| Table of Contents |
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Pots, Pots, and More Pots (Diana Hsieh)
Monday, March 28, 2005
How Can Terri Schiavo Be in a Persistent Vegetative State... (Paul Hsieh)
OCON 2005 (Diana Hsieh)
A Video is Not an Argument (Diana Hsieh)
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Philosophy Poetry (Diana Hsieh)
Friday, March 25, 2005
Prankster smuggles fake art into 4 New York museums (Paul Hsieh)
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Self-Made Vegetable (Diana Hsieh)
Celebrating Ayn Rand (Diana Hsieh)
The Top 100 City Skylines (Paul Hsieh)
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Hooray for False Excuses! (Diana Hsieh)
Monday, March 21, 2005
Tall Tales (Diana Hsieh)
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Women in the Media (Diana Hsieh)
Canadian Health Care (Paul Hsieh)
Today's Joke (Paul Hsieh)
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Neuroeconomics (Paul Hsieh)
Friday, March 18, 2005
Bizarre Religious Product of the Day (Paul Hsieh)
Yet Another Crisis in Academia (Paul Hsieh)
The True Excitement of 24 (Diana Hsieh)
Thursday, March 17, 2005
The Intellectual Dead End of Postmodernist Academia (Paul Hsieh)
The Flu, Part Two (Diana Hsieh)
Evidence for White Privilege (Diana Hsieh)
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
A Portrait of John Galt (Diana Hsieh)
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Monastery joke (Paul Hsieh)
Monday, March 14, 2005
Another Ayn Rand Centenary (Diana Hsieh)
Does Paul Really Love Me? (Diana Hsieh)
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Brad Bird on Ayn Rand (Diana Hsieh)
Friday, March 11, 2005
A Book Announcement (Diana Hsieh)
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
The Hateful Left (Diana Hsieh)
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Why I Love Miss Manners, Reason #375 (Diana Hsieh)
No Give, No Take (Paul Hsieh)
Monday, March 07, 2005
Checkpoint Confusions (Diana Hsieh)
A Fun Story (Diana Hsieh)
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Handy Latin Phrases (Paul Hsieh)
Plagiarism by Professors (Diana Hsieh)
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Platonism (Diana Hsieh)
Do you use the English language properly? (Paul Hsieh)
Friday, March 04, 2005
Happy Happy Happy (Diana Hsieh)
Another Joke from Paul (Diana Hsieh)
Today's Philosophical Joke (Paul Hsieh)
Thursday, March 03, 2005
A Joke from Paul (Diana Hsieh)
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
FROST Seminar on Tackling Hard Thinking (Diana Hsieh)
The Secret Life of Spider-Man (Diana Hsieh)
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| Tuesday, March 29, 2005 |
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Pots, Pots, and More Pots
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:32 AM   
My sister, Meredith Brickell, is a wonderfully talented potter. I own a fairly substantial number of her pots: bowls, serving dishes, platters, mugs, jars, and so on. I use and enjoy them on a daily basis.
Happily, she now has a web site of her own at mbrickell.com. It's not much yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing more of her work on it.
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A Video is Not an Argument
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:58 AM
I recently heard Leonard Peikoff's Ford Hall Forum lecture " A Picture is Not an Argument." (It was quite good.) All of the considerations he mentions with respect to the abortion debate apply in spades to the Terri Shaivo case, as this article "Docs Say Schiavo Tapes Don't Tell Story" shows. The mere fact that her eyes might sometimes track a balloon or her mother does not prove anything, as any neurologist not blinded by religious faith will tell you. Similarly, the mere fact that a fetus of a certain age sucks its thumb or responds to sounds does not prove that abortion is murder.
Contrary to those who wish to use such pictures as proof, we cannot justly leap in one bound from selected perceptual data to abstract philosophical conclusions. Much conceptual processing of a wide range of observational data is required. Without that conceptual understanding, such images are horribly misleading. With it, they are useless. In the case of abortion, the pictures of the developing fetus drop the critical context of the location of the fetus inside the mother. In the case of Terri Schiavo, the selected video of her drops the critical context of our scientific knowledge of automatized responses produced by the brain stem. Sadly, people are all too easily suckered into drawing highly abstract conclusions from just a few such selected images.
For an insane example of the opposite error of rationalism, check out this article arguing that removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is murder -- on supposedly Objectivist grounds. Really, it's quite astonishing.
In any case, we can all be grateful that Terri Shaivo didn't die on Easter. The proclamations of a miracle would have been too much to bear.
