John at TexasBestGrok points out the hypocrisy of supporting the “sanctity of marriage” while denying Michael Schiavo the power to speak on behalf of his wife.
OK, ok, I really don’t give a damn about the Schiavo charade, I just wanted to plug TexasBestGrok, whose author is a fellow Texan who shares my love of Heinlein, science fiction, scifi babes, flying, and capitalism. Hmm, maybe not such a coincidence afterall?
From my other blog: Designing an effective campus flier on the ObjectivismOnline meta-blog.
Are there any unemployed artists/web designers who follow my blog? Click.
I often recommend free software to companies I work with, so I’ve decided to collect my recommendations in one place from now on: The Essential Free Windows Software List.
Things were bound to go haywire when the Brits banned their ancient tradition of fox hunting: the foxes are now hunting dogs.
The ongoing debate over the fate of Terri Schiavo is a revealing example of the differences between a secular and a religious world view. Those who advocate that Terry be kept alive and those supporting her right to die have two very different conceptions of the soul. The difference is crucial because differences in their metaphysical views have significant ethical and political implications.
Interesting article in the NYT about pre-packaged government propaganda passed on by network news as real journalism.
Companies shouldn’t feel obligated to “give back'’ to the community, because they haven’t taken anything away, the Austrian-born chief of the world’s largest food company told local executives yesterday… “What the hell have we taken away from society by being a successful company that employs people?'’ he said.
The following comes from a post on ObjectivismOnline. For more, see the original thread.
The protection of intellectual property requires the ability to create and apply an objective standard. Attempting to enforce intellectual property rights without the existence of an objective criteria or the ability to apply it violates real property rights, regardless of the potential benefits. Furthermore, the existence of patents must be evaluated in a cost-benefit analysis, at least if the purpose of patents is to provide a benefit to the inventor.
There are some costs common to all patents, including software patents, such as the cost of filling and protecting them, the need for patent portfolios to protect oneself against competitors patent portfolios, the disincentive to inventors and investors of violating existing but unknown patents, and the associated research costs, and the mis-incentives created by directing research into patentable areas versus non-patentable ones.
My new phone. It speaks digital and analog, comes with a camera with zoom and flash, internal and external displays, speakerphone, and voice recognition for complete voice control. It weights 116g, has a talk time of 3 hours and a standby time of 150 hours. Its two-year-old ancestor seems like a dinosaur by comparison.
Since getting wireless, I’ve abandoned my wired phone company, switching to cable for data and video and cellular for calling. While the development of desktop computers has stagnated in the last four years, the massive integration of formerly disparate functions onto a single chipset combined with massive consumer demand has made rapid progress in cellular technology possible. Unfortunately, North America is still way behind Japan and Europe, where phone networks have embraced the Internet and support features such as video chat, GPS navigation, and digital wallets.
After 1&1 permanently nixed my online art gallery without any means of restoring it, I finally re-created it by re-uploading the originals, because my backup is hopelessly out of date. The new gallery needs a lot of work to restore the lost grandeur, so I am looking for volunteers to help me add the relevant hyperlinks and descriptions. There are over 1800 images to manage, so I could use all the help I can get. Just contact me if you’re interested.
I’ve updated my New York City vacation photos after processing them with Picasa. What do you think?
Want to see computers, refrigerators, boats and car parts being shredded into tiny bits? Check out the product demos of SSI.
The following comes from a recent philosophy assignment. My task was to “discuss the meaning of each of the following five concepts: bad, wicked, evil, vicious, and immoral in the context of negative moral judgment.”
In the course of living in society, it is necessary to interact with many different individuals, each with a different philosophy and consequent moral code. In order to be successful in dealing with a variety of different people, it is necessary to exercise careful moral judgment to evaluate the potential value or disvalue each individual offers. In most cases, only a basic evaluation is necessary because the interaction is of a limited and predefined nature, such with a clerk in a store, a newspaper article, or a casual acquaintance. In other cases, it is important to make a careful moral judgment of a person as a whole, such as with a business partner, a close friend, a potential spouse, or a philosopher one admires and aims to emulate.
Read the rest of this entry »
Story on the evening news: “de-policing” is a popular response to allegations of racial profiling. Cops are stopping fewer minorities in order to avoid creating statistical patterns that might implicate them or their departments in racial profiling.
Is anyone really surprised by this?
I was disappointed to see that Picassa doesn’t support subfolders – all folders are shown as a long list. But guess what, here is an undocumented trick direct from a Google employee: the “My Pictures/Picassa” folder is special. Any folders placed inside it will display in a hierarchy. Voila!”
In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate.-- Ayn Rand
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