Thursday 28 March 2013

Happy Easter [[updated]

Yes, folks, it’s Easter—that  time of year in which we celebrate the advent of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, with all that suggests: fertility, new life, rebirth, the end of the darkness of Winter. No wonder then that this celebration, named after Ishtar (pronounced “Easter”)—the Babylonian goddess of fertility, war, love, and sex—involves eating, drinking, eggs, buns and rabbits.

Oh, and a dead figure from Christian mythology: the Christian festival having been grafted onto (and borrowed from) the pagan.

Ishtar’s Sunday commemorated the resurrection of her consort, a god called "Tammuz," believed to be the only begotten son of the moon-goddess and the sun-god. It was celebrated with rabbits and eggs, and sacred cakes with the marking of a "T" or cross on the top (sounding familiar?).

But there were other pagan celebrations from which the Christian mythology borrowed.

The hometown of Saint Paul for example, who almost single-handedly grafted the myth of resurrection onto the bare bones of the life and death of an un-prophetic prophet,* re-enacted every four years the sacred drama of Heracles’ martyrdom by fire (“…he went upon Mount Oeta, having built a high pyre and mounted it. He commanded his servants to set it afire… The pyre was still burning when a thunderclap was heard, and the hero, freed of his mortal self, was taken up into the sky”).  Heracles was called Prince of Peace, Sun of Righteousness, Light of the World—his “sun” was greeted daily with the words “he is risen,” and his body sacrificed at the spring equinox.

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The Persian and Indian god Mithra also had his festival on the spring equinox (a potent time on the agricultural calendar). His religion had a eucharist or “Lord’s Supper,” at which Mithra said “He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him shall not be saved.”

Those familiar with Germanic myth and folklore will recall that in the Icelandic Edda, it is told that the All—Father Odin (Wotan, Othin, Woden) hung himself on the world tree, Yggdrasil:

I ween that I hung | on the windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, | and offered I was
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none | may ever know
What root beneath it runs.

None made me happy | with loaf or horn,
And there below I looked;
I took up the runes, | shrieking I took them,
And forthwith back I fell…

Then began I to thrive, | and wisdom to get,
I grew and well I was;
Each word led me on | to another word,
Each deed to another deed.

In fact, the theme of pagan deities breaking bread, saving souls by their sacrifice, by vanquishing darkness, by being hung on trees or nailed up and crucified, is legion. Its A to Z includes, but is not limited to:

  • Adad and Marduk of Assyria, who was considered "the Word" (Logos)
  • Adonis (right), Aesclepius, Apollo (who was resurrected at the vernal equinox as the lamb), Dionysus, Heracles (Hercules) and Zeus of Greece
  • Alcides of Thebes, divine redeemer born of a virgin around 1200 BCE-'
  • Attis of Phrygia
  • Baal or Bel of Babylon/ Phoenicia
  • Balder and Frey of Scandinavia
  • Bali of Afghanistan • Beddru of Japan
  • Buddha and Krishna of India
  • Chu Chulainn of Ireland
  • Codom and Deva Tat of Siam
  • Crite of Chaldea
  • Dahzbog of the Slavs
  • Dumuzi of Sumeria
  • Fo-hi, Lao-Kiun, Tien, and Chang-Ti of China, whose birth was attended by heavenly music, angels and shepherds-'
  • Hermes of Egypt/Greece, who was born of the Virgin Maia and called "the Logos" because he was the Messenger or Word of the Heavenly Father, Zeus.
  • Hesus of the Druids and Gauls
  • Horus, Osiris and Serapis of Egypt
  • Indra of Tibet/ India • leo of China, who was "the great prophet, lawgiver and savior" with 70 disciples3
  • Issa/Isa of Arabia, who was born of the Virgin Mary and was the "Divine Word" of the ancient Arabian Nasara/ Nazarenes around 400 BCE4
  • Jao of Nepal • Jupiter/Jove of Rome • Mithra of Persia/India
  • Odin/Wodin/Woden/Wotan of the Scandinavians, who hung himself on the World Tree to acquire knowledge, and was "wounded with a spear."
  • Prometheus of Caucasus/Greece
  • Quetzalcoatl of Mexico
  • Quirinius of Rome
  • Salivahana of southern India, who was a "divine child, born of a virgin, and was the son of a carpenter," himself also being called "the Carpenter," and whose name or title means "cross-borne" ("Salvation")
  • Tammuz of Syria, the savior god worshipped in Jerusalem
  • Thor of the Gauls
  • Universal Monarch of the Sibyls
  • Wittoba of the Bilingonese/Telingonese
  • Zalmoxis of Thrace, the savior who "promised eternal life to guests at his sacramental Last Supper. Then he went into the underworld, and rose again on the third day"
  • Zarathustra/Zoroaster of Persia
  • Zoar of the Bonze

So on this holiday of all holidays, enjoy it in the safe and certain knowledge that while it’s certainly an age-old religious holiday (in the Northern Hemisphere at least), it really has nothing at all to do with the nailing up of an itinerant and largely unimportant Jewish carpenter from Nazareth.

* * * *

* The resurrection itself, of which Tertullian famously pronounced it must be true since it is so absurd, was a story manufactured almost wholly by Paul/Saul of Tarsus, seeing his chance for fame and fortune by leveraging himself to the helm of this new movement. “The first reference [to the resurrection] comes from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, written about AD 55, but even this is twenty years after the events Paul describes. By now Jesus is referred to as `the anointed one', Christos in Greek. Paul does not mention the tradition of the empty tomb at all. He has heard of four appearances or visions of Christ, none involving women and none related to any particular place, although an appearance to James, the brother of Jesus, was presumably in Jerusalem. One of these, to five hundred brethren, some of whom were no longer alive, is recorded nowhere else. Paul ends by adding his own vision of Christ, `on the road to Damascus', as a conversion experience. None of these six accounts, three in Paul's letters and three in Acts, suggests a physical, in the sense of a touchable, dimension to Jesus. In Acts he is simply a light with the power of speech, a clear contrast with Luke's earlier gospel account of a Jesus of `flesh and bones' (Luke 24:39). Paul [who had never met Jesus, let alone heard what he had to say] appears determined to give himself the same status as the other [disciples by manufacturing a meeting] that those travelling with him did not see.”

