A Thought on Self-Sacrifice

As most of my readers know, I sometimes like to watch nature shows. Over the years I have noticed that there is one practice that is not found in the minds or behaviors of any living organism except man, the practice of self-sacrifice. If you look at single-celled creatures you will never see say an amoeba sacrifice itself for the sake of a paramecium or even another amoeba. It just doesn't happen. Over in the plant world it's the same way. You'll never see a Rose bush sacrificing itself for a Petunia or giving up its thorns so some needy animal can eat it. Nor will you see an Oak tree sacrificing itself for an Elm or any other being.

More of the same can be seen in the animal world. A worm does not sacrifice itself to a bird or to anything else. Cats don't sacrifice themselves to dogs or vice-versa. And so it goes throughout the realms of all livings things. There is a complete absence of self-sacrificial behavior. It's rather obvious that nature did not evolve such a behavior in any of its organisms precisely because that behavior is antithetical to the organism's survival. It is so for man as well.

If you look closely at the behaviors of all of these organisms you will readily see that every action they take is a self-interested action, that is, an action determined by their natures to sustain and/or enhance the organisms' lives. It follows then, that man, being an organism too, must have a specific nature which can guide his actions in a similiar self-interested way. It was Aristotle who correctly identified man as the rational animal but it was Ayn Rand who clarified what that implied and identified a self-interested behavior (moral code) proper to a rational animal, rational self-interest, i.e. a non-sacrificial way of life.

But man is unlike the animals in that he must choose his behavior. If man can choose to adopt such a non-sacrificial code, he too will become at peace with his nature. No living organism choses to act against its nature. Only man has that ability and he has spent most of his history doing so with self-sacrifice. There is a non-sacrificial way of life proper to man's nature, rational self-interest, and man needs to explore it now.

Shark Week Special, Discovery Channel

I have been asked to post a plug about a Discovery Channel special. None of the links provided work so I'll just post this short message for the benefit of my nature loving readers.

SHARK WEEK will celebrate its 20th Anniversary on Discovery Channel this summer with top-rated shark programs from the past – including eight all-new specials - filling the network’s entire weekly schedule from 9AM to 3AM (ET/PT) between Sunday, July 29 and Saturday, August 4.

Obesity Magic Update

On Thursday 7/26/07 I posted on a study of obesity magic that proclaimed obesity was contagious from one person to another. I thought that some media probably would run with it but most wouldn't. Wrongo. I now find via Junksfoodcience.com that the majority of media are embracing and extolling it along with other intellectuals. (hat tip Junkscience.com.) I highly recommend reading the whole article. Host Sandy Szwarc reports:

Within hours of the press releases, a massive, well-orchestrated marketing campaign was off and running. By dinnertime yesterday, Google noted 300 nearly identical articles had been published about it and there were 500 by this morning. Television and radio reporters have been gushing over it, with MSNBC reporting that having a fat friend can make you fat and be downright dangerous for your health.

I do agree with Ms. Szwarc that this study is a prescription for a campaign of moral and social condemnation against people who are overweight. But why would the media rush en mass to endorse the spread of such obvious scientific voodoo?

In her essay "An Untitled Letter" in the book "Philosophy: Who Needs It" Ayn Rand was speaking of trial balloons attacking the concept justice when she wrote:

"It is a conspiracy, not of men, but of basic premises--and the power directing it is logic: if, at the desperate stage of a losing battle, some men point to a road logically necessitated by their basic premises, those who share the premises will rush to follow." (p-103)

I think this principle is at work regarding this study's popularity as well. The news media obviously shares at least some of the principles of this study like for example, the appeal to collectivism, the notion that the individual has no merit or value outside of some collective to which he can be assigned; the desire to dispense with causality by blatantly regarding associations and correlations as causal connections with no need to identify a causal mechanism. The attempt to destroy causality allows junk scientists to substitute anything they want for a causal connection and most often this is nothing more than their own biases and feelings.

Such scientists like those who wrote this study (and their supporters in the media) are obediently following the philosophic ideas of Immanuel Kant who said that the purpose of science is to study only "appearances." So if something can be made to "appear" to be true, like a correlation or association, then viola, it is true. According to junkfood science however, the study wasn't even a valid study but a computer animated virtual reality. Why would modern scientists have such an affinity for virtual realities? They can generate "appearances" at will.

This is a good example of the wrongness of the notion that philosophic principles have no effect on the real world, and why I agree with ARI that nothing less than a philosophic revolution will alter the course the world is currently on. This does not mean everyone has to become an objectivist, only that there needs to be more of them in academia. How many? I don't know. Just more.

(A copy of Philosophy: Who Needs It can be purchased at most book stores or here.)

Two Posts: Obesity Magic and Nestle Wins

Thursday's Detroit News carries a New York Times news article by Gina Kolata titled:
"Obesity spreads through social networks, study says." The first paragraph says:

Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers reported Wednesday. When one person gained weight, their close friends tended to gain weight, too.

Exactly how obesity spreads from person to person is not explained, but a feeble attempt is made late in the article. For now it just happens like magic.

Before going any further, I want to remind my readers that studies usually report risk in terms of relative risk (rr) which is just the difference between two study groups and should not be confused with actual risk, and that rrs of less than 200% are considered statistically insignificant, caused by hidden biases, confounding factors or plain chance. The article continues:

...people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person's chances of becoming obese by 57 percent.

Obviously, 57% is way less than 200% so statistical significance doesn't seem to be a priority with this study. What seems to be important is the strength of the magic regarding friends but no one else.

