Objectivist Round Up #94

This week's Objectivist Round Up is online at One Reality.

Society is increasingly dominated by range-of-the-moment thinking, cynicism, and interest group politics. While large-scale examples from history, such as post-WW2 Berlin, show the power of free thinking and individualism over collectivism, many continue to advocate the latter and unceasingly condemn "greed" and "self-interest". What is going on here? What should be done about it? See what Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has to say about it.

IE 8 An "Important Update"?

If you are a Windows user, you may have noticed that the new Internet Explorer 8 has been assigned the status of an "Important Update" in Windows Update and is showing up as something you should install by default. This means if you don't check the particulars but simply install all updates, you will have unwittingly updated your browser.

This is not necessarily a bad thing; I've used IE 8 and so far it's been a fairly positive experience. For example, it has a feature called Accelerators, which allow you to select text in a browser window, right-click, and perform certain actions such as a Google search on the text, or send it in an email.

However, I've also found several drawbacks:

• You can no longer right-click on folders in your links bar and open the folder in Explorer. The option has been replaced with "Open In Tabs", and I have not yet found a workaround. I manage my bookmarks a lot and this was handy.
• Some sites do not display correctly. IE 8 has a button to the right of the address bar that will turn on "Compatibility Mode" for the current web site (it remembers this setting), which may allow the page to render correctly going forward. It did for me, in the case of Blogger.
• Some sites may just plain break. For example, HP Quality Center checks for certain browser versions and refuses to run otherwise. Even spoofing an older version does not seem to help.

So, updaters beware!

Elk Meadow Trail Run

On this dreary day on the west side of Denver, the clouds were hovering at the tops of the foothills: clear below and invisible above. Since I was looking for something to make my run interesting, I headed up to Evergreen's Elk Meadow Open Space, up into the fog. I was hoping it would make for a spooky and interesting landscape for a run.


This loop is 6 miles, with an average elevation of 7800 feet and a gain/loss of 850 feet. It's "flat" compared to some trails, but I live at 5800 feet, so the extra altitude combined with a bit of uphill makes a good workout. I also alternated easy and fast miles. The longest loop in this park, which is 10 miles, goes to the top of Bergen Peak at just under 9700 elevation. That's a good one!

During the easy miles, I couldn't resists taking some pictures. Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to take some sunny pictures, however the shifting clouds and fog made for a very interesting scene.

Matthews/Winters Run

Since I don't accept the environmentalists' view of Earth Day*, and my iron smelter was at the repair shop ;) I spent the afternoon enjoying the planet outdoors, running at Matthews Winters Park west of Denver.

Another very typical low foothills park, it's located in the valley behind the hogback ridge that stretches for miles along the border between the plains and mountains. This gives it a somewhat secluded feel, even though it's quite close to the bustle of the nearby metropolis.


This is one of the more rugged 10k trail loops near the plains. The average elevation is 6,400 feet, with a total gain/loss of 1,500 feet, and much of the trail is rough. On the left out of view is the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre. On the right is a rolling, rocky ridge.

An interesting and challenging feature of the ridge line is the fact that the rock slants at an angle, and breaks off in an inverted "v" shape. This means there are many places on the top where the rock is slanted at 45 degrees and you have to pick your foot placement carefully to keep from slipping and bruising the side of your feet! To add to the fun, in some places the soil is sandy and your feet sink and slide. However, the ruggedness lends interest, and it's shaded with pines and full of interesting rocks and small cliffs.

The section on the left (west) near Red Rocks traces up through a ravine full of red sandstone cliffs and rock formations. Its aesthetics and quick elevation gain make for a great quick run or hike if you don't have much time and want bang for the buck.

* I won't side with those who want to roll back the Industrial Revolution and don't accept the fact that I have individual rights.

Olbermann, Garofalo And The Tea Party Protests

This story comes by way of a post on Reality Talk, and links to a horrible video with Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo about the Tea Party protests.

It has become reflex for liberals to bash Fox News. I don't get that channel, and I only watch the occasional Yaron Brook interview via the web site, but it seems like sour grapes for liberals to decry the one of the few major news outlets with views they don't like, when nearly every other news outlet is relatively liberal. Anti-intellectual? Try government policies that prevent the human mind from working, like nearly everything advocated by Obama. That's what it means when you don't allow people to make market choices based on their own judgment, or you spend their hard-earned money instead of letting them decide how to use it. Liberalism is anti-mind. So is the current strain of conservatism, with its fascist tendencies and Christian social policies.

Anyway, on to the video segment of our program:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

First of all, I didn't realize Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo were so totally awful. Wow. If Fox News uttered such inanities, those two would scream bloody murder!

