Working and Observing by Grampa

Along with babysitting, I got one project out of the way; remodeling a spare bedroom which was badly in need of work anyway, into a sewing room for Mrs. Eyes (her name is Everly). This room will also double as a sleepover room for the grandkids. They've slept over in there before but we weren't happy with the way it looked. Now we are.

My granddaughter who will be 3 July 4th has really been stringing sentences together lately. But last week I noticed she hasn't yet grasped the meaning of counting. She brought me three little refrige magnets which were Dalmatians one with a blue shirt, one with a yellow shirt and one with no shirt. I asked "How many do you have?" and she said "I don't know". So I said lets count them and I pointed at blue shirt, yellow shirt and no shirt while saying '1', '2', '3'. You have three doggies I said. Later she brought them to me again and I tried to repeat the exercise. Again she said she didn't know how many she had. So again I pointed to them counting 1,2,and 3 only this time I pointed at yellow shirt, no shirt and blue shirt. She then said loudly "No" pointing at yellow shirt "This is 2" and pointing at no shirt "This is 3" and "This is 1" pointing at blue shirt. That's when I understood what she was doing conceptually. She remembered how I counted them before. She's treating numbers as if they were a kind of name which when assigned to a thing, the thing always carried that number-name with it. I think she'll be grasping the idea of quantity very soon. But I marvel at how such little ones deal with concepts they don't yet understand.

Light Blogging

Blogging will be light this week as I divide my time between painting and rearranging a spare bedroom and babysitting my grand kids.

I've made a slight change to the title of my blog and I think an explanation is in order. I originally wanted to title my blog Spotted by Mike's Eyes but wrongly thought it was too long. Over time I decided I don't like just Mike's Eyes so I've added Spotted By in parentheses. I've had a few people ask why I named it Mike's Eyes so that too is partly why I decided to clarify it.

Definition Exercise

As a grampa, my babysitting is sometimes done at their house and sometimes at my house. When I go to my son's houses I usually take a book to read in the event the tykes take a nap. One day a few months ago I went to sit and forgot the book. I had a legal pad out in the car so I decided to try my hand a putting together some formal definitions in an effort to hone my skill at it. I started out with Rand's definition of table at the top of my list as a model. So here for your perusal and criticism is my short list.
*********************************************
Definitions

>Table

Genus:

An item of furniture...

Differentia:

with a flat, level surface and
supports, designed to support
other, smaller objects.

>Duffel Bag

Genus:

An item of luggage...

Differentia:

in the shape of a bag, with
compartments, designed to hold
personalized items usually for
one person.

>Closet

Genus:

A small space or room within a human habitat...

Differentia:

designed to store small accessories such as apparel or
equipment.

>Gate

Genus:

Part of a fence or enclosure...

Differentia:

that opens to allow passage from one side to the other.

>Television Set

Genus:

An electronic communication receiving device...

Differentia:

that recieves audio and visual communications via microwave signals.
******************************************
Admittedly this is a short list and only very simple things defined. While doing this I refused to consult a dictionary for assistance for two reasons. One, many dictionaries don't give genus/differentia definitions and second, I need to get better at identifying definitions myself. So if you're a mind to, spare no criticism.

See No (Solutions to) Evil

The Sunday May 4th Detroit Free Press editorial "Graduate to Solutions" about dropouts, discusses the fact that in 22 of 27 districts in the Detroit Public School system (DPS) students are not meeting basic minimum requirements and that three-quarters of the students who start high school don't finish.

The editorial then states the obvious solution but treats it as a fantasy:

Think of Detroit Public Schools as a $1.3-billion enterprise and ask yourself: What enterprise would tolerate the utter failure of 22 of its 27 divisions, and for how long, without an urgent overhaul?

That's exactly right. A private enterprise would not tolerate it. And that's exactly why DPS should be shut down and turned over to private enterprise. I'm willing to bet that such an enterprise would not need anywhere near $1.3 billion to properly teach students. If students actually learn something they won't drop out. Yet the intellectuals and leaders insist that a public system is better for students than a private one.

Just as they won't consider a private system seriously, so they absolutely won't look at the curriculum either. In several years of reading Detroit newspapers the only mentions of curriculum I've seen were calls for a more rigorous one. But the gods of whole word for reading, the helter skelter approach to math, science and everything else are not to be questioned. Why?

In her essay "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World" Philosopher Ayn Rand wrote: "Observe how noisily the modern intellectuals are seeking solutions for problems--and how swiftly they blank out the existence of any theory or idea, past or present, that offers the lead to a solution." That's exactly what the DPS and the press are doing. But again, why?

It's the morality of altruism. A public school system is one in which a large number of people are being sacrificed to others. Many people without kids have their money taken in taxes to pay for the education of those who do have kids, a violation of the former's rights. But it's more than that. Altruism has placed the stigma of selfishness, which is held to be evil, on private actions, and the halo of selflessness, held to be virtuous, on public actions. (Evaded here is that "public actions" involve the force of government.)