NB: Contains excerpts and notes from Joseph Campbell’s Thou Art That, S Acharya’s The Christ Conspiracy, T.W. Doane’s Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions, Kersey Graves’s The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviours,and Charles Freeman, A New History of Early Christianity.

Quote of the Day, 3: Post-Cyprus

“You cannot dick around with money on this scale unless you know what you’re doing. To suggest that the bail-in legislation is a problem [only] for the periphery and uninsured depositors is to say that the fire is downstairs… [We have rank amateurs playing a high-stakes game without understanding either the rules or what’s at stake. Maybe our masters have plans for a controlled detonation of a massively complex and unstable system. But I see damn all evidence of that. Instead we appear to have a group of under-qualified provincial politicians who, having been badly mauled by a housecat are looking to pick a fight with an alligator.”
            - Pawelmorski, “Europe: No Need To Worry, The Fire’s Downstairs

Quote of the Day, 2: “…the puritans are after the drinkers and eaters…”

“Everybody needs somebody to hate, after all. The smokers are sufficiently marginalised, so now the puritans are after the drinkers and eaters. Can you spot the epicurean persecution yet?”
            - Will de Cleene, “Fat Fucks Burn Better on a Righteous Pyre

Quote of the Day, 1: "Opposition to same-sex marriage is..."

"Opposition to same-sex marriage is a continuation of a long-term cognitive dissonance that has infected my political party, the Republican Party. In my view, we can't be the party of self-determination—and then tell people who they can, and can't, legally spend their lives with."
            - Reed Galen, “Gay Marriage: Freedom Should Be Central Issue

Is the right to life right?

Guest post by Terry Verhoeven

THE LIFE CON ACT

Just a fortnight after making an historic fourteen hour filibuster-for-liberty speech, Jekyll-and-Hyde Senator and 2016 Presidential Contender Randal Paul last week showed his other side when he introduced to the US Senate his Life At Conception Act (hereafter the 'Life Con Act''), an abominable rights-infringing piece of legislation that aims to "define life at conception in law, as a scientific statement" (according to Paul's website).

If passed, the Life Con Act would have the effect of transforming, by decree, hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals into murderers. It would also cause untold suffering for thousands more who would be forced to raise children they didn’t plan, never wanted and can't afford.

Some "scientific statement."

The vicious idea that an actual human being is the moral equivalent to a piece of protoplasm is made possible by conflating the abstraction of “the right to life” with a specific human being's right's to life. In fact and in law it gets even worse, because Senator Paul’s law deems a pregnant woman morally inferior to a piece of protoplasm—since under his legislation biological cells would be granted a legal mortgage over the lives of their unsuspecting host.

How de-humanising.

A piece of protoplasm is not a human being.  Only by ascertaining and defining by a rational standard what a human being is does it become possible to identify when a specific right to life applies.

A LESSON IN RIGHTS*

The function of rights was capsulised by Miss Rand in her essay 'Man's Rights':

“Rights” are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

In other words, rights serve the purpose of enabling individual morality to exist in a social context.

Rights are not a gift from God, nor are they granted by governments or society at large; they are, like all morals, objectively identifiable principles which human beings need to discover for themselves using their reason. 

Rights exist in the first instance in the form of a recognition of the facts of reality, i.e. as mental existents. It is only when a group of individuals who, after having identified their rights, enter into a legal pact with one other to uphold each other's rights that those rights come into existence in the form of a relationship among men. It is only in the form of a 'relationship among men' that rights enable human beings to live as human beings in a social context, i.e. as free individuals able to act in accordance with their own rational judgment, restrained only by the physical laws of nature and the obligation to respect other individuals' rights to freely to do the same.

For all his filibustering for liberty, such is the nature of rights that Senator Paul is yet to grasp.

Only human beings can possess rights because only human beings can identify, understand, agree to and adhere to rights.  Compare this to so-called “animal rights,” for example, where as PJ O’Rourke famously observes, you can tell the lion all you like that it’s wrong, but he’ll still rip the guts right out of Bambi.

The 'right to life' is said to be the most fundamental right. This is but an abbreviation; it is a human being's right to her life that is the most fundamental right, i.e. one's right to humanhood.

Humanhood is defined as "the state or condition of being human."

The right to humanhood is, I submit, the right from which all other rights are derived, including the right to life, which is merely its corollary.

Humanhood presupposes that one has a conscious existence, which presupposes that one is alive, i.e. that one is an actual living human being and not just a human body.

Identifying what it is that qualifies one for humanhood, and ipso facto for possessing rights, is, I submit, the logical starting point to objectively identifying what rights entail.

LIFE: NECESSARY BUT NOT ESSENTIAL

As far as we know, all life forms on Earth (at present) supervene on other life forms. Gametes that precede a zygote have 'life' in exactly the same sense that a zygote has 'life,’ it is just that a zygote's 'life' exists in a different form to that of gametes. In other words, new life no more comes into being at time of conception than new matter comes into existence at time of conception. Life exists as part of a continuum of life going back to each individual life form's oldest biological ancestor. What "comes into being" at time of conception is not new life, but a new form of life.

The state of being a human being is not defined by the characteristic of life any more than it is defined by water molecules or hydrogen atoms or anything else that is equally 'necessary' for a human being to exist. If one needed only to focus on a necessary characteristic and not on the essential and culminating characteristics of being a human being in arriving at what the most fundamental right is, one could argue that the most fundamental right is to Higgs boson particles, without which matter itself would not (supposedly) exist.

Clearly, this would be absurd.

HUMANNESS – THE ESSENTIALS

According to the Life Con Act, to qualify for humanhood requires possessing two characteristics: life and the human genome. Here is the Act's wording:

_Quote_IdiotThe terms ‘‘human person’’ and ‘‘human being’’ include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including, but not limited to, the moment of fertilization, cloning, and other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.