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| Friday, March 25, 2005 |
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Prankster smuggles fake art into 4 New York museums
By Paul Hsieh @ 5:42 PM
According to this article:Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, "I could do that."
A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed.
The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day. Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location in Britain, Banksy said he conducted all four operations on March 13, helped by accomplices who filmed him and provided distractions where necessary.
"They staged a gay tiff (lovers' quarrel), shouting very loudly and obnoxiously," said the artist, declining to give his real name or any personal details beyond his occupation as a professional painter and decorator.
The article also links to photographs of Banksy "wearing an Inspector Clouseau-style overcoat, a hat and a fake beard and nose" hanging up his work at the four museums.
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Celebrating Ayn Rand
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:14 AM
As some of you might have noticed, I didn't post anything on the Ayn Rand centenary. I didn't link to Onkar Ghate's lovely op-ed on the enduring appeal of Ayn Rand. I didn't even make a single snide remark about Cathy Young's horrid smear job for Reason.
Now perhaps my silence isn't all that surprising, given that I'm generally bad about blogging events. (I still haven't written on Tara Smith's very good, very explicitly Objectivist colloquium at Boulder on egoistic friendship. Shame on me!) However, in the case of the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth, I had every intention to posting a short blog entry.
Unfortunately, that day was pretty much thrown into complete disarray when some unscrupulous undergraduate stole my keys from the ladies room. I put them down next to the sink as I was washing the chalk off my hands after teaching my early recitation. The next thing I knew, my keys were gone. (I posted pleas to return them, checked lost and founds, and so on, but they were never returned.) So I spent that day getting my car towed from Boulder to a dealership in north Denver in order to get new keys made. It was an expensive, exhausting, and time-consuming procedure. I must say, it was particularly annoying to spend Ayn Rand's birthday coping with the effects of petty theft.
So let me finally offer my belated "Happy Birthday!" to Ayn Rand. Sadly, not all those who claim to honor her actually do so. Case in point: Ed Hudgins, the future Executive Director of The Objectivist Center, wrote TOC's op-ed for Ayn Rand's centenary, titled Ayn Rand at 100: The Moral Defense of Freedom. Let me comment upon a few passages.
Rand is best known as a logical yet passionate advocate of individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism who stands out from others because she was principally a novelist. In Atlas her heroes were businessmen and -women, productive individuals whose achievements were responsible for the country's prosperity. This is in stark contrast to the usual portrayal of business executives as villains in books, movies, TV shows, sermons and political pronouncements. Rand didn't simply explain her perspective; her stories showed us her characters' love for their work; it was exciting to read about how they strove with zeal, using their minds, independent judgment, integrity and strength to produce railroads, oil wells and steel mills. Apart from the boring, insipid, and vague prose (as in "Rand didn't simply explain her perspective" and "it was exciting to read"), this paragraph is just bizarre. Does Ayn Rand really stand out from those unspecified "others" in virtue of being a novelist? Is that a fundamental difference between her and Milton Friedman, for example? Is Atlas Shrugged most noteworthy for its positive portrayal of businessmen? Does that constitute a fundamental difference between it and modern books, movies, tv, politics -- and SERMONS?!? Hudgins' relentless focus on non-essentials is typical -- and reveals (once again) his lack of understanding for and appreciation of Ayn Rand's accomplishments.
Even more important, in her novels and her non-fiction works she developed a philosophy -- Objectivism -- that provided a moral defense of free markets. Rand began with the observation that since the ultimate alternative for human beings is life or death, the ultimate moral goal for each individual is survival. That might not seem so radical, but Rand went on to observe that because we are humans, the goal is not just physical survival; it is a happy, joyous and flourishing life. Further, the means by which we discover how to achieve this goal is our unique rational capacity, not instincts, feelings or faith. Thinking allows us to produce food, clothing, shelter, medicine, printing presses, computers, rockets and theories to explain everything from atoms to galaxies. In the first sentence, Hudgins presents Objectivism as little more than a philosophy (only an ethics, really) for defending free markets. Contrast that with Ayn Rand's own characterization of her philosophical commitments: "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows." Objectivism is certainly a philosophy that provides a moral defense of free markets, but it's not only that or even primarily that. It is a philosophy for living on earth. Given that this is an op-ed on the Ayn Rand centenary, Hudgins ought to focus on the essentials of Ayn Rand's achievements. By focusing only on one derivative aspect instead, he undervalues those achievements.