There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends.
It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away, the influence remained. And the greatest influence of all was between close mutual friends. There, if one became obese, the other had a 171 percent increased chance of becoming obese, too.

171% might look scary but it's still less than 200%. What's really impressive though is "It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away, the influence remained." Now that's a powerful influence! Still, what is the nature of this influence? How does it work?

Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator in the new study, says one explanation is that friends affect each others' perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad.

"You change your idea of what is an acceptable body type by looking at the people around you," Christakis said.

So the Dr. is admitting that he believes--and thinks everyone else believes--in social metaphysics. Value is to be determined by what others value. (Carrie at ED Bites has a good post on the inanity of the study apparently from a Washington Post version.) Now we get to the feeble attempt at causality:

The investigators say their findings can help explain why Americans have become fatter in recent years -- each person who became obese was likely to drag some friends with them.

See what's under attack here? Choice, volition, free will and eventually freedom. So if you chose a lifestyle by which you gain weight, those choices magically "drag" others into your sinful, evil ways. Your choices then, become "influences" that compel the actions of others. Or, if you are fat and prefer the victim status, your fatness is not your fault, the anti-social choices of others made you do it. Actually though, the study says that what made you, as an individual, fat doesn't matter.

Their analysis was unique, Christakis said, because it moved beyond a simple analysis of one person and his or her social contacts, and instead examined an entire social network at once and what could have an influence on a person's weight.

Translation: since we can't prove a causal connection between individuals, we'll just dispense with that necessity and infer social "influences" to be the same as causation. What's good for you will not be determined by studying you but by studying the herd to which you belong.

One of the manifestations of Ayn Rand's identification: "Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood." is that scientific tests and experiments designed to prove (or disprove) causality are being replaced by correlations and associations and links. Why? The thing called evidence is just well, irrelevant.

What is really sad though, is that this study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, supposedly, one of the most prestigious journals on the planet.
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I really don't like to leave my readers in a pessimistic mood so I thought I'd close with this piece of good or at least hopeful news. The same edition of the News carries a story "Nestle wins fight over water." For me the key passages are:

The Michigan Supreme Court effectively upheld the right of the bottler of Ice Mountain spring water to pump from four wells in Mecosta County in a decision that may make it harder to raise environmental claims generally.

The 4-3 ruling held that two families and an environmental group, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, cannot challenge Nestle's pumping operations on waterways the groups don't own or use.

Yes!!! Now if we can just get this logic applied to all the green NGOs.

A Grandpa's Thoughts on Perceptual Development

As a grampa who has been babysitting for what is now a 2 yr old granddaughter and a 1 yr old grandson, I have had time to observe behavior and ponder the why of it. One behavior seems to take place when the baby can crawl but not yet walk. It involves crawling over to a box or basket of toys and taking them out one at a time and dropping them on the floor.

Back when I was raising my own sons, I noticed this behavior and observed it was always one-way. The baby never felt a desire to pick them up and put them back. At that time, I just dismissed it as a nonsensical behavior that babies--who cannot think--just do, without rhyme, reason or logic. I now think this evaluation was in error.

What made me challenge this notion was the fact that I knew babies often jabbered a lot making incoherent sounds for no apparent reason. I know for example, that they are not trying to communicate anything to me, nor are they intentionally trying to exercise their vocal cords and tongue and lip movements in order to develop their speaking skills. But is there an unapparent reason? I think so and I think it is the same for emptying out a toy box as for jabbering. They do it simply because they can, then because they can, they want to, and further, it is this desire that motivates the action. The process is reciprocal. The act of doing reinforces his implicit knowledge that "he can" which triggers the desire "to do" and so on. It's all about cognitive efficacy, about gaining some modicum of control over his world, though only on the perceptual level.

So the little guy is in fact performing a goal directed action. It is not however an existential but a cognitive one: mental efficacy. This then would explain why he has no desire to put the toys back: that would be a practical, existential goal directed action which he is not yet ready for.

So now when I see him empty out his toy box, I know he is not trying to create an empty one, nor does he desire to create a mess in the middle of the floor. Such concepts as mess and order and disorder have no meaning for him and won't until he learns to speak. No, he is just trying to gain some mastery of this world and himself.

Admittedly, this evaluation of mine will undergo some refinement in the future. There are implications I have not yet fully thought about. For example, does the baby perceive relationships such as the difference between 'in' the toy box and 'out' of it? I think so. Once, before he could crawl, my grandson was sitting on a blanket with a few toys. One of them was slightly out of reach. He grabbed the blanket and pulled it towards him bringing the toy within reach. I marvelled at this bit of awareness on his part. But was he perceiving relationships or the consequences of an action which, later in life, he will reclassify as cause and effect? I'm not sure.

Lately, in concert with mommy and daddy, I've been trying to redirect his attention somewhat. Once when he was emptying out his toy box, I laid on the floor next to him and spoke the word "out" every time he took a toy out. When he was done, I began putting the toys back in saying the word "in" every time. Nothing came of it then. He just looked at me with a blank stare as if to say "toys don't go in toy boxes, are you crazy?" Later we tried this again. This time he took one of his stuffed animals out of the toy box then put it back, then out again. This pleased me because he now knows that there is an opposite direction he can do and this to me, is progress.

In conclusion, I have determined that in babydom, the operative cognitive process is "I can, therefore I will." It is then of course, up to adults to redirect this force towards productive endeavors and away from harm. So if you have a little tyke indulging in this behavior, try to remember that he or she is really not seeking to trash your living room and is not being bad, rather, is being good, very good.