But the reverse is true. There is nothing innately virtuous about a public school and nothing inherently evil about a private one. In fact, the public schools are mostly failures because the teachers, administrators and leaders have nothing to gain by doing a great job and nothing to lose by doing a poor one. The system should be privatized, the curriculum challenged, the government moved out of education and a rational philosophy of education adopted.

Ms. Rand's above mentioned essay is in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It which can be ordered at most bookstores or here. (Only $6.95)

Success Story

Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science reports that Irvine Robbins, the co founder of Baskin-Robbins ice cream died yesterday at the age of 90.

As a young boy, his father owned a dairy and he had a job working in his father’s ice cream store. He noticed that people got a smile on their face when they bought an ice cream cone. During World War II, while serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, he made ice cream for his fellow troops and after his discharge, he put his life savings into his first store. He eventually joined forces with his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin and the rest is history.

Another productive capitalist success story. She links to an article at 4KNBC.com Los Angeles which says that "Today, Baskin-Robbins is part of Dunkin' Brands Inc. and has more than 5,800 franchises worldwide."

Disgusting

The May 5th Detroit News has two stories that are disgusting in their premises and implications. The first is what I call introduction to euthanasia and is titled "Medical disaster plan touts whom to let die" by AP writer Lindsey Tanner. It says in part:

CHICAGO -- Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.

Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia. (....) The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals "so that everybody will be thinking in the same way" when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report. The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources -- including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses -- are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.

This isn't some right or left wing whacko group. It's your friendly altruistic government.

The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

So who gets to die?

To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the task of deciding who will and who won't get lifesaving care, the task force wrote. Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:

• People older than 85.

• Those with severe trauma, which could include critical car crash injuries and shootings.

• Severely burned patients older than 60.

• Those with severe mental impairment, which may include advanced Alzheimer's disease.

• Those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes.

Please understand that this policy reverses the practice that those most critically injured be attended before those who are not. If you have one leg in the grave and the other on a banana peel, well, to hell with you. But if you're healthier than that, you get care. Look at those guidelines closer. Everyone over the age of 85 is doomed. What are their chances of "long-term survival"?

"Those with severe trauma.." That would include most people in a widespread disaster wouldn't it? Since when does being over 60 disqualify burn patients from care? Since when did human life become worthless after 60 or 85 or any age?

If the mentally impaired are among the victims, well, they are out of luck too.

"Those with severe chronic disease..." Evidently, only those with a good chance of survival will get care. Man! have you ever heard of a more anti-life, anti-human proposal before? Adolph Hitler would love such a policy. Oh wait! He had one didn't he? Did you ever see that video of German newborn infants moving down a conveyor belt and being thrown alive onto a huge pile of writhing and dying babies if there was the slightest defect?

Remember, it's not the doctors and nurses who are deciding to do this. They are just "scarce resources" like "ventilators" and "medicine" who will be following orders. If you're wondering why would anyone want such a policy? Power. The lust for control over others. There is no mistake about it. The desire by some to regulate the lives of others is the desire to control all of it including the end points, birth and death. This proposal is essential altruism. Its only antidote is a life-respecting, man-respecting moral code, rational egoism. In a laissez-faire capitalist society there would be no Homeland Security, or dept. of Human Resources and the CDC, if it existed, would be entirely private and probably making a ton of money testing for industry. But do any of these regulators actually thrill at the idea of deciding who gets to live or die? It's hard to say. More likely they just think that making such decisions is doing their altruistic duty and that is what is wrong with altruism.

The second article was a report that a $5 billion project for a posh resort in the green zone in Baghdad is supported by the Pentagon.

BAGHDAD -- Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.

That's all part of a five-year development "dream list" -- or what some dub an improbable fantasy -- to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad's future.

But the $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, the lead military liaison for the project told the Associated Press.

So why do they want to do this?

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a "zone of influence" around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

"When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time," said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

Kind of sad isn't it? But guess who one of the interested potential investors is?

Karnowski said a deal already has been completed for Marriott International Inc. to build a hotel in the Green Zone. He also said a possible $1 billion investment could come from MBI International, a conglomerate that focuses on hotels and resorts and is led by Saudi Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber.

Is that what our future young men are going over there to die for? A golf course for wealthy enemies? What the hell is a 'zone of influence'? Who is influencing whom? Disgusting!

Busy, Busy

I heard a joke once that went something like this: "Since I've been retired, I don't have time for anything!" Well, I wouldn't use the word 'anything', but I think that when you're retired you have a tendency to pile-on yourself all kinds of things you'd like or want or think you should do. That's why blogging has been slow.

What with getting an early start on spring cleaning, other ongoing projects around the house which will consume most of the year, babysitting, and being a grampa for the fourth time--yep, I now have 2 girl and 2 boy grandkids--there hasn't been much time for blogging.