This set of qualifiers excludes the two essential characteristics of humanhood or "the state or condition of being human": i.e, that humans each possess consciousness, and each enjoys at least the capacity to reason. Senator Paul's Act re-defines an actual human being out of existence by excluding what actually gives a human being their humanness.

By way of analogy, if it were 'Loaf-of-Breadness' that we were aiming to identify, and we were to adopt Senator Paul's logic, we would conclude that a single edible seed of grain has "loaf-of-breadness."   Or if we were defining “beerness,” we would accept a single hop as our accompaniment to our “loaf.”  Try lunching on that.

To exist as an actual loaf of bread though, or as a pint of beer, certain other essential characteristics must be present. The presence of hops in beer or a grain seed in a loaf of bread is, like the presence of the human genome in a human being, a necessary but not essential one. Having the quality of being edible is also necessary but not essential, just like the quality of being alive is necessary but not essential for a human to have humanness  (without life what exists is the remains of a human being - a corpse, but not an actual human being). The two essential qualities of a loaf of bread is the raised bread (of which grain is a necessary component) and that the bread has the capacity to be sliced before being eaten. Whether the loaf is in fact ever sliced or not does not alter the fact that it is still a loaf, but that capacity of being able to be sliced must exist or else the loaf would cease to be a loaf.

So what is a human being's essential qualities? i.e. what essentials give rise to 'humanhood'?

Ayn Rand wrote that man is

an indivisible entity of matter and consciousness. [Emphasis mine]

This is most profoundly true, but what form of matter and what type of consciousness?

The form of matter is trivially easy: that which possesses the human genome. As mentioned, the material component of humanhood is necessary but it is not essential. This is because consciousness emerges from the material existence that gives rise to it and the type of consciousness humans have his ultimately what defines humans as being human. When it comes to consciousness, the difference between man and every other form of sentient life is that human beings as a species possess the capacity to reason, which means to think conceptually, a characteristic which may or may not be realized during a man's life (just as being sliced may or may not be realized during the life of a loaf). 'Humanness' as a class may therefore be defined as "possessing the indivisible attributes of human form, sentience and the capacity to reason." Or in Aristotle’s abridged formulation: man is the rational animal.

The inception of humanness and one's qualifying for humanhood can therefore be said to take place at the precise moment when sentience is first attained by any member of the homo sapien species where that member also possesses the capacity to reason.

One may ask why sentience is one of the qualifiers for humanness and not the capacity for sentience, like with the capacity for reason? The answer is that there is no guarantee that reason will ever be employed in one's life as a human being, just like there is no requirement that a loaf of bread be cut during its life in order for it to be a loaf. Without consciousness however there can be no state of 'being' a human, just like without raised bread there can be no state of being a loaf of bread. To 'be' in the human sense is to be conscious. A human body that never attains consciousness is like a bread dough that never rises. What one has is that case is dough, or unleavened bread, but not bread fit for a loaf of bread.

It is important to note the the right-to-humanhood applies from the moment that humanness is first present right up until the moment that humanness is permanently lost. The points in between these two times is called a human's life.

QUALIFIERS

So what should the litmus tests be for the three characteristics that culminate in and qualify one for 'humanhood'?

I propose the following, and stress again that these three characteristics are indivisible:

  1. Form or presence of the humane genome
    If it looks human and acts human, unless there is good reason to doubt it, then it is safe to say that it is human. If there is doubt , let scientific investigation confirm the taxonomy.
  2. Capacity to Reason
    The existence of a functional neo-cortex. A functional neo-cortex is essential to reasoning. As science and technology progresses, this may be able to be made more specific.
  3. First sentience
    First sentience first occurs at birth, upon commencement of breathing.

Ayn Rand was correct that a human being's life begins at birth, but not for the reason she thought she was. Pre-Christianity, the prevalent view was that awareness or sentience begins with one's first breath. Testament to this fact is the etymology of the word 'spirit' which is derived from the Latin word spiritus, meaning "breath".

The ancients, as it turns out, were right. And the latest scientific evidence confirms it.

Professor David Mellor from Massey University's Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics Centre published an influential scientific review in 2005 which observed that biochemicals produced by the placenta and fetus together with the low oxygen environment in-utero have a sedating and anesthetizing effect on the fetus. The fetal cocktail includes adenosine, which suppresses brain activity; pregnanolone, which relieves pain; and prostaglandin D2, which induces sleep. Combined with the low oxygen environment and the warmth and buoyancy of the womb, this brew lulls the fetus into a near-continuous slumber, rendering it effectively unconscious no matter what the state of its anatomy. It is only upon the traumatic event of birth—entering a shocking and wholly new environment—that  breathing commences, flushing oxygen through the blood stream, whereupon the cocktail of sedating and anesthetizing hormones from the placenta ceases, and the newborn is jolted into consciousness and thus (existential) life for the first time.

(Here is a link to a subsequent publication from Professor Mellor which does not require subscription or payment to read but which covers his findings: http://altweb.jhsph.edu/wc6/paper79.pdf_)

Due to legal restraints involved with testing and researching human fetuses, and the stark difference between studying premature babies in an ex-utero environment compared to a fetus in-utero, Professor Mellor's work is the most advanced available on the subject.

What of the fervent claims that the animated existence and reactiveness of fetuses in-utero is clear evidence of consciousness while in the womb? Such claims are, I submit, nothing but psychological projection without scientific basis. Proof in point…

Let us now investigate a medical list of symptoms and signs:

  • No evidence of awareness of self or environment and cannot interact with other people.
  • Purposeful responses to external stimuli are absent, as are language comprehension and expression.
  • Signs of an intact reticular formation (eg, eye opening) and an intact brain stem (eg, reactive pupils, oculocephalic reflex) are present.
  • Sleep-wake cycles occur but do not necessarily reflect a specific circadian rhythm and are not associated with the environment.
  • More complex brain stem reflexes, including yawning, chewing, swallowing, and, uncommonly, guttural vocalizations, are also present.
  • Arousal and startle reflexes; eg, loud sounds or blinking with bright lights may elicit eye opening.
  • Eyes may water and produce tears.
  • May appear to smile or frown.
  • Spontaneous roving eye movements—usually slow, of constant velocity, and without saccadic jerks—may be misinterpreted as volitional tracking and can be misinterpreted by family members as evidence of awareness.
  • Cannot react to visual threat and cannot follow commands.
  • The limbs may move, but the only purposeful motor responses that occur are primitive (eg, grasping an object that contacts the hand).
  • Pain usually elicits a motor response (typically decorticate or decerebrate posturing) but no purposeful avoidance.
  • Fecal and urinary incontinence.

