The Anger of Compassion

Science wars: Billions and billions--of tax dollars

Carl Sagan, according to Lowell Ponte, gave up being a scientiest and became a politician. And that politicization of science continues:

Carl Sagan, an astrophysicist and expert on other planets, created a computer model of Earth to demonstrate “nuclear winter,” and the world media dutifully reported his claims as fact.

Dr. Stephen Schneider, then at NCAR as Deputy Head of the Climate Project and now at Stanford University, wondered why Sagan bothered to create his own computer model. “We would have been glad to let Sagan simulate nuclear war on NCAR’s Supercomputer model,” Dr. Schneider told me.

But when Schneider tried to duplicate Sagan’s results on the NCAR computers, he discovered that “the most we could replicate was a little bit of ‘nuclear autumn,’ a bit more frost in a few places.”

Upon examining the model Sagan had shown to the world press to “prove” the danger of “nuclear winter,” Schneider found it was of a barren ball of rock with no mountains and no oceans. Oceans, as both Schneider and Sagan knew, act as gigantic energy flywheels that moderate temperature, helping cool adjacent continents in summer and warm them in winter.

Sagan, in other words, knowingly committed deliberate scientific fraud. He cooked up a phony computer model to concoct the phony “nuclear winter” results he wanted for political reasons. He avoided the already-available NCAR computer climate model precisely because he knew it would not produce the “nuclear winter” he wanted to sell to gullible journalists and an ignorant public. And were he still alive, Sagan would doubtless be among the signers, like Ehrlich, of this letter accusing President Bush of politicizing science.

There's more, a lot more, in Ponte's story. Go read the whole thing.

"Nuclear autumn." I like that one.

Take some TIPS from me

Remember the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS?

Critics, among them privacy defenders and civil liberties advocates, claimed that it would turn us all into agents of the state, into a nation of informers. No way, countered the Bush-Ashcroft defenders: this is not Soviet Russia, where children informed on their parents, nor is it East Germany, where the Stasi had seemingly everybody ratting out everybody else. It can't happen here.

Let me ask you something: do you really think that human nature changes at national boundaries?

I was at a defensive driving class a few weekends ago, and the instructor told us a story. It used to be, he said, that he'd collect signatures and registration fees, after which he'd declare a break for the class. During the break, he'd call a friend of his, an El Paso cop, and read the names off his list so his cop buddy could check for bench warrants.

Let me ask another question: do you even know if the TIPS effort is still active? How about its twin sister, Total Information Awareness (TIA)? What changes have been brought about by the Patriot Act, or by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security? I can't claim any originality by pointing out that that's an awfully KGB-ish sounding name...but have you ever asked yourself just what the Department of Defense is defending if not the American homeland?

"Can't happen here," my ass. The necessary mindset is already here, and one needn't be an alarmist to notice it. TIPS and TIA, the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security--it's all statism, it's all based on bullshit, and it's all got to go.

Can't resist a blogging fad...

Yeah, I take these "Which [blank] are you?" quizzes. I like most of them.

Which Simpsons character am I? I was kinda hoping to be Groundskeeper Willie, but...

You are Lisa Simpson. You are bright and
concientious but unfortunately not well-liked.
Cheer up though, someday you'll be running
Springfield and all those who teased you will
be your loyal minions.


Which "Simpsons" Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Which book am I?

You're Anarchy, State, and Utopia!

by Robert Nozick

If it were up to you, there would probably be no government at all.
But then you'd have to deal with there being no government, and nobody likes that. So
you've decided that hiring a few security guards is okay. Getting rid of that nasty
tax collector would sure be nice, though. He keeps getting in the way of you making
the money you so richly deserve! Everyone who believes in you happens to be fairly
well off.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Okay, so I threw away that Anne of Green Gables result...and Siddhartha. And Love in the Time of Cholera.

Ah, and which rule of civil procedure am I? Thought you'd never ask...

YOU ARE RULE 11!