Regarding Keith, the things he said are just plain nasty and without real content. "Teabaggers"? Talk about below the belt.

Regarding Janeane, her assertions about racism have no basis and her comments about Tea Party participants are utterly obnoxious. It's ironic for her to be speaking of racism and simultaneously offering condescending comments about brain structure, which suggest a biological basis for political behavior. If our biology is off-limits, then it must be so for Garofalo as well.

Saying that people have ingrained irrational behaviors also offers the same polemical payoff as racism does: it relieves her of the responsibility of rational persuasion, because her opponents are too stupid to be reasoned with. This type of disrespect for others is always the bedrock justification behind government policies aimed at forcing us to do what we are too stupid to do for ourselves.

If Garofalo examined the actual principles behind her politics, she would find she actually has much in common with Republicans (those who are not classical liberals). For example, both advocate government interference in markets and don't respect free will or individual rights.

Both commentators are apparently too myopic to see beyond partisanship and Obama-worship and discover the intellectual issue at hand, and the positive side of the protests. Of course, big-government advocates won't have any cookies to raid from the jar if we cut taxes and renounce the nanny state, so I don't expect them to like it. However, they can at least refrain from below-the-belt smears and looking down their noses, which is something they have no right to do. Liberalism is very far from a bright idea, so mocking rednecks is a disingenuous tactic.

Taxes and government spending are a problem for both Democrats and Republicans, and Garofalo and Olbermann should at least have the good manners to accept it as a rational viewpoint worthy of discussion, even if they don't agree with it.

April Blizzard

Denver and the Colorado Front Range got hit with a stationary snow storm during the past few days. Skiers like me love it, but it still wreaks havoc on the city in general, especially when it's heavy snow like this. Some areas lost electric service, and I noticed various traffic signals acting abnormally while I was out and about. Yesterday after work, it felt like a post-nuclear holocaust out there, with just a few drivers, the occasional accident, vehicles off the road and abandoned. I stocked up on fireplace supplies, just in case.

Here are a couple of photos of how I spent Saturday afternoon, taken with my crummy Razr V3m camera -- since my beloved Canon camera is being repaired. These are from Loveland Ski Area, which sits right above the Eisenhower and Johnson Tunnels on I-70 on the Continental Divide.


One man's nightmarish April blizzard is another man's mountain bliss.

White Ranch Run

This post involves both fun and the forces of gravity. White Ranch Open Space Park is on the very edge of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, CO. It's an archetypal Front Range trail near Denver: it starts on the plains but ascends up into the foothills, weaving through canyons and light pine forest (there's more vegetation than there seems to be in the Google Earth image below). The terrain is part arid plains with cactus and boulders, part foothill plateau with pines and lush hidden ravines.

The loop I ran after work today was about 5.5 miles, with a total uphill of 1400 ft. (that's counting ups and downs along the trail). This run only covers a portion of the whole park, which extends about twice this far into the mountains (the longest loop is a bit under 14 miles, and is a pretty tough run).


As I mentioned before, I run with a camera, and part of the fun of these trails, even after 3 years solid of running them, are the unexpected and ever-changing sights, sounds and scents of the outdoors. Not every photograph I want to take is a blockbuster mountain view. Sometimes you just stop several miles out on a trail, and can hear nothing but your own breath, maybe a bird rustling in the bushes, or a dog barking way down in the valley. Near sunset, colors deepen and push the abilities of my camera to capture the view, but the experience is rich and I have to try.

Samsung 2443BWX LCD Monitor

After returning two inexpensive 24" Acer LCD monitors that had bad pixels on them (stuck on blue or red), I recently replaced my aging CRT with a new Samsung 2443BWX LCD monitor instead, which I purchased locally at Office Depot. Ahh, it was nice to get back to Samsung quality. The product was absolutely perfect when I opened the box; not a single flaw, scratch, or stuck pixel.

Although it's now discontinued, this is still a nice large LCD monitor with a good image. No speakers, ports, or other frills, just 1920 x 1200 pixels of sharpness.

Pros:

• Nice resolution. At 1920 x 1200 pixels, it's hard to find something with more image area.
• Good color and sharpness, and bright enough in my somewhat dim interior that I have to turn down the levels for it to be comfortable on the eyes.
• Good price: if you can find it, it will probably cost around $300 or so.
• The screen has a matte finish, unlike a lot of the LCDs coming out now. I find reflections annoying.
• The included Magic Tune software gives you full control over brightness, color, and even has a calibration tool.
• It has both DVI and VGA inputs.