Also, my stack of books to be read is growing by leaps and bounds again. Last week a local bookstore called and said my copy of 'Comrade J' was in. Comrade J is subtitled "The untold secrets of Russia's master spy in America after the end of the cold war."

The next day my order of books from the Ayn Rand Bookstore arrived. They include 'Ayn Rand Answers', a collection of the best of her Q&A's.

'The Ominous Parallels' by Leonard Piekoff, which shows the frightening similarities between the ideas popular today in America and those of Germany just before the rise of Naziism.

'The God of the Machine' by Isabel Paterson. It's a political and economic defense of free-enterprise. Although this book was originally published in 1943, it can still be purchased at the Ayn Rand Bookstore at a good price.

'The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts" by Harry Binswanger. I want this to clarify my own thinking on such concepts as goal directed and purposeful action.

There is another book on study methods which was out of stock but which I hope to get soon. Meanwhile I'm still immersed in 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Gary Taubes.

I don't speed read or skim. I read slowly looking at every word. Oh yes, in between all this I'm still reading my spring edition of The Objective Standard. Right now I'm reading 'Isaac Newton: Discoverer of Universal Laws', an essay by David Harriman. Good stuff. I like the way Mr. Harriman takes the reader through the steps Newton took to arrive at his discoveries. I'm looking forward to the next two essays, 'Caspar David Friedrich and Visual Romanticism' by Tore Boeckmann, and 'The Exhalted Heroism of Alistair MacLean's Novels' by Andrew Bernstein.

So my spare time will be regimented for awhile but I promise to make more time to do some blogging at least once a week if not more.

The Day After (Earth Day)

If one ever wanted evidence that many in the media see their role as being witch doctors to Attila (the government) this post at Business & Media Institute by Jeff Poor should suffice. (h/t Junkscience.com) A witch doctor doesn't usually have direct power. His job is to provide Attila with justification for whatever Attila wants to do. In Ayn Rand's famous characterization:

"Attila herds men into armies--the Witch Doctor sets the armies' goals. Attila conquers empires--the Witch Doctor writes their laws. Attila loots and plunders--the Witch Doctor exhorts the victims to surpass their selfish concern with material property. Attila slaughters--the Witch Doctor proclaims to the survivors that scourges are a retribution for their sins. Attila rules by means of fear, by keeping men under a constant threat of destruction--the Witch Doctor rules by means of guilt, by keeping men convinced of their innate depravity, impotence and insignificance. Attila turns men's life on earth into a living hell--the Witch Doctor tells them it could not be otherwise."- From her title essay For The New Intellectual

From Mr Poor's article:

Time magazine continued to defend its manipulation of the classic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo – calling it a “point of view.” Managing Editor Richard Stengel said the cover art was part of the publication’s global warming advocacy and a way of forcing readers to “pay attention.”

Stengel defied the traditional notion that journalists should be unbiased. “I didn’t go to journalism school,” Stengel said. “But this notion that journalism is objective, or must be objective is something that has always bothered me – because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is as such a thing as objectivity.”

So let's all indulge our subjective whims! There is more:

Stengel spoke at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., part of the third annual Stuart J. Bullion Lecture on April 21. He made his remarks in the wake of a controversy sparked by magazine’s use of the iconic image of Marines raising an American flag at Iwo Jima with the flag replaced by a tree. He told the Ole Miss audience it was an attention ploy.

“My feeling is you have to grab people by the lapels and say, ‘Hey, pay attention’ and that was the idea of doing this,” Stengel said. “[I] just think you can’t be squeamish about trying to get people’s attention.”

In other words, if the public isn't paying attention, try a two-by-four over the head. Poor Mr. Stengel. He doesn't know that a picture is not an argument. For an editor, that is a disgrace. He clearly wants the public to fall into line behind government agencies like the IPCC et al. I recommend reading the whole article.

But wait. There's more!
Lubos Motl at the Reference Frame has a short video via News Busters that shows one of the scenes in Gore's AIT was actually copied from a scene in The Day After Tomorrow. Trouble is, that scene in TDAT was computer generated, not real. There is no end to the wholesale indifference to truth with these people. The primacy of consciousness reigns supreme.

Earth Is For Man

Today being Earth Day I thought I would celebrate one of earth's greatest achievements, the evolution of man. We should actually call this Man day. One of the underlying premises of environmentalism is that man is unnatural and is destroying the one true nature by merely existing. But man is natural. He evolved naturally just like all other living things have. If one looks at other life forms, one sees that plants for instance, always act in a self-interested way. They send their roots to exploit water and nutrients and their stems and leaves to exploit sunlight and life giving gasses like carbon dioxide. Everything a plant does it does to maintain and advance its own life. It is a very selfish behavior. You will never see a plant sacrifice itself for another plant. The reason is that self-sacrifice is unnatural. If self-sacrifice were natural, the plant world would soon cease to exist and all other life would follow.

