Blog di Rovinare di Sid

Objectivity Implemented in Thought, Action, Computers, and Photography

Archive mode
(Week of 22.12.2002)

Sunday, 22 December 2002

Just one month on from Thanksgiving, I'm going on holiday again! I'll be gone from tomorrow until somewhere in the range of 29 Dec to 1 Jan. I'll have Internet access in Houston though, to the blogging will continue, provided I have something to say....

posted by Sid at 00.43 / 321 [ Comments: 0 ]

Tuesday, 24 December 2002

For a reminder of what benefits living in a rational society with privately-funded schools would provide, examine a school in Ohio where administrators confiscated school newspapers because they contained an article in which students discussed consuming alcohol during a party. Is it freedom of speech? Is it something else? Should it be condoned by public schools? The entire debate is in terms of non-essentials when the money paying for the printing of the newspapers is stolen from taxpayers. When it is instead being doled out by a business, whether or not it should be spent is now a decision made by an actual person, not a moral answer to be sought out in a quagmire of chaotic non-philosophy.

posted by Sid at 11.39 / 777 [ Comments: 0 ]

I very seldom play the lottery since I regard it primarily as a voluntary tax on people who are bad at statistics, but for some people, it provides a fun gambling experience. From 1994, the UK has had a National Lottery operated under licence by the government enforced monopolist Camelot.

All has been fine and good for a while, but ticket sales have been falling year on year recently, and nothing seems to be able to prop up the declining revenues. One possible solution proposed by the government that depends upon receipt of the profits made by ticket sales is nationalisation of the industry.

What matters about the lottery is that it works for the public good, that it represents good value for money and that the minimum amount of money is being creamed off to meet costs.

Tessa Jowell, Culture Secretary

So there is the principle underlying all decisions made by the UK government. If the private sector is succeeding in providing for the `public good' (an undefined and undefinable concept as pointed out by Ayn Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal) then fine, otherwise, the government will come and seize your business and your livelihood and take over its operations itself. As Rand points out, this results in a blank check written to the government; since `public good' is a non-concept used not for any particular meaning but because it has no particular meaning, it can be used to sanction the nationalisation of any business for any reason, merely by invoking `the public good' before one seizes its assets.

posted by Sid at 11.51 / 785 [ Comments: 0 ]

As I discussed back in March when I first began my blog, I watch a lot of television when on holiday in Houston, and this has been exacerbated this time by the fact that my mother has acquired a satellite dish for the television programming provider known as the Dish Network.

I recently saw a commercial advertising a web site that sells veterinary medications at discount prices. This is nothing new; catalogues have existed for years from which one could buy veterinary medicines for one's pets including vaccinations which you could administer to them yourself in order to save the cost of going to a vet for the same service.

While I'm aware that some site exist which will sell you discount human medications if you have a prescription, imagine the lowering of prices that would occur if one could buy any human medication one wanted online. And observe the total inversion of values: animal prescriptions can be purchased cheaply and with no prescription whereas man, the rational animal must buy only those prescriptions authorised to him by a licenced doctor and only so much and only at certain locations. This is one instance where the animals in fact have it better than us humans, and the animal rights activists' anti-man philosophy becomes fully lucid.

(And another note on commercials: I have now for the first time seen the commercials for my cellular provider, T-Mobile, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, and I am pleased to report that they are most entertaining to watch, so pay attention when you're watching television.)

posted by Sid at 12.02 / 793 [ Comments: 0 ]

When I was young, my sister and I were avid game show watchers. Now that I'm a bit more rational than I was when I was 12, I have noticed that my tastes in game shows has changed, and some I like immensely, whereas I detest others.

My mother's satellite dish receives a television channel which airs nothing but game shows, so I have been watching some oldies. It seems that game shows test one of three things: common sense (Price is Right, Family Feud), puzzles or trivia knowledge (Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune), or mental skills or physical dexterity as such ($25,000 Pyramid, Double Dare).

I would have to say that without reservation, my current favourite is $25,000 Pyramid or Password, but the station doesn't seem to air the latter. In the former, each two-person team engages in a process of concretisation/definition and integration. One person is given a list of words that he must induce the other person to say, which he attempts to accomplish using a number of spoken devices familiar to watchers of the show such as defining the word, giving a fill-in-the-blank phrase or sentence, giving antonyms, gesturing, etc. The other person when presented with these clues must guess what the word is, and they have thirty seconds in which to complete this seven times. For those who do well at this exercise, the bonus round is even more strenuous. There are more stringent restrictions on how the `giver' may communicate to the `receiver' (such as no gestures) and to further complicate the `giver's' job, bonus round answers are always abstractions. The hardest in the most recent episode I watched was `things in sections'; the clues provided included theatre seats, grapefruits, and oranges.

If you like knowledge and you're a big fan of the proper way in which to acquire it, I'd recommend that you check out one of these two programs.

posted by Sid at 12.22 / 807 [ Comments: 1 ]

Wednesday, 25 December 2002

Happy Christmas!

I exposed a roll of Ilford's Delta 3200 film in my medium format camera today to find a nice surprise waiting for me at the end of the roll. I removed it from the camera and licked the glue on the paper band to seal it closed to find that the glue was mint-flavoured!

posted by Sid at 14.42 / 904 [ Comments: 0 ]