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Tuesday, July 31, 2007 StumbleUpon By Diana Hsieh @ 10:01 PM While perusing the referrer logs for dianahsieh.com, I noticed a bunch of hits from StumbleUpon. It seems like a nifty way to find cool sites of interest to me. So I've signed myself up, downloaded the FireFox add-in, added "StumbleThis" links to every post, and rated a bunch of sites I like. So ... and here's the real (i.e. selfish) point of this post ... if you like NoodleFood, please do give it a thumbs up and maybe even a quick review. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis The Wealthiest Americans By Paul @ 8:21 AM This chart from the New York Times lists the 25 wealthiest Americans ever, adjusted for inflation. E-mail Paul    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, July 30, 2007 Green Consumerism? By Diana Hsieh @ 5:11 PM As much as I've been irked by the "green invasion" into consumer products, I imagine the true greens are so very much more upset by it. The millions of people buying recycled paper, organic strawberries, hybrid cars, and natural potato chips are just as much filthy capitalist consumers as ever! They just don't understand the whole-life change that Mother Earth requires! So I'm glad to see that the true greens are fighting back, as that'll alienate the pseudo-greens from the environmental movement that much faster, leaving it without substantial support. Here's the Ayn Rand Institute Press Release on the backlash: Environmentalists Against "Buying Green" July 30, 2007 Irvine, CA--With organic food in every grocery store and hybrid cars on every stretch of freeway, "green consumerism" has become commonplace. But a backlash against such allegedly "earth friendly" shopping is arising; critics within the environmentalist movement are condemning the trend as superficial and contradictory. Says one environmental activist: "green consumerism is an oxymoronic phrase." "This criticism is extremely revealing about the true nature of environmentalism," said Dr. Keith Lockitch, resident fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute. "For decades, many environmentalists have insisted that protecting the environment is not incompatible with industrial civilization. To make their ideology more palatable, they regularly promise that living 'sustainably' doesn't have to come at too great an economic cost or personal hardship. But when people finally begin to come on board and make allegedly 'pro-environment' choices, they are condemned as 'light greens' and 'eco-narcissists.' "The truth is that environmentalism is not compatible with human flourishing. It does demand economic destruction and unbearable hardship. The claim that its goal is to protect the environment for the sake of mankind is a Big Lie. Its goal is to protect nature, not for man, but from man--to preserve an untouched environment as an end in itself, no matter what cost or hardship that imposes on human beings. "Anyone who thinks that 'eco-chic' is consistent with the principles of environmentalism had better think harder about the true nature of the ideology they are trying to support. What environmentalism truly demands is sacrifice to nature--the rejection of our modern, industrial civilization in favor of the decidedly un-chic, unglamorous hardship of a primitive, pre-industrial, stone-age existence." I'll be teaching a class on "the value of nature" in my upcoming "Introduction to Philosophy" course. We'll be reading Aldo Leopold's 1954 essay "The Land Ethic," a classic of environmental ethics. I've not settled on an opposing article yet, although I like Gregg Easterbrook's "The Case Against Nature" found in the Sommers' Virtue and Vice in Everyday Life. It's a selection from his book A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism, which I've just ordered from Amazon. Other pro-man recommendations would be welcome. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Noumenal Self Returns By Diana Hsieh @ 8:03 AM Noumenal Self has returned to blogging with some interesting posts: a defense of Ayn Rand against a lengthy post by an academic arguing against human excellence and its defenders (i.e. Objectivists), an exploration of the proper response to environmental torts, and a discussion of the open nihilism of the environmental movement. I particularly recommend his two posts (one and two) on Robert Tracinksi's continued defense of the Iraq War. (Then again, I'm not sure that any critique could be quite so devastating as Barbara Branden's hearty endorsement of The Intellectual Activist. As Betsy says, "In the long run you get the kind of friends -- and the kind of enemies -- you deserve." So true! The advocates of a kinder, gentler, and more tolerant "Objectivism" (like Barbara Branden and Robert Bidinotto) should be expected to support those defending the ongoing sacrifice of American soldiers in an altruistic-in-design and unwinnable-as-fought war. They should be aghast at those advocating lasting victory over the enemies who actually threaten us. And so they are.) E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, July 29, 2007 AT&T: Breakup and Reconstitution By Paul @ 10:00 AM This graphic pretty much explains it all. E-mail Paul    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Saturday, July 28, 2007 OCON in the News By Diana Hsieh @ 9:02 AM Ari and Linn Armstrong published a column in the Grand Junction Free Press about the then-upcoming OCON two weeks ago: Happy birthday, Atlas Shrugged. Also, Ari has altered his "Liberty