| Friday, July 04, 2008 |
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Highlights from OCON: Day 6
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:50 PM   
Here are highlights from the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON), Day Six:
Eric Daniels on Freedom of Speech in American History
- Two words perfectly summarize the opening lecture of this course: Freakin' Awesome. Eric Daniels -- my very, very favorite of all the fabulous Objectivist lecturers -- offered an hour and fifteen minutes of uber-high-bandwidth information on free speech. It was clear, comprehensible, and compelling. (I had no trouble taking copious good notes.) And, Eric looked at his notes once or twice the whole time -- maybe. So as I said: Freakin' Awesome.
- This lecture covered three foundational questions: (1) Do we have free speech today? (2) What is free speech? and (3) Why does free speech matter? (His answer for the third was particularly interesting in his emphasis on the epistemological roots of the right of free speech.) Eric then discussed -- in some detail -- the early history of free speech in America, particularly the state of English law on free speech (fascinating!), the First Amendment and the Sedition Act (not your father's view!), and the restrictions on abolitionist speech in the mid-1830s (familiar ground for me, but now better integrated and understood).
Since I'm only taking one optional course this week, that single class was my whole conference today. So I spent some time working on my dissertation, talking with friends, and goofing off. Plus I got in a painfully good workout.
Finally, Paul and I had a particularly delightful dinner with friends -- the kind of evening that I hope to vividly and fondly recall 50 years from now. That was beyond fantastic.
Oh and I forgot to mention this tidbit earlier: As of a few days ago, OCON 2008 had 455 attendees -- and that was still growing. It's a darn big conference.Labels: ARI, OCON
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Jefferson's Last Letter
By Paul Hsieh @ 10:59 PM
Thomas Jefferson was invited to attend a celebration in Washington DC on July 4, 1826, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He had to decline due to reasons of health, but he did write the following in his last letter:I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Via Marginal Revolution.)Labels: History
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| Thursday, July 03, 2008 |
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Highlights from OCON: Day 5
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:53 PM
Here are highlights from the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON), Day Five:
Tore Boeckmann on "The Novels of Ayn Rand and the Metaphysics of Value"
- Tore Boeckmann offered a fascinating look at the concrete values in Ayn Rand's fiction in relation to the theme of the work, particularly the significance of the incidental elements or aspects of those values, such as Howard Roark's gaunt, angular figure. This lecture offered a level of literary analysis well beyond my meager understanding, so I plan to be on the lookout for this new complexity when I next reread Ayn Rand's novels, particularly her more developed works The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Onkar Ghate on "Cultural Movements: Creating Change"
- Onkar Ghate gave a fantastically chilling lecture on the rise of religion in American politics, beginning with the Goldwater campaign. His case for the deliberate infiltration of politics by evangelical Christianity was clear, systematic, and undeniable. Further details may be found in a source used by Dr. Ghate himself, one that I've repeatedly recommended, namely With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America by sociologist William Martin.
- Toward the end of his lecture, Dr. Ghate observed the following, as recorded in my abbreviated notes: Increasing numbers of Christians are recognizing the contemporary evangelical Christianity is too easy, too soft: it doesn't recognize man's inherently sinful nature. Moreover, the younger evangelicals are not interested in the free markets espoused by the older generation but rather in environmentalism and poverty. So religion needs environmentalism -- and vice versa. Environmentalism offers religion its necessary doomsday scenario according to which your mere existence is a sin. Religion offers environmentalism a widely-held philosophic foundation, as Yaron Brook argued a few days ago. Until now, religionists have been primarily concerned with the spiritual realm, i.e. with sex. Yet many recognize that the message of Christianity is far more broad, far more reaching than that. Correspondingly, environmentalism has been primarily concerned with the material realm, i.e. with industry. The merger of them is a natural outgrowth of their current trajectories -- and very dangerous.
Academic Panel:
- As usual, the Academic Panel had tons of news to report, but since I arrived late and without my computer, I didn't take notes. If you want to know what's happening with Ayn Rand in academia, I'd recommend donating to the newly-expanded Anthem Foundation, so that you can enjoy the regular progress reports.
Now, bedtime!Labels: ARI, OCON
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OCON: Q&A Session with Leonard Peikoff
By Paul Hsieh @ 11:01 PM
As many readers know, Dr. Leonard Peikoff gave a special Q&A session for attendees of OCON 2008 on July 2, 2008. I've chosen to summarize a few selected questions, not necessarily in the order that they were asked. These are paraphrases from my notes and not verbatim quotes, so any errors or inadvertent inaccuracies are purely my own, not his. He took a mixture of nearly 40 written and spoken questions. The session lasted 90 minutes, with a 5 minute intermission halfway through.
