1962

1962 was such a spectacular year in film. Some highlights:

1. Lawrence of Arabia
   
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
   
3. The Manchurian Candidate
   
4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
   
5. Sanjuro
   
6. The Miracle Worker
   
7. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
   
8. Lolita
   
9. Birdman of Alcatraz
   
10. Cape Feare

The late '50s and early '60s was an incredible period of filmmaking. We have Twelve Angry Men and Inherit the Wind, plus Kurosawa's most famous films, amidst a general flourishing of filmmaking in Japan. But 1962 stands out as a spectacular year in this spectacular decade: no less than TEN great films, all released in a single twelve-month period.

Now this is what I call art!

Fantastic.

Via Jesus' General.

Hugo thinks about anti-feminist women

And mentions my "favourite" "philosopher" in the process:

The other aspect of this anti-feminism I encounter among my students is a disturbing refusal to see any sense of responsibility for and towards other women. Not all anti-feminist young women are selfish. But I have to admit that more than a few of the brighter ones, are alas, going through that depressing stage where they think the Fountainhead is the greatest book ever written, and Ayn Rand has become -- at least temporarily -- their hero. (Thankfully, they usually grow out of it. Lots of young men and women become captivated by the radical self-centeredness of objectivism in their teens and early twenties; most abandon it once they learn what it is to truly love another human being unconditionally.) Young women like this flatter themselves into believing that sexism is just an excuse used by unhappy and unsuccessful women to explain their failures; the Rand devotees insist, with an almost heartbreaking naivete, that in the modern world any young woman can succeed at anything she wants if she tries hard enough, and she can do so by herself. Women's failure to achieve happiness, they defiantly declare, is due to individual shortcomings only, and not to broader social problems.

One thing I know right now: dealing with college freshman and sophomores who are enamored of Atlas Shrugged is something I will have to do again and again over the next forty or fifty years. I expect this to be a monumentally frustrating task, because these are liable to be my 'best' students -- intelligent, literate, hardworking. They'll ask thoughtful, relevant questions and make thoughtful, relevant comments; but then there'll be all the comments that Kant was CLEARLY wrong about the categorical imperative, because, as Ayn Rand shows, blah blah blah. And, of course, as much as I'd like to, I can't just dismiss comments like this offhand. Nor can I just start blatantly arguing with one of my students in the middle of class; the moderator isn't supposed to get involved in the debate!

Maybe I'll just include some Nietzsche in all my Intro to Ethics courses. Start them off with some Genaeology of Morals, which the Randiac should enjoy, and then slip in something to trip them off just when they're gloating.

For a change, I've got some lyrics. But there's a trick: for ten points, name the artist, the song, and the episode of Buffy the song was performed in.
Because nobody knows that's how I nearly fell / Trading clothes and ringing Pavlov's bell / History shows there's not a chance in hell

Nerdy Links

Alright, evidently yesterday there was a press event for the Xbox 360 in New York. Evil Avatar has some previews here, here, here, and here. Check out the first one in particular. Live Arcade sounds totally cool.

Apple announced the Ipod Video today, which will be available next week. It's not the play-anything-you-have-on-your-computer type of player that you may have hoped for, but I suppose it's a step in the right direction. If you're looking for something a little better for video stuff, there are other options out there.

"The other day around the way I seen you illin' at a party
Drunk as skunk you illin' punk and in your left hand was Bacardi
You went up to this fly girl and said "Yo, yo, can I get this dance?"
She smelt your breath and then she left you standin' in your illin' stance"

Juvenial Humor

From Dan Brottman, we have the sophmoric humor for the day. It seems that .ck is the domain of the Cook Islands and, furthermore, .co.ck is the .com of that domain. I should also warn you that on the site I'm linking to there's another link that takes you to a nude picture of Tony Danza, so don't let your Danza curiosity get the best of you if you're not prepared for some "Hey oh, oh-ay!" action.

