| Saturday, March 13, 2004 |
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PowerPuff!
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:37 PM
Paul may feign geeky manliness over on Geekpress, but he secretly sends me URLs like this one to the PowerPuff Girls Portrait Studio. (Yes, he watches the PPG as much as I do!)
So I made myself a PowerPuff Diana on a Good Day:
And a PowerPuff Diana on a Bad Day:
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Food Labels
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:24 AM
So why are Americans so fat? It's because we're so stupid. Really, that's the basic premise behind the FDA's push for "better" labeling that wouldn't require us to multiply the number of servings by the calories per serving. Sheesh, how else would we ever know that gulping a 20 ounce Coke in one sitting is unhealthy?
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| Thursday, March 11, 2004 |
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A Revolting Cost Benefit Analysis
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:27 PM
Eugene blogs on a rather disturbing case in which a nine-months-pregnant woman allowed one of her twins to die rather than have a c-section, because the scar would "ruin her life." That stillborn twin died in utero a few days later, just two days before the birth. The woman is being charged with murder.
Eugene writes:
A really tough issue: On the one hand, I'm skittish about any legal requirement that someone get surgery, even to save her child's life. On the other hand, parents do rightly have a legal obligation to take care of their children, and it may well be that this obligation does extend even to going under the knife. Thought experiment: Should the law be able to force a parent -- on pain of a murder conviction -- to donate bone marrow to save a child's life? Should it be able to do so, but only on pain of conviction of a lesser offense, such as involuntary manslaughter or child neglect?
I also wonder whether the facts as reported justly support a murder charge or some lesser charge. Notably, the case doesn't exactly map onto the abortion debate, as this circumstance involve letting die rather than active killing. But obviously, if someone believes in an total right to abortion up to the moment that the umbilical cord is cut, then letting die anytime before that point would presumably also ought be legally permissible.
For various reasons related to the autonomy of rights-bearers, I regard natural viability as the proper standard for abortion rights in ordinary circumstances. So on my view, should a woman have the right to allow her fully viable fetus die when it could be so easily saved? I don't know, but I suspect not. Legal parental obligations perhaps begin when that viability point is passed -- or whenever the woman commits to carry the fetus to term.
In any case, I do think that the woman's choice indicates significant character defects, defects which will likely strongly impact the quality of her parenting. This decision of hers thus might be a prima facie reason to vacate her parental rights to the live-born twin. But that's also a rather weighty legal decision.
As a last thought, I wonder whether the doctor adequately explained the procedure to her or not. Was she deeply irrational, wholly misinformed, or some combination thereof? It's really hard to imagine someone so callous towards the life of her child, although obviously such people exist.
Update: Eugene posted a long commentary from an ob-gyn on the medical facts about such cases. Very interesting!
Update 2: I just heard on FoxNews that the woman's two prior children were born via c-section, which makes her decision all the more strange.
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A Burning Question
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:57 PM
Finally, I have the answer to the question that has long burned in our hearts: Were there dinosaurs on Noah's Ark? The wonderfully illustrated answer is most undoubtedly yes.
The logic is quite entertaining, particularly the claim that people after the Flood interacted with dinosaurs based on unspecified "scientific evidence" and references to the "behemoth" in Job 40:15-24.
Heh. (Thanks to Eric Barnhill for the link.)
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Paper at UPitt-CMU Graduate Conference
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:04 AM
About ten days ago, I was delighted to hear that a shortened version of my paper on false excuses was accepted for the 6th International University of Pittsburgh/Carnegie Mellon Graduate Philosophy Conference. I'm scheduled for 3:20pm on March 20th.
I just finished my final edits tonight based upon some helpful comments from reviewers. So I've posted the paper on the website. (In the course of my revisions, I was able to incorporate some bits from my Harry Potter paper on self-deception, which I also just finished revising.)
If you're interested in philosophy and near Pittsburgh, come on by!
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| Wednesday, March 10, 2004 |
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64,000 Just Isn't Enough
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:28 PM
For the past two weeks or so, I've been unable to use Adobe Acrobat Reader. It would freeze up on me, regardless of whether I attempted to open a file in a browser, in the system, or just launch the program. This was a rather serious problem, as all of my class readings this semester are in PDF format.
I tried reinstalling Acrobat Reader 6 -- twice. I googled for advice based upon the error message, but no luck at all. Adobe's help file was completely useless.