The same is true of the animal world. I've been told that some animals have sacrificed themselves to protect their young. It is true that some animals do die trying to protect their home or young. But defending one's own life is a very selfish action. If say a Wildebeest were to offer its calf, or itself, to a pride of hungry lions, that would be a sacrifice. If you see such a thing, be sure to take pictures. You'll be incredibly rich. Why won't you see it? Because self-sacrifice is unnatural in the animal world too.

And the same is true of humans. There is only one problem. Man's survival was not prewired in any way. As a being of volitional consciousness, he must discover what is and is not in his self-interest. Man is the only creature that can act for his own survival or against it. Every individual human must make this choice. The great philosopher Aristotle identified man as the 'rational animal.' Obviously his mode of survival requires a rational self-interest as opposed to an irrational view of what is in his interest.

Environmentalists don't see man as the rational animal. They only see him as irrational and think that that is the essence of his nature. They want him to sacrifice himself to the wilderness. But sacrifice is not conducive to man's survival. Enviros seem to understand this and that is why they seek it. Most of them refuse even to consider that a rational self-interest will benefit nature in any way.

An even greater philosopher, Ayn Rand, has identified just such a rational self interest, Rational Egoism. So today, I will set aside some time to reread a few passages from her collection on rational egoism The Virtue of Selfishness.

(More info on Objectivism here.)

PS. C august had a good post at Titanic Deck Chairs yesterday on the question of how does a parent defend his kids from the green propaganda they certainly are exposed to. The comments are interesting too.

Good Evidence of Bad Science

Right now I'm reading "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. I'm only starting chapter 9 right now so I'm withholding an overall judgement of the book until I'm done with the whole thing. But I will say this: so far, this book has been replete with concrete examples of the truth of Ayn Rand's identification that "Government encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood."

That quote is from her essay 'The Establishing of an Establishment' now in the book 'Philosophy: Who Needs It' which can be found in most bookstores or ordered here. While Ms. Rand was writing about encouragement of the arts, this indifference to truth is true of many of the different market activities that government today encourages. Why this is so is a topic for another day. Let it suffice to say that dedication to the truth is replaced with dedication to government policy. For now I want to give a few examples of the many instances of indifference mentioned in the book:

"Scientists were believed to be free of conflicts if their only source of funding was a federal agency, but all nutritionists knew that if their research failed to support the government position on a particular subject, the funding would go instead to someone whose research did. "To be a dissenter was to be unfunded because the peer-reviewed system rewards conformity and excludes criticism," George Mann had written The New England Journal of Medicine in 1977. The NIH [National Institute of Health--ME] expert panels that decide funding represent the orthodoxy and will tend to perceive research interpreted in a contrarian manner as unworthy of funding. David Kritchevski, a member of the Food and Nutrition Board when it released Toward Healthful Diets, put it this way: "The US government is as big a pusher as industry. If you say what the government says, then it's okay. If you say something that isn't what the government says, or that may be parallel to what industry says, that makes you suspect."" (p-51,52)

Or:

"Those who believed that dietary fat caused heart disease had always preferentially interpreted their data in the light of that hypothesis. Now they no longer felt obliged to test any hypothesis, let alone [Ancel--ME] Key's. Rather, they seemed to consider their obligation to be that of "reconciling {their}study findings with current programs of prevention," which meant the now official government recommendations. Moreover, these studies were expensive, and one way to justify the expense was to generate evidence that supported the official advice to avoid fat. If the evidence didn't support the recommendations, then the task was to interpret it so that it did.*" (P-53,54)

He links to the Honolulu Heart Program which he says is an extreme example of this conflict in 1985.

It looks like starting with chapter 9 Mr. Taubes will be giving more scientific evidence that refined carbohydrates like white flour, white bread and sugar are bad for us and our obesity as a consequence of government encouragement to eat carbs in general while ignoring the kind of carbs consumed. We'll see. But the first 8 chapters are a testament to the validity of Rand's identification about indifference to truth.

To BE--lieve or Not To BE--lieve

One of the things I've been trying to do since becoming a student of Objectivism, is to stop using the words believe and belief except when referring to the act of accepting as true an idea for which there is no evidence. I've been trying to replace the words 'I believe that...' with 'I think that...' and while I've had some success at it I still find myself responding to inquires about my ideas with 'I believe.'

I'm trying to do this mainly to clarify my own thinking regarding the difference between knowledge and beliefs. All to often, people have said to me something like "Isn't everyone entitled to their own beliefs?" To which I've usually responded with "Politically, yes, but if those beliefs require action that will violate my or someone's rights, then those actions would be morally and politically wrong, in which case, the beliefs need to remain unrealized." This has resulted in at least partial agreement sometimes.

