Definition of a Nitwitter

My first Twitter post is dated June 19, 2009. I had once sworn never to join Twitter. But I love it. For my purposes, it works fantastically. (I basically use it as a news feed.) But the tool is only as good as its users. I've seen plenty of Twitter nonsense as well.

I knew somebody out there must have come up with a definition of a "nitwitter." I was right:

A person who discusses their twitting frequently and enthusiastically, causing irritation.

Person A: Did you read my tweets this morning? They were so funny!

Person B: Get lost, nitwitter.

I'd like to add two more definitions:

2. nitwitter: a user of Twitter who writes hopelessly incomprehensible Twitter posts. (I know 140 characters isn't much, but if you can't write a post that other people can actually understand, why bother?)

3. nitwitter: a user of Twitter who follows more people than he or she can possibly read, for the purpose of attracting more followers, who in turn neglect to read the first person's Twitter posts.

Don't be a nitwitter! In any of the three senses.

Still, I love it. Go to Twitter and follow me!

What If God Disappeared?

When I watched the first few seconds of this video some weeks ago, I didn't appreciate it. But now that I've watched it completely through...

Come On, You Homosexual Demon

No need to go to uncivilized, pestilence-ridden hovels at the far corners of the earth for crazy. We've got plenty of that right here in the U.S. of A.

Witness for yourself a "gay exorcism;" the attempt to cast a "homosexual demon" out of a teenage boy. The religious scene features a disgusting display of bigoted ignorance.

(It's unclear to me whether the alleged demon in question is itself homosexual, or if it merely causes homosexuality in its purported victim. I suppose a gay demon that also causes gayness would be particularly hard to exorcise.)

Wordpress Experience

Obviously I run with Blogger, but I've been curious about WordPress and occasionally irritated with Google (as when they shut down George Reisman's blog as "spam" for a time). Today I had the opportunity to try WordPress, so I figured I'd share a few comments about the experience.

One of my friends, Bob Glass, knows even less about techie internet stuff than I do, so he came to me for help. I went through several options, and he decided to register a domain with WordPress and set up a blog through that service. The cost is $15 per year, not a bad deal. We found (what I think is) a great domain: BobGlassRadio.com.

We set up a very simple site with a couple of blog posts. Eventually, Bob plans to upgrade the page, add permanent pages for a bio and links to archives, and so on. But at least we got up and running today.

Though I found the new setting a bit awkward, on the whole WordPress is easy to use. I was surprised that one must first establishe a ".wordpress" blog before registering a domain. But once you do that it's very easy to get the domain (with a PayPal transfer).

In creating blog entries, I was surprised that WordPress had trouble with my hand-coded "A HREF" commands. If there's an option that allows this, I didn't find it. But WordPress has a link button that's pretty easy to use. I guess it's largely what you get used to.

Like anything, tweaking a page will require a certain amount of playing around and trial-and-error. But I got the sense that WordPress can create a web page as robust as the user wants and has time to generate.

The main point is Blogger's favor is that it will transfer content to a third-party hoster at no charge. From what I gather, WordPress charges $10 per year for that. That's not a lot, but it contributes to my resistance to changing. I am glad, though, that there's a good alternative to Blogger out there. Let's hope Blogger doesn't persuade me to use it.

For most new bloggers, though, I'd recommend WordPress over Blogger, especially if you want to host your domain through WordPress as well.

Sotomayor On Abortion

I have made my opinion of Sonia Sotomayor clear: her race-based politics and judicial relativism pose serious threats to the legal system.

In the case of abortion, however, the enemies of my enemy remain my enemies. Sotomayor has come under fire for supporting the right to get an abortion, though I regard that as among the few points in her favor. (Radio host Jim Pfaff turned me on the the stories quoted here, though apparently we're on opposite sides of the issue.)

According to Paul Kengor writing for Catholic Exchange, Senator Jim DeMint said, "When I asked [Sotomayor] if an unborn child has any rights whatsoever, I was surprised that she said she had never thought about it... This is not just a question about abortion, but about respect due to human life at all stages." (Sotomayor's opinion here comes to us indirectly, via an obviously partisan senator.)

Part of DeMint's line (absent the context) made it into Charmaine Yoest's op-ed for the Washington Times. "Charmaine Yoest is president and chief executive officer of Americans United for Life (AUL)... [which] has been involved in every pro-life case before the Supreme Court since Roe v. Wade."

As background, last year I co-wrote a paper arguing that it is the anti-abortion stance that is, in fact, anti-life. Abortion bans would threaten the lives of some pregnant women, force some women to bear deformed fetuses against their will, force pregnancies even in cases of rape and incest, and interfere with birth control, scientific research, fertilization medicine, and a woman's right to control her own life and future. Personhood begins at birth, when a fetus leaves the mother's body and becomes a biologically separate and independent entity. Only religious faith can endorse the view that a fertilized egg is a person with the same rights as a newborn baby -- and religious faith conflicts with the requirements of objective law.

