrians? Faster, please.

But that is nothing compared to the clear message from On High on the soccer fields of Germany. No, I'm not talking about the demonstrations against President Ahmadinejad, I'm talking about the Mexican victory over Iran in the first round of the World Cup.

With the game tied 1-1, a Mexican player named Omar Bravo scored for Mexico, which went on to win 3-1. That name, Omar Bravo, sends chills down the spines of the mullahs. "Bravo" is a universal plaudit, enthusiastic praise for the person to whom the "bravo" is directed. And Omar? Well...Omar is the most hated name in the Shiite lexicon, the symbol of the forces of evil, the incarnation of satanic influence on earth.

And why? Because after the death of the Prophet, Mohammed's son in law, Ali (the husband of Mohammed's daughter Fatima) was fighting to become the leader of all Muslims. Ali lost out to Omar Bakr and to Omar, his close adviser and successor as Caliph. To this day, the Shiites believe that Abu Bakr and Omar usurped Ali's rightful inheritance as ruler of Islam. Not only that, but during the succession struggle Omar burst into Ali's house, crushing the pregnant Fatima behind the door, leading to the stillbirth of her son. And although Ali formally accepted the elevation of Abu Bakr, and then Omar, the Shiites still speak of Omar with intense hatred. In Iran today, one of the harshest things you can say about another person is Iaanat be'Omar, cursed by Omar.

To a devout Shiite of the sort that governs Iran today, the defeat of the Iranian national team by somebody named Omar Bravo cannot be easily dismissed as a random event. It cannot possibly be a coincidence (it is hard for Iranians to believe that anything is a coincidence), and it is most certainly a terrible augury. Many Iranians will interpret it as a message to the mullahs: just as Ali was defeated by Omar, so your doom has been signaled by a modern Omar. And that "bravo," can it be an accident? No way. [bold added, link dropped]

John Stossel on Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is an endless book with some too-long speeches about how the creeping regulation destroys opportunity in America. A group of the most creative people decide they will move to a remote part of the country and start over. Without their contribution, much of modern life, which is taken for granted by the smug regulators, falls apart.

The modern art world shows its colors (yet again)

One of Britain's most prestigious art galleries put a block of slate on display, topped by a small piece of wood, in the mistaken belief it was a work of art.

The Royal Academy included the chunk of stone and the small bone-shaped wooden stick in its summer exhibition in London.

But the slate was actually a plinth -- a slab on which a pedestal is placed -- and the stick was designed to prop up a sculpture. The sculpture itself -- of a human head -- was nowhere to be seen.

"I think the things got separated in the selection process and the selectors presented the plinth as a complete sculpture," the work's artist David Hensel told BBC radio.

The academy explained the error by saying the plinth and the head were sent to the exhibitors separately.

"Given their separate submission, the two parts were judged independently," it said in a statement. "The head was rejected. The base was thought to have merit and accepted.

"The head has been safely stored ready to be collected by the artist," it added. "It is accepted that works may not be displayed in the way that the artist might have intended." [Reuters]

Clearly amused, Mr Hensel said: "Anything, even if it is not intended to be art, can still have a presence. I like the look of the plinth and support. I can recognize it as a nice object. But I never thought the selectors would choose it as an exhibit."

Life as a hospice

Not only do eighteen people die each day while waiting for an organ; many people also suffer as they wait. Why are so many people suffering and dying while waiting for organs? Because the acceptance of altruism has convinced Americans that it is better for some people to suffer and die than it would be for others to donate organs for a profit. Profit is plainly selfish; thus, according to altruism, it would sully the whole "beautiful" altruistic "ideal" of people giving away organs for free.

Moreover, on the premise of altruism, it is wrong for those who possess more wealth or more virtue to benefit from that fact; thus, the authorities must see to it that the distribution of organs has nothing to do with who can afford to purchase an organ or whether the recipient is an innocent child, or a heroic soldier, or a convicted murderer.

Outflanked in Quantico

Defending Capitalism: “Going Places”

Going Places is a 1948 “Cold War cartoon defending the profit motive against anti-capitalist critics.”

Update: Thanks to Michael for Destination Unlimited,  “a 1956 corporate-sponsored cartoon, in which Martian dissidents learn that oil and competition are the two things that make America great.”

Not Even Wrong

Hence his book's title, Not Even Wrong: an epithet created by Wolfgang Pauli, an irascible early 20th-century German physicist. Pauli had three escalating levels of insult for colleagues he deemed to be talking nonsense: "Wrong!", "Completely wrong!" and finally "Not even wrong!". By which he meant that a proposal was so completely outside the scientific ballpark as not to merit the least consideration.

...[P]hysicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) is in a category of his own: the withering comment for which he's best known combines utter contempt on the one hand with philosophical profundity on the other. "This isn't right," Pauli is supposed to have said of a student's physics paper. "It's not even wrong."

"Not even wrong" is enjoying a resurgence as the put-down of choice for questionable science: it's been used to condemn everything from string theory, via homeopathy, to intelligent design. There's a reason for this: Pauli's insult slices to the heart of what distinguishes good science from bad.

"I use 'not even wrong' to refer to things that are so speculative that there would be no way ever to know whether they're right or wrong," says Peter Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University who runs the weblog Not Even Wrong (www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/).

Fraud or Not?

A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the productive requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security for his deposits). But the amount of loans he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments (Alan Greenspan, "Gold and Economic Freedom," The Objectivist, July 1966, pg 109).

What underlies the practical advantages of the 100 percent-reserve gold standard over any form of fractional-reserve system is its moral superiority. It operates consistently with the law of the excluded middle and does not attempt to cheat reality by getting away with a contradiction. It recognizes that lending money precludes retaining that money in one's possession, and that retaining money in one's possession precludes lending it. The 100-percent-reserve system follows the principle that either one lends money or one retains the money, but not both together, with one and the same sum money. In contrast, a fractional-reserve system applied to checking deposits or banknotes is a deliberate attempt to cheat reality. It is the attempt to have one's money and lend it too. It is a system fully as dishonest as all other recurring efforts that take place in one form or another in attempts "to have one's cake and eat it too."

