| Thursday, May 29, 2003 | |
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TP Ethics and Grumpiness
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:35 PM   
It's about time that the blogosphere tackled the difficult ethical questions about the use of toiler paper in public restrooms. Reasonable Man to the rescue!
Oh, and a sick Jacob Levy complains about grumpiness: Which reminds me: did you see this article about curmudgeons in the Sunday NYT? It has the unmitigated gall to compare Andy Rooney and Art Buchwald-- Art Buchwald!-- to, say, H.L. Mencken and George Carlin. Rooney is termed "curmudgeon in chief." I've been struggling through a series of deadlines for the entire month of May, so I've been unusually grumpy lately -- particularly in my online communications. (Then again, I haven't been able to leave the house much, so online communications have really been my only communications with people other than Paul.) Well, tonight I should be done with the last May deadline... and then I head down to Taos, New Mexico for a few days of very-very-very-much-vacation with my parents who are RV'ing around the southwest. I desperately hope that I'll be able to set aside some time to ride my horses and garden a bit when I return. Okay, well, back to work. Augh.  E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Tuesday, May 27, 2003 | |
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Victor Davis Hanson
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:29 AM
I'm not sure how I found this profile of Victor Davis Hanson from the Boston Globe (perhaps through Bill Quick), but it's well worth reading.
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| Sunday, May 25, 2003 | |
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More Information Than I Needed
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:31 PM
Augh... my American Idol innocence has been shattered. Frankly, I wasn't so impressed with Ruben towards the end... so I would love to have seen Kimberly versus Clay in the final round.
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Soulmate Calculator
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:36 PM
Sheesh, I'm glad I'm already married... given my Soulmate Calculator results:
Your probability coefficient: 1.95839045518104E-08. Uh, yeah, if you're dating by random sample... maybe. I was pretty generous with my criteria... And stupidly, none of the criteria concerned sex drive, which strikes me as quite important in any long-term relationship. (Via Spy in the House of Bling.) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, May 23, 2003 | |
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Super-DCMA, Super-Hanah
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:57 PM
Hanah Metchis' article on Super-DCMA laws just landed in my inbox thanks to CEI's "C:\SPIN." She writes:
Despite the moniker, the super-DMCA bills are not much like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which became federal law in 1998. They do deal with the same issue--the protection of copyright in an age when digital devices make piracy an easy task--but the state bills use much broader language. (The state bills differ in their details, but are all based on the same model legislation.) They outlaw any "communications device" used "without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider." That means your phone company, cable company, and ISP get to decide what's legal and what's not. This is not a good idea for the future of tech competition. Thankfully, Colorado's governor Bill Owens, who recently vetoed one of these stupid super-DCMA laws, seems to agree with Hanah. According to Linda Seebach of the Rocky Mountain News (via Instapundit), Bill Owens warned the legislature "to be more careful in drafting a bill that adds protections that are rightfully needed, but does not paint a broad brush stroke where only a tight line is needed." E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Tuesday, May 20, 2003 | |
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Funny Fiction
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:56 PM
Someone named "collinschubbwoolston" just posted this amusing bit of pure fiction on the Nathaniel Branden Forum:But just as politicians and religious leaders appeal to our narcissistic tendencies and our fears of being rejected by the herd, so Rand takes advantage of these weaknesses. In most of her works, she glorifies the human mind and tells the reader that he or she possess the magnificent power of reason, and that no-one is his or her intellectual superior. She uses the word "social mystic" to describe any person that believes in the existence of people with intelligence superior to one's own intelligence. This makes the reader feel excellent and worthy of existence. Those who read Rand's works often go to meetings called "objectivist workshops" where they are told what all of the correct opinions are on every political, ethical and philosophical issue. Once the person attending these meetings demonstrates that all of the correct opinions have been formed, membership to the "objectivist club" is offered. Strangely, thousands of people have been excommunicated from this club for erring ever so slightly in the formation of any particular opinion. It is difficult to understand how one can reconcile the desire to avoid being a "social mystic" with the requirement to form an official set of opinions. [Emphasis added.] I don't think there's a single true claim in that whole paragraph. (I didn't bother to read the rest of the post. This bit was quite enough for me!) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Interesting Changes at TOC
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:16 PM
The much-hailed George de Feis has parted company with The Objectivist Center -- after only six months as chief operating officer. According to the announcement Paul and I (and other sponors) received, the staff reductions due to budget constraints this year "reduced the need for a fulltime manager at his level." More interestingly, the announcement notes that "it had also become clear that his particular skills and experience were not the best fit for our mission." I wonder what that means... and whether it has anything to do with the allegations that he seriously mismanaged the US Chess Federation as its executive director.TOC seems lost to me these days. From my (admittedly very much outside) perspective, they don't seem to be doing much except Navigator and the Summer Seminar. And that's just not enough. 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. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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A Rather Interesting Tale
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:23 AM
Dave Jilk just alerted me to a rather interesting tale of his on the themes of sexual desire and fidelity. It's well-written, racy, and philosophically fascinating... which is an unusual combo!