The two-sentence summary of Ayn Rand's metaethics is far worse. Because Hudgins first characterizes the "ultimate moral goal for each individual" as "survival" rather than life, Hudgins must then hastily add that survival doesn't mean "just physical survival," but rather "a happy, joyous and flourishing life." To those unfamiliar with Ayn Rand's actual meta-ethical argument, that must seem like an arbitrary abuse of ordinary language. In addition, Hudgins' suggests that survival as the "ultimate moral goal" is not so radical, but that flourishing as that goal is. (Are you kidding me?!?) Apparently, Ayn Rand's idea that the basic source of moral values is the fundamental alternative of life or death is just common sense, but people reject her ethics because she advocates happiness in addition to physical survival. (Are you kidding me?!?)
In his discussion of reason, Hudgins' wordy description of reason as "the means by which we discover how to achieve this goal" is noteworthy. Objectivism holds that reason is our only means of sustaining life; it must be thoroughly action guiding, not just sometimes or in some areas of life, but at every moment of every day. Yet Hudgins' characterization of reason as the way in which we "discover how to achieve this goal [of life]" seems to give reason a more background role, as if it merely establishes the general means of achieving life, which then may be implemented by "instincts, feelings or faith." A clear statement of the Objectivist view was possible, yet Hudgins offered a convoluted, misleading mess instead.
Rand developed an ethos of rational self-interest, but this "virtue of selfishness" was not an anti-social creed for predators. Instead, it led Rand to her great insight that there is no conflict of interest between honest, rational individuals. Since individuals are ends in themselves, no one in society should initiate the use of force or fraud against others. All relationships should be based on mutual consent. This became the credo of the modern libertarian movement, found today in think tanks, publications and public policy proposals. Ah yes, let us honor the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth by blithely connecting her to the openly subjectivist libertarian movement that she repeatedly denounced during her lifetime.
As I've said before: With friends like these, who needs enemies? Ed Hudgins -- unlike many in and around TOC -- may mean well. But that's not good enough.
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| Tuesday, March 22, 2005 |
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Hooray for False Excuses!
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:39 PM
My paper on false excuses is no longer forthcoming from the Journal of Value Inquiry. It has been published!
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Here's the full citation: Diana Mertz Hsieh, "False Excuses: Honesty, Wrongdoing, and Moral Growth," The Journal of Value Inquiry, Volume 38, Issue 2, Jun 2004, pp 171 - 185.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
If you have university access, you can probably get to the PDF through this link. If that doesn't work, I'll send you a copy of the paper if you drop me an e-mail.
For the record, I do think that the paper has some methodological problems. Nonetheless, I'm insanely happy that it's published.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
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| Monday, March 21, 2005 |
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Tall Tales
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:13 AM
Almost a year ago, Tom Blackstone wrote this about my disassociation from TOC:
A terrible thing has happened: Diana Hsieh, (www.dianahsieh.com), one of the most brilliant up-and-coming Objectivist philosophers around, has left the Objectivist Center and seems to be supporting the Ayn Rand Institute. This is a serious mistake. A person with such original ideas as her should not waste her talent by supporting an organization that repudiates the value of independent judgement and sets up a guru as an "official" interpreter of the philosophy it espouses. Interestingly, Tom's strong animus toward the Ayn Rand Institute was recently called into doubt upon hearing Yaron Brook speak at Georgia Tech. His very frank account is worth reading.
Given the distortions about the Ayn Rand Institute's scholars and supporters routinely circulated in and around TOC and SOLO, I cannot stress enough the importance of first-hand information in evaluating the Ayn Rand Institute. Even otherwise reasonable and reliable people do spin such stories for their own purposes and according to their own prior judgments. (The same is true for stories about Ayn Rand. People will tell grand tales of her going ballistic in response to some totally innocent question, yet a review of the recording reveals nothing more than a quick flash of anger at an absurd question, not even directed at the questioner, before settling down to answer the question at length. In such cases, those interested in the truth are lucky to have the recording, so that they may judge for themselves.)
If you can't attend an ARI conference, you can get a first-hand sense of the scholars, the work in progress, and the atmosphere of ARI through the lectures available through the Ayn Rand Bookstore. (Of course, quality does vary, so you might want to check out my recommendations.) And don't presume that the loud internet voices in support of ARI are also well-respected, as they often are not.
I wish that I had followed such reasonable advice those ten years ago, back when I all-too-quickly sided with David Kelley. It could have made a world of difference.
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| Sunday, March 20, 2005 |
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Women in the Media
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:40 PM
Anne Applebaum is cool. Not only was her book Gulag: A History fantastic, but her recent column on Susan Estrich's invented brouhaha about the number of female opinion writers was biting in all the right ways. Here's a small sample:
This conversation was sparked, as media junkies will know, by a bizarre attack launched on Michael Kinsley, now the editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times, by Susan Estrich, a self-styled feminist. In a ranting, raving series of e-mails last month, all of which were leaked, naturally, Estrich accused Kinsley of failing to print enough articles by women, most notably herself, and of resorting instead to the use of articles by men, as well as by women who don't count as women because they don't write with "women's voices."