He and the ARI established a few ground rules ahead of time. In particular, he stated that he wouldn't comment on the 2008 Presidential election. He also gave an update on the status of his forthcoming book on the DIM hypothesis as well as his podcasting activities. Overall, he was in an cheerful benevolent mood, and there were many touches of humor that I can't easily capture in this blog post. His mind was razor sharp, and it was good to see him at his best.
I don't know if an audio recording of this session will be subsequently released as a CD from the Ayn Rand Bookstore or on his podcast. If I learn more, I'll post an update.
My own comments will be in square brackets ("[]").
=====
Book update: The book is going both "badly" and well. It is going "badly" in the sense that he has completed a preliminary draft of the entire book, but now has to do a lot of heavy editing of the earlier chapters.
It is going well in the sense that he is now fully convinced of the correctness of his DIM hypothesis, based on the research he has done. And he is enjoying the writing process and is happy with the quality of the work. The book should be completed by Christmas 2010 at the very latest.
Podcast update: He enjoys doing the podcast tremendously. He is pleased with the quality of the questions and believes that the questions submitted are of better quality than in the past. He is also happy with the improved audio quality. He hopes that his answers are spurring his listeners to pursue some of these ideas in greater depth by looking for more information in the rest of the Objectivist literature. Also, he finds the podcasting to be a nice break from his book writing.
The podcasts will now be available on iTunes, which any users can subscribe to for free!
[I think this is terrific news, since this will make it easier to transfer files back and forth from my iPod, rather than having to do the downloads through the Peikoff.com website.]
Q) What philosophical or cultural trend is the most dangerous?
A) Religion.
Q) Will the rise of environmentalism and the subsequent loss of freedoms bring us to a society like that portrayed in Anthem?
A) Yes and no. Environmentalism does pose a danger to our freedoms. But the society depicted in Anthem is a fictional one which projects the idea of collectivism in its purest form. In our case, he believes that a different bad outcome would be more likely -- one in which we are ruled by a Pope rather than a "Council of Scholars".
Q) Who are the "low hanging fruit" most likely to be receptive to Objectivist ideas, i.e., the best targets to reach?
A) In his experience, young people between ages 17-29. Before age 17, they are generally too young and not ready to digest these ideas. After age 30, they are more likely to stop thinking as they will have finished deciding their basic values. With respect to specific professions, he's noticed that engineers, computer people, and doctors seem to be disproportionately represented in Objectivist circles.
Q) What are your favorite artworks in the following specific categories -- novel, play, painting, sculpture, and song?
A) His favorites are:Novel - Atlas Shrugged
Play - Cyrano de Bergerac
Painting - The Creation of Adam (Michelangelo)
Sculpture - The Dying Slave (Michelangelo)
Song - He doesn't know which is his favorite, but it's not "God Save the King" (the first song title that popped into his head when he heard the question). Q) As a gay Objectivist, there seem to be a disproportionate number of other gays in the Objectivist community relative to the population at large. Is there an explanation for this?
A) "Is that a problem?" [Lots of laughter, and the questioner said, no that wasn't a problem at all for him.] Basically, it's hard to know if there actually is over-representation or under-representation given the small numbers. Perhaps if there were 20 million Objectivists we could ask the question and attempt an answer. But the numbers are currently too small to attempt to answer this question or even to know if the premise is true.
Q) Is there a proper role for government in environmental issues where there are collective action questions -- for instance, issue of pollution where no single source causes a provable harm, but the aggregate of millions of polluters is a source of harm?
A) If a single polluter can be shown to be the cause of a provable harm to another, then this should be addressed through the courts -- i.e., the polluter can be sued for damages.
On the other hand, in the cases where an industrial society inherently generates in aggregate a level of pollution that may cause harm, but no single individual's pollution is a provable source of harm, then there is no role for government intervention. A person can't take the benefits of living in an industrial society (such as advanced medical technology that lets people to live to age 75 rather than dying at age 25), then also complain that the government should stop the Los Angeles smog that causes his eyes to water.
If you don't want to live in LA, then the proper response is to move away, not ask the government to impose environmental regulations.
[Obviously this opens up a number of interesting secondary issues, but he did not pursue this further.]
