Nov 21, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on what happens when scientists substitute God and religious theory for reality and reason...
[...] Scientists may scoff at people who fall back on explanations involving an intelligent designer, [Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson] said, but history shows that "the most brilliant people who ever walked this earth were doing the same thing." When Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica" failed to account for the stability of the solar system — why the planets tugging at one another's orbits have not collapsed into the Sun — Newton proposed that propping up the mathematical mobile was "an intelligent and powerful being." It was left to Pierre Simon Laplace, a century later, to take the next step. Hautily telling Napoleon that he had no need for the God hypothesis, Laplace extended Newton's mathematics and opened the way to a purely physical theory.
"What concerns me now is that even if you're as brilliant as Newton, you reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God and then your discovery stops — it just stops," Dr. Tyson said. "You're no good anymore for advancing that frontier, waiting for somebody else to come behind you who doesn't have God on the brain and who says: ‘That's a really cool problem. I want to solve it.' "
"Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance," he said. "Something fundamental is going on in people's minds when they confront things they don't understand."
..and when entire cultures do the same:
He told of a time, more than a millennium ago, when Baghdad reigned as the intellectual center of the world, a history fossilized in the night sky. The names of the constellations are Greek and Roman, Dr. Tyson said, but two-thirds of the stars have Arabic names. The words "algebra" and "algorithm" are Arabic. But sometime around 1100, a dark age descended. Mathematics became seen as the work of the devil, as Dr. Tyson put it. "Revelation replaced investigation," he said, and the intellectual foundation collapsed. He did not have to say so, but the implication was that maybe a century, maybe a millennium from now, the names of new planets, stars and galaxies might be Chinese. Or there may be no one to name them at all. ["A Free-for-All on Science and Religion", NY Times, November 21, 2006, ]
Nov 19, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Ellen Kenner's radio show "The Rational Basis of Happiness" is available as a FREE iTunes podcast.Nov 15, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Listen to his new radio show live or download the latest show as an .mp3.
From the show description:
Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is board-certified family physician and graduate of The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. A nationally recognized nutritional expert, Dr. Fuhrman is also the author of several acclaimed books including; "Eat To Live", "Disease Proof Your Child", "Cholesterol Protection For Life", and "Fasting and Eating for Health". Dr. Fuhrman's books have helped thousands to lower cholesterol, reverse diabetes, and lose weight. As a former world class athlete and coach, Dr. Fuhrman was a member of the United States International and World Figure Skating Team, winning medals in pair skating on both the national and world levels. He has dedicated his life career towards understanding nutritional science applying it in his medical practice. Over the years, Dr. Fuhrman has helped thousands of patients lose weight permanently and achieve dramatic recoveries from "so-called" irreversible diseases via nutritional excellence.
Nov 15, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
The pros:
[...]Seat belts, vaccines, clean tap water, and other modern miracles have dramatically boosted average life expectancies, to be sure—reducing annually the percentage of people who die before reaching the maximum life span—but CR alone demonstrably raises the maximum itself. In lab studies going back to the thirties, mice on severely limited diets have consistently lived as much as 50 percent longer than the oldest of their well-fed peers—the rodent equivalent of a human life stretched past the age of 160. And it isn't just a mouse thing: Yeast cells, spiders, vinegar worms, rhesus monkeys—by now a veritable menagerie of species has been shown to benefit from CR's life-extending effects. Despite the mounting evidence, however, the link between CR and longevity remained for many years a medical curiosity, its implications for human health intriguing, certainly, but unexplored.
