The colors! The colors!

Okay, I've altered the colors on my blog because I have received a few complaints from people who were having trouble reading light-colored text on a dark background. I may continue fiddling with things over the next couple of days.

Enjoy.

-M.

Update...

Nick Provenzo over at Rule of Reason  has published another update to the uproar over his abortion post. He has published several of the more venomous and ridiculous messages he received from the so-called "pro-life" nutjobs. Some of them are hilariously asinine, others are eerily disgusting.

Go check it out for a good laugh and a creeped-out shiver. 

"Our stigmata will stagnate and we will shake"--

Matt 

The greatest show unearthed!

Okay, I’ve been absent for a bit. Fall semester at university isn’t really kicking my ass, but it is time consuming. And, and the hurricanes. Half the city doesn’t have or is just now getting back power. I have a few things lined up, both for here and the YouTube account, but right now, I’d like to introduce a new feature here at Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Actually, this is just an excuse to introduce something that I can use as filler whenever I get too distracted to post as frequently as I would like.

So, every now and then I’ll post a strip from a little comic I’ve been working on off-and-on for a few months. It’s nothing particularly mind-blowing. Just something I do occasionally to pass the time, when I don’t feel like writing and when I don’t really have the alacrity to retain anything I read.

The comic is called “The Horrors of Babylon”. It used to be called “The World Will Be Poorer without You”, after a line in one of my short stories. But that name just didn’t fit the comic. So, I played with a few names in my head and eventually changed it. And if I think of a better one, I’ll change it again.

To describe it as succinctly as I can: This is the kind of comic I would find funny. Topics include philosophy, science, economics, history, geek culture, b-movie horror film culture (e.g., Bob Wilkins, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Addams Family, Vincent Price, etc.), camp and kitsch (usually on the darker end of the spectrum), some politics and a few other things. It’s certainly not for everyone. But, if you enjoy a good Bob Wilkins, Kierkegaard or cryptography reference, this is for you.

The three recurring characters are Tzim Tzum, Ms. Penny Dreadful and Autumn Mitternacht. I am an okay artist, if I take my time. But I don’t put an incredible amount of work into these things. They exist largely for the jokes and references. They’re a boredom project.

The first on is called “Of Bullshit-ology”. Let’s see if you can guess what that is a reference to. Enjoy.

(You may have to click on it to see a bigger version. Flickr doesn't seem to have anything between "too small to read" and "too big to fit in the post".)

Provenzo on abortion; religionists on how to embarrass yourself publicly

Nick Provenzo over at Rule of Reason posted a piece about Palin’s Down’s Syndrome child and the ethics of abortion. It’s a good piece (except for one possibly misleading part that someone outside of an Objectivist context might misconstrue, but which Nick later clarified) so go read it.

What I’d really like to draw attention to for anyone who has yet to see it, is the quality of comments over at Rule of Reason. It’s goddamn embarrassing. Sometimes, it’s hard to think of some people as fellow human beings. The raving lunacy with which the conservative readers attacked Nick (thanks to links from HotAir, LifeNews and LewRockwell.com, among others) is astonishing. He gets called a moron, a eugenicist and “a sick wacko” among other horrible things. He was even compared to “white supremacists, nazis and other groups hellbent on genetic cleansing.”

In my experience, this sort of inanity and frothy-mouthed, unbalanced hysteria is reserved for when someone tells the left to go take their social justice, socialized medicine or environmentalist nonsense and shove it. Take a lesson from this, kids: it doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, left or right, when you reject reason, you are reduced to the kind of ravings that would embarrass a mental patient.

This was directed at Diana Hsieh in response to one of her comments: “I wish i had an egg to smack on your head”. Charming.

Take a good look. This is what religion has wrought.

From the migraine fields—

Matt

Mother Nature sucks...

Okay, the blog is not dead (is there even anyone out there to check the pulse?). With the fall semester at university under way and hurricanes Gustav and Ike crashing my party, I have been a tad neglectful. But fret not, things are a-brewin' and I will be resuming regular posting within the week. Cheers.

"I liked you better when you had hope."
"No, you didn't."

-Matt

A few notes...

...just so you know I'm not dead. I've been working on a few projects, so I haven't been updating with the frequency I would like. But here is some brief commentary on some recent happenings. I know of a few Objectivist bloggers who have a regular feature like this, so I might continue to do one every now and then.


Victoria Osteen (or, Sky Bitch of Houston)

I generally don't like to gloat about someone else's problems, but I just hate these people.

For those of you who don't know, Joel Osteen is a pastor at a megachurch here in Houston. He does, however, have several best-selling books and I believe he is on television quite often. So many people have probably heard of him.

His sermons, which are broadcasted nationally, are some of the most annoyingly foolish piles of religious nonsense I generally experience.

The church is a converted sports arena. That should give you an idea of the size of his congregation. I also live about half a mile from this atrocity, so you can imagine how much of a bitch it is to get around downtown in a major city on a Sunday with the biggest church in the nation releasing the drones to go to their apre-sermon IHOP breakfast.

Anyway, it seems his wife threw a hissy-fit on a plane when she didn't get immediate service after demanding the flight attendants clean up a fifty-cent piece size spill. While bitching out, she apparently tried to force her way into the cockpit and shoved a flight attendant into a bathroom door and elbowed her in the breast.

Some of the claims made by the woman bringing the suit are kind of foolish, but the general consensus of everyone who is not Osteen or her lawyer is that she did indeed wig out and try to force her way into the cockpit.

This trend of religious leaders acting like general a-holes and engaging in graphically hypocritical acts makes me smile.


XM/Serius Merger

The FCC finally deigned to allow Sirius and XM Satellite Radio to merge. Of course, in a free society, private companies wouldn't need to grovel to government bureaucrats to exercise their property rights, but one aspect of this merger struck me as particularly disgusting.