But these conversations are usually with older people whom I'm not trying to bring around to objectivism. If they were younger and thus more open to reason and new ideas, my responses may have been more involved. For example, a 60ish lady once asked me if I believed in an afterlife. I simply said no. She then asked if I believed that this world is all there is, to which I said yes. "I don't believe that" she said adding that there has to be more, there has to be some reward for going through life in this world. I said that I believed life is its own reward. (Looking back, I should have left 'I believed' out of that sentence.) That's when I knew she was operating, at least partially, on the malevolent universe premise. (This, despite having raised 4 kids successfully to adulthood and having been productive citizens all their lives.) Fortunately, the subject changed with no further questions of me.

Suppose the questioner had been much younger, say 30 or less. I might have answered with something like "Well, there are no facts of reality that give rise to the idea of an afterlife, so I don't give the idea any credibility." In my younger years I would have said something like "I don't believe in an afterlife." In the first response my frame of reference was reality. In the second the frame of reference was just mere opinion not tied or grounded to reality. So I think it is very important to respond to questions with answers that are tied to reality and not in just a belief system. So that's why I'm trying to purge the use of 'belief' from my everyday usage. Even if someone asks me "Do you believe America has a free future?" I will try to frame my answer away from the context of belief and into the context of reality by saying something like "Based on the evidence that..., I think..."

I know, in today's culture that 'I think' and 'I believe' are often used interchangeably. I know that people will often use 'I believe' in reference to something for which there is some evidence. I don't see evidence of a problem here. There is no point in jumping on someone because they're not as precise as we might like them to be, especially since most people have been taught to regard ideas in the approximate.

Even if someone asks for my opinion, "What's your opinion of Fred's honesty?" I would have to respond with say, "Within the context of everything I know about Fred, I have judged him to be an honest man." But, "It's my opinion Fred is honest" just doesn't seem to have the same tie to reality. I sometimes don't care for the word opinion because it can be a euphemism for belief as in "Do you believe in god?" Or knowledge as in "Do you believe two plus two equals four?" I know there are valid meanings for 'opinion' and invalid ones. I'll have to give that more thought.

More Blogroll Additions

Lately I've been busy with projects inside and outside the house. That's why blogging has been a little light. But for now I want to inform my readers of some blogroll additions.

First, I've added Titanic Deck Chairs by C. August who comments on anything and everything from an objectivist perspective. Today he reviews a book called The Baroque Cycle.

Second is 3 Ring Binder by LB who says the site is "A place to collect, store and eventually integrate ideas." Also from an objectivist orientation.

Third is another objectivist site called One Reality by SB. In his post of April 6th, he expresses his deepest gratitude to the IRS for throwing him a few crumbs of the money they took from him every two weeks. That's right! Never bite the hand that robs you.

At the website of the same name, evanescent reports on "philosophy, politics, science, atheism, religion, ethics, life, objectivism."

The Objective Standard, already on my blogroll, also has a blog called Principles In Practice. Today, Keith Lockitch posts on the real meaning of last week's Earth Hour.

I've also added a new site Atlas Shrugged. It's about Ayn Rand's magnum opus novel which concretizes her philosophy of Objectivism.

And lastly, I've added The Ayn Rand Lexicon. It's a good reference to Objectivism's position on a large variety of topics. For example, if you want to know Objectivism's position on sacrifice, go to the home page, across the top will be the alphabet, click on s and scroll down to the word sacrifice.

Return Of The Primitive In Medicine

In the essay What is Capitalism? in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand wrote:

The disintegration of philosophy in the nineteenth century and its collapse in the twentieth have led to a similar, though much slower and less obvious, process in the course of modern science.

Today's frantic development in the field of technology has a quality reminiscent of the days preceding the economic crash of 1929: riding on the momentum of the past, on the unacknowledged remnants of an Aristotelian epistemology, it is a hectic, feverish expansion, heedless of the fact that its theoretical account is long since overdrawn—that in the field of scientific theory, unable to integrate or interpret their own data, scientists are abetting the resurgence of a primitive mysticism. In the humanities, however, the crash is past, the depression has set in, and the collapse of science is all but complete.

We see evidence of the growth of irrationality in the sciences all around us. science no longer relies on experiments and lab tests to prove that x causes (or doesn't cause) y. Instead, statistical studies have replaced experiments. Even in statistics, the move now is to treat correlations as if they were causations.

We see the spread of irrationality in the form of the creation of new diseases that don't seem to have a cause and the addition of many causes to known diseases by way of definitions by non-essentials. I am convinced this is happening with autism, diabetes, ADHD, and many others. As far as "...the resurgence of a primitive mysticism" is concerned, Sandy Szwarc at JunkfoodScience has scary evidence of that:

Once one becomes a nurse or a doctor, it is now possible to get the continuing medical education credit hours required to keep our licenses without ever reading a lick of science. That’s a terrifying thought as a patient and a disheartening one as a medical professional.