UAW's Gettelfinger Praised for Hypocrisy

Monday's 7/16/07, Detroit Free Press has a front page article titled "Square Dealer Drives UAW." The subtitle is "Talks shape up as stiff test of flexibility." I know editors like to show off their ability to formulate a play on words but what is a stiff test of flexibility? Can there be a flexible test of flexibility? Oh well, rather than stress my brain on that one I went into the story. The first three paragraphs say:

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger had tarred private-equity firms as "strip and flip" artists, more interested in dismantling companies than in helping them grow.

But when parts supplier Dana Corp. struggled in bankruptcy this year and threatened to cancel its UAW contracts, Gettelfinger didn't hesitate. He recruited Centerbridge Partners, a private-equity fund based in New York, to rescue Dana in a deal that would preserve workers' jobs and health care coverage.

Dana announced the deal earlier this month.

The Free Press has learned that Gettelfinger and the UAW, not the company, invited the private-equity investors to the table. Dana confirmed the details.

So how did Freep business writer John Gallagher interpret this obvious two-faced positioning by the union leader?

That Gettelfinger could pivot from bashing private-equity firms to initiating a major deal with one illustrates the shrewd, tough, practical approach to saving automotive jobs and benefits that has marked Gettelfinger's five-year tenure as president of the union.

So bashing someone as evil and destructive of jobs then relying on them to save jobs is "shrewd", "practical" and the sign of a "square dealer." Ayn Rand was right, the American public has no intellectual leadership whatsoever.

To me this lengthy article is a puff piece designed to sell Mr. Gettelfinger as a heroic figure to the workers, especially since negotiations with the big 3 start on the 20th. This is done to help the UAW deliver the labor vote to the Democratic party, and to do that, it is absolutely essential the anti-capitalist, anti-business hatred be maintained. As long as the intellectuals team up to convince workers that businessmen are their enemy, they will be able to persuade workers it is in their interest to pay protection money to the unions of the world.

I'm not saying unions can't be of value. They can but that would be a topic for another post. The bottom line is that fostering a hatred of capitalism is not in the interest of any worker, and a true "square dealer" would know and admit this.

(For an example of the kind of intellectual leadership the masses are getting, Andrew Dalton at Witch Doctor Repellent has a good fisking of a British witch doctor wannabe.)

Child Obesity=Parental Neglect

Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science has a horror story about an 8yr old British girl who was taken from her parents because she is 1 foot taller and fatter than her peers and was made a ward of the state. Evidently, obesity is now going to be classified as a form of parental child abuse according to the linked Times Online article which says in part:

There are no guidelines for social service about the issue. Anne Ridgway, chairman of the Cumbria Local Safeguarding Children Board, said: “Parental behaviour that leads to childhood obesity can be a form of neglect. But a child’s weight becomes a safeguarding issue only in extreme cases ? and thankfully they are very rare.”

I suppose deliberately overfeeding a child could be a form of abuse or neglect but there is no mention in the articles that Ms. Ridgway has any evidence of this. I get the impression that she is just assuming that because the child is fat, it is automatically the parents' fault.

Now I'm all in favor of laws against child abuse provided there exists objective evidence of same. No parent has the right to violate his child's right to life. But as any parent can testify, a child with cuts and bruises is not prima facie evidence of child beatings. Nor is a fat child proof of overfeeding. You'd think that the fact that this child was 1 foot taller than her peers just might be a red flag that something other than obesity was at work. But no. Obesity is the problem and the parents are the villains. As Ms. Szwarc shows, no study has ever demonstrated that obesity causes tallness. As my masthead says, government encouragement makes facts irrelevant.

Even more sinister is the fact that removing an 8yr old child from his or her family can be a very traumatic experience, especially if the family atmosphere was a loving one, and there was no evidence in the article to show it wasn't. Obviously then, mental health must be sacrificed to purely physical concerns. Let the child be a mental basket case as long as she's a thin one.

Admittedly, this is happening in Britain which doesn't have any allegiance to individual rights which means, they rely on a benevolent ruler. They're getting what they asked for when they agreed that their children belong to the state. What is scary though, is that what is happening in Europe now will be tried here in America next. The social engineering dictator wannabes can't wait to get that kind of power. Like global warming, obesity is just another tool to get that power.

Great Pictures

Gus Van Horn has some beautiful pictures of Ouray Colorado which is said to be the inspiration for Galt's Gulch in Ayn Rand's famous novel Atlas Shrugged. Click on the pictures for a larger more beautiful sight.

Slow Blogging for a little while.

I've been busy lately and blogging may be sporadic during August. But for now I recommend the following:

Carrie, (a recovering anorexic), at ED Bites has a good post on how the media is in lock step with the government science establishment position on the so-called obesity crises. And for more on that subject, Junkscience.com.

Jonathan Lowe at Gusts of Hot Air posts a study showing Greenland's Ice Sheet to be more resilient than previously thought. For more on global cooling see Ice Age Now.

Problem Solved

Ok. I now know what a widget is. Seems I've been using them all along just not knowing they were called widgets.

Lost In Cyber Space

As you may have noticed, my blog is not quite its old self. That's because I've been trying to make it a tad better, moving things around and adding a few things. As is sometimes the case, I do make it better--after I've made it worse. sigh

When I tried to publish my new look, my template came out the wrong color. So, I re-brought up my original template and when I did, my blog roll and a few other things, disappeared. So now I'm slowly putting my blog roll back together. The nice people (who know what they're doing) at blogger help told me I forgot to save my widgets. (Whatever they are)

I make this notice mainly so my regular readers won't think I booted them off the blog roll. So, when I'm done with the roll, and you see your blog is not there, which it was before, send me an email or even a note in the comments. Now I'm off to find out what is a widget and how to save them.

