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By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog Columbia University mathematics instructor Peter Woit has just written a book harshly critical of modern physics "string theory", arguing that it's not a genuine scientific theory at all because it does not have the requisite relationship to reality. From the article: Hence his book's title, Not Even Wrong: an epithet created by Wolfgang Pauli, an irascible early 20th-century German physicist. Pauli had three escalating levels of insult for colleagues he deemed to be talking nonsense: "Wrong!", "Completely wrong!" and finally "Not even wrong!". By which he meant that a proposal was so completely outside the scientific ballpark as not to merit the least consideration. I found this interesting, because Pauli's "Not even wrong" is the closest I've ever seen in mainstream science to the Objectivist concept of the "arbitrary". This related article talks a bit more about the phrase "not even wrong": ...[P]hysicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) is in a category of his own: the withering comment for which he's best known combines utter contempt on the one hand with philosophical profundity on the other. "This isn't right," Pauli is supposed to have said of a student's physics paper. "It's not even wrong." "Not even wrong" is enjoying a resurgence as the put-down of choice for questionable science: it's been used to condemn everything from string theory, via homeopathy, to intelligent design. There's a reason for this: Pauli's insult slices to the heart of what distinguishes good science from bad. "I use 'not even wrong' to refer to things that are so speculative that there would be no way ever to know whether they're right or wrong," says Peter Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University who runs the weblog Not Even Wrong (www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/). (Caveat: The articles do go onto say that Woit's arguments are more along the traditional Popperian lines of, "string theory can't be falsified", and "string theory can't generate verifiable experimental evidence". Hence Objectivists may find those arguments a mixed bag, at best.) http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000953.html

