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.) Link / Noodles / Trackback 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! Link / Noodles / Trackback 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.) Link / Noodles / Trackback 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. Link / Noodles / Trackback 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. Link / Noodles / Trackback 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. Link / Noodles / Trackback 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! Link / Noodles / Trackback 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! Link / Noodles / Trackback 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. Link / Noodles / Trackback 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. Link / Noodles / Trackback 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. Link / Noodles / Trackback 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... Link / Noodles / Trackback 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.) Link / Noodles / Trackback 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?!?) Link / Noodles / Trackback 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! Link / Noodles / Trackback 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. Link / Noodles / Trackback

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