The above is a medical description, but not of a fetus—it describes someone in a Persistent Vegetative State ('PVS'). PVS involves a complete absence of awareness, but there are signs of non-conscious wakefulness. (see http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/neurologic_disorders/coma_and_impaired_consciousness/vegetative_state.html)

A fetus displays no more signs of awareness than someone in a Persistent Vegetative State, and therefore there is no evidence to suggest fetuses are aware (i.e. conscious/sentient) any more than the poor person in this state.

Patients in a PVS are also reported as responding to familiar music and sounds as fetuses do, whereby small changes in heart rates recorded. This is known as an 'auditory evoked response' and is not evidence of a conscious state. Auditory evoked responses are an entirely physiologic response that results in a change in autonomic function, involving brain stem function and not higher brain function required for consciousness  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_brainstem_response)

For another example to demonstrate that fetal movement and responsiveness to stimuli is not indicative of consciousness one need only look at babies born who are born without a brain. The rare condition called Anencephaly, is where the cerebrum is missing and all that exists in its place is a brain stem. Nickolas Coke is just one such recorded case. Nickolas lived until he was 4 years old without any artificial support. He would feed, make noises, respond to various stimuli, even smile. Yet he had no (higher) brain.

When one looks at the evidence rationally, one needs to dismiss the mystical idea of ensoulment (which assumes the existence of a God to do the 'ensouling') and focus solely on when sentience is achieved. In focusing solely on when sentience is achieved, physiologic responses must be dismissed as evidence of sentience. The only other scientific evidence provided for fetal sentience other than evidence of physiologic responses involves evidence from studies done on pre-term babies. This too must be dismissed. All that is left is the extremely compelling evidence of Professor Mellor et al which shows that fetuses remain unconscious until they are born and take their first breath.

CONCLUSION

When one replaces the non-essential characteristic 'life' with the two essential and indivisible qualities of 'humanness' being prior consciousness and the capacity to reason, the right to life is not lost, nor are any corollary or consequential rights of the right to life lost. All that results is a (more) clear demarcation point as to when rights apply.

I submit that Ayn Rand hinted at humanhood being the foundational right in the following quote but she never took the step of expanding on it:

The source of man’s rights [is] the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival.

I have merely expanded on this by introducing the concept of human life beginning at humanhood, with the fundamental right being the right to humanhood.

Miss Rand also spoke of the fundamental principles from which one must approach the issue of abortion:

The basic principles here are: never sacrifice the living to the non-living, and never confuse an actuality with a potentiality. [Ayn Rand, FHF Q&A following "Egalitarianism and Inflation", 1974, Ayn Rand Answers p.17]

I submit that there I have followed these basic principles in arriving at the fundamental right being that of humanhood, and concluding from their application that humanhood begins at birth upon taking one's first breath. Furthermore, this conclusion is consistent with Miss Rand's conclusion that life begins at birth, only I have arrived at the same conclusion via a slightly different route of reasoning.

Instead of focusing on the 'entity-ness' of a born versus unborn baby so as to discern when it is 'alive' as a human being, I have focused on the identity of what makes a human being a human being (a baby's separateness from its mother is, like with the characteristic 'life', a necessary by not essential quality).

I submit that the route of reasoning I have taken in grounding the right to life in the right to humanness avoids the potential objection to Miss Rand's position that an unborn child is a "part" of it's mother as opposed to being an entity in it's own right and is merely attached to her, and that a baby is only alive in the human sense as a result of it being separated from it's mother.

In conclusion, I submit that the approach I have taken has expanded on, is complimentary to and is reinforcing of Miss Rand's theory of rights and supports her personal conclusions on the subject of abortion rights while additionally and at the same time identifying the demarcation point for when a human being's right to life ends.

* * * * *

* I shall attempt here to expand on Ayn Rand's theory of rights by introducing what I consider to be a key foundational principle which I submit Miss Rand either omitted, or did not sufficiently highlight in her work. I shall then apply this expanded theory to the subject of abortion rights to arrive at a perfected answer from an Objectivist viewpoint.

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: Film Night!

Here’s the note from our friends at the Auckland University Economics Group about their meeting tonight:

Hi everyone,
This week, due to Easter, we will be watching and discussing a documentary about some of the most prominent economic ideas in the past decade, and their significance.
    Date: Thursday, 28th March
    Time: 6pm
    Location: Room 215, Level Two, Business School
As always, all are welcome to attend.
Look forward to seeing you there.
--
Check us out on the web at our Facebook Group.

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Bugger.

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Bugger.

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Bugger.

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Bugger.

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Bugger.

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Bugger.

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Bugger.

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Bugger.

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Kevin Pietersen, who apart from casting a shadow played no part in this test, tweeted

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The last five days have been the best possible advertisement for test cricket—five days of heart-in-the-mouth stuff, right down to the wire, with a whole series riding on every ball—but finished, for New Zealand, just a fingernail short.

Bugger.

Tuesday 26 March 2013

John Locke vs. Ayn Rand on IP and more!

imageGuest post by patent attorney Dale Halling. Feedback is welcomed.

imageThis paper is exploratory not definitive. Comments and input is greatly appreciated. My interest in the comparison between Rand and Locke started when I wrote my book The Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur, spurred on by reading the excellent book The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, by Burgess Laughlin.

In my opinion, John Locke is often misrepresented by both his supporters and his detractors. (I freely admit I have neither the time or energy to review Locke’s original writings in depth at this time, so your input here is appreciated.)