Q) Is the word "Shrugged" in "Atlas Shrugged" a verb or an adjective?
A) It's a verb. "I can't imagine a sentence in which 'shrugged' would be used an adjective."
Q) Is it legitimate for a person to make a career of theoretical science, without regard to practical application? Or must there be some attempt at application for this to be a legitimate activity?
A) As an individual scientist, this can be a totally legitimate activity. This can be part of a division of labor where someone pursues advances in theory without necessarily concerning himself with how it can be applied, whereas others use their minds to develop applications.
In a free society, someone concerned purely with theory might find it difficult to obtain funding, since most businesses would want to pay for research with some eventual practical applications. But if he had his own source of private funding or if that was how the division of labor was made, then this is fine.
From the perspective of man as such, it is not a legitimate endeavour to pursue pure theory without regard for any practical application that would benefit man's life in some way. But from the perspective of the individual scientist, a division of labor into theoreticians vs. applied scientists can be entirely legitimate.
Q) What is your favorite episode of The Twilight Zone?
A) The episode "A Nice Place to Visit", because of the deep philosophical content presented in an engaging way accessible to all viewers. He also likes the Twilight Zone series as a whole due to the good dialogue and characterizations, as well as brilliant plot twists.
[Larry Salzman notes that the full 30-minute episode can be found here on the CBS website. Thanks, Larry!]
Q) Do you have any advice on how to achieve cultural change for the better?
A) Nothing more than Ayn Rand has already said in her essay, "What Can One Do?". Namely, to write, speak out and advocate good ideas in the appropriate contexts.Labels: ARI, Objectivism, OCON
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| Wednesday, July 02, 2008 |
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Highlights from OCON: Day 4
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:59 PM
Here are highlights from the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON), Day Four:
Lin Zinser on "Health-Care Activism: Saving the Life Savers," Class 3 of 3:
- Lin discussed three broad topics today: coalitions, tactics, and politics and intellectual activism.
- Many self-described advocates of free markets, politicians and advocates, are not genuine defenders of free markets at all. They are in favor of all kinds of regulations and entitlements. At best, they wish to reduce some regulations and limit some entitlements. By clearly advocating for fully free markets, FIRM has made clear what a free market in medicine really means.
- Lin offered six points for effective intellectual activism at the end of the lecture:
- Do what you are comfortable with.
- Have clearly stated goals with measurable deadlines.
- Use moral arguments and communicate at the appropriate level.
- Get on a mailing list -- create your own or join OActivists -- for editing, moral support, and alerts.
- Develop credibility and expertise by studying the issues and stating your views in a well-reasoned manner.
- If you have a desire to change a group's fundamental mission or platform, investigate the group and attend meetings. There may be a group where you could use moral philosophical arguments to formulate or change the policy for the entire group
Tara Smith on "The Menace of Pragmatism"
- Tara Smith delivered yet another fantastic lecture, particularly noteworthy for her passion on the subject.
- Smith began with as clear a description of pragmatism as possible: the concept rather fuzzy by its very nature, by the design of its advocates. She identified four features of pragmatism as a common method of thought (as opposed to a system of philosophy):
- Range-of-the-moment thinking
- Refusal or inability to think in principle
- Resistance to identifying things by their fundamental nature
- All options are kept open in decision-making
- Smith then sketched the pervasive influence of pragmatism in the culture. (That was compelling but depressing.)
- Next, Smith discussed the appeal and error of pragmatism. Pragmatism is particularly dangerous, Smith argued, because it sells itself as reasonable, rational, and practical. Yet in fact, pragmatism rejects reality, it rejects rationality, and it rejects practicality. It does so by rejecting long-range, conceptual, principled thought, i.e. the basic means of human survival.
- Finally, Smith offered some suggestions for combating pragmatism in others and in oneself. Here are her suggestions, in brief:
- Identity it. Call it when you see it, not just to yourself and others. Show that it's not practical.
- Police the meaning of words. Don't let yourself be spun by the labels of others that reinforce pragmatism. Don't allow them to claim the mantle of being rational or practical. Don't allow the term "reasonable" to be a fuzzy sort-of kind of non-rationality.
- Defend rational idealism. Stock up instances of idealism to show that they are practical. Also, don't allow false idealism to go unchallenged.
- Don't give up. Remind yourself of what's at stake: to surrender to pragmatism is to surrender to the rule of irrationality.
- To combat pragmatism in ourselves:
- Beware the pull of the present. The present can seem like the most important consideration. It takes deliberate effort to think long-range.