"Takin' a dive 'cos you can't halt the slide / floating downstream / So let her go don't start spoiling the show / It's a bad dream"

Emoticons

I just signed up with myspace.com, which I hear is like Friendster but better. Don't ask me, I don't know yet. Anyway, as it common with going through with lots of people's profiles on the internet you run across various levels of annoying emoticons. Generally I'm not a fan of the standard smiley faces and such, but I'm a bit more open to more inventive emoticon ideas. I just wanted to say that <3 doesn't look like a heart to me...

Not your ordinary review

A literary analysis of Serenity. Interesting stuff!

No pie for you!

Because I'm lazy and forgot to take a picture of it before I cut into it. It's damn tasty, though.

And now for something completely different.

In Book V of the Physics (or somewhere around there), Aristotle gives a teleological argument against the reduction of biological beings to mere complicated material structures. Briefly, he argues that organisms are organized into structures with a particular end (telos), the well-being of the organism itself. Even the most charitable version of reductivism cannot give an account of this telos, and hence cannot be true.

Now, prima facie, this conflicts with the sort of evolutionary account that's fundamental to contemporary biology, but I think the Aristotelian teleology of the organism can be cashed out in terms of the reproductive success basic to natural selection.

One of the major metaphysical accounts of mathematics for the past 100+ years has been logicism, the idea that (major parts of) mathematics can be reduced to formal (symbolic) logic. Mic Detlefsen (my advisor) has interpreted Poincare (the father of topology, and one of the greatest mathematicians in the history of the subject) as arguing that logicism cannot give an account of the way a mathematician views her theorem as playing an important role in the development of the field of mathematics as a whole.

There seems to be an interesting parallel here. What repercussions follow from interpreting Poincare's point as a teleology of mathematics?

Fantasy Hockey

Ok, this isn't going to be a terribly interesting post for people not involved in my fantasy hockey league, but read it anyway because I said so. Ok, so this year I got roped into a fantasy hockey league. It's the first time I've ever been involved in fantasy sports and, predictably, I've gotten kind of obsessed with it; checking stats all day and such. Anyway, because it's the first time I've done this I did a pretty bad job of drafting players and managed to draft a goalie that doesn't so much play in the NHL anymore. So that's my fault and it left me with one goalie for the first week.

Then in the first game of the season my one goalie hurt himself, leaving me with no goalies for the rest of the week. I could, however, try to get some goalies for the next week, so I dumped my no-longer-playing goalie for a hot young prospect. He injured himself before I got him. So I put both of my injured goalies on my reserves so I could get two healthy goalies, and I managed to get one guy that can play for me this week and another that will get onto my roster next week. The latter goalie was injured today. Seriously, if I lose four goalies to injuries in under two weeks I'm just quitting. It's not safe for the guys playing to have me drafting them.

"Tommy used to work on the docks / Union's been on strike / He's down on his luck - it's tough"

Well, I'm finally posting the results from September's competition for Staff of Ra Points. Drew, of course, destroyed all the competition. It wasn't even close. Like Napoleon in his wet dreams, Drew road over the countryside smacking away the paltry attempts to defeat him launched by his competitors. His strategy was a complex one: Post a bunch and I'll get lots of points. I'm not sure if this bold strategy can be replicated, but I hope some of you might try. Another key aspect of Drew's crushing and demoralizing victory was participating in the several contests offered during the competition which held large awards for participation/victory.

When our reporters caught up with Drew to discuss his victory, the great warrior had little to say, as he was busy trying to win again in October, but we did get this out of him,

"True glory requires more than jsut victory. A warrior must defeat his opponents so decisively that they feel shame for daring to even compete. I have achieved that glory. In recognition of my greatness and dominance, henceforth, I shall be known as Grumlock the Destroyer."

Fare thee well noble Mr. the Destroyer. Your victory is a glory for all to behold.

Here is the final tabulation of scores:
1. Drew - 293
2. Jay - 145
3. Jamie - 125
4. Andy - 90
5. Manda/Joy - 72
6. Rob - 35
7. Casey - 30
8. Dan Brottman - 20
9. The Annonymous Poster - 10
10. Jesse D - 5

"I looked out this morning and the sun was gone / Turned on some music to start my day / I lost myself in a familiar song / I closed my eyes and I slipped away"

Of What Worth Are Nerds?