[...] In 1991, however, the proposition was simplified somewhat when a team of eight bioscientists sealed themselves up for a two-year stint inside a giant, airtight terrarium in the Arizona desert—and promptly discovered that the hypothetically self-sustaining ecosystem they'd settled into could barely grow enough food to keep them alive. This revelation might have doomed the experiment (known as Biosphere 2) but for the fact that the team's physician, UCLA pathologist Roy Walford, had been studying the Calorie Restriction phenomenon for decades and convinced his fellow econauts that—as long as they all ate carefully enough to get their daily share of essential nutrients—a year or two of near starvation wouldn't hurt. When at last the Biosphere 2 crew emerged from their bubble, tests proved them healthier in nearly every nutritionally relevant respect than when they'd gone in, and the case for Calorie Restriction in humans was no longer purely circumstantial. ["The Fast Supper", Julian Dibbell, New York Magazine]
For some more pros -- and some of the cons -- see the article at New York Magazine.Nov 14, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Andy Bernstein will speak at Marist College on Thursday Nov. 16, 2006 about "The Moral Greatness of Sports Heroism." This talk was inspired by a front page interview he did for USA Today in September 2006 on the soul of a champion. This talk starts with an attempt to define heroism and to demonstrate the moral stature of a true hero. On such a foundation, it then proceeds to rationally validate and explain what many sports fans only viscerally sense: a superlative athlete is a towering hero.
Time: 7:30 p.m. EST; Bldg. / Room: Student Center Building (No. 27 on Campus Map) / Cabaret Room; Marist College 3399 North Road Poughkeepsie, NY 12601; Phone - 845-575-3000. Directions, Maps, Parking: https://www.marist.edu/welcome/visit.html and https://www.marist.edu/welcome/map.htmlNov 7, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
From Noodlefood:In other words, 340 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan fighting for absolutely nothing. In Iraq, 2801 American soldiers have died for worse than nothing, i.e. in order to create yet another virulently anti-American Islamic regime. In both conflicts, over 10,000 American soldiers have been seriously wounded.Yet in a recent (11/2) TIA Daily article entitled "Is Bush All Hat and No Cattle?", Robert Tracinski claims that "All of Bush's errors [in Iraq] could have been, and still can be, corrected." Did I miss something? Has Jesus granted President Bush the power to raise the dead and heal the wounded?It's not mere "error" to kill over 3,000 American soldiers and seriously wound more than 10,000 for the sake of granting our Islamist enemies the power to vote in Islamist governments that will shelter, organize, and finance the terrorists who will attack America and other civilized nations in upcoming years. It's not mere "error" for an American President to pursue that strategy despite overwhelming evidence of its grossly self-destructive results.So let's call a spade a spade: President Bush's foreign policy is active, deliberate, and blind self-sacrifice. That's not error. It's evil.
Comments Professor John Lewis in TOS:One argument made for a Republican vote in this election—and the support it will bring to President Bush—is that Bush has the right foreign policy aims in mind; he errs only in their pursuit. If we would just give him the support he needs, he will correct his errors—thus speak his apologists.Well, some 3,000 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and over 10,000 have been maimed. Until those apologists raise the dead and restore lost limbs, the "errors" remain uncorrectable.Bush has had nearly four years to watch this horrendous destruction of our youth—and to understand its purpose, and its cause. But the more body bags and stretchers come home, and the more our position deteriorates, the more he demands we "stay the course." What course? The good of the Iraqis, which trumps all other considerations.This is not error. This is the intentional, ongoing, committed sacrifice of our young people to foreign strangers. This is evil.Please spare me the rejoinder that Iraq is a "small war" next to World War II, and that we lost 12,500 dead and over 50,00 wounded at Okinawa alone. The war is not small to that 25 year old soldier who wanted to protect his country, but ended up losing his legs for the Iraqis. It is the purpose of the war—sacrifice on behalf of others—that makes it evil, not the body count.The withdrawal of support for the Iraq war by the American people is a healthy response to this sacrificial carnage. It is their recognition, even though implicit, that that the Iraqis have no claim on the lives of our young people.
Nov 6, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--This Veterans Day, we will once again pay tribute to our fellow Americans who have served in the military. "Americans should be very proud of our heroic veterans," said Alex Epstein, junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "But we must also acknowledge that our government has repeatedly failed our men in uniform.
"It is proper to send soldiers to war only when their and our freedom is truly threatened, and only if we make every effort to protect their lives during war.