Just as such attempts typically entail taking away someone else's cake, fractional-reserve banking applied to checking deposits or banknotes entails some parties gaining credit at the expense of other parties, and others unexpectedly being placed in need of credit. Again and again it results in financial contractions, depressions, and deflation, accompanied by widespread bank failures, which last represents the cheating coming home to roost. Again and again, individuals who believed they owned money, who would never have dreamed of lending out the money they needed to hold to make purchases and pay bills, and thus of lending, to the point of their own insolvency, wake up to learn that the checking deposits or banknotes they hold represent loans that have become uncollectable.

Imposition of the 100-percent-reserve principle in connection with checking deposits and banknotes is the imposition of financial honesty. It would require nothing more than that banks ask their customers whether in making a deposit or buying banknotes their intention was to lend money to the bank or to keep their money at the bank. In the first case, the bank's customers would receive a credit to a savings account or certificates of deposit, neither of which they could spend until such time as they withdrew the funds they had lent, which would entail equivalently reducing their savings account or redeeming their certificates of deposit. During the interval the bank, for its part, could lend the customers' money out, as it thought best. In the second case, the customers would receive either a credit to their checking account or banknotes, both of which they could spend as they wished. But so long as the customers held their funds in the form of checking accounts or banknotes, the bank could not lend or spend the proceeds its customers had entrusted to it. That money would be the customers' money, which they were not lending to the bank but merely keeping at the bank.

It follows from this discussion that it is mistaken to believe that the imposition by law of 100-percent-reserve banking in connection with checking deposits and banknotes would constitute government interference. It would constitute nothing more than the just exercise of the government's power to combat fraud--the fraud of having one's funds lent out despite the bank's deliberate creation of the impression that in making a checking deposit or purchasing banknotes one fully retained the possession of one's funds.

Shysterism in any form is always slippery. Thus if it occurs to anyone to argue that the banks' customers are not victims of fraud because they clearly know and understand that their funds are being lent out, then the answer is that in that case they would be parties to fraud. Their fraud would be the attempt to make payment to others not with money or reliable warehouse receipts for money, but with claims to debt. They would be engaged in the willful contradiction and deception of claiming to pay someone when in fact imposing on him the position of being a grantor of credit. (George Reisman, Capitalism, pg 957-8)

Freaky Girl Coverings

RELIGIOUS RIGHT AGAINST CANCER VACCINE

Conservative groups, including the influential Family Research Council (FRC), have voiced concerns that immunising young girls against the virus that most regularly causes cervical cancer, Human Papilloma- virus, may lead to sexual promiscuity. "We would oppose any measures to legally require vaccination or to coerce parents into authorising it," wrote the FRC in a recent letter to the US government. "Our primary concern is with the message that would be delivered to nine- to 12-year-olds with the administration of the vaccines. Care must be taken not to communicate that such an intervention makes all sex 'safe'." (News.independent.co.uk, 06/11/06.)

Welcome to the Third Carnival of the Objectivists!

[L]et's do a quick recap:
- Iran is clearly trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Everyone knows it; no one disputes it (besides Iran).
- Iran is an indisputable enemy of the West. Weekly prayers include "Death to America" chants. Its president openly calls for the destruction of Israel, and openly expresses his goal that Islam should rule the world.
- Iran would use a nuclear bomb. Iran is ruled by Islamic fundamentalists with a messianic vision about the coming end of the world. These are not rational people. They "love death", as they openly tell us (and as Islamic suicide bombers prove weekly). They would be exhilirated by the chance to martyr themselves, as long as they could take us with them. A strategy of "nuclear deterrence" doesn't work with irrational people who think death is great.
- "Diplomacy" with an irrational life-hating dictatorship is dishonest and self-defeating. It is grotesquely irrational and immoral to seek to reward someone in exchange for not killing us. Isn't it blatantly obvious what behavior that encourages?
- Nothing we say or promise is going to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons in any case. There is nothing in this world we could give them, or that they would want, that could persuade them to cease and desist. They don't care about "this world". Their focus is on the "next world"--which, according to their beliefs, a nuclear bomb will help to bring about.

Bottom line: Iran wants to destroy us. We don't want to be destroyed (well, I guess I can't speak for the Europeans). There is no middle ground here. There is nothing to discuss, debate, or negotiate.

There is only one "diplomatic message" that needs to be sent to Iran: Stop developing nuclear weapons, or we will destroy you. And we mean it.

Sadly we are still wasting time treating the Iranians with kid-gloves when open warfare has long been overdue. As the elimination of Zarqawi shows, this war is winnable, these murderers are not invincible, our military is more than capable of destroying them. All that is required is that we commit ourselves to American self-defense.

Mainstream political and intellectual writers are unable, on principle, to face the barbarian nature of the enemy’s culture. Instead, they blame America. Both Democrats and Republicans argue over who can engineer a better world in Iraq and win “the hearts and minds” of the Islamic world. It’s we that have to change, not Muslims. We’re the problem, according to this analysis. If they haven’t embraced the liberal democracy that we’ve patiently and generously offered, we must have did something wrong. (Too few troops, too many troops, not enough U.N. troops, too much humiliation, too little force, too soon, too late, etc.)

The complete blindness to the inherent failure of Arab societies is captured in Colin Powell’s quip on Iraq: “we broke it, we own it.” If Saddam’s Iraq was Colin’s idea of a working nation, let’s hope we never have Powell as a President.

So we are trying to get Iran to give up its nuclear bomb intentions by giving it a guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel! No wonder Iran is willing to "study" the package. They probably can't believe it either. That's like the homeowner offering the thief a guaranteed supply of crowbars in the hopes the thief will use them for "peaceful purposes."

Of course, the homeowner (West) refuses to identify the fact that such a policy will result in all other thieves (thugs) noticing what works and presenting the same demands to the homeowner (West) until one day he discovers that his money and silverware (freedom) and whatever else he had to negotiate away, are gone. Such is the logical result of ignoring the existence of, and compromising on, principles.

This change of name is good news -- and not just because it's yet another highly
visible example of the organization's incompetent floundering. The name change
distances the organization from Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. After all,
the symbol of Atlas refers to far more than Atlas Shrugged. Given the
origin of the symbol in Ancient Greek myth, the name "The Atlas Society" does
not necessarily imply Ayn Rand.

