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Friday, May 31, 2002 Fun and Water Games By Diana Hsieh @ 10:28 PM John Caldera of the Independence Institute has a funny commentary on droughts and water rights in the Boulder paper. The opening paragraph is priceless. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Grading on a Curve By Diana Hsieh @ 5:07 PM Eugene has the only decent defense of grading on a curve that I've ever read. In fact, it's pretty convincing. (I particularly appreciated the point about the variations in the professors as generally much greater than the variations between classes.) Go read it! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Of Living Death By Diana Hsieh @ 2:06 PM I have often wondered why we tend to simply lump people affected by an attack into three categories: unharmed, injured, and dead. After all, a scrape on the forehead is hardly the same as the loss of a limn or paralysis, yet both count as injuries. And even when we use the distinction of "minor" versus "serious" injuries, we don't often hear about the nature of those serious injuries or about their long-term inpact on the person's life. But the WND article Survivors face agony in suicide attacks details the damage. Here's the worst of it: Reports of people being injured in suicide bombings are not rare. Since September 2000, 498 Israelis have been killed and 4,021 injured in acts of Palestinian violence. In suicide bombings alone, 208 Israelis have died. On Monday, there were several reports on the suicide bomber who killed an 18-month-old baby girl and her grandmother and left 27 people injured. The reports, however, rarely go into the medical details to explain just what is meant by "injured." At a Tel Aviv nightclub June 1, a suicide bomber left 15-year-old Alona Shportova with serious brain damage and paralysis. She also had some of her limbs lacerated. In the suicide bombing of Dec. 1, Eran Mizrahi suffered a nail through his skull. He was celebrating his 16th birthday at a restaurant in Jerusalem. His injury left him paralyzed and in a catatonic state. Messing said one of the victims he saw while in Jerusalem had around 300 individual metallic fragments within his body. The metal fragments, measuring from millimeters to centimeters, were imbedded in the young man literally from head to toe, he said. "Several of the fragments penetrated into his vital organs. He sustained a punctured colon, a collapsed lung, and a lacerated liver and kidney. I could actually feel the nails under his skin where they had burrowed and lodged," Messing recalls. The victim underwent painstaking hours of exploration to try to remove the metal fragments that were accessible. "He suffered multiple organ injuries, but was saved with successful emergency room care and surgery," he said. "Other victims suffered amputated limbs, severe burns, fractures, lacerations, paralysis, deafness and blindness." Sometimes the fragments will cause more damage if they are taken out, Messing said, so some of the victims live the rest of their agonizing lives with shrapnel still inside of them. "It is common knowledge here that light injury can be losing a limb; medium is nearly dead or doubtful if he will live or radically altered functionality," Legomsky says. "Serious almost always means most of these victims wish they were dead physically." I am reminded of the title of one of Ayn Rand's essays from VOR: "Of Living Death." E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Google Zeitgeist By Diana Hsieh @ 11:59 AM I've been wondering about the popularity of various Google searches for a while. Now I know, thanks to Google Zeitgeist. So now I just need a way to work all those popular search terms into every single blog entry. The problem is that I don't know what the hell most of them mean. Sure I know who "chandra levy" is, and "david blaine" sounds familiar. But I'm not sure about "roland garros", "monica bellucci", or "roy keane". And what is "eurovision"? And "gta3"? And "cbse results"? And "e3"? And finally, is "big brother" the TV show or the totalitarian government? Ah, screw it! It would be impossible to work all those terms into a post! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Spider-man By Diana Hsieh @ 10:49 AM Paul and I went to see Spider-man last night. I can definitely understand why the movie has been so popular. Spider-man is the quintessentially American hero, particularly in these post-9/11 days. He's the geeky good guy, who has to learn how to be a superhero in both the moral and physical sense. He has to learn self-discipline and self-restraint in order to protect those he loves. He is unwilling to sacrifice anyone to evil. He is utterly devoted to fighting crime, without sinking into bitter revenge. Three cheers for Spider-man! For me, the movie did involve a bit of strange cognitive dissonance. I recently watched The Cider House Rules, in which Tobey Maguire plays an orphan trained as an obstetrician. So in Spider-man that orphan obstetrician became a superhero. How weird! But it will be even stranger for Paul, when he finally gets around to watching The Cider House Rules, for then Spider-man will give up being a superhero to become an obstetrician. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, May 30, 2002 Some Advice For Those With Children By Diana Hsieh @ 11:30 PM If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "Take two Aspirin" and "Keep away from children." (Thanks to Richard Blane for forwarding.) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Top Political Blogs By Diana Hsieh @ 11:00 PM Hey, I want to know why I'm not on John Hawkins' list of top political blogs. I bet that I was excluded just because my posting has been spotty for the past month and don't often talk about politics. How unfair! I suspect liberal bias in this so-called Right Wing News! (Perhaps the name is simply a sugar-coated cover for a bitter pill, like "Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.") The real problem with the list was the lack of tingling anticipation at the holder of the #1 slot. Who else could it be? Oh, but where was Best of the Web? Or does that not really qualify as a blog? E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis The Joys and Pains of Moderation By Diana Hsieh @ 2:03 PM Overall, I've been having fun administering Nathaniel Branden's new discussion forum on Yahoo Groups. It's working much better than the old board, as I can now kick off people who are abusive. (That's the extent of the moderation.) But today in particular, people started clamoring for per-message moderation, starting with this message by Ray Bronski. Unfortunately, personal attacks on my motives and competence were part of the package. It was infuriating. I suspect that this whole issue came up solely due to some rather personal and heated arguments between some of these pro-moderation people and Monica Pignotti regarding Thought Field Therapy. Monica was very forcefully arguing for the effectiveness of the therapy, when some people started attacking her personally. (She defended herself well, so I didn't jump in, although I probably should have.) These people saw TFT as irrelevant to the discussion of Nathaniel's work, even though he uses TFT in his practice and specifically invited Monica to the group to talk about TFT. (Some of them, I gather, didn't know that NB uses TFT.) So the pro-moderation crowd wanted to discuss something other than TFT, like self-esteem. That's all well and good. But none of them actually posted anything on such subjects that was of sufficient interest to the group to start a discussion. And so suddenly they were clamoring for moderation, presumably so that TFT posts would be banned. It was silly. If it was my list, rather than Nathaniel's, I would have told these people to get lost, but probably not so nicely. Instead I posted two messages (one and two) arguing against per-message moderation. I also argued that people ought to take responsibility for creating discussions on the list of interest to them. Well, that didn't seem to help. But finally Nathaniel chimed in with four messages, in support of exactly those two points. It seems that the pro-moderation crowd has been quieted. Thank goodness. Nothing like an argument from an authority! I really wonder sometimes about people who are deeply interested in discussing self-help. Perhaps I came into my adult life too well-adjusted to understand the desire to speak about one's own personal growth experiences. Perhaps I am too intellectually inclined. Perhaps I value my own privacy too much. Perhaps I'm not empathetic enough. Perhaps I'm too reason-oriented rather than emotion-oriented. Perhaps I'm just thick-skinned when it comes to heated intellectual debate. Perhaps Paul has been secretly brainwashing me against self-help psychology while I'm asleep. Whatever the reason, I just can't relate. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Brainwashing By Diana Hsieh @ 12:23 PM A highly critical introduction to Scientology on Operation Clambake says this about the techniques of Scientology: The results of applying their crackpot psychotherapy (called "auditing") is to weaken the mind. The mind goes from a rational state to an irrational one as the delusional contents of the subconscious mind are brought to the surface and are assumed to be valid. It also makes a person more susceptible to suggestion since it submerges the critical thinking faculties of the mind into a partial subconscious state. It results in a permanent light hypnotic trance and so from thenceforth that person can be more easily controlled. The person will, to a much greater extent, believe and do whatever they are told. And of course this is used to the full in persuading them to hand over further money and dedicating themselves further to the cult. The results of applying their oversimplified and inapplicable rules in life is to lose the ability to think rationally and logically. A person loses the ability to think for themselves and so they lose the ability to challenge incorrect ideas. This makes them easier to control. It also isolates and alienates the person from society so that they withdraw from normal society and into their "Scientology" society. This further increases