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog From an Objectivist perspective, is there anything fraudulent about fractional reserve banking? That question first occurred to me a few months ago, when I listened to Murray Rothbard's lecture "Banking and the Business Cycle" from the Mises Institute's generally uninformative Home Study Course in Austrian Economics. Rothbard insists that fractional reserve banking is fraudulent, but never adequately explains why. Some searching online led me to this Objectivism Online thread on the topic. The arguments against fractional reserve banking seemed highly rationalistic to me, but I didn't know enough to draw any solid conclusions. A bit later, I re-read Alan Greenspan's essay "Gold and Economic Freedom," including this passage in favor of fractional reserve banking: A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the productive requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security for his deposits). But the amount of loans he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments (Alan Greenspan, "Gold and Economic Freedom," The Objectivist, July 1966, pg 109). At this point, I'd say that I'm reasonably clear about the way in which fractional reserve banking works. Although I have some lingering worries (or perhaps just confusions) about the "money multiplier" created by the cycle of deposit-loan-deposit-loan (discussed by my friend Jimmy Wales here), I'm even far more clear about that than I was originally. As for the proper legal status of fractional reserve banking, I cannot see any fraud in it, so long as all parties are adequately informed. If I know in advance that my bank might lend up to some fixed percentage of its total deposits rather than safeguarding them all for mass withdrawal at any moment, then how is that bank defrauding me -- or anyone else? After all, if the demand for past deposits exceeds the supply of reserves, then some procedure contracted by all in advance will have to be invoked. That might be painful, but it wouldn't be fraud. Before I posted on this topic, I decided to read the section on fractional reserve banking in George Reisman's Capitalism. To my surprise, he's not just opposed to fractional reserve banking, but in favor of outlawing it as fraud. His critical philosophic argument comes in a section entitled "The Moral Virtue of the 100-Percent-Reserve Gold Standard": What underlies the practical advantages of the 100 percent-reserve gold standard over any form of fractional-reserve system is its moral superiority. It operates consistently with the law of the excluded middle and does not attempt to cheat reality by getting away with a contradiction. It recognizes that lending money precludes retaining that money in one's possession, and that retaining money in one's possession precludes lending it. The 100-percent-reserve system follows the principle that either one lends money or one retains the money, but not both together, with one and the same sum money. In contrast, a fractional-reserve system applied to checking deposits or banknotes is a deliberate attempt to cheat reality. It is the attempt to have one's money and lend it too. It is a system fully as dishonest as all other recurring efforts that take place in one form or another in attempts "to have one's cake and eat it too." Just as such attempts typically entail taking away someone else's cake, fractional-reserve banking applied to checking deposits or banknotes entails some parties gaining credit at the expense of other parties, and others unexpectedly being placed in need of credit. Again and again it results in financial contractions, depressions, and deflation, accompanied by widespread bank failures, which last represents the cheating coming home to roost. Again and again, individuals who believed they owned money, who would never have dreamed of lending out the money they needed to hold to make purchases and pay bills, and thus of lending, to the point of their own insolvency, wake up to learn that the checking deposits or banknotes they hold represent loans that have become uncollectable. Imposition of the 100-percent-reserve principle in connection with checking deposits and banknotes is the imposition of financial honesty. It would require nothing more than that banks ask their customers whether in making a deposit or buying banknotes their intention was to lend money to the bank or to keep their money at the bank. In the first case, the bank's customers would receive a credit to a savings account or certificates of deposit, neither of which they could spend until such time as they withdrew the funds they had lent, which would entail equivalently reducing their savings account or redeeming their certificates of deposit. During the interval the bank, for its part, could lend the customers' money out, as it thought best. In the second case, the customers would receive either a credit to their checking account or banknotes, both of which they could spend as they wished. But so long as the customers held their funds in the form of checking accounts or banknotes, the bank could not lend or spend the proceeds its customers had entrusted to it. That money would be the customers' money, which they were not lending to the bank but merely keeping at the bank. It follows from this discussion that it is mistaken to believe that the imposition by law of 100-percent-reserve banking in connection with checking deposits and banknotes would constitute government interference. It would constitute nothing more than the just exercise of the government's power to combat fraud--the fraud of having one's funds lent out despite the bank's deliberate creation of the impression that in making a checking deposit or purchasing banknotes one fully retained the possession of one's funds. Shysterism in any form is always slippery. Thus if it occurs to anyone to argue that the banks' customers are not victims of fraud because they clearly know and understand that their funds are being lent out, then the answer is that in that case they would be parties to fraud. Their fraud would be the attempt to make payment to others not with money or reliable warehouse receipts for money, but with claims to debt. They would be engaged in the willful contradiction and deception of claiming to pay someone when in fact imposing on him the position of being a grantor of credit. (George Reisman, Capitalism, pg 957-8) Woah, Nellie! If a fractional reserve bank lends up to 90% of its total deposits in a laissez-faire capitalist system, its depositors are not dishonestly attempting to cheat reality by holding and lending their money. They are counting upon the quality of the loans of that particular bank, hopefully with good reason. They are also generally counting upon the fact that demand for deposits will be fairly evenly distributed over the large pool of depositors over time, just as Alan Greenspan noted. They are also aware that in times of crisis, their own deposits may not be available to them, hopefully temporarily but also possibly permanently. Where is the dishonesty or fraud in that kind of system? It's no more fraudulent than pooling risk with insurance. The claim that payment to others in fractional reserve banknotes would be fraud is also unpersuasive. If Mary owes John $1000 for painting her house, John need not accept banknotes from Mary's fractional reserve bank if he regard those notes as insufficiently reliable. John could insist upon funds from a 100-percent-reserve bank -- or even gold. So how is John deceived and cheated if he accepts fractional reserve notes? As far as I can see, the charge of dishonesty and fraud only makes sense if you assume that ordinary people are not competent to judge the quality of the financial institutions with which they deal. However, Objectivism certainly does not endorse any such forms of paternalism. Moreover, any legally competent person could understand that full-reserve notes (or in gold itself) would be less risky than fractional-reserve notes. So while I'm no expert in economics, I cannot possibly regard Dr. Reisman's argument as a plausible justification for outlawing fractional reserve banking. On a philosophic level, the argument strikes me as highly rationalistic, in that its main line is basically a deduction from the idea that fractional reserve banking means depositing money in the bank to lend to others even while retaining the ability to withdraw it at any time. That does seem like a contradictory state of affairs -- if you drop the broader context of the activities of all the bank's other depositors. Over the past few years, I've heard various Objectivist scholars complain of the heavy rationalism of George Reisman's work. If his philosophic discussion of fractional reserve banking is any indication, those complaints are warranted. (And please, don't even get me started on his maliciously rationalistic and context-dropping review of Ayn Rand Answers. I've said enough about that already, I think.) http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000951.html