Of course, this new "Atlas Society" will still claim to represent Ayn Rand's philosophy -- at least for a while. They've been explicitly distancing themselves from that prickly philosophy of Objectivism for some time now; it's just too uncompromising for Ed Hudgins. The new name will allow them to do that so much more easily. I wouldn't dignify that shift by calling it more honest, but it will be more accurate.

This has to be my favorite sculpture. Even in a photograph, I cannot look at it for long without being moved to tears. The woman reaches up for love. She touches him tenderly, bare of soul. He lifts her head to his lips, and they unite in a circle beneath his hopeful gaze. An exalted human experience, love and passion triumphant!

Although this was a relatively quick and somewhat experimental painting, I have to admit that I love the end result. It will take some time for the thick white paint in the brighter areas of the fireworks to dry completely so that the painting can be varnished and professionally photographed, but hopefully at that point I can make a better image available. Until then, enjoy New Year's Eve and please send in any last comments or questions.

The wonderful thing that I think best characterizes both Nouveau and Deco is that it is functional art. They enliven menial everyday items with inspirational art, not by pasting art on top of things, but by making the style an integral/natural part of the structure of the things one creates. Nouveau does it in a flowing, curvy, often described as "whiplash" style (usually busy). Deco does it in a geometric, angular, bare-bones sort of way. But the same glorious idea that I adore applies to both: beauty and elegance are necessary in the structure of living, and not to be added as an after-thought.

“Border crossers,” is I guess that is the new, official PC term of evasion. They used to be called wetbacks, but that was judged to harsh and even “racist.” After all Americans wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of those who flaunt our laws and national sovereignty. So, the new term became “illegal alien.” While it was an increase to two words and four syllables to say the same thing as one word, it was still accurate.

Accuracy was still a problem for the arbiters of language. Accordingly, the new, new term became “undocumented workers.” Now we are up to seven syllables to say nothing. “Undocumented,” as if the main problem with these invaders is a paper work hang-up. While shorter, “border crossers” is even more absurd. Millions cross our southern border legally every year. The purpose of the new PC term is to evade the distinction between the law abiding and the law breaker.

Not being able to drive cars or move freely are minor examples of the oppression women face in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic theocracies. Arranged marriages, domestic abuse, and honor killings are regular aspects of Muslim women's so-called lives. When their alternative is to become a man or to suffer a lifetime of psychological and physical abuse, the big surprise is that more Muslim women haven't had sex-change operations.

Nucor planners, engineers, contractors and workers gather. A monumental struggle begins. Seemingly insurmountable obstacles arise, followed by spectacular failures—mounds of capital are expended at an alarming rate—a growing doubt spreads among Nucor investors—naysayers are popping off in the press left and right—and, silently, America’s industrial tycoons for which steel is their companies’ life blood wait in agonizing suspense.

Then: heroic perseverance—brilliantly ingenious solutions—increasing successes—a muted but steadfast and growing determination—and, in the end, glorious, magnificent triumph! And above it all the while, leading the way—tough, certain, unflappable, his eyes ever focused on the goal—stands Kenneth Iverson.

This is a sad development indeed, as many of America’s great inventors got into technology experimenting with chemicals and home-made fireworks.

Consider the very idea of a Death Tax, for a moment. The deceased has already paid whatever taxes were demanded in the first place when he earned his wealth. If he wanted to bequeath this money while he was still alive, he wouldn’t have to pay a tax on it first. (although unfortunately, the recipient might)

So why does he have to pay extra for being dead? Is there something wrong with dying, that it has to be punished or something? No, the answer is far more sinister: in the eyes of the taxman, he’s just collecting what was his all along.

You see, your property was never yours at all. “Your” property, and by extension your life, belonged to the state. They were just letting you use it. Everything you have is, in the end, their property.

The Virginian

Wrong Kind of Relief

Skyscrapers

Skyscrapers are hard to build and even harder to make money from. Perhaps that is why they hold such an enduring fascination. "The problem of the tall office building", wrote Louis Sullivan in 1896, "is one of the most stupendous, one of the most magnificent opportunities that the Lord of Nature in His beneficence has ever offered to the proud spirit of man."

Three sorts of changes have shaped the current wave of skyscraper design: materials, lifts and computing...

Translucent towers, which aside from looking pretty also alleviate one of the worst things about skyscrapers--the long shadows they cast on the streets below--are now proposed by architects everywhere. Thin-film technology (coating the glass in glazes that repel heat, but let in light) and self-cleaning glass are becoming standard. And glass can be formed into shapes that now make Mies's conceptual design look rather conservative, as at 30 St Mary Axe in London (better known as the "gherkin") or the Hearst building in New York.

Other changes to materials have helped towers weigh less, which allows them to go higher. Floors and walls have become thinner, thanks to innovations like slim-line insulation made of fibreglass and aluminium foil, an idea borrowed from containers used to transport blood. This brings its own problems, though. When a floor is really large, thin ones become like trampolines and engineers have to find ways to prevent the journey to the photocopier from becoming too bouncy.

Architects are also grappling with Mies's other idea: dispensing with the central core, or breaking it up. Skyscrapers up to 200 metres tall can stand up with a central core of steel and concrete that houses a building's lifts and the plumbing for support services. Any taller and the building needs outriggers, which provide support like the flying buttresses on a gothic cathedral. This structure can apparently be extended heavenwards indefinitely. The Burj Dubai is made up of a central core with outriggers. [See above image for an example of these "outriggers". -- PSH] It is determined to claim the title of tallest building in the world--so determined, in fact, that its final height is a secret and subject to elongation to keep ahead of would-be usurpers.

But engineers also have to work out how to get people to the top floors.

Tall buildings have always relied on changes to lifting technology to go higher--the first hydraulic lifts around 1870 made it possible to go higher than the steam-powered lifts they replaced. Now, however, the constraints come less from the ability of a lift to travel half a kilometre vertically than from how long people must wait in the lobby for a lift to take them to the 50th floor. That makes it necessary to find ways to speed up their journeys around the building.

Most tall towers now have at least two banks of lifts: one for the lower floors and one for the upper ones. In the tallest towers in Asia (home to eight of the world's ten highest giants) this still means waiting too long. So engineers run two or more lifts in each lift shaft, and build "sky lobbies" where passengers cross between lifts if they want to go the whole way down or up.