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More Done!
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:01 AM
Whew! The abstract and outline of my six-lecture "Objectivism 101" course for TOC's summer seminar is done too! Given that I only just started revising these lectures, some of it is likely to be not-entirely-accurate by the time the seminar rolls around. But since the outline covers six hours of lecturing, it's pretty short on detail anyway.
Objectivism 101 Abstract Ayn Rand's novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged offer a unique and inspiring moral vision, but translating those ideals into daily life can be a challenge. In these lectures, we will survey the basic principles of Objectivism, from metaphysics to aesthetics. We will focus on both the theory and practice of the philosophy, contrasting it with common religious and cultural views. Although no familiarity with the philosophy of Objectivism is presumed for this course, acquaintance with Ayn Rand's two major novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged will be helpful. Each session will draw upon ideas and themes from the earlier lectures, so attendance of all the lectures is recommended. Objectivism 101 Outline I. Ayn Rand and Philosophy Now I have a week to revise and complete my Advanced Seminar paper on philosophy of mind. Oy. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Monday, May 19, 2003 | |
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Life Is Good
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:44 PM
I just turned in my last set of lessons for Camp Indecon. Hooray!
For those of you who have no idea what that means, last summer I took on the task of developing the curriculum for Camp Indecon's 17 year olds. (The camp was expanded to include that age group this year.) I'll also be teaching my curriculum at camp this summer. As a bit of background, Camp Indecon is a week-long summer camp (held from July 19th to July 26th in Woodland Park, Colorado) that teaches kids practical, rational philosophy and life skills using the Montessori method. Here's what the web site says about its philosophy: If we don't formally teach our children how to think, society will teach them not to. I was only able to attend Camp Indecon for two days last summer, but I got to witness each of the sections (9-10, 11-12, 13-14, and 15-16 year olds) in at least one of their two daily hour-long lessons. There's not much that's cooler than watching 9 and 10 year olds understanding what a self-fulfilling prophecy is, 11 and 12 year olds learning why its important to have a plan in life, 13 and 14 year olds constructing an ideal society, and 15 and 16 year olds struggling to develop definitions and learning about logical fallacies. My lessons for the 17 year olds are:
There's also a lesson on money management... rightfully taught by a professional rather than a philosopher! Last I heard, there was still space in my section. So if you know of any intellectually-minded high school seniors, send them to http://www.campindecon.org! I'm not sure how full the other sections of the camp are, but you can always inquire! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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The Perfunctory Post About the Atlas Movie
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:53 AM
Many fans of Rand are thrilled at the prospect of an movie of Atlas Shrugged. Frankly, I've heard such announcements so often (about both Atlas and The Fountainhead) over the past ten years that it's hard to get excited. But Ari Armstrong gives us actual reason to worry in this post to OWL:
Terrible, terrible news... Given the emegence of big screen miniseries with Lord of the Rings and The Matrix (as opposed to self-contained sequels), I do wonder whether either Atlas Shugged or The Fountainhead could be made into say, a two or three movie movie. That would be cool. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Saturday, May 17, 2003 | |
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A Weekend Story
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:25 AM
This was priceless...
I was happy. My girlfriend and I were dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married. My parents helped us in every way; my friends encouraged me, and my girlfriend? She was a dream! There was only one thing bothering me, quite much indeed, and that was my mother-in-law to be. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, May 16, 2003 | |
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Post-Vacation Blues
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:40 AM
Over the past year, I've managed to dramatically increase my productivity, largely with the help of a simple weekly time management system in excel. (You can see a sample sheet of a single, typical week in excel. Tuesdays and Thursdays only required two hours of work because I was in school most of the day. Readings for class aren't counted as work in the system, but papers are.) As a result of targeting and tracking my time in various projects, I've managed to get so much more done this year than last.