For years, professionals have been lamenting the growing pseudoscience and alternative modalities in university curriculums, including medical school and nursing programs. The latest list of continuing educational courses for nurses to maintain their professional licenses, accredited by our state nursing association for this quarter, was just issued. Once again, it was replete with unscientific woo, such as courses in alternative medicine, reiki (8.4 credit hours), Chi Nie Tsang (21 credit hours), energy medicine (35.8 credit hours) and homeopathy (7.6 credit hours). Chi Nei Tsang, nurses are taught, is a deep organ massage that purportedly heals by working “on internal dysfunctions and energy blocks” and includes a variety of energy techniques. A certification in purple light is also offered by the provider which, it explains, will “strengthen the pure alchemical and conscious evolutionary practices using Ancient Taoist modalities as a bridge to connect all lineages, and bring ancient teachings into present day situations. As the earth moves through her evolution, lineage traditions must come forward to clarify and share their understanding of the human experience.”

So what does Ms. Szwarc think of this?

Yikes. If my loved ones land in the emergency room suffering a stroke or massive head injury, I really hope their medical care provider has been studying the latest science and technology and is grounded in evidence-based medicine. The point of requiring CMEs is to ensure us healthcare professionals stay current on the latest scientific developments and keep our skills sharp. Those include skills using our minds and the scientific process to critically examine research, as well as sort through bogus marketing claims. It makes one worry that if energy fields are confused for sound science, how well is unsound information recognized from the sound stuff when it comes to issues like preventive health, obesity and nutrition?

My sentiments exactly. In fact, I'm worried that my grandkids, just toddlers now, will one day wind up in a hospital only to have the doctor or nurse hum incantations and shake rattles over the bed while practicing the new multiculturalism of medical treatment. Now that's scary.

Earth Hour, Another Useless Ritual

Yesterday, Saturday March 29th. I posted a short notice on Earth Hour which was from 8 to 9 pm in which everyone around the globe was supposed to turn off all their lights in order to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions which would supposedly be a benefit to planet Earth. As I visited various websites, I noticed many bloggers promising to turn on all the lights in their house as a counter protest. As symbolic protests go, I thought it was a good idea.

Many bloggers correctly pointed out that the so called Earth Hour blackout was utter nonsense and would have zero effect on the planet. Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame points out that "Incidentally, the believers who will replace light bulbs by candles should know that a candle produces as much CO2 as a 20W light bulb powered by average energy sources during the same time. Five candles replace the CO2 output of a 100W light bulb." Obviously, this is not about reducing emissions of CO2.
While the average citizen would be justified in ignoring the event completely, thinkers should not trivialize or dismiss it out of hand entirely. As Ayn Rand once advised, don't bother to examine a folly, ask only what it is designed to accomplish. In this vein I have a few thoughts.

My first thought is: the pushers of environmentalism's ideas-the university professors and other leaders of the movement-may want to know how many people, users of these ideas in the world, are willing to make little sacrifices, i.e. agree to take a 'little' poison with their food on the grounds that it won't hurt much. This can tell them where the principle of sacrifice-to-the-wilderness has been seeded and thus where to apply pressure to expand that principle by virtue of its own merit. By the same token, it shows where there is resistance to said sacrifices and thus indicates where more effort is needed. (Happily, my own city of Detroit declined to participate in Earth Hour. A rare spike of rationality? I doubt it. Con artists don't like to make sacrifices. They prefer to collect them.)

A second thought that occurred to me was: this could be an indication of how many people are still under the influence of the Kantian idea that everything in reality is 'mere appearance' and so to them appearance, like performing an altruistic ritual of shutting lights off, is everything. I for one am curious as to how many people turned their lights out last night for that hour then later went to bed thinking they did something that would nobly and virtuously help the planet. This is the same mentality we see in G-8 meetings where every year the planet's leaders gather and promise to loot their citizens' tax dollars and give them to the starving people of Africa all the while refusing to identify and correct the causes of said poverty. They then go to bed believing themselves to be righteous people. But I digress.

A third thought is that modern society has digressed from the real meaning of sacrifice--the surrender of a value for a non-value--to naming as a sacrifice that which is, in effect, a trade. It is common today to hear people refer to the exchange of a value in return for a greater value, a sacrifice. Of course, such an exchange is precisely what a trade is. Each person in a trade believes the value he is trading for is of greater value to him than is the thing he is willing to trade away.

By referring to trades as sacrifices in order to make them sound virtuous, one removes the concept trade from the realm of morality. It then becomes impossible for trades to be considered virtuous. At best they are considered amoral.

