By Roderick on August 26, 2010
The current (Aug. 30) New Yorker has an exposé (sort of) on the Koch brothers. As you’d expect from such a piece, it largely criticises the Kochs for their virtues while giving them a pass for their sins; but anyway, libertarians will find it interesting even though it mostly misses the point.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Conflation Debate, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian |
By Roderick on August 25, 2010
Owing to complex IP issues, the 1996 Doctor Who tv-movie – featuring the one and only tv appearance of the 8th Doctor – has long been unavailable here in Region 1. (Well, I say unavailable … of course there are region-free bootleg copies of the Region 2 disk floating around, but their picture quality is not great.) But it looks like the legal obstacles to a Region 1 dvd are finally being cleared away.
The tv-movie, a failed pilot for the first attempt at a Who revival, isn’t as good as the revived series that would eventually succeed a decade later; for one thing, it’s too oriented (or orientated, as our transoceanic cousins would say) toward American audiences to feel quite authentic. (The Master with an American accent? Really? It makes me tremble for Torchwood.) Still, this was the first time that Who was presented with modern production values and a decent sfx budget, and it serves as an interesting bridge between the classic show and the new one.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged IP, Science Fiction |
By Roderick on August 24, 2010
Ludwig Boltzmann
Three more blasts from the past (all a bit more recent than my blast from Oscarville):
First, two papers I wrote for a science course in college: “The Temptation of Ludwig Boltzmann” (a short sf story exploring the implications of Boltzmannian probability theory – though Amazon thinks it’s something else) and “Evolution: Chance or Teleology?” (an essay on the spontaneous growth of physical order).
Next, a blast from my statist past: “Financing the Non-Coercive State,” an essay I wrote in (though not for) grad school, in which I decisively refute free-market anarchism!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Anarchy, Antiquity, Ethics, Jove's Witnesses, Juvenilia, Left-Libertarian, Online Texts, Personal, Praxeology, Science Fact, Science Fiction, Unethical Philosophy |
By Roderick on August 23, 2010
The next time you hear someone say, “It’s disrespectful to the victims of 9/11 to build near Ground Zero a monument to the religious ideas that motivated their murder,” tell them: “Darn right, we shouldn’t have any mosques or churches or synagogues in the area – it’s an insult to those victims of monotheist ideology.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Jove's Witnesses, Left-Libertarian, Terror |
By Roderick on August 23, 2010
Ron Paul vs. Rand Paul on the non-Ground-Zero non-mosque.
How come whenever Rand Paul deviates from Ron Paul it’s always in the wrong direction?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Jove's Witnesses, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian, Terror |
By Roderick on August 23, 2010
Some C4SS-related items worth checking out: [Note that this does not mean that other C4SS-related items not listed here are not worth checking out!]
Please support the Center’s work if you can. $5 here and $10 there can be a lifesaver.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Anarchy, Left-Libertarian, Molinari/C4SS, Online Texts, Personal |
By Roderick on August 23, 2010
I know some of my readers regard even idle speculation as spoilerrific, so …
SPOILER WARNING:
Neil Gaiman is writing an episode for next season’s Doctor Who. (Yay!)
He’s had to cut over ten pages out of it. (Boo!)
He’s posted online a bit of dialogue that was cut. (Yay!)
Gaiman says this is spoiler-free, since it “tells you absolutely nothing about the story except that it now doesn’t have a scene with a bowl of food in it.” But of course that’s not quite true. We can infer, at least, that there are non-humanoid aliens in the story (since Amy would be unlikely to exclude humanoid aliens from the category of “people”), and that they are on sufficiently good terms with our protagonists to offer them food. (Of course prisoners get fed, so that doesn’t tell us all that much. The reference to “background radiation” makes me think of Daleks, but I can’t imagine Dalek cuisine being yummy even by Gallifreyan standards, and besides I somehow don’t expect a Dalek episode from Gaiman.)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Science Fiction |
By Roderick on August 20, 2010
Exchange last night in the elevator:
MY INTERLOCUTOR: What’s your field of study?
ME: Philosophy.
MY INTERLOCUTOR: Does that study, like, rocks and stuff?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Lapsus Linguae |
By Roderick on August 19, 2010
Al-Qaeda seeks to combat the idea that people of different religions can live harmoniously together in the same society. The anti-mosqueteers are certainly doing their best to combat this idea as well.
Al-Qaeda seeks to subordinate private property rights to religious law. This is exactly what the anti-mosqueteers do when they declare other people’s property “sacred ground” and propose on this basis to interfere with their peaceful use of it.
Al-Qaeda seeks to position itself as the representative of the entire Muslim community. The whole anti-mosqueteer position makes sense only on the assumption that they support al-Qaeda’s claim on this point – since otherwise banning an Islamic cultural center because the 9/11 highjackers were Muslim would be no more salient than banning a YMCA because the highjackers were male. (“A young woman said to me: ‘I have had the most horrible experiences with furriers; they robbed me, they burned the fur I entrusted to them. Well, they were all Jews.’ But why did she choose to hate Jews rather than furriers?” – Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew.)
Al-Qaeda employs a double standard, condemning its enemies for killing innocents but excusing its own similar actions. This approach too gets its stamp of approval from the anti-mosqueteers, who express far more concern about what might be built near the site of the 9/11 bombings than about what might be built near the sites of American bombings of Muslims.
Al-Qaeda seeks to intimidate its opponents into appeasing its irrational demands. What are the anti-mosqueteers doing if not endorsing this tactic when they suggest that the Islamic Center should cave in and “compromise” out of concern for the anti-mosqueteeers’ “feelings,” regardless of the merits of those feelings? (Likewise, why couldn’t southern blacks compromise with the KKK? Sure, maybe legally the blacks were in the right, but the KKK’s bigoted feelings were strong and sincere and deserved respect, no?)
I’m not saying that the anti-mosqueteers are literally in the pay of al-Qaeda. But they might as well be.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Antiracism, Jove's Witnesses, Left-Libertarian |
By Roderick on August 18, 2010
I don’t get it. If Laura Schlessinger says “I’m Laura Schlessinger,” she gets no flak for it; everyone takes it in stride. But if I say the very same thing, people act like I’ve uttered some huge falsehood. Why the double standard?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Antiracism, Lapsus Linguae, Left-Libertarian |
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