Significantly, Yoest bases her case, not on principles of objective law, but on popularity polls. The writes that "the overwhelming majority of Americans... support at least some restrictions on abortion." For example, "polls show" that "informed consent and parental notification" laws "are supported by at least 70 percent of the American public." I have not checked into the polling data -- though I suspect that the results depend very much on how the questions are worded (for instance, "informed consent" in this context means forcibly restricting a woman from getting an abortion for a period that politicians deem appropriate). The point is that Constitutional law is not properly determined by opinion polls.

Yoest writes that Sotomayor is guilty of "reading a 'fundamental right' to abortion into the Constitution." This is indeed ironic, given that the Bill of Rights does not explicitly mention abortion, yet it does explicitly name the right to keep and bear arms. As Dave Kopel writes, Sotomayor has also found that "the right to arms is not a fundamental right." The fact that Sotomayor can find a fundamental right for something not named in the Bill of Rghts, but not for something explicitly named, indeed points to her prejudices.

Yet the entire doctrine of "fundamental" and non-fundamental rights is a judicial fiction completely at odds with the founding philosophy of the nation. Yoest is no less guilty than Sotomayor of ignoring the plain language of the Ninth Amendment, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Yoest refers to "common-sense restrictions on abortion" -- without explaining how the restrictions she favors comport with common sense (much less individual rights). Her language mirrors that of anti-gun activists who speak of "common-sense restrictions" on the right to bear arms. Yoest's clear intent is to undermine individual rights at the whim of mob rule.

Yoest does rightly raises two troubling issues. The matter of parental notification is not obvious. The argument against it is that parents have no right to force their pre-adult teens to take on a lifetime commitment to raising a child. The other troubling issue is "state and federal funding of abortion." Yoest is right to oppose it, as forcing people to fund abortions violates their rights. However, so long as the state funds medical procedures, to limit funding for one procedure to meet the demands of religious faith violates the separation of church and state. The only solution is to end state funding of medical procedures across the board. If Yoest favors that position, she does not state it in her op-ed.

Ultimately, Yoest falls into the same error as Sotomayor of subverting objective law to subjective experience. Whether the subjective experience is said to arise from the genes or from supernatural communion, the result is the same: the destruction of individual rights.

Mango

If you're looking for a delicious and healthy snack, dried fruit is hard to beat. But it has to be good dried fruit, starting with good fresh fruit, and without a bunch of added junk. Fruits that dry well without additives include strawberries, peaches, apricots, and cherries. (I did bananas once, but you have to soak them in something -- I used orange juice -- and they're a complete mess. Good, though.)

And mangos.



Shown here is one sliced mango on a dehydrator tray, with two jars of dried mango in the background.

All you need is a good dehydrator, some good, ripe (but not mushy!) mangos (Costco is currently selling them for around $7.50 for nine), and a good knife (my tool of choice is a Wusthof classic paring knife). And some time.

(I can't think of mangos now without thinking about the Flight of the Conchords mutha uckin fruit song.)

Twitter, Here I Come

Color me green. I'm joining the Twitter revolution. So here's how I plan to work it: I'll use my Facebook account for personal news and my Twitter account to post news and updates about Colorado politics related to liberty. I'll also post some stories about national and religious items.

Follow me!

The Stoning of Soraya M.

Who was Soraya M.? She was a young woman murdered by Islamist thugs in 1986. She is every woman who continues to suffer under Islamist tyranny around the world.

Most of the horror stories we never hear about. One story has been made into a film, The Stoning of Soraya M. I am not looking forward to watching it. But watch it I must.

Mormon Missionaries

I just passed a couple of Mormon missionaries on the way back from King Soopers. We had a very pleasant conversation for ten minutes or so, which I'll summarize here.

They asked me if I'd ever talked with a Mormon missionary. I said yes, and I don't believe a word of it. We quickly established that I don't believe in God and therefore regard every religion as false.

I suggested that in the coming years they allow themselves to seriously question the underpinnings of their religion. I pointed out that the community ties of Mormonism, a strength of the religion in many ways, also bears the danger that many Mormons adhere to their beliefs largely because of social pressure. We talked about the fact that, around the world, people tend to follow the religious beliefs with which they were raised.

One of the missionaries said that he listens to the Holy Spirit, which guided him in working through his doubts about the religion. I pointed out that such an approach is circular. By assuming the Holy Spirit exists, you're assuming the entire supernaturalist framework. To evaluate a religion at a fundamental level, it is precisely supernaturalism that must be questioned. I added that, what he sees as guidance from the Holy Spirit, I regard as self-talk; he's basically working through a problem mentally, and when he comes to persuade himself on some point, he mistakes this as guidance from the Holy Spirit.

Regarding the general issue of faith, I replied that one should base beliefs on reason rooted in the evidence of the senses, not resort to faith. After all, I argued, if faith is the reason to accept Mormonism, then why not accept on faith any other religion, such as Catholicism or Islam?