In the meantime, and for your reading pleasure, Myrhaf has a good post of the real psychological meaning of 'recycling'.

And Grant Jones at the Dougout has an essay on the disgrace that is the Just War Theory that Bush is wedded to. Grant also has a review of a book which purports to show a group of Vietnam era journalists, including David Halberstam, were not heros.

A Positive Round Up

This round up will not discuss or link to any bad news or anything disgusting or negative. In the spirit of the Fourth of July week, only heroic and positive things count.

First, The Pittsburgh Tribune reports that Exxon Mobil CEO Mr. Rex Tillerson stood up to green activists at a recent shareholders meeting essentially telling them to get lost. (hat tip Junkscience.com) Reporter Bill Steigerwald relates:

Exxon Mobil, Tillerson reminded everyone, was in the business of finding, drilling, refining and selling oil and natural gas -- not in the business of risking money to save the planet from bogeymen. Anyway, he said wisely, what's wrong with a little debate on climate change?

One can only wish that other CEOs would follow his moral leadership.
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Grant Jones at The Dougout has a 2 minute video of people restoring old airplanes in a giant hanger/museum.
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Dennis Chamberland and crew have a few nice things to say about America's birthday. In fact, just go to his blog and scroll down for updates of various human productive endeavors.
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Dennis at Dennis blog recommends the book "The Great Bridge" about the Brooklyn Bridge. Dennis tells us:

Like the bridge's web of suspension cables, rich human stories are woven into it as well, deeper than the cables' roots in the bedrock under the twin gothic towers. To really see the bridge, read this book. Look at the spirit of man in action.

I like the painting of the bridge Dennis used also.
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If your eyes need a rest from all the fireworks, then soothe and revitalize them by going to:

Dianne Durante has some new photos of structure and architecture taken on a casual stroll through part of Manhattan. In fact, I recommend just visiting her home page, scrolling down and enjoying even more interesting photos, even checking out her archives.
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There are more good photos of art at Lee Sanstead's blog.
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The Gallery of Quent Cordair has a collection of fine artists which I recommend.
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More art can be had at Schuylkill Academy here.
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And if you're looking for a philosophy of life, that is, an overall guide to living a happy, productive life on this Earth, I highly recommend visiting ARI.

Children In Charge

In a recent post I wrote about the evils of the smoking ban and how it sidetracks science from looking for the causes that prevent millions of smokers from getting lung cancer. As a adjunct to that post, I present an excellent post by John Brignell at Number Watch. In my post I did not mention any alleged benefits of smoking. I only decried the utter falsehood of the "premature deadly" claims made by the alarmists. But Mr. Brignell quotes Mr. Woodrow Wyatt as saying:

It is well known that smoking , particularly at work, relieves stress, and to outlaw it increases demands on hospital beds. Even the US Surgeon General, in 1964, recognised that Parkinson’s disease (a degenerative disorder of the nervous system) occurred at around half the rate among smokers. In the International Journal of Epidemiology , in 1991, a review of 11 studies showed that non-smokers suffered 50 per cent more Alzheimer’s disease than smokers. And researchers at Erasmus University Medical School , Rotterdam , found that more non-smokers had early-onset dementia than smokers.

He also quotes Dr. James LeFanu:

In the Daily Telegraph, Dr. James Le Fanu wrote: “Smokers have a 50 per cent reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s and the more smoked, the greater the protection.” The New England Journal of Medicine. in 1985, reported that endometrial cancer of the womb occurs at around 50 per cent the rate among smokers as non-smokers. Colon cancer and ulcerative colitis also seem to be about 30 and 50 per cent respectively less frequent among smokers according to articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in the New England Journal of Medicine, in 1981 and 1983. The American government’s first Health and Nutrition Examination Survey has found that osteo-arthritis is five times less likely to occur among heavy smokers than non-smokers.

Now I've not checked any of these studies myself so I can't vouch for their accuracy. Nor am I saying that if you fear any of these maladies you should take up smoking. Not at all. This is just another example of the many things anti-tobacco alarmists refuse to consider.

In reading Mr. Brignell's post, I couldn't help but notice, when he pointed out how other British problems seem to take a back seat to the smoking ban, the obvious performance of the altruistic ritual 'it's not for me but for others I do this' on the part of the anti-smoking alarmists. And as I considered how critical it is for our culture to perform that ritual regardless of results, a frightening image came to mind.

Did you ever see a toddler trying to be good to a second toddler? The first toddler tries to give a toy or piece of candy to a second toddler who doesn't want it. Not willing to accept rejection, the first toddler tries to force the gift onto the second toddler. But the second toddler resists and now animosity springs forth. It is usually at this point that a mature adult steps in and stops this process knowing that both toddlers have yet to learn a more rational way of dealing with each other.

What is scary is that when I look at the first toddler I see our current intellectual and political leadership trying to force their idea of the good. When I look at the second toddler I see the American public bewildered, frustrated and anxiously waiting for the mature adult to step in and stop the madness. Sadly, (Objectivism aside) no such adult is coming. The intellectual toddlers are at the helm.

IPCC Betrays Science

Tony Gillard at Spiked magazine has a lengthy but insightful article on the history of the global warming issue. Although he doesn't write from a philosophical perspective, his time line of who, what and when, I found to be very informative. His main theme seems to be twofold, that the scientific debate on global warming is anything but over and the IPCC is a political organization more than scientific.

He states three issues he wants to explore and adds a caveat:

How much of the global warming issue is shaped by new scientific discoveries, and how much by broader cultural and political trends?