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog I just want to know whom I should blame for creating a market for these "modest" swimsuits. I suspect the evangelical Christians. (Via Jared Seehafer.) http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000952.html

By Don from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog The has a very nice article on Ayn Rand in the latest issue of Liberty & Law. I especially liked this: If Rand is known for her villains, her heroes are even more vividly portrayed. And here too we encounter real life examples, this time in our clients. When Shamille Peters speaks of a longtime dream to run her own floral shop, she is reminiscent of Dagny Taggart standing on the railroad tracks as a child and vowing to one day run a railroad. When Lonzo Archie stood up to the power structure of the State of Mississippi and refused to give up his home for a Nissan plant, he evoked the image of Hank Rearden when he refused to give up Rearden Metal to those who demanded it for the public good. And when taxicab entrepreneur Leroy Jones said he wanted nothing from others, just a chance to "do it myself," Howard Roark couldn't have said it better. Check out the whole thing! http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000939.html

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog Paul pointed me to this delightful tidbit by Bill Tingley about how "Ayn Rand" might be derived from "Rosenbaum." Interesting! http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000937.html

By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog Julian Edney's recent article, "How did liberals lose the road map?" is yet another worried leftist commentary on the ideological crisis of the left. ("Help! Help! We have no ideas!") However, two points caught my attention. First, I've never seen the fallacy of the frozen abstraction better exemplified than in this paragraph from early in the article: What is an ideology? It states the common good. It is a statement of values, it names ideals. It joins people in a purpose, it urges loyalty and sacrifice. It is visionary and explains what we are all doing here. It says why and how we must work together. For those unfamiliar with "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction," Ayn Rand coined the term in her essay "Collectivized Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness. She defined it as "substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs" -- such as by "substituting a specific ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of 'ethics.'" In this case, the author substitutes his own vague muddle of altruistic collectivism for "ideology." Second, the author seems to regard Ayn Rand as the major ideological foil for the left. He claims that leftism's lack of ideology is the natural outgrowth of its embrace of materialism: "And we have lost the ability to think. Ideology and materialism are mutually exclusive. Acquiring stuff never was an intellectual ability. Insects know how to hoard." (That sounds straight out of Atlas Shrugged -- and not in a good way.) Mr. Edney says: "How did liberals get over there? There was a time when selfishness and materialism were moral problems. Now they are goals in life." He continues, "What about the '60s cultural revolution, with music and hippies? Daniel Bell thinks it was an ersatz revolution, just an expansion of sex and drug and rock-and-roll freedoms which was paralleled foot by foot by the power hungry Ayn Rand, whose rants for no-holds-barred self advancement seem to have won the cultural race." (Uh, okay.) He then sort-of vaguely suggests that we ought not eliminate this scourge of materialism since "our economy would halt without [it]." Instead, we need to hold our society together with "ideals, direction, and trust -- for people to come together with a common cause." Liberals need "ideological direction" for that to happen, although (ever so typically) he can't even suggest an ideology, since the liberals will all have to commune about it collectively. And so he concludes by saying: Before we start searching for direction, we need to put ideas back on top. To decide whether freedom is more important than equality. To stop watching TV whose advertising, collectively, promotes greed, because greed also destroys trust. To think, to reclaim our own judgment. And to refute Ayn Rand's antisocial tracts, because we have become what she poisonously prescribed: selfish, unhelpful, and denying of the common good. Then we can start the search. That's just a bizarre chronology. First, liberals must decide between equality and freedom, stop watching the advertising of greedy corporations, and refute Ayn Rand. Then they can start searching for an ideology. In any case, it's quite odd for the author to give so much prominence to Ayn Rand. Just based upon this article, I suspect that he saw a bit too much of his own ideas and values reflected in the villains of Atlas Shrugged. http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000938.html

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog There's been so much excellent Objectivist blogging going on, I'd be remiss if I didn't hold another Carnival of the Objectivists. Mark your calanders for this Saturday and be there, or be square. http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000933.html