One fellow replied with two prongs of the faith line. First, he argued that the scriptures contain some verifiable wisdom. I replied that, to be sustainable as a religion, any religion must adopt a certain amount of common-sense wisdom, which by its nature is not inherently religious. (Scripture also contains a lot of bad advice, I added.) For example, I accept the view common among religions (but not inherently religious) that murder and adultery are wrong. So the fact that scripture might contain some truth does not justify a belief in the religion. Next, the fellow argued that, while we can go a long way on reason, finally we must resort to faith. I said that "punting" to faith is no way to ground beliefs, nor is it compatible ultimately with being honest with one's self.

Mormon missionaries tend to be young (one of the ones I talked with, a nineteen year old, nevertheless bears the title, "Elder"), which is why I tried to emphasize that they seriously question their beliefs over the next few years. I certainly don't think people have some sort of responsibility to try to persuade Mormon missionaries that their religion is false, and they are trained to handle discussions (in pairs, in something like a "good cop, bad cop" relationship). But I was up for it, and I thought that if they want me to consider their ideas, they might as well consider mine.

They asked me if I wanted a Book of Mormon. I said I already have a copy. I said that I'm on my way to read Atlas Shrugged in preparation for a reading group. I suggested that they read it, too.

Still Charmed

Jennifer and I are watching Charmed on Netflix (as the DVDs cost quite a lot to purchase). Sure, some of the episodes are silly, some of the acting is poor, and sometimes the focus seems to be on hiring pretty faces. In case you've missed it, Charmed is about three sisters with magical powers.

Sometimes, though, the writing is superb. And I really like the central characters. Tonight we watched "Awakened" from the second season. It and "Morality Bites" are the two best episodes of the show so far, as far as I'm concerned. Both have the same theme: integrity. Doing the wrong thing can have unforeseen and disastrous consequences.

In "Awakened," Piper (one of the sisters) brings unsafe fruit into her club, and she contracts a dangerous illness from an insect in the box. Then, the sisters try to save her by misusing magic, and that creates many more problems.

Unfortunately, the moral rules by which they use their powers are arbitrary and ambiguous. The idea is that they cannot use their power "for personal gain." But that's clearly not an enforced rule; all the time they use their powers to save themselves from nefarious creatures. Even if we add the exception of fighting magical villains, the characters still use their powers for personal gain all the time. For example, Piper regularly freezes people merely to chat privately with her sisters or to resolve some awkward situation. In the previous episode, another sister uses her powers to help care for a baby, for her own convenience.

So the sensible rule seems to be something more like, "Don't try to control innocent people for unearned gain."

The ridiculousness of the magical rules becomes obvious near the end of "Awakened." Somehow it's bad for two of the sisters to save the third from a non-magical malady by the use of magic, even though this is not for "personal gain," yet it's noble for another magical being to save Piper through magic (even though he's punished for it by his order).

However, if you abstract away from the silly magical rules to the universal theme of integrity, it's a good story. And the theme is actually carried off much better when a third sister quits her job in protest of her boss selling a painting she knows is not authentic. The show avoids the same flaw often enough to remain interesting.

Tomato Patch

Jennifer and I -- with some help from Jennifer's sister -- planted 48 tomato plants on Sunday. We had been shooting for 60, but 48 fit our space better. We have poor soil, so we planted each plant in a hole with "planter's mix" soil. We also planted assorted squash.

A word of warning: I called and had my utility lines marked, but in one case we found a line several feet away from the marking. (The guideline is 18 inches on either side.) So apparently the markings are largely guesses. I also suggest that you photograph the markings, so if you hit an unmarked line you have a good defense against related fees. At our old place a landscaping company hit an unmarked Comcast line, and the company's careful documentation prevented Comcast from passing along the repair fees.





It may not look pretty, but all I care about is the survival and growth of my tomato plants. Next year we hope to have a considerably prettier yard (which had completely reverted to weeds when we bought it last summer).

Dried Strawberries

King Soopers is selling strawberries for a buck a pound, not a bad deal, so we've dried sixteen pounds, with another eight to go.

Pictured here are eight pounds of strawberries loaded into a large Excalibur Dehydrator. As you can see, this yielded nine cups of dried strawberries, perfect out of the jar, on salads, etc.

(We have so much work to do on the house, yard, and garden over the summer that I'll probably blog more about that and less about cultural and political issues for a while. We also planted 48 tomato plants yesterday, and I'm a bit sore from digging holes.)

Meniskus Releases Partyer!

The Colorado band Meniskus released the single "Partyer" last night at the Fox Theatre in Boulder.

"Partyer" should be available soon on iTunes. For now, you can listen to it streaming on the group's Facebook page.

While you're there, make sure to check out "Brigade," "Letters," and "Overbearing." I consider these the band's four greatest songs, and an impressive collection for a relatively young band. If these songs hook you, you'll become a Meniskus fan. (Note: I like the version of "Letters" on Foreign Beyond best. You can also see the video for "Letters" on the Facebook page.)