As a condition of being allowed to merge, the new company must pay fines of about $20 million because several radio receivers and signal boosting towers violated FCC technical rules. What rules? The companies failed to create and market receivers that were capable of receiving a signal from both companies prior to the merger.

That's right. Before they even knew if the government would leave them the hell alone and let them practice business the way they saw fit, they had to potentially waste millions of dollars on production and marketing of a product that, if the FCC had rejected the merger, would serve to aid their competitors. The new company is essentially going to be fined for not being sufficiently stupid prior to merging.

Reason #8,903,772 to abolish the FCC.


Beijing Olympics

Okay, personally, I have always thought, and I still think, that the U.S. should boycott the Beijing Olympics. This is a collectivist, authoritarian nation that shows no respect whatsoever to individual rights.

There was a big stink a little while a ago over China going back on the promise to refrain from monitoring and restricting the internet access of foreigners in the country to participate in or attend the Olympic Games. No surprise there.

Now China has revoked the visa of American speedskater and gold medalist, Joey Cheek, barring him from competing in the Games. Why? Essentially, because he is a Darfur activist.

Now, I think the notion of "doing something" about Darfur is foolish. But the only reason this man's visa was revoked was because of his work with Team Darfur, a bunch of athlete-activists who try to raise money for their cause. China's economic and military ties to the Sudan are very well known, so it's not hard to wonder about why this happened.

Of course, barring a gold medalist from competing against China's athletes only sweetens the deal.


That is all--
Matt

Oh, I can feel my anger in my teeth...

Last week, a meeting was held here in Houston, the purpose of which was purported to be an "[e]xamination of the Healthcare crisis in America and offering Universal Healthcare as the solution with Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Congressman John Conyers, Jr."

The entities responsible seemed to try very hard to avoid letting many physicians, or even the general public, know about this. I attended. It hurt my brain meats.

I refrained from writing up a report because I have a temper and very little patience for asininity and because my notes were basically divided into two categories: ones that went along the lines of "Dr. Whatever, healthcare as a right, economic illiterate/moral parasite" or, more bluntly, "Conyers, Wortham apology, are you shitting me?!"

Honestly, those are the notes I took. I can't take these people seriously. I know they pose a serious threat, but intellectually, I view them as bratty children at best.

Anyway, Gus Van Horn was there as well and he wrote up a very good report on the whole sad little event. Go check it out.


"And much of madness..."
-Matt

"They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe"

Ed Cline just doesn't stop. Now that you've read his short series on Obama, go read his three-part series "John McCain: Psuedo-Maverick of the Republican Party" (here are parts 2 and 3--they are also linked in the sidebar on part 1).

I love this guy.

Oh, and his Sparrowhawk series of historical fiction novels is amazing as well. C. August over at Titanic Deck Chairs provides an excellent review.


From the Migraine Fields--
Matt

The Sokal Hoax

Let me begin by saying that I have been aware of the Sokal Hoax for some time now. I was aware of who the principal players were, what the gag was and what the outcome was.

For those of you (is anyone out there?) who are unaware of the hoax: Alan Sokal, who is a physics professor at NYU, perpetrated an elaborate and very well-known academic hoax on the editors and readership of a postmodernist academic journal published by Duke University called Social Text. Sokal, who is the author of such books as Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science (which I recommend), wanted to see if such a prestigious postmodernist journal would “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions”.

He proceeded to write “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”. Now, as I said, I was aware of the hoax (which occurred in the mid-1990’s) and all the basics of the situation, but I had never read Sokal’s “Transgressing the Boundaries”. Until today.

It is comedic genius.

It is such a blatant hoax that the Social Text editors really deserved all the flak they caught for this (and then some). Anyone paying even the slightest attention while reading this paper would have caught on. There are so many great inside gags that, after a few pages, the only proper reaction is “Hey, this guy is screwin’ with us!”

Here’s a taste (from footnote 14):

“See also Porush (1989) for a fascinating account of how a second group of scientists and engineers -- cyberneticists -- contrived, with considerable success, to subvert the most revolutionary implications of quantum physics. The main limitation of Porush's critique is that it remains solely on a cultural and philosophical plane; his conclusions would be immeasurably strengthened by an analysis of economic and political factors. (For example, Porush fails to mention that engineer-cyberneticist Claude Shannon worked for the then-telephone monopoly AT&T.) A careful analysis would show, I think, that the victory of cybernetics over quantum physics in the 1940's and 50's can be explained in large part by the centrality of cybernetics to the ongoing capitalist drive for automation of industrial production, compared to the marginal industrial relevance of quantum mechanics.”

This is complete gibberish for anyone who knows anything about (1) economics, (2) the history of cybernetics, or (3) even the most basic elements of semiconductor physics.

“As Althusser rightly commented, ‘Lacan finally gives Freud’s thinking the scientific concepts it requires.' [Oh, God!] More recently, Lacan’s topologie du sujet has been applied fruitfully to cinema criticism and to the psychoanalysis of AIDS.”

If I had read that first sentence in a paper that was meant to be taken seriously, I would've crapped myself with anger. The second sentence—the one about applying Lacanian topology to cinema criticism and the psychoanalysis of AIDS-- is, disappointingly, based on actual publications. If I wasn’t already personally aware of that, you couldn’t have convinced it was anything but a joke.

If this paper was meant to be taken seriously, it would drive me up the goddamn wall and would certify its author as a Grade A, batshit numbskull. But, knowing it’s a joke, it’s just bloody funny.

From the Migraine Fields--
Matt

How goddamn cool is this?!

I was introduced to this video via a post on HBL.


-M.