Human Advancement

Timmy Geithner, who plays Obama's Secretary of the Treasury on TV, was laughed out of China yesterday. Here's a quick summation of some of Timmy's other recent public appearances:
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It would appear that the Chinese are taking my advice seriously.

So, my local fishwrap is going out of business. It’s no big loss, as I long ago found them unequal to the task of wrapping fish properly. You’d think they would at least try to get that right.

Kate Marymont, Gannett Co. vice president for news, told the newspaper's staff Friday that the paper will continue with a Web site edition providing commentary and opinion but no news coverage.

So, really, nothing at all has changed. I can’t remember the last time I looked at one of the local newspapers - or any newspaper, for that matter - but if I had found some honest news in it, I probably would have kept buying it on occasion.

It seems that even in a desperate bid to find creative ways to remain in business, that approach was just too crazy to consider.

A pair of Jehova's Witnesses left my doorstep just now, one of them having promised to read Atlas Shrugged. It took about 20 minutes. He may never read it - I have no idea how seriously Witnesses take such promises - but if not, he may just keep wondering whether he should.

The one before that was a 17 year old kid, a few months ago. He told me, after more than an hour, that I was a good teacher. To which I responded "that's the best way to learn". I must have used up his entire time allotment at the park, since the van came by shortly after to pick him back up. Watching him climb into the van, I'm convinced that he'd be asking some tough questions, if not of his handlers, then of himself.

Billy, it doesn't matter.

Are Waxman and Markey evil or retarded?

Any sufficiently stupid idea is indistinguishable from malice.

Blaming the current financial crisis on the failure of markets is like blaming an airplane crash on the failure of gravity.

The markets didn't fail, you demanded they do something impossible. This crash is the predictable and correct result of the inputs you provided. If you let an airplane turn into an ice-covered flying brick, gravity continues to do exactly what it will do - your flight plan might as well be a parabola - and people die. The NTSB never, in its investigations, asks "What went wrong with gravity?" What makes you think markets are any different?

You might think that we can find an alternative to markets, that markets are a political tool that can be chosen or rejected. They're not. They operate at all times and in all places, and always by the same laws. They are the given that your political positions are tested against.

You have failed.

The people trying to politically destroy Obama (a just and noble cause), have made a tactical error bad enough that if you told me that Obama himself had put them up to it, I might believe you. They're claiming that his aunt is in the country illegally, and if he doesn't deport her, he will have no more credibility.

New Checkers Speech in.... 3... 2.... 1....

Billy gets at the apparent double-meaning for the word "brand", which isn't really a double meaning at all. To save even more time, these people might want to go ahead and get the bar-code upgrade right now, while it is still optional.

He continues ably live-blogging the execution, in all its varied and colorful aspects.

Imagine that someone you love is dying. You know they'll be gone soon, you've known it for a long time. Years even, while they've been in steady decline. You can't even remember the last time they were really themselves, though you see flashes of it every now and then. Fewer and fewer of them as time goes by, but enough that they allow you, for a brief moment, to hope that dear old Dad, or Grandma, or Uncle Sam might brighten up enough to recognize your face, your voice, and at least offer a word, a look, an acknowledgement that he is still in there somewhere, that he is aware of what is happening, that he appreciates you sitting next to the bed all this time.

Now imagine the whole world cheering on the cancer cells, or the neural plaques that slowly, inexorably are stealing your loved one's mind, body, and soul. Everyone you meet, cheering. Turn to any channel, news or otherwise... cheering. Rooting for the cancer that is devastating a life and everyone it has ever touched. Not even because they hate your Dad or Uncle, or Grandma, they just love cancer, love disease.

You wait, probably in vain, because you know this is the last day. The graphs on the monitors went flat months ago, yet the body still sometimes quivered, sometimes gasped or rolled its eyes, and you hung on every movement as if it were a sign of life when you knew it could no longer be. All that is left is the small, quiet ritual of pulling the plug... except this time millions are watching, and cheering it on, and all you can ask is "what did we ever do to you, to deserve this?"

Keep a watch on Billy today, he seems to be handling it better than I am, almost, ironically, "live-blogging" a death... no, an execution.

This is going to blow the minds of a lot of people I've been arguing with about anarchy.

No society worth having can function without some malum prohibitum rules.

Now, most of those I've been arguing with should agree with that. In fact, one of the objections I get over and over again stems from equating anarchy with the a-priori absence of all such rules. I'd like to see them try to reconcile what they're arguing against, what they think I am arguing for, with that statement. It can't be done.

For those of you willing to proceed with the understanding that I believe that to be true, I offer the following hypothesis: Government is incapable of generating rational mala prohibitum laws. Not pathologically incapable, but that its very nature contradicts the possibility of doing so. Federalism was, in fact, an attempt (unknowingly) to get around that fundamental flaw in the nature of government, but it merely reduced and masked the effects, it did not address the flaw itself. It was a band-aid over the sores produced by a genetic defect.

Proving it requires a bit more groundwork, and so I'll leave it at that for the moment, as an assertion to be backed up later.