I'm hoping that "Partyer" is the most radio and party-friendly release so far, and that it draws attention to some of the other songs. It deserves to become a popular hit song.

Defiance

Defiance is a film new to DVD about a group of Jewish freedom fighters who fight the Nazis and struggle to maintain a camp of survivors. Like all films about Nazi atrocities, Defiance can be tough to watch. Yet in this film the emphasis is on the Jewish resistance, so there's plenty to cheer for.

Edward Zwick, who directed the film, wrote the foreword to a new release to the history book by Nechama Tec on which the film is based. Zwick writes:

[T]o see Jewish men and women standing shoulder to shoulder in the snowy woods, brandishing automatic weapons in their own defense, flies in the face of the most pernicious oversimplification of the Holocaust -- one that minimizes the impulse of its victims to resist. And it is this impulse that Nechama Tec details with such ferocious clarity. Indeed, as contemporary scholarship has now revealed, resistance in fact found its expression in almost every city, town, and shtetl in Eastern Europe over which the shadows of extermination had fallen.

It is this spirit of defiance which animates the cry, "Never again!"

Springtime In Colorado

We met family today at Dillon Lake off I-70. The clouds were spectacular, but the rain held off for most of the day. Here are three photos:






Now if we could just get a political scene as pretty as the mountains...

You Send It

I'm very pleased with YouSendIt.com. For no charge you can send files up to 100 megabytes in size to as many as 100 other people. You can pay a fee for larger files, more people, or added security. It's easy to use -- you just need to set up an account and establish a password -- and the service will send an e-mail straight to recipients telling them the file is available. (They have seven days to download it, again unless you pay extra for more time.) Today I sent a zipped folder of photos as well as a short video. Very cool.

Tales of Beedle the Bard

I've written a review of J. K. Rowling's book of fairy tales, Tales of Beedle the Bard Expands Rowling's Moral Themes.

My least favorite story is "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot," because it mixes themes and develops them poorly. My favorite is "The Fountain of Fair Fortune." I find the other three tales to have interesting things to say about psychology, politics, and dealing with death.

Read the entire review.

Goode Family

We just watched the first episode of The Goode Family at ABC.com. It is about an environmentally-conscious, sensitive vegan family (think Boulder). The parents adopted a child from Africa to fight racism and accidentally got a white kid from South Africa. The dog is vegan, too -- and, coincidentally, many of the neighborhood animals have gone missing.



This is biting social criticism from Mike Judge (of King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-head fame). And, like all of Judge's work, it has something of a soft heart, despite its sometimes-painful satire.

This is not "ha, ha funny" television. It's so satirically critical of environmentalism that I'm surprised a major network picked it up. Good for ABC. I'm not sure it can last with its hard edge (especially among an American audience, which loves the dumbed down, Americanized version of The Office). Still, very interesting television.

Unemployment Whiners

UPI reports:

Some people recently laid-off from religious institutions in Virginia said they were shocked [just shocked!] to find the state does not offer them unemployment benefits.

Carol Bronson, who was laid off from her secretarial job at Temple Emanuel synagogue in Virginia Beach, said she was told her unemployment claim was denied because the tax exemptions for religious organizations under Virginia law include an exemption from paying unemployment taxes, The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported Monday.

Steven G. Vegh of the Virginian-Pilot adds that "under Virginia law, tax exemptions for religious organizations include freedom from paying unemployment taxes. The groups still must pay Social Security and withholding taxes."

You don't have to pay the tax, so you don't get the benefits. Sounds pretty fair to me. In fact, it sounds like such a good idea that I think it should be expanded. All businesses should be able to decide whether to pay the unemployment tax. If I could decide not to pay the Social Security tax in exchange for not getting any Social Security benefits, I'd sign up in a second.

Sennheiser Microphones

In the case of remote microphones, it is true that you get what you pay for. I purchased a lower-end Audio Technica mic that worked, but it offered steady background static, frequent bursts of interference, and practically no controls. I returned it.

Then I purchased a much more expensive G2 series mic system from Sennheiser (from B&H, by the way), and my preliminary tests came back with crystal clear sound. The only problem I've had is that, out of the box, it's a little hot for my camcorder. But I can adjust the volume, the frequency, and various other settings fairly easily. I haven't quite decided on the optimal settings for my equipment, but I've come close.

I'm a bargain shopper. Sometimes, though, the best bargains cost the most money.

Origins Of Life?

While no doubt the matter will continue to be debated, British scientists seem to have made some progress regarding the origins of life. Via Fox, the Agence France-Presse reports on "a paper published in the British journal Nature by University of Manchester chemists:"

The team, led by Professor John Sutherland, venture that an RNA-like synthesis took place through a series of chemical reactions and an important intermediate substance.