Charles Murray suggests Ayn Rand’s ideas are just a rehash of Locke, Nietzsche, and Adam Smith.[1] I reject this out of hand. Nietzsche’s uberman certainly influenced Rand’s [early] fictional characters, but while she maintained her respect for Nietzsche's concept of the noble soul (“the noble soul has reverence for itself”) as her philosophical ideas matured she completely rejected Nietzsche’s explicit philosophy. Adam Smith’s book Theory of Moral Sentiments, written before his Wealth of Nations, is not at all consistent with Rand’s ideas, and the two books do not even appear entirely consistent with each other. As a result, it is hard to pin down Smith on his ethics and epistemology.

imageThe differences between Rand and Locke are more subtle.  My book mainly discusses patent law in terms of Natural Law or Locke, because that is the historical basis for the founding of the US and US patent law. Readers of my blog State of Innovation may wonder what this has to do with patent law. My answer is everything, since this is about the fundamental basis of property rights.

Metaphysics
In my opinion, all philosophers fall either into the camp of Aristotle or of Plato.

Metaphysics is the base of all philosophy. The starting point.  It is the study of existence as such, and where we see the philosophical differences between the two plainly. Like Rand, Aristotle argues we can trust our senses, that there is only one existence, and the existents within it have identity—or in other words, as Rand stated it, A is A.  Plato’s metaphysics on the other hand says there is more than one plane of existence (with this one being less real), that our senses cannot be trusted to understand what we see, and in fact that we can never have any real understanding of “the real world.”

In the realm of metaphysics, Rand and Locke are both Aristotelian.

Some people may object that Locke advocated there was a deity. Locke did appear to make somewhat contradictory statements on God and faith, but he was writing at a time in which you could have your head cut off for being on the wrong side of a religious debate. Locke appeared to be a Deist (a Deist believes in god or a deity that created the laws of the Universe and has no effect thereafter):

His philosophy on human progress proposed the following:
a) human beings can progress by acquiring knowledge,
b) reason and action are subject to natural law, and
c) the mind (as consciousness) is subject to scientific inquiry (Smith, 1997).
[2]

Epistemology
Epistemology is the study of knowledge—the branch of philosophy examining how (or if) we can know anything.  John Locke’s epistemology was one of Reason. Reason is the means of integrating and conceptualizing perceptions by means of logic. It is distinguished from “rationalism” which begins with “revealed truths” and then applies a logical system derived from these ungrounded starting points. This is itself usually distinguished from “empiricism,” which holds that man’s only source of knowledge is his senses without any recourse at all to conceptual thinking. (The logical positivists did us all one favour at least in showing that all logical systems are based either on an observation, or on an assumption—such as Euclidean geometry’s idea that a straight line goes on forever and two parallel lines never intersect.)

Some people argue that Locke was an empiricist.[3] Locke was attempting to use the techniques of science to analyse ethics and political philosophy. (Note that he also defined the metaphysics and epistemology used by science.) People who argue that Locke was an empiricist usually argue that modern science is based on empiricism. Based on the definition given above, this is incorrect. Science builds on observation, but it is highly conceptual and many discoveries in modern physics are derived from following the logical consequences of theory. For instance, the Higgs Boson particle was first predicted by following the mathematics of field theory, and may now (eight decades later) have been verified by experiment. Based on the definition given above, Locke was not an empiricist either. He is widely quoted as having said “logic was the anatomy of thought,” which would be highly inconsistent with empiricism.

Ayn Rand’s epistemology was also one of Reason. One difference between Rand and Locke can be seen in Rand’s refutation of philosopher Immanuel Kant’s attempts to limit reason, and to argue that emotion is a valid path to knowledge. Locke came before Kant however, and therefore could hardly have commented on Kant and the philosophy he unleashed on the world.

Rand spends a lot of time explaining how concepts are formed and how they relate to the real world, or to specific instances. An example is reproduced below:

The same principle directs the process of forming concepts of entities—for instance, the concept “table.” The child’s mind isolates two or more tables from other objects, by focusing on their distinctive characteristic: their shape. He observes that their shapes vary, but have one characteristic in common: a flat, level surface and support(s). He forms the concept “table” by retaining that characteristic and omitting all particular measurements, not only the measurements of the shape, but of all the other characteristics of tables (many of which he is not aware of at the time).[4]

It is my understanding that Rand is explaining in modern language the concepts of Aristotle, or refining them. This seems basically consistent with John Locke’s epistemology.

Ethics
This is where we see the major differences between Rand and Locke. In my brief survey of Locke’s ethics, I found two competing concepts for Locke. One is his ideas about Natural Rights, and the other is a hedonistic perspective on ethics. Locke’s hedonistic perspective on ethics is in conflict with Rand’s concept of “rational selfishness,” and I would suggest in conflict with Natural Rights.

imageLocke’s hedonistic ethical views start with the idea that people naturally want to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. Locke’s Natural Rights starts with the idea that moral laws are divine, but he does state these divine laws are discoverable by reason. This second part makes it consistent with his deist metaphysics. He does not seem to reconcile these two competing ethical systems.[5] I will focus on Locke’s Natural Rights ethics.

Locke’s formulation of Natural Rights starts with his concept of man’s rights in a state of nature.[6] In a state of nature a man owns himself. Since he owns himself he has a right to defend himself. Man also has a right to those things he creates, which is where the right to property comes from. From these concepts the moral repugnancy of slavery follows as well as most of traditional criminal law, contracts, and property law. Locke does not explicitly state that man is an end in himself like Rand, however ownership in one’s self certainly implies this. To the extent we focus on Locke’s Natural Rights, Rand and Locke are not in conflict and I would suggest Rand’s ideas are a refinement and provide a deeper insight. Like Relativity and Quantum Mechanics expand our knowledge over Newtonian physics, but are not in conflict with it.[7]

Ayn Rand’s ethics starts with idea that human life has value and ethics is the actions necessary to allow man to live. By “live” she does not mean mere existence, but thriving. Everything else she derives from an evolutionary point of view.[8] In Galt’s speech she states,

There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. . . . It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

From this evolutionary individualistic basis (“There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought … or a collective stomach”) she focuses on man and his unique tool of survival, which is his mind.