By Diana, cross-posted from NoodleFood A professor offers students eight helpful tips on how to cheat good. It doesn't speak well of today's students that they cheat so ineptly. It's a travesty: Our high schools just aren't preparing students for the academic challenges of cheating in college! http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000927.html

By Diana, cross-posted from NoodleFood This letter to the editor on the Ward Churchill scandal was published today as an op-ed in Boulder's Daily Camera. It was written by the chairman of my department, Bob Pasnau. And it's yet another reason why I like and respect him so very much. Since the investigative report released earlier this month on the Churchill affair, little has been heard from CU faculty. This is understandable, since the whole affair is such a quagmire, but still the silence is unfortunate, since no one is so well placed to judge the matter. I hope these remarks will provide some helpful context. A careful reading of the investigative report (available on CU's web site [ here]) shows the committee to have discharged its duty with tremendous care for the many nuances of the case, scholarly and political. Ironically, however, the very care taken in the report, which runs to over 100 pages, may have kept the full seriousness of the charges from being fully appreciated. In short, the committee found two cases where Churchill extensively plagiarized the work of others. They found other cases where he first wrote articles under a false name, and then in a later work cited those earlier articles as providing independent confirmation for his own claims. They found a great many places where apparently detailed footnotes turned out on close inspection to offer no support whatsoever for the claims being made, and found that Churchill continued to stick with these false sources in later work even after being confronted in print with their inadequacy. Assessing the cumulative impact of these tactics, the committee describes "a pattern and consistent research stratagem to cloak extreme, unsupportable, propaganda-like claims of fact that support Professor Churchill's legal and political claims with the aura of authentic scholarly research by referencing apparently (but not actually) supportive independent third-party sources." The fact that this disparate group of highly distinguished scholars could reach its verdict with complete unanimity -- save for the final, delicate question of what sanction to impose -- should give one a great deal of confidence in their verdict. No such confidence can be taken from Churchill's own statement (available on the Camera's web site [ here]). A careful reading of the original report, next to his response, shows him to have misstated and ignored the committee's findings at every stage. Indeed, one might almost laugh at the way his slipshod responses reenact the very sorts of intellectual failings that the report originally highlighted. One might laugh, that is, if the whole affair were not so depressing. Perhaps its most unfortunate aspect, beyond the immediate and very serious damage to CU, is the impression it seems to have left in some quarters that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here my own experience is relevant. In the course of my duties evaluating the work of my colleagues, I have never encountered a single instance of fraud or misconduct, or even the bare allegation of such. Additionally, in all of the graduate seminars I have conducted, and dissertations I have read, I have never seen anything even remotely resembling this sort of conduct. Furthermore, over many years of evaluating thousands of job applicants, reviewing their qualifications with the greatest care, I have never seen or heard of even the shadow of this sort of behavior. Finally, in all my years of scholarly research, over the countless articles and books that I have read, I have never encountered anything of this kind. Happily, it does not fall upon me to decide what sort of penalty is appropriate in this case. But were such misconduct discovered among my own faculty, or in my own field at large, I would be the first to seek that person's dismissal. Professor Robert Pasnau Chair, Department of Philosophy, CU/Boulder 1837 Mapleton Ave., Boulder, CO 80304 303-938-8803 Although I haven't yet read the report in detail, the proven misconduct of Ward Churchill clearly warranted his firing, particularly since he steadfastly refused to acknowledge any substantial wrongdoing. Yet just one committee member positively recommended that sanction: two actively opposed dismissal, recommending suspension without pay for two years instead, and two accepted dismissal as appropriate but recommended five years suspension without pay for two years instead. Those four committee members were terribly unjust: although they formed the proper moral judgment, they failed to act upon that knowledge. So I certainly wish that Bob Pasnau -- or men and women more like him -- composed that faculty committee. Then Ward Churchill would have been fired as he so richly deserves. Sure, he would have sued, then the University would have bought him off with some outrageous sum of money. Still, the proper moral message would have been clear. As it stands, even the most basic forms of academic integrity and honesty are no longer required of the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000853.html