How has the interaction between scientists, international institutions, governments, media and activists influenced the development of climate change policy?

Was the establishment of the IPCC a visionary act or an expression of political implosion in the West?

This essay does not attempt to provide a comprehensive history of the global warming issue; rather its aim is to contribute to the start of a critique. For whatever the facts about climate change can tell us, they do not tell us that the debate is over.

While he does explore these mostly from a practical viewpoint, he does brush up against the issue of loss of sovereignty when he says:

This trend towards ‘international’ policy making, where the authority of national governments is diminished in relation to institutions such as the United Nations or the European Union, is evident today whenever a controversial issue arises, from the legitimacy of the Iraq war to the development of genetically modified (GM) crops or any number of issues related to the human rights agenda.

One could probably do an entire essay on how "the authority of national governments is diminished" is the goal of the UN, and so far, mission accomplished. But if one were ever in doubt about the fact that this GW movement is all about forced sacrifices as a way of life there is this quote from Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC:

‘It is of great satisfaction that this report for the first time has dealt with lifestyle and consumption patterns as an important means by which we can bring about mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. So of course you can look at technologies, you can look at policies, but what is an extremely powerful message in this report is the need for human society as a whole to start looking at changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns.’

Of course, "changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns" are to be achieved by force. We know that this is the goal because, in a quote a few paragraphs earlier, Mr. Pachauri says:

‘It is essentially the scientists and the experts who are the ones who assess and provide the knowledge but this is something that is discussed and debated by the governments and since we accept everything by consensus this has the implication that whatever is accepted here has the stamp of acceptance of all the governments of the world.’

So science now seeks its seal of approval, its raison d'etre, its source of truth, not from reality but from an approval by institutions which have a legal monopoly of the use of force (governments). I cannot think of a greater betrayal of science than to put it (the mind) to serve at the pleasure of force.

Spotted By Mike's Eyes June

I've been unable to visit my favorite sites lately so in getting caught up I've put together this roundup. Some of these may be a few days old but worth it if you haven't already seen them.

Could this spread? Iowa State University wants to have a chaplain for their football team. Trouble is, the faculty don't care for the name chaplain. So a new position with a new title is about to be born: "volunteer life skills assistent".

The philosophy dept. snubbed again.
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Nicholas Provenzo at Rule of Reason has a good post on "Save Net Radio" or Save the Free Market"

Every so often I write letters to my political representatives. I'll be doing so this week and this subject-intellectual property rights-is one of the things I'll be harping on.
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Andy Clarkson at The Charlotte Capitalist is blogging again with a post on enviromentalism and its mysanthropic nature. Andy says in part:

The environmentalist's case thus rests on the proposition that they don't like the fact that existence exists, that it has a certain identity and thus causality. All of their proposals are thus focused on fighting the nature of existence -- and nothing else.

So very true.
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Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame posts on more record lows in Chile with links.

Was Al Gore giving speeches there?

Lubos also has a good post on CO2 saturation for those laymen like me who would like to know more about the science of GW. He is largely responding to attacks on him over at RealClimate.com.
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The Objective Standard summer edition is now available online for subscribers. For non-subscribers the letters and replies, and Lisa VanDamme's excellent essay on classical education, are available to all.

If you don't have a subscription, I urge you to get one. It is well worth it.
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If you like flowers, especially orchids, Amit Ghate at Thrutch has some nice photos of same. Beneath the photo is the word orchids. Click on it for more beautiful photos.

Corruption of Journalism and Science

In keeping with my efforts to help readers defend themselves against mis and dis-information, I recommend another great article at JunkfoodScience.com on the relationship between journalism and science. In it, host Sandy Szwarc examines an article by Jon Franklin written in 1994 titled "Poisons of the Mind". She says in part:

In his classic article entitled, “Poisons of the Mind,” professor Franklin cautioned against relying upon media for sound information:

[']Journalism brings you skewed statistics and decontextualized quotes ... half truths, mendacity, prevarication and deceit and spin and buncombe and humbug and distortion and bosh, cant, nihilism, cynicism, hypocrisy....[']


While he found that low level of understanding of science, medicine and technology play a key role in the unreliable reporting of the news by media, he also described the power of groupthink throughout the industry which chooses to look the other way in the face of facts.

She links to his speech which I highly recommend reading entirely. While I may disagree with a few of his interpretations of history, the story he tells is a true horrer story of the corruption of journalism and science.

Regarding science, Mr. Franklin's speech provides concretizations of Ayn Rand's principle that "Governmental encouragement does not require men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood." (Ayn Rand, from her essay "The Establishing of an Establishment" now in the book "Philosophy Who Needs It" which can be had in most book stores or here.)

Regarding journalism and its seeming complicity in such indifference, the article also concretizes the principle that: "It is a conspiracy, not of men, but of basic premises--and the power directing it is logic: if, at the desperate stage of a losing battle, some men point to a road logically necessitated by their basic premises, those who share the premises will rush to follow." (Ayn Rand, from the essay "An Untitled Letter" in the same book linked to above.) As Immanuel Kant's subjectivism spreads into science and journalism, it should be no surprise that the subjectivism of one will endorse the subjectivism of the other.

As I read the article I hoped Mr. Franklin would make some identification of Kant's influence on journalism but none was found. Mr. Franklin did however make a correct epistimological identification when he said:

We are in fact sinking deeper and deeper into a generalized acceptance of, as they say, "other ways of knowing." Witchcraft, reincarnation, devil possession, spiritualism . . . these things are widely accepted by a large proportion, perhaps a solid majority, of the voting population of the United States.