"Shamefully, America has repeatedly failed to meet this obligation. It has repeatedly placed soldiers in harm's way when no threat to America existed--e.g., to quell tribal conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. America entered World War I, in which 115,000 soldiers died, with no clear self-defense purpose but rather on the vague, self-sacrificial grounds that 'The world must be made safe for democracy.' America's involvement in Vietnam, in which 56,000 Americans died in a fiasco that American officials openly declared a 'no-win' war, was justified primarily in the name of service to the South Vietnamese. And the current war in Iraq--which could have had a valid purpose as a first step in ousting the terrorist-sponsoring, anti-American regimes of the Middle East--is responsible for thousands of unnecessary American deaths in pursuit of the sacrificial goal of 'civilizing' Iraq by enabling Iraqis to select any government they wish, no matter how anti-American.
"In addition to being sent on ill-conceived, 'humanitarian' missions, our soldiers have been compromised with crippling rules of engagement that place the lives of civilians in enemy territory above their own. To send soldiers into war without a clear self-defense purpose, and without providing them every possible protection, is a betrayal of their valor and a violation of their rights.
"This Veterans Day, we must call for a stop to the sacrifice of our soldiers and condemn all those who demand it."Nov 2, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--In response to the kidnapping of an American soldier in Iraq, U.S. forces imposed a blockade around Sadr City. Five days later, with the solider still missing, the United States ended the blockade at the behest of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. "President Bush has mocked the idea that military decisions should be made by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., yet he is now allowing them to be made by bureaucrats in Iraq," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "This is disgraceful." "Yet this is perfectly consistent with Bush's Iraq policy, which aims, not to defend U.S. interests, but to sacrifice American wealth, security, and lives in service of Iraqis. So long as the welfare of Iraqis is paramount, there are no grounds for asserting our right to direct our soldiers as we see fit.
"We must reject President Bush's suicidal policy and embrace a foreign policy aimed solely at protecting the interests of the United States."
From Cox and Forkum:
Nov 1, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
"Many of us discovered Cox & Forkum in the days after September 11th. It was a strange time. After cartoonists had done their initial muted-in-sorrow Statue-of-Liberty-with-head-bowed-to-the-missing-towers tastefully tragic responses to the day itself, many seemed to have great difficulty finding a tone for the new era. And into the void stepped Cox & Forkum." -- MARK STEYN from the introduction
We're proud to announce our latest book, BLACK & WHITE WORLD III. All our editorial cartoons from November 2004 to October 2006 are included, plus:
-- An introduction by Mark Steyn, author of the New York Times bestseller America Alone;
-- A Cox & Forkum interview with Cox & Forkum, for an inside look at how we create cartoons together;
-- Newsmaker and other caricatures by John;
-- Pages from John's sketchbook;
-- "Cartoon Jihad": A section devoted to our Mohammed-related cartoons, including a previously unpublished interview by Robert Tracinski (publisher of The Intellectual Activist), and his "Publish or Perish" editorial;
-- "The Ahmadinejad Code": A section devoted to our covert cartoon for Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest, including developmental sketches;
-- "Ground Zero": A section devoted to our cartoons about the battle for a proper 9/11 memorial at the World Trade Center site, including the editorial by Debra Burlingame that started it all;
-- Gag cartoons for the Buster McNutt humor column;
-- And more ... over 400 illustrations!
Click here for more information and to order a signed limited edition copy.Oct 30, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
"Dave Harriman seems to know effortlessly everything worth knowing about physics and its history; yet he also knows that the student must be led through the material carefully, in crystal clear steps, if he is to understand the logic and power of the subject. As a result, physics taught by Harriman comes alive in the student's mind as a real part of his thinking. Harriman taught me physics personally, so I know whereof I speak." -- Dr. Leonard Peikoff
David Harriman, philosopher and historian of physics, is the originator of VanDamme Academy's revolutionary science curriculum. An expert both in physics and in proper pedagogy, Mr Harriman developed and taught a two-year course on the history of physics for VanDamme Academy.