- Beware of the pull of the seemingly practical. Understand the practical necessity of rational principles. Adherence to principles is always the most practical, even if not always easy or convenient.
- Distinguish legitimate from illegitimate compromise. Be honest in your decision-making. Probe your own doubts. Listen for potential rationalization. Persevere in sorting through difficult cases. Go back to fundamentals, remind yourself of basic principles.
- Know thyself, and know thyself better. Identify your own vulnerabilities and blind-spots. Know what helps keep you on principle.
- Read and re-read Ayn Rand's works.
- My notes posted here only scratch the surface of this excellent lecture. I highly recommend buying it whenever it becomes available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore.
Pat Corvini: "Two, Three, Four, and All That: The Sequel," Class 3 of 3:
- Unfortunately, Pat Corvini was a bit rushed in her last lecture. So I'm clear on her view of generation of the irrational numbers, but I'm still a bit murky on the problems with the postulational method. (I can see the big picture, but not enough of the details. However, from what I do understand, the problems with attempting to generate irrational numbers via the postulational method seem hugely insurmountable.) I hope to review my notes with Paul sometime tomorrow.
Debi Ghate and Tom Bowden: "How to Be an Agent of Cultural Change"
- A nice presentation of some of the basic steps a person can take to contribute to positive cultural change. Most of it was familiar ground to me, but I did take good notes. I'll be posting those to OActivists tomorrow.
Leonard Peikoff: "Q&A":
- I didn't take many notes on this Q&A, so I don't have much of substance to say about it. However, Dr. Peikoff was in fine form. He was as intellectually sharp as ever, plus in a delightfully friendly and benevolent mood. He was particularly generous in answering my question about privacy lies -- or rather in explaining why he couldn't answer my question because he really couldn't say under what conditions lies to protect privacy might be legitimate because it depends too much on the particulars of the situation at hand.
- Also, he reported that his book is going very well, that he's written a full draft o the whole text, and that he expects to be finished by the end of 2010 at the very latest.
OBloggers:
- The informal get-together for Objectivist bloggers (a.k.a. OBloggers) was all kinds of fun. I'll have to arrange a similar event in advance next year rather than at the last minute.
Now it's finally time for bed! I'm beat!Labels: ARI, OCON
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Highlights from OCON: Day 3
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:16 AM
I don't have much to report from the third day of the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON). The morning was free, so Paul and I only had two lectures to attend:
Pat Corvini: "Two, Three, Four, and All That: The Sequel," Class 2 of 3:
- I struggled a bit with the material today, particularly the postulational method of defining various kinds of numbers, but after some discussion with Paul, that's all reasonably clear to me. However, I haven't the foggiest idea how Pat's objective approach to number will shed light on Cantor -- although I'm sure that she has something very good up her sleeve.
Dina Schein Federman's lecture "Ayn Rand as Intellectual Activist":
- This lecture was good -- and even relevant to questions about activism today. But it wasn't eye-popping like her 2006 lecture on Ayn Rand's Home Atmosphere. In that lecture, the content was wholly new, based on Ayn Rand's family's letters to her, none of which were even translated until Dina began her work on them. That lecture was interesting in its own right, but I also enjoyed it as a total refutation Barbara Branden's very negative portrayal of Ayn Rand's relationship with her family.
Tomorrow is the final day of the first half of the conference. It's going to be busy. We'll start with the final lecture of Lin Zinser's course, then Tara Smith's lecture on pragmatism, then the final lecture of Pat Corvini's course, then the ARI Open House including the Workshop on Cultural Change, then the Q&A with Leonard Peikoff, and finally an informal meeting of Objectivist Bloggers.
I'm tired just thinking about it!Labels: ARI, OCON
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| Monday, June 30, 2008 |
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The Next 3 OCONs
By Paul Hsieh @ 11:34 PM
Yaron Brook announced the dates and locations for the next three OCON conferences:2009: July 3-11, Boston, MA, Seaport Hotel
2010: July 2-10, Las Vegas, NV, Red Rock Resort
2011: July 1-9, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Marriott Harbor Beach Resort Labels: ARI, OCON
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Highlights from OCON: Day 2
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:23 PM
Here are some more highlights from the second day of the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON).