Yes, a return of the primative.

While I think Mr. Franklin is a mixed bag philosophically, he seems to be more rational than most journalists in my experience and that's why I recommend reading the entire post and speech.

Ban on Second Hand Smoke

The June 18th Detroit Free Press had an op-ed under the Local Comment section titled "Smoke-Free or die" presumably a play on the state Motto of New Hampshire, "Live Free or die." It's a shame too because the meaning of "live free" is to live free of initiatory coercion by other men including the government--the very thing "smoke-free or die" advocates.

The subtitle of this attack on second hand smoke is "Smoking ban will save lives" by a Kenneth E. Warner who is "the dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan and an internationally known expert on tobacco-related health and policy issues" according to the paper's accreditation. The justification for the ban is:

Our lawmakers will not fulfill their constitutional obligation to protect the health and welfare of Michigan citizens until they vote to pass such smoke-free legislation.

Once again we see the non-objective constitutional claim general welfare being invoked to justify government initiation of force against citizens. This time it's to ban smoking on the grounds of saving lives.

Doesn't matter. The proper function of government is the protection of individual rights. A look at the writings of our founders would reveal that a nanny state is not what they had in mind by the phrase general welfare. To call for the government to start the use of force against citizens to achieve some social good is precisely what our constitution was written to prevent. (It must be remembered that there is no such thing as a "social good." There are only individual goods and individual rights is the only rational, peaceful, civilized way of protecting them.)

But let's look at his claims. The statistics given by Mr. Warner are highly debatable because they are taken from statistical studies which can't prove anything. He doesn't indicate which studies he is referencing but some of the more popular ones were taken when nobody was writing down smoking as a cause of death on any death certificates, so how could they know smoking was a cause of death? They don't. It's just an extrapolation from the data of other studies.

The numbers he cites in this quote

Adults who don't smoke but are exposed to secondhand smoke have a 25%-30% greater chance of developing heart disease, and a 20%-30% greater chance of developing lung cancer.

are usually what statisticians call relative risks (rr) and do not indicate actual risk. Most scientists consider any rr below 100% (some use 200%) as statistically insignificant because such numbers can be caused by confounding factors, hidden biases or even chance. Mr. Warner's numbers are well below the significance level. It is also noteworthy that since he felt no need to tell his readers whether he was using relative risk or actual risk or odds ratios, (all three are different) many untrained readers will wrongly assume those numbers represent actual risk to themselves.

His contention that

Every year that our lawmakers fail to act on this issue, hundreds if not thousands of Michigan citizens will die from completely preventable, premature deaths because of secondhand smoke.

is nothing more than conjecture and an out of context meaning of premature. He also neglects to tell his readers that the average life expectancy of smokers is about 72 years according to studies quoted at this site. Also, how can they be premature if living to 72 and beyond? Premature to what? Clearly Mr. Warner is using 'premature' out of context. To him any death is a premature one if that person could have lived longer.

His assertion that there is "no safe level of exposure to second hand smoke" is another flagrant example of context dropping. In the context of a guaranteed safety, there is no such thing as a perfectly safe level of exposure to anything. But in the context of the principle of toxicology, 'the poison is in the dose', there are relatively safe levels of almost everything. For example, two aspirins can cure a headache but 200 can kill a person. The threat to health is relative to the size of the dose, not unconditional like Mr. Warner suggests.

Many of the 4000 chemicals he says are in second hand smoke are naturally occurring substances already in our bodies. There are trace amounts of mercury, dioxin, arsenic and many more in most of our bodies. In fact, the polonium 210 he mentions is also in every one's bodies in trace amounts according to this NRC website. So why aren't we all dead?

Some common sense needs to be applied here. Humans have been evolving for thousands of years and have developed defenses against trace amounts of some deadly stuff. What this means is that in fact and in reality there can be safe levels relative to the size of the dose.

As for the recent poisoning of former spy Alexander Litvinenko by polonium 210, another thing Mr. Warner didn't tell his readers was that Mr. Litvinenko was fed five times the lethal dose which itself is many times higher than a person would encounter naturally.

His claim that second hand smoke is the "deadliest environmental exposure the average person confronts" is more nonsense. If people who expose themselves to first hand smoke are living to an average of 72, people exposed to second hand smoke cannot be dying sooner. The implication would be that second hand smoke is more deadly than first hand smoke. I don't think so.

Yes this is an op-ed and Mr. Warner is entitled to his views. That this is an agenda driven advocacy piece is beyond doubt when he tries to convince his readers that there is no difference between the force of nature and man's force against man. He also conflates free choice with force. For example,talking about arsenic and hydrogen cyanide he says:

Michigan law not only permits but effectively requires us to inhale those chemicals.

Requires? He ends with

When a former Russian spy is poisoned with polonium 210, it's front-page news. Yet when a child in Michigan is forced to inhale that same polonium 210 in a restaurant, no one seems to notice. It's time for Michigan's voters to notice. Tell your state lawmakers that you will no longer tolerate the daily poisoning of our citizens.

"forced to inhale?" Being ignored here is the fact that the responsibility for a Michigan child rests on the shoulders of that child's parents, not his (Warner's). That he believes the population belongs to the state (and its spokesmen), is supported by his reference to 'citizens' in the possessive (our).

I am not saying that smoking is healthy or that it's not unhealthy. If Mr. Warner were to say that smoke, first or second hand, may contribute to some cancer and heart disease, I would support that. But that's not what he's saying. He wants to end the debate once and for all with the power of government force. To end debate with force is to deflect attention away from the real causes of lung cancer and other ailments. Why should private enterprise or for that matter, government granting agencies, pour money into a non-problem, one that has already been solved with a ban? I fear that is exactly what is happening and here is why.