You were designed to make sure that attorneys in
federal cases make reasonable inquiries into
fact or law before submitting pleadings,
motions, or other papers. You were a real
hardass in 1983, when you snuffed out all legal
creativity from federal proceedings and
embarassed well-meaning but overzealous
attorneys. You loosened up a bit in 1993, when
you began allowing plaintiffs to make
allegations in their complaints that are likely
to have evidenciary support after discovery,
and when you allowed a 21 day period for the
erring attorney to withdraw the errant motion.
Sure, you keep everything running on the up and
up, but it's clear that things would be a lot
more fun without you around.


Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

So there I am.

(Hat tip to The Agitator's Radley Balko)

Asking the Right Questions

I supported the action in Afghanistan. I had my reservations about the Iraq war and its justifications, before, during, and after. But more intelligent questions need to be asked.

Harry Binswanger tackles the issue of intelligence failures and Iraq. He makes some interesting points:

2. The errors or omissions, if any, in the pre-war intelligence on Iraq are as nothing compared to the errors and omissions during the whole Cold War regarding the communist bloc. We knew practically nothing. Or at least, if we did know anything it never seemed to influence either foreign policy or public opinion. The only exception I can think of was the Cuban missile crisis, when U- 2 spy-planes got photographic evidence.

And this:

6. Intelligence? Why did we need intelligence? Was it a closely guarded secret that Saddam was a dictator, a madman, a hater of America, near to the heart of terrorism? Was it unknown that Saddam had invaded Kuwait? Was it unknown that Saddam had tried to murder George W. Bush's father? Weren't we already constantly running minor sorties in Iraq--dozens of them--because Saddam kept violating the "no fly-zone" and otherwise breaking the terms imposed by our victory in the Gulf War? Did it require special espionage to uncover a possibility that Saddam would cooperate with bin Laden, as rival Mafia families do? And wasn't it on television that bin Laden issued an official endorsement of Saddam against America?

Three thousand Americans died in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of that, the only intelligent question was: which lousy Middle East pesthole-dictatorship are we going to crush first? Not: was or was not the threat from this particular statist sewer "imminent" or only "growing"?

Read the whole thing. You might like his conclusion, too, especially if you remember 1979.

Celebrate Capitalism

International Capitalism Day is moving, this year, from the first Sunday in December to the first Sunday in June.

Computers, software, and high-speed internet access. Satellite TV. Antibiotics and medical devices. Contact lenses. Plastics. Mutual funds. Cell phones. Comfort, warmth, and food--think of all the reasons you have for celebrating capitalism--it shouldn't take long.

If you're interested in getting together for the El Paso celebration on Sunday, June 6, contact me here.

"Mom, where did the Blues Brothers come from?"

Memphis.

Yeah, I know the movie was set in Chicago, and they've got the accents to prove it. But the music was pure Memphis, and Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn even appeared in (and played in) the movie.

All of which is by way of saying that I read in Dustbury that Stax Records co-founder Estelle Axton has died.

And Stax, in the Sixties and early Seventies, was the most serious rival to Motown in the creation of that marvelous music known as Soul. The Stax house band, Booker T. [Jones] and the MGs [Memphis Group], backed up Sam and Dave, Rufus (and daughter Carla) Thomas, and scored hits on their own; sister label Volt was the home of Otis Redding.

Read the whole thing.

Oh god...

One is tempted to sigh, "There they go again." The headline to Kathy Gilsinian's Columbia Spectator story reads, "Does God Exist? Yes, Mathematician Says." The mathematician in question, Dr. William Hatcher, spoke at Columbia's Warren Hall, is an adherent of the Baha'i faith, and doesn't strike me as all that rational.

Mind you, I wasn't there to hear Dr. Hatcher speak, so I'm relying on Gilsinian's report. But it's not promising.

First, we're told that "Hatcher began his discussion with an introduction to Aristotlean [sic], or attributional, logic and its shortcomings."

Aristotle purported to have proven the existence of God, but he did so based on a kind of logic that deals with properties of objects, an approach, he argued, that's less than satisfying considering that God's attributes cannot be perceived....In relational logic, we want to know how the object relates to other objects. It turns out that the relational approach often yields more useful information [than Aristotlean [sic] attributional logic]."