So now we have a situation where people are actually making trades but calling them sacrifices in order to feel moral. But this cannot sit well with those who know that the real meaning of sacrifice,--the surrender of a value for nothing in return, which means, to be virtuous, a sacrifice must include suffering,--is not actually being practiced today thus people are not really being virtuous. The question then becomes, in the minds of the sacrificers, how do we get society back to the morality of true sacrifice, i.e. suffering as a way of life? ( Now do you know why Africa is a not-to-be-developed continent? They are already living the environmentalist's ideal lifestyle.)

They, the sacrificers, get to this ideal society piecemeal. A little at a time. They try to get people used to the idea of giving something up and getting nothing in return. The way to do that is by inventing moral rituals which when performed, will make one a moral person. One must make sure however, that the ritual provides nothing in return to the sacrificer except the idea that he, the sacrificer, is being moral.

Some rituals of this kind include recycling, which does nothing for the planet and costs more that it saves. Switching light bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent is another ritual which will cost way more than it's worth and does not help anyone, shutting off lights for an hour will have no affect on the planet except to return humans to the dark ages for an hour. In each of these cases the sacrificer gets nothing in return except the feeling of being moral. Later, even this will be removed when the pushers of sacrifice gain political power, i.e. the power of force. Then sacrifices will be forced as they were in Stalin's Russia and Mao's China where about 20 and 30 million people respectively were sacrificed and they didn't get to feel moral.

Expect to see a lot more of these useless rituals in the future as Americans are ceaselessly urged, cajoled, bribed and otherwise nudged to accept the real meaning of sacrifice, the surrender of a value in return for a non-value. This will continue until people realize that sacrifice is a primitive concept invented by savages and has no place in a civilized society. Today, people have a choice between altruism which causes men to regard every other man as a threat to whom he must sacrifice his values, or Objectivism the Philosophy of Ayn Rand in which Egoism, the morality of rational self interest, which requires men to respect his fellow man by respecting his rights, and provides man with a non-sacrificial way of life.

The question then is would people rather live in a society that regards men as sacrificial animals or one that requires men to respect each other?

No Earth Hour

I didn't know it but thanks to Amy Nasir at Kindredist, there is an earth hour at 8pm tonight when everyone is supposed to shut off their lights for one hour till 9pm. Amy calls it Edison Hour and vows to turn on all her lights at that hour. I know it's a symbolic protest but a good one I think.

Hillaryisms: I Mean, You Know...

I know this is a few days old but, Rule of Reason has a revealing post by Edward Cline on Hillary's attempted rationalization of her sniper-fire gaff. Evidently, she said:

œI went to eighty countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things – millions of words a day – so if I misspoke, it was a misstatement.”

Does she or does she not sound like a bubble-gum chewing, 17 yr old airhead? That paragraph almost makes Bush look like a linguistic scholar. Mr. Cline does an admirable job of cognitive critic when he points out:

I mean, you know, after all, what is the meaning of is? You know? I mean, I’m really inarticulate in this kind of bind, and I have a foggy memory of when exactly I was under sniper fire, or where. I traveled so much when First Lady as part of my experience. So when you catch me in a lie – I mean, a minor blip, a misstatement – it really rattles me, you know. But I’m sure I could think clearly if I got a call at 3 o’clock in the morning about an Iranian nuclear missile that incinerated Philadelphia, it wouldn’t rattle me at all, I mean, I have all that foreign policy experience. I actually touched the red phone in Bill's office, and that counts as experience, doesn’t it?

I concur, and they call Bush inarticulate.

The article goes on to say that all three major networks carried the clip of Hillary not running for cover. This is very much out of character for the MSM. There can only be one reason for such blasphemy, they want Obama to win. After all, everything will be forgiven by the DNC if Obama, a Democrat, wins.

If McCain or Hillary wins, expect the FCC to conduct an investigation to determine if networks' ownership is still serving the 'public interest.' (a sarcastic heh)

I wouldn't put anything past these candidates.

The "Only" Proper Space Race

David Veksler at Truth, Justice and The American Way has a 20 min. video at Ted Talks by space entrepreneur Burt Rutan. Evidently Mr. Rutan promised not to get into politics in this talk but what he does say is head-shaking enough. Plus, one has to admire his entrepreneurial spirit.

His theme seems to be: under government auspices, space technology development has stagnated and a new private, capitalist space race is needed, entirely funded of course with private money. His projection of the future is admirable.

Student Motivation Pt. 5

Pedagogically Correct Volume 2, Issue 9
March 19, 2008

"Pedagogy": The art and science of teaching.
:: Calling All LifeLong Learners: Learn Science the VanDamme Academy Way!
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Last time, I explained that in order for a teacher to properly motivate his students, he must really know the purpose of teaching his subject, and that purpose must set the standard for selection of the subject's content. Let me now add that the content selected must also be hierarchically appropriate if the purpose is to be achievable.