Damn straight

Billy's one of the most educated people I know. If you read enough of his comments here and there, or even just look at how the little "off the shelves" blurb at the top of his blog changes over time, you get a sense of the depth of his reading. I won't go all gushy and say "he taught me everything I know", mostly because it's not true - I've done a hell of a lot of it on my own, and from picking little bits here and there from a lot of people, and figuring out how they all fit together - but I have learned a hell of a lot from him.

His "crazy" idea to hang out a shingle as "Philosopher at Large" isn't so crazy. Back when I was involved in Second Life, I considered doing just that in there, for pay. The problem with doing it in "First Life" is that there's probably a total of about 14 adults in my town who would even consider such a thing, and so the internet is a much more target-rich environment.

On the other hand, I've had some recent contact with the local homeschoolers. I decided to clean out my bookshelves - there simply isn't room to even store the entire collection - and so I donated 12 file boxes full of them to the group. It got me thinking that they are probably a market for just this sort of thing. I was thinking more in terms of teaching some C++, or at least basic programming, but they'd probably eat up some formal teaching in philosophy, or even informal discussions. And I've still got enough books left to run a lending library to some tens of these intelligent kids.

Just a quick note, regarding some arguments I've been watching around...

A position, even the most obstinately held one, is not a principle. Principles support positions. Principles are facts that can be traced all the way back, with the best logic you can muster, to things you can see, touch, taste, smell or hear, with your very own eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. "Gun rights" is no more a principle, and no less a mere position, than "Britney Spears is, like, the best singer evurrrrr!". except that only one of them is based on true principles.

Note to Representative Jim Moran, Commiecrat, Virginia:

Fuck You.



You can have my wealth when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Your power doesn't come from the office, it comes from the respect and fear Americans have for it. It's an important distinction, you'd do well to understand it fully before undermining both any more than they already are. Be very careful pushing productive people to the point where they have nothing to lose, old man.

The tree of liberty may be wilted and in tatters, but it's heart still lives.

Email out just now to Deborah Howell, Ombudsman of the Washington Post, regarding her admission that her paper was biased for Barak Obama during the recent campaign.

Ms Howell,

In reference to your online article of Saturday, November 9, referenced to page B06 of the print edition, thank you for coming clean about your paper's shortcomings in this election cycle. While it is refreshing to see the bias that has long been noticed, not only in you paper, but others, finally acknowledged publicly, I can't help but notice the timing of this admission.

Like it or not, you must realize that news outlets such as yours, which have a national readership, not only report the news, but they influence it. News institutions such as yours, sometimes disparagingly referred to as "Mainstream Media", or "Legacy Media", are looked to by many people as the primary, or even only, source of information in shaping their opinions.

You may reasonably argue that it is not your fault that so many people allow your information to not only inform their choices, but in some cases to form them. That is their failing, not yours. Yet there are many who believe that you, and others, court and carefully cultivate this influence. The long-standing claims of major newspapers to the status of distributors of unbiased and objective news and analysis must, if believed, carry with them some level of trust and a willingness to defer to your judgment in complex matters.

Your bias, or "tilt", intentional or not, and even when acknowledged later, is a misuse of this trust in a way that affects all of us. While it is not likely that your newspaper alone substantially determined the outcome of this election, the cumulative effect of decades of this abuse of public trust by institutional news sources in the aggregate has likely significantly colored public opinion to the extent that our political landscape is now quite different than it may otherwise have been.

In making this admission just after a major election, you leave yourself open to accusations that you seek not to remedy your errors, but to provide cover against future accusations, while doing so early enough that the admission will be long forgotten when the time comes for you to influence, intentionally or not, the next election. I hope this is not the case. I hope that this is the beginning of a concerted effort by your paper to lead by example the effort to reform the general news media in this country back to one of fairness, objectivity, and the honored place that the nation's newspapers hold in all of our memories. I would be more hopeful in that if you had put this story on the front page, rather than page B06, and done so prior to the election so that all of those you have misled would have had a chance to rethink the choices they were about to make.

Short of that, I think it is perfectly reasonable and proper for a news source to have a bias, so long as that bias is clearly enunciated directly and prominently in every issue, accompanying every online story, so that your readers may weigh that bias in evaluating the quality of the information you present. Everyone has some bias, it is impossible not to. Perhaps fair and objective is too high a standard to hold a newspaper, or any news service, to. If so, you would best serve the public by carefully examining your news staff's culture and personnel for hidden or veiled biases, and make this information widely and prominently available. In that way, you may be able to regain the stature and respect that so many feel you have squandered over the years.

God DAMN America...

God damn you, Barak Obama...

God damn each and every one of you who voted for him...



Planet of the Apes indeed. "Man is the only animal that can sink below his nature" --Ayn Rand

Alea iacta est. III

There is much truth here, and much childishness. But hey, there's worse crimes than childishness.

I may have spoken positively of Molyneux at some point in the past. I probably didn't, because there were plenty of red flags prior to fully figuring him out, but if so, I apologize for misleading. After a short while, I pretty much pegged him the same as the guys at the link, and promptly forgot all about him. Just remember that, when he makes the news some day.

See why first hand.