'ACT: the Libertarian Party'?
The other day I offered a challenge to the new ACT on Campus President Helen Simpson and her President in Charge of Vice Andrew Falloon to have the courage of their freedom convictions and to let us "hear them calling for the Association of Compulsion Touters [ACT] to expunge all vestiges of compulsion, and to truly represent its stated freedom principles." A Five Point Programme was offered...
Bird flu immunity
Beethoven Pleydenwald from the Whinging in New Zealand blog (WINZ) has been keeping an eye on H5N1 bird flu hysteria. Despite it's imminence -- it's all around us you know -- he's noted one surefire way to gain immunity: Still no H5N1 deaths amongst attractive young women who have performed fellatio on me...
Why did the whale cross the beach?
Whales are not just ungrateful, they're also not the sharpest mammal in the biosphere. While mass whale strandings are greeted with surprise and sadness around the world, they still just keep right on happening. And sometimes whales are so ungrateful even to be rescued they they just up and turn around and re-beach themselves. One pod yesterday was even graceless enough to sink a launch...
Setting light to Nosy Parkers
I was about to prepare a post on why I will be burning my census form come Census Day -- just as I've done in previous years -- when I find that a pretty enlightening debate on that very subject has been taking place at DPF's. Get a job with The Man, says Dave, and earn a little extra money helping th Nosy Parkers. " Go piss up a rope," respond commenters including LibertyScott...
On infighting and 'fellow travellers'
Phil Sage asks a question I thought I'd already answered many times before: Why can't 'we' just all get along. Phil thinks all those "travelling in the same direction" -- whom he decribes variously as "Libertarian Travellers" and "travellers in the direction of Freedom with Responsibility" -- should stop their infighting, and work together...
Rosenbaum Floor Plan - Frank Lloyd Wright
To an architect, a floor plan is like a musical score -- all the information is there if you know what to look for, and how to read it. Frank Lloyd Wright's floor plans were incredibly nuanced, and deceptively complex. The example shown here is from the 1939 Rosenbuam House, one of Wright's forty-odd moderate cost 'Usonian Houses' -- just 143 sqm, but with the soul of a larger house packed in...
Saving those whales with good hard sense
There's nothing like an argument about whales to make everyone lose their marbles. A revivified Ruth, for example, has posted various thoughts on morality and animal rights, and on her former membership of Greenpeace. 'Go Greenpeace' she says. 'Stop the hand-wringing and break out those guns.' (I paraphrase, of course) Unfortunately, she offers no argument for her position...
Superseding the Treaty with something objective called "good law"
Waitangi Day is rushing down upon us, so it's worth re-posting Nick Kim's cartoon demonstrating what the mythical Treaty Principles are doing to our law (cartoon courtesy The Free Radical)... in my view the Treaty is insufficiently comprehensive to be a founding document of a nation and should be superseded and made an historical nullity by an objectively written constitution. The gravy train has to be derailed, and justice put back in its seat...
Change of helm at ACT on Campus
Congratulations to Helen Simpson and Andrew Falloon, the new president and vice-president respectively of ACT on Campus. I look forward to Helen and Andrew having the courage of what they say are their freedom convictions, and to hear them calling for...
Commenting on the commentators
Deborah Coddington has belatedly discovered blogs and has told the Herald all about it. She finds "Planet Blogger" to be nothing short of "a sad, pathetic sphere..." "I feel genuinely sorry for the blogsite hosts who strive to supply a political service the market obviously wants," she says, before scurrying back to the safety of the MSM, which clearly isn't supplying the market...
Explaining Capitalism
Perhaps the most exciting recent book for capitalists released in the last year has been Andrew Bernstein's Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire (reviewed here and here.) Capitalism Magazine has a brief excerpt up at their site: A proper understanding of capitalism is sorely lacking among current politicians, intellectuals and even the American...
Cue Card Libertarianism - Harmony of interests
As I said here recently, no man is an island and neither should we be. In a free society, we each gain an incalculable boon from the existence of others. Just some of the benefits of living in a free society are the following: the learning and knowledge we may glean from others -- being able to stand on the shoulders of geniuses...
Some thoughts on the harmony of men's interests
Did it ever occur to you that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires — if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical? There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another — if...
A joke at the heart of Climate Change
It's hilarious, really, isn't it. Why am I laughing? If you haven't heard already, here's the joke: plants are implicated in the 'global warming problem.' Here's how...
