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Friday, August 29, 2003 Robert's New Blog By Diana Hsieh @ 3:01 PM The Bidinotto Formerly Known as Bob has a new blog -- and a new web site EcoNOT. Speaking of environmentalism, I just remembered hearing about a t-shirt that said (if memory serves): "EarthFirst! We'll pave the other planets later." Heh. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, August 27, 2003 Freaky People By Diana Hsieh @ 8:38 AM The following e-mail was by far the strangest and stupidest I've ever gotten as Nathaniel Branden's webmaster: Subject: I want Nathan To know I think he is the biggest farce on the planet....I recently watched the movie "The Passion of Ayn Rand" and I think it's appalling how he treated his wife Barbara.....it's disgusting! I would never seek your services or respect in the profession of helping or teaching others anything. You are no example...you should read the Book by Scott Peck "The Road Less Traveled" and take responsibility for your wrong doing, your self-fulfilling selfishness, self centered and EGO. He calls himself a psychologist? How could he profess to help anyone, and on the phone no less, what a farce. It's men like you Nathan that make people like me revolt against therapists like you. Are you still easily lead by the head between your legs? I am one person you cannot fool for I know exactly what lurks behind that phony smile and shiny teeth. EVIL, defined as sacrificing another human being for the sake of maintaining your image of perfection, even if that sacrifice means Death! I hope Barbara is doing better now without you! Sincerely, Cathy My reply was brief: I'm really impressed that you're judging someone based upon what you saw in a movie... a movie that all parties agreed was not even remotely accurate where the character of Nathaniel was concerned. Go away. Good lord, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. Update: The e-mailer sent back a one-word reply: "egoist." Well, yeah, but that's not exactly a moral condemnation where I come from. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, August 25, 2003 Good Lord! By Diana Hsieh @ 7:32 PM Well, this is good news about the third Lord of the Rings: we'll get to see the first two in the theater again before the final movie is released. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, August 24, 2003 Tim Lynch on The Patriot Act By Diana Hsieh @ 5:00 PM When I was an intern at Cato way back in 1995, I mostly worked for Tim Lynch as a researcher. He's a careful and thoughtful legal scholar -- and it shows in this quick NRO essay on the Patriot Act. Tim also has a longer policy analysis entitled Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism which seems to delve into these and related issues in more depth. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Saturday, August 23, 2003 Men Are From Hell, Women Are From Heaven By Diana Hsieh @ 1:09 PM Arianna is complaining about Arnold's sexism on her blog: Going through the morning papers, I scan over the pictures of Arnold's team of economic advisors -- not a double X chromosome among them. In a state where there are tens of thousands of women in positions of power, including both U.S. Senators, there was not even one woman who Arnold thought worthy of adding to the mix? We need greater diversity, not more of the same old boys club -- emphasis on the boys -- that got us into this mess in the first place. It's not just a matter of gender. It's a matter of priorities. A woman governor, particularly one who is also a mother, would bring a whole different perspective to the problems facing California. My priorities would be the priorities a mother has for her children: a quality education; affordable and readily accessible health care; and a safe clean world to live in. No mother in California should have to send her kids off to crumbling, decaying, rat-infested schools - as hundreds of thousands of them currently do. No mother should have to sit in a hospital waiting room for 20 hours waiting for a doctor to see her sick child because she can't afford health insurance for herself and her kids - but that's the case right now. And no mother should have to worry about whether her children will grow up in world choked with polluted air and water, which is why we need a sane energy policy that protects the environment, stresses fuel efficiency, and invests in clean and renewable energy. This seemed like a dubious argument to me, until it hit me: Fathers are insensitive clods who care not a whit about their children's education, health care, and living conditions. In fact, fathers are pleased when their children are sent to "crumbling, decaying, rat-infested schools", when their children have to "sit in a hospital waiting room for 20 hours," and when their world is "choked with polluted air and water." Silly me; I forgot that fathers (and men generally) are evil. But I'm not just not sure how to square that with the fact that Arianna's kids left her house to go live with their father when she decided to run for governor. Maybe they're all boys, a.k.a evildoers-in-training. More seriously, it's just as disgusting for a woman to argue that she ought hold some political office because she's a woman as it would be for a man to do so. It's sexism, plain and simple. Blech. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Crocodile Army By Diana Hsieh @ 12:49 AM Yup, this timeline of the story on the crocodile army pretty much says it all. Okay, well, it doesn't mention Stephen Den Beste's long historical essay on reptilian armies, nor Eugene's commentary on the constitutionality of quartering crocodile soldiers. The bit on our beloved Professor Reynolds was, however, quite perfect. Heh. Indeed. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, August 22, 2003 A Very Happy Birthday By Diana Hsieh @ 5:10 PM My best birthday wishes to The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. I can't believe it's been four years already. Chris, you're a god. Where would we be be without you? E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Those kooky utilitarians By Diana Hsieh @ 4:56 PM This article, entitled An Organ Donor's Generosity Raises the Question of How Much Is Too Much, concerns a man's thoughts about giving away his second kidney (and thus ending his own life) on utilitarian grounds. By his own calculation, his life -- when compared with that of "a dying scientist who was the intellectual driving force behind a breakthrough cure for cancer or AIDS or on the brink of unlocking the secrets of cell regeneration" -- isn't worth much. He'd be "a schnook" not to give such a man his second kidney because "he could save millions of lives, and I can't." And his kids must just be thrilled to hear this when he tucks them into bed at night: "I love my children, I really do. But I just can't say their lives are more valuable than any other life." But no, he's not crazy. He's just a fully consistent utilitarian. I found the article thanks to Peter, one of my fellow grad students at Boulder, who forwarded it to the grad list with the subject line "Those kooky utilitarians." I couldn't have summed it up better myself! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, August 21, 2003 Disappointed By Diana Hsieh @ 3:46 PM I must say that I'm rather disappointed that Angelyne doesn't seem to be making a serious run for governor. She does seem to be doing at least as well as Arianna though. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, August 13, 2003 What Would Carson Say? By Diana Hsieh @ 10:33 PM Tonight, I was cleaning out my bedroom closet, deciding which clothes to trash, which to donate, and which to keep. (I'm a bit late with my spring cleaning.) Though it all, my overriding thought was: What would Carson say? Sometimes, I must admit, (my imagined version of) his comments were pretty biting. That's when clothes got chucked. Oh, and if you don't know who Carson is, you need to start watching Queer Eye. It's, well, fabulous. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, August 12, 2003 Too Little Cuddling, Too Much Coddling By Diana Hsieh @ 3:50 PM Katie Allison Granju has an interesting article on the upsidedown-ness too little parental attachment to babies and too much parental attachment to older children. I've been wondering about this issue a bit lately, as I've noticed that, in talking to parents about Camp Indecon, they are often quite hesitant about sending their 9-12 year old kids to a single-week-long sleepover camp. (The older-than-12 kids don't seem to be so much of an issue.) This surprises me, given my own childhood of semi-dangerous activities often unsupervised by adults, as well as routine sleepovers at the houses of friends. When I was twelve, I flew as an unaccompanied minor from Baltimore to Ft. Lauderdale to spend a month with a close friend and her family. So at 9, a week of sleepover camp would have been a cinch. Some parents say that their kids "aren't ready," but, well, I wonder why not. They certainly should be at that age. Then again... based upon what I saw at camp, the kids are very much ready... it's the parents who aren't. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, August 10, 2003 Oh no! By Diana Hsieh @ 9:13 PM In the Which Jane Austen Character Are You? Quiz, I got: You are the true hero(ine)! Sensible, steady and mature, you are the lynchpin of your circle of friends and family. Male: At your best, you are a dynamo combination of Mr. Knightley from Emma and Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility. At your worst, you may be briefly beguiled by silly women (cf. Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility and Captain Wentworth's behavior toward Lousia Musgrove in Persuasion), but in the end, you'll win through and end up with the proper heroine. Female: You are Elinor from Sense and Sensibility! Wise beyond your years, you are all too aware of the folly of those around you. You are "sense" personified, and without you, things would certainly fall apart. Ah well, at least I'm not Mary Bennet... I was worried after all those questions about parties. (And I must admit to having been beguiled by silly women in my youth... Nevertheless, "sense personified" is a tad strong. Paul, after all, has "daily proof" of my delight in ridiculous, silly, and very bad behavior.) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Philosophers on the Moon By Diana Hsieh @ 4:47 PM This was a mailing list post forwarded from goodness knows where. Whether true or not, it is good for a laugh and a head shake. About 6-7 years ago, I was in a philosophy class at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (good science/engineering school) and the teaching assistant was explaining Descartes. He was trying to show how things don't always happen the way we think they will and explained that, while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just float away if you let go of it on the Moon. My jaw dropped a little. I blurted, "What?!" Looking around the room, I saw that only my friend Mark and one other student looked confused by the TA's statement. The other 17 people just looked at me like "What's your problem?" "But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more slowly." I protested. "No it wouldn't," the TA explained calmly, "because you're too far away from the Earth's gravity." Think. Think. Aha! "You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, didn't you?" I countered, "why didn't they float away?" "Because they were wearing heavy boots," he responded, as if this made perfect sense. (Remember, this is a Philosophy TA who's had plenty of logic classes.) By then I