Well, I'd say they're worth a lot. Hugh Hewitt doesn't seem to think so though. In discussing the reactions to Harriet Miers Hewitt takes particular exception to the idea that Supreme Court Justices should all be brainiacs.

The idea that Miers cannot go toe to toe with the giant brains on the Supreme Court is a very odd argument, on a number of fronts. It assumes that the business of judging is very difficult and that only scholars and intellectuals are suited to the task[.]

This reminds me of an episode of the West Wing when, during Bartlett's reelection campaign, two of the characters are discussing the Republican contender, who prides himself on his folksey personality while being downright hostile towards intellectualism. The conservative character made an argument that was somewhat similar to what Hewitt's saying here. The more liberal character replied that while doctorates and nobel prizes aren't required to be president, or for our purposes Justice of the Supreme Court, in a country of nearly 300 million people we should be able to find someone that is personable and all that while still having a certain amount of gravitas.

Hewitt goes on to suggest that Constitutional Law simply isn't that hard and doesn't require the smartest person in the world to do the job. To be perfectly honest, I agree with Hewitt on this part: Consitutional Law really isn't full of difficult concepts. Then again, the "self-evident"conclusions that I come to are going to be completely different from the "self evident" conclusions that Hewitt will come to.

I got this link over at the Volokh Conspiracy, and Orin Kerr makes some good points. It's exactly these sorts of dichotomies that should lead us to searching out clever, smart, educated, and intelligent Justices. And like Kerr says, it might very well be fair to say that extensive experience, and the thoughtful reflection that comes with it, can be a good substitute for natural brilliance, but Miers has niether; at least that I've seen. But at the bottom of it all we're talking about the Supreme Court. We get to put nine people in a group to decide the most important issues of the day. Nine people. That's a pretty exclusive club; shouldn't we be choosey about the people we let on?

I don't think the argument is that Harriet Miers can't possibly comprehend the issues before the Court, it's just that we can do better.

"Though we'll always be apart / Locked forever in a dream / If I ever love again / Even then, nothing will change"

My mind is tired

A solid day and a half of philosophy of math is fun, but exhausting. Topping it off with 3 hours of reading (Aristotle and Kant) has turned my brain into a mush not dissimilar to creamed corn.

I think I'm going to go for a bike ride, so maybe you people will get some pretty pictures of Fall in rural Indiana. There is also a very real chance of a pumpkin pie recipe later on, because pumpkin pie is, in fact, the objectively best kind of pie, and Fall is all about pumpkin pie. In the meantime, read this:

The thing about the drive to have bigger houses and bigger cars for you dollar that's helping cause the suburbs to blow up (I don't imagine that's the only factor, but here in Austin it's certainly a biggie) is that I, like Jeanne, doubt very seriously that it's doing much to help people pursue happiness and in fact is probably working against them. I know that when the ex and I lived on the outskirts of Austin for a year--not even the suburbs really, just the city limits--we were getting to be pretty miserable. The traffic alone was a huge issue

Also, the new Wallace and Gromit film is quite funny, especially if you've seen their shorts.

Sunday Random 10

I've had a busy couple of days with personal stuff, but I thought a late Random 10 was better than no Random 10 at all. Whatever, it's not like you guys ever post your own Random 10s! Maybe you should is all I'm saying...

You all know the drill (or do you?). Load up your collection of MP3s in any program or device with a random or shuffle funtion built in. Set it to random/shuffle and then post the first ten songs that randomly come up. The only rule is that you don't alter your randomly selected songs, especially as a means of making the list cooler.

Song - Artist

1. Calm Like A Bomb - Rage Against The Machine
2. The Trees - Rush
3. The Gypsy - Spock's Beard
4. Bad Seed - Metallica
5. Masquerade/Why So Silent - Andrew Lloyd Webber
6. Drop A Jewel - Freddie Foxxx
7. The Alchemist - Bruce Dickenson
8. Jungle Love - Steve Miller Band
9. Taking Control - Tiles
10. Goodbye To Yesterday - Spock's Beard

Overall I'd say it's a decent Random 10. It starts off really well, then goes into lame town with the Phantom of the Opera bit. Yeah, I like the soundtrack. It's a private shame, though now I guess slightly more public. I've never heard #6, which is one of the benefits of having way too many mp3s. I'd probably rate my list a 6 or 7 out of 10. Why not rate your own lists? Might be fun!