their susceptibility to the influence of their group. They end up being afraid of society, believing all society to be controlled by a group of drug companies, psychiatrists and financiers all of whom report to more remote masters. In other words they are in a state of mass paranoia. They therefore avoid reading newspapers and the like since they fear it will disturb their safe Scientology world. It is a downward spiral into madness. I wonder about the psychology of brainwashing. What is actually happening to such a person's mind during the process? Short of a neurological defect, I suspect that it is impossible for a person to entirely "lose the ability to think rationally and logically." After all, even the most brainwashed Scientologist must use reason and logic in order to get through the day. Even obeying orders requires us to think. So the tactics of Scientology can't possibly eliminate all thinking, although perhaps it can eliminate critical thinking about Scientology itself. As for strongly discouraging critical thinking about Scientology, both internal and external pressures can certainly be effective. If a person believes that the outside world is totally corrupt, that Hubbard will fix these abuses as soon as he learns of them, that thoughts critical of Scientology are a sign of mental illness, and so on, then critical thinking about Scientology becomes extremely difficult. Those are the internal pressures. If voicing any criticism will result in punishment or expulsion or loss of privilege or social ostracism, then critical thinking about Scientology becomes all the more difficult. Those are the external pressures. The combination of these two can be deadly. These internal and external pressures exist for people in regular life all the time. A wife might not want to think about the meaning of her husband's infidelity, so she pushes it out of her mind. A parent might refuse to acknowledge child's drug problem, for fear that her friends will think her a bad mother. A Catholic may fear leaving the church for fear of going to hell. These are all pressures not to think, or at least not to think too much about something. What makes brainwashing different is, I think, simply the amount of pressure exerted and the effectiveness of that pressure. The goal of the group, in such cases, is the precisely elimination of critical thought about the group. As a result, the pressures exerted are more likely to be strong and effective. When such pressures take hold in a person's mind, the likelihood that the person will engage in critical thinking may sink to just about zero. Perhaps an accurate description would be that such a person has effectively lost the capacity to think rationally about a given subject. Of course, that doesn't mean that the capacity to think has been lost. After, if it was completely gone, it would be hard to explain how people like Monica Pignotti leave Scientology if all capacity for rational thought about Scientology had been compromised. I admit that bursting through these internal and external pressures not to think may require more mental effort and endurance than most people have at their disposal. But an unwillingness to resist the pressures of Scientology is not the same as an incapacity to do so. Of course, for most, the distinction is likely to be sadly irrelevant. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, May 29, 2002 Ethics?!? By Diana Hsieh @ 9:42 PM This article seemed like the usual apology for suicide bombings. The author argues: When a people have been stripped of everything they have, are denied the expression of who they are, humiliated by those occupying their land, homes destroyed, schools closed, children not being allowed to play, put in jail without trials, executed without being tried...life becomes intolerable. In fact, the notion of simple earthly pleasures becomes out of reach. The Israelis control every facet of Palestinian life. Suicide bombings are a reaction to this oppressive control of life. These people are telling Israelis, "You can starve us, beat us, humiliate us, but you will never control our spirit. We will choose the day of our death, and in the process make you feel a bit of the pain you, our occupiers, inflict on our entire society." Palestinians exist in an environment so dire that the prospects of death overshadow their prospects for life. Imagine your mother spat upon by a nineteen-year-old Israeli soldier simply because she was your mother...imagine our neighborhood being bombed by powerful planes and helicopters and we had no way to protect ourselves. Suicide bombings are acts of desperation and mean that a people have been pushed to the brink. There is not one incident that leads to one of these actions. Rather it is a systematic matrix of actions by Israeli occupation that terrorizes an entire population. Palestinians have been pushed so hard that they no longer fear death nor the enemy. The "rightness or wrongness" of these suicide bombings can be debated by everyone, but failure to understand why these happen will make certain that they will continue. Without understanding the causes that lead