Archive for December, 2003

The next environmentalist mass hysteria is at hand: the earth is slowing down. Collision with sun/moon is imminent.

Correction: what I meant to say is that after billions of years, the earth has stopped slowing down — since 1999 that is. The difference is less than a second a year, but the missing leap-second is significant to scientists and many communication systems.

I’ve been working on converting my website to a content management system that I can easily deploy on other sites. If you’re familiar with PHP, you can download my first hack at it CMS.rar">here. The interesting stuff is in cms.php and .htaccess. (File compressed with WinRar.) I used the CMS to generate this mobile/AvantGo version of my homepage.

SelectSmart has a “presidential candidate selector poll.” Given that my answer was not listed for 2/3 of the questions, I think that the results are fairly accurate:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Libertarian Candidate (71%)
3. Bush, President George W. – Republican (69%)
4. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO – Democrat (43%)
5. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT – Democrat (42%)
6. Edwards, Senator John, NC – Democrat (37%)
7. Kerry, Senator John, MA – Democrat (33%)
8. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT – Democrat (31%)
9. Sharpton, Reverend Al – Democrat (25%)
10. Phillips, Howard – Constitution (23%)

Though you will never see a campaign banner on my site, I will almost certainly be (once again) voting for Bush. Not because I like him or his policies, but because I alternatively shudder, laugh, and cringe at the alternatives.

This TCS op-ed has to be the most insightful article on the peace movement I’ve ever read.

And here we begin to see why there is this strange and unholy alliance between idealistic liberalism, the vestiges of the old socialist left, traditional third world authoritarians, and the unrelenting forces of Islamic totalitarianism, theocracy, and terror. However various their ideas of what is the good, all are united in their desire for an enforced law of the good. Even elements of the human rights movement, much of the anti-globalist community, and a large swatch of the philanthropic world — the so-called NGOs — still yearn for a government that, through sumptuary laws, high taxation, political correctness, and entitlements, would force to happen what people ought to, but do not make happen of their own free will.

A recent poll shows strong that 55 percent of Americans support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Whatever one thinks of gay marriage itself, a Constitutional amendment banning it is ludicrous. A constitution is a framework for a nation’s government, not a means by which trendy political disputes are resolved. There is no constitutionally justified reason why gay marriage should even be a federal issue, and hence no justification for the federal government to have any say on what marriage is or is not. Having said that, the policy that states should enact is such: gay marriage should be recognized, but it should be recognized as just that: gay marriage. Allow me to explain:

In a free society, adult individuals are free to engage in any consensual activity they desire. In a rational government, they are also able to form any contract between them and have it be legally recognizable and binding – assuming that the contract does not impose obligations on anyone else and is enforceable. Ignoring its social and moral ramifications, marriage is just such a contract. Certainly there is more to marriage than a legal contract, but from the government’s perspective, that’s all it should be seen as – a contract to share finances, certain legal obligations, and custodial rights. Legally, marriage is a special kind of contract –a standardized way of creating a complex legal entity. It certainly would not be feasible for the courts or for couples to have to draw up their own unique marriage contract, with all the details covering all potential eventualities. It would take dozens of lawyers, and it still wouldn’t have hundreds of years of precedent to cover all the possibilities. To simplify all that, we have a standard marriage contract that can be handled by a single public notary. Are there any valid reasons not to extend this contract to couples of the same sex?

On the face of it, the answer is no — there is nothing particularly special about the sex of the people entering into a marriage. Now some might cite a harm to children of such relationships, social harms, etc – but that is nonsense I will not go into here. There is clearly a demand for such a contract, and it is the function of government to provide it. Given the above arguments, there is clearly a valid reason to legalize gay marriage.

There is a problem however. The fact of marriage is used by many private entities to provide various privileges when entering into various legal contracts. Examples are spousal benefits provided by employers, insurance firms, and other private business that take marriage into consideration. If no distinction is made between traditional and same-sex marriages, then the firms would not be able to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In fact, this is precisely what the gay lobby wants. If traditional and same-sex marriages are not delineated, then all private (and public) entities that consider marital status would be forced to use the government’s definition of marriage. Now some companies (like Disney) might be fine with that – but many others clearly will not be – and for good reasons, since homosexuality, for example, (is statistically at least) very bad for your health. There are many other valid and invalid reasons to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but whatever they are, it’s not the job of government to judge them. Individuals own their lives and may choose to engage or not to engage in trade with whomsoever they please for whatsoever reason. The “homosexual agenda” – if there is such a thing – does not recognize this. Their goal is to use government coercion to impose a certain non-discriminatory social view on the public. Whether you believe that homosexuality is moral or immoral, using government to force that view on everyone else is clearly wrong.

What’s the solution? The solution is to create a new marriage contract for homosexual couples and treat as such – a separate legal contract. Private individuals will then be free to recognize it — and provide the same benefits to gay couples or not to. Government should not provide special benefits to anyone – whether they are single, or in a traditional or non-traditional marriage. Since it respects contracts however, partners of gay marriages would still retain the same custodial and inheritance rights as those of straight ones.

The new design of the WTC has been unveiled (photos) – after Daniel Libeskind was forced to compromise on his original monstrosity. I don’t particularly like the new design either – the top third is just a useless lattice – with a wind turbine added in for “environmental” reasons. Still, it will be the tallest building in the world at 1,776 feet – a nice touch. The entire WTC project is estimated to cost $12 billion, with $5 billion being paid by taxpayers.
One further comment: some people are questioning whether the new tower could withstand another 9-11 style attack. While the tower should be designed with all reasonable safety precautions in mind, withstanding a 9-11 type of attack should not be a consideration. Terrorism is not and should not be regarded as a natural and inevitable phenomenon – it is the job of the security agencies to prevent terrorist acts, not the job of architects, airlines, and engineers to waste their resources on building terrorist-proof facilities. The hundreds of billions spent on terrorist-proofing everything from airports to credit card processing centers should be regarded as an unnecessary expense made necessary by the failure of America’s foreign policy and security agencies, not a natural part of doing business.
(See my previous post on the WTC.)