and Prosperity Challenge" in ways that might of be interest: As many of you have read, in response to calls to increase tax spending on food stamps, my wife and I proposed the six-month "Serious Food Economy Challenge," during which my wife and I were prepared to spend no more than $3 per person per day on food. However, for every dollar we came in under budget, advocates of higher food-stamp spending had to donate $10 to our nonprofit of choice. The minimum amount to activate the challenge was $2,000. Unfortunately, only two people responded, pledging $200 combined. But now there's a new challenge: The Liberty and Prosperity Challenge. During "The Liberty and Prosperity Challenge," scheduled for the entire month of August, my wife and I will spend no more than $180 jointly on food, or less than $3 per person per day. We will donate every dollar we save out of that budget to the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). Others may participate in the challenge by agreeing to donate the same amount of money either to ARI or to the nonprofit of their choice. So you can participate by agreeing to donate one dollar to a nonprofit of your choice for every dollar we come in under budget. You can also send me 200 words promoting your nonprofit of choice, which I will publish with the article. Finally, you can help promote the challenge. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, July 27, 2007 Teaching Children Productiveness By Diana Hsieh @ 9:48 PM Thanks to my very own fabulous OBloggers list, I found this delightful post from Rational Jenn on teaching children the virtue of productiveness. Her morning question of "What is your work going to be today?" is useful for those of us past childhood too. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, July 26, 2007 Question for NoodleFood By Diana Hsieh @ 8:27 PM I've had a miserable waste of a day, thanks to a horrid migraine. So I'm going to let you folks answer this "Question for NoodleFood" from Jeff Montgomery: My question is: what is a proper capitalist assessment of offshoring and immigration with regard to jobs? Because I work in the IT industry, this topic comes up a lot. There are actually 2 issues I have in mind: offshoring, where companies hire workers that are located overseas, and hiring temporary foreign workers on US soil (H-1B visa). On the one hand, I can hardly blame employers for wanting to reduce costs by hiring in this manner, and if someone can truly do my job for less, I can't very well stand in their way. However this involves relations between countries and our government's job is to protect us, so I may be missing something. And there is the potential for huge losses of American jobs here depending on what is allowed (or if hiring ever becomes totally unrestricted). How does one properly assess the benefits and losses and apply the principle of individual rights to these issues? Well, I can't resist one quick comment: The proper function of the government is not to "protect us." If that formulation were right, then a big fat welfare and nanny state would be just and proper. The purpose of the government is, in fact, to protect our rights. Americans do not have a right to a job. They do not have a right to force companies to hire them when those companies would prefer to hire foreign workers. Rather, Americans have the right to trade, contract with, and employ whoever they please, whether American or not. That freedom is not merely the only proper application of rights, it's also in everyone's interest. It is an important source of economic productivity via the specialization of labor. For details on the philosophic roots of opposition to outsourcing, I recommend this op-ed on outsourcing by Onkar Ghate. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis On Libertarianism and Other Non-Fellow-Travellers By Diana Hsieh @ 12:40 AM Francisco Gutierrez, who I know from Front Range Objectivism, recently posted a good statement on why he no longer identifies himself as a libertarian. Some of you might have met Francisco at OCON. He was one of the 50 (!!) people from Colorado in attendance, out of a total of over 500 (!!). Gus Van Horn also has a clear and brief explanation of the problem with publishing in a forum like The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, as well as some comments on libertarianism in a recent round-up. Finally, since I can't afford the time required to write a real blog post about this topic, I do recommend reading Mike (of The Primacy of Awesome) on how the secular Rudy Giuliani will help entrench even more religious fundamentalists in our judiciary by appointing more strict constructionists. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, July 25, 2007 Ward Churchill, Begone! By Diana Hsieh @ 8:33 AM Thank goodness: TO: CU-Boulder Students FROM: Office of the President SENDER: officeofthepresident@cu.edu DATE: 07/24/07 SUBJECT: Communication from President Hank Brown on the Board of Regents Vote Dear Students of the University of Colorado, The Board of Regents today voted to accept my recommendation to dismiss Professor Ward Churchill from the faculty. I made the recommendation for the good of the university. CU's success depends upon its reputation for academic integrity. A public research university such as ours requires public faith that each faculty member's professional activities and search for truth are conducted according to the high standards on which CU's reputation rests. We are accountable to those who have a stake in the university: the people of Colorado who contribute $200 million annually in tax dollars, the federal entities that provide some $640 million annually in research funding, the donors who gave us more than $130 million this year to enhance academic quality, the alumni who want to maintain the value of their degrees, the faculty and staff who expect their colleagues to act with integrity, and the students who trust that faculty who teach them meet the high professional standards of the university and the profession. Given the record of the case and findings of Professor Churchill's faculty peers, I determined that allowing him to remain on the faculty would cast a shadow on our reputation for academic integrity. Throughout the case, we have adhered to shared governance procedures as determined by the CU Faculty Senate Constitution and Bylaws and adopted by the Board of Regents. During the course of two-plus years, Professor Churchill presented his position in writing, in person, with his attorney and with witnesses of his choosing. He was afforded full due process. More than 20 tenured faculty members (from CU and other universities) on three separate panels conducted a thorough review of his work and found that the evidence shows Professor Churchill engaged in research misconduct, and that it required serious sanction. The record of the case shows a pattern of serious, repeated and deliberate research misconduct that falls below the minimum standard of professional integrity, including fabrication, falsification, improper citation and plagiarism. No university can abide such serious academic misconduct. Professor Churchill fabricated historical events and sought to support his fabrications by manufacturing articles under other names. His publications show more than just sloppy citations or using the work of others without crediting them. The Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct found multiple instances of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism. Any student engaging in such a wide range of academic misconduct would be seriously sanctioned. We should hold our faculty to a high standard of professionalism While Professor Churchill's peers on the faculty panels were unanimous in finding research misconduct, views on the appropriate sanction varied. Some faculty recommended dismissal while others suggested a less severe penalty. My obligation as president is to recommend to the Board of Regents an appropriate sanction that is for the good of the university. Some on the Boulder campus and beyond claim Professor Churchill was singled out because of public condemnation of his writing about September 11, 2001. They see this case as a referendum on academic freedom. The university determined early in the process that his speech was not at issue, but that his research was. The prohibition against research misconduct extends to all faculty, regardless of their political views. We cannot abandon our professional standards and exempt faculty members from being accountable for the integrity of their research simply because their views are controversial. Professor Churchill's activities not only run counter to the essence of academic freedom, but also threaten its foundation. Academic freedom is intended to protect the exploration and teaching of unpopular, even controversial ideas. But that pursuit must be accompanied by the standards of the profession. Academic freedom does not protect research misconduct. After his research misconduct was identified, Professor Churchill did not admit any errors or come forward to correct the record, as is expected in the profession. CU's most important asset is its academic reputation. Professor Churchill's actions reflect poorly on the University of Colorado, but we will not let the research misconduct of one individual tarnish our reputation. Our faculty members take pride in their work and demonstrate their respect for the high standards of their profession and this university day in and day out. Professor Churchill's research misconduct is an affront to those who conduct themselves with integrity. We will remain accountable to those who have high expectations of Colorado's flagship university. And our faculty will remain true to high professional standards to ensure our reputation for academic integrity remains intact. Sincerely, Hank Brown President I think I'd like to throw a party! Labels: Academia E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, July 23, 2007 A Perfect Wedding By Greg @ 9:25 PM The deal is done! I've got pictures, the papers are filed with the courthouse, we've told the world, and she can't back out now. ;^) Seriously, I thought it would be nice to share with you how Tammy and I were married on the way to OCON -- in Ouray on the 4th of July, under the fireworks! How perfect is that? And Colorado let us make it even more about us: we married ourselves with no officiant and no audience, without even any official witnesses of record (only the photographer and his helpers were there). Here's the main feature of the DVD we had playing at the big reception this past weekend, showing our journey from Boise, to Sun Valley to play a jazz concert, to Moab for a little mountainbike riding, to Ouray for the wedding itself, to Telluride for OCON, then back to Boise. (If you can't make out enough in the low-res youtube of the video, you can skip right to the presentation of the text of the ceremony itself at 2:35.) Now, I sleep. :^) E-mail Greg    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis OAcademics By