I have heard of two plausible causes of lung cancer from smoke, 1) smoking causes mucus in the lungs to become toxic and this toxic solution somehow causes cancer, and 2) the polonium 210 in the smoke emits alpha particles which can disrupt the DNA genes in the cells of the lungs causing them to become cancerous.

There is only one thing wrong with these two causes (and any others I may not have heard of): They do not explain why there are millions of smokers who have both the toxic mucus and the radioactive Polonium 210 in their lungs and do not get lung cancer. There are reasons for this and as I wrote in another post:

But to declare that smoking has been proven to be the definite cause of lung cancer is for scientists to fail to be honest with the public and with themselves because it refuses to explain why millions of people smoke and don't get lung cancer. There is a reason, perhaps several, why they don't get lung cancer and these reasons need to be discovered. There could be scientific discoveries waiting to happen which won't because the establishment has already decided it knows the cause, smoking.

Mr. Warner's op-ed is not so much intended to educate people on the possible evils of smoking, but to recruit them over to the statist principle that it is OK to start the use of force against citizens to achieve a 'social goal.'

The bottom line is that the health threat from second hand smoke while real to some extent, is nowhere near the danger it's cracked up to be by the statists, but even if it were, there's no way rational people would then partake in an activity that deadly. By that deadly I mean knowing that one will not make it into old age.

It may seem like a good idea to use just a little force to save some lives in the here and now but it will always result in the loss of more lives later when that principle is expanded, as it must be, to envelope ever more aspects of human behavior. A ban on smoking will just increase the chances people will not live free.

On The Lighter Side June 16th

As most of my readers know I sometimes deviate from the serious and post on that which is almost serious. Today is one of those times.

As some of my readers may also know, I'm a grampa and like many other grampas, have been pulling babysitting tasks in recent months. My granddaughter will be 2 on July 4th and grandson 1 on Aug. 4th and I enjoy babysitting them both. To me it's a real pleasure watching a new rational being becoming acclimated to existence. But I have percieved a problem. It isn't with anything above but rather the concept, or to be more precise, its name, babysitting. It is not just a misnomer, it's a miseverything.

I have become convinced that the person who first attached the word "sitting" to "baby" needs to feel some pain. If this individual is no longer alive, then perhaps some historical shame is in order. I don't know exactly what would serve justice here but surely some kind of corrective action needs to be taken.

Looking back to the days when I was young and raising my own 3 sons, I can now see that I was oblivious to the fraud I was foisting on my family and friends when I asked "Can you babysit little Robbie on X day?" After all, "babysitting" has a nice laid-back, piece-of-cake connotation to it doesn't it. The only thing that was missing was me going "hee hee" after leaving the sitter in charge, and that was because there was no awareness on my part of any con being perpetrated.

So, to prevent future sitters from being thusly mislead, I have decided that we need to come up with a new word which refers to what is really subsumed under the concept of babysitting. I have put together the following list of actual events as starting points.

>babyhawking (constantly)
>babychanging (diapers, clothes, bibs, etc.)
>babyfeeding (and burping)
>babysoothing (when something scares them)
>babyconsoling (when they clunk themselves on the head with their own toys)
>babyhumering (actually playing with the little tykes)
>babychasing (all around the house) and finally,
>babysitting (at naptime)

So, if we add all these up, what kind of concept can be induced? I have come up with the following possibilities:

1.baby maintenance?
2.baby nursing?
3.baby policing?
4.baby guarding?
5.baby intensive caring?

While I'm open to more suggestions, for now #5 gets my vote.

Perhaps there was a time when babysitting only took place at night and involved no more than an occasional changing and feeding. But such is no longer the case. Today, watching a baby all day long is a full time effort and I can assure you that the least performed activity is 'sitting'.

Thus it is incumbent on us to formulate a new name that's a little more realistic and relegate babysitting to the long list of logical fallacies.

G8 Performs the Ritual Again

In my post of January 2nd 2006 I wrote about how the morality of altruism is a morality of ritual performance in which actually helping others is optional. I used the examples of tobacco money not being used as promised and how the 2005 G8 meeting's intentions of helping Africans but actually failing to do so, demonstrated this fact. I wrote in part:

After the Africans have eaten the fish handed to them they will still be there with the same needs next year so the next G8 can perform the same ritual. And the media will shower them with praise for their noble and virtuous efforts. More billions will be spent. The corrupt governments will still be in power and ripping off most of this aid. And the Africans will still need.

Actually helping the Africans is irrelevant. Performing the ritual is absolutely essential.

Well, Not much has changed in 2 years. The G8 nations are at it again. This website has a long list of links and examples of how little good all the billions in G8 aid to Africa really does. The site author has mixed premises on things like free markets and capitalism but it has a wealth of articles and sites to link to that demonstrate the fact that actually helping Africans is not happening. And yet the ritual continues.

In fact, if anyone were to propose that since the ritual is ineffective, let's stop performing it, all hell would break lose. "How dare you be so heartless and cruel to the African peoples" the media would shout. "How could you condemn the Africans to perpetual, hopeless poverty and millions of deaths by disease every year?" would scream college professors and politicians. The fact that their G8 rituals do nothing to alleviate this human disaster that is Africa, means nothing to these altruists. But this uproar would prove that performing the ritual is absolutely essential.