realized that we were each living in totally different worlds, and did not speak each others' language, so I gave up. As we left the room, my friend Mark was raging. "My God! How can all those people be so stupid?" I tried to be understanding. "Mark, they knew this stuff at one time, but it's not part of their basic view of the world, so they've forgotten it. Most people could probably make the same mistake." To prove my point, we went back to our dorm room and began randomly selecting names from the campus phone book. We called about 30 people and asked each this question: 1. If you're standing on the Moon holding a pen, and you let go, will it a) float away, b) float where it is, or c) fall to the ground? About 47 percent got this question correct. Of the ones who got it wrong, we asked the obvious follow-up question: 2. You've seen films of the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, why didn't they fall off? About 20 percent of the people changed their answer to the first question when they heard this one! But the most amazing part was that about half of them confidently answered, "Because they were wearing heavy boots." E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis The Scary Moment When Robots Take Our Jobs By Diana Hsieh @ 4:29 PM Frank Foreman posted this comment to the psychology list on wetheliving.com: There's a subject I'd love to discuss, and I promised Joshua to bring it up, and that is Ayn Rand's theory of virtue. She lists them in the Galt speech as being "rationality, independence, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride." (The three values are reason, purpose, and self-esteem, in case you need verification.) Galt gives brief definitions of each virtue. What I am wondering is what will happen to the virtue of productiveness when half the population will be unable to do productive work, that work being taken over by machines. That this will happen is convincingly argued by Marshall Brain in "Robotic Nation." He sent the text of that essay to the list, along with the convenient link to the web version. Basically, the argument is that robots are going to become so capable, cheap, and ubiquitous that by 2050, they will occupy half of all jobs in the US. With half of all people unemployed (note that big logical leap), "a significant portion of the normal American population [will be] permanently living in government welfare dormitories." The implication of Brain's closing comments seems to be that we need to structure society so that people don't have to have jobs in order to live. Ah, socialist heaven, as repackaged by robots! Anyway, I was surprised, to say that least, that anyone with any knowledge of economics or history would take this argument seriously. So here was my response, admittedly dismissive: Marshall Brain's argument is nothing more than the broken window fallacy all dressed up in Sunday best for The Scary Moment When Robots Take Our Jobs. (BTW, that's supposed to be after The Scary Moment When Those Damn Hardworking Immigrants Take Our Jobs.) It focuses only upon jobs lost and ignores the vast new opportunities created by technology. These sorts of arguments are not just absurd on a theoretical level, but also on the basis of everyday experience. Are we currently facing massive unemployment due to ATMs, self-service gas pumps, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and automobiles? Those technologies put many hundreds of thousands of people out of work. But, duh, the economy hasn't collapsed into a third world welfare state yet. The reason is not mysterious. And as for the possibility of computers replacing human brain power, well, that's idle (and philosophically suspect) speculation. When computers become something more than very big crows for massive data processing, I might show a vague glimmer of interest in such issues. Maybe. This argument is just another apocalyptic vision dressed up in the garb of science. And, to paraphrase Julian Simon, I'm not dressed for church. Y2K was my one and only foray into apocalyptic visions; it was quite enough for a lifetime. Others can feel free to scare themselves into a perverse sort of comfort by thinking of the myriad of ways the world as we know it might end. The worry is that too often their proposed (statist) solutions are far worse than the problem would likely ever be... and they want to impose those "solutions" upon the rest of us. Now that's something to worry about. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, August 05, 2003 North Korea Blinks By Diana Hsieh @ 11:23 AM I wish I had been taught history by Stephen Den Beste. He is undoubtedly the most astonishingly insightful "lumper" of political history, able to spot trends, underlying logic, and commonalities to which most of us are hopelessly blind. His recent analysis of the course of recent events in our standoff with North Korea is a case in point. Read it and ye shall understand all. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, August 04, 2003 The Strange Mr Woo By Diana Hsieh @ 2:55 PM My husband sends me the strangest stuff, like this article on the "down low" culture. Their motto: "Sure, I'm a man having sex with other men, but I'm not gay! That's for sissy white boys!" Really, I swear. Oh, and they're contracting HIV like crazy -- and spreading it to their wives and girlfriends. Lovely. On the more normal side, Paul also recently pointed me to the blog of political cartoonists Cox and Forkum. (I particularly enjoy the commentaries about the cartoons on the blog.) And while I'm compiling links, I should mention that The Speculist opens today. Phil claimed that there would be a celebration, but it just seems like funny and smart blog to me. Okay, back to work for me! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis

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