These arrangements, whereby cappuccino-carrying office workers or hotel porters are directed to a particular lift according to where they want to go, are collectively known as "hall call". KONE, a Finnish lift company, is working on a lift system that sends text messages to people's mobile phones as they enter a building, informing them to take lift five, say, if they want to go to their desk or lift seven if they want the cafe on the 60th floor.

Contemplating buildings this complicated has been possible in recent years only because computers have became powerful enough to build three-dimensional models that developers, architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers and builders can all work on. Before such computer systems arrived, design changes had to be made on several sets of drawings, which increased the chances of mistakes. Strange shapes constructed at lower levels were possible before computers sped up. But ambitious forms like the new 230-metre China Central Television building in Beijing (which looks a little like a bent croquet hoop) needed computer processors to design.

Computers have made other things possible, too. Engineers can use them to test how a building might stand up to a fire or an aeroplane crash. When the main tower at Canary Wharf was proposed in the 1980s, according to Peter Bressington of Arup, an engineering firm that is a prolific builder of skyscrapers, nobody was able to predict accurately how long it would take to evacuate if a fire broke out. Now Arup can run a simulation in which a fire starts on the 35th floor, one lift is out of action and a few thousand people have to get out, and see how long it takes.

As well as allowing skyscrapers to go taller, these changes have made them more efficient machines for living or working in and brought their running costs down.

The Kingfish

Stop “Net Neutrality” now!

The following message is brought to you by The Future.. Faster industry campaign.

This week, the Senate is poised to vote on the issue of “Net Neutrality,” which is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and threatens the Internet freedom we now enjoy.

It is up to YOU to stop it. Please click here to contact your legislators, and demand they oppose “Net Neutrality.”

The Internet has been successful to date because the government has maintained a vigilant, but hands-off approach that has allowed companies to innovate in direct response to the evolving wants and needs of their customers.

A consumer’s Internet experience is today unimpeded - in the absence of virtually any regulation of the Internet - because there exists a powerful consumer mandate for Internet freedom. “Net Neutrality” supporters want to change all of that, putting the federal government in charge of how consumers use the Internet.

With Congress set to vote on “Net Neutrality” as early as Thursday, it is imperative that you contact your legislators right now and tell them, Say NO to “Net Neutrality.”

Existing net neutrality bills are solutions in search of a problem.

In a new communications era defined by multiple choices - multiple communications pathways - consumers simply will not continue to purchase service from a provider that blocks or restricts their Internet access.

When consumers have choices in the marketplace, consumers have control. Consider the following:

• There is vigorous competition between DSL, cable modem, wireless, satellite, and other Internet access providers.
• In some areas free Wi-Fi access is available.
• In others, access over power line is becoming available. This competition directly benefits consumers - and the latest evidence is the announcement of $12.99/month DSL service from AT&T.

Unnecessary regulatory or legislative intervention in marketplace activities would stifle, not enhance the Internet. Laws are inflexible and difficult to fine-tune - particularly when applied to technologies that are rapidly evolving.

The last thing that consumers need is government regulation of the Internet, disguised as “Net Neutrality.” Please click here to tell your legislator, Vote NO! on Net Neutrality.

The Anti-Life Movement

The recent ban on abortion in South Dakota is a victory for the "pro-life" movement--and thus, anti-abortionists claim, a victory for "the sanctity of human life." But is it?

The South Dakota law bans abortions in all cases except saving the life of the mother. Consider what this would mean for human life--not the "lives" of embryos or primitive fetuses, but the lives of real, living, breathing, thinking women.

It would mean that women who wanted to terminate a pregnancy because it resulted from rape or contraceptive failure--or because the would-be father has abandoned her--or because the fetus is malformed--would be forbidden from doing so. It would mean that they would be forced to endure the misery of unwanted pregnancy and the incredible burdens of child rearing. It would mean that women would be sentenced to 18-year terms of enslavement to unwanted children--thereby suffocating their hopes, their dreams, their personal ambitions, their chance of happiness. And it would mean that women who refused to submit to such a fate would be forced to turn to the "back-alley" at a staggering risk to their health. According to a World Health Organization estimate, 110,000 women worldwide die each year from such illegal abortions and up to six times as many suffer injury from them.

Clearly, anti-abortionists believe that such women's lives are an unimportant consideration in the issue of abortion. Why? Because, they claim, the embryo or fetus is a human being--and thus to abort it is murder. But an embryo is not a human being, and abortion is not murder.

There is no scientific reason to characterize a raisin-size lump of cells as a human being. Biologically speaking, such an embryo is far more primitive than a fish or a bird. Anatomically, its brain has yet to develop, so in terms of its capacity for consciousness, it doesn't bear the remotest similarity to a human being. This growth of cells has the potential to become a human being--if preserved, fed, nurtured, and brought to term by the woman that it depends on--but it is not actually a human being. Analogously, seeds can become mature plants--but that hardly makes a pile of acorns equal to a forest.

What can justify the sacrifice of an actual woman's life to human potential of the most primitive kind? There can be no rational justification for such a position--certainly not a genuine concern for human life. The ultimate "justification" of the "pro-life" position is religious dogma. Led by the American Roman Catholic Church and Protestant fundamentalists, the movement's basic tenet, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is that an embryo must be treated "from conception as a person" created by the "action of God." What about the fact that an embryo is manifestly not a person, and treating it as such inflicts mass suffering on real people? This tenet is not subject to rational scrutiny; it is a dogma that must be accepted on faith.

The "pro-life" movement tries to obscure the religious, inhuman nature of its position by endlessly focusing on the medical details of late-term abortions (although it seldom mentions that "partial birth" abortions are extremely rare, constituting 0.17 percent of all abortions, and often involve a malformed fetus or a threat to the life of the mother). But one must not allow the smokescreen to distract one from the real issue: the "pro-life" movement is on a faith-based crusade to ban abortion no matter the consequences to actual human life--part of what the Pro-Life Alliance calls the "absolute moral duty to do everything possible to stop abortion, even if in the first instance we are only able to chip away at the existing legislation." This is why it supports the South Dakota law, which is the closest the movement has come to achieving its avowed goal: to ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy, including the first trimester--when 90 percent of abortions take place. As the Pro-Life Alliance puts it: "We continue to campaign for total abolition."

