Read this article about the MTV Trippin’ show.
I think it would be “inspiring” and “awesome” and “cool” if Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and other celebrities who spew these things actually spent about ten years living without all of those nasty conveniences that help to keep us alive and healthy and comfortable and productive.
I suspect that keeping them away from any modern communications equipment will go a long way toward saving the planet.
(Hat Tip: Ronald Bailey at Reason Hit & Run)
Go read Don Boudreaux’s great post over at Cafe Hayek about living in harmony with nature. Excerpt:
Pre-Columbian peoples lived simply, to be sure, but let’s stop mistaking ignorance and poverty with harmony. It’s an utter myth – we might say an urban myth – that primitive peoples lived with nature harmoniously. Nature devastated them. Nature battered them into early graves. Their ignorance of nature prevented them from achieving much material wealth. To dance to imaginary rain gods or to chant and pray for a child dying of bacterial infection is not to live harmoniously with nature; it is to live most inharmoniously. Nature is doing its thing – failing to water the crops, growing bacteria within a child’s lungs – while human beings who are as ignorant of nature as nature is of human beings, moan, chant, pray, dance, build totems, burn leaves and twigs, all in fruitless, inharmonious efforts to solve the problems.
…
It is science – rational thought, skepticism, critical inquiry – that furthers greater harmony with nature.
UPDATE: Boudreaux clarifies a few points in this follow-up post, and concludes with:
It’s time we stop defining living harmoniously as having no effect on nature. Nothing intrinsic to the concept ‘living harmoniously with nature’ requires that humans live in such a way as to leave the environment as close as possible to what it would be like if we didn’t exist.
I know it’s not considered polite to speak ill of the dead, but some people deserved it!
I think Cathy Young gets things exactly right in her Reason Hit & Run post.
Dworkin was a crazed fanatic who was spectacularly wrong in most of her generalized conclusions. I think she and others who see women as perpetual victims, and men as perpetual criminals, have done much more harm than good for women.
I don’t mind so much that she was wrong. I mind that she wanted to impose her vision on the rest of us.
Ironically, I suspect that if her policy prescriptions were ever enacted widely much of her own work would have been banned or censored. The law cannot distinguish between good and bad art and speculation; and without broad liberties we risk being deprived of the freedom to share interesting, but controversial, ideas.
Mark Alexander at WitNit has passed a “Book Meme” along to me. I guess it’s like a blogosphere chain letter. I would refuse to cooperate on principle, but I didn’t have anything better to write about. So…here goes:
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Anthem by Ayn Rand. It’s short and sweet and illustrates the supremacy of individualism over collectivism; which is probably the most important meme to spread in such an environment.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Yes. (stupid question! They should probably have added, “and if so, who?”)
The last book you bought is:
Sock by Penn Jillette. I blogged a little about it here.
The last book you read:
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. I thought it was a pretty interesting read. I liked the anecdotes. I don’t think it helps one to know when to trust his first instincts, and I’ll probably continue to look for good explanations before making important decisions, but it’s good to remember how much of what we know is based on inexplicit knowledge.
What are you currently reading?
How Would You Move Mount Fuji? by William Poundstone. Not because I’m very interested in the value of these questions when interviewing, but because I like logic puzzles, and I’m curious about what kind of answers to impossible questions are desired.
MCAD/MCSD Visual C# .NET Certification All-in-One Exam Guide by Marj Rempel, Kenneth Lind. Just in case I decide to take more certification exams.
Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett. I actually haven’t picked this up in a while, but I consider myself to still be reading it.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes-And Its Implications by David Deutsch
The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Extreme Survival Almanac: Everything You Need to Know to Live Through a Shipwreck, Plane Crash, or Any Outdoor Crisis Imaginable by Reid Kincaid. I can’t believe everybody didn’t pick this one!
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
I’m going to cheat here (even more than above) and not name anybody, because I don’t think it’s fair if the invitation isn’t wanted.
But, I encourage anybody who reads this, and has a blog, and wants to answer the questions to do so and let us all know about it in the comments.
I’m not going to try to pull an April Fool’s Day stunt this year.