If you doubt this consider that the G8 pledges began in 1970. The G8 nations were supposed to begin with pledges that would eventually reach 7 tenths of one percent of GDP for each G8 nation by the year 2015. Now I don't know about anyone else's interpretation of this but to me an international welfare plan lasting 45 years reveals no desire to lift Africa out of poverty. Just the opposite. Africa is not a developed or developing nation. It is a not-to-be-developed nation. Why else the prolonged state of international welfare recipient?

The G8 nations, and the rest of the world for that matter, represented by the UN, are saying to the Africans in effect "We are not concerned with the root cause of your poverty and strife. Being loyal to our value of pragmatism, we are only concerned with the reality immediately before our eyes, and that would be your physical suffering. So, that is the problem we intend to address and we will do so by making a sacrifice. We will sacrifice the pleasure we would have received by spending this $ 60 billion on ourselves and give it to you to temporarily alleviate your misery. We expect no physical values in return. Our reward is the absolutely essential feeling we must have of thinking we are noble and virtuous people. Your continued destitution makes that possible. Thank you and see you in a year."

Now how would it look if the G8 approached Africa from a moral position of rational self-interest instead of altruism? While there are probably several different forms this could take, I think a rationally self-interested G8 would say something like this: "Because we love life, we value those things that sustain and enhance life. A free and prosperous Africa accomplishes those values. To achieve this end, we want to make not a sacrifice, but a trade, a very selfish trade. We will offer you a chance to end the present massive suffering once and for all. We propose to come into your country and revamp the government. In a nutshell, we'll provide your country with the same political, social and philosophical framework that made us so healthy, wealthy and powerful. Our reward will be two fold: first the selfish satisfaction of knowing we have been loyal to our values and second, we hope that when you are free enough, there will be trade between us."

Of course, a G8 like that can't exist until the morality of rational self-interest gains much more traction in the western populaces.

One final note: This isn't just an issue of G8 incompetence as some people think. The practical and moral issues are what the unearned increment does to an entire society. Gus Van Horn has a good post on how aid hurts Africa in his Quick roundup 203 here.

Slanting Self-Defense

In my post of May 14th/07, I identified a form of news slanting by package dealing which I ended with "Let the Reader Beware." Thinking about this further, I wondered just how is John Q Public going to do that. How can a Joe lunch box or a Wanda waitress defend themselves against all the bias, slanting, half-truths, distortions and outright falsehoods published in the media as news reports? Towards the goal of alleviating this problem I offer a few suggestions.

Unfortunately, there is no fool-proof way of making oneself well, fool proof, but there are steps one can take to defend against many forms of slanting and deceit. The first step I would recommend is to learn some of the logical fallacies. This site has eight of the most common ones used today. There are many more but it's not necessary to know them all. Knowing a few will help a lot. I will touch briefly on a couple.

One of the most common is the ad hominem, or attack the man and not his argument. This usually takes the form of calling him names like fool or idiot or attacking some aspect of him like his past or his source of income. This one is real popular today. "He has received money from Exxon Mobil therefore his argument is irrelevant." Another is the argument from numbers or consensus which holds that an idea is true (or false) because a majority of people agree (or disagree) with it. One hears this one a lot in the climate change debate. Once one has learned a few of these, it is time to look at some other tactics used to slant news reports.

In my first post of Dec. 2005 I showed how a reporter used violent, negative action words when referring to President Bush and peaceful, positive, domicile words when referring to Democrats. For example, Democrats "expressed worries" while Bush "hurled back" those criticisms. That article was a blatant example. Now and then a reporter will go so far as to tell you how to think: "Unbelievably, the president denied any wrong doing today." The word unbelievably properly belongs in an editorial, not a news report.

Sometimes the use of slanting adjectives can be very subtle. I call them nudge words. For example, when referring to scientists, I've seen such words as "top","leading", "authoritative" and my favorite, "reputable" used often. Such adjectives would be fine if the reporter were talking about a scientist's credentials, experience, awards, etc. But to plop that adjective down in front of "scientist" outside of any context of credentials or experience is to nudge the reader into agreeing with that particular scientist's findings. Why?

I don't think any reporter concerned about his future is going to refer to the scientist issuing him a press release, as a disreputable scientist. (unless of course he's reporting on a case of scientific fraud) It is assumed by me and hopefully most others, that whomever the reporter is quoting, he is at least reputable to some extent. So why bother adding such qualifiers as reputable to the word scientist? Obviously, being reputable means having a reputation which means that a number of people think he is an ok scientist--and here comes the nudge--ergo, you should too. In other words, don't bother to challenge, question or even doubt this scientist's findings because others think he's right so you should go along, or, who are you to question all of these?

When I see such words as "top", "leading" and "reputable" being used out of context like this, I know I'm being nudged by reporters who have bought into the scientist's findings and can't resist a chance to nudge his readers into acceptance of those findings.

The word authoritative has only one valid meaning as far as I'm concerned and that would refer to a scientist who has authored a lot of published papers. Other than that, scientific findings are either true or false, right or wrong or perhaps some of each, but never authoritative. What would it mean for scientific findings to be authoritative? Do they get to boss around other findings? Do the scientists have the authority to say "I'm right and you're wrong"? But Mike you say, you're getting irrational here. Well, not any more irrational than using a political concept like authoritative in a scientific context as a nudge word.

Another kind of slanting is using deceit in the form of package deals, an example of which is linked to at the beginning of this post. It was a study in which a false idea was packaged with one or more true ones. It is impossible to defend oneself from this kind of deception in advance. Most people don't have the time to fact-check studies or even know what to look for. So, I recommend doing what I do: go to the sites of scientists who do read studies and report on them. I recommend the sites listed in this post. I hope this has aided in some small way your slanting self-defense.