Their lab model uses starting materials and environmental conditions that are believed to have been around in early Earth and are also used in the standard "RNA first" scenario.

Their theory starts with a simple sugar called glycolaldehyde, which reacts with cyanmide (a compound of cyanide and ammonia) and phosphate to produce an intermediate compound called 2-aminooxazole.

Gentle warming from the Sun and cooling at night help purify the 2-aminooxazole, turning it into a plentiful precursor which contributes the sugar and base portions of the new ribonucleotide molecule.

The presence of phosphate and ultraviolet light from the Sun complete the synthesis.

God's Gap may have just shrunk a bit more. Of course, even if scientists succeed in creating new life in a laboratory setting, even that will not prevent (the relatively sophisticated) creationists from imagining the hand of God at work in the origins and evolution of life.

Trimming Songs

Memo to rock bands: don't put annoying filler in your songs. Thankfully, now I can simply cut such nonsense out with my audio editing software (mostly Amadeus, though I have to use other stuff to get around irritating "protection" encoding. I hasten to note that I buy all my music and alter the encoding only of songs I have purchased for my personal use).

I almost didn't buy the new Depeche Mode album because of the bizarre and off-putting (and long) introduction to the first song, which is otherwise great. With a judicious snip, the song is now a minute, twenty-three seconds shorter -- and much better.

I love U2's "Wanderer," sung by Johnny Cash -- except that they recorded these horrible clanging noises at the end. Now I can enjoy the song without rushing to fast-forward through the completely unnecessary noise.

I also got a song from Ghostland Observatory that includes this grating buzzing sequence about three-fourths of the way through. Now the song is about a fourth shorter -- and I can listen to it.

Listen, rock bands: none of you is so great that you can just put annoying noise in your songs and expect us to listen. Knock it off. You're not being avant garde, you're not being edgy, you're not being clever. You're being annoying. And there are too many good bands in the world for listeners to put up with your annoying crap. That goes for you, too, U2. At least now I can fight back and do your editing work for you.

There is a broader point here: with the digitization of music, listeners can now adjust their play lists, not just to include the songs they want, but to include the sections of songs they want. In general, the digital revolution puts consumers in charge of their media in remarkable new ways.

Coconut Milk Smoothie

Wow. Want a calorie booster in your morning smoothie? Try coconut milk.

My nephew is allergic to milk, so I suggested to my sister that she put coconut milk in his smoothies. Today I tried it with great results. We blended a can of Thai Kitchen coconut milk (which Target sells for $1.44), a banana, some pineapple-orange juice, and some yogurt (which I assume my sister would hold). We ended up with four cups of rich, creamy smoothie that tastes fantastic. The coconut flavor is mild and yummy.

The can of coconut milk contains 70 grams of fat, 50 of which are saturated. So this definitely follows the "fat is your friend" line of dietary views. (I know that some people especially like coconut fat in terms of healthy eating, but I don't know the science behind such claims.) You could definitely use less coconut per serving if you wanted to reduce the calorie and fat load.

I do think it's true that eating fat makes you feel full; I've mostly finished my two cups of smoothie and I feel absolutely stuffed, even though earlier I was thinking of making eggs.

Read also about chicken mole using coconut milk.

Castle Renewed! Now Revive Serenity

I'm thrilled for Nathan Fillion (a.k.a. "Cap'n Tight Pants." Not that I noticed, or anything, but I hear tell). Castle, the hip "Murder He Wrote" for ABC, has been picked up for a second season (via Wikipedia).

Jennifer and I just finished watching the final (tenth) episode of the first (replacement) season. The last episode illustrates why I like Fillion. He's funny, yes. But he also has that hard, tense edge when he needs it. I also quite like Stana Katic, who portrays the cop with whom Fillion's Rick Castle partners to solve crimes.

I like the show because Katic's character is driven to find justice, yet the crimes often are shown to be what real crimes are: messy. Sometimes the perpetrators are a little sympathetic, and sometimes the victims weren't so nice.

Okay, so now that Fillion is a big damn movie star (though he already had a fantastic TV show and two outstanding feature films to his credit, plus some other fun work), now that Summer Glau is a freakin' terminator, now that Alan Tudyk is back working with Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, now that Whedon is obviously in his prime, it seems high time to get the crew together and finish making the Serenity movies.

I'll review a few rules here for making the last two movies a success.

1. Film them both at once to save costs.

2. Don't title them "Serenity," which sounds like retired people fishing in a pond or something. Call it "Mal's War" or something bad-ass. ("Serenity" can be in the subtitle.)

3. Run real ads, not those strange "cult following" ads that accompanied the first movie.

4. This is optional, but I like it. Whedon killed off two characters in the first film. Okay, I get it. But you can bring back these characters, say by having Tudyk appear in Zoe's dreams (say, to tell her she's pregnant), and having Book appear in a video recording addressed to Mal. Or something like that.