His unique approach is to teach physics historically, thereby teaching it inductively. From the early Greeks to Copernicus to Newton, this course presents the essential principles of physics in logical sequence, placing each in the context of the earlier discoveries that made it possible and explaining how each was discovered by reasoning from observations.
Teaching physics by this method not only renders physics thoroughly intelligible--it also makes physics an inspiring story of discovery, in which great thinkers triumph in their quest to grasp the nature of the physical universe.
VanDamme Academy is now making this revolutionary physics course, "Introduction to Physical Science," available to the public. While Mr. Harriman's easily accessible presentation makes the course appropriate for students as young as grade seven, the course's profound content (unavailable anywhere else) makes it equally valuable for adults: from those seeking to gain the science education they never had to lovers of history who want to understand how we reached today's wondrous world of technology.Oct 26, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
I just finished reading Bradley Thompson's article "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism." It succinctly shows how the two factions of conservatism -- "compassionate conservatism" and the "neo-conservatism" -- both unite on their fundamental opposition to individual rights and capitalism in favor of forced sacrifice of a fascist redistributive welfare state -- in other words they have embraced the philosophy of the Left, while claiming to be defenders of capitalism.
Writes, Thompson:
What the mandarins of the conservative establishment do not and cannot understand, given their philosophy, is that conservatives—to the extent that they ever had any interest in defending individual rights and limited government—lost the fight because they never engaged the enemy with the only kind of weapon that could win: a moral argument against the claim that those in "need" have a moral claim on one's life, liberty, and property. More importantly, mainstream conservatives have never made a philosophic argument for individual rights, limited government, and capitalism on explicitly moral grounds. Ultimately, they are embarrassed by, and have always worked very hard to hide, the fact that capitalism can only be justified if each and every man has a moral right to live and work for his own sake and not as a sacrificial beast of burden to the "needs" of society.
It is true that the GOP and its intellectual allies in the conservative movement have employed the rhetoric of rights, but there has never been any philosophic substance to their arguments. Once one peels away the folksy rhetoric, the hollow bromides, and the patriotic slogans, the conservative position comes down to this: The free-enterprise system is good because it "works" better than any other system, because it produces more wealth that can be subsequently "shared" with the less fortunate.
Not even Goldwater conservatives can offer an alternative to the welfare state, because they too accept its moral premises. Why? Why do all conservatives accept the moral premises of the liberals? The answer, in a word, is religion.
[...]
Liberalism invokes the altruism of Marx; conservatism invokes the altruism of Jesus; and both camps are indebted to Rousseau for his emphasis on compassion. With respect to individual rights, there is and can be no fundamental difference between a secular-liberal welfare state and a religious-conservative welfare state. It matters not one whit to me whether my earned wealth is forcibly redistributed by a Hillary Clinton or a George Bush government; either way, my money is seized. The political subjugation of the individual in the name of the morality of sacrifice is the essence of both.
Compassionate conservatism and neoconservatism have not corrupted the GOP as some conservatives have argued; they have simply exploited and brought to the surface principles that have been at the heart of the conservative intellectual movement from the beginning. Consequently, after decades of an impossible struggle in which conservatives fought liberal government programs while accepting and agreeing with liberal altruism, they have finally and officially given up, abandoned their former half-formed principles, and openly embraced the philosophical roots of the Left.
Be sure to read the rest of this insightful in The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism, available online at Craig Biddle's The Objective Standard.Oct 25, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--Iran is apparently expanding its nuclear program, and North Korea has hinted that it might test another nuclear bomb. Washington has committed itself to a "diplomatic" solution and is pushing for U.N. sanctions against Iran or North Korea. These sanctions, though, might be sunk if opposed by Russia or China or another country. So U.S. diplomats are busy trying to build international support for supposedly "tough" U.N. sanctions.