Lin Zinser on "Health-Care Activism: Saving the Life Savers," Class 2 of 3:
Today, Lin discussed some strategies for successful activism, connecting those lessons to her own experience with FIRM. (Some of her stories would be very surprising to most people -- in a good way.) Robert Mayhew on "Thales and the Birth of Philosophy in Ancient Greece":
This lecture was a fascinating discussion of the birth of philosophy, particularly the radical departure from primitive supernaturalism that began with Thales in ancient Greece. Thales inaugurated the study of philosophy as an explicit discipline on the basis of observation and rational argument -- as opposed to relying on traditional myths to explain natural phenomena. Mayhew clearly showed the radical differences between the methods of Thales and those of thinkers in other cultures at the time. Mayhew also traced the unique factors in ancient Greek culture that made possible (but not necessary) the development of explicit philosophy.
I particularly enjoyed the lessons for the prospects for Objectivism at the end of the lecture.
(The lecture was related to Dr. Mayhew's essay criticizing Robert Tracinski's analysis of the role of philosophy in history, posted to NoodleFood in January 2007.) Pat Corvini: "Two, Three, Four, and All That: The Sequel," Class 1 of 3:
This course examines three modern ideas in mathematics: (1) equivalent sets, (2) the postulational method, and (3) the continuum and actual infinities. Today, Pat explained the basics of Cantor's arguments about comparisons of sets, with a few hints of the criticisms to come. (I remembered that somewhat fuzzily from my undergraduate course in philosophy of mathematics.) Tomorrow and the next day, she'll lay out the standard the postulational method, and then discuss the Objectivist approach to these topics. (Very cool!)
This course is a sequel to her excellent course of last year: Two, Three, Four, and All That. That's all for today!Labels: ARI, OCON
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| Sunday, June 29, 2008 |
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Highlights from OCON: Day 1
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:50 PM
I'm attending the Ayn Rand Institute's summer conference (a.k.a. OCON this week. So in lieu of regular blogging, I thought I'd try to post a few brief highlights each day.
Lin Zinser on "Health-Care Activism: Saving the Life Savers," Class 1 of 3:
- An excellent first class. Inspiring review of the accomplishments of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM). Fascinating discussion of the rise, fall, and rise of state laws licensing doctors to practice medicine.
- Kind of Activism: Intellectual activism means changing the ideas of honest, intellectually active people. Political activism means directing your legislators on how to vote. Political activism is not primary: the real change must be in the culture.
Yaron Brook on "Cultural Movements: Creating Change," Lecture 1 of 3:
- A fascinating overview of the successes and failures of the economic defense of free markets from the 1960s to the 1990s and the environmental movement from the 1970s to today. (I'm eager to hear the rest of these lectures! They'll definitely be worth buying.)
... drumroll please ...
Yaron Brook on "State of ARI":
These are just a few highlights:
- ARI has shipped 1.1 million books as part of the "Free Books for Teachers" program. So if the books have a lifespan of four to five years, then four to five million students are reading Ayn Rand's novels in their English classes. By the end of the decade, over seven million kids will have read Ayn Rand.
- BB&T has funded 38 programs in the southeast US for the study of capitalism and philosophy.
- DC Office will be opened with four staff members just five blocks from the White House in August.
- Yowza! An anonymous donor donated one million and one dollars just this afternoon. That's ARI's largest single donation ever -- by a dollar. So ARI's projected revenues for 2008 will be nine million dollars.
That's all for now!
Further Reports on OCON:
Labels: ARI, OCON
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The Dependent Life
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:20 PM
Some months ago, I needed to photocopy Stanley Milgram's "The Perils of Obedience," a popular article on his famous experiments on authority published in the December 1973 issue of Harpers. (Note to self: blog about that soon!) As I was doing that, I noticed the following quote, excerpted from Philip Slater's book The Pursuit of Loneliness, in the "wraparound" section. I was so struck by its evil that I photocopied the page, in the hopes of blogging it. I forgot about it -- until I found the photocopied page a few days ago while cleaning out my desk. So, at long last, here it is for your reading displeasure:
It is easy to produce examples of the many ways in which Americans attempt to minimize, circumvent, or deny the interdependence upon which all human societies are based. We seek a private house, a private means of transportation, a private garden, a private laundry, self-service stores, and do-it-yourself skills of every kind. An enormous technology seems to have set itself the task of making it unnecessary for one human being ever to ask anything of another in the course of going about his daily business. Even within the family Americans are unique in their feeling that each member should have a separate room, and even a separate television, and car, when economically possible. We seek more and more privacy, and feel more and more alienated and lonely when we get it. Oh how evil of us crass Americans to wish to live lives of our own, pursuing our own goals and dreams, while allowing others to do the same!