But I still have a lingering problem, one that was particularly evident (and particularly painful) this week. I hope that others might have some suggestions for how to resolve it. The problem is that once I stop work for a much-needed few days of vacation, returning to work is a painfully difficult process of days and days. I simply can't manage to concentrate on work again; it feels physically impossible. This time around, it was a slow and painful process, despite a fast-approaching deadline for my Camp Indecon lessons. Yesterday, I did finally manage to get some work done, but it was too little too late. (This is not a problem unique to philosophizing, as I remember having the same post-vacation difficulties while working as a programmer.) So any suggestions or tricks for getting back into the groove of work after time off? E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Thursday, May 15, 2003 | |
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The Desert of the Real
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:45 AM
VAGUE AND ABSTRACT BUT NONETHELESS IMPORTANT SPOILER ALERT!
I agree with some of criticisms of Stephen Hunter's (spoiler-heavy) review of The Matrix Reloaded. The politics of Zion, for example, really weren't all that captivating. And we're definitely stopped in the middle of a larger movie, which is frustrating. But his argument that the second movie lost touch with the first's themes of "What is real? I am in control of my own life?" is just plain wrong. He writes: Perhaps the most serious deficiency of "Reloaded" is conceptual. Possibly it couldn't be helped. But at the core, the idea of what the Matrix meant -- and it was that idea that drove the film to astonishing success and influence -- isn't truly reestablished here. I suppose the Wachowskis take it for granted and assume that we do as well, but that's dangerous. It was so useful an idea, so resonant, an equal-opportunity delusion for the secret paranoids that all of us really are: that a secret screen of anti-reality had been imposed by a cabal of mechanical monsters to hide the elemental truth. We're zombies, they drain our electricity, what we see is simply neural responses to pricks inside our brains. Au contraire! Neo's discovery of the true purpose of The One folds those same themes back on themselves. He and Morpheus and everyone else thought that unplugging from the Matrix left them securely in the Real World. They thought Zion was free and independent. But all is still merely an elaborate deception of the Matrix designed to maintain the dominance of the machines -- but not in the obvious brain-in-a-vat way. And significantly, that plot twist resolves some of the deeply unsatisfactory ideas of the first movie, including fatalism and irrelevance of choice, the puzzle about source of Neo's One-ness, and so on. The original themes of The Matrix are more subtle and twisted in Reloaded, but certainly very much still in force. I won't say more, as I don't want to get into the details... go see the movie! VAGUE AND ABSTRACT BUT NONETHELESS IMPORTANT SPOILER ALERT! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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The Matrix Reloaded
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:23 AM
Paul and I just returned from our late viewing of The Matrix Reloaded. A few quick thoughts: The fight scenes were wowowowow awesome. The relationship between Neo and Trinity was well-fleshed-out (*ahem*). Zion is not exactly a holy Christian or Moslem or Jewish enclave. The plot twists were completely unexpected, but nevertheless sensible in retrospect. The mystical bizarreness of the first movie was resolved. Many unanswered questions linger for the third movie.
Sometimes, I fear high hopes for a movie. I wasn't disappointed tonight though. It was awesome. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Wednesday, May 14, 2003 | |
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Not Always So Boring
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:44 PM
Neil Cavuto is Fox News' calm and straight-laced VP of business news and host of "Your World." But he's not as nice and boring as he looks. Today's Righteous Fisking of Paul Krugman, for example, was pure delight. I'll quote the whole thing, as a slice is just inadequate.
Since no good deed goes unpunished, leave it to The New York Times to take a shot at me. Not The Times itself, but columnist Paul Krugman, who blasts me for my apparent blatant partisanship. Andrew Sullivan characterizes Cavuto as responding "somewhat intemperately." That's an understatement. But Krugman deserved every bit of Cavuto's intemperate response. Oh, and Matthew Hoy has a nice dissection of the stupidity of the rest of Krugman's column. (According to Hoy, the version of Cavuto's comments reprinted on Fox News' site isn't word-for-word perfect. Perhaps I'll TiVO the later airing, as Paul and I are -- of course -- off to see The Matrix: Reloaded this evening.) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Author's Notes
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:36 PM
An academic life is not, sadly enough, terribly conducive to humor. So that's why these author's notes about responsbility for errors in articles are so damn funny.