I sincerely believe that the next two Serenity films would make money. (Hell, I think you could re-release the first film and make more money off that.) I think there were some problems with the first film in terms of packaging and marketing that held back its sales, but that could be fixed for the next two films. Yes, scheduling conflicts and all that. But this is great art. And great art deserves commitment and funding. I believe the money will follow.

Give us Serenity parts II and III.

Essays on Atlas

Amazon finally shipped my copy of Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. (Get the paperback, unless you're willing to pay an exorbitant price for the hardback.) There's a lot of good material in there, and I've just started to read through it. I enjoyed Jeff Britting's chapter on adapting the novel for screen, based largely on Rand's own advice.

The best essay I've read so far is Darryl Wright's chapter on Rand's development of ethics between her two big novels. In brief, she went from seeing independence as the primary virtue to crowning rationality. The shift places reality -- one's relationship with reality -- at the forefront. And I hadn't directly considered the fact that independence is a virtue possible only in relation to other people; without reference to others one can be neither independent (from others) or dependent (on others). That's a big reason why rationality is primary: one must choose to think whether alone or in society.

Wright also reviews Rand's development of the idea that morality arises only within the context of the choice to live. Good stuff.

Taken

In Taken, a film released to DVD this week starring Liam Neeson, two teenage girls go to Paris without any mature supervision or hard-headed sense. Predictably, they fall in with a smooth-talking predator. And they are taken.

Fortunately, the father of one of the girls (Neeson) worked many years for the government to prevent "bad things from happening." So he heads to Paris to find his daughter -- and take care of her abductors.

The father shows single-minded, coolly passionate competence in tracking his daughter. He demonstrates that there is no necessary conflict between reason and emotional commitment: he uses his mind to direct his physical prowess in recovering his daughter, his supreme value.

I really liked this movie.

Assuming Jennifer and I have kids as planned, I plan to buy Taken and other films with good sensible messages of self-protection. It really can be a dangerous world out there if you don't pay attention to what you're doing and take sensible precautions. I navigated a few dangerous situations by sheer luck. I want to help my kids do better.

Face: Best Boulder Band

Congratulations to Face, an all-vocal recently named the best band in Boulder. See Vince Darcangelo's love letter to Face in the Daily Camera.

My wife and I took my mom to see Face at Nissis on Monday. Good show. The group has sold out that venue something like 80 times in a row. (Note: an owner of Nissis also owns my wife's company.)

I wrote about Face twice in 2005. I understand the group likes my following line:

[S]aying that Face is an "a cappella group" is sort of like saying Jimi Hendrix is a "guitar player." It's true, but it doesn't really get the point across. Face rocks.

On Monday, I was especially impressed with Mark Megibow's new "drum" solo: he was singing through his own beats. (I joked that I'd be impressed when he can also sing harmony with himself.) He must have the best-developed mouth and throat muscles in all of Colorado.

You can listen to Face's music on the group's webpage.

If you want to read a heart-wrenching mother's day story, see Pamela White's article for Boulder Weekly, "2 men, 2 women and a baby." Here's the summary. Forest Kelly is another member of Face. His wife suffered from cancer, so, unable to have children herself, she had some eggs of hers frozen. Then Megibow's wife decided to carry her friends' baby to term. Happy Mother's Day.

Return 'Buy Black'

You've got to be kidding me. A "buy black" program -- as in, buy only from African-American owned stores -- is "becoming a nationwide movement."

This should get exact same reception as a "buy white" campaign would get. Paging Dr. King.

Apple Service

I love Apple. I love my iMac computer, yes, but I also love Apple as a company. previously I wrote about our new computer. I have since processed an HD video file two hours in length; the computer worked fine (though it takes time to process files that big). The source file in iMovie is about 100 gigabytes.

Recently I needed some information about iMovie versus Final Cut Express, the mid-grade software. A guy named Eliot at the Flatirons store spent a few minutes answering my questions about the software. (I learned that iMovie is a lot more powerful than I had imagined.) As we also briefly discussed, when you buy an Apple product, you're not just buying the stuff, you're buying the service, which is worth a lot.

Just decades ago, the technology I have sitting on my desktop was not available at any price. Just years ago, it cost several times the value of my house. The technology revolution has allowed the economy to move forward despite all the federal interventionist shenanigans. Just imagine where we might go in a free economy.

Cookware

Jennifer and I bought a teflon pan a year or two ago at Target. It worked well, but recently I noticed that it had started to show chipping and scratching (even though we use only silicone spatulas). That teflon is wearing off somewhere, either in the wash or in the cooking, and I'm not sure I want to be eating it. Plus, everybody we've talked with says teflon wears out eventually with any pan, and we didn't want to keep buying new pans every year or two.



So we bought a stainless steel All-Clad fourteen inch deep-dish pan. It was pricy, but it performed well for an onion-beef-tomato dish I made. Unfortunately, it did not perform well as a griddle.