Here I declare an interest: Michael Kinsley hired me to write an op-ed column when he was the editor of the online magazine Slate. As for Estrich, I don't know much about her at all, except that she's just launched a conversation that is seriously bad for female columnists and writers. None of the ones I know -- and, yes, I conducted an informal survey -- want to think of themselves as beans to be counted, or as "female journalists" with a special obligation to write about "women's issues." Most of them got where they are by having clear views, knowing their subjects, writing well and learning to ignore the ad hominem attacks that go with the job. But now, thanks to Estrich, every woman who gets her article accepted will have to wonder whether it was her knowledge of Irish politics, her willingness to court controversy or just her gender that won the editor over.
So feminists are hard at work undermining women's self-confidence yet again. I'm shocked, just shocked.
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Canadian Health Care
By Paul Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
This recent article on Canadian health care shows how badly things have deteriorated. Some choice excerpts:A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It added: "If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies." ...The patient wasn't dead, according to the doctor who showed the letter to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Americans who flock to Canada for cheap flu shots often come away impressed at the free and first-class medical care available to Canadians, rich or poor. But tell that to hospital administrators constantly having to cut staff for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she would have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament.
"It's like somebody's telling you that you can buy this car, and you've paid for the car, but you can't have it right now," said Jane Pelton. Rather than leave daughter Emily in pain and a knee brace, the Ottawa family opted to pay $3,300 for arthroscopic surgery at a private clinic in Vancouver, with no help from the government. Defenders of the Canadian system call it the "most moral and most cost-effective health care system there is in the world". As proof of its morality, they make the argument that it's good because there's no contamination by self-interest. The website for this group, Friends of Medicare, is very explicit on this point in their FAQ:Why shouldn't I be permitted to buy medical treatment for myself and my family?
The Moral Answer
Let's turn the question around. If you can afford the treatment for your grandchild, but your neighbor cannot, what justification is there for denying your neighbor's grandchild timely treatment? Is your sick grandchild more deserving of help than your neighbor's grandchild? This gets to the heart of the moral question; and it gets to the heart of the basic value represented by our compassionate Canadian Medicare System. The basic principle is that a person has the right to the best medical care available regardless of ability to pay. As appalling as the answer is, at least they are totally clear on the moral underpinnings of their policies, as well as the practical consequence - you should not be able to buy better health care than your neighbor, since it goes against the moral value of egalitarianism. One obvious corollary would be an eventual ban on people buying better food their their neighbors even if they can afford to do so, because there's no justification for you to have something your neighbor can't. It may seem far-fetched now, but so would the current position of the "Friends of Medicare" just a generation ago. (The FAQ also glosses over the fact that buying something for oneself is not the same as "denying" the same thing for your neighbor - this is just another example of the "fixed pie" fallacy in action.)
The article also details a number of bizarre unintended consequences caused by the perverse incentive system of Canadian health care. For example:...That's one way the system discourages the spread of private medicine -- by limiting it to nonresidents. But it can have curious results, says [orthopedic surgeon Dr. Brian Day].
He tells of a patient who was informed by Ontario officials that since Ontario couldn't help him, they would spend $35,000 to send him to the United States for surgery.
Day said his Vancouver clinic could have done it for $12,000 but the Ontario officials "do not philosophically support sending an individual to a nongovernment clinic in Canada." The rest of the article describes various Canadians' desires to somehow reform the system, while retaining the egalitarian nature. Given the unsoundness of the underlying premise, all I can say is "Rotsa Ruck!"Labels: Health Care
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| Saturday, March 19, 2005 |
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Neuroeconomics
By Paul Hsieh @ 7:57 AM
This week's issue of Business Week has a nice overview of "neuroeconomics", which is the study of economic decision-making using advanced functional brain imaging techniques. Of particular interest to Objectivists are the studies that reveal when people tend to use reason to make decisions, and when they tend to discard reason in favor of whim/emotionalism.
Of course, there are many uses for this kind of research. In particular, if you participating in any kind of efficient marketplace, and a situation arises which causes some of the less rational investors to disregard reason and instead rely on emotion to pay significantly less (or more) for an item than they should, then this would create an excellent buying (or selling) opportunity for the more rational investors.
