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Wednesday, April 24, 2002 Fear and Marriage By Diana Hsieh @ 11:03 PM Paul and I are headed to Front Sight outside of Las Vegas for a four day handgun course. We'll be back blogging on Wednesday. We went to the range today to brush up on our skills. I was very glad we did, as my shooting started off very poorly due to wincing anticipation. But a few rounds of .45 later, I was shooting in a nice tight grouping. Delightful! I love my Glocks. My husband is now scared of me, as he ought to be. :-) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Ribstone Pippin! By Diana Hsieh @ 9:23 PM Ribstone Pippin has some astute analysis of the Tahoe-Sierra case that I fumed about earlier today. In particular, he notes the absurdity of a hard and fast distinction between temporary and permanent takings. He writes: Experience shows that what turns out to be permanent and what turns out to be temporary is not an easy distinction for the courts to make ex ante. Common sense, therefore, suggests that all takings be compensated for the duration of the actual deprivation of use. Yup. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis In the Long Run, We Are All Dead By Diana Hsieh @ 9:46 AM The Supreme Court has decided that fascist regulatory takings that deprive people of control over their property aren't worthy of compensation like communist takings in which ownership itself is deprived. Augh. Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist dissented. What's the point of owning property if nothing useful can be done with it? Oh, well I guess the owners have the pleasure of throwing their hard-earned and overly-taxed money into now-excessive mortgage payments. The majority even said: Land-use regulations are ubiquitous and most of them impact property values in some tangential way often in completely unanticipated ways. Treating them all as per se takings would transform government regulation into a luxury few governments could afford. Well, making regulations into "a luxury few governments could afford" is a precisely the reason governments ought to be required to compensate property owners for regulatory takings! Oh, but no, we want to shift the cost of stupid government regulations to the already-property-deprived property owner. Good idea, Mr. Leviathan! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, April 23, 2002 Sociobiology By Diana Hsieh @ 1:23 PM Will Wilkinson and I are having a fun exchange over biological explanations for the persistence of religion on the comment board of his blog entry on Christopher Hitchens. I'm often unimpressed with sociobiological explanations of various aspects of human life. Religion is no exception. And I honestly don't understand why so many people, including Objectivists, are favorably impressed with sociobiology. Too much of the field has all the markings of pseudo-science: pathetically flimsy evidence, inability to falsify hypotheses, confusion of plausibility with proof, failure to address counter-examples, and dismissal of the possibility of cultural and psychological explanations. I'm sure that some sociobiologists are real scientists using good methodology, but such distinctions are rarely made. So tell me, why is sociobiology so attractive? E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, April 22, 2002 Really Really Bad Neighbors By Diana Hsieh @ 8:41 PM Charles Oliver pointed me to this hysterically funny account of the world's stupidest neighbor. Read the whole page, as the stories only get funnier and the pictures more frequent towards the end. The big Jesus statue on top of the poorly constructed mailbox stand of stolen bricks was priceless. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Hell for Miss Manners By Diana Hsieh @ 10:45 AM I've been wasting time this morning reading tacky wedding stories. So many of these lunacies could be prevented if the bride and groom paid for their own wedding, rather than mooching off their parents! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Parenthood By Diana Hsieh @ 9:54 AM James Lileks has some delightful comments on parenthood, including the choice to have children or not. Too many people who argue against parenthood do actually hate children -- all children, not just the bratty ones. They usually deny it publicly, but their private invectives against the young give them away. Such people have even told me that many parents who say they love their children are just rationalizing away their horrible and guilty feelings of regret for having made the terrible decision to have kids at all. Apparently, a parent must love every moment of parenting and never get frustrated with a child in order to actually love their children. Of course, there are lots of people in this world who ought not have children; the kid-haters are certainly at the top of that list. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, April 21, 2002 My Loss is Your Gain By Diana Hsieh @ 5:45 PM Sadly, my mother has returned home to Maryland. As usual, we had a delightful time together. We discussed everything from the silly behavior of the cats to the conflict in the Middle East. We made delicious meals together and drank lots of tea. We stretched our legs walking the dogs and filled out bellies with homemade doughnuts. We laughed our way through Bridget Jones' Diary and various episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? It was perfectly easy. I shall have to content myself with mere phone calls until I stop by the farm for a visit in June on my way to an IHS seminar in Virginia. But my loss is your gain: I'm back blogging. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Saturday, April 20, 2002 Jesus By Diana Hsieh @ 11:56 PM But where are the statues of Jesus having sex with the altar boys?!? Isn't that a Catholic sport these days? (Thanks to Hanah for the link.) (Yes, yes, that was in terrible taste.) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis The Honor By Diana Hsieh @ 10:58 PM Oh oh oh! My book and lecture reviews posted to Amazon have netted me a reviewer rank of a whopping #49378. Vote my reviews helpful so that I can make it to #49377! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Damn Those Rich Professors By Diana Hsieh @ 10:41 PM According to historian and economist Robert Wright, humanities professors ought to earn less money. He has a point. (Link thanks to Jane Galt.) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, April 19, 2002 Worth Reading By Diana Hsieh @ 11:01 PM Thanks to this week's Impromptus, I found this moving NY Times op-ed, Needing Israel. Impromptus also notes another attack on Jews in Europe: In Kiev, “a mob of about 50 youths attacked the central synagogue, beating worshipers with stones and bottles and shattering windows,” according to the New York Post. The mob had marched down the boulevard shouting “Kill the Jews!” before attacking the synagogue last Saturday night. Are such attacks really that different from those suffered in the years before Germany's "final solution"? Are the pathetic excuses and rationalizations for them all that different? I'm very worried. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, April 18, 2002 She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain... By Diana Hsieh @ 10:59 AM In the past two days, most of my time and energy has been spend hauling rocks and digging in the soil. No, I haven't been robbing graves; I've been gardening! I do very much enjoy cultivating plant life, although gardening in Colorado is often a challenge. We have a short growing season, with occasional snows even in late May. It is usually very dry and frequently unbelievably windy. The early summer rains are often torrential downpours. Basically, the prissy plants don't survive in Colorado. We're a hardy bunch here. My gardening over the past two days was, unfortunately, make distinctly less pleasurable by the high winds, which probably averaged about 20 mph. Normally, I would have delayed until calmer weather prevailed, but my mother is arriving for a visit today. Not only did I want the place to look nice for her, but I didn't want to have to babysit my just-bought plants for a week until I could plant them. My poor little plants must have thought they have been transported from Home Depot Heaven to Windy Home Hell. But the aggravation of the wind and the present pain of my muscles was worth it, as the gardens look so much better. In just a few moments, I will be leaving to pick up my mother from the airport, so I probably won't be posting as much as usual over the next few days. My responses on some issues, like Aaron's comments on racism, will have to wait. But [insert Arnold voice here] I'll be back. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Israel's Nukes By Diana Hsieh @ 9:21 AM Kuro5hin has an story on Israel's nuclear capabilities. Of particular interest is the discussion of what kind of nukes Israel has: Some sources claim that the warheads, mounted on long-range Jericho missiles, are intended for deterrence and as weapons of last resort. Evidence for this is French and Russian satellite data revealing that they are not siloed in border regions but instead at the center of Israel--a defensive arrangement. However, Steinbach's report draws a rather different conclusion. Deterrence weapons are usually designed to have a very high yield; they are doomsday devices. However, a large fraction of the Israeli arsenal consists of neutron bombs. These produce a relatively small explosion and less radioactive fallout than other designs. Their primary mechanism of destruction is a deadly burst of high-speed neutrons, which destroys all living tissue within miles. Because of this design, Israeli bombs could even be used against their immediate neighbors without Israel suffering much from the radioactive cloud they produce. The US calls such low-yield bombs "theater nuclear weapons" and plans to build more of them for a variety of battlefield and first-strike roles (see Bush's recent Nuclear Posture Review, analysis). The idea of first-strike nukes is that they should be small enough so as to not deter the country who owns them from launching them. In this way, the Israeli arsenal has the makeup of a first-strike force. The article goes on to hint that Israel's neighbors aren't really much of threat -- which is clearly ludicrous. Those neighbors are desperate to get their hands on nuclear weapons and would be delighted to launch a first strike against their sworn enemy. Although I tend to think that allowing the Soviet Union to acquire nuclear weapons was a bad idea, at least that nation was rational enough to keep the war chilly. There would be no such option in the Middle East if a militant Islamic regime got their hands on nukes. A very hot war would likely erupt immediately. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, April 17, 2002 Finally! By Diana Hsieh @ 11:10 PM Ally McBeal abruptly stopped being funny about three seasons ago. Thankfully, it is being put out of its misery. The show had clearly lost all direction. Characters were added and dropped without warning or explanation. The humor of the characters' neuroses was transformed into pity and disgust, as such pathetic life skills and psychological pathology is only tolerable for so long. The necessary sense of direction and stability, not to mention the even more necessary humor, was long gone from Ally McBeal. It's sad to see a funny show die such a horrible death, but... thank god its over! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Condoleezza Rice, NFL Commissioner By Diana Hsieh @ 1:51 PM Condoleezza Rice may not be our next VP after all. She wants to be the NFL Commissioner. Seriously. She's a big football fan -- and very knowledgeable about the game. (As a big professional football fan myself, this new tidbit of information only endears me to Condi all the more!) Some people are still stuck in the idea that football is game watched only by men. On the OWL list recently, Cat Farrar claimed: And just as women are turned off by men competing in the physical world (sports, fights etc), they are also turned off my [sic] intellectual sparing. Women, as a rule, don't fight the interesting, practical or productive. *BZZZT* Wrong! Over 40% of all serious football fans are women. Women are not helpless little lambs fearful and averse to confrontation and battle. So hooray for hawkish women whether they be Vice Presidents or NFL Commissioners! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Hot Shoes or Sensible Shoes By Diana Hsieh @ 8:32 AM Virginia Postrel's protestation against sensible shoes is part of why she is, as VodkaPundit said, "the hottest 'sensible shoes' libertarian. Ever." Under the heading "Fashion Grievance," she writes: I'm flattered, and I've read the explanation, but my shoes are still insulted. If I must wear shoes, let them have three-inch heels. Perhaps Virginia should have been called the most sensible hot shoes libertarian. I'm not sure what kind of libertarian I am, but my shoes are indeed sensible. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Court Nixes Ban on Virtual Child Porn By Diana Hsieh @ 10:09 AM The AP reports: The Supreme Court struck down a congressional ban on virtual child pornography Tuesday, ruling that the First Amendment protects pornography or other sexual images that only appear to depict real children engaged in sex. The decision was 6-3, with the major issue for the dissent apparently being the problem of enforcing laws against actual child porn if virtual porn is allowed and the danger to children of feeding the desires of pedophiles. The opinions don't seem to be up on Cornell Law site, FindLaw, or Supreme Court site yet. If you find them, let me know. I want to read Thomas' separate agreement with the majority. Hooray for free speech! Update: The case just showed up on FindLaw. Thomas' concurrence leaves open the possibility that virtual porn could be banned if technology developed to such an extent that it was impossible to determine which child porn involved the abuse of actual minors. I'm dubious. We wouldn't ban sex on first dates simply due to the frequent difficulty of distinguishing between acquaintance rape and consensual sex. We wouldn't ban giving money to strangers just because an accused mugger may be able to successfully claim that the transfer of funds was consensual. In short, we ought not ban non-rights-violations simply because it may be difficult to distinguish them from rights-violations. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis My Computers Hate Me By Diana Hsieh @ 9:45 AM A few weeks ago, I dropped my Palm IIIe, more or less killing the screen. (It became streaky and unreadable.) The fall must have damaged the video card in some way, as I took the whole damn thing apart, but couldn't find anything obviously wrong. So it was time to buy another handheld. For the past few months, I'd had my eye on a Sony Clié, the PEG-N760C, mostly due to its awesome color screen, Jog dial, and capacity to double as an MP3 player. Deciding that a really cool Palm was worth blowing some play money on, I bought one on EBay. It worked just fine, except for one problem: I couldn't get my desktop computer to recognize the memory stick. The Clié could read and write to the memory stick just fine, but my desktop kept telling me (falsely) that it wasn't formatted. As a result, I couldn't transfer anything to the memory stick, thereby rendering the MP3 function basically nil. So yesterday, for the second time, I spent hours trying to get the desktop to recognize the memory stick. I bought and tested out a new 128MB memory stick, in the hopes that the original 16K memory was somehow bad. No luck. I called Sony, but they couldn't help, as they had never heard of such a problem. And because I bought the damn thing on EBay, the warranty was void. So sending it in for repairs would have cost me big bucks. Augh! So, I started looking for software that might be of help. I found an amazing little product called BlueSync that sits on top of HotSync and syncs the memory stick with a particular folder on the desktop. Finally, I could transfer stuff to the memory stick! BlueSquirrel also makes such transfers to and from the memory stick much easier than they would be normally. (Of course, a song by my beloved Dave Matthews Band was honored with the first transfer.) I also recently acquired a Targus Stowaway Keyboard, with which I am quite pleased. Now I'll be able to work on various writings without taking the laptop. (My laptop is Paul's old Sony Vaio, so it's hardly big and bulky. But the Clié with the Targus keyboard will be so much cooler for roaming around town. I also recently ordered an emergency 9V charger and what promises to be an excellent hard slim case for my Clié from Brando. (Sony's cover sucks more than you can possibly imagine, as it falls off very easily.) After all that pain and suffering, I am in love with my Clié again. And I can finally get back to work. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, April 15, 2002 The Man with the Fly Bottle Returns By Diana Hsieh @ 2:51 PM Will Wilkinson is back! I was getting tired of checking the same old page... E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Hard Jobs By Diana Hsieh @ 7:56 AM You think your job is tough? Be grateful that you aren't Stick Figure Man, enduring all manner of pain and indignity just to protect stupid humans from hurting themselves. (Link thanks to MetaFilter.) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, April 14, 2002 No Hemlock, Please By Diana Hsieh @ 6:00 PM Instapundit is like Socrates. But he refuses to drink the hemlock. (What ever happened to respect for the law?!?) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis A Tangled Web of Guesses By Diana Hsieh @ 3:14 PM Although I mentioned this essay in passing in my previous blog entry, I'd like to give a hearty endorsement to Nicholas Dykes' monograph-length essay A Tangled Web of Guesses: A Critical Assessment of the Philosophy of Karl Popper. It is perhaps the best analysis of a mainstream philosopher from an Objectivist perspective that I've ever read. (Of course, Dykes knock-down arguments don't just apply to Popper, but also to the similar ideas in Kant and Hume and others in the history of philosophy.) Hooray for good philosophy! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis An Open Society by One of Its Enemies By Diana Hsieh @ 1:21 PM At the FROG (Front Range Objectivist Group) meeting that I attended last night, Mike Williams gave an excellent presentation on Karl Popper. He argued that although Popper is often cited as a defender of reason, individualism, and liberty, he is quite the opposite. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the evening was the very clear line drawn between Popper's failure to acknowledge identity in metaphysics and his advocacy of experimental social engineering in politics. (The progression is so clear, in fact, that I'll probably use Popper as an example of why metaphysics matters in Objectivism 101. So I'll soon be buying the recommended Popper Selections.) Sadly, considering his actual political views, not to mention his method of defending them, Popper is considered by many to be an advocate of liberty. He greatly influenced Hayek. His book The Open Society and Its Enemies is sold by Laissez Faire Books. His metaphysical and epistemological views, as well as portions of his political views, are often seen as very compatible with libertarianism, as in this short essay by Jan Lester. (Fascinatingly enough, Popper's views, as Lester persuasively argues, do directly lead to anarcho-capitalism.) Wallace Matson even blithely (and falsely) asserts in his essay "Rand on Concepts" in The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand that Popper is "a 'modern philosopher' with whom Rand has much in common" (22). Critiques of Popper, like this one by Roy Childs, often grant that "Popper's arguments for democracy (as opposed to his advocacy of democracy itself) ... bring us to the doctrine of libertarianism" and hold Popper out as "a great and forceful advocate of reason, science and progress." (In contrast, Nicholas Dykes has an excellent long critique of Popper on all the right grounds.) Of course, before I come to any final conclusions on Popper, I'll have to read him for myself. But based on the consistent sketch of Popper's ideas as seen in a multitude of sympathetic and quote-laden secondary sources, he seems like one of those "with friends like these who needs enemies" kinds of "friends of liberty." So let me just leave you to ponder this amazing quote. In his autobiography, Unended Quest, Popper writes, If there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree. (36) The mind boggles. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Saturday, April 13, 2002 Violent Bloggers By Diana Hsieh @ 2:30 PM Apparently, Asparagirl is a "violent blogger," as are the rest of us alarmed by the wave of recent attacks on Jews in France and elsewhere. Okay, Asparagirl, time to fess up... How many people have you beaten up since you started your blog? How many French have you killed in your hateful blogging? None? Oh... Not all cultures and people are the same. The civilized ones respect individual rights. The uncivilized ones do not. To observe that fact is not to be guilty of racism, but rather to make the all-important distinction between race and culture. Uncivilized people, such as those who send their children off to be suicide bombers or who condone or tolerate attacks on innocents, are not less human than the rest of us. But they are less humane. They are not less worthy of respect because of their race, but because of their freely chosen beliefs and actions. Culture matters. Philosophy matters. Character matters. Race is irrelevant. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, April 12, 2002 Suicide Bombings By Diana Hsieh @ 8:39 PM In his March 31st op-ed entitled "Suicidal Lies," Thomas Friedman argued that the suicide bombings of Palestinians amounted to "testing out a whole new form of warfare," one that threatened not just Israel and the United States, but all of civilization. This column was certainly a welcome change from Friedman's unveiling and advocacy of the ludicrous Saudi "peace plan," as this op-ed clearly acknowledged the gravity of the threat faced by the Israelis. Suicide bombers are, in many respects, a difficult and puzzling problem for military strategists, as so much conventional military strategy is premised on the idea that the enemy wants to kill you and live, not to kill you and die. When an enemy hides among civilians and rescue workers, the work of soldiers is complicated in that attempts to effectively fight the enemy must be tempered with greater-than-usual concern for collateral damage. (That, of course, is the obvious point of concealment among innocents. But such concealment also has the much more substantial effect of undermining morale by making the good guys appear unjust and inhumane towards innocent civilians.) However, a recent article by Brian Finch casts serious doubt upon Friedman's claim that the threat posed by suicide bombers is a new and particularly dangerous one. After all, both Japan and Germany used suicide attacks in World War II. Such attacks were not a grave threat to civilization, but rather an admission that "defeat was at hand." No one can win a war "killing as many of their enemies as possible without regard for their own losses." But, of course, suicide bombings can also inflict terrible damage. Looking at the Japanese kamikaze pilots, Finch writes, In one sense, the kamikaze attacks worked. Many American ships were damaged or sunk by the attacks, and the U.S. Navy was forced to devote enormous resources to fight off such attacks. But the suicide attacks did not ultimately succeed. While these attacks strained the U.S. military, they did not break morale. The military instead recognized the attacks for what they were -- the last ditch weapon of a desperate foe that had concluded it could not prevail in conventional warfare. The solution for America was simple: Roll forward and defeat the Japanese soundly, which it did. The suicide bombings of the Palestinians, Finch argues should be regarded in a similar light. They are a desperate last resort, an admission that they cannot win a war with Israel by even remotely conventional means. And so the proper response to these suicide bombings now is the same as it was in World War II: refuse to be cowed and continue to fight. Defeat of the enemy is at hand. Finch is, however, too optimistic about the ease of pursuing that iron-willed strategy in these morally relative times. Apart from the United States' lukewarm support, Israel stands alone in her fight against the suicide bombers. And public opinion even in Israel is more divided than it ought to be. The rest of the world, for the most part, has sided with the Palestinians, and thus with the sacrifice of the Jews -- yet again. So Israel is fighting the suicide bombers with one hand tied around her back. She may still be winning, but the cost in human lives will be greater as a result. Really, it all boils down to the comment of a friend of mine: We want to live, they want to die. Hey, I know a compromise in this war to make everyone happy! We kill them! That's the only sort of compromise possible with suicide bombers. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Right Wing News By Diana Hsieh @ 3:29 PM John Hawkins of Right Wing News has a delightful rant on why he supports Israel. My favorite passage: It's all well and good to sit around at cafes in France and sneer at Israel because you don't think they're living up to some impossible ethical standard that's been applied to them, but it's another thing to be in their shoes, surrounded by 300 hundred million hostile Arabs who want to finish the job Hitler started in WW2. They're not dealing with reasonable, rational, civilized people. They're dealing in large part with terrorists and savages who claim to be thrilled when their own children die as long as they take Israeli civilians with them. To expect Israel to deal with the Palestinians as if they were a bunch of snot nosed globalization protestors at a G8 summit is irrational to the point of insanity. As he says, Israel is just the appetizer, but we are the main course. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis In Defense of the Intact Penis By Diana Hsieh @ 9:34 AM Andrew Sullivan has some excellent comments on male circumcision under the heading "The Mutilation of Children." He writes: I may be a broken record on this but the news today that circumcision may have a small effect in restraining transmission of the HPV virus strikes me as likely to be misused. The argument against the circumcision of infants is not that it might not conceivably have some future health-benefits. The argument against infant male genital mutilation is that it is the permanent, irreversible disfigurement of a person's body without his consent. Unless such a move is necessary to protect a child's life or essential health, it seems to me that it is a grotesque violation of a person's right to control his own body. It matters not a jot why it is done. It simply should not be done - until the boy or man is able to give his informed consent. And to perform such an operation to protect the health of others is an even more unthinkable violation. It's treating an individual entirely as a means rather than as an end. I'm at a loss why a culture such as ours that goes to great lengths to protect the dignity and safety of children (and rightly so) should look so blithely on this barbaric relic. Yes, I know there are religious justifications for it. But even so, religions should not be given ethical carte blanche over the bodies of children. Would we condone a religious ceremony that, say, permanently mutilated a child's ear? Or tongue? Or scarred their body irreversibly? Of course not. So why do we barely object when people mutilate a child's sexual organ? Well put. When I first investigated the issue of male circumcision, the barbarity and pointlessness of the practice was immediately and painfully obvious to me. (Actually, the practice isn't really pointless, as it does serve the purpose of diminishing sexual pleasure.) Circumcision is a rights-violation, in either boys or girls. The justifications often cited for the practice were transparently ridiculous, as such arguments would never be used to justify other types of child mutilation. For example, circumcision is falsely said to eliminate the (already very low) risk of penile cancer. But it would be unthinkable to remove the breast tissue of newborn girls (if possible) so as to reduce the much greater risk of breast cancer. Life comes with risks of disease. We do not remove useful body parts in advance of any problem, particularly not without informed consent, so as to reduce those risks -- except in the case of the male foreskin. Nor do we remove body parts because parents are squeamish about teaching cleaning procedures or because young men might not be so diligent about performing the necessary cleaning -- except in the case of the male foreskin. As Andrew Sullivan indicates, circumcision is a glaring exception in our generally respectful attitudes towards the bodies of children. The gross inadequacy of these arguments is yet another instance of people failing to develop or apply the all-important philosophical skill of thinking in principles. People simply don't often-enough ask questions like: Would this sort of argument hold water in other, similar cases? As a result, they accept all manner of ludicrous conclusions simply because the arguments, taken in stark isolation, seem unobjectionable. As a result, people who would never dream of cutting off a child's ears so as to eliminate the problem of dirt collecting behind them are willing to cut off the foreskin so as to prevent the collection of smegma. For many, however, the problem may be more psychological in origin. As a woman, the most mind-boggling aspect of male circumcision is that most men seem to be suffering from a variant of Stockholm Syndrome as a result of the procedure. They generally steadfastly refuse to admit even the possibility that the circumcision was harmful to them. They deny that the removal of foreskin might have reduced their capacity to feel sexual pleasure, even though they clearly have no way of knowing a priori what it would be like to have sex or masturbate uncircumcised. They seem determined to ward off any thought that their parents might have seriously damaged them at an age when they could not even be aware, let alone protest, the injustice. As a result, these men go on to circumcise their own sons. It is abominable. Men need to start standing up for their own sex. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, April 11, 2002 Sensible Shoes Libertarians By Diana Hsieh @ 11:15 PM VodkaPundit blogs on things he knows but cannot prove. The best, by a long shot is... Virginia Postrel is the hottest "sensible shoes" libertarian. Ever. He then notes: NOTE: Newer readers, or humans in general, might take "'sensible shoes' libertarian" as a slur on Virginia's wardrobe. Far from it. Nothing to do with clothes at all. Sensible shoes libertarians are real-world reformers. Then there are Combat Boot Libertarians -- revolutionaries still clutching dog-earred copies of Atlas Shrugged. And Golf Shoe Libertarians, who are just Republican wanna-be radicals. This opens up a whole world of possibility concerning the classification of Libertarians. How about Thigh Boot Libertarians? Or Dirty Old Sneaker Libertarians? Slipper Libertarians? The Shoe Libertarian Ideology Classification System (SLICS) must be developed further! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis A Petition Worth Signing By Diana Hsieh @ 6:00 PM I just signed the petition against banning theraputic cloning of Franklin Society. It reads: Therapeutic Cloning Should NOT Be Banned We the undersigned recognize that the cloning of cells offers scientists the chance to advance medical research and perhaps one day treat devastating illnesses such as juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's by replacing lost or debilitated cells. Congress should not outlaw this research despite recent pressure from various political factions. Nor should Congress impose a moratorium on this research, which would have the effect of halting the advances that are currently being made. We the undersigned--many of us conservatives, some of us scientists, all of us concerned for the future--want it known that therapeutic cloning has supporters from across the political spectrum. To halt this research would be a terrible blow to science and public health. It's worth a look -- and a signature. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, April 10, 2002 Unspeakable Evil By Diana Hsieh @ 8:30 PM Yesterday's Best of the Web includes some mind-boggling stories of anti-Semitism. Most distressing is this story from Norway: Ingmar Tveitt, a friend of Norwegian Parliament member Jan Simonsen, was ordered yesterday by Parliament security guards to remove his jacket because a Star of David was displayed on the chest pocket. Go read the detailed account from Best of the Web, as the news story is not in English. In light of my strong support of Israel's right to defend itself and the growing threat of anti-Semitism, I have idly thought of wearing a small version of the flag of Israel, similar to Ingmar Tveitt's. Not being even remotely Jewish myself, it would be something like the apocryphal story of the Danes all wearing the star of David so that the Nazis couldn't identify the Jews. (However untrue that particular story may be, the Danes did protect their Jews from the Nazis, unlike the people of other countries.) I wonder what sort of reactions I might get. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis A Tasty Snack for James Taranto By Diana Hsieh @ 3:40 PM This week's "What Do You Think" in The Onion serves up Yasser Arafat as a tasty dish, sure to be loved by the folks over at Best of the Web. Mary Putnam, Graphic Designer, says: "Arafat would never be behind any acts of terrorism. This is a Nobel Peace Prize winner we're talking about here." James Taranto's almost daily reminders that "Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994" seem to have sunk in! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Self-Destructive Culture By Diana Hsieh @ 1:17 PM Juan Williams opposes reparations for slavery in an op-ed of arguments of variable quality. He makes the idiotic claim that reparations may have the harmful effect of ending "the moral responsibility that all Americans, especially white Americans, have for the history of slavery, legal segregation and the ongoing racism in our national life." Apparently eliminating unearned guilt, guilt for inhumane and racist acts committed by people wholly unconnected to you, is a bad thing. Despite this boggle, Mr. Williams does make some interesting comments about reparations fostering racism. He writes, If reparations become a reality, black Americans already battling presumptions of inferiority (they are less hard working, less intelligent and less patriotic, according to whites questioned by pollsters) will also bear the weight of being demeaned as less able than any Mexican immigrant or Bosnian refugee. The newcomers, after all, are not asking for reparations -- they only want a chance to make it in America. The result will be a further segregation of low-income black people from the mainstream. Mr. Williams certainly has a good point about the push for reparations fostering ideas of the inferiority of blacks. Millions of immigrants, even those subjected to terrible racial bias, have succeeded in this country without payments for comparable injustices. The reparations movement thus subtly hints that some aspect of black people themselves is responsible for the proportionally higher rates of poverty, criminality, illegitimacy, and school dropouts among blacks. Predictably, racists will use the ideas reparations movement as confirmation of their view that blacks are inherently too lazy or stupid or criminal or whatever to succeed. (I ought not have to say it, but I will, that such racism is completely irrational and reprehensible.) For reasonable people willing to distinguish between race and culture, the reparations movement may have an unintended benefit, attracting attention to the ways in which black culture damages blacks themselves. Such damage is partially the result of the intellectual corruption of anointed black leaders wholly invested in the cult of black victimhood, like Jesse Jackson. Black intellectuals who do not tow the line of racism as responsible for all ills, like Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas are regarded as sellouts, as not really black. More insidiously, however, black culture damages children by too often pegging academic and material success as a failure as a black person, because such success is merely an imitation of white people. A disturbing 1998 story from The Washington Post details the pressure cooker forced upon black students who value academic achievement. High-achieving African American students also complain about being ridiculed by fellow black students who tease them if they expend a lot of effort to earn good grades. Prodded by her parents, Aida Harris always worked hard in school, earning top grades and taking the toughest classes. But by the time she got to middle school, she found that her gung-ho attitude alienated her from many of her black friends. "People constantly told me that I'm acting white, that I'm an Oreo," she said. "I was constantly shunned by my black classmates." The harassment grew so intense that her grades dropped from A's and B's to C's and D's. She said that she became preoccupied with her racial identity and let her grades slip in hopes of getting back in the good graces of her