In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.[9] (Emphasis added)

It is reason that requires an ethics of individuality, where each person’s life has value separate from the species. This is not true of other organisms.

Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—and of self-protection. Reason is the most selfish human faculty: it has to be used in and by a man’s own mind, and its product—truth—makes him inflexible, intransigent, impervious to the power of any pack or any ruler. Deprived of the ability to reason, man becomes a docile, pliant, impotent chunk of clay, to be shaped into any subhuman form and used for any purpose by anyone who wants to bother.[10] (Emphasis added)

Thus Rand ends up with an ethics in which each individual person is their own end. The exercise of their mind is the means by which they attain values to live. In order to achieve their values they must not only think but act. In order for this to be true, man must own himself, which is the starting point of Locke. The main difference between Locke and Rand is that Rand starts with a scientific or metaphysical basis of the nature of man to derive her ethics. Locke starts with the assumption that each man owns themselves, but Rand proves why this must be true.

Her starting point is that every living organism must value its life or go extinct. Note there are ethical systems that do not value human life, so this cannot be taken as a given. We will explore these more later. The second biggest difference between Rand and Locke is she shows the central place of reason and the mind in man’s existence. Evolution had not been discovered at the time of Locke, so he could not use it to develop his ethics. Another major achievement of Rand was to debunk the supposed is-ought dichotomy.

In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.”[11]

This issue was supposedly first raised by David Hume who lived after John Locke died. As a result, this was not a problem which Locke could address. In fairness to Hume, Rand starts with one assumption or observation in order to solve this problem, mainly that a living entity has to value its own life. As I pointed out earlier it is impossible to have a logical system that is not based on at least one assumption or observation.[12]

I have suggested that a deeper understanding of these issues can be had by understanding that evolution is the application of the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) to living organisms. Note I am not the first person to suggest that evolution and entropy are related. Applying entropy concepts to living organisms is fraught with potential logical errors. I have attempted to avoid them in my writings, but in passing these around I have found that even my most ardent supporters found them a little difficult to get through. My most well received post along this line is Sustainability isn’t Sustainable. My other posts on point can be found below.[13]

Life is a fight against entropy. Entropy as applied to economics is the concept of diminishing returns. It shows that inventions are the only way to overcome entropy – production without invention leads to the Malthusian Trap. As a result, this idea is consistent with Rand’s idea that the mind and reason are the primary means of survival, but refines this to the understanding of the critical role of inventions.

Why is this important? Because the intellectual battle today is against those people who have combined an incorrect interpretation of entropy with Kant’s emotion-driven epistemology. These people do not believe human life is valuable, in fact they believe humans are evil because they believe we accelerate the entropy of the Universe. Other living species do not harness and use energy (outside their physical body) so they do not accelerate the entropy of the universe and therefore are not evil. These people advocate the death of at least five billion people as a moral good. The basis of their morality is founded on a flawed understanding of entropy and physics. For more information see  The Pseudo Scientific Basis of Environmentalism. Defeating this evil philosophy intellectually is vital to anyone who values human happiness.

Property Rights
Locke formulation of property rights is based on the Labour Theory of Property which, commonly stated, says that when you mix your labour with natural resources you obtain property rights in your creation. This has been purposely mischaracterized and attacked by Locke’s opponents. Adam Mossoff has an excellent paper on point entitled  Locke’s Labour Lost. Locke’s concept of property is that your productive effort creates a property right in the thing you created. One problem or misinterpretation of Locke’s theory of property rights is that labour means physical labour. This is most likely a mischaracterization, but leaves open the question of whether intellectual property such as patents is property.

Rand’s theory of property rights argues that they derive from your right to life.

The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.[14] (Emphasis Added)

Rand’s understanding that man’s mind is the most important tool for survival impels her to put intellectual property rights as primary:

Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind.[15] (Emphasis Added)

Ayn Rand’s more detailed understanding of man leads to the primacy of man’s mind and reason as his tool of survival. This leads to a deeper understanding of property rights and the primacy of intellectual property rights. My refinement of Rand’s ideas leads to the primacy of property rights for inventions.

Conclusion
Locke and Rand are not in conflict philosophically, but Rand provides the more coherent ethics, one based on the fundamental nature of man and living organisms. Rand’s main difference in her epistemology is to dispense with the need for a deity, even one whose only effect was to create the world, and her tackling of Kant’s emotion-based epistemology provides a path out of the philosophical thickets he created.

I see the relationship between Rand and Locke as the difference between Algebra and Analytic Geometry, or between Newton and Einstein (with the full awareness of the intellectual stature being made by that comparison).  The difference is one of refinement, not of opposition.

I believe that Rand’s ethics can be further refined by understanding how entropy and evolution are related. This leads to a slightly different understanding of property rights, but more importantly provides a direct argument against the religion of environmentalism and the related Malthusian argument that we are running out of natural resources .


NOTES:
[1] Noted in “Ayn Rand's Critics,” Capitalism Magazine, by JAMES VALLIANT, http://capitalismmagazine.com/2011/08/ayn-rands-critics/, accessed 3/20/13.
[2] RESEARCH ON JOHN LOCKE'S INFLUENCE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF DEISM DURING THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, Robert Waxman, http://www.robertwaxman.com/id85.html, 3/18/13.
[3] “The Empiricist John Locke,” http://nmalbert.hubpages.com/hub/The-Empiricist-John-Locke, 3/18/13.
[4] “Concept-Formation,” Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 11–12
[5] “Locke's Moral Philosophy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-moral/, accessed 3/20/13.
[6] The state of nature concept has been much maligned by Marxists and others. They have purposely distorted his argument into an anthropological statement. This clearly was not Locke’s intent and shows an intellectual dishonesty on the part of Marxists.
[7] For those people who do not know, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are in complete agreement with Newtonian physics except in the realms of very fast systems, very high gravitational fields, and very small distances. This is part of how we know they are correct.
[8] It is surprising that Rand was indifferent on the idea of evolution. Her ethics is clearly based on the same concepts. I believe the reason for this is she was worried it would lead to erroneous ideas about Determinism.
[9] “What Is Capitalism?” in Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 16
[10] The Comprachicos,” in Rand’s Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 84
[11] “The Objectivist Ethics,” in Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness, 17
[12] This is a favourite argument of Christians. They believe it shows morality is impossible without God. This is inconsistent with both Locke and Rand.
[13] “The Science of Economic Growth” 1-3, http://hallingblog.com/the-science-of-economic-growth-part-1/, http://hallingblog.com/the-science-of-economic-growth-part-2/, http://hallingblog.com/the-science-of-economic-growth-part-3/; and
”The Pseudo Scientific Basis of Environmentalism” http://hallingblog.com/the-pseudo-scientific-basis-of-environmentalism/ .
[14] “Man’s Rights,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 93
[15] Rand, Ayn, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Signet, New York, 1967, p. 130.