Well, we saw that coming, didn't we? Logic as recognized by Aristotle has "shortcomings." In particular, it seems, that inconvenient bit about A is A. Can't have that. Nice sidestep, too, about how "God's attributes cannot be perceived." What, then, are we trying to "relate?" What, then, is to be perceived about God at all?

Gilsinian continues:

The proof itself rests on four principles, the first of which is the assertion that something exists. Even if the world is an illusion, he pointed out, an illusory self, contemplating an illusory universe, is still something that exists.

(What is illusory is that anything is being discussed here.)

Further, he said, everything that exists does so because of some cause, and the "principle of sufficient reason" states that every phenomenon is either caused by something external or caused by itself, but never both. "Everything that exists has to have a reason for existing," he said.

Working from these principles, Hatcher first defined what he called "the minimum criteria for Godhood," and then set about trying to prove the existence of a phenomenon to fit those criteria. God, he said, must exist and be unique, and must be self-caused as well as being the cause of everything else. "Every existing phenomenon is the end effect of a causal chain of possibly infinite length, starting with God," he said.

He then delved into Avicenna's discussion of the part-whole relationship. "All known physical phenomena are composites, except possibly the elementary particles of quantum mechanics," he stated. Thus, if A is a component of B, then B is composite, and furthermore a composite cannot be a cause of one of its components, because it could not exist without all its components in place.

From these definitions, he said, one can infer that the universe is a composite of all phenomena. He inferred that the universe itself, then, cannot bring any of its own components into being, as it could not have existed before the existence of the components.

Then, the universe could similarly not be self-caused, since it is caused by the aggregation of its components, and so there must be some object, G, that causes the universe but is not the universe itself. G must then be universal because it is a cause, directly or indirectly, of every component in the universe.

He concluded that G is the unique uncaused phenomenon, because, as the cause of everything, it can't be caused by something else.

My god. Can we say "fallacy of composition?" "Begging the question?" And this is simpy egregious linguistic sleight-of-hand: "the universe is a composite of all phenomena (my emphasis)," but "God is not part of the universe itself."

This is a mathematician reasoning? No wonder so many kids hate math in school.

Here's Gilsinian's final paragraph:

David Kline, CC '07, said he was impressed, even though he felt that the logical proof of God, far from justifying faith, only requires a different kind of faith. But, with that faith in reason so characteristic of Columbia students, he said he appreciated that the talk was "a purely logical representation of the existence of God and not the meaning of God."

"Faith in reason." We have a long, long way to go.

Role Reversals: Objectivist Second Thoughts

Shawn Klein's February 15 post to The Ayn Rand Meta-Blog contained a real surprise: apparently Lindsay Perigo will be speaking at the TOC Summer Seminar this year. Perigo's criticized The Objectivist Center for years, mostly for being lukewarm or tepid in their defense of values and Objectivism. He even founded his own Objectivist activities (see here and here) because of what he viewed as the "passion without reason" at The Ayn Rand Institute and the "reason without passion" over at The Objectivist Center.

So what's he thinking now? I have no idea. But given his outspoken criticisms of the group, I think he should probably offer some explanation. Anyway, Lindsay is a skilled writer and speaker, and whatever he's presenting will probably be very good.

Meanwhile, Diana Mertz Hsieh, long a defender of The Objectivist Center and a presenter at their events, has dropped a bomb of her own: she's done with them. On the practical side, she employed the word "tepid (shades of Lindsay Perigo!)," and criticized a number of TOC-published pieces, and on the philosophical side, she presents a bit of her argument:

My survey of these and other articles showed me that TOC's vision of and approach to Objectivism is fundamentally at odds with mine. Although I've never been directly involved with TOC's cultural activism, my very public involvement with and support of TOC over the years connects me to it, much to my all-too-frequent embarrassment and dismay.