friends. At one point, she told her parents that she wanted to leave public school altogether. "It was traumatic, absolutely traumatic," said her father, Reuben Harris Jr., an insurance agent and a founding member of a parents' group focused on raising black student achievement. "She was feeling ostracized and separated from her own people." Aida Harris eventually improved her grades, but only after extraordinary intervention by her father. He found time to sit in at her middle school every day, and now he is a regular presence at Shaker Heights High School, where his daughter is a sophomore. "I had strong support from my parents, which made it possible for me to be independent," Harris said. "Many [black] kids don't seem to have the same kind of support." Thank goodness for committed parents. In my two years of public middle school, I was nearly ruined intellectually by much more subtle pressure against academic achievement. I remember telling my mother that I wouldn't get grades higher than Bs, because I was already in the "Gifted and Talented" program. Girls were simply not supposed to be overtly smart. They weren't supposed to be interested in learning. As a result, I was desperately trying to maintain a balancing act that would have ended up destroying my opinionated self. I was saved by a last minute switch to a private all-girls school, Garrison Forest, for 8th grade and high school. Most people simply don't believe that my intellectual life would have been seriously and most likely permanently stunted by continuing in the anti-intellectual environment of public school. But they are wrong. I would have ended up like the vast majority of girls at WashU: never speaking up in class, never able to do anything alone, never confident in judging independently. And, as with the other girls at WashU, no one would have ever noticed anything amiss. So I was "saved" -- in an almost religious sense. My greatest gratitude towards my parents will always be for that change of schools. So I have some sense for the damage that such pressure to conform to ideals of mediocrity can do to a child. And I feel a sense of vicarious gratitude to every black parent who demands success from his/her child. In short: Blacks don't need reparations. They don't need affirmative action. They don't need the welfare state. They need a cultural revolution. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, April 09, 2002 One Crisis After Another By Diana Hsieh @ 1:18 PM Thomas Bray urges us to keep some perspective on the problem of obesity: First, something has to rank first among the causes of "preventable death." That obesity is now No. 1 may tell us more about the progress we are making against other problems than about the apparently sudden collapse of willpower in a population inundated by burgers, french fries and chocolate malts. After all, longevity keeps going up even as each new health crisis is discovered. Of course, the government-must-do-something crisis culture is also quite adept at sounding the alarm at one issue for a few years, then raising hell about precisely the opposite problem in a few years. It may also be no accident that the presumed surge in obesity claimed by CDC occurred during a period of sustained prosperity and low unemployment. If it had been a period of economic misery, we might still be talking about malnutrition and starvation. Remember the campaign a few years back about all those children going to bed hungry at night--a campaign brought to you by some of the same people now obsessed with fatness? Were we ever eating just right for even a few moments between the crisis of hunger and the crisis obesity? Oh, of course not, silly me! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis The Nomination By Diana Hsieh @ 12:41 PM Thanks to Dave Tepper, I've been nominated for "the post of Camille Paglia" because of my comments (below) about leftist feminists as battered wives. Sadly, I must decline, as my husband has declared that he only wants a lesbian wife if he can have two of them, preferably identical twins. ;-) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, April 08, 2002 Leftists Feminists as Battered Wives By Diana Hsieh @ 2:41 PM Edward Blum tells a great story about Al Sharpton in his latest article in NRO. Sharpton says: We may have a bad date with Michael Bloomberg, but I'm not going to be the battered wife for the Democratic party. That's what battering husbands do: beat their wives, talk about "Nobody wants you but me," slap them around, say "Who else is going to buy you a dress?" Well, I'd rather walk around naked than wear your wretched dress. The leftist feminists (NOW and company) were certainly the battered wives of the Clinton administration. They went ballistic over the flimsy allegations that Clarence Thomas make some inappropriate sexual comments towards Anita Hill. But when President Clinton was accused of rape by the much more credible Juanita Broaddrick, we barely heard a peep. Apparently, no woman except Juanita Broaddrick has ever falsely reported a rape. Apparently, no man who supports feminists causes is capable of behaving abominably towards women. But of course, if Clinton did rape Ms. Broaddrick, surely he is sorry and has mended his ways. And surely no other president would love those feminist groups the way that Slick Willie did. Battered wives indeed. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, April 07, 2002 The Birth of the Modern