"But this entire approach is dead wrong. It sacrifices our self-defense to the whims of the so-called international community," said Elan Journo, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.
"Our self-defense should not be left to the mercy of the dictatorship-infested United Nations, an organization corrupt to its core and manifestly hostile to America.
"We have a moral right to exist and defend our freedom. But our leaders do not believe that. That is why they want the approval of others, the endorsement of a 'consensus' supporting U.S. actions. Our leaders lack the confidence to act self-assertively to defend U.S. interests. But such independence--grounded in rational judgment and moral self-confidence--is indispensable to protecting our lives.
"Today's crisis is a product of U.S. inaction and appeasement of Iran. Taking military action against Iran is not only within America's rights, but overdue."Oct 25, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
From the New Zealand Herald:
A New Zealand peace activist has been jailed in Britain for eight months for attacking a rock singer leaving him in a coma. Christiaan Briggs, who acted as a human shield in Iraq, admitted punching 19-year-old singer Billy Leeson following an argument on a late night bus. [...] Briggs spent three weeks in Iraq with the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action Group in 2003 and was a former British Green Party candidate. [...] According to court testimony, Leeson had been on a bus coming back from a sell-out London gig when his girlfriend complained that Briggs was staring at her. Leeson told Briggs to "look elsewhere" and, after they exchanged words, got off the bus in Camden. Briggs followed and as Leeson walked off, punched him on his left cheek. [..] The singer suffered a fractured skull and had to undergo a five-hour operation during which surgeons removed a piece of bone to lessen pressure on his brain. He was in hospital for six weeks and had to learn to walk again. According to the BBC website, Briggs' defence counsel Bartholomew Cosella said Briggs was a "committed pacifist" who had devoted himself to "trying to make the world a better place". ["NZer jailed for attacking British rock singer"]
Perhaps, the world would be a better place if Briggs had been put into a coma.Oct 24, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
On Oct. 13 President Bush signed into law the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a measure restricting Internet gambling.
"This measure, which requires financial institutions to block credit card and other payments to Internet wagering businesses, is an infringement on our rights," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
"Gambling, when practiced responsibly, can be a totally legitimate form of entertainment. The government has no right to prohibit adults from doing it--on the Internet or anywhere else--and no right to prohibit businesses from offering gambling opportunities to potential customers.
Cartoon by Cox and Forkum.
"Why do supporters of the law deny individuals the freedom to spend their hard-earned money on gambling? Because, they say, people will bet and lose more than they can afford. In other words, individuals are inherently incapable of making rational decisions, and thus it is the government's job to protect us from ourselves. This vicious, paternalistic idea has no place in a free society."Oct 23, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--"Britain is embroiled in a fierce debate over British Muslim women who wear a niqab--an opaque veil that covers a woman's entire face. Many British Muslims have expressed outrage that a public schoolteacher was ordered to remove her veil--while many other Britons have defended the school, criticized the wearing of niqabs, and called for the greater assimilation of Muslims into British society."Britons are absolutely right to criticize the niqab," said Alex Epstein, junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is a demeaning, barbaric article of clothing that inculcates shame in women, depriving them of individuality and femininity.""But to criticize niqabs will not go very far in making Britain a more integrated, less balkanized nation. Britons' most powerful tool of assimilation is to understand and proudly and convincingly proclaim Western ideals. They must understand that what made the West great is individualism, reason, the pursuit of happiness--and that this is objectively superior to the tribalism, superstition, and earthly deprivation that many Muslims seek to live out and bring to Europe. Britons must reject the insidious idea of multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures are of equal value. Cultures are not of equal value: prosperity is superior to poverty, happiness is superior to misery, freedom is superior to slavery, and a visible face is superior to a slit revealing two anonymous eyes."Oct 23, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--Upon hearing the news that former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to 24 years, most Americans, trusting the newspaper articles and books they have read on Enron, think that justice has been served. But, said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "Jeff Skilling has not gotten justice, and the media bear a major portion of the blame.