As a classic example, investors who have performed the proper fundamental analysis of a stock's worth and know that the company has good long-term prospects are often still tempted to sell their stock when there is a temporary downturn in the price, just because they see others selling. Investment books are full of advice not to panic in those situations and ride out the short-term trend. A more detailed scientific understanding of the circumstances under which people can be tempted to act against reason could be beneficial, both in terms of enhancing one's personal wealth, as well as helping to improve the overall efficiency of marketplaces (as more and more smart investors use this knowledge to take advantage of short-term bubbles, thereby reducing their size and duration, and thus more quickly driving the prices back to their rational values).
Another potentially interesting trend is the related field of "neuromarketing". Some preliminary studies have shown that Coca-Cola's advertisement and branding have been far more successful than Pepsi's in creating strong positive cultural associations of their product amongst consumers, and that these emotional associations will influence which drinks consumers say they prefer. According to one article in the New York Times:
When researchers monitored brain scans of 67 people who were given a blind taste test of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, each soft drink lit up the brain's reward system, and the participants were evenly split as to which drink they preferred. But when the same people were told what they were drinking, activity in a different set of brain regions linked to brand loyalty overrode their original preferences. Three out of four said that they preferred Coca-Cola. If one reads past the usual negative commentary about the "Orwellian" nature of the work, the prospect of being able to create a sound scientific basis for measuring the effectiveness of marketing and advertising should be very exciting for capitalists. (Here's a more detailed article on the Coke-vs.-Pepsi experiments.)
As functional MRI become cheaper and more widely available (both in academia and in private research labs), we should expect to see more and more of this kind of work.
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The True Excitement of 24
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:57 AM
Paul and I are only on Season 3 of 24, but wowowowow, am I ever excited about this Season 4 episode: Upcoming '24' Focuses on Jack Bauer Eating a Sandwich. I mean, wow, this just seems so exciting!
The barely sentient cashier fails to enter Jack's order correctly, so the sandwich arrives with pickles anyway. He then tells Jack that the Dr. Pepper spout is broken. "Listen to me," Jack says, grabbing the cashier by the shirt. "I need you to take the pickles off now. There's no time to explain - you're going to have to trust me." Also, it will be refreshing to see someone visit the restroom for reasons other than making covert telephone calls.
Again, since this blog is supposed to comment on deep and significant issues in philosophy, I should mention that this delightful little satire contains an implicit criticism of naturalism in fiction.
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| Thursday, March 17, 2005 |
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The Intellectual Dead End of Postmodernist Academia
By Paul Hsieh @ 8:58 PM
I just read this devastating critique of modern academia. Some excerpts:While Republicans were commandeering the nation's political apparatus," noted historian Richard Wolin, the theorists of a postmodern left, cuckolded by history, were conquering academia. Their victory has come at a high cost. Once a forward-looking hothouse for discussion and debate, academia, taken as a whole, has been increasingly dominated by freeze-dried 1960's radicals and their intellectual progeny, who have turned much of the humanities and social sciences into a backwater.
It has gotten so bad that philosophers at a prestigious university have asked to be detached from the humanities department because the English and history departments are so mired in subjectivity that faculty members in the same department can barely speak with each other, let alone across disciplines. When the academic philosophers are disturbed by the horrible methodology and rampant subjectivism of their peers in other departments, it must be getting really bad! Read the whole article -- it's worth it. (Via Rand Simberg.)Labels: Academia
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The Flu, Part Two
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:53 PM
Hooray! Paul is coming home today! He's been away at a medical conference in Florida since Saturday.
Paul was mildly ill last week. Despite the usual precautions, he was generous enough to pass his illness onto me before he left. (Thank you, my darling husband!)
I started feeling badly on Monday evening. Over the past few days, I've mostly been fatigued, with a mild sore throat, a somewhat stuffy nose, and a deep cough. I was feeling substantially worse this morning, but I decided to drive my hour-long commute to Boulder for my classes. (I had scheduled meetings with students about recently-graded papers that I didn't want to cancel, given that next week is spring break.) That was probably a mistake, as I felt really badly by this afternoon: utterly exhausted, feverish, and so on. It was a long, hard drive home. But life is better now: I'm home, on the sofa, in my pajamas, wrapped in fleece blankets.
Given my symptoms (particularly the fever), I'm now certain that I have the flu... for the second time this year. (And yes, I did get a flu shot.) I'm just thrilled.
