Manufacturing Outrage

This outrage about AIG's bonuses seems so false to me. It looks to be manufactured--including the ACORN-run bus tour of AIG executives' homes.

I have not heard outrage from individuals, excepting the random letter to the editor. The outrage has been from Congress, from our president and the media.

Their goal is to attempt to create a groundswell of hatred for the wealthy and therefore, to further Barack Obama's goal of assuming government control of the economy. I hope people aren't falling for this; they need to understand that when you buy a company, you also buy the contractual obligations. If the company is to succeed, they need to pay their top people a competitive wage.

Why Objectivism Is Not Conservatism

I just had the disgust to cast my eyes on this smear job in National Review.

The religious right will always take issue with Rand's atheism. She exposes the religious right for what they are: anti-intellectuals who believe in capitalism with no basis, who believe that force is OK when it is for "the good" or to enforce biblical principles.

Ayn Rand and her philosophy are consistent; reason and faith are opposites, so one cannot apply reason to politics while denying it metaphysically and ethically.

Ayn Rand is NOT Nostradamus

Several of the talk radio hosts were talking today about this op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal: "'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years". I'm pleased that Atlas Shrugged is getting publicity still...but the non-educated are treating Ayn Rand as if she were some seer into the future, and they are making guesses as to how she could have possibly predicted what is happening right now.

There is no mysticism involved. Rather, Atlas Shrugged is not a novel about the government being evil or capitalism being the proper social system. It addresses those things, but there is much more to this novel than that. Ayn Rand was a genius, because she recognized how philosophy influences everything else in life. Her characters are expressions of philosophical ideas, from Lee Hunsacker's lament over his typewriter sabotaging his chances of writing his book (Marxism: the tools of production determine your thinking), to the party guest blandly saying "money is the root of all evil" (altruism/belief in self-sacrifice), to Cuffy Meigs carrying a gun and a rabbit's foot (faith and its corrollary, force).

If we had fought those bad ideas as we recognized them, we wouldn't be in the state we are today. The lesson from Atlas Shrugged should not be "Wow, she was right!", but "Wow, we need to defeat bad ideas or else things will get worse."

Objectivism and Usability

I've been thinking a lot about the intersection of the Objectivist philosophy and usability/user interface design. Just a few notes for now--I'm going to flesh out these ideas much more in weeks to come.

Gestalt psychology: Horrible psychological nonsense brought to you courtesy of Immanuel Kant and friends. Deterministic in nature. However, what the researchers found was valid. But I think this can be explained by Crow Epistemology.

Mental models: This is akin to psycho-epistemology. Will dig into this further.

I think I may start a new blog on the subject.

Humor: What is Funny?

Over at the Rule of Reason blog, a discussion erupted over whether His Girl Friday is funny, and was followed up by a post about humor.

I've personally found many Objectivists to be humorless. Maybe that's not exactly it; rather, I've found that they don't laugh easily at the unimportant.

I've long thought that humor is the relaxation of the intelligent mind. Wordplay in particular is a pleasant way to exercise your brain without any purpose other than to make people laugh. Interestingly, I've found that the funniest quips are those that don't get an immediate laugh, but require a fraction of a second to get the laugh. That slight pause means that others are digesting the bit of humor--using those brains to put it together.

In my opinion, many things can be funny. Sometimes it's the absurd, sometimes it's the clever. Sometimes it's even the crude, if handled properly. I'm proud to say that everyone I consider a friend has a very keen sense of humor.

And yes, I'm thankful for that.

Taking Pleasure in the Little Things

I'm pleased to report that a) I did not lose my job and b) little Penn started lifting his leg when he pees.

I've been busy of late focusing on getting religion out of politics via some letters to the editor and writing to my congressmen, etc. I was extremely angry about the outcome of Prop 8 in California. Hearing about the immense effort put forth by a good friend made it personal, and therefore even more angering. Stinking Christians.

The fact that the federal government has decided to play Santa Claus with my money hasn't helped either.

So I'm taking a deep breath and trying to enjoy the little things. These dogs sure do help.

Fresh off the joy of Penn's graduation to doghood, I was in the kitchen preparing a dinner of hot sausage, peppers and onions in sauce over fried polenta. The dogs wanted to go out quite badly, so I let them out into the very wet and muddy backyard. In the meantime, I was chopping the green peppers, and had only gotten as far as quartering them.

When the dogs came back in, they were covered in mud from some playing and tussling outside. I dried them off with the towel we keep by the door for that purpose, and before I was done with Z, I saw Penn trot off to the kitchen. In spite of yelling "NO!", I heard the inevitable crunch, and Penn trotted by again, mouth slightly open so as not to eat the pepper until he was sure it was something worth eating. Somehow Z ultimately came up with the pepper and quickly scarfed it down.

The moral of this story is that in spite of the horrors of the outside world, pets can make you laugh even when you're about ready to pack it all in. I can never thank them enough.

Why I'm Abstaining Tomorrow

Not completely, as I plan to vote in local races. But I am refusing to vote for president, and I plan to follow up my actions with plenty of letters to the editor and emails to relevant people explaining what I am explaining here.

As many of my friends, family and co-workers know, I am a staunch defender of laissez-faire capitalism, not the sort of mixed economy that resulted in the recent economic mess. As an objectivist, I defend capitalism not for practical reasons, but because it is, as Ayn Rand stated, the only system consistent with individual rights. I say to the government: Get out. Out of my life.

But here's the rub. I want it to get out of all of my life, not just the economic side. For many years, I supported the Republican party because I thought they defended my economic rights and I never really took seriously their babbling about religion.

This has changed drastically over the last few years. They actually take it seriously. They think this country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles (c'mon, the freakin' Dark Ages were the result of Judeo-Christian principles). They want to enact legislation that legislates their beliefs. Does a zygote have a soul? Well yeah, a fertilized egg has a soul. Therefore, a poor 16-year-old girl who had unprotected sex or whose boyfriend's condom broke will have her life either ended by being forced to keep the child or, at minimum, put on hold for nine months.

Did the Bible declare homosexuality immoral? Sure, so consenting individuals who want to make their romantic choices concrete in the act of marriage will not be allowed to do so.

Rights be damned, if they conflict with the word of God.

I'm done with them. Their worldview is psychotic, even aside from the concrete examples of it. People completely out of touch with reality should not run this country or even have any say in what goes on in it.

I am not, however, talking about becoming a hardcore Democrat (see laissez-faire capitalism above). I can only hope this country can survive the next four years and that the Republican party will either dissolve completely or they will get the same message I hope to send from hundreds or thousands of people who are just as dissaffected as I am.