Cons:

• At brightness levels below 100%, it has a fan-like hum coming from behind in the upper right corner. The solution is to simply turn it to 100% brightness using the on-screen controls, then adjust the brightness in the display adapter software or by using Samsung's provided Magic Tune software, both of which use a gamma curve, a method that avoids the buzzing sound. To my surprise, a web search turned up a surprising number of different monitors with this characteristic.
• The buttons on the front of the monitor are painted in dark grey on black and are hard to see in dim light. However, I don't use them much, I use the software to control the same settings.

Note: Office Depot has a restricted return policy for certain items that applies to monitors: if it's been opened, you can only do an exchange at the store within 15 days, and you can't get cash back (for that, they want you to pony up around 15% extra for their protection plan!). So, just be aware that if you buy the product from them, you are committed to paying Office Depot, one way or the other. I wanted the quickness of service, so I didn't mind.

Vail's Back Bowls

Vail's back bowls are a great place to be if you want to ski in central Colorado after a snow storm. For one thing, it's a winter wonderland after it snows. For another, there are multiple hills and valleys of open and treed terrain to ski. If you want to hike, there's even more. It's probably my favorite resort terrain on a powder day.


It also pays to have big skis for areas like this, i.e. at least 90-100mm under foot. Wind does nasty things to snow, and anything that's not beefy enough to plow over it may hook a tip. In the bowls, snow transitions from powder to wind-packed crud to wind-blasted crust, and if you don't watch your feet and hammer over it, it'll get ya.

Objectivist Round Up #90

Since every link helps, I'm here to say that Objectivist Round Up #90 is up and running courtesy of Rational Jenn.

The Round Up occurs every Thursday and features posts by blog authors who live by and advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Go Objectivism!

Three Comments At BW

Business Week has an interesting feature called The Debate Room where they post a brief 2-person debate and allow comments. Today's point of contention was The Economy Needs Ayn Rand, with the pro position taken by Onkar Ghate from ARI.

I am constantly trying to tune the tone of my writing to be both accurate and passionate, and I find I'm turned off by criticisms of people in writing. It's simply irrelevant. Therefore, even a short while after posting, already decided I would have tweaked the wording away from referring to her level of understanding, to simply referring to the ideas expressed being, or not being, a certain way. I find that approach to be more effective and less abrasive. Regardless, my original comment was:

Ms. Patterson,

I think you need to review your Rand. Phrases like "her so-called philosophy of 'rational self-interest'—in other words, a crude kind of dog-eat-dog laissez-faire capitalism" indicate that you simply have not understood the source material. It is precisely the type of individual rights Rand championed that would prevent businessmen from using government in their favor *as well as* prevent statists from devouring our bank accounts. You don't understand what she advocated. May I suggest "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" as a starting point.

What caused our recent troubles was, as usual, government influences on the economy. In brief, it was the aggressive push for affordable housing, which caused many pressures in favor of loose credit, and therefore caused too many risky loans. "Greed" means nothing without an enabler, and that enabler was loose credit. It caused the illusion that housing would boom forever, and induced people to engage in more risky activities than they should have. Get government out of economics like Rand and other Objectivists advocate, and we won't have such troubles.

The second debate I commented on was whether to Legalize Marijuana for Tax Revenue. My comment:

Tax revenue is not a reason to legalize marijuana, but the fact that nobody has the moral right to stop two individuals from trading and using drugs, is. It is nobody's business whether someone smokes or sells pot, any more than it's anyone's business if they drink alcohol or consume trans-fats. It's their life, to do with as they choose. It is a peaceful transaction that hurts no one. I'm sure we'd have less murder if we locked everyone in their homes, but we don't, because until someone actually commits a violent crime, we leave them alone. It should be the same for drugs and other "vices". If you want to care about drug users, then start a free drug treatment clinic.

On the other hand, the devastation wrought by anti-drug laws is extensive and caused solely by our government, just like during Prohibition. It's ruined vast swaths of American inner cities, it's rendered northern Mexico and other areas under the control of violent gangs, it ruins the lives of unhappy escapists who turn to drugs and then lose years of their lives in prison, etc. etc. It's an absolute abomination.

The third debate I commented on was AIG Execs: Hand Back the $165 Million:

It is not government's place to tell business how to spend their money. If the problem is that the government wants to manage what it's footing the bill for, well, the obvious solution is to stop paying companies to fail. Get government out of the way so the failed companies can go into bankruptcy and we can pick up the pieces and get on with the healing. Keeping such companies around only punishes companies who *didn't* do anything stupid and does not do anything to remove the damage done.