to the bombings, one will never eliminate them. This simple truth seems to evade most commentators, pundits, politicians, and of course seems to be missed by most Israelis and those that support them. Ho hum. But then I read the byline. "Mr. Jaffer Ali is a Palestinian-American businessman who writes on business Ethics, management theory and political topics. This guy is an ethicist?!? Sheesh! I guess that's what happens when the government doesn't license philosophers. ;-) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Three Cheers for Capitalism! By Diana Hsieh @ 9:17 AM Kate and I are headed up to Alameda East today for suture removal. I'm just so relieved that we made it through these 12 days without her ripping out her stitches again. I'm very pleased with her post-op progress. She is very stable and active on her new artificial hip. Although she is on leash at all times while outside, she no longer just totters outside for a few moments just to go potty. For the past week, she's been taking short walks with me down to the front gate. And for the past few days, she's been accompanying Abby and me to the barn to feed the horses. (She gets tied in a corner while I'm working.) It's pretty amazing that an ordinary dog could have access to such advanced medical technology. The surgery wasn't cheap, but I could have afforded it back when I was living frugally on a $35,000 salary in Los Angeles. Three cheers for capitalism! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Bothering People By Diana Hsieh @ 9:01 AM Mr Instapundit pointed me to this great CS Monitor article on the Israel's help of US in dealing with terrorism. And damn, we do need help. On talk radio yesterday, one of the hosts was saying how he had gotten through security at two different airports with a pair of six-inch scissors. The first time, he was singled out at the gate for extra inspection. They didn't find the scissors. The second time, they put his bag through the X-ray machine three times before clearing it. Amazing! Here's how Israeli methods differ from ours: Israeli specialists have a low regard for American security searches. They say they tend to cause unnecessary discomfort for travelers, while being prone to missing potential assailants. "The United States does not have a security system, it has a system for bothering people," Dror says. "The difference between the Israeli and American systems is that we are looking for the terrorist, while the Americans look for the weapons," he adds. At the heart of the Israeli system is the questioning of the passenger, which Dror says is done not only to get answers, but also to gauge the passenger's behavior. "The reason we open the suitcase is to have another few minutes with the passenger, to ask some more questions," he says. The questioning also serves as a way to quickly decide who to send to the plane without probing more thoroughly, he adds. Dror advocates Israeli-style security clearances for all workers at the companies for whom he consults. They entail checking a person's history by interviewing acquaintances and family "We check the man himself, not documents." But Dror adds that Israeli methods, even if fully adopted, will not stop all attacks. "There is no 100 percent in security. If you want 100 percent security on flights, every passenger has to take all his clothes off, have his suitcase checked, and be handcuffed and tied to his seat. For sure this can never be. The idea is to enable people to continue their lives while making an attack less possible." It sounds like those Israelis are familiar with the methods in The Truth About Lying, an excellent book I just read on spotting deception. I'll write up a review in the next few days. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, May 28, 2002 Postmodernist Generator By Diana Hsieh @ 10:37 PM I love this postmodern shit. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis The Evils of Scientology By Diana Hsieh @ 10:28 PM I just finished the best article on Scientology I've ever read. In it, Monica Pignotti gives oodles of details about her life in Scientology. The story details how she got sucked in, why she stayed so long, and how she got out. And it is all frighteningly plausible. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Indecision By Diana Hsieh @ 10:44 AM My body can't seem to decide whether it is sick or well. For the past five days, I've had mild cold symptoms: stuffy nose, sore throat, swollen glands, and exhaustion. The first few days, I kept expecting to actually develop a cold. But that hasn't happened yet. But I don't seem to be getting much better either. Ugh. I haven't actually been sick in about 3 years, thanks to working from home. (The last time I got sick was from my beloved Paul, who caught something on the airplane, shook it off himself, but gave it to me. Thanks, dear.) So I hope that returning to school won't put me back on my usual schedule of two illnesses per year. In the meantime, I'd just like to shake whatever virus I am laboring under at the moment. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, May 27, 2002 My Beloved By Diana Hsieh @ 1:17 PM I have been reluctant to blog this news, as it is so personal and painful to me. But since I have spoken of my kitties here before, it seems appropriate. Last Friday, the 17th of May, my most beloved cat Clara disappeared. We have been searching diligently for her, but have yet to find her. I have filed a lost cat report with our county animal control and the Denver Dumb Friends League. (Thankfully, she is microchipped.) A notice has been posted at the entrance of the neighborhood and flyers given to all of our immediate neighbors, but no one has seen her. I have gone on many kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty-Clara calling walks, to no avail. Living in the semi-rural area that we do, we fear that a coyote caught and killed her, but there is just no way of knowing. She is a large and savvy cat, so I am hopeful that she will turn up. Clara is the Platonic Form of Catness. She is reckless, curious, and demanding. She is my favorite of our three cats. I can only hope that she returns soon. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Atheists in Foxholes By Diana Hsieh @ 1:10 PM Tapped has a nice bit on atheists in foxholes. Two comments: 1. The atheist "emblem of belief" is goofy. 2. The atheist who yells out "God save me!" while in the midst of battle is most likely saying more about the monstrosity of war than about his religious views. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, May 26, 2002 Rape Fantasies By Diana Hsieh @ 11:04 AM Glenn Reynolds might be trying to attract as many "teen sex" hits as he can lately, but I've already inadvertently cornered the non-porn market on "rape fantasy" hits. I'm number 15 on Google's search for rape fantasy, thanks to this 1998 post to the randian-feminism list. Now that I've mentioned it on my blog too, I'm sure I'll get even more traffic! The numbers of queries involving rape and fantasy are pretty amazing in comparison to the numbers for everything else. See for yourself: May 1st to May 26th: Listing the top 30 queries by the number of requests, sorted by the number of requests. #reqs: search term -----: ----------- 123: rape fantasy 23: fantasy rape 20: ihealer 19: rape fantasies 18: marx species being 14: mila 18 12: species being marx 11: diana hsieh 8: plea bargaining 7: naked bosnian girls pictures 7: aristotle's doctrine of the mean 6: equity feminism 5: abaaya 5: nathaniel branden 5: criticisms of foucault 5: kant against aristotle happiness 4: ascetic ideal 4: women rape fantasy 4: habermas foucault 4: kant and copernicus 4: genealogical history of morality 4: why kids lie 4: nietzsche ascetic ideal 4: fingarette heavy drinking disease 3: women rape fantasies 3: prudent predator habit 3: altruism in animals 3: marx and species being 3: nietzsche criticism 3: essays on masculinity 1018: [not listed: 890 search terms] Oh, and that naked bosnian girls pictures is just a fluke -- an odd assortment of keywords on Google's current cache of my main blog page. I swear. On a more serious note, I wonder how many of those who are searching for phrases like criticisms of foucault, aristotle's doctrine of the mean, and marx species being are actually students looking to plagiarize a paper. For those who are, may you live a short and miserable life! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Saturday, May 25, 2002 Bushisms and Self-Sacrifice By Diana Hsieh @ 3:01 PM Eugene defends the president's latest Bushism as nothing to get all excited about. Eugene cites Bush's speech: They found out we think differently here in America. We think differently because this is a nation that loves our freedom, loves our country. And this is a nation that has got citizens who are willing to sacrifice for a cause greater than themselves. Forget the silliness of "this is a nation that ... loves our country." How about the philosophical absurdity of the United States being a nation of "citizens who are willing to sacrifice for a cause greater than themselves." There is a reason that the worship of death and destruction found in Islamic militants is accompanied by a worship of self-sacrifice for a greater cause. The former is the natural consequence of the latter. Americans, however much they might prattle incoherently on about the virtues of selflessness, are lovers of life and happiness. That's why we think differently from our enemies. That's why America is so great. Particularly aggravating is the idea that the passengers on Flight 93 willingly sacrificed themselves for the good of the rest of us. Surely, their actions benefited us greatly. Surely, they did not want to stand by and be complicit in the horrible evil that the terrorists were attempting to perpetrate. But, in reality, attacking the hijackers was their best and only chance of survival. They knew, from talking to the relatives on their cellphones about the attacks on the WTC, that they were all dead if they did nothing. Their only chance for life, as slim as it might has been, was to attempt to retake the plane. So they did. Those of Flight 93 are not heroes because they were willing to sacrifice their lives to save others. They are heroes