Diana Hsieh @ 1:06 PM Now that OCON is past, I'm posting one final announcement about my new OAcademics list before opening it for business tomorrow: The OAcademics mailing list is a private forum for Objectivist academics to discuss teaching, research, coursework, dissertations, job prospects, publication, and all other aspects of life in (or after) academia. The list is basically a means of sharing knowledge and experience as ever more Objectivists enter academia. The list isn't limited to philosophers. All Objectivists in academia, whether professors or graduate students, are welcome. Future academics, i.e. those in the process of applying to graduate school, may also join. No subscriber is obliged to participate in list discussions. However, I do make two requests: (1) That subscribers post the syllabi from the courses they teach (including the list of readings) at the beginning of every semester so that others may consult them in the process of their own course development. (2) That subscribers post any significant announcements about their work, e.g. the successful defense of a dissertation, an article accepted for publication, a fabulous new teaching job, leaving academia to hunt bears in Alaska. These are strong recommendations but not ironclad obligations. The list is not moderated. Posts should be polite, friendly, and reasonably relevant to life in academia. Messages will be archived, but those archives will be available only to other list members. List members should not forward list messages to anyone else or post them to any other forum without permission from the author(s). If you have any questions, please e-mail Diana Hsieh, the list's owner and administrator, at diana@dianahsieh.com. To subscribe, enter the relevant information on the web interface. Also, please feel free to forward this post (or a link thereto) to anyone you think might be interested in joining the list. Labels: Academia, Objectivism E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, July 22, 2007 John Lewis in Hebrew By Diana Hsieh @ 8:35 AM John Lewis sent me this great bit of news this morning: I am proud to note that my article, "No Substitute for Victory: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism," has been transmitted into Hebrew. It appears in Nativ: A Journal of Politics and the Arts, vol. 20, n. 3.116 (May - June 2007). Nativ is published by the Ariel Center for Policy Research. From its website: "The Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR) is devoted to incisive research and discussion of political and strategic issues concerning Israel and the Jewish people." The article is published by permission of The Objective Standard, from its 1.4, Winter, 2006-2007, pp. 39-63. This is the English abstract, as it appears in Nativ: "No Substitute for Victory: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism" In the face of rising threats to their freedom and rights, Americans today are uncertain about what a proper foreign policy should be. This uncertainty arises from the philosophical influences of pragmatism and altruism, which have misguided American leaders for 50 years, and have made it difficult for Americans to evaluate their leaders and to evaluate their actions. As a result, Americans have failed to forthrightly confront rising threats, and have not properly supported allies ˆ in particular, Israel. We have, as a result, emboldened and empowered the worst threat to the West in centuries. This article uses the historical example of American policy towards Shintoism in post-1945 Japan, in order to show that a proper policy today would first identify Islamic Totalitarianism as the political threat facing the West, and would then direct American resources towards ending the political imposition of Islamic Law, beginning with the Islamic State of Iran. By identifying the advocates of political Islam ˆ those who would impose Islamic Law by force ˆ as the true enemy, Americans could destroy its state manifestation wherever it appears, and then offer an intellectual alternative to jihad. This is the only way to end the threat posed by Islamic Totalitarianism, and to re-establish a proper basis for freedom across the globe. Excellent! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Saturday, July 21, 2007 No Comment Necessary By Diana Hsieh @ 11:44 PM Wal-Mart To Test Bible Action Figures In 425 Stores: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) said Tuesday it will test sales in some stores of biblical action figures whose makers say they are aimed at Christian parents who prefer their children play with Samson, David or Noah rather than with a comic book character or Bratz doll. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien said the toys made by One2believe, a Valencia, Calif., company, will be offered in 425 of Wal-Mart's 3,376 discount stores and Supercenters. One2believe Chief Executive David Socha said his products were part of a "battle for the toy box" with dolls and figures that he said carry negative messages. "If you're very religious, it's a battle for your children's minds and what they're playing with and pretending. There are remakes out there of Satan and evil things," Socha said. Wal-Mart's O'Brien said the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer believes there is demand for faith-based toys. The toy line will be on some Wal-Mart shelves starting in August, mainly in the Midwest and South but also in California and as far northeast as Pennsylvania, O'Brien said. "It is a test. It's not a national