So we first bought an All-Clad double burner cast-iron griddle. But I didn't like it for two reasons. It didn't fit our stove's burners well, and my egg immediately ran into the "grease" gutter. So we returned it. I bought two Calphalon 10.5 inch cast-iron griddles at Target, and they work spectacularly. I made the best pancakes of my life in them. (Plus, the two round griddles cost less than the single double-burner one.)

So we now have cookware that works well and that should last the rest of our lives and beyond.

Trekking Boldly

The new Star Trek movie overall is fantastic. If you're a Start Trek fan, go see it. If you like sci-fi, action, good acting, good production, or J. J. Abrams, go see it.

I think there's a reason why Wolverine and Star Trek each earned a huge box office: people still want to live with heroes. Sometimes in our world it's easy to forget that there are heroes out there, that we too can act heroically. People are hungry for that. Thankfully, Star Trek delivers.

Here's the basic minimally-spoily story: a Romulan (Nero, portrayed by Eric Bana) nurses an irrational rage against the elder Spock, who pursues Nero into the past. Nero arrives at a time just before James T. Kirk is born and sticks around long enough to tangle with Kirk as a young man.

I don't like everything about Trek. Indeed, while I enjoyed the movie immensely while watching it, afterward I sulked about the plot inconsistencies and contrivances. Then I decided that, despite the film's weaknesses, it is a heroic story finely made.

That said, I remain frustrated with the film for similar reasons that I've become frustrated with other projects from Abrams. I really enjoyed Alias, but less so after the plot became nearly incomprehensibly complex, and not at all when the Giant Magical Energy Ball appeared. I never have finished watching the series. (While Abrams did not write Trek, he worked with writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman on Alias and other projects.) I loved Lost right until the characters had to repeatedly punch a code into some bizarre machine for some unknown reason. The stories are just too convoluted to be enjoyable.

Likewise, while I enjoyed the action of the Transformers film (which didn't involve Abrams but which Orci and Kurzman wrote), I found the basic story exceedingly tedious and stupid.

Trek is a lot better, but, notably, Spock the Elder has to voice-over substantial background to make the story remotely comprehensible.

From here on out this review includes spoilers!

Star Trek, like Alias, features a Giant Magical Sci-Fi Energy Globule. This is a device, a stand-in for real writing. It's almost as bad as the Giant Magical Energy Ribbon from Generations. It's the sort of nonsense takes the "sci" out of sci-fi.

Here's another example of the occasional idiocy of Star Trek. At one point, Spock the Younger kicks Kirk off the ship; Kirk ends up on a nearby planet, in a random place though somewhat near a Federation outpost. After being chased by not one but two Man-Eating Snow Monsters (because, you know, all ice planets are filled with Man-Eating Snow Monsters), Kirk falls down an embankment and runs into a cave. Low and behold! It is precisely the cave where Spock the Elder has taken up residence after he was sent to the planet by Nero! What amazing luck. But wait, there's more! Kirk meets not only Spock the Elder but Scotty, who just so happens to have been assigned to the ice-planet outpost! It's so coincidental you wouldn't believe it if it were fiction.

Once Leonard Nimoy signed on as Spock the Elder, time travel was a plot necessity (given the undesirability of mere flashbacks). As a rule I hate time travel in stories just because it makes everything so messy and disconnected. I suppose it is poetic, then, that the three greatest Trek films -- The Voyage Home, First Contact, and the new one -- feature time travel as a crucial element of plot.

The writers use time travel to make the new Trek not just an "origins" film, but a complete reboot. Because Nero appears just before Kirk's birth, he literally changes the entire timeline from that point on. The Star Trek universe is literally different from the historical universe of the rest of the franchise. (I believe that Next Generations went off into a parallel universe for a while.)

What's interesting about the film -- and I actually like this -- is that the writers don't "fix" the timeline in the end. This has devastating consequences for an entire world. This adds an element of realism to the movie. The heroes win, but they can't blow on it and make everything better in the end. The bad guy extracts a horrible price, the way bad guys so often do in the real world. While the heroes do not always have to lose something precious to drive a compelling story, in this case it's integral to the story, though it took me considerable time to overcome the anxiety about disrupting the history of the rest of the franchise. (I finally had to ask myself, "Would I like this movie if I knew nothing else about Star Trek?")

After it all, then, I can forgive the eyebrow-raising plot holes, because the story's amazing heroism rings true.

John Lewis Reflects on Tea Parties

While John Lewis was in town to discuss the Athenian constitution, he also shared a few thoughts about the Tea Parties. Listen also to Dr. Lewis's outstanding Tea Party speech from April 15.

John Lewis on Constitutions, Athens and Now

John Lewis gave a talk today in Arvada called "Greek Lessons for Today's Crisis of Government." Here he briefly summarizes his talk.

Values of Harry Potter Update

Kirk Barbera's review of my book Values of Harry Potter was republished on his Cedrac blog.

Barbera writes that Values of Harry Potter shows "the morality of the Potter series does not promote sacrificing life on earth, but instead supports the notion of living life fully."