The "pro-life" movement is not a defender of human life--it is, in fact, a profound enemy of actual human life and happiness. Its goal is to turn women into breeding mares whose body is owned by the state and whose rights, health and pursuit of happiness are sacrificed en mass--all in the name of dogmatic sacrifice to the pre-human.

Christian Beenfeldt, MA in philosophy, is a guest writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

IJ on AR

If Rand is known for her villains, her heroes are even more vividly portrayed. And here too we encounter real life examples, this time in our clients. When Shamille Peters speaks of a longtime dream to run her own floral shop, she is reminiscent of Dagny Taggart standing on the railroad tracks as a child and vowing to one day run a railroad. When Lonzo Archie stood up to the power structure of the State of Mississippi and refused to give up his home for a Nissan plant, he evoked the image of Hank Rearden when he refused to give up Rearden Metal to those who demanded it for the public good. And when taxicab entrepreneur Leroy Jones said he wanted nothing from others, just a chance to "do it myself," Howard Roark couldn't have said it better.

From Rosenbaum to Ayn Rand

Liberal Dreams

What is an ideology? It states the common good. It is a statement of values, it names ideals. It joins people in a purpose, it urges loyalty and sacrifice. It is visionary and explains what we are all doing here. It says why and how we must work together.

Before we start searching for direction, we need to put ideas back on top. To decide whether freedom is more important than equality. To stop watching TV whose advertising, collectively, promotes greed, because greed also destroys trust. To think, to reclaim our own judgment. And to refute Ayn Rand's antisocial tracts, because we have become what she poisonously prescribed: selfish, unhelpful, and denying of the common good.

Then we can start the search.

Adobe can’t eat its cake and have it too

Microsoft has just announced that it is removing PDF features from the next version of Microsoft Office because Adobe will sue it for antitrust violations if it does.

The key to the success of Adobe’s PDF format is that it is free of any licensing restrictions, so anyone can implement PDF readers/writers. Microsoft’s competitors have – both operating system vendors like Apple and Linux and competing office suites like Star Office and OpenOffice.org. However Microsoft isn’t allowed to – not because Adobe has any legal right to prevent it, but because Adobe claims that it won’t be able to compete with Microsoft if Microsoft makes PDF features available for free like most everyone else does. Adobe charges $449 for Adobe Acrobat – something it can only get away if Microsoft isn’t allowed to compete with it. In effect, it is saying “anyone can use our format and compete with our products… unless you actually present a competitive challenge.”

Microsoft expects Adobe to sue anyway because it will offer its own portable document format instead of selling Adobe’s products for them in its own software. (Meanwhile, anti-Microsoft advocates continue blasting it for rejecting “open standards.”)
You can bypass Adobe and get free PDF creation software here.

Fuel A Rocket Ship With Sugar

College Of Rational Education In North Carolina

Markets Don't Fail! By Brian P. Simpson

When I finally got around to taking basic micro- and macro-economics in graduate school, it was in many ways a disappointment. I was certainly not an expert, but by this time in my life, I had been exposed to many ideas about how economies ought to work. However, the class I took was nothing like the few books I had previously read. Those books argued for laissez faire capitalism and criticized government intervention. The instructor and the textbook were united in believing that actual markets are “imperfect” and break down and government intervention is required to keep order and safety. At the time I had some trouble coming up with arguments against market failure since aside from large economics treatises that I did not have time to read, there were seemed to be no concise refutations of such supposed circumstances.

Today the situation is quite different thanks to Brian P. Simpson, Assistant Professor in the School of Business and Management at National University, La Jolla, California. As its name implies, Simpson’s book, Markets Don’t Fail! (Lexington Books, 2005) provides an antidote to the almost universal college economics textbook assertions about market failure. In that respect, it’s an excellent resource for those who want to understand the issues behind these claims.

In his text, Simpson addresses some of the most common claims of market failure, examining issues such as monopolization, externalities, environmentalism, and public goods, just to name a few. In each example, Simpson lays out the strongest case of the interventionist side—and then proceeds to utterly demolish it. An illustrative example is his coverage of externalities. He begins by clearly defining the term “externality”:

An “externality”… is a cost imposed, or benefit bestowed, on people other than those who purchase or sell a good or service. The recipient of the externality is neither compensated for the cost imposed on him, nor does he pay for the benefit bestowed upon him. These costs and benefits are labeled “externalities” because the people who experience them are outside or external to the transaction to buy and sell the good or service. (P.85)

After further describing the difference between positive and negative externalities, Simpson explains why it is claimed that markets fail in this instance:

The alleged failure of the market occurs because, it is claimed, the market provides too many goods that produce negative externalities and too few goods that create positive externalities. Too many goods that create negative external effects are allegedly produced because the costs imposed on those who experience the negative externalities are not taken into account in the production of the goods creating the negative side effects. Remember, these costs are imposed on people who neither buy nor sell the goods. If these costs were accounted for in the production of such goods the cost of producing them, and therefore the price needed to purchase them, would be higher. Hence, fewer of them would be produced and purchased.

The “solution” … is government intervention into the market. …It is claimed that the government must take some action to restrict the production of these goods by, perhaps, imposing a tax on the producers of such goods so that these will experience the effects of all the costs they impose on others. (P.86-87)

Finally, Simpson proceeds to analyze and refute not only the economic arguments behind both positive and negative externalities, arguing that acting on “externality theory in a consistent manner and implement[ing] policies based on it . . . would lead to economic stagnation, a much lower standard of living, and thus a much lower level of individual satisfaction in the economy” but going deeper and arguing that the entire concept of “externality” is philosophically invalid and absurd.

He concludes the chapter by writing that “[t]he externality argument does not provide any evidence of market failure. The only evidence of failure this argument provides, as with all the arguments against the market, is the failure of contemporary economists and other intellectuals to embrace sound concepts and ideas.”

Markets Don’t Fail! is about more than just economics. Just as in the case of externalities above, Simpson presents a multiple level refutation of each of the market failure claims. In a separate chapter he also provides a good review of the positive case for capitalism, showing in detail how capitalism is the only moral social system and rests on an ethics of egoism. Simpson rewards the reader with a wealth of arguments that will help him understand the issues involved—and students of economics will finally have a resource with detailed answers to the false claims so often made in their textbooks.