Too many moons ago, I uploaded my paper "On the Margins of Humanity" to my web site without announcing it. The paper attempts, probably not terribly successfully, to attack the marginal humans argument for animal rights. Frankly, I think that properly understanding this issue requires a good theory of broken units, but I couldn't see a way to argue that in a graduate paper. Nonetheless, I suspect the paper contains at least a few true and interesting thoughts. By Diana, cross-posted from NoodleFood

I recently finished re-reading We the Living (which I hadn't read in over 10 years), and I was especially struck by this magnificent passage near the beginning of Part 2. Rand is describing the famous statues on the bridge near Anichkovsky palace: Four black statues stand at the four corners of the bridge. They may be only an accident and an ornament; they may be the very spirit of Petrograd, the city raised by man against the will of nature. Each statue is of a man and a horse. In the first one, the furious hoofs of a rearing beast are swung high in the air, ready to crush the naked, kneeling man, his arm stretched in a first effort toward the bridle of the monster. In the second, the man is up on one knee, his torso leaning back, the muscles of his legs, of his arms, of his body ready to burst through the skin, as he pulls at the bridle, in the supreme moment of the struggle. In the third, they are face to face, the man up on his feet, his head at the nostrils of a beast bewildered by a first recognition of its master. In the fourth, the beast is tamed; it steps obediently, led by the hand of the man who is tall, erect, calm in his victory, stepping forward with serene assurance, his head held straight, his eyes looking steadily into an unfathomable future. After some Google searching, I was able to find images of each of the four sculptures. (Much to my surprise, there was no single website that had an image of all four). For those with a taste for art collection, the Hermitage Museum also sells tiny replicas of all four statues for $70-80 apiece. Posted by Paul, cross-posted from NoodleFood http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000851.html

1. The human body can an awe-inspiring instrument, if raw physical talent is subject to proper training and discipline. 2. Pascal's Wager and other bad arguments for the worship of God are perfectly dramatized in this short film. (I lectured on Pascal's Wager to the full Introduction to Philosophy class this semester, so I particularly appreciated the perfect humor of the film.) 3. Some high school students made for a movie version of Anthem. As expected, the production values aren't terribly high, but it was cool to watch. By Diana, Cross-posted from NoodleFood

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, Oh, excellent: For more information, check out the web site.

From ARI: Here's yesterday's Letter to the Editor on the topic:

I'm always amazed by attempts to denigrate Ayn Rand's works in terms like this... The adjective "humorless" is unnecessary since "apocalyptic" novels generally aren't full of chuckles and giggles. It's also an implicit criticism since "humorless" (unlike "serious" or "grave") suggests a lack of appropriate or even necessary humor. Yet why oh why would anyone think that humor is such a major value that every work of fiction must be brimming with humor? Ayn Rand's other major novel, The Fountainhead, is a wonderfully satiric novel. Isn't that enough? Apparently not. Yet those who pen such criticisms would surely not ever say "Homer's humorless epic The Iliad" or "Nathaniel Hawthorne's humorless novel The Scarlet Letter." Yet Ayn Rand is routinely attacked for her supposed lack of humor -- and unjustly so. Regarding Ayn Rand's use of humor in The Fountainhead, I highly recommend Robert Mayhew's fantastic lecture on "Humor in the Fountainhead." He gave it to FROST in January. (It was a fantastic evening, perhaps the most thoroughly enjoyable FROST lecture I've heard.) He'll be giving the lecture at NYU on April 26th. (I think non-students must register in advance.)

Originally posted by Don from NoodleFood, For those of you who could not attend the USC Free Speech event featuring Yaron Brook and Daniel Pipes, the video is now available for free on the Ayn Rand Institute registered user webpage. (Note: It will only be available online for a limited time.)

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, Do you wish to learn how to evade more effectively? Do you need assistance blanking out unpleasant knowledge? Are pesky facts impairing your capacity to believe what you please? Then you might study the evangelical Christian answer to the question "Does the Bible contain errors, contradictions, or discrepancies?" I'm sure it will be of great help. Update: When I posted this story this morning, I completely forgot that it was Easter... but how perfect!