In order to ferret out any underlying philosophical causes of these systemic problems at TOC, I also re-read the founding document of TOC, David Kelley's Truth and Toleration, for the first time in 10 years. I was surprised to find myself in strong disagreement with critical elements of the arguments on almost every issue: moral judgment, tolerance, sanction, and Objectivism as an open system. None of my disagreements are minor. All seem to bear upon TOC's disturbing trajectory over the years. But I regard the last, that Objectivism is an "open system," as the most widely misunderstood, deeply flawed, and practically dangerous of the lot -- and as the basic source of my own unhappiness at TOC.

She promises a more detailed explanation soon. I look forward to reading it.

Was it a Chinese curse, or an Irish one: "May you live in interesting times?"

[Disclaimer: I've done writing and editing work for some of Lindsay Perigo's projects; I read and link to Diana Hsieh's blog and she links to this one.]

Capitalism the practical, moral cure for education system failures

In an op-ed entitled "Capitalism best cure for dismal education system," Jonathan Hoenig writes in the Chicago Sun-Times:

The vast majority of children in the United States attend public schools, and in a methodic and disciplined fashion, the authors make a comprehensive case why the free market can better educate more students at a lower cost.

The authors begin by describing the horrible condition of public education, which, make no mistake, is a complete mess nationwide. Although government schools maintain a monopoly on public funds, they've failed miserably by almost every conceivable benchmark.

Even more depressing is that even as results have dropped, the size and cost of the government school bureaucracy has soared.

The authors to whom he refers are Herbert J. Walberg and Joseph L. Bast, authors of the new Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools (Hoover Press, 362 pages, $15). But they offer a solution:

The solution is capitalism, the same incredible force of productive change that brought civilization out of the Dark Ages and propelled this country to the highest standard of living, for rich and poor alike, in all of human history.

The authors' thesis, built on the groundwork laid by the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman, is that just as the free market has created unparalleled innovation in medicine, agriculture and communication, so could it vastly improve education. The ability for parents to choose their schools, and for schools to compete for their attendance, would raise standards and lower cost, just as it has in every other area of our lives.

Walberg and Bast devote a good deal of space to refuting common misconceptions and criticisms of capitalism, and describe how a free market in education might work. But they go beyond that, according to Hoenig, in providing a perspective for their thesis:

Moreover, in the tradition of economist Ludwig von Mises and philosopher Ayn Rand, they ground their arguments in moral as well as practical terms. Capitalism isn't simply the most efficient social system ever devised, but the most just as well.

(Cross-posted to The Ayn Rand Meta-Blog)

Craig is always right...

I told you to read Vin Suprynowicz. I told you, I told you, I told you.

Read.

News and Updates

I've cleared a number of pending blogprojects recently. The other day, for example, I mentioned Charles at dustbury--now he resides on my blogroll (hope he prefers it to Oklahoma!). Megan McArdle--the "Jane Galt" of Asymmetrical Information--was one of my early blogreading favorites, and has now, finally, been added; and my admiration for Wendy McElroy goes all the way back to the mid-1970s, when I can only imagine she must have been a child prodigy. They've both been added, too.

SpinSanity and Eden at Just One Bite both offer reality checks. They do, er, differ.

Rachel Lucas is gone, sadly. She remarked a few months back that her blog had begun to really suck and that everyone knew it. Well, Rachel, I never "knew" that. But she seems to be inactive and deliberately so, so I've removed her. Should she return to blogging--and I hope she does--she'll probably return to my blogroll.

I read the columns and articles at Lew Rockwell's site six days a week and I always learn something. I learned this lesson the hard way almost twenty-five years ago, but then know-it-alls (among which I must count myself) have to learn everything the hard way: there are intelligent, thoughtful conservatives and Christians out there. Libertarians and Objectivists, take note.

The Texas Powerlifting Scene is what it is, and what it is is good. Spend some time there, check out how the strength sports differ. They're all appealing for one reason or another. Let me know, too, which side you take on the "raw" issue, or if you think powerlifting should be an Olympic event.