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Evidence for White Privilege
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:54 AM
I've been thinking about the arbitrary of late, particularly what constitutes genuine evidence for a conclusion, as opposed to the mere illusion of evidence. In fact, when I taught my two recitations yesterday on Tom Regan's seeming argument for animal rights, my basic criticism was the his critical concept of "inherent value" is not just arbitrary, but meaningless. So when I received this article (forwarded to the Boulder graduate student list by a faculty member) on the widespread effects of pervasive "white privilege," I was interested to see exactly what kind of concrete evidence the author marshaled for such racism. Given his claim that "all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves," one might think that he would have oodles of clear evidence at his disposal. So what does he say to justify that claim? Absolutely nothing:
Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.
I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.
But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.
All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.
There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.
Notice that...
... the unknown actions of long-dead ancestors somehow still confers benefits upon whites -- and only whites.
... learning in classrooms filled with white children apparently gives a child some kind of an educational advantage. (If that's not racism, then nothing is!)
... history ought to be taught in accordance with racial parity, not the facts.
... white people must have some special innate advantage in reading comprehension, vocabulary, mathematics, and so on, since standardized tests favor them.
... the fact that the author's career has been advanced in the usual ways by white people (i.e. the majority) is cited as evidence of white privilege, as if the author would come to a different conclusion if he had been hired by non-whites.
Ultimately, I think that we are supposed to be impressed simply by the number of times that the author manages to mention the word "white." Of course, that's not genuine evidence for "white privilege" at all, just an illusion designed for the confused, gullible, and faithful. I wonder how effective it is.
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| Monday, March 14, 2005 |
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Another Ayn Rand Centenary
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:35 PM
A friend of mine attended the Ayn Rand Centenary in Irvine back in February. She enjoyed it immensely -- and for good reason, given all of the fabulous tales about Ayn Rand that she told upon her return. The New York Ayn Rand Centenary is coming up in late April. (I would attend, except that it's right at the end of my semester.) It is pricey, but students get a 25% discount. Here's the official announcement, with some formatting edits to make it blog-friendly:
Join us in celebration of the first one hundred years of the Ayn Rand Centuries--first, a look backward, and then a look forward. The Ayn Rand Institute and Objectivist Conferences are commemorating Ayn Rand's centenary in an exciting weekend event in New York City, April 23-24, 2005.
Below is a summary of the event. Space is limited, so register soon! For more details, pricing and registration information, visit the Objectivist Conferences web site:
We hope to see you next month in New York City!
New York City Centenary Event Schedule
SATURDAY, APRIL 23: MARRIOTT EAST SIDE: A Celebration of Ayn Rand's Life
9 A.M. - 9:30 A.M.: Yaron Brook: Welcome
9:30 A.M. - 11 A.M.: Jeff Britting: Ayn Rand, an Illustrated Life
11 A.M. - 11:15 A.M.: Coffee break
11:15 A.M. - 12:45 P.M.: Shoshana Milgram: Ayn Rand in New York: Her Life and the Goal of Her Writing
1 P.M. - 2:30 P.M.: Lunch break
2:30 P.M. - 4 P.M.: Michael Berliner: Ayn Rand's "Musical Biography": A Recorded "Concert," With Commentary
4 P.M. - 4:15 P.M.: Coffee break
4:15 P.M. - 5:45 P.M.: Harry Binswanger: Ayn Rand's Philosophical Achievement
7 P.M.: Reception and Celebration Dinner: Mary Ann Sures describes Ayn Rand's enjoyment of New York City and answers questions. (ARI fundraising event)
SUNDAY, APRIL 24: MARRIOTT EAST SIDE
9:30 A.M. - 10:30 A.M.: Harry Binswanger: Guide to Ayn Rand Sites in Manhattan: A Presentation, With Q & A
10:45 A.M. - 12:45 P.M.: Yaron Brook: ARI and the Future of Objectivism
Oy, I wish I could go!
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| Sunday, March 13, 2005 |
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Brad Bird on Ayn Rand
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:10 AM
Brad Bird, the director of The Incredibles, commented on the often-proposed connection between his film and Ayn Rand's philosophy in a recent interview:
Q:"The Incredibles" generated quite a lot of ink on op-ed pages, where pundits debated the film's thesis that mediocrity is celebrated in America and that people with special abilities were being discouraged from being quite so special. Were you surprised?
A:The idea that "The Incredibles," a mainstream animated feature, was thought of as provocative was wonderful to me. I was very gratified, though I thought some of the analysis was really kind of goofy.
Q:Such as?
A:Some pieces compared the viewpoint to the objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand. I thought that was silly and the writers were humorless. I was into Rand for about six months when I was 20, but you outgrow that narrow point of view. Some compromise is necessary in life. Of course, I would have been surprised if he had been influenced by Ayn Rand. But I was hoping for something a bit less banal than that. Oh well.
