Month: October 2002
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On Voting..
Today’s blog comes from my post on the ASC forum Voting by definition is a process that involves forcing your will on others. Some actions of government (or its agents) are clearly coercive in that they limit your liberty directly, while others don’t involve initiating force, but rather define just what the initiation of force…
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Marxism and Quantum Physics
I can’t believe I haven’t head about this, but apparently, in 1996, Alan Sokal, a physicist at NYU, wrote an article titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“, in which he parodied cultural studies, postmodernism, and so on, writing a paper full of gibberish using dozens of Marxist, Socialist and other…
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Scientists Shake Hands over Internet: Porn Industry Interested
As this Reuters story reports, scientists are developing a way to “recreate the sense of touch” over the Internet. Says Reuters: “Pushing on the pen sends data representing forces through the Internet that can be interpreted by a phantom and therefore felt on the other end,” said Mel Slater, Professor of Computer Science at University…
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Economic Freedom and Prosperity
For my econometrics class, I am comparing the relationship between economic freedom and prosperity, and I just got my first regression results for 2001 for 155 nations. The results are very preliminary, but the evidence is clear: there is an extremely high correlation between economic freedom and prosperity, explaining over 73% of the variation in…
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UFO-Mania!
Reports MSNBC: “Calls for the U.S. government to be more forthcoming on what it knows about UFOs increased following the release of the poll results. That RoperASW study, sponsored by the SCI FI Channel, shows that 72% of Americans believe the government is not telling the public everything it knows about UFO activity.” I’m inclined…
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Iraq kicks out foreign journalists…
From MSNBC: “The Iraqi government is upset about foreign reporting of an anti-government demonstration outside the Iraqi Information Ministry in Baghdad earlier this week, said Eason Jordan, CNN president of newsgathering.”Demonstrations??? But I thought the vote was 100% Mr Hussein? Why would anyone want to protest?? Oh well, the’ve probably been shot by the time…
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Touchstone
I came across this line in the Touchstone, Texas A&M’s local liberal loony paper:“Greedy capitalists will not likely relinquish their firm grip on the currency. The future therefore looks bleak.”I appreciate the compliment, but there is a small error in this logic: the government is actually in control of the currency, not “greedy capitalists.” The…
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Bush
In response to the ridiculous claims by Democrats that Bush in effect pushing seniors of a cliff by “privatizing” social security, the RNC has released an even more ridiculous cartoon about Bush “saving” social security, as if this Ponzi scheme of the ages can (or should) be saved: The Republicans also reassure us that Bush’s…
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Ideas Matter!
Dante said in the Divine Comedy that “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis.” For those of us who understand the dangers of collectivism and its growth in America during the 20th century and especially now, the time of great moral crisis is upon…
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Saddam gets 100% of the vote!
In other Axis news, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein won re-election for another six years by – get this – 100%. No, not 99.7% like last time, a full 11,445,638 to ZERO vote of the ENTIRE ELECTORATE. Never mind that there are active Kurdish rebel movements in the country, and many remote areas are not accessible…