"Been downhearted baby / Ever since the day we me / Our love is nothin' but the blues"

Points For Drew

Drew sent me this link and it is awesome enough to warrant the 15 Ra points for cool links. You can get this info from the link, but the basic idea is that there was a contest where people re-cut movie trailers to make them appear to be different types of movies. The winner re-cut the trailer for The Shining into a story about a lonely kid and a lost foster father finding each other. It's fantastic.

Good job Drew!

"There are no unbeatable odds / There are no believable gods"

It's like a reverse post hoc

The logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc is based on the difference between correlation and causation. For example, in the time since no-fault divorce became more readily available, the violent crime rate has gone down. But this, by itself, doesn't mean violent crime fell because more people were getting divorced. If someone was going to argue that, they'll need to show some link between the two.

On the other hand, we have this.

The major center of crazy is what I like to call the Shit Maxim. The shit maxim presumes that we are in a shit-filled bathroom. Shit on the walls, shit on the sink, shit on the ceiling. When the person invoking the Maxim entered the bathroom, there was only shit in the toilet. Their answer? "Shit's shit, ain't it?"

It's why Bush can invoke this argument with a straight face.

"Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions of our coalition in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001 -- and al Qaeda attacked us anyway."

See, there was shit prior to Iraq, and there's shit after Iraq! Ignore the fact that the post-Iraq shit is pooling up around your waist - shit happens.

The argument Jesse's criticizing here is just as stupid as the fallacy. In fact, it's worse: post hoc makes an unwarranted leap from correlation to causation, while the argument Bush here just pretends an obvious correlation doesn't exist. That's not just a logical fallacy; that's insanity.

You Luck Is Pressed

I'm sure most of us know the story of the guy that memorized the pattern of the Big Board on Press Your Luck and got lots of money, but this link has the full story, including the downward spiral his life took into the gutter after his amazing performance.

Many thanks to Jocelyn for the link.

Live Life Like You're Gonna Die, Because You're Gonna

The Brottman set me up with this link, which I love. I've got presents planned already for people I know. Feel free to post your favorite bits in the comments.

"I swear to God you take your chances / Too many questions and not enough answers."

City of Villains pricing announced

The pricing scheme for the sequel/expansion to City of Heroes, City of Villains, has been hotly anticipated among the CoH community for three months now. CoV will run on the same servers as CoH, and the games will share four player-versus-player areas (at launch; no doubt more to come later if PvP proves to be popular). It's expected that most players will want to be involved in both games, with hero and villain characters on the same servers. There were concerns that business interests would require players to pay a separate subscription fee of around $15 a month for each game.

Well, we got some good news this morning. The current rate of $15/month will cover both games -- for players who already have CoH, CoV will effectively function as an expansion pack, with a single login and a single interface for managing all of one's heroes and villains. Also, it appears the one month gratis that comes with CoV can be used by CoH subscribers, effectively giving current subscribers something like a 30% rebate on purchasing CoV.

Some Interesting Morning Links

If you all don't remember from a few months ago, Electronic Arts was embroiled in a labor dispute in which a class of employees argued that they had improperly been denied overtime pay. Traditionally in California certain classes of workers, mainly in the entertainment industry, had been exempted from overtime pay with the reasoning that often those workers were expected to work very long hours during a "crunch period" which was followed by a more slack period of work. The EA employees were saying that in practice their jobs had no "slack" and was all "crunch". It seems EA got a little scared because the case has been settled out of court.

Next, in World of Warcraft, an online massively multiplayer role playing game (MMORPG), recently there was a bug which created an disease outbreak in the game. Evidently there was some boss-type creature who would attack players with some kind of plague attack. This was supposed to kill the players pretty quickly and then be over. I'm not exactly sure on the specifics, but either it didn't kill players quickly enough, or it stayed with the player after they had been resurected in the game. This has led to a massive outbreak of the plague in the game world, going so far as to spread to some of the major cities in the game and infecting non-player characters which in turn pass it on to many more players. Now there's a group of scientists, who's main area of focus is the asian bird flu, who are studying the reaction of the populace in WoW to the plague as a potential tool for predicting the reaction of people in the real world to a real plague.