Get down to the Park!

Peter Fulton scored his second century of the match,

After heroic performances from Peter Fulton (above, with a century in each innings), Trent Boult (6 wickets for 68 runs in the first innings), Kane Williamson (partnership with Fulton in the first, and two wickets for five runs in this one), Brendon McCullum (attacking captaincy all through, and a timely and bludgeoning half-century yesterday) … from all around the New Zealand dressing room, New Zealand is on the verge this morning of a famous victory: the first series win against England at home since 1984!*

That’s a heck of a long time between domestic drinks.

So put down what you what you were going to do today, and gather instead round a radio, a TV, a streaming computer or a Twitter feed and join in with what we hope (with 6 English wickets to winkle out over one day) will be a famous victory against an English side so far up themselves they’re almost inside out. And if you’re in Auckland, then get down to Eden Park where, to make it easier, the new improved Park staff have decided to charge half price for adults, and made if free for kids.

Not only has it been a great all-round performance from the team normally known as the Black Craps—they’ve outplayed the much-vaunted England team in virtually every area, from batting to bowling to intelligent attacking  field placement—with the Barmy Army supporters providing an entertaining series of laments to accompany  their heroes’ almost petulant demise, it’s great entertainment.

Personally, I loved Barmy Army trumpeter Billy Cooper using this fanfare from Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin to mark Neil Wagner’s appearance at the bowling crease.  That’s class.

* NZ has beaten England in England since in a series in both 1986 and 1999. But in sporting terms, that’s still a damned long time ago.

Monday 25 March 2013

Garden of Eden

Since I’ve slagged off before the amateur-hour administrators at Eden Park who’ve so often contrived  to make Eden Park the Home of Mediocrity, let me praise them now for the mature attitude they’ve taken during the first test cricket match the Park has hosted for seven years.

In short, they’ve done well.

The patronising ground announcements have gone. The scoreboards are providing advertising and scoreboard information, and not instead of. The overbearing Eden Park security staff, normally completely unaware they’re not policing a prison and that people are coming along to the park to enjoy themselves, all seem to have  taken a chill pill. They’ve allowed England’s terraces trumpeter to entertain the troops. Families are allowed to enjoy their own lunches, bringing in chilly bins, picnic baskets and thermos flasks.  And just like old times, at lunch times the ground is opened up to children (and big children) to wander out and hit a ball around themselves.

DSC_0374

Mind you, they did confiscate a beach ball.

Still, it’s been a great few days at the Park, with (hopefully) a great result to come.

Hopefully.

Sunday 24 March 2013

Large infrastructure projects should be really easy, right?

Large infrastructure projects should be really easy. Because if you do "not doubt in your heart" you can cast a mountain into the sea. See:

For verily I say unto you [says Jesus] that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:23-24)

Roading engineers could just set up a prayer chain ...

Friday 22 March 2013

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: Test Day Edition

Test Day? It’s the first day a cricket test has been played at Eden Park for … years! It won’t last long, so don’t hold back. Here’s some things to read in between watching wickets fall.

To say that the tensions within the European "Union" are getting unbearable would be an understatement.
Cyprus President To Rehn: "I Told You Tax Wouldn't Pass. Regards To Mrs Merkel" – Tyler Durden, ZERO HEDGE

Ever wondered what a one-million dollar bus shelter would look like? Me too.
How Much Is A Bus Shelter Worth? – THE AUCKLAND BANNER

Since everyone has become an instant expert…
Five Principles of Urban Economics: Things we know and things we don’t – CITY JOURNAL

And can we now stop talking bollocks about remake our cities with “creative clusters.” The so-called creative class of intellects and artists was supposed to remake cities and revive urban wastelands. Now the evidence is in—and the experiment appears to have failed.
Richard Florida Concedes the Limits of the Creative Class – DAILY BEAST

D’you remember a Prime Minister talking about us NOT being a world leader on this?
So who has an ETS? According to the World Bank – not many. – Sinclair Davidson, CATALLAXY FILES
Climate: Time to Shift Verb Tenses – POWER LINE

Ever wondered what a George Bush nude painting would look like … ?
The Recently Revealed, Nude Self-Portraits of George W. Bush: A Critique – VANITY FAIR
The four most interesting revelations from the hacked Bush emails – SALON

Speaking of hacked emails, another data dump reveals more sordid secrets of the world’s rock star climate scientists, signalling Climategate 3.0 …
Another hockey stick smashed – ANDREW BOLT
Climategate 3.0: Mann, Jones plot to eliminate Little Ice Age, Medieval Warming Era from IPCC report – JUNK SCIENCE
Too many links to post ... – GOOGLE

Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car. Discuss.
26 Things You'll See On Public Transportation – BuzzFeed

“The British Government … has passed a law that effectively censors the entire world’s media. And they’ve done this simply because they are ignorant of the very laws they’re trying to change. Which is, I think you’ll agree, a little disturbing, that politicians would casually negate press freedom just because they don’t know what they’re doing.”
The British Government Has Decided To Censor The Entire World's Press And Media – Tim Worstall, FORBES

UK politicians would be right at home in Asia and Australia.
The National Interest – TIM BLAIR

China’s richest man has a strong statement for those looking to invest there: “The capital markets in China suck.”
China's Wahaha Billionaire Says Capital Markets "Suck" – ZERO HEDGE