The Humor section is new as of tonight. Books, blogs, links, articles, sound files, organizations, comedians, writers, television shows...lots of stuff there, all of it good, much of it great. Check it out. Check it all out: you'll savor the laughs.

And I realize that, as with anything else in blogging, my Humor section is a permanent work-in-progress. For one thing, I'd thought earlier to include Shakespeare. After all, he gaves us A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Comedy of Errors--and in Sir John Falstaff, he created one of the two or three greatest comic figures in all English literature. Greatest, in this sense, means, simply, funniest. But I didn't, simply because I forgot. Jackie Gleason isn't represented (shame on me), and neither is Woody Allen. There is no Chaucer, he of the Miller, not to mention the Wife of Bath. What was I smoking?

Soon-to-be-introduced Anger of Compassion features include a section on cryptic crosswords, the British version of that verbal obsession; a section devoted to and delving into mnemonics; a Reason and Capitalism Quote of the Day; and The Punditrail ^TM. That last is exactly what it sounds like...

And, I promise, more on beer. Permanently.

Finally, I just discovered tonight that I'm blogrolled by Diana Mertz Hsieh at NoodleFood. I'm a Conchiglie Blog, sandwiched alphabetically between two Anger of Compassion-blogrolled efforts, Radley Balko's The Agitator and Megan McArdle's Asymmetrical Information. Woo hoo!

Classical Music: Where the Babes Are

Well, here you go: I guess this is why a live performance is superior to a recording.

Or this.

And definitely this.

We all have our tastes, but I just can't understand, for example, why Aristotle Onassis left Maria Callas for Jackie Kennedy. I just don't. And Britney Spears, you're just outclassed.

Yum.

I'm not a surveyor, either :-(

Regarding the post below, either I'm no HTML expert or the world is just a whole lot larger than I thought...

Yes, I'm the Wanderer...

Hat tip to Laura Antoniou for this one (Sasha Castel has posted her wanderings also). First we have the US states I've visited:

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

And then we have the other countries I've been to:

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Okay, I should get out more.

UPDATE: Ah, the influence of The Anger of Compassion is felt everywhere! Not five hours--not even five hours, people--after I post an online map of my travels, the lovely, intelligent, and tasteful Eden at Just One Bite declares, "Fuck principles," abandons her long-held "no memes" policy, and posts her own trotting around.

Her US map looks a lot like my own. Perhaps we're cosmically compatible....Oh yes...yes, yesss, preciousss...

Ayn Rand Scholar Interviewed

Speaking (the post below) of interviews: a few Thursdays ago I interviewed Professor Mimi Reisel Gladstein in her office at the Theater Arts department of the University of Texas at El Paso. She was quite gracious, and her remarks were as thoughtful as you'd expect those of a Steinbeck-Singer-Hemingway-Rand scholar to be. It was fun.

Well, I'm no audio engineer, so the sound is awful and transcribing the interview is taking some time. The Atlasphere has expressed an interest, so I'll offer it to them when I'm finished.

Restored Prodos Interviews

I discovered the Prodos.com interviews (and Prodos himself) about four years ago, when I was living in Egypt and rediscovering the ideas of Ayn Rand and the internet was damn near my only contact with the real world.

And yes, for a number of reasons, Egypt is quite apart from the "real world."

Anyway, Prodos recently posted some previously lost or mislaid interviews from the show, including those with Lindsay Perigo and with Sean Bowring and the late Mike Mentzer.

Mentzer was a professional bodybuilder and personal trainer who applied the ideas of Objectivism to his chosen fields. Perigo is a former New Zealand broadcast professional who founded the political party LibertariaNZ, the print journal The Free Radical, and the online SoloHQ.

Good stuff in both interviews. You'll thank me. Enjoy.

More power!

Tool on over to The Atlasphere for my latest column.

Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, and...Chaz?

Yes, Chaz. Chaz at Dustbury.com, that is, and I should have added him to my blogroll long before this. But here's a taste for you:

Memo to an unnamed official

Had it been so damned important, do you really think they'd have put you in charge of it?

Just asking.