Time for another Carnival of the Objectivists!

Everything Bad Is Good for You

Across the board, irrespective of class or race or education, Americans were getting smarter. Flynn was able to quantify the shift: in forty-six years, the American people had gained 13.8 IQ points on average.

The trend had gone unnoticed for so long because th eIQ establishment routinely normalized the exams to ensure that a person of average intelligence scored 100 on the test. So, every few years, they'd review the numbers and tweak the test to ensure that the median score was 100. Without realizing it, they were slowly but reliably increasing the difficulty of the test, as though they were ramping up the speed of a treadmill. If you looked exclusively at the history of the scores themselves, IQ seemed to be running in place, unchanged over the past century. But if you factored in the mounting challenge presented by the tests themselves, the picture changed dramatically: the test-takers were getting smarter.

Once you released your Dwarven fighter into the world, the calculations involved in determining the effects of his actions--attacking a specific creature with a specific weapon under specific circumstances with a specific squad of comrades fighting alongside you--would leave most kids weeping if you put the same charts on a math quiz.

Which gets to the ultimate question of why a ten-year-old found any of this fun. For me, the embarrassing truth of the matter is that I did ultimately grow frustrated with my baseball simulation, but not for the reasons you might expect. It wasn't that arcane language wore me down, or that I grew tired of switching columns on the Bases Empty chart, or that I decided that six hours was too long ot spend alone in my room on a Saturday afternoon in July.

No, I moved on from [the baseball simulation] because it wasn't realistic enough.

"Fairness" in Search Results?

An attorney with a prominent conservative Christian group says he is troubled by the recent announcement that the popular Internet search engine Google has dumped news sites criticizing radical Islam.

...

"[Users are essentially saying] 'I'll do the decision-making -- the discriminating, if you will -- as to which articles I want to read and which ones I don't,'" says [Steve] Crampton [, chief counsel of the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy]. "But when you retrieve only left-leaning articles or only articles that are favorable to the religion of Islam, you're not really providing news. You're providing a slanted view of the world." [one link dropped, one added]

When you consider how large this entity has become, you start to get into a realm where an argument could be made that perhaps this entity now becomes sort of like a public utility to the extent that the people rely on Google and Google alone," the attorney states. "There may be an argument that the government can step in and regulate Google in a way that it couldn't otherwise regulate a private entity." [bold added]

Interview With Andy Bernstein

New School Opens In Charlotte

Cheating Good

By Diana, cross-posted from NoodleFood

A professor offers students eight helpful tips on how to cheat good. It doesn't speak well of today's students that they cheat so ineptly. It's a travesty: Our high schools just aren't preparing students for the academic challenges of cheating in college!

Gardening While Moslem

Today's gym culture seems like the perfect vehicle for nurturing the combination of narcissism and loathing of the masses necessary to carry out a terrorist suicide mission. If some of these attackers viewed their own bodies as pure instruments, and everyone else as wasteful and deserving of punishment, they could just as well have come to that conclusion through absorbing the healthy-living agenda of the gym as by reading the Quran. At the gym, Atta, Khan, and the others could focus on perfecting the self, the body, as a pure and righteous thing -- and hone their disdain for others.

So, should we shut down all gyms in the name of fighting terrorism? Of course not. It's a ludicrous idea. But no more ludicrous, perhaps, than the infiltration of Western mosques. [bold added]

[It] consists of threatening to impeach an opponent's character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: "Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X's argument is false." (139)

I wish to quote you:

"Islam, which has no strong tradition of rational inquiry or of religious toleration, and which incites violence and murder against unbelievers."

May I enquire as to the facts on which you base your confidant claim that Islam 'incites violence and murder against unbelievers. Although not a member of the faith myself, I would encourage you to do your homework before resorting to such seemingly authoritative but baseless and misinformed claims.

[N]o. I am not going to reproduce this all in detail here, for you, personally. Why? Because if, in the years since September 11, 2001 you really haven't noticed a theme by now, you never will and nothing I can say is going to change your mind. And if you have, and are still asking questions like this, interrogating me as if I am some sort of war criminal, then you are no better than a terrorist yourself. In either case, I am wasting my time.

I do not owe you an explanation for my views, and I do not intend to give you one. I am finished with this conversation.

IS A PC AT A CAFE A GAMBLING MACHINE?

An internet café in Örebro in Sweden has been closed after the local council argued that its twelve PCs were occasionally used for gambling and it therefore needed a gaming permit.

When protesting didn't help and both the country administrative board and the administrative court ruled in favor of the cafe, the case was taken to the administrative court of appeal in Jönköping, which yesterday ruled that a PC - even in an internet café - automatically becomes a gaming machine if someone plays games with a financial stake on it. (theregister.co.uk, 06/01/06.)

Redefining Racism (yet again)

In response to the numerous concerns voiced regarding definitions posted on the Equity & Race website, we have decided to revise our website in a way that will hopefully provide more context to readers around the work that Seattle Public Schools is doing to address institutional racism. The intended purpose of our work in the area of race and social justice is to bring communities together through open dialogue and honest reflection around what is meant by racism and the impact is has on our society and more specifically, our students. Our intention is not to put up additional barriers or develop an “us against them” mindset, nor is it to continue to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality. It is our hope that we can explore the work of leading scholars in the areas of race and social justice issues to help us understand the dynamics and realities of how racism permeate throughout our society and use their knowledge to help us create meaningful change. This difficult work is vital to the success of our students and families. Thank you for sharing your concerns.

Warm regards,

Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D.
Director of Equity & Race Relations
Seattle Public Schools

Forced "Conversions": 600/Year

The same Islam that pronounces death for conversion to another religion, forces women married to Muslims to become Muslims too. Forced conversions figures reach between 500 to 600 people a year in Pakistan, although "national media report only 100 such cases" that police and the courts "treat prejudicially". This was the most significant conclusion of a meeting on "Forced Conversion of Women and Minorities Rights in Pakistan" held on 26 May in a hotel in Lahore.