The fanboys are going crazy. Peter Jackson to executive produce the Halo feature film. Also, the script was written by Alex Garland, who wrote 28 Days Later. Rage serum aside, I rather liked that movie, so that looks like a good thing to me.

Game Informer has an interesting interview with Peter Moore and J. Allard, the two big Microsoft Xbox bigwigs, taken at the recent X05 event in Amsterdam. The cover everything from why we don't know the launch lineup yet, to why we don't know which games will be backwards compatible yet, to what stuff will be on the Xbox 360 hard drive on day 1 when you open the thing up. Best quote in my opinion: [When asked about what will be on the hard drive out of the box] J. Allard: "I don’t know if I’m actually allowed to talk about this… I can talk about this. I’m the boss." If you're interested in the 360 I think you should read this, good stuff in there.

Another good quote from the article about the ability to plug in your mp3 player or Sony PSP to the 360 (yes, you can do this to play music or video files):

"I’m pro-consumer to the end on this one and anyone in my company that thought it was a bad idea for us to plug in Sony devices or Apple devices into this thing, I ended that conversation pretty quickly. This is the right thing to do for consumers. Once they’ve invested $500 into their digital media library you can’t ask them to go buy a 360 music player and a 360 digital camera. No! They’ve got their stuff. They’re going to want to plug it in. We want to be open here."

Good stuff

"Are you a lucky lady in the City of Light / Or just another lost angel...City of Night"

A "classical liberal" argument for progressive taxation

There are several subtle differences between various definitions of 'progressive taxation' which I don't want to get into here. I'll just say that a progressive tax scheme is one in which the wealthy pay more than the poor. The tax system in the US is nominally progressive but effectively fairly regressive -- there are lots of loopholes that allow the wealthy to avoid having their income and expenses taxed, as well the cuts to capital gains and estate taxes passed since 2000.

So-called "classical" liberalism is the nominal liberalism of the Libertarian party, or more accurately the views of Adam Smith or John Locke. On this view, small, limited government that exists primarily to guarantee freedoms, and a largely free market, are seen as the best way to promote the common good. Note the final clause: that's critical. After all, Smith's book isn't just about how the rich in a free market economy get rich; it's about how a free market economy benefits everyone in the society. I'm not positive, but I believe the supply-side cliche that "a rising tide lifts all boats" is actually from The Wealth of Nations.

(Incidentally, check out Amazon's bundle deal. I'm laughing on the inside, but only because I'm too tired to laugh on the outside.)

Now, in light of that important clause, we consider why the classical liberal feels the whole capitalism thing is so great. A great many of them, of course, just want to be rich, but selfishness has never really caught on a good foundation of moral philosophy. (This is not pace Ayn Rand, for two reasons. One of which is that her "philosophy" doesn't provide a good foundation for a coffee table. 15 Ra points to someone who explains the other reason. You're allowed to ask questions in the comments.) Instead, the more philosophically reflective classical liberals have always argued that capitalism is good because, in a free market, our acquisitive nature gets us to produce more and more goods and services, and distribute them more widely. That is, the pursuit of wealth is good because it drives the creation and distribution of wealth.

My argument here is that capital gains and estate taxes, the two major ways the incomes of the wealthiest members of our society are (were) taxed, and the two inherently most progressive forms of taxation, work in exactly the same way. I take it to be clear that inheriting wealth doesn't lead to the creation of more wealth. The reader might be more sceptical about investment in stocks -- they're offered, after all, as a way for a business to acquire the capital needed to expand, ie, create more wealth. But the remuneration for this takes the form of dividends, not capital gains: capital gains are nothing more than making money by playing on a transient epiphenomenon of human psychology.

Hence, capital gains and estate taxes encourage people to pursue gainful occupations, rather than attempt to acquire wealth by means which do not serve to create new wealth.