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| Friday, March 11, 2005 |
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A Book Announcement
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:35 AM
A while back, I received this delightful book announcement:
A CALL FOR UNITY
Harun Yahya
We are living in an era in which the world is desperately in need of peace, friendship, and solidarity. Despite the urgent need for unity and cooperation, certain circles are inciting conflict, particularly conflict between the world's two greatest and deep-rooted civilizations. This issue needs to be explored, as the war of civilizations that they predict would have disastrous consequences for humanity. One of the best ways of preventing such a disaster is to strengthen the dialogue and cooperation between these civilizations. This is not a hard task, as there are no fundamental differences between Islam and the Judeo-Christian western world. To the contrary, there is much common ground between them.
Today, ideological struggles, indeed, continue to divide the world. However, Muslims are not at one pole and Jews and Christians are not at the opposing pole. In fact, one pole represents people who believe in God's existence and unity, and the other pole represents the unbelievers. There is only one way to defeat the alliance of the various groups of unbelievers on an ideological level: eradicate the negative and destructive influences of anti-religious materialism and further the cause of a society dominated by morality, happiness, tranquility, security, and prosperity. This will be done by forming an alliance of all conscientious people, namely, sincere Christians, along with religious Jews and Muslims, who will come together and unite in this common cause.
This book reveals that Muslims, Christians, and Jews have common principles of faith, worship, and moral values; face common dangers; and calls on the People of the Book (Christians and Jews) to unite with Muslims as fellow believers opposed to atheism, anti-religiosity, and social as well as moral degeneration. Personally, I'd like more details about the proposed defeat of unbelievers. Given the strong language, I strongly suspect that rational persuasion isn't the prefered method. So does the "eradicat[ing] the negative and destructive influences of anti-religious materialism" mean death to the infidels or merely censorship and intimidation? I don't suppose it matters, really, but I am idly curious. (I'm not curious enough to buy and read the book, however! I've got more than enough bad philosophy already on my plate.)
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| Wednesday, March 09, 2005 |
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The Hateful Left
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:18 PM
A friend of mine at CU Boulder had to read and comment on this poem for her anthropology class. (It's very relevant to the actual subject matter, I'm sure!) If you have the stomach to read it, it's an excellent example of the principle that that hard left's hatred of America knows no bounds.
Not in My Name
Emmanuel Ortiz
9.11.02
Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.
And if I could just add one more thing
A full day of silence for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.
Before I begin this poem, two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Viet Nam -- a people, not a war -- for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war ... ssssshhhhh .... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem,
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guetmaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas ...
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west ... 100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here, Whose land and lives were stolen, In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...
So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has been
Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in
South Africa, 1977
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at
Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York
Times, and Newsweek ignored
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses,
the Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people have gathered
You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence
Take it.
But take it all
Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.
- Emmanuel Ortiz 9.11.02 Delightful, no?
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| Tuesday, March 08, 2005 |
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Why I Love Miss Manners, Reason #375
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:11 AM
Here's a nice little tidbit from Miss Manners' latest column:
Etiquette's prejudice for the personal is commonly mistaken for a blanket antipathy toward technology, and indeed toward progress itself. Such is not the case. Miss Manners cannot bear to fire her horse, but she believes it would be exciting to risk a horseless carriage after he retires.
She is on record as having been first to defend such useful appliances as the telephone answering machine (when others were decrying people who "screened their calls" instead of leaving this door open all the time) and the cellular telephone (which is still being condemned as show-offy, although most of the population now has them). Naturally, Miss Manners demands that these items be used politely, as she does in connection with everything from kid gloves to hockey sticks. When they are not, she blames the misuser rather than the tool.
I very much enjoy Miss Manners' writings on etiquette, as her approach to the subject is quite rational, i.e. not burdened with the sort of traditionalism, altruism, or collectivism so often found in justifications for manners. Plus, she's just damn funny, in her own unique understated way.
I cannot claim any great virtue in etiquette, although I do strive to be more thoughtful about such matters. Nonetheless, an argumentum ad Miss Mannersum carries great weight with me!
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A Fun Story
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:01 AM
Paul deserves the credit for finding this fun Christmas story:
Never believe a story that begins: "Let me tell you something which really, truly, happened to a friend of a friend." It will almost certainly be an urban myth. And yet there is something irresistible about such stories, because there is always just that faint possibility that they might contain a seedling of truth.