In Pakistan we do not have any law against forced conversion and converting from Islam to any other religion means death. To change this state of affairs, we must consider the issue as a struggle for democracy and invite Muslims as well to these meetings, so they can help us to better understand all points of view of the argument. [bold added]

Kalyan Singh, a Sikh participant said one of the toughest challenges to overcome was the "subjection of judges to Islamic clerics. Judges do not manage to deal with such cases neutrally because they are scared of the revenge of religious extremists."

Joseph Francis, of the Center for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement took up this argument. "Our organization has dealt with hundreds of forced conversion cases. Not even the judges of the High Courts deal with such cases objectively. Parents are not allowed to talk to their daughters and many forcibly converted girls are made to be prostitutes."

In conclusion, participants "forcefully and unanimously condemned forced conversions" and called on the government to "abolish personal laws and to punish those who indulge in such practices". [bold added]

Why Reform Lost in NOLA

The Marines & Morality in Haditha

By Nicholas Provenzo, cross-posted from The Rule of Reason

I was recently asked about my thoughts on the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha last November. I think we all can agree that current US policy is not to target non-combatants, and certainly not wantonly as is alleged here (I for one think justice demands the investigation be concluded before flying off the deep end).

Nevertheless, here are a few observations:

1.) There is no charge of a cover-up, like there was in My Lai during the Vietnam War. The top Marine commanders seem resolute in finding out exactly what took place in Haditha, determine if it was a crime, and prosecute those responsible.

2.) What does bother me, is if the charges do prove true, this incident indicates a severe loss of moral in at least one Marine unit in Iraq and a general disrespect for the commander's intent. No one has authorized the massacre of civilians as retaliation for the death of American forces. Marines must understand what their commanders seek to achieve and follow their lawful orders to the letter, even if their rage and contempt for the enemy gets in the way.

3.) That said, I deeply disagree with the idea of an enemy "non-combatant" under the so-called "law of land warfare;" that is, a policy that separates the enemy's fighters from the civilian population that makes the war against us possible. The insurgents don't exist in a vacuum; they move freely in the towns and villages and are given comfort and aid by the local populations. Why then should the Iraqi "non-combatants" who support them be exempt from the full effect of this war, if by targeting them, the war would end sooner, and American lives would be saved? If the Iraqi people are guilty of action against the United States, why shouldn't they pay for it until they chose to surrender? I can think of no honest reason--except the view that the US must sacrifice its men to utter savages.

4.) And that's why although I would disagree with the actions of the accused Marines if the charges against them prove true, I can understand why it happened. One can only suffer savagery (and the seeming indifference to savagery) to a point. Beyond that point, one does become susceptible to rage and the unjustifiable conduct that comes from rage. If there was a practical plan for victory in Iraq, I don't think men would be driven to massacre innocents. I wonder then if this alleged incident indicates a sense of hopelessness on the ground in Iraq, and if that's the case, I hold that it would be us back home who would be to blame for that.

At root (and I've said this several times before), the population in Iraq that opposes our troops should feel as much of the horrors of war as did those Southerners who opposed the Union during the American Civil War. I believe America ought to let lose a modern day General Sherman to break the back of the civilian population that supports the insurgents. Let the jihadists come to learn that fighting against the US equals death to everything they hold dear--and a pointless, futile death at that. The men we ask to fight on our behalf deserve nothing less.

Nuke the Deal with Iran

By Martin Lindeskog, cross-posted from the Egoist blog

Why cut a deal with an enemy of the Western world? Here is an excerpt from Andy Clarkson's post, Diplomacy With Iran.

Now that is an interesting offer -- we will talk, if they end uranium enrichment. What's in it for Iran? Nothing. Is this a ploy so that the Bush Administration can say they wanted to be diplomatic while at the same time making an offer Iran would refuse? We'll see. (CharlotteCapitalist.com, 06/01/06.)

Within a day of Condi's proposal, the international debate is not--as she had planned--over whether Iran should suspend its enrichment. Instead, as I suspected, the debate is over whether the Bush administration should drop its preconditions for talks with Iran. In other words, having appeased Iran's European appeasers, we are being asked to make even more concessions.

To their credit, both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Sun have identified the proposal as a crucial error. The other good news, according to a New York Times report on the internal White House debate, is that President Bush approved this proposal because he expected it to fail, allowing him to "check off the box" of diplomacy before he can "confront Iran." (TIADaily.com, 06/01/06.)

• US prepares Lincoln bed for mullahs of Iran arrival - Persian Journal.
• Why Rice fell for the ways of 'Teheran Jack' - Telegraph.

Former Nurse Stops Shysters

By Gus Van Horn, cross-posted from the Gus Van Horn blog

High Oil Prices: NC Senators Burr And Dole To Blame

By Andy, cross-posted from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM)

Yaron Brook:

IRVINE, CA-- "The House's decision to keep a 25-year-old moratorium on oil and gas drilling off much of the nation's coasts is a disgrace," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"At a time when oil and gas prices are hitting record highs, our politicians should be removing, not entrenching, obstacles to oil and gas production.

"Politicians say keeping the moratorium is justified because oil and gas drilling off the coast would ruin the view and threaten the beaches with oil spills. But there is no such thing as a "right" to an unobstructed view of the horizon.

Moreover, oil spills are rare events against which oil companies take reasonable and effective precautions. As long as oil companies are held financially responsible for any property damages their activities may cause, we should let them drill at will."

Jason Lewis at WBT reports that Senators Richard Burr and Elizabeth Dole supported keeping the moratorium in place. If you are unhappy with gas prices, blame them. If you agree with the moratorium, then blame yourself -- and not oil companies or politicians.

More On Ken Iverson And Nucor Of Charlotte

By Andy, cross-posted from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM)

Steven Brockerman has part two of his posts on the life of Ken Iverson of Nucor:

Iverson's company, now renamed Nucor, opened its first mini-mill in Darlington, South Caroline in June, 1969. Nucor's mission--recall--was to produce good, inexpensive steel for use in making Vulcraft joists and steel grates. But because of Iverson's business plan--lean and mean at every level, non-union workers, performance bonuses and high tech cost efficient production methods--Nucor suddenly found its low-cost, quality steel in great demand. Ken decided that Nucor could--and would--meet that demand.

Part one here.

Bird Flu Fading. Bird-Brain Pandemic Ending Also?

