This battle has just begun

I spend a lot of time on the internet. I get almost all of my news there (aside from the occasional edition of the Wall Street Journal purchased outside my favorite diner and the occasional bored venture onto primetime news networks), my blog rounds include upwards of 150 blogs ranging from current events to politics to economics to news analysis to philosophy to sports. I have to know what's going on in the world and in my fields (philosophy and history), so I try to keep up. But sometimes some of the sites usually on my regular rounds fall by the wayside (this happens to The New Clarion all the time--I don't know why I keep spacing them out). One of those that has fallen out of my regular rotation lately is Brian Leiter's blog. It happens.

For those of you who don't know, Leiter's blog is predominantly reporting news about the academic profession of philosophy: who left where to teach where, who died, etc., with a bit of reporting on the intellectual culture in general thrown in. Leiter is a philosopher and legal scholar at the University of Chicago and also is the editor of The Philosophical Gourmet Report, a ranking (often controversial) of philosophy graduate schools in the English-speaking world. 

Well, I stopped by Leitner's place again today and saw this. If you don't know who Donald Hubin is, don't worry. His contribution to philosophy is 30-odd years of poorly reasoned and wholly uninfluential articles on justice, paternity, rights, values and sundry other topics in ethics. 

These are the people young Objectivists (especially philosophy majors) will encounter in universities. Someone who thinks of his job not as teaching young people how to think rationally about philosophical issues, but as disabusing the poor little lemmings of their nonsense dogmas. And that's if you're lucky. Many of them are openly hostile. Trust me, I've seen them all.

And to include Rothbard in the same category as Rand, or even someone like Nozick, is just insulting. I'm sorry, but libertarians are going to have realize that Rothbard was a piss-poor thinker. 

Look, I've dealt with these cats for five years. I'm in it for the long haul: PhD. Don't let them break you down. And they will try to break you down like you're an alcoholic at an intervention. Stand your ground, be respectful (as long as they deserve it) and, above all, know your material. Know it backwards and forwards. Not only Objectivism but whoever you are studying. If you have to know Schopenhauer's opinion of Kant's transcendental aesthetic, know it thoroughly. If you have to know Schumpeter's criticism of Keynes' "general theory", know it thoroughly. If you have to know the influence of classical teachings on the Founding Fathers, know it thoroughly. 

If you know your material, know how to rationally integrate that knowledge and can articulate it eloquently, they have nothing on you.

-M.

5-0

It's looking more and more like I may owe Josh McDaniels an apology.

-M.

Don't act surprised.

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

This was going to happen at some point during his presidency. Might as well get it out of the way now, when he is merely promising universal prosperity and world peace, then when his nonsense collapses all around him.

I'll say nothing else except to point you to the list of recipients of this Oslo trinket and ask whether you think it should really be such an honor to be in that company.

-M.

An Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes

Do I really need to say anything else?

-M.

Good Riddance

Ted Kennedy Dies of Brain Cancer at Age 77

It's about time.

-M.

Les Paul, 1915-2009

I've been a day or so behind for the last week, so I just learned, after stopping by Myrhaf's, that the great Les Paul has passed away. A brilliant musician and innovator, there is no rock and roll without this man. He developed one of the first (and eventually most ubiquitous) solid body electric guitars as well as developing overdubbing, multitracking, delay and phasing effects, as well as innovative playing styles. 

A great man whose influence will live as long as rock and roll. Rest in peace, Les Paul. 

Thank you, Les.

-M.

Hall of Fame

Well, Shannon Sharpe has been snubbed from the Hall of Fame. I shouldn't be surprised. The Denver Broncos just get routinely snubbed from Canton. Floyd Little, Haven Moses, Tom Jackson, Steve Atwater, Karl Mecklenburg. RANDY GRADISHAR. It's obscene really.

From what I understand, there is a lot of backroom politics bullshit that goes on with the pile of fools who are tapped to vote for the inductees. Just look who else isn't in Canton: Cris Carter, Steve Tasker, Alex Karras, Ken Stabler and Jerry Kramer. Kramer's snub is particularly shameful. I acknowledge some bias, being a former offensive lineman myself, but this man really was the greatest guard to ever play the game. And he kicked field goals!

Now, I have a whole season of being disappointed by the Frankenstein monster that Jeff McDaniels has turned my team into.

Onward.

-M.

Really swingin', man...

I had always assumed that people swinging their arms when they walked was somehow a balance thing. I never gave it much thought though. Pendulums are often used to keep the balance of tall, skinny structures and that is what arms essentially are when you're walking: swinging pendulums.

Now, I read this article, which states that arm swinging is largely believed to be an evolutionary carry-over "from when we used to go about on all fours," but now a new paper reveals that the purpose of arm swinging may actually be balance and energy economy. Really? That former was the default theory? Huh.

"Rather than a facultative relic of the locomotion needs of our quadrupedal ancestors, arm swinging is an integral part of the energy economy of human gait."

Well, yeah. Didn't you ever try to walk with your arms straight your sides when you were a kid just to see what it felt like? I was under the impression that this was a near-universal childhood curiosity.

This is not the first time in recent memory that I've read about an allegedly interesting scientific paper making some common sense claim that was causing a stir. A few months ago I read an article about a computer science professor named James Crook who claimed to have an algorithm for solving sudoku puzzles.

His system requires players to mark up empty cells in a Sudoku grid with all possible remaining numbers and, by comparing number sets, to labour through a tree of options that eventually produces a solution.

That's pretty much the method I, and everyone else I know, use to solve sudoku puzzles. Am I missing something?

-M.

Ligatio in caritas

For those of you who can stomach it, the Pope's new encyclical, Caritas in veritate, is here.

It's quite long and I have not made my way through the entire thing yet, but it is disgusting. 

As Gus Van Horn points out, the new screed from Benedictus reminds one eerily of John Paul's Populorum Progressio, which Ayn Rand annihilated in "Requiem for Man" in Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Indeed, it is essentially Populorum Progressio updated for 2009. It even discusses Populorum Progressio in detail at many points. 

Of course, the call for what would essentially be a world government is the most jarring. 

Take a good hard look at everything, kids. And I mean everything. This is fast becoming the world many of you asked for. So, don't flinch. You are not spectators, you are part of the spectacle. And you will not be forgiven. 

-M.

Ahmadinejad warns Obama

Ahmadinejad tells Obama not to interfer in Iran

It doesn't matter who the president is, kids. As long as he is the American president, there will be trouble.

Listen--

Obama could get down on his hand and knees and lick the feet of Ahmadinejad and all the Iranian mullahs and it would not make a damn bit of difference. Their problem is with the West in general and America in particular. To these medieval mystics, Obama is still the president of the Great Satan and anything he is says will only be interpreted as "Western filth" and aggressive American "imperialism" and "interference".

There is no coming to terms with a violent pile of religious crazies.

-M.