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I’m In an Infinitely Reproducible New York State of Mind

By on December 18, 2009 2

Image removed under threat of state violence

The papers for the Molinari Society’s upcoming IP symposium at the APA are now online. (For those planning to attend, I’ll announce the session location here as soon as I can wrest the information from the APA’s bony fingers at registration.)

I notice that the Ayn Rand Society session at the APA is also devoted to intellectual property. So hours of libertarian IP debate await us in New York! (Well, using “us” loosely; something else I’m committed to conflicts with the Randian meeting, so I will have to miss it. But, y’know, them us.)

Addendum, 9-30-2010:

Ironically, this very post announcing our panel opposing the form of censorship known as “copyright” has today been victimsed by the form of censorship known as “copyright.”

War Games Eagle

By on December 15, 2009 5

I plan to stay away from campus tomorrow morning, since it sounds like I wouldn’t be able to get into my office anyway:

Auburn University will have an “active shooter” emergency preparedness training exercise the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 16, so university personnel and local first-responders can practice dealing with a campus emergency or disaster. Sultans of SWATPerimeters will be set up around the area of the Student Center and Haley Center for a drill that will include role playing and emergency response by public safety agencies. “We’ll have agencies from across the Auburn area participating in the drill,” said Chance Corbett, associate director of Auburn University’s Department of Public Safety and Security/Emergency Management. “We need to ensure that the university and public safety agencies are prepared and ready to respond to an emergency or disaster on campus.” Participating agencies will include Auburn University, Auburn Police Division, Auburn Fire Department, Lee County Emergency Management Agency, Auburn University Medical Clinic and East Alabama Emergency Medical Services. In addition, a joint information center will be activated on campus that will allow the university’s Office of Communications and Marketing to test its effectiveness in gathering and disseminating information. “In the event of a large incident or an event that attracts national media attention, our department must be prepared to provide the public with timely, accurate information,” said Mike Clardy, director of communications. University officials selected Dec. 16 for the exercise because classes will have ended for the fall semester and activity on campus will be scarce. The exercise is set to begin at 7:45 a.m. and should last until about noon.

I wonder whether the deadline for faculty to submit grades will be extended by an extra half-day to make up for the half-day that we won’t be able to have access to our Haley Center offices? (Okay, I don’t actually wonder that.)

Libertariański Feminizm!

By on November 30, 2009 35

I just received in the mail, kindly sent to me by Włodzimierz Gogłoza, a Polish libertarian magazine called MindFuck (pronounced, I assume, “Minndfootsk”) that includes translations into Polish of the libertarian feminist piece I wrote with Charles, Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved?, as well as my blog post Against Anarchist Apartheid.

Polish flag with anarchy symbol

The magazine’s other articles, likewise all in Polish, are as follows (insofar as I’ve guessed/deciphered correctly); I’ve linked to the English versions: David Andrade’s What Is Anarchy?; Voltairine de Cleyre and Rachelle Yarros’s The Individualist and the Communist; Wendy McElroy’s American Anarchism; Murray Rothbard’s Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty and The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine; Bryan Caplan’s Anarcho-Statists of Spain; and three pieces I couldn’t find English versions of: an unsigned editorial on horror movies (I think), another on religious parodies (I think), and a piece by Gogłoza himself on Spencerian anarchist Wordsworth Donisthorpe.

There were also interviews with our own Kevin Carson, with Fred Woodworth of The Match!, with Tom Hazelmyer of Amphetamine Reptile, with “feminist pornographer” Erika Lust, and with anarchist musician Daniel Carter; the latter interview is the only one I believe I’ve identified an English version of, here.

So it’s safe to say that this is the sort of periodical I would read, if I could read Polish.

Random Query

By on November 28, 2009 9

When I was in 7th grade, we used a flashy, image-rich math textbook that made such efforts to be kid-friendly that it was almost shameful; I particularly remember a section featuring a battle between “King Strong” and “Gonzilla.” Does this ring a bell with anyone?

JLS  Symposium on Atlas Shrugged  Finally Available

By on November 27, 2009 16
Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

The last issue of Journal of Libertarian Studies – last as in most recent (it remains to be seen whether it’s the last absolutely, as there might be at least one more issue) – was devoted inter alia to a symposium on the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged, with new contributions by Barbara Branden, Geoff Plauché, and Jennifer Baker, and two previously unpublished pieces by Murray Rothbard – one an amazingly revealing fan letter to Rand, and one a defense of Rand’s aesthetic theory. (The rest of the issue is interesting too, including a dandy piece by Bob Higgs on anarchism. For further details, see the summaries here and here.)

I’m particularly proud of that issue – but until recently, it wasn’t available online yet. Now it is. Gaudete igitur.

It looks to me as though hard copies of that issue (21.4) are available for sale also, but I haven’t tested whether that’s true.

Name of the Game

By on November 19, 2009 8
Paragon Park's Bermuda Triangle

Paragon Park's Bermuda Triangle

Back in the mid-80s – and specifically, IIRC, the summers of ’84 and ’85 – I worked at a now-defunct amusement park in Hull, Massachusetts, called Paragon Park (which proudly advertised itself as featuring “the world’s oldest all-wooden rollercoaster,” like that was a good thing). And in the park’s arcade area, hidden amongst the pinball machines, was the most amazing video game I’d ever seen.

I don’t remember what the game was called, but it featured a race among flying cars zooming along a highway that twisted and curved through outer space (so one had to dodge random asteroids and so on). This game not only had far more sophisticated and realistic digital imagery than anything I’d seen before – it also had far more sophisticated and realistic digital imagery than anything I would see for years after that, while relatively unfancy-looking games like Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Snake continued to dominate the market.

Eventually, of course the look of my mystery game became standard throughout the industry, and its quality has long since been surpassed. Still, for a long time that game was, in my experience at least, a solitary advanced scout for the wave of the future, without contemporary parallel or, apparently, contemporary fame. So my question is: do any of my readers have any idea what this game could have been?

Not having a picture of the game, I offer a picture of my favourite ride (both to ride and to operate) at Paragon Park – the Bermuda Triangle.

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