Chemistry sets now illegal

Cross-posted from Truth, Justice, and the American Way:

Wired news is carrying a story on how an out-of-control Consumer Product Safety Commission has made chemistry sets illegal in an orgy of terrorist paranoia. This is a sad development indeed, as many of America's great inventors got into technology experimenting with chemicals and home-made fireworks.

The chemophobia that's put a damper on home science has also invaded America's classrooms, where hands-on labs are being replaced by liability-proof teacher demonstrations with the explicit message Don't try this at home. A guide for teachers of grades 7 through 12 issued by the American Chemical Society in 2001 makes the prospect of an hour in the lab seem fraught with peril: "Every chemical, without exception, is hazardous. Did you know that oxygen is poisonous if inhaled at a concentration a bit greater than its natural concentration in the air?" More than half of the suggested experiments in a multimedia package for schools called "You Be the Chemist," created in 2004 by the Chemical Educational Foundation, are to be performed by the teacher alone, leaving students to blow up balloons (with safety goggles in place) or answer questions like "How many pretzels can you eat in a minute?"

The same political idiocy afflicts model rocketry.

Injustice At Duke

Invisibility Cloak Hokum At Duke University

by Andy, cross-posted from The Charlotte Capitalist(TM)

The Capitalist Daughter hooked me on the Harry Potter series. I just finished the fourth book "Goblet Of Fire". I originally thought I would not like the series because of all the spells, ghosts, and other mystical aspects.

Oh, contraire. The books are a lot of fun and they focus upon Harry Potter's heroic efforts against evil.

One of Harry's tools is his invisibility cloak. By placing the cloak over his body, Harry is able to move where he chooses without anyone seeing him. The cloak allows others to see completely through itself and Harry as if they weren't there. It is a lot of fun in the book and I can understand why kids would like the idea of such a cloak. Didn't you want the power to be invisible when you were a kid?

Now, along comes an article from The National Geographic which says that scientists are near to developing an invisibility cloak:

The theoretical breakthrough is made possible by novel substances called metamaterials.

Invented six years ago, the man-made materials are embedded with networks of exceptionally tiny metal wires and loops.

The structures refract, or bend, different types of electromagnetic radiation--such as radar, microwaves, or visible light--in ways natural substances can't.

"[Metamaterials] have the power to control light in an unprecedented way," said Sir John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at England's Imperial College London.

Sorry, I am not buying into this. In fact, their analogy is way off-base:

Schurig likens the effect to a rock in a stream. The rock symbolizes a metamaterial cloaking shell. The water plays the role of electromagnetic radiation flowing around the cloaking shell.

"Downstream you can't necessarily tell that there was an object distorting the flow," he said, adding that, even from the side, the disturbance is hard to discern.

When you perceive something visually, say a table, one of your senses (sight via the eyes) is picking up reflected light rays, interpreting them, and sending signals to your brain. If you take a step in another direction, the table will look slightly different to you because your eyes are picking up light which is reflected differently than the light you were seeing before you moved.

For an invisibility cloak to work, that is, an object would appear not to exist and you could see what is behind is undistorted, would require at least the following:

1. The cloak would have to be able to re-reflect the light which is coming from behind the cloaked object in an undistorted manner. It would have to be able to act almost like a computer program and manage incredibly small "pixels" so that they are arranged in a way that copies the objects behind the cloak.

A cloak is of course soft and if the person or object under the cloak moves, then the cloak would have to interpret all of those movements in order to keep the pixels properly arranged and then reflect them out instantaneously and without distortion.

2. The invisibility cloak would have to know not only where the perceiver and his eyes are, the cloak would have to also track the movements of the perceiver because again, as you you move, you see the reflected light from an object differently.

Thus, the overall process for the cloak would have to be to "read" reflected light from objects which would normally be blocked from the perceiver if the cloak did not exist. Track those "pixels" of light, take into consideration movements in the cloak, perceive the position of the perceiver's eyes and re-reflect the light out to the perceiver in the exactly "pixel" formation. In the end, the meta-materials of the cloak have to track 1. the object in the distance behind the cloak, 2. the cloak and the object it is covering, 3. the position of the perceiver and what his eyes are perceiving.

The water analogy is faulty because one drop of water looks like another. As a stream of water rushes by a perceiver, it makes no difference if one molecule is in place of another. But with reflected light if a "pixel" is out of place, then what the perceiver perceives is distorted.

The above, I believe, is an objective way of looking at this issue. There are several non-objective ways of looking at the cloak.

An idealist would simply say, "The cloak is a gift from God. God works in mysterious ways including using miracles. The cloak is a miracle." I can't go for that, no-oh-oh.

The materialist approach would be to say, "Consciousness is a myth anyway. So whether you see something or say it is invisible is irrelevant. We can't really know anything."

Now, there may be some value to these meta-materials. My guess this whole thing is a publicity campaign for these guys to get funding. But for a magazine such as National Geographic to go along with this cloak hokum is embarrassing.

An example of why zoning laws (and conservatives) are evil

by Nicholas Provenzo, cross-posted from The Rule of Reason

You know the oft-repeated conservative meme that the family is the foundation of society (implying that individuals are not)? Here's an example of how that mentality attacks the freedom of people to choose their own relationships. It seems the regulatory overlords of Black Jack, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri have legally defined a family, and if you don't fall into that definition, you are not allowed to chose who you live with.

The city council has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together, and the mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.

Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a home in this St. Louis suburb because they have three children and are not married.

The town's planning and zoning commission proposed a change in the law, but the measure was rejected Tuesday by the city council in a 5-3 vote.

"I'm just shocked," Shelltrack said. "I really thought this would all be over, and we could go on with our lives."

The current ordinance prohibits more than three people from living together unless they are related by "blood, marriage or adoption." The defeated measure would have changed the definition of a family to include unmarried couples with two or more children.

Mayor Norman McCourt declined to be interviewed but said in a statement that those who do not meet the town's definition of family could soon face eviction. [AP]

Philosophy in The Simpsons

By Gus Van Horn, cross-posted from the Gus Van Horn blog

May $25 Wiki Competition Winner: NAS

Congrats to the NAS for being the biggest contributor to the Objectivism Wiki in May with 94 edits. He gets a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate.

Stay tuned for round two!