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is apparently “the adult in the room” when it comes to dealing with the current slow recovery from the Great Recession… with the exception of Obama’s 2009 stimulus, only Bernanke and the Fed have worked tirelessly to “keep the US economy afloat”—even as the Bernanke Fed has morphed from a  lender of last resort “into a central planning agency with a corporate welfare department.”
Bernanke: The Good Engineer? – John P. Cochran, MISES DAILY

By the way, there is an interesting paradox at work as central banks suppress interest rates: The only way central banks can keep interest rates low is to buy the bonds issued by their respective governments. But the more bonds they buy with new money, the more likely it is interest rates will go up in any case. And the more debt govts issue, the less able govts will be to every pay these debts back.
What Could Cause Interest Rates to Rise? – Charles Hugh-Smith – ZERO HEDGE

“As the title of the work suggests, Simmons believes that, most often, government creates far more problems in the economy than it solves.”
REVIEW: Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure, by Randy Simmons – Ari Armstrong, OBJECTIVE STANDARD

Is Washington, D.C. the only place where you can “cut” spending while spending vastly more than you were in the past? I wish it were so.
Why the fiscal sequester scheme is actually bullshit – Richard Salsman, FORBES

Let’s stop celebrating Keynes and Krugman.
Not Keynes Or Kuznets Or Krugman But Cowperthwaite – Sean Corrigan, ZERO HEDGE

You want proof that Keynesian economics is insane. Well, here it is.
Keynesian insanity reaches a new peak – Steve Kates, CATALLAXY FILES

Keynesian economics in one graphic:

“Ever since John Locke developed the theory of natural individual human rights, there has been an ongoing attempt to change his idea to something very different… But instead of relying on people’s good will and generosity to help out those in need of various goods and services, the positive or welfare rights doctrine reintroduces the old regime that people in society aren’t free agents but serfs.”
Welfare Rights Are Wrong – Tibor Machan, TIBOR’s SPACE

If good government is like a guard dog, properly trained and tied up constitutionally to protect your rights instead of doing you over, then is this what governments look like now:

There was reason wartime Germans were called ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners.’ Because as new evidence emerges, the story they couldn’t see the Holocaust just became much less convincing.
The Holocaust, Everywhere – NOODLE FOOD
Two millennia of European antisemitism explained -- and more! – NOT PC, 2007

Why I hate guns:

LOL!

image

As we were saying, Twitter is now seven years old. Luck Twitter changed that original logo.
Twitpic - TWITTER
How We Covered Twitter: 7 Headlines for 7 Years – WALL STREET JOURNAL

More on the benefits of alcohol: wowsers suffer more from Fibromyalgia.
Alcohol, Fibromyalgia, and Quality of Life – SCIENCE DAILY

I’ve retired. Time to “give something back.” What a crock!
‘Give Back’ Is One Of The World’s Most Impoverishing Commands – Don Watkins, FORBES

“But puritans haven't vanished. They've merely changed the subject.”
The Tyranny of the Virtuous – BASTIAT INSTITUTE

A Frank Lloyd Wright house in Millstone, New Jersey, wants to move to Florence, Italy. True story.
Frank Lloyd Wrong? – MONOCLE

Image

The simple band aid was invented in 1920. Two Taiwanese students just gave it an upgrade (click to enlarge):

Answering the important questions:
"How do farts behave in low gravity?" – QUORA

Anarchist arguments lose again.
A strange anarchist argument against HobbesGene Callahan, CRASH LANDING

imageAmity Shlaes provides a long-overdue assessment of an underrated and misunderstood president: Calvin Coolidge, aka Silent Cal.
Singular Cal – CITY JOURNAL

The Coolidge re-evaluation is also a good time to re-evaluate the lessons of the “Laffer Curve.”
Art Laffer and Calvin Coolidge – ON LIBERTY STREET

New maps of the cosmic microwave background are coming out today!
Coming soon: Planck unveils the cosmic microwave background  - EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY

Where would NZ be without the underwater communications cables linking us to the rest of the world.  Ever wondered how they are built and protected?
Protecting the Submarine Cables That Wire Our World – POPULAR MECHANICS

Time to celebrate the greening of the planet, says Rational Optimist Matt Ridley.  It’s greening not despite, but because of our reliance on fossil fuels.

And, by the way…
Fracking is Wonderful – John Stossel, BASTIAT INSTITUTE

Not me.
Are You Good at Following Flowcharts? – COLLEGE HUMOUR

But this, from 1854, is fascinating.
The First Modern Organizational Chart – Peter Klein, ORGANIZATIONS & MARKETS

The answer to this question is "No", according to the Bible anyway.
Jesus H. Christ: Does anyone know his name? – DWINDLING IN UNBELIEF

Are Objectivists libertarians? The Ayn Rand Institute (now) says “yes.”
Are Objectivists Libertarians? – Robert Tracinski, TRACINSKI LETTER

The perfect online tool for travellers, especially skinflint fricking NZers. In two flavours:
How Much Should I Tip? (Vanilla Version)
How Much Should I F***ing Tip? (Hilariously Offensive Version)

Help for the helpless.
Where To Start When Creating A Home Color Scheme – APARTMENT THERAPY
How To Confidently Choose Paint Colors: Mark's Foolproof Methods – APARTMENT THERAPY

The life of a student opera-singer:

A note to other friends:

Whole Foods’s John Mackey on Whole Foods, Conscious Capitalism, and Life Beyond the Profit Motive:

Hat tip Capitalistm, Small Dead Animals, Chris Keall, Geek Press, Don Watkins, Melanie Tollemache, Kelly McNulty Valenzuela, Peter Smale, CoNZervative, Tarrynne, Small Dead Animals, Noodle Food,

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.
PC

PS: Thanks to PSP for hospitality, and for handing me a tennis trophy yesterday at their Annual Architects Tennis Tournament. Very enjoyable.

PPS: Since I now only have DB’s alleged beer products to choose from at my local tennis club, could the answer be to try cider. What doest the jury think?
Cider: Made like Wine, Drunk like Beer – Neil Miller, MALTHOUSE