rollout," O'Brien said. The toys, based on biblical stories, include a 3-inch figure of Daniel in the lion's den, a 12-inch talking Jesus doll and 13-inch Samson action figure. Wal-Mart has always carried some faith products, mainly stationery, books and music, but this is the first line of toys with a faith theme, O'Brien said. "I think there is an interest in faith-based toys and we are testing it in our stores," O'Brien said. It is a leap in scale for One2believe, which so far has mainly sold its figures directly to churches and ministries and through its Web site, Socha said. (Via Ari Armstrong) In my youth, I played with many toys at other children's homes, but I never played with a "biblical action figures." I was an explicit atheist from an extremely young age -- around 4 or 5, when I first heard about God -- so I would have been aghast at any religious toys. The simple fact is that none of the kids I grew up with were religious in that serious kind of way. Obviously, that's no longer true. Similarly, none of my high school classmates would have dreamed of putting off college to do missionary work in the third world in a million years. Yet, this morning in Starbucks, Paul and I overheard some high school girls talking about a classmate doing just that. They were surprised that the boy in particular would choose that, but they obviously regarded the activity as a relatively normal break between high school and college. The anecdotes are piling up almost as fast as the Christian stores are opening their doors. Labels: Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, July 20, 2007 OCON and Tasks By Diana Hsieh @ 12:03 PM I'm too overloaded with work to blog on OCON, but I did want to mention a very favorable news article about it by Jay Ambrose of the Scripps Howard News Service. Then again, maybe I'm not so busy after all. I managed to delete the entirety of my very large and carefully constructed collection of tasks in Entourage while testing some other task management software, namely iGTD. I failed to turn off Enourage's sync with iCal, so when iGTD deleted all my tasks in iCal instead of importing them in its attempted sync, I lost all my tasks in Entourage too. Lovely, no? I wasn't too worried though, since I had a recent backup. Or at least I thought I did. Much to my dismay, the relevant iCal and Entouage files were simply missing from my backup drive. (I'm not sure whether the backup program or the drive failed. A common parent folder was empty.) Perhaps worst of all, none of the task programs that I tested worked as well as Entourage. Daylite seemed quite good, but its inability to create recurring tasks makes it wholly unusable for me. I also liked iGTD (despite the disaster it created) except for its awkward and inadequate handling of recurring tasks. So I deleted all my tasks for nothing! I'll be able to reconstruct my tasks on Entourage from my old task list on Outlook reasonably well. That's particularly helpful for tasks with significant dates and/or recurrence cycles, such as deworming the horses. (I've got tons of those kinds of tasks.) I'm not going to re-import them again, as that would involve just as much editing work as entering them manually. So now I must simply hope that Microsoft fixes the few annoying elements of Entourage's task management -- such as the inability to edit due dates in the list view -- with the forthcoming update of Office. Oddly enough, apart from a few such annoyances, Entourage (i.e. the Mac version of Outlook) does work better as a GTD tool than even Outlook 2007. It's "Projects" feature is fabulous, not just for its integrated views of all the tasks, e-mail, contacts, files, and appointments associated given project, but also for its easy implementation of both "Project" and the "Action Context" labels for any given task. That takes some work (or the GTD add-on) to implement in Outlook (including 2007). Plus, Entourage doesn't stick you with a space-hogging gaggle of useless undeletable views like Outlook does. Entourage also has five priority levels, rather than Outlook's paltry three. That makes it possible for me to mark tasks as equivalent to "sometime in the next week or two" or "sometime next year, if not later" without arbitrarily setting some particular date. It's quite handy. Well, enough of that. I might have only ten tasks in Entourage right now, but one of them is my required daily hours on my dissertation! So back to work I go! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, July 19, 2007 Zen Wisdom By Diana Hsieh @ 8:08 AM Some of these bits of wisdom are damn clever: 01. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell alone. 02. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire. 03. Its always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it. 04. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted. 05. Always remember that you're unique. Just like everyone else. 06. Never test the depth of the water with both feet. 07. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. 08. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. 09. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is probably not for you. 10. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. 11. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably a wise investment. 12. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket. 13. A closed mouth gathers no foot. 14. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, July 18, 2007 Letter Published After All By Diana Hsieh @ 8:28 AM Hooray! My June letter to the editor was published in the Rocky Mountain News after all. It appeared in yesterday's print edition, but you can read it (plus a ton of comments) online: Free-market medicine is the answer. Update: Whoops, that probably made no sense whatsoever. I wrote up a post a few days ago with my letter to the Rocky Mountain News which I'd presumed wasn't to be published after all despite a phone call from them because so much time had passed. When I wrote the above, I thought I'd published that blog post, but it was actually just in the queue. In any case, here's text of the letter I sent to the News: Dear Editor, At a weekend rally in Denver, filmmaker Michael Moore advocated the total government takeover of medicine with heartbreaking tales of peoples’ medical disasters ("Filmmaker Moore presides at Colorado health care rally," June 25th). He neglected to mention that "single-payer" socialized medicine makes medical disasters routine due to inevitable rationing of care. In Canada, patients are forced to wait weeks and months for diagnostic tests, appointments with specialists, and treatment as their deadly cancer cells multiply. In Britain, most NHS kidney patients over the age of 55 are allowed to die rather than offered dialysis. As usual, the working poor suffer the most: they are unable to afford treatment outside the government system they've already bought with taxes. The only reliable protection against medical disasters is a genuinely free market in medicine. Only when medicine is freed of burdensome government regulations, mandates, and entitlements will patients will be able to pay for their own routine health care and purchase affordable catastrophic insurance. That's the reform Colorado needs. Diana Hsieh June 25, 2007 Although I haven't checked word-for-word, that seems to be almost exactly what was printed. Also, in my original post, I mentioned that I'm eager to write some more "morally radical" letters in the next few months. So stay tuned! Labels: Health Care E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, July 16, 2007 My Fan Club By Diana Hsieh @ 10:45 PM My devoted anti-fans are meeting yet again on The So-Called Forum for Ayn Rand Fans. They are quite upset at me for questioning and doubting Phil Oliver's claims of irrationality and ludditism on the part of Dr. Peikoff. The claims are too absurd for comment ... but nonetheless depressing. So, I have a new policy: If you choose to continue posting on The Forum, then however honest and nice you are, please do not post comments on NoodleFood. Do not e-mail me with or for information -- or for any other purpose. Do not talk to me at conferences or elsewhere. Just stay away from me. I want nothing whatsoever to do with the fleas who attack me on that forum -- or the people who sanction such attacks by participating in the pointless bull sessions with the fleas on that forum. I do, after all, prefer to maintain some shred of self-respect. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, July 15, 2007 ARI in DC By Diana Hsieh @ 9:04 AM Yesterday afternoon, Yaron Brook announced that, thanks to the generosity of a donor, Ayn Rand Institute will open a satellite office in Washington, DC, likely in 2008. That east coast office will help ARI more easily and effectively advocate cultural and political change. Hooray! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Friday, July 13, 2007 On Ashland University By Diana Hsieh @ 8:22 AM Ashland University's insanely unjust treatment of John Lewis was recently detailed in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Tenure Shrugged. FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has posted some further details (correcting some small inaccuracies in the CHE article, as far as I understand) here: Ashland University: No Objectivists Need Apply. Notice that the source of Dr. Lewis's troubles were (1) neocons and (2) evangelical Christians. From what I understand, the run-of-the-mill liberal faculty were rightly shocked and outraged by his treatment by Ashland. Also, I might as well mention that I was quoted in the Chronicle's introduction to its three articles on Objectivism in academia: The articles in this special Chronicle report are about a different group of scholars: those who believe that Rand created a true and complete philosophical model, which must be widely spread or else civilization will perish. These scholars believe that the road to cultural renewal runs through the philosophy department: If the public adopts the correct metaphysical and epistemological beliefs, then peace, justice, and prosperity will naturally follow. (In this respect, the famously anti-religious Randians are oddly similar to Catholic philosophers in the Thomist tradition.) "The serious study of Ayn Rand's work­ -- in and out of academia­­ -- is only in its nascent stages," wrote Diana Mertz Hsieh, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, on her blog in 2005. "If stillborn, our culture is doomed. ... It's not just some academic game: It's literally life and death." In case you're wondering, I've not blogged because I've been at OCON in lovely Telluride. I've enjoyed myself well enough, although I'm eager to return to real work on my dissertation and to preparation for my fall "Intro Phil" class. I probably won't return to regular blogging for another week. Labels: Academia, History, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Thursday, July 05, 2007 Twinning By Paul @ 2:37 PM These time lapse photographs show the exact moment when one embryo