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Role Models
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:40 AM
Eugene has some good comments on role models, particularly on how much a role model needs to be "like us." He writes:
...while I'm not an expert on the psychological research surrounding this subject, my sense is that it's not inherently that hard for people to find role models who differ from them in race or sex. People are capable of being inspired by people who lived centuries before them, who spoke a completely different language, had a completely different ethnicity, and lived a completely different sort of life. Ask an American classical musician, for instance, which figures in history he has admired -- is he likelier to mention American or English composers, or German or Russian ones? People are capable of abstracting those factors (which in any event shouldn't be the basis for admiration), and focusing on more important matters, such as the person's great achievements or great character (which should be the basis for admiration). I suspect that people are likewise able to abstract race and sex as well. I agree that people ought to look broadly within the whole of humanity for their role models. As a philosopher, I would have no role models at all if I confined myself to my own sex, that Russian Jewish woman philosopher notwithstanding. To find role models in the history of philosophy, I must look beyond the superficial similarities of race, sex, and class to the more fundamental issues of method, style, and ideas. And I'm far better off for doing so, as I can pick and choose from among the best, e.g. Aristotle, Locke, Mill, rather than from a small (and frankly mediocre) subset. From the outside, I certainly have little in common with a misogynistic, slave-holding Greek who lived over 2000 years ago, a.k.a. Aristotle. And, despite her sex, I have little in common with a Russian Jewish immigrant fascinated with Hollywood, a.k.a. Ayn Rand. Friendship would likely have been impossible with either of these philosophers. But the whole point of philosophy (as well as other endeavors like art, science, and so on) is to transcend those cultural divides and personal preferences, to find something universal to all humanity. So to look for role models based upon superficial characteristics is to radically misunderstand (in good postmodernist fashion) the whole point of these subjects. One final note: I could be, I suppose, a very good woman philosopher. If that were my goal, then women philosopher role models might be appropriate. But to think in such terms is limiting, patronizing, and deeply sexist. I want to be a very good philosopher, period. (I wonder if other women in philosophy think in those terms, however. At CU Boulder, about a third of the grad students in philosophy are women -- and most of them are focused on feminist issues, not real philosophy. That's disappointing, but not surprising.) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Tuesday, May 13, 2003 | |
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Silly Joke from Who Knows Who
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:27 AM
In pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name: Tylenol is acetaminophen, Aleve is naproxen, Amoxil is amoxicillin, Advil is ibuprofen, and so on. The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra, and announced that it has settle on mycoxafloppin. Also considered were mycoxafailin, mydixadrupin, mydixarizin, mydixadud, dixafix, and of course, ibepokin.
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| Sunday, May 11, 2003 | |
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Principles of Healthy Eating
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:43 PM
As a general principle of cannibalism, this one by Jonah Goldberg seems pretty sensible to me: "And while I'm not kosher myself, I do think I would prefer to eat only kosher people." Sometimes being pro-Judiasm can go a bit too far, I must admit...
More seriously, Randy Barnett has an excellent article in NRO on Bill Bennett on drugs versus gambling. I'm generally unenthused and unconvinced by the gleeful response to the revelations, but Barnett's argument makes sense to me. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, May 09, 2003 | |
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Quick Announcement
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:56 PM
Paul and I have been married for four years today. Happy anniversary, Mr. Woo!
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| Wednesday, May 07, 2003 | |
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It's Tin, It's From France!
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:19 PM
I just turned in my final paper for the semester. Thank goodness! It has been a very unpleasant week of endless hours of writing, take-out dinners, the occasional panic, and Vivarin. Yes, Vivarin. I've never had to take drugs to stay awake before, but I was sleep deprived for just too many days on end to stay awake all by willpower alone. Now I wish marijuana were legal. So now I just have my Camp Indecon lessons to finish up (due May 15th), my Advanced Seminar paper on philosophy of mind to overhaul (due May 26th), a massive programming project (due June 15th), and my Objectivism 101 lectures to revise (due June 24th). Then I'll be gone from home for a month for the TOC summer seminar, the ARI summer conference, and Camp Indecon. I'm taking August off... oh, except I'll have a paper on self-deception to due at the end of the month. Gnat said this today: "First there's the woman. Then there's fire. Then bonking bonking bonking." Does the stress and sleep deprivation explain why I found it so completely hysterical? I don't know. All I know is that IT'S TIN, IT'S FROM FRANCE. Really. American Idol was perfect tonight. Life is good... or at least better. 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. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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