Careful with that harpoon, Eugene!
Want to jump on to the back of whaling boats and spike their harpoons? The entertaining Generation XY blog has conveniently linked for you a game put together by Greenpeace to give you some practice. And once you've had your fill of all that political correctness, you can get out the Hawaiian Harpoon and do some serious fishing. Sadly, no game as yet apparently to give you practice with...
Still flowing. Still in the zone.
More information on the concept of Flow - what sportsmen call 'being in the zone,' and what psychologists call a state of being in focused attention (about which I previously wrote here): here's a short interview with Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi (Dr Mike), answering questions on his work with Flow and a few more of its applications, this time for education. Money quote: Q: Why aren’t teachers...
Health, wealth & nannying
Popular Mechanics magazine has judged the top fifty inventions of the last half-century, and they're online here. And here's some tables (for the US) showing what such inventions have helped bring about -- historically significant rises in life expectancy across the course of the last century. Stephen Hicks, whose site has these links, describes the dramatic rises simply as "fruits of the enlightenment..."
Opening a whole new can of whales
We eat cows. The Japanese eat whales. The only difference is that cows are privately owned, and whales are much larger. Despite the hand-wringing over the killing and eating of whales , it's no more or less barbaric than the killing and eating of cows. Here's what really is barbaric: trying to stop whaling by sinking whalers with a 'can opener' -- as the self-appointed Sea Shepherds have...
Get rid of Queen St's trees
A storm in a 'tree-cup' going on in Auckland's Queen St over the holidays has had all sorts of people saying all sorts of nonsense -- the politically correct at loggerheads with the politically conservative over the architecturally stupid...
Reviewing Narnia
How do you write a film review? Dianne Durante gives a Master Class by giving you a 'how-to' of her own The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe review...
Too-fast growth is bad. Right?
... "the economy is slowing down after five years of, perhaps, too-fast growth." Now that's a pretty common view, and one heard from many voices -- at least one of them emanating from the Reserve Bank. 'Too-fast' growth in productivity causes rapidly rising prices, and has to be stamped down into mediocre growth, or even no growth at all. 'Too-fast' growth is A Bad Thing.
Better no growth at all, says this view, than 'too-fast' growth. But can it be true?
Better no growth at all, says this view, than 'too-fast' growth. But can it be true?
Bad news for NZ's economic freedom
The various Economic Freedom Indices are a pretty blunt instrument to my mind -- for some reason they still award New Zealand as a perfect 'One' for property rights, for instance, despite the many well-documented abuses inflicted upon NZ's property owners by government's both central and local. However, like all such things, while the precise figures are questionable the trend across several...
Taming the inflation monster
As you might recall, we ended the year wondering why the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is strangling growth in a bid to keep down the prices of property -- nailing producers and exporters and all the rest of us to a cross of 'price stability' that is itself a mirage. This, says Alan Bollocks and RBNZ supporters, is neccessary to underpin the currency and restrain the infltaion monster. "No!" say people with a brain...
Things we all should have learned by now
Here's something to ponder as you gaily engage in debate: How much do you really need to know in order for your opinion to be an informed one? Not all opinions are equally valid -- uninformed opinion is less equal than most. In the 21st Century, there are some basics that an educated person really should know if they're to be considered educated enough to pound sand, let alone to survive...
What I learned on my holidays, 2.
What else did I learn while I was away? Well, I learned that some bloggers don't even stop for Christmas or for intercontinental travel! Phew. That's dedication for you. I learned too that there is more than one perfect breakfast -- I found another. This one is a version of fried eggs with what the Americans call Hot Biscuits (scones to you and me) and Gravy....
What I learned on my holidays, 1.
What a great holiday. I trust you've all enjoyed my absence. Amongst my holiday reading was the new Anthony Burgess biography: mentioned is Burgess's enthusiasm for inventing what he called "life-threatening cocktails," and a recipe for one such is included -- with time available and the ingredients to hand, a number of our party felt compelled to try it out. Here, according to Burgess's biographer is a recipe for the 'Hangman's Blood'...
Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for stopping by!
2 comments:
Interesting meta-review of Rand. I have not enough time to read all these pieces, let alone write. I hope you are able to draft designs as quickly as you are able to write.
I hope you are able to draft designs as quickly as you are able to write." I do what I can, Phil. [cough] :-)
Post a Comment