divides into two identical twins. If you're a Christian conservative, presumably this is also the exact moment that God infuses a second soul. I don't know how he decides which twin keeps the original and which twin gets the new one. (Via KevinMD.) Labels: Science E-mail Paul    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Wednesday, July 04, 2007 Thomas Jefferson's Last Letter By Paul @ 8:13 AM Thomas Jefferson was invited to attend a celebration in Washington DC on July 4, 1826, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He had to decline due to reasons of health, but he did write the following stirring passage in his last letter: I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Via Marginal Revolution.) E-mail Paul    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Tuesday, July 03, 2007 Healthcare Letter By Diana Hsieh @ 11:51 PM Hooray! The Colorado Springs Gazette printed the letter on healthcare I sent them last week. It's hardly a stunning bit of prose, but I'm happy to see it published: TAKING CHARGE People, not government, responsible for health Marcy Morrison, the sole El Paso County representative on Colorado’s 2008 Commission for Health Care Reform, claims that her goal is to insure as many people as possible (“Morrison works to insure more Coloradans,” Metro, June 25). That’s morally wrong. The government should not attempt to enforce universal medical coverage, nor universal healthy diets, nor universal fashionable haircuts. The only proper function of government is to protect our rights. In medicine, that means protecting the rights of health care providers, insurers and patients to contract for the services they deem in their best interest, free from government regulations, mandates and entitlements. Only then can people act as responsible adults, rather than as wards of the nanny state. Diana Hsieh Sedalia Labels: Health Care E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Monday, July 02, 2007 Pictures By Diana Hsieh @ 8:02 PM I took some pictures of Paul this evening, as the Denver Post wanted a photo to run with Paul's latest op-ed this Sunday. (Paul will post that when it's published, obviously.) Most of them turned out very nicely, so I finally have a semi-decent photo of him on the sidebar. (Hooray!) Here's another we liked: Ah yes, geeky-cute... just how I like my men! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis A Request By Diana Hsieh @ 1:02 AM I just received the following request from Rachel Miner: Does anyone have the Winter 1993 V1N2 issue of The Atlantean Press Review? I'd be glad to buy it, or I have received permission from Robert LeChevalier (the publisher) to have it copied once. He tried to send me his copy, but it was sadly lost in the mail. If you can help out, please e-mail Rachel at rachelminer at mac.com. She also mentioned that she'll be at OCON, in case hand delivery is preferable. Update: Rachel reports that she's found a copy. Thanks! E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Sunday, July 01, 2007 E-mail Only, Please By Diana Hsieh @ 6:24 PM Please do not send me messages via the messaging systems of web sites like FaceBook, ObjectivismOnline, and the like. I cannot stand to use them: I want all my messaging in one place, with one interface, and one archive. I have a very public and stable e-mail address -- diana@dianahsieh.com -- so please use that instead. I do try to post warnings to the above effect on my personal pages on these various forums, but that's a hassle to do. I've not yet done it on FaceBook, so I've gotten two messages in the past few days that I had to (1) click through on the link in the e-mail alert, (2) log in to FaceBook, (3) reply to the message by telling the person to e-mail me. That's a huge pain, although not as much of a pain as conducting a conversation on those systems would be! It's certainly not the fault of the person messaging me since they're unaware of my preferences, but I do get annoyed by the hassle of it all nonetheless. So... please use e-mail to contact me. I'm going to go put a warning on FaceBook now. E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis Gina Liggett LTE in "USA Today" By Paul @ 10:06 AM The June 29, 2007 edition of USA Today printed the following excellent letter-to-the-editor by Gina Liggett (halfway down the page): Moore in denial Gina M. Liggett, R.N. -- Denver I'm hoping the title of the sequel to "Sicko" will be "Just Kidding." Moore and many Americans are in denial about the disaster that single-payer health care would bring, including: * Long waiting lists for tests and treatment. * Soaring costs of Medicare. * Rationing treatments for more serious and costly diseases like cancer. * Bureaucrats influencing medical decision-making that should only take place between a patient and a physician. Does anyone care that Moore's advocacy of greater regulation of the pharmaceutical industry would only further stifle innovation at a time when we need it most to cure such devastating diseases as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes? As a nurse, I take care of patients with these diseases, and if our health care system is bad now, it will crash and burn under socialized medicine. Gina is a member of the 2FROG discussion group here in Colorado. She has RN and MPH degrees. Here's the USA Today blog version of the letter with online comments in case anyone wants to chime in. Labels: Health Care E-mail Paul    PermaLink    Comments (Popup)    BloggerThis

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