Then again, I suspect that Slater is speaking the truth -- about himself. The values that he pursued probably didn't have any meaning for him, so he longed for some human connection to fill the bottomless void inside himself.
BLECH!
So once again, Ayn Rand's comment about civilization and privacy comes to mind:
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. Notably, Philip Slater couldn't have written that trash in the kind of society he advocates. He'd be too occupied with the elevating tasks of an "interdependent" life, such as waiting in bread lines for daily rations and working nights to support irresponsible relatives.Labels: Ethics
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A Moral Example of Salami Slicing
By Greg Perkins @ 12:47 AM
Remember that technique which showed up in the plots of movies like Superman III, Hackers, and Office Space, where someone would change bank software to take fractions of cents from transactions like interest payments and funnel them all into one account? Nobody misses a fraction of a cent -- but given enough transactions over time, the sum can really add up! That's what they call "Salami Slicing."
Of course it is stealing in cases like that, but the same idea of accumulating vast numbers of tiny values that are hardly noticeable could legitimately pay off, too.
Consider this fact about driving your vehicle: left turns often require waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, taking a little more time and gas on average than right turns do. Now, this doesn't make all that much of a difference to most of us (just like the above fraction of a cent we may or may not get in interest from the bank) -- but if you have a fleet of 90,000 big brown trucks that follow the routes you schedule for them each day to deliver packages, then adjusting your software to minimize left turns could really add up!
Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas...
That's some serious scratch, especially with the price of gas today! I love it -- kudos to the brain at UPS who saw and brilliantly exploited this little fact.
[HT: Jason]Labels: Business, Cool, Ethics
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| Thursday, June 26, 2008 |
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Epic Weekend Ride
By Greg Perkins @ 8:09 PM
 Whew! I was still a bit depleted Monday, with my brain a little foggier than usual.
This past weekend, we decided to try out an annual mountain bike ride that veteran riders around us have been talking about: the Wild Rockies Boise-to-Idaho City Tour!
Here are the essential stats: we mountain biked about 90-95 miles over two days, climbing a total of about 14 thousand feet (maybe seven hours of riding each day). Tammy and I may be pretty solid riders, but we don't usually do those kinds of numbers -- my rear is still hurting!
We got to ride with about 100 people from around the valley, going from Boise to Idaho City (an old mining town) on Saturday, camping there overnight, and riding a different route back on Sunday. 
Extra cool was how the ride was hosted: they transported our camping gear, and there were lunch and a few "snack break" stops along the way, dinner at the destination -- oh, and there were showers at the high school in Idaho City! I'm pretty sure Tammy thought that improved things in the tent. :^)
Very satisfying to be able to hang with that kind of crowd! (And nice that there were no real injuries in such a large group.)Labels: Fun, Personal, Sports
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Don’t Talk to the Police
By Greg Perkins @ 1:00 AM
Here is a fascinating 30-minute lecture by Regent University law professor James Duane about the 5th amendment. He is speaking to law students, explaining why he uniformly advises his clients (and everyone) that they should they never, ever, under any circumstances, talk with the police -- guilty or innocent, a suspect or not, even if they are smarter than Aristotle and Newton combined, articulate as all get out, an expert in the law, and pure as the wind-driven snow. Never.
He explains how talking to the police can't ever help, and will in all likelihood hurt even innocents. This last is the part that really stood out: even the most innocuous statements by the most innocent of people could put them in jeopardy -- it depends on context they don't control. An officer misremembering an answer could bring a conviction; so could misremembering the question. Taping interviews is no guarantee, either: even some fuzziness in the contextual information that floated by before the interview could be disasterous!
His examples are striking. "I don't know who killed Joe. Of course I didn't shoot him: I don't even own a gun -- heck, I haven't ever touched a gun in my life!" Suppose that's all perfectly true. What could possibly be incriminating about sharing that? Well, just consider an officer on the stand responding with "I never mentioned anything about a gun." Toast.
But wait, there's more! It isn't just you or officers who might make a mistake that hangs you, but anybody with whom the police might come in contact. (See the video. Oh, and here is the second half with the other fellow.)
Quite an argument for improved epistemological hygiene in our legal system -- and for very careful engagement with it. While exercising 5th amendment rights is widely associated with guilt, Duane explains that it wasn't designed for that -- it is for protecting innocent people in epistemologically perilous circumstances.
[HT: Jason]Labels: Epistemology, Law
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