In a literature course, for example, the works selected for a given group of students must contain characters and themes to which they can relate. They must contain abstract material that the students are capable of grasping and can connect to their own lives. I once gave a workshop on hierarchy in education to the Maryland Homeschoolers' Association. In the discussion, I threw out, as a contrived example of the violation of hierarchy, the absurdity of reading Tom Sawyer to your toddler in the name of getting a jump on the classics. A parent approached me after the talk, thanked me for it, and confessed, his head low, that he had been reading none other than Tom Sawyer to his 2 and 5-year-olds, with what he had regarded as inexplicably disastrous results. It is not inexplicable-the works introduced to a child must not just be meaningful, they must be meaningful to him.

The value of the subject must also set the standard for the method of the course. Every exercise must be purposeful; it must be carefully selected to further the ultimate goal of the course. The method by which we achieve the purpose in literature is to have daily discussions of the reading, and daily writing assignments, that are integrated around the central value of the work-discussions that help the students to gain an understanding of the plot, of the characterization, and of the theme, so that they gain, over time, a deep appreciation for the story and for its meaning.

Key to this method must also be active integration of the material to the rest of the child's knowledge, including his knowledge of other subjects and the experiences of his life. He must not view the knowledge he gains as isolated, free-floating items of information, but as part of a whole, connected body of knowledge that he is working to master because of the guidance it will offer him in the pursuit of a fulfilled, happy life. Each subject has profound value-real, practical, selfish value-and the teacher must make a purpose of conveying this fact through connections to real life.

The final and most important principle of motivation is that the teacher must identify, explicitly and abstractly, the value of the subject to the students' lives. He must explain, as an important and recurring theme through every course, why the student is learning this, and what is the benefit to him. Motivation is fundamentally cognitive; it is knowledge itself-knowledge of the value of the material he is learning.

Andrew Lewis once gave a presentation to the VanDamme Academy parents about his method of teaching history. He said that the subject of history, as taught by most history teachers, answers five questions: Who?, What?, When?, Where? , and How? He then explained that a proper history course absolutely must answer two more questions: Why? , and the one most relevant to my purpose here, So what? This question must be answered not just in history, but in every subject.

The basic principles of motivation are really quite simple: the teacher must identify the value of his course, design the curriculum accordingly, and name the value explicitly. If he does this properly, he can dispose of the pizzas, gold stars, and rulers, and enjoy the radiantly eager response of children who really grasp what they are learning and why.

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"Fundamentals of Physical Science: A Historical, Inductive Approach"
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What I'm Reading

I just finished reading The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein and highly recommend it to all my readers. It can be purchased online here or ordered at any bookstore. This has to be the most in-depth, scholarly dissertation on the nature of Capitalism I have ever read. Mounds of evidence showing how the protection of individual rights led to the enormous explosion in productivity and thus prosperity that was the early America.

Dr. Bernstein not only provides overwhelming evidence to support the practical arguments for capitalism, he also provides strong moral and philosophical arguments for it. He even destroys the popular myths against capitalism such as the claim that capitalism exploits the workers and creates poverty or the notion that capitalism needed slavery to get started, and many more. In fact, he clearly shows that those companies that did do harm to the public and workers were able to do so only because they had been granted special favors not found in a free market: laws passed by federal and state governments granting subsidies, permits and monopolistic status to them while forbidding competition--by law.

The book shows the squalid and short lifespans endured by humans before capitalism and compares that to the booming prosperity and longer lifespans after capitalism. There is much more in this book than just the above. I especilly like the theme which runs throughout; Capitalism, with its protection of individual rights, is the only moral system in history because it is the only one that recognizes and is conducive with mans' nature as a rational, productive, thinking being. I urge my readers to get a copy asap. You won't regret it.


Update: I neglected to mention that Dr. Bernstein has his own website here.

Another Scary Government Intervention

On Wednesday's post I said that three articles at Junkfood Science were scary. But that was an understatement compared to this post.

Important news was issued yesterday on the legislative battle over the State collection of genetic material on newborn babies to use for government-endorsed genetic research without parents’ consent. Last night, the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee voted against consent rights (ownership) of infant blood and DNA, reported Twila Brase, RN, President of the Citizens' Council on Health Care. That means DNA material on children can be stored and used by the government or third parties without the consent of parents. The bill (SF 3138) now goes to the Senate for a full vote.

The government is getting out of hand. They scream bloody murder if the label on a soup can or cereal box cover doesn't disclose a detailed description of every atom enclosed. But they have no problem helping themselves to your baby's blood test info without your permission i.e. hiding that fact from you.

It's a long post but well worth the read, and includes an example of how the urge to perform the altruistic ritual by the government in 1960 resulted in the crippling and deaths of countless babies and children.

In a private laissez-faire economy, any desired screening of newborns would be provided by the private sector and not without the parent's permission. If babies started to die it would make headlines in the media. There would be no way private hospitals could cover it up for long like governments can and did.