Originally posted by Paul from NoodleFood, The controversial Irish airline Ryanair is moving towards a fascinating business model in which the airfare is free. They make money by charging for ancillary services, including baggage check-in and food, having advertisements on seat-backs, affiliate programs with hotels and rental car agencies, etc. Already a quarter of their passengers pay zero for airfare (those fares can be found on their reservation website), and they expect that by 2010 over half of their customers will fly for free. Plus they're making a ton of money with this approach: Capitalism is wonderful.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, If you ever wonder whether people's lives are really ruined by altruistic appeasement of the whims of others, just read "Dear Abby." For example, consider this woman: The problem is not that the mother is an irrational control freak -- not really. The daughter could cut off relations with her, or even just walk away when her mother becomes overbearing. (For examples of that, even if far too late, see this sad column.) More likely than not, the daughter doesn't do that because she doesn't have a real self -- and so she lacks the moral strength required to do battle with her mother, even though she's fighting for her very life. Instead, she capitulates, asking Abby only how she might change the irrational mother she's so sure really loves her. (That's why I like Abby's recommendation of therapy.) Even a moderate egoist, I think, would be incapable of such psychopathology. It is altruism, with its ideal of sacrificing your own values for the sake of others, no matter how undeserving, that sucks people into these lives not worth living.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, I'm presently in the middle of reading Robert Mayhew's excellent anthology Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem. I've never been much of a fan of Anthem, but the essays in the anthology are giving me an enormous new understanding of and appreciation for the work. Although I read Anthem in February, I eagerly anticipate reading it again as soon as I finish the anthology. My friend Lin Zinser had the same experience with the also excellent anthology Essays on Ayn Rand's We the Living. Although I've always loved We the Living, I also gained a much greater understanding of it by reading the anthology. Unfortunately, I've heard that neither of these two anthologies are selling terribly well: they've only sold a few hundred copies. That's quite distressing to me. After all, they are excellent works. The essays are well-written, interesting, and illuminating -- not just of Ayn Rand's literary methods, but also of her philosophy. They are stellar examples of good scholarship on Objectivism. So Objectivists and fellow travelers who don't buy and read these books are missing a fantastic opportunity to understand and appreciate Ayn Rand's fiction and philosophy so much more deeply and thoroughly than ever before. Moreover, the better these anthologies sell, the more receptive publishers will be to future works on Objectivism by Objectivist scholars. (That's of great interest to me, obviously!) From what I hear from other quarters, this kind of lack of interest isn't unique to these anthologies. Although The Objective Standard is doing very well in its subscriptions, the journal has fewer than expected Objectivist subscribers. (That does mean more than expected non-Objectivist subscribers -- and that's great news!) Like Robert Mayhew's anthologies, The Objective Standard is a fantastically interesting read. (I'm in the middle of reading the first issue now too.) So I'm puzzled as to why subscriptions haven't been snatched up by Objectivists and fellow travelers in droves. (Unlike lecture courses, these works are not expensive.) So here's what I'd like to know: If you haven't bought these anthologies, why not? Have you not heard of them? Are you just uninterested in reading essays on Ayn Rand's fiction? Have you just not gotten around to buying them? Are you unsure of their value? Are you living in a hut without two pennies to rub together? Despite that last, I am asking a serious question here: I really do wish to know why so few of the many thousands of people with a serious interest in Ayn Rand's fiction and philosophy have bought Dr. Mayhew's excellent anthologies or subscribed to The Objective Standard. So I'd very much appreciate if those of you who haven't purchased the volume would indicate your reasons for not doing so in the comments or via private e-mail. Also, since I'm sure that NoodleFood readers are a more studious bunch than most, I'd like to ask those of you with a local club to inquire with your members as to whether they've bought the anthologies -- and if not, why not. Then tell me what you find out, if you please. Also, if you've read and enjoyed the volumes, please encourage those people to buy and read them! This question is of great personal interest to me. In a few years, I'll be free from the burdens of graduate school to write what I please. I'd very much like to write on Objectivism for those already familiar with Ayn Rand's fiction and philosophy -- at least part of the time. However, if that's like shouting into a black hole, then I may as well concentrate my efforts upon more interested and appreciative audiences. (In case anyone is wondering, I have not revealed any confidental information in this post.)