But, many other web-based April Fool’s Day pranks are accumulating at this wikipedia web page.
Check them out.
Russell Roberts has a nice post today about the perplexing romantic ideas of government provision of services that imagine that things are better that way than they would be if private people did them (coerced collective action = Good, private cooperative action = Bad or Unimaginable).
I often express my gratitude that the government didn’t decide early on that it must be the major provider of food, because food is so important (especially to the poor!). If they had, we’d probably be stuck with very few choices of mostly crappy food that would be incredibly expensive to produce and distribute. We’re all very lucky that this didn’t happen; especially the poor.
Now, if we could just get the government out of the education, health care, retirement, transportation, scientific research, art (and many other) businesses we’d be much better off.
Especially the poor.
I think that 23% is too high, but I’m happy to see proposals for replacing the current federal income tax (and others) being considered (as in this George Will column).
As I indicated in the fascinating comments to this post, I think that such a replacement would be a step in the right direction.
I think it would be great to eliminate the need for the government to know all of the intimate details of our earnings and expenses; or to have an excuse to intimidate and harass us about them. It will also be much better to avoid all of the inefficient resource allocation (both individual and corporate) going on now to reduce tax burdens rather than to improve productivity. Additionally, it will be great to stop congress from being able to engage in all of their current tax code manipulation mischief.
The Left should be pleased that the rich would continue to bear the major portion of the burden, but I suspect that they won’t see it as sufficient punishment for the sin of financial success.
I agree with David Bernstein that this refusal to discriminate was stupid and costly.
Irrational discrimination can be very painful and ugly, and so it’s very tempting to outlaw and discourage all discrimination (based on certain unchosen characteristics, anyway) regardless of whether they may be rational. But, such laws and practices can also lead to injustice and, as in this case, to tragedy as well.
I think it’s far better to respect liberty and permit both rational and irrational discrimination, and leave it to evolving social norms to discourage the ugly, irrational, sorts of discrimination.
I’m not sure why, but I find this site hilarious. Here’s the pitch:
Toby is the cutest little bunny on the planet. Unfortunately, he will DIE on June 30th, 2005 if you don’t help. I rescued him several months ago. I found him under my porch, soaking wet, injured from what appeared to be an attack from an alley cat. I took him in, thinking he had no chance to live from his injuries, but miraculously, he recovered. I have since spent several months nursing him to health. Toby is a fighter, that’s for sure.
Unfortunately, on June 30th, 2005, Toby will die. I am going to eat him. I am going to take Toby to a butcher to have him slaughter this cute bunny. I will then prepare Toby for a midsummer feast. I have several recipes under consideration, which can be seen, with some pretty graphic images, under the recipe section.
I don’t want to eat Toby, he is my friend, and he has always been the most loving, adorable pet. However, God as my witness, I will devour this little guy unless I receive 50,000$ USD into my account from donations or purchase of merchandise. You can help this poor, helpless bunny’s cause by making donations through my verified PayPal account by clicking on any of the Donate buttons on this site, or by purchasing merchandise at the Savetoby.com online store.
This reminds me of the National Lampoon magazine cover that said “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.”
Ok, so the site is a hoax. I’m sure there are still people dumb enough to send the guy money, though. And, there’s a part of me that thinks that the sooner those people are separated from their money, the better.
There are many smart left-liberals, conservatives, and libertarians who will probably never agree about politics no matter how long they consider the same evidence, and argue. They just have different conceptions of right and wrong, and human nature, what people should be forced to do and what they should be free to choose.
Randy Barnett wrote a post at the Volokh Conspiracy blog yesterday discussing this article from Liberty magazine, and opened up comments for libertarians to try to explain their own psychology. If you’re curious about the psychology of political ideology (as I am), I encourage you to read the article, the post, and the comments.
I don’t know what the answers are. I don’t think many of us are very good at introspection about why we have formed our deep assumptions, and we’re even worse at figuring out what makes others tick. But, I think there’s an element of the truth in much of what is suggested by these thoughtful people speculating about it.
A Reasonable Man 