He concludes, "Most importantly the [Harry Potter] books can teach us how to attain the values best suited to each and every one of our lives. Ari Armstrong shows us that, through Harry, we can learn life isn't just what is; but what can and ought to be."

Note that Amazon is behind in its ordering, but the book should become available there again within a few days. Or order Values of Harry Potter directly with free shipping on all U.S. orders (outside Colorado).

ReCaptcha: Stop Spam, Digitize Books

Some readers may have noticed that I've changed my method of listing my e-mail address on my web pages. I now use ReCaptcha.

ReCaptcha hides a portion of the e-mail, and to access the entire e-mail, you must type in two words. This helps stop spammers, obviously.

But -- and this is the really clever part -- it also helps to digitize books. So we're getting some extra value for our time spent blocking spam.

ReCaptcha is a service of Carnegie Mellon University. Here's the relevant description:

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into "reading" books.

To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then transformed into text using "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher.

This is very clever. Two problems, one elegant solution. Nicely done.

Two Doses of Nonsense Do Not Make for Reason

David Limbaugh's comment today illustrates perfectly what's wrong with today's left-right divide:

Lately, MSNBC's Chris Matthews has been on a childish tear, taunting Republicans to admit their belief in the biblical account of the Creation. Someone ought to ask this paragon of smug self-satisfaction why, if he's so brilliant, he unquestioningly echoes the demagogic hyperbole of global warming fanatics hellbent on destroying the economic system responsible for producing unprecedented prosperity in the advanced industrialized world. Oh, yes, it's fashionable to denounce capitalism these days, but the historical record is clear.

So because Matthews is a nutty leftist, that somehow legitimizes the nutty right? What we need is reason and capitalism.

Out-Of-Wedlock Births Approach 40 Percent

Ken Blackwell alerted me to the latest updates on out-of-wedlock births. The upshot is that the figure approaches 40 percent. And that is a serious problem.

Emile Yoffe of Slate points out that, from 1960 to today, the percent of births to unwed mothers has risen from 5 to 40.

Of course, the mere numbers do not tell the whole story. Some responsible older women choose to have children by themselves. I know several Colorado couples who are "common law" married but who may not show up in the marriage statistics. Some couples, while not technically married, are fully committed to their relationship. (While Yoffe notes that many unmarried couples with children split up, the fact remains that many married couples do the same thing, though at a somewhat lower rate.)

Gay couples typically are legally forbidden from getting married, though they may raise a child in a deeply committed romantic relationship. While many women used to suffer in horrible "shotgun" marriages with abusive spouses, today they are more likely to go it alone -- and they're better off for it. More women (as CNN points out) have a child before getting married, rather than rush a marriage due to pregnancy.

Nevertheless, the dramatic rise in out-of-wedlock births points to deep cultural problems, even if not all out-of-wedlock births are a cause for alarm.

Out-of-wedlock births are largely a phenomenon of lower-class America, where decades of welfare have encouraged promiscuity and dependence on federal handouts. Yoffe points out, "Only 4 percent of college graduates have children out of wedlock."

The National Vital Statistics Report for Births: Final Data for 2006 (January 7, 2009) offers the updates. Here's the relevant passage:

The birth rate for unmarried women increased 7 percent between 2005 and 2006, reaching 50.6 births per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15–44 years. The rate has jumped 16 percent since 2002, the most recent low. The number of nonmarital births in 2006, 1,641,946, was almost 8 percent higher than in 2005 and 20 percent more than in 2002. The proportion of all births to unmarried women reached 38.5 percent of all U.S. births in 2006, up from 36.9 percent in 2005. All of these measures were at record levels for the United States in 2006.

Turn to Table 18 of the report (page 54) for some truly frightening numbers. The "percent of births to unmarried women" for "all ages" breaks down as follows:

All Races: 38.5
White: 33.3
Black: 70.2
Hispanic: 49.9

The welfare state and the social pathologies it engenders are devastating much of black America. And any political leader who refuses to look squarely at the problem is a traitor to the black community.

Gay Marriage Advances

Rarely do I favor the fence with my seat, but I have wavered between gay marriage and domestic partnership. I think all romantic couples should be treated equally under the law, but I haven't been persuaded that domestic partnership fails this test.

But ultimately gay marriage may trump. As the Associated Press reports, Maine became the fifth state to allow gay marriage, and New Hampshire may become the sixth.

How can Colorado balk if a gay couple, married in another state, moves here? Will our legal system say, "You're not really married here?" Article IV of the Constitution states, "Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state."

Moreover, does Colorado want to tell successful gay couples that they're not welcome here? While Christian conservatives may decline to answer or may forthrightly say they're happy to push gay couples away, for the rest of us, gay couples shop the same as everyone else, rent or buy houses, perform useful jobs, and generally enhance the economy and culture. It'll be interesting to see how all this works out over the coming years.