because they saw the reality of their situation and acted courageously to fight for their lives. They are heroes because they were unwilling to play the role of sacrificial victims to the hijacker's evil. Will Thomas articulated this point better than I have in a commentary entitled American Heroism. He writes: A myth has circulated in the press: that the passengers of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save the nation's capital. In fact, at the time they attacked the hijackers, there is every reason to think they had a reasonable hope of survival. This myth is driven by the altruistic conception of heroism which permeates the cultural subconscious, steeped as it is in the life-boat stories so prevalent in college courses on moral problems. Let it be said that were this myth true, there would still be much to admire in the integrity and benevolence of a person who would not abandon his values in the world even in the face of his own certain death. To live as a human is to live by reason and to live by principle. So it is admirable and moving to see a person face his own death with the same virtues that he lived his life. But there is no evidence that martyrdom was the goal of Glick, Burnett, and their companions. There is every reason to think it was possible for the passengers, perhaps with the help of a surviving pilot, to find a way to safely land the plane if they could only get control of it. Burnett's wife told the AP her husband "thought he was going to be home. He was going to solve this problem." It is a tragedy that he and his compatriots did not make it home. It is heroic that they acted while they still could, as best they could. It takes a rare love of life to throw oneself into a one-sided battle, against the odds, risking injury and death for a chance to make it through. That is the hope of the lover of life: that even the direst problems can be solved. It is a characteristically American hope, and striving to bring it about under the direst and most unforeseen of circumstances takes greatness in many dimensions. It takes American heroism. Indeed. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Interview with Wendy By Diana Hsieh @ 11:35 AM John Hawkins (of Right Wing News) has a good interview with Wendy McElroy (of iFeminists) covering the basics of her views. One of the ideas that Wendy espouses in the interview is that "a prospective father who asks the woman to abort ... should not be held responsible for child support payments if she refuses." I've long advocated this view, as I do not think that men ought to be slaves to the accidents of pregnancy any more than women should. There are complications with this view. In particular, should the man be obligated to support the child if he knew in advance that the woman would definitely not have an abortion or give the child up for adoption? What if the woman merely expressed reservations about abortion or adoption? Or interest in keeping any conceived child? What if the man made vague promises about taking care of the woman if anything happened? What if the couple agreed previously that they would not abort the child, but then the woman decided to anyway? There seems to be a great deal of gray area here that would be worth examining in detail. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Oh Ah! By Diana Hsieh @ 11:06 AM If you need to do some arithmetic, why not use the Orgasmic Calculator? Using it at work or around children would seem to be a particularly good idea! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis A Bit of Fun By Diana Hsieh @ 10:56 AM I'm not sure if this is true, but it's damn funny. Number of physicians in the US: 700,000. Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year: 120,000. Accidental deaths per physician: 0.171 (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services) Number of gun owners in the US: 80,000,000. Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups): 700. (1999) Accidental deaths per gun owner: 0.0000094 Statistically, doctors are approximately 18,000 times more dangerous than gun owners. "FACT: Not everyone has a gun, but everyone has at least one Doctor." Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets out of hand. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, May 21, 2002 Ed on Clones By Diana Hsieh @ 9:15 AM Ed Hudgins has a piece entitled "Star Wars and Falling Republics" on the moral and political lessons from Attack of the Clones. Personally, I have never been a fan of Star Wars. The universe is silly and uninspiring. George Lucas is a completely incompetent philosophical wannabe. But I'll see the movie anyway -- but not until I've seen Spiderman. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, May 20, 2002 How to Be a Good Christian Woman By Diana Hsieh @ 2:11 PM Thanks to Andrew Sullivan, I found these delightful Biblical Instructions for Women using Legos as illustrations. The last few in this sequence are hysterical, in substantial part because the Biblical ideas are so absurd. Do people actually believe this stuff? Jesus! Uh, or something... The whole Brick Testament is definitely worth checking out, including the Instructions on Marriage and Instructions for Slaves. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis More Dependent Creatures By Diana Hsieh @ 10:49 AM So just a few minutes ago, I went upstairs to find our cat Fanny following a baby bunny around one of the bedrooms. Oh thrill, another dependent creature comes into my care! Augh! Oddly enough, Fanny wasn't really attacking or even seriously playing with the bunny. She didn't harm him in the process of catching him or bringing him inside. But he was terrified. So I put him in a box with a blanket and locked the cats outside while I tried to decide what to do with him. He's old enough to have some bunny life-skills, so I decided to put him out by the woodpile, where I know other bunnies live. (Unfortunately, I don't know where Fanny caught him.) So I brought him out to the woodpile, left him on the blanket near a opening to the protected interior, and then went to the barn to feed the horses. When I returned to the woodpile a few minutes later, he was missing. I presume that he hopped into the interior. Well, I do hope that he survives. But if not, such is life in the natural world. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis More Excitement Than I Need By Diana Hsieh @ 9:51 AM On Wednesday, my dog Kate had the first of two hip replacement surgeries. (She has terrible hip dysplasia, thanks to the eugenics of the AKC and the irresponsibility of whoever bred her parents. We adopted her from a shelter when she was about 4 years old, so we bear all the cost, but none of the responsibility.) She was one of the first dogs to get a new kind of cementless hip replacement, thanks to an inventor in Switzerland and the amazing surgical skill of Dr. Robert Taylor of the world-famous Alameda East Veterinary Hospital. (Alameda East is featured on Animal Planet's show Emergency Vets.) The surgery went fine, and Kate stayed two extra days while I was in Leadville speaking to the Colorado Libertarian Party Convention. So yesterday, after driving home two hours from Leadville, Paul and I relaxed for a bit before taking the 50 minute drive to pick up Kate from Alameda East. She was very glad to be going home, and the few extra days at the vet had really helped out, as she was much more sturdy and stable than she had been when I visited her on Thursday. So we got her home, petted her a great deal, let her visit with the overjoyed Abby, put her in her newly-purchased, larger-than-a-crate octagonal pen, and went upstairs to relax a bit with some of our TiVO-recorded television. (Kate has to stay on carpet and avoid stairs for the next month, which means living exclusively downstairs.) When I came downstairs an hour later (7:30 pm), I immediately saw that Kate had ripped out all the staples holding her 10-inch surgery scar together. I was so shocked and horrified that I couldn't even tell Paul what was wrong. I just was yelling incoherently until he came downstairs and saw for himself. We were home just two hours and the damn dog ripped herself open! Augh! So I made a frantic call to Alameda East while Paul covered her wound with some gauze so that it wouldn't get dirty in the car. (We had to use duct tape to secure it, as the medical tape was small and flimsy. But even the duct tape didn't work so well, but well enough.) And so Kate and I took the 50 minute drive back to Alameda East. Unfortunately, between the time when I called and when I arrived, a number of traumas rolled in, so Kate's repair took about an hour for one of the vets to get to. (Unfortunately, I didn't have either my laptop or the keyboard for my Clie, so I couldn't even really get any work done.) As it turns out, Kate didn't just pull out her staples, she also ripped some of the internal stitches. So the wound had to be recut, resown internally, and then resown externally. (They used sutures rather than staples this time for greater stability.) The only not-so-bad part of the evening was that Kate was able to tolerate all this repair work just local anesthetic. She is a very calm and stoical dog. So Kate and I arrived back home four hours later, this time with a head collar. Jennifer, Dr. Taylor's assistant, called me this morning to find out how Kate was doing after all the excitement last night. Strangely enough, she said that she didn't give me a head collar when Kate went home because Kate didn't fuss with her wound one bit while she was an in-patient. I suspect that depression over being at the vet was the crucial difference. ("Oh, I'm so happy that I'm home. Now I have the energy to rip out those damn staples. Oh shit, we're going back to the vet!") The problem with the collar, of course, is that it makes walking and navigating much more difficult for an already unstable dog. And during this recovery, a fall could be very dangerous for Kate. So I asked Jennifer if I could fashion a pair of bike shorts to prevent Kate from fussing with her wound, which she said would be fine. So I'll be cutting and sewing Kate a pair of pants this morning. That's not quite what I had planned for my morning, but c'est la vie! Will I ever get any rest? At the rate I'm going, probably not for a while. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, May 17, 2002 The Schedule By Diana Hsieh @ 11:49 PM Well, I'm tomorrow morning I'm off to speak on the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism at the 2002 Convention of the Libertarian Party of Colorado in Leadville. After that, it's back to work on my various presentations for the 2002 Summer Seminar of the The Objectivist Center: my six-lecture course "Objectivism 101," my lecture on honesty "White Lies, Black Lies," and the short presentation for my Advanced Seminar paper "Excuses Excuses." The next few weeks are going to be insanely busy, as the past few weeks have. But it's great to have work! Update: Due to serious philosophic and moral objections, I am no longer associated with The Objectivist Center in any way, shape, or form. My reasons why can be found on my web page on The Many False Friends of Objectivism. Also, today, I would not speak to the Libertarian Party, nor to any libertarian group. For my reasons why, see the second half of my blog post Stinky Garbage on Islam and my husband's essay The Fable of the Cardiac Surgeon and the Organization of Health Practitioners or Why I Don't Support Libertarian Organizations. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, May 16, 2002 Life Imitates T2 By Diana Hsieh @ 5:24 PM A tanker full of liquid nitrogen overturned this afternoon on Highway 85 in Denver, one of the two routes that we commonly use to get into town from Sedalia. The web site of 9 News has cool photos. (No pun intended.) No steel factory nearby to warm you up this time, evil terminator! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Rigidity By Diana Hsieh @ 3:18 PM Unquestioning obedience to an obsessive-compulsive religion is not my idea of the good life. But for those who believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, perfect God, absolute submission makes a great deal of sense. Why should a mere human exercise independent judgment when such a God exists? Ought not every creature simply follow His Commandments? Thank God for the freedom of atheism! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, May 15, 2002 Carterpalooza By Diana Hsieh @ 9:31 AM I always used to have a fairly good opinion of Jimmy Carter as an ex-president. Not anymore. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Modesty By Diana Hsieh @ 9:30 AM There is something to be said for modesty, even when you become another person's primary source of food. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, May 10, 2002 Wrong By Diana Hsieh @ 9:17 AM This is just wrong. Nothing like a pathetic apology for one of the most brutal and oppressive regimes to start off the day. The real kicker was this line: The Saudi peace proposal was a real and novel attempt ... not only to end the violence in the region through a mutually agreeable settlement, but also to begin the process of Arab recognition of Israel. Or how about this understatement: "[Saudi Arabia] suffers from a number of human-rights abuses." Augh. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, May 08, 2002 Life Imitates South Park By Diana Hsieh @ 10:10 PM I just got around to watching the "Chef Goes Nanners" episode of South Park. So now, perhaps the best thing I can say about the newly proposed EU flag is... at least it's not as bad as South Park's flag! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, May 06, 2002 Haitus By Diana Hsieh @ 1:41 PM I got back from my very cool but exhausting four days at Front Sight Defensive Handgun course on Tuesday night of last week, but then had to throw myself into my preparations for the Objectivism 101 course of TOC's 2002 Summer Seminar. I'm having to do a lot of revision, as I have grad-student-itis, as Will Thomas accurately pointed out after reviewing the first and sixth lectures. And he didn't even see the lecture on metaphysics and epistemology, where I really had it bad! (It's bad to have grad-student-itis before even becoming a graduate student.) This weekend, I was busy with my mare Tara in an excellent two day Frank Bell clinic. But now I'm back working on my lectures, so I'll be gone from the blogosphere for a few more days. I took extensive notes on the course at Front Sight, so I'll be organizing and posting those soon after I start blogging again. I doubt that I have too many riders among my readers, so I won't bother writing up the Frank Bell clinic. But I would strongly recommend it to anyone who deals with horses. His methods were simple and easy to learn, with obvious progress made in just the course of a day. My mare Tara started off completely nuts, as she had a serious case of separation anxiety from her barn buddy Jackson. By the end of the second day, I was riding her in the arena with nothing but a piece of bailing twine around her neck. I rode her home in a halter and leadrope. But that's just what's so amazing about these natural horsemanship methods: they get results quickly and safely. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis

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