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, Luka Yovetich sent me this NY Times article on Laurie Pycroft, a 16 year old geeky British blogger fighting animal rights terrorists with the help of some Oxford University undergraduates, under the banner of "Pro-Test." Young Mr. Pycroft's has since received more than his fair share of death threats. Here's a bit more about his views: Best of all, he's making a difference: The good doctors conducting medical testing to advance human knowledge need a whole lot more moral support than they're getting these days. Just think about it: Your life may someday depend upon medical testing done -- or not done.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, Over the past few years, as any reader of NoodleFood knows, I've grown increasingly (if not fanatically) interested in history. Right now, I'm still working my way through ancient Greece, mostly focusing on the history, literature, and philosophy produced in that era. For the moment though, I've had to set aside those readings, as well as those on 20th century communism, due to the demands of graduate school. Hopefully this summer, I'll be able to dive into the ten to fifteen books that I'd still like to read on communism, as well as some earlier Russian literature, that of Leo Tolstoy and Fodor Dostoyevsky in particular. (I'm actually listening to Anna Karenina now.) And once I finish my survey of ancient Greece, I'll move onto ancient Rome. In the meantime, I'm taking Scott Powell's First History for Adults course. After four classes, I'm very impressed with his thoughtful and innovative approach to the teaching of history. So I have high hopes for the course as a whole. Scott Powell's basic method of teaching history is in the form of a "causally integrated narrative." On that approach, history is a story of logically integrated facts. Since the basic purpose of studying history is to understand how the past changed into the present, facts are selected for that story based upon their impact upon the world. Perhaps the closest I've seen to that approach in my readings of history is Tibor Szamuely, author of The Russian Tradition. He is a clear and engaging writer with a reasonably firm grasp of the way in which ideas move history. Toward the end of The Russian Tradition, in a chapter on "The Marxist-Populist Dialectic," he has a delightful passage on the proper practice of history: (Please note that Dr. Szamuely is not saying that the Bolshevik Revolution was good in describing it as "the greatest revolution of our time." He's merely saying that it was important and momentous.) At least in some general sense, a "causally integrated narrative" is the basic method of history advocated by Dr. Szamuely above -- and practiced in The Russian Tradition. Consequently, that book is required reading, along with East Minus West = Zero: Russia's Debt to the Western World, 862-1962, for anyone who wishes to understand why communism held Russia in a death-grip for so many decades, why Russia is slipping back into autocracy under Putin, and why business investment in Russia today is not even smart enough to be idiotic. Oh, and both books also explain why Ayn Rand hated Russia so very much -- and why she was right to do so.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood My long-time friend Eric Barnhill is an amazing concert pianist doing all kinds of interesting work in music theory and education. He recently e-mailed me about his new music improvisation blog. He said: I finally had a chance to check out some of Eric's improvisations late last week. My first, second, and third thought upon hearing the most recent recording was basically: Holy *@!&@^#, that's improvisation?!?" I had the same thought about the next one I heard. And the one after that. Eric was right: I do like them. And I look forward to listening to the rest of them!

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, I recently received this interesting announcement from Objectivist Ed Thompson: I have no idea whether ARI is interested in any such "Ragnar Danneskjold Project," but an individual certainly could claim his voucher, then donate it to Microsoft. And people can request to speak out in whatever way permitted by the court settlement. (I can't do anything, at least not yet, since Colorado isn't one of the states involved in the settlement.) A final thought: In the time since Microsoft lost its antitrust case, the company has seemed stopped in its tracks, stagnating rather than innovating. Maybe that's just a fluke, or maybe I haven't paid adequate attention to the news. However, I've heard that IBM suffered exactly that effect as a result of its major antitrust woes of the 1980s. And stagnation would seem to be the natural result of the government breathing down your neck to ensure that your great creativity is not harming your weaker, slower competitors.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, Eugene Volokh has done some good blogging on the horrifying case of Abdul Rahman, the man in grave danger of losing his head in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity. (Did we really fight a war to "liberate" that country from the Islamic radicals?!?) Oh, and Mark Steyn recounts this great story in an op-ed of multiculturalism in action: If the United States fails to protect Abdul Rahman from these Muslim barbarians, if we permit the government we put in power and now maintain in power to murder a man for rejecting Islam, then we may as well just slit out own throats -- before the Muslims do it for us.