"Few Americans know that during Skilling's trial, the prosecution came nowhere near proving its central allegation that Jeff Skilling engineered a conspiracy to defraud investors. Few know that Skilling, upon leaving Enron five months before its collapse, destroyed no documents, nor did anything else resembling a criminal cover-up. Few know that the prosecution, unable to prove a conspiracy, spent huge swaths of the trial taking pot-shots at Skilling with issues not even mentioned in the indictment, such as the failure of Skilling, a multi-millionaire many times over, to disclose a failed $50,000 investment to Enron's board.
"The media's misportrayal of the case against Skilling long predates the trial. Ever since the fall of Enron, most of the media have treated as fact every conceivable smear against Skilling made by ax-grinding prosecutors or ex-Enron employees, while treating as absurd Skilling's claim that he neither engineered a conspiracy nor lied to investors.
"There can be no doubt that the media's treatment of Skilling contributed to his conviction for a phantom conspiracy--and to the outrageous 24-year sentence that he has now received. And the mistreatment of Skilling is part of a broader trend: the trend of treating businessmen as guilty until proven innocent. Our journalists and intellectuals, accepting the idea that the pursuit of profit is morally tainted, assume that whenever anything goes wrong in business, it is the result of crooked behavior by greedy, rich CEOs--and slant their coverage accordingly. This practice is putting numerous innocent men in jail, and instilling terror throughout corporate America.
"During Skilling's appeal, let us call for the media to start treating Skilling--and all businessmen--fairly."Oct 22, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Conventionally, most people believe that morality can only be based in religious faith - that in a world without God no principles of right and wrong could exist. Related to this, philosophers have long held that no objective, fact-based, rational code of values is possible. Regarding both points, this talk shows that the exact opposite is true. The purpose of morality is to guide human life on earth - and religion is utterly incapable of it. Flourishing life requires a code of secularism, rationality, egoism and freedom. Religious faith clashes with every principle of a proper moral code, and as such, has led--and can only lead to--hell on earth. The speaker, Dr. Andrew Bernstein, is a professor of philosophy at Marist College and also lectures at the State University of New York, where he was selected as Outstanding Teacher in 2004. He has given addresses at Harvard, Stanford, West Pont, Northwestern, Carnegie-Mellon, Columbia, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, USC, among others. He is a frequent contributor to several major newspapers as well as a frequent radio and TV commentator. He is also affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute, where he is a Senior Writer and Speaker. He has published several books, including Heart of a Pagan, The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic, and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire, and Cliffs Notes for Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem.
University of California, Los Angeles. Date: Thurs, Oct. 26, 2006 Time: 7:30 PM Location: Moore 100 http://www.ucla.edu/map/ Contact Info: info@ClubLogic.org
Oct 22, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Global Capitalism: The Solution to World Oppression and Poverty
Capitalism is the system of individual rights. The enormous success of capitalism in Asia in the 20th century's second half, and the beginning of its positive impact in contemporary Latin America add to the evidence accumulated in Europe and North America over the past 200 years: capitalism is the system of both freedom and prosperity. Conversely, capitalism's antipode -- statism in any form -- those systems that deny the principle of individual rights, necessitates both political oppression and economic destitution. The purpose of this talk is to show that and why these claims are true. This talk shows that wherever the political/economic system of capitalism is instituted on any continent in any era men's freedom and prosperity are greatly increased. This was as true of 18th century Europe as it is of 21st century Asia. From its earliest days, capitalism raised the poor's living standards and, within a century, eradicated in the Western world the ages-old scourge of child labor. At the turn of the 21st century, the enormous benefits of capitalism are beginning to be reaped in the 3rd World, especially in Asia. As Ayn Rand stated, capitalism is the ideal social system and this talk, based on three years of research for 'The Capitalist Manifesto', proves it.
University of Southern California . Fri, Oct 27, 2006 Time: 6:30pm Location: SAL – 101. Contact Info: aynrand@usc.edu www.uscobjectivistclub.com
From 