I tried installing Acrobat Reader 5 -- twice. That didn't work either. However, the error message was different and, as it turned out, far more informative. (It told me "temporary file could not be opened.") In some online miscellaneous notes about computer stuff, I found this:
Reader creates temp files which it is supposed to clean up after itself. it has a bug and sometimes creates 64000 temp files and then can't open since it has run out of numbers to assign to new tmp files. Problem was solved by going to CMD prompt in the temp directory (/Local Settings/Temp), then del acr*.tmp
Well, my Temp directory was indeed plagued with a proliferation of acr*.tmp files. I deleted them... and lo and behold, I can now open PDF files. Really, that tidbit would have been really %@*# helpful in Adobe's help file. I probably spent a total of about 3 hours trying to fix the problem. What a waste.
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On Lincoln
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:07 AM
Earlier today, I was directed toward this screed against Abe Lincoln by L. Neil Smith. Now, I certainly have concerns and questions about Lincoln's commitment to the founding principles of the United States. But the proper evaluation of the man is hardly glaringly obvious. In any case, I was pleased to then read this more sober and thoughtful commentary on Lincoln from Tibor Machan.
A few questions about the Civil War plague me:
Why was Lincoln so concerned with preserving the union in the first place? (What was his philosophic justification, if any? I've never heard any explanation of this point.)
What would have happened if the North had simply allowed the South to secede? (Would this have lead to other states seceding in later years over minor issues? Even if that happened, would it have been so terrible? Would it have been worse than our present situation in which any and all secession is unthinkable?)
Why not emancipate the slaves with compensation, as happened peacefully elsewhere? (Would it have been too costly? Was the opposition to such a scheme by the abolitionists politically significant?)
If anyone has reading recommendations that might address these points (particularly the first two), I'd love to hear them.
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| Tuesday, March 09, 2004 |
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Mel Gibson
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:59 PM
A great comment from Ross Levatter from Atlantis II:
I saw the Mel Gibson movie last night. I have to say that what you've heard it true: it is both exceedingly violent and dramatically powerful.
Then, again, what would you expect, given the story: a man of the people, a leader with a growing following, taken by the state, brutally tortured, killed in a futile effort to stem the tide of a movement that would not be denied.
And the climactic scene, at his death, when he looks away to the heavens and says that line he's always remembered for, that line that has changed the lives of so many:
Freedom!
I loved Braveheart.
Heh.
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Fraud in Business
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:01 PM
Resume padding is nothing new, but the high-tech ways people are circumventing checks are. For example:
Some applicants are providing employers with toll-free phone numbers, which are answered by operators of Web sites that not only offer phony academic degrees, but also "verify" a job seeker's education.
And, in an effort to put more credibility into embellishing their resume, some candidates are paying hackers to plug their names into a class list database of a university they claim to have attended.
Perhaps the most disturbing comment from the article is this one:
The background search firm ADP Screening and Selection Services, in a 2003 study, found that more than 50 percent of the people on whom it conducted employment and education checks had submitted false information, compared with about 40 percent in 2002.
50 percent!?! Of course, perhaps such screening only happens with a small fraction of suspicious cases, although I suspect that large firms suspect everyone. Still, that's a huge percentage. Anyone know more about this problem, even just anecdotal evidence?
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Stephen Moore On Martha
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:13 AM
Stephen Moore has a nice article on the conviction of Martha up on NRO. On insider trading, he writes:
Now, advocates of insider-trading laws are probably irate at this proposition of mine to legalize insider trading, because insider trading "hurts the mom-and-pop investor." They also say that we need to enforce this law to maintain the integrity and the public confidence of the financial markets. Baloney. The market fell — it didn't rise — on the news of Martha Stewart's conviction. If investors believe that the SEC can throw you in jail for making trades that can be construed by a federal prosecutor as based on "insider information," this has a chilling effect on the financial markets and all stocks are hurt. That means all investors are also hurt.
On the morality of capitalism, he writes:
Love her or hate her, Martha Stewart has been one of the most successful capitalists of this generation. She created hundreds of millions of dollars of new wealth and virtually a new industry that was, in effect, herself. She created thousands of jobs and was a successful entrepreneur who happened to make a lot of money while she was at it. The source of my uneasiness is that many in our society applaud her downfall precisely because of her enormous success. But success is a virtue in America, and when we start treating it as vice, we denigrate our capitalistic system. And then we have a much bigger problem in our society than whether people are trading on hot stock tips in the middle of the night.
Indeed.
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