Now, let me tell you something which really, truly happened to a friend of a friend, last Christmas. Her friend is a busy advertising executive and ran out of time to buy presents for family and close friends. So instead she decided to enclose some rather generous cheques with her Christmas cards, scribbling the message: "Have a lovely Christmas but, if you don't mind, buy your own present this year!"
A little impersonal, but actually fairly practical, she thought. Except that a week or so into January, having not received the customary thank-yous from her relatives and friends, she found all the cheques in a drawer. In the rush, she had neglected to enclose them. More details can be found on Snopes.
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| Saturday, March 05, 2005 |
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Platonism
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:03 AM
Hooray! Greg Salmieri's excellent "Platonism" course is now available to the teeming masses. (I got mine a few months ago, since I ordered it while at the conference.) Here's the blurb (with links):
PLATONISM
By Greg Salmieri
Plato authored the world's first philosophical system. He offered unified answers to questions ranging from metaphysics to politics, mathematics to sex. Studying his thought sheds light on the history and nature of philosophy. This course is an examination of Plato's system with an emphasis on its centerpiece: the theory of Forms. The theory of Forms is Plato's solution to the problem of concepts (or "universals"). The course covers how he developed this theory, and how it shaped his epistemology, ethics, and politics. In covering this material Mr. Salmieri clarifies the relationship between theories of concepts and the rest of philosophy. He offers a new perspective on the value of Ayn Rand's theory of concepts.
"I would like to recommend Greg Salmieri's superb new course, Platonism, which is available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore. The focus of the course is the philosophy of Plato, especially as found in such central dialogues as the Meno, the Phaedo and the Republic. Greg offers an excellent presentation not only of the fundamental beliefs of Plato's philosophy (and especially his metaphysics, epistemology and ethics), but also of the 'arguments' Plato offers in defense of those beliefs. I found that even when Greg was going over very familiar (to me) ground--e.g., the discussion of the Forms in the central books of the Repbulic--he had something interesting and original to say." --Robert Mayhew
"I enthusiastically second Robert Mayhew's recommendation of this course." --Harry Binswanger
5 hours, 55 minutes, with Q & A: Audio 8-CD set: $81.95 or Audio 4-tape set: $68.95 If Platonism were true, Greg would get my vote for Philosopher King! (Then again, if Platonism were true, I wouldn't get a vote...)
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Another Joke from Paul
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:32 PM
A union boss at a convention in Las Vegas decides to visit a local brothel. He asks the madam, "Is this a union house?"
"No, I'm sorry, it isn't," she says.
"Well, if I pay $100, what do the girls get?" he asks.
"The house gets $80 and the girl gets $20."
Mighty offended by such unfair dealings, the man stomps off in search of a more equitable shop.
Finally, he reaches a brothel where the madam says, "Why yes, this is a union house."
"And if I pay $100, what do the girls get?" he asks.
"The girls get $80 and the house gets $20."
"That's more like it!" the man says. He looks around the room and points to a gorgeous young redhead. "I'd like her for the night."
"I'm sure you would, sir, but…" says the madam, gesturing at a 70-year-old woman in the corner, "Ethel here has seniority."
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| Thursday, March 03, 2005 |
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A Joke from Paul
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:32 AM
A guy goes to his doctor because he's been having problems remembering things. After a battery of tests the doctor says, "Unfortunately, I have bad news, and I have very bad news."
"What's the very bad news?" the man asks warily.
"Well," says the doctor, "our tests show that you have cancer and only have three weeks to live."
"Oh, my God!" says the man. "Well, what's the bad news?"
"Our tests indicate that you also have Alzheimer's disease," says the doc.
"Well, I can always look on the bright side," says the man. "At least I don't have cancer!"
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| Wednesday, March 02, 2005 |
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FROST Seminar on Tackling Hard Thinking
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:36 PM
Front Range Objectivist Supper Talks is pleased to announce its next event: A two-day, eight-hour seminar on "Tackling Hard Thinking" by Jean Moroney Binswanger on April 2-3 in Denver, Colorado.
In "Tackling Hard Thinking," Jean Moroney teaches practical techniques for guiding one's thinking when the task is challenging. The objective of the course is to teach methods for monitoring one's cognitive progress and strategies for re-directing one's thought when something blocks that progress. Specifically, Ms. Moroney teaches tactics for sustaining thinking despite four common problems which can bring the thinking to a halt: blankness, vagueness, overload, and floundering. The course is organized around these four problems. Although suitable for any adult, "Tackling Hard Thinking" is particularly relevant to professionals of all kinds.
The course is limited to 30 people and is filling up quickly. Reservations made and paid